(no subject)

[bluegreen17]

woke up with the 'what's it all for?' questions running around in my brain,which led to feeling bad in general,because right now i don't have any answers. it's really frustrating going from one extreme to another,never knowing when i'm going to feel okay,or good,or mildly bad,or really terrible. it bothers me that i can't seem to be able to keep a consistent worldview for long. nothing lasts. which the buddhists know. the buddhists seem to be the wisest,at least psychologically. but i don't want to practice buddhism as a religion because there's no God in their religion,and that bothers me. but they seem to be the only ones who really understand.

well,obviously,i'm in one of my frequent states of confusion. so i'm going to just stop writing for now!

Comments

[icdedpeople.livejournal.com]

at some point in the last two years i started asking myself what qualities i'd expect from someone who was really 'enlightened' ... what do you think?

being enlightened is...

[bluegreen17]

good question.

let's see. first,not letting outward circumstances affect you negatively...though i suppose not having them affect you positively might be part of the deal,unfortunately...though maybe it hardly matters if you already feel good! (oy...just goes to show how far i am from enlightenment by this definition...and seemingly getting further and further away all the time...the only possible good is that if i hit bottom the only way left to go is up...though does anyone every think of the possibility of getting 'stuck' at the bottom? sorry,i'm having a really gloomy time of it at present!)

other things...being at peace,though i guess that's really the same as what i just said. i think that's the basic thing. and i would think that kindness and helpfulness would be an outgrowth of being at peace. isn't it easier to be nice to others when you're happy? indeed,isn't it a joy to be nice to others and helpful when you're happy? and why is it so difficult when you're unhappy?

well,i guess i'm not the most likely candidate for straightforward simple answers,but perhaps you know that.

and...what are your thoughts on this?

Re: being enlightened is...

[icdedpeople.livejournal.com]

Well, for a while I had two kinds of "evolvement" in mind... one was empathy/compassion and the other seemed to be best expressed as "zen." I suppose that you could think of it as being right in one's heart and one's head, respectively. I'm surprised that having benefited from Julia Cameron's idea of creativity being linked to spirituality, that I didn't add that dimension as well until it was pointed out in Between Heaven and Hell (I think) that one may expect all three from an enlightened person. I don't think one expects an extremely creative person to be adept in the other two dimensions, of course. What is less obvious is that the a very zen personality may not be all that loving (though probably not unloving), or that a very compassionate person may be a tormented soul and not necessarily be very zen. Of course, I tend to think that if one were to excel far enough into the insights of one dimension, it would require coming to terms with the others'.