Enlightening Conversations

words, philosopies, advice religion seem to do nothing to me spiritually but music - specifically playing music, gets me somewhere I can't get any other way ...

[neat thread Larinda..]

hhmm I'm gonna self-moderate here and not put out the usual waffle.
I think its a very good thread.

I've been Riding The Horse Backwards long before I knew there was a way to do it.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka

also fond of John Parkin's book "the F -it Way"

London buses are worth a try

( damn I could resistant a flippant remark)

okay apologies to all.

I am reminded of the Turkish folk hero, Nasrudin (spelling varies):
http://hem.bredband.net/hodja/animal.htm#06

On Desire and Buddhism:

my take on it is: that if you recognise desire as a thought or feeling that arises and as simply that: a thought or feeling; then you just accept it as part of your self and you don't have to act on it. We do act on some desires because they keep as alive; hunger for instance.

I think desire translates better as expectation; if you give expecting things to be the way you think they "ought" to be then you suffer less. otherwise you become"oughtistic"

but there is also the "wish-fulfilling" which equates to prayer: that one wishes for all beings to be free from anxiety;(for example) wich is there to help us develop compassion.

Personally, am not big fan of the Conversations books, although I have read them all. I find them more disinforming but...like anything else they can have their place.

I do love Florence Scovell Shinn...have had her Game of Life by my bed for many years, and her other works have inspired me deeply many, many times. I studied Christian Science (not Scientology) and ACIM for many years, and she is on the same wavelength as those teachings...but in a simpler, more direct voice.

I'm referring more to desire as the voice of the heart...the heart's desire...and how potent it is to work with that as an agent for manifesting. But it is shut down, clamped down against very frequently, because of resistance against the "unrequited" feeling of something not yet manifest. Takes a powerful rootedness in gratitude and certainty of fulfillment to go there.

Enough; aside from my hyapotheosis that one needs an usual name to write a philosphical self-help book; I'm going for self-hindrance:

instead of" The Wisdom of.........
I will have "The Stupidity of.........B. Tan-Goman"
lying between Don Quixote ( windmills; a guide to tilting at) and Baron Von Munchausen
and why the medical profession has given Von M a bad name; quite unneccessarilly)*

* The film rights are going to Terry Gilliam that celluloid master of the fantastical.

Actually in a way I agree - sit upstairs in an open-top double decker of a circle line and go round and round london - its actually very therapeutic, if a bit wet

Of course the mistake that I and others make is to think that the answers lie in a book.

The real answers lie within oneself and the world around.

as do all the questions... the ones that matter anyway

i don't study mine any longer, but i have two copies packed away...one is in tatters from so much study.

the beauty of that particular book is that it teaches exactly that discrimination to turn inward...

I like the way you think.

Properly viewed, religion never, "has all the answers" (and indeed a claim to the contrary is often the hallmark of a cult). Rather, it provides a set of tools for examining the questions.