liminal_luke

Steve, It´s so easy to get lost in opinion. Often, our inner struggles get projected out and take the form of interpersonal conflict. As within, so without. You have a talent for bypassing The Fight and zeroing in on what really matters: human connection. Perhaps you were born with this ability, but I suspect it´s something you´ve honed through years of dedicated spiritual practice and introspection. I hope you know that the fruits of this inner work are appreciated and seen.

Bums react in various ways to my posts but, to my knowledge, my ramblings have yet to induce a blood clot. Rarely, people have reported headaches from overly enthusiastic face palming. Still, I disavow responsibility because, say it with me now, correlation is not causation. Call me biased but I consider my writings to have an acceptable side effect profile. Let us hope I can keep my thrombosis-free streak going!

While innocently curmudgeoning through my morning, I read your post and am reminded once again (as I often am when reading your posts, st) of the fluid nature of reality. English has it´s limitations but there´s much we can do to avoid undue reification. We can, for instance, strike the word "antivaccer" from our vocabulary. This word takes an intellectual point of view and converts it, needlessly, erroneously, into a static identity. There is no such thing as an antivaccer and no such thing as a vaccer either. There are just people stumbling through life the best they know how. petpeeving out, Luke

Thanks, @steve. That makes a lot of sense. It seems plausible to me, as you suggest, that physicians, on average, do not have the power to effectively care for patients in a way that they´d like or their patients deserve. Otherwise capable and compassionate hands are tied by a system that is set up to create wealth rather than health. What gives me hope is the flowering of independent sources of health information on the internet and elsewhere, information that allows a motivated person to take care of their body. We know so much! I can nourish myself with healthy food and invigorating physical movement. I can expose myself to sunshine in the morning and go to bed at a reasonable hour at night. I could, theoretically, stop typing on my laptop and talk to actual people. (This last goal has proved more elusive.) It would be great if there was more of a governmental push to help people take proactive steps to better their health. Maybe someday their will be but I´m not going to wait.

Thanks for this, Taomeow. Kind of mindblowing. It leads to some obvious questions like...why has there been a blackout on outpatient treatment options and a near total focus on vaccines? Who benefits? Is this just about vaccine profits for pharmaceutical companies or is there another layer to this? I heard you when you said you´ve sworn off this topic so no worries if you´d rather not provide answers. Just wanted to share the questions I´m left with.

I haven´t pondered evil deeply, but I´ll take a stab, so to speak. Evil is hurting other people for the purpose of seeing them hurt. Sociopaths can be evil. This is opposed to hurting other people because we´re careless, ignorant, narcissistically unaware of other´s feelings, insensitive, opportunistic -- ie normal human misbehavior.. To me, evil is the desire to do bad in the world.

Maybe I should of realized it on my own, but I didn´t know that Indians experienced pictures of funeral pyres as disrespectful. Thanks to dwai for bringing it to my attention. I think it´s important to be culturally sensitive, perhaps especially for journalists who, by reputation anyway, are often more concerned about "getting the story" than honoring the dignity of those involved. It´s difficult to impute motive to others with any accuracy. Everybody perceives the world through the lens of their experience and the stories we believe about ourselves and others are not always 100% accurate. I think it´s important to be gentle with each other. Nobody is perfect but most of us aren´t intentionally evil. (A few might be but not most.) It´s human to bother other people and to feel bothered. The best we can do is express how we feel so that others know. Doing so honors relationships and our humanity.

I´ve never had much luck deciphering the statistical analyses of wild Taoist cats. Who knows how they arrive at their views, views that are, more often than not, spectacularly at odds with my newsfeed? Rumor has it that yarrow sticks are thrown, feline phone trees activated (in who knows how many meow tongues), and scientific journals poured over late into the night. I´ve stopped trying to figure it out. But there´s one thing I´m pretty sure of: many white people in the US and the "west" generally devalue people who do not look and act like themselves. For the most part, it´s not the felines who are responsible for this behavior -- it´s a human thing. Sad. As a gringo living in Mexico, I´m aware of how this racial and cultural devaluation hurts many Mexicans. I do not know many Indians personally but can´t imagine anybody enjoys having their lives dismissed and forgotten. Black people matter. Indians too. I do not know how the Covid situation in India compares with New York or anywhere else. Statistics aside, each Covid death is a tragedy for the very real people left behind.

Statistics and what we´ve called the "human element" appear to be wildly different ways of knowing, but need not be set one against the other. I think we´ll know best how to proceed when we bring the intelligences of the head and heart together.

No problem, Dwai. I think I misunderstood. What strikes me about the poem is that the light is on all day and no effort is needed to keep it going: it´s just ON. To me, this is analogous to awareness which is always there, recognized or unrecognized. I suppose we could also say the Awakened Self is always there, recognized or unrecognized, if that phrase is preferred. The someone -- the light -- doesn´t need our effort to come into existence. But we don´t always see it. During the day time, when the sun is out, the light is obscured and we don´t make the crucial recognition. Then at night it´s obvious that the light is on and it´s like, duh, the Self exists. We remember. I also like the idea that it´s the light inside me that is leading me towards the light. It is the light that makes you remember. The reason I´m interested in spiritual things is because I´m already attracted by some sort of glimmer, an intuition, of the light. It´s already there inside me and my attraction to the light is not separate from the light itself. If that makes any sense... The awakening business is a bit above my paygrade as of the moment, but, for me, the metaphor of the poem provides a kind of aha moment.

dwai, Are these questions you´re asking because you don´t know the answer? When I read your questions I assumed they weren´t actual questions but something more akin to a didactic spiritual tool. (Perhaps I was wrong?) I felt myself shutting down a little bit in response, which I suspect was not your intention. I might be uniquely sensitive to the question-that-isn´t-really-a-question thing but thought I´d let you know.

You might check out Sheng Zhen. https://shengzhen.org/

Is wakefulness and sleep analogous to forgetting and remembering? Here is a poem I like by Yuhuda Ahichai that some might find relevent to the themes of this thread. ............................................................................. Forgetting Someone Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light in the backyard so it stays lit all day But then it is the light that makes you remember. Yehuda Amichai

It´s certainly possible to have a felt sense of not being inside yourself. There´s even the idiomatic expression of being "beside oneself." To me, anxiety is the experience of wanting to jump outside of one´s own body. (The irony being that being outside oneself also produces anxiety.) When a spiritual practice is working for me my voice will go down. This lower timbre of voice is associated with a feeling of comfort, ease, and peace. There´s sometimes a feeling of resting into myself. Obviously, this distance I sometimes feel from the core of my being is an illusion. In reality, I´m always me. But it does take some work to actually "feel" like I´m me. Perhaps there´s a spiritual utility in realizing that I´m never far from myself. That all the anxiety and dis-ease I feel can, at least theoretically, be let go of in an instant. When a person is in the right space just knowing that can perhaps lead to an awakening of sorts. But it´s also true that many of us are working in the spiritual trenches, engaging in a process of self-integration that can indeed take time. Just some thoughts.

It´s certainly been my experience that other people can be difficult. They so rarely do what I want. (This is especially the case with my partner who, bless his little heart, is just the worst.) I have a degree in counseling psychology but never actually got myself employed as a counselor. My pal Greg told me I should make it happen, become a counselor, that I´d be good at it. I pointed out that I gave him my best advice all the time and he was still crazy... so my counseling skills must not be all that. Of course counseling isn´t really about giving advice, but the point remains: influencing other people is a tough business. What´s useful, I think, about letting go of ego is that it allows me to be OK when others don´t change. I can let people be as they are. And that´s truly wonderful. The secret of life is unilateral disarmament.

First the big chain booksellers threatened to decimate mom-and-pop bookstores everywhere, then came the literary catastrophe of e-readers. Among all that we´ve lost and are losing, few things strike an emotional chord as poignant as the formerly ubiquitous bookstore cat.

One answer: to cultivate more authentic and fulfilling relationships with others.

As you might suspect, @Yueya, only the most intellectual and inward-looking cats read Jungian analysis. Feline reading habits run wide and deep so I hesitate to make generalizations, but if I had to pick a single favored tome I´d go with this one.

Cats are often wild, independent, self-possessed. You never see a cat reading Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More. Cats offer affection, or not, on their own terms. Not everyone appreciates these qualities.

You hear this kind of stuff a lot. When people talk about how they think relationships work in a general way they sometimes throw around phrases like Tough Guys, Alpha Males....Games People Play. Meh...to me that´s reducing the mystery of love to someone´s warped view of gender politics. It´s an attempt to understand what brings people together when really it´s much more honest and true to just say we don´t know. We just don´t know.

So true! My own partner is a much younger, career-challenged (to put it mildly), schizoaffective guy who once thought I was literally the devil and, worse, doesn´t have a college education. You can probably guess the kind of relationship advice I´ve gotten over the years. And yet we´re been together a long time -- 13 difficult yet loving years and counting -- and I wouldn´t have it any other way. I´m aware that my own relationship advice will almost certainly fall on deaf ears, but I give it anyway because giving it is so much fun.

I´ve got to hand it to you (and the girl´s mother) Nungali. Much of what you said I agree with. It´s pretty much what I would say if I was willing to just put it all out there. I tone myself down because I´m thinking about how I´m going to be received and trying to make my words more palatable and easily digested. But I think there´s virtue in not pussyfooting around. Good on ya.

Lodge 49 is a show on Hulu (with a second season available on Amazon for purchase). It´s a quirky show about people who are having a hard time of it in life, but also, possibly, bumping up against mysterious beauty and hidden meaning. Or maybe not. I´m enjoying it and think some other Bums might enjoy as well.

@Nungali OK, but tell us what you really think...

Hi eric-stroman, I´d like to second the advice of ilumairen -- focus on how you´re feeling rather than how you believe others are feeling. If you´re feeling lost and even suicidal, those are definitely feelings to pay attention to and take steps to remedy. May I suggest that you need your friends? It´s also likely that they need you! May I also gently suggest that it´s easy to misinterpret what´s going on for others, attributing their actions (rubbing eyes, etc.) to you when it´s possible the eye rubbing and other signs of being drained don´t have anything to do with you. I do this all the time -- take something somebody else does and think I´m the cause of it when I´m not. It´s very common. If you must, you could call a friend and tell them that you believe you´ve been a victim of black magic and are draining other people. Would they like to take a chance and get together with you anyway? This is an informed consent approach. If someone hears you out and wants to see you regardless, I say let them. It´s entirely ethical to do so. At a time like this, you need friends and they need you. Let yourself get the support you need. Luke