| Here are a few quotes I liked.
"when wisdom controls desire, you live long; when desire overcomes wisdom, you die early" - Chang San Feng
"When the time comes, there is no moment for reasoning. And if you have not done your inquiring beforehand, there is most often shame." - unknown
"It is what it is" - unknown
'Love your enemy, bless those who curse you, do good to those who abuse you." - Yeshua
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| JadedJanissary did a recent post where he did a survey. I took the liberty to copy past his following statement for this post. "1) FACT: I often fast for several days or weeks before thanksgiving, so that I can appreciate it more."
I think this is an awesome concept.
Fasting can be for many reasons, for cleaning the body, the mind, and the spirit primarily but also to enhance experiences and bring out the contrast.
I've never really done many "food fasts" where I actually didn't eat for a day. I've never gone much over 24 hrs without food. I have done limiting food fast such as no meat, no dairy, and so on but I like to take the concept a bit further in order to teach myself new things and breed creativity.
I got rid of my fridge once for about 6 months just to see what it would be like to live without one. It was a really good experience. If I wanted to eat something large, such as a watermelon I'd have to either throw it away or share. So I'd end up going down to the coffee shop and eating it on the porch randomly handing slices to passersby and customers. It's amazing how not having makes you feel like you have even more.
There was a story of a monk ... I'll see if I can remember it right -
Once upon a time there was a minimalist monk, he lived up a hill a mile or 2 outside of a town in a small shack with very few well used possessions. One night the monk came back from his evening walk to find a robber rummaging through his few possessions. He had compassion on the robber because the robber couldn't find anything of value to steal and was getting pretty frustrated about it. The monk spoke, startling the robber, he said: "I see that you can't find anything worth stealing but I don't want you to go away empty handed. I know my robe is worth something, here, take it. " With that the monk took off his robe and gave it to the robber who turned and quickly ran off. That night as the monk sat nude on a rock looking at the moon, he thought to himself, I wish I could have given the robber this moon that I have.
Possessions often own the possessors.... or perhaps a better way to put it is, if your attached to your possessions you are "Possessed"
I really enjoy and appreciate contrast... well sometimes I don't enjoy it, like now for example. I have a bit of road rash because I laid my bike down a few days ago(wet pavement). It hurts to move but I still appreciate the contrast and appreciate even more my agility and the way I have been working to flow within my environments over the years. Once my wounds heal I will appreciate even more the freedom of each and every motion. It's kind of like a fast in a sense from my normal day to day experience of motion. It teaches me. I realize how I have taken my ability to preform even simple task for granted. Each day is a gift, learn, grow, change.
Growth is typically birthed from pain.
Well there's my random post for the day. I don't normally care to post much about my personal life on the net but if my experiences can be used to teach I suppose it's worth it on occasion.
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| A few weeks back I was checking out random xangas and I found one that was full of hatred towards most if not all other religions. Particularly monotheistic religions with a focus on Christianity and various offshoots such as Mormonism. The blog was
In_Reason_I_Trust
Now I don't normally call out specific xangas like this but I am a peaceful fellow and don't really care to see such hate from any religion. His/her religion is Atheism yet in his info he had something about himself being god.(an odd contradiction) Now for those of you who don't know, religion, philosophy, and psychology are some of my strong suits. That said, I decided to attempt to cause this person to actually think for a moment about a lot of things.
I started by defining terms. - I define religion as ANY set of beliefs that influence the way you live your life on a consistant bases. Everyone is therefore religious. I consider Atheism a religion.
I have defined religion this way for years and a college professor I was listening to recently (I listen to class lectures often) seemed to agree so I know I'm not the only one with this view. Anyway moving on....
I stated that Atheism and every other religion out there attempts to get science to fit with their beliefs. As long as a majority seem to feel a certain way it doesn't really matter what the facts actually are. Historically we see that anyone with an idea that doesn't fit with the majority viewpoint is typically laughed at, discredited, abused, or even killed. We only have to glance at history for a brief moment to see this and to think that we are somehow above that historical trend is borderline insanity. To suppress viewpoints that disagree with the majority of mainstream "science" is nothing new but you would have thought that humanity maybe would have learned something by now.
Moving on.
a few fun facts about atheism -
Atheism has about a 2 percent following worldwide (higher in various countries but the average is 2 percent)
Atheism has a bloody history - see history books for many examples.
I reason that it would probably rank at least in the top 5 bloodiest religions if you were to factor in it's small following.
Now I have a few friends who are atheist/agnostic and I know that not all of them are violent types or even hateful types. Just like with almost every other religion out there you have peaceful types and the hateful types within those religions. Most religions also have a very bloody history. Most religions think they are right and will attempt to fit any evidence to their belief system. Most religions will attack anyone who questions them. A great example of this is all the prophets that got killed in Judaism even though they were sent by the Jew's God to show them where they were wrong.
Now Atheism is unique in that they claim that there is no God at all but they still have beliefs that influence the way they live their lives. Just like every other religion some Atheist are peaceful people, some are hateful people.
I should probably be spending way more time on this post but I'm in a bit of a rush. What I hope your getting from all of this is the trends. You should always look for trends in EVERY area of life. By now hopefully you have reached the conclusion that our human traits show out regardless of religion.
We can chose to spread hate as this In_Reason_I_Trust person chooses to. This is the kinda thing which leads to acts of violence, wars, and ignorance/stupidity. We as humans won't get very far holding onto all our hatred. We won't make the scientific breakthroughs we should have made 10 years ago if all our science is dominated by one or 2 religions.
We can also choose to spread peace and love. wow what a concept. Love our neighbors. Love our enemies.
In the Spanish language we say "I have heat" but in English we say that we are the heat. I think the Spanish is more philosophically correct. How does this relate? When we say things like YOU ARE FAT for example, we are defining a person by what they currently have. Instead if we say "you have a lot of fat" we indicate that it could be a temporary state rather than something that defines the person. So while In_Reason_I_Trust 's blog s full of hate he has the ability to turn that around. He wouldn't entertain reason with me and although I stated no religious leaning he got upset because I questioned his religion (again a common trend within nearly any religion)
I hope this has been an educational post. I know I probably made a few dozen mistakes because i typed it fast and didn't have time to review it even so maybe I'll fine tune it later. Also this is a lot shorter than it should have been to make the points with clarity so if it's a little fuzzy I apologize, I'm kinda running late today.
Please don't go to this guys site and spread hate. Hate begets hate. violence begets violence, lies beget lies. We should love him or her as our fellow human until he realizes there is no more need to hate others regardless of differences.
And if you feel like it, do a random act of kindness for someone today.
Peace!
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| http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-tv-doom-gloom-climate-fraudsters-exposed/
Thought this was interesting. I'm all for taking care of the environment but this global warming thing is more about controlling people and potentially justifying the murder of billions.
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