Ahira's Hangar

David Zindell's Neverness, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens and all things Science Fiction and Fantasy
It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 2:23 pm

All times are UTC




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 10 posts ] 
Author Message
 Post subject: Who decides what you feel and think?
PostPosted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 4:36 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:23 am
Posts: 586
I just ran across a quote in a Rilke book I'm reading that is similar to quotes from another couple of books I've read. So I figured I'd post them together under this title.

Here's the Rilke:Quote:...keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.

This one is Hugh Prather:Quote:So I want to remind you that every entry in this book is at best an asymptotic shot at life, and at my life, not at yours. If my words affirm you, then savor them for the moment; but if they cause you to distrust your own experience, spit them out. You are the only authority on what is good for you, and once you have seen this, you will feel an enormous peace and freedom.

And this is from Conversations With God:Quote:Now the supreme irony here is that you have all placed so much importance on the Word of God, and so little on the experience.

In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what you experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around.

Your experience and your feelings about a thing represent what you factually and intuitively know about that thing. Words can only seek to symbolize what you know, and can often confuse what you know. ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Who decides what you feel and think?
PostPosted: Sat Jun 21, 2003 12:59 am 
Offline
Master Pilot

Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2002 2:23 am
Posts: 3363
Quote:Life moved ever outward into infinite possibilities and yet all things were perfect and finished in every single moment, their end attained.-Zindell

I think all things r trying 2 climb out of chaos right now, but the universe still has a very cool plan 4 us... And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.

Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Who decides what you feel and think?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 06, 2003 4:46 pm 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
I think that for the most part, each person decides what to think and feel -- but circumstances in each person's life contributes to these. For instance, if a close family member dies, most persons will feel grief and sadness and possibly anger -- I don't think most people could choose otherwise...

Also, you can get into brain chemistry questions and their impact on such states as depression, emotion, thought, moods. Now, that could be quite a can of worms to delve into...does someone with depression choose that, or is it a physical problem they cannot control without medication? Likewise other mental and emotional illnesses... Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Who decides what you feel and think?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2003 1:49 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:23 am
Posts: 586
Those are good points duchess. I've had a lot of contact with two different women who suffer from depression, and at least one of them has other things also. (Social phobia and ADD, at least.) I have not the slightest doubt that, in both cases, the cause is physical/chemical. Not that anyone can live a life free of any depression at every moment, but some have two strikes against them just because of the way their DNA set things up. Not in any way resembling a fair shot, but that's life sometimes.

However, my original post in this thread was about taking someone else's word for what you should believe and feel. Religion is a good one. Someone could read any given religion's sacred writings and say, "I can't imagine how such a thing could be. That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense." And yet, for some reason, they had already decided that that sacred writing MUST be Truth. Or maybe they decided to accept someone or other as the authority on what is Truth. And if that person says that those sacred writings are, indeed, Truth, the person says, "Well... OK. I guess you must know." So the person accepts it, despite the fact that their experience, logic, and intuition say otherwise. My quotes above are saying that we should all be taking our own word for what is Truth. ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2003 2:35 am 
Offline
Lady Scryer
User avatar

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 5:11 pm
Posts: 9653
Location: Michigan, USA
Ah, so your question was more one of logic and faith? <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 07, 2003 4:04 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:23 am
Posts: 586
Could be. Although logic doesn't have to be a part of faith. That's part of what I'm saying too. Just because I need certain things to be logical - by my definition, that is - doesn't mean anyone should listen to me and ignore what they feel to be right about their beliefs.

But not all the quotes are about religion. Prather and Rilke aren't. My overriding idea is about knowing what makes you happy and embracing it, and knowing what makes you unhappy and rejecting it - but because YOU know it's right or wrong for you, not because someone else said it should be. ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i>Edited by: Highdrake at: 7/6/03 9:13 pm
</i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 09, 2003 12:11 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Sat Feb 01, 2003 8:13 pm
Posts: 323
Location: K-ville, NC
I still stick with the idea that the pursuit of happiness is a self-defeating idea (one I often get caught up in). Happiness is great, but I think people get a little too preoccupied with it. It's an elevated state, and as such, is unnatural to be at all the time, or even to need to be at (there are way too many people in the world that are sad because they're not happy... not including depression here). I'd settle for just being content.

I don't like to admit it, but my programs rule me. I've set up a few subroutines of logic, insight, compassion, etc. (the faith subroutine was found to be obsolete and was subsequently deleted) to rerout some of my patterns. I'm a pretty big believer in the subconscious, pretty much to the point where I believe it's the master matrix of who a person is. Largely because of this, I believe it's just as important to reach inside and fine tune the hidden parts of yourself that nonetheless keep expressing themselves as it is to control your exterior environment (it's important to buy groceries, but it's also important not just to deny yourself going overboard on the junk food, but also figure out and repair what's making you want all the junkfood (too easy of a metaphor, since the cause of this is usually physiological... but then again))

Arg, sorry for the ramble. My point is, I think for the most part our subconscious (and throw fate in here as well) controls us, but it doesn't do so without giving us the tools to have a say in the process (and I know this leads to circular logic saying that the conscious mind is only a simple expression of the deeper subconscious... and I'd agree with that... in many different ways). ________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two"<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 2:09 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:23 am
Posts: 586
Here's another example of my original idea of this thread.

The Voice
by Shel Silverstein

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel that this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you -- just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.

____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 4:33 pm 
Offline
Master Pilot

Joined: Fri May 09, 2003 12:24 am
Posts: 150
Some related thoughts from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance:

"Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world."

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. " <i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: faith or logic?
PostPosted: Tue Sep 09, 2003 2:34 am 
Offline
Master Pilot
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 1:23 am
Posts: 586
Fantastic!!!! Thank a lot!! ____________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 10 posts ] 

All times are UTC


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group