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leery11
I Tell You What!

Registered: 06/24/05
Posts: 5,998
Last seen: 8 years, 9 months
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excess and minfulness
#5704185 - 06/02/06 01:39 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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"look what I have found, a sea-shell in a sea of shells." - dredg
Who is a banana more important to, a native who happens across one growing in a tree, has gone very hungry, and has received a bounty from the Earth, or, a soccer mom who drove her SUV to the grocery store to buy a few dozen for her spoiled children?
We have everything. And soley because of this, nothing has value. The only thing left to value is money, and money only leads to have greater quantities of everything. Repeat cycle.
Food is a precious gift. Unless you are obese. Music is a perfect gift, unless you listen to it constantly.
Because we have everything we need, our wants are not conducive to better health because they are not aligned with what we need.
If we want what we need. We are happy to have our needs met. If we want what we don't need, what we want is not something that will bring substance to our lives.
Constant overstimulation numbs me, but I would not want you any other way. It's not enough. I need more. Nothing seems to satisfy. I said I don't WANT it, I just NEED it, to breathe, feel, to know I'm aliiiiive.
Do we need to lose? Do we need to voluntarily give up, in order to be free? To go very hungry so that eating food is eating food. Because eating food is not eating food, eating food is thinking about the dream you just woke up from and contemplating mowing the lawn. Mowing the lawn is contemplating what you will have for dinner. Having dinner is watching TV. Watching TV is going to sleep. Going to sleep is not attainable because going to sleep is thinking about tomorrow (not for me insomnia is silly but it's all too real for most people )
We are completely and totally dispalced. Our attention has been atrophied and compromised and buried somewhere underneath the hundreds to thousands of posessions we have. Because survival is totally irrelevant, we do not have a connection to the sacredness of living.
Fruit is sacred. Vegetables are sacred. Blue sky and mild weather is sacred. Your life is sacred. The lives of humans are sacred. The lives of animals are sacred.
A person undergoing HUNGER, not "oh my tummy is a little gurgly I will eat two big macs" truely experiences EATING. A person who has never experienced hunger does not experience eating. Only in our infancy did we experience mindfulness....
that is, connection to what we are doing. This connection to what you are doing is supposed to exist naturally but it is atrophied by excess.
this applies to everything. Marijuana. Sacred drug of the yogis, or 4/20 every day so that the difference between being stoned and sober is nonexistant? Halluinagen or bringer of stupidity? Depends on how you use it.
Meat. Good protein to be had sparingly or early heart attack, steak every week?
Sex. This one is real important. Union between souls and bridge to transcendent states of higher consciousness, the ultimate unification between two people. Or giddy thrill and spreader of disease and suffering?
Funny that food, that which brings us life.... is currently what is KILLING most of us.
I just read the Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh and he suggests once a week we spend an entire day devoted to very slow and present mindfulness of everything we do. That within a months time we will begin to lose the illusion of separateness between us and what we are doing. We will merge with the cup of tea we are drinking (sounds psychedelic doesn't it?) that a regular practice of meditation incorporated with a weekly SABBATH (something direly missing from the lives of Christians and Jews it seems like) of mindfulness will restore us to how we are supposed to function.
-------------------- I am the MacDaddy of Heimlich County, I play it Straight Up Yo! ....I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human...... Om Namah Shivaya, I tell you What!
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery


Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5704251 - 06/02/06 01:56 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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This is a very good post IMO.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5704263 - 06/02/06 02:00 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Add to that: "not speaking" during those once-a-week days of mindfulness.
Silence is heavy and lithe.
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DoctorJ


Registered: 06/30/03
Posts: 8,846
Loc: space
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5704294 - 06/02/06 02:10 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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you are one cool motherfucker
brother
love your ideas
keep em comin
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leery11
I Tell You What!

Registered: 06/24/05
Posts: 5,998
Last seen: 8 years, 9 months
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: DoctorJ]
#5704598 - 06/02/06 03:46 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Lakefingers said: Add to that: "not speaking" during those once-a-week days of mindfulness.
Silence is heavy and lithe.
yeah that would be a good one too.
I suppose not typing is equally important? He said it wasn't necessary but silence was a good idea for the day.
I just want to say it's not like we should condemn the fact that we are able to eat and with great variety.
It's not bad it's just that..... we need to rediscover eating.... you know what it's like the first time you ate something stoned...... you should put that much emphasis and joy into it always. We can live in this society(i think?) mindfully and peacefully it's just that this society is not DESIGNED to be lived in that way, and we have to uproot any glutonous and robotic influences. television would be a good start gather round the good stuff i'm lovin it hot sluts dancing to pepsi billboards constant overeating.
how about a pizza hut commercial where there are kids starving to death outside while rich people are enjoying a buffet? That would help put things into perspective.
I dunno.
We're lucky to be here but all the more reason to be careful and thankful and graceful with what we have. Because when you have an excess you just don't give a fuck, it doesn't mean anything to you. $100,000 is nothing to Bill Gates [and good for him for being a philanthropist], but it's everything to an impoverished village that doesn't have much food or water.
we have because others do not. that needs to change immediately. Netaid estimates if every internet user in North America gave a meager $40 a year there would be no more starvation problems. It costs $40 a MONTH just to have internet!
-------------------- I am the MacDaddy of Heimlich County, I play it Straight Up Yo! ....I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human...... Om Namah Shivaya, I tell you What!
Edited by leery11 (06/02/06 03:48 PM)
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Lakefingers

Registered: 08/26/05
Posts: 6,440
Loc: mumuland
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5707635 - 06/03/06 02:36 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Ghandi had a period where he was silent once a week for a day. He communicated to others through writing on a small sketch pad he carried with him.
"constant overeating" ... and giving away 40 dollars to end starving...
How about we combine these? Instead of each internet user giving away 40 dollars per year, each internet user could cut 40 dollars from their yearly food bill send that money to solve starvation.
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demiu5
humans, lol


Registered: 08/18/05
Posts: 43,948
Loc: the popcorn stadium
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5707699 - 06/03/06 03:03 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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thank you, you got out some of the things I have been trying to say for a year. I agree with you all of the way. Unfortunately, there is not much of an alternative, other than to just do it, change, live the way we should. To 99.9% of "civilized" peoples, that would be worse than dying, it would be, dare I say it, unpleasant because we think this is living. I could keep going, but it would pretty repetitious, ultimately.
-------------------- channel your inner Larry David
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Cherk
Fashionable


Registered: 10/25/02
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5707729 - 06/03/06 03:12 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Why not take the $100 billion international space station apart and sell the parts as scrap. We could use the money to feed 100,000 people a day for the next 182 years if each person can be fed for $15 a day.
Why don't we? Because ice on mars is worth more to us than the 100,000 lives.
The wisest man in the world evetually has to say, "cause that's the way things are"
--------------------
I have considered such matters. SIKE
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WIZOLZ
Poor with Needs


Registered: 03/20/06
Posts: 290
Loc: Monte Carlo
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: Cherk]
#5708001 - 06/03/06 04:52 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Though, I can attest to much of what has been said here about mindfullness and redicovering our need to establish a greater appriciation for our daily gifts and activities. You are very right that excess contribute's to the opressive nature of "taking for granted." Seperating yourself from such things, naturally brings about a new and greater appriciation for them. Lossing attentivness can't be entirely attributed all to excess of things around us, I would also think that the individual is also much limited by his mental faculties, which makes it more difficult to concentrate on the important qualities of your life. (Ever drive with a person who won't shut the ...Or talk about yourself instead of listening to another person in a conversation??) I read a book once by C.S Lewis and he talked about this dis-appriciation for food. As if through age and wisdom the stout, learned person begins to regect certain foods of lesser quality because they do not meet his/her expectations. Where is the appriciation and Joy in that !!...All I would see is a very pretentious adult who has lost the essence of "having" for the illusion of prefrence. When I was a kid I had to eat what was before me, no and if's or buts...luckily it was all good food.
This topic on minfullness and excess could be also very relitive to our personal relationships. Which IMO are about equal to the neccesity of eating and drinking. I have a brother who I do not live near and see rarely during the year. When we did live together, oh the battles and black eyes. Though NOW, we are like "Double Dragon" and have "trancended" such immature behaviors and learned to become allies and not enemies. Excess of presence lead to our blindness.
So many things are used in excess, man...Water use is one of them for sure. I do not think it is FOOD that is killing us, like you said, it is excess of the wrong foods and also lack of proper healthy life styles. God, with all this variety and discovery around us, it isnt that difficult to stay active and maintain a proper body nowadays. If any thing is killing us, it would be the collection of years of digestive, mental, emotional and physical abuse. (Ie: Heavy shroom hitters ^_^ )
Gratitude is one of the highest forms of grace in my eyes. I'm more open and applicable to anyone who knows how to share appriciation for even the smallest of gifts. A person who is gratfull is less likely to waste and waste is such a wastefull thing.
Thank you for supporting positive convictions...
-------------------- ---------o----o----o-------o------------------------o--o-o- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Requim for a Dream - Paul Oakenfold --------------------------------------------------------------- "The mis/abuse of any form of power, is the worst form of ignorance" ------------------------------------------------------------- WIZOLZ - Lover with a Killer's Smile
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ManianFH
living in perverty


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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5708064 - 06/03/06 05:12 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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-------------------- notapillow said: "you are going about this endeavor all wrong. clear your mind of useless fear and concern. buy the ticket, take the ride, and all that.... " ChrisWho said: "It's all about the journey, not the destination."
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OldWoodSpecter
waiting


Registered: 02/01/05
Posts: 4,033
Loc: mountains and lakes
Last seen: 17 years, 3 months
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5708246 - 06/03/06 06:01 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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There's one thing we'll never be able to buy, and that's spirit, and that's something we lack, and that will be the end of us and our SUV's
-------------------- I descend upon your earth from the skies I command your very souls you unbelievers Bring before me what is mine
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evolprim
human


Registered: 05/07/06
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Re: excess and minfulness [Re: leery11]
#5708280 - 06/03/06 06:10 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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great post.
I'd go on to say how i'd like to adapt these ideas into my daily life, but i dont want to use excessive wording
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leery11
I Tell You What!

Registered: 06/24/05
Posts: 5,998
Last seen: 8 years, 9 months
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Quote:
OldWoodSpecter said: There's one thing we'll never be able to buy, and that's spirit, and that's something we lack, and that will be the end of us and our SUV's
that means that all the people that want to be spiritual will go down with all the people who don't.
i don't really like that version of the future. it has to stay to a certain extent, just people's attitudes need a revamping.
-------------------- I am the MacDaddy of Heimlich County, I play it Straight Up Yo! ....I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human...... Om Namah Shivaya, I tell you What!
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