What are you optimistic about?

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I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it. ~ Queen Juliana

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[maryw]

Tzu wrote: i've been watching tv preachers for years for the entertainment value

Hehehee -- When I was going to college (Mizzou) in the late 70s Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's "Praise the Lord" Club was the only thing on late at night in those days before cable. We would watch it just for laughs -- it really was quite hilarious! Like a Lawrence Welk show for evangelicals, but somehow even cornier than that. (This was before the big scandal and all. Ah, those were the days ...)

Mary

[stilltraveler]

Yes, Mary, that is a great, fine riff - the Brezsny piece. Thanks for reminding me of it.

[Jana]

Brezsny asked his friends to come up with some ideas for his catalog of cagey optimism. We could do with a little of that around here, no? I was wondering if anyone might want to contribute to his list. Seems like he's off to a good start...

Quote:
CATALOG OF CAGEY OPTIMISM

Psychiatry and psychotherapy obsess on what's wrong with people and
give short shrift to what's right. The manual of these professions is a
943-page textbook called the DSM-IV. It identifies scores of pathological
states but no healthy ones. [I'm out to change that, here are some ideas:]

* MODULATED RAPTURISM. Welcoming miracles and peak experiences in
full awareness that the growth they initiate will require sober commitment
and disciplined work to complete. (Suggested by Timothy S. Wallace.)

* NONRESENTMENT SYNDROME. Having an ability to be friendly, open, and
helpful to people with whom you disagree.

* NOT HAVING TO BE RIGHT. Fostering an ability, even a willingness, to be
proven wrong about one of your initial perceptions or pet theories; having
an eagerness to gather information that may change your mind about
something you have fervently believed; cultivating a tendency to enjoy
being corrected, especially about ideas that are negative or hostile.
(Suggested by Sheila Kollasch.)

* ORGIASTIC LUCIDITY. Experiencing an expansive and intricate state of
clarity while in the midst of extreme sensual pleasure.

* PERMANENT DIVINE INFATUATION. Having not the abstract
understanding but rather a direction perception that the Divine
Intelligence, who recreates the universe fresh every moment, is deeply in
love with you, even as you are in love with the Divine Intelligence.

* RADICAL CURIOSITY. Characterized by the following traits: an
enthusiasm for the mystery embedded in the mundane; a preference for
questions over answers; an aversion to stereotyping, generalizations, and
jumping to conclusions; a belief that people are unsolvable puzzles; an
inclination to be unafraid of both change and absence of change; a strong
drive to avoid boredom; a lack of interest in possessing or dominating
what you are curious about. (Suggested by Laurie Burton.)

* RELENTLESS UNPRETENTIOUSNESS. Possessing a strong determination
to not take yourself too seriously, not take your cherished beliefs too
literally, and not take other people's ideas about you too personally.

* RIPE INTELLECTION. The understanding that a predilection to notice and
analyze pathology is itself pathological. (Suggested by Timothy S.
Wallace.)

* ROOTED IN ETERNITY. The state of knowing that your true identity is
deeper than the constant chatter of thoughts, images, and feelings that
swirls through your mind. (Suggested by Crispin R.)

* SACRED PERCEPTIVENESS. Seeing others for who they really are, in both
their immaturity and genius, and articulating your insights to them with
care.

* SCARY-THUNDER-IN-THE-DARK HAPPINESS. Feeling deliciously safe in a
well-protected sanctuary during a severe storm. (Suggested by Sue Carol
Robinson.)

* SCHIZOFRIENDIA. Hearing voices in your head that are constantly
supportive, encouraging, and keen to offer advice that helps you make
the most of every experience. (Suggested by Lewis.)

* SELF-ACCEPTANCE UNDER PRESSURE. The state achieved upon leaving a
room filled with people who know you, and not worrying about what
anyone will say about you. (Suggested by Shannen Davis.)

* SELF-HONORING. Having an unwillingness to disparage, belittle, or hurt
yourself; includes a taboo against speaking phrases like, "I'm such an
idiot!" and "What's wrong with me?" (Suggested by Julie Levin.)

* SLY TRUST. Having a discerning faith that the integrity of your efforts
will inevitably lead to a result that's exactly what you need; being skillful
in the art of never trying too hard. (Suggested by Rhonda Christmas.)

* SONGBIRD-IN-A-TREE. The cultivated awareness that daily life presents
countless opportunities to be buoyed by moments of ordinary
extraordinary beauty, and that these moments are most available if you
perceive with your senses and not with your internal turmoil. (Suggested
by Lisa Chabot.)

* TENDER RAGE. Maintaining a strong sense of love and protectiveness
towards a person or creature or institution you're angry at.

* TRANSCONSUMERISM. An absence of tendencies to predicate
happiness on acquiring material possessions. (Suggested by Timothy S.
Wallace.)

* TRIUMPHANT NURTURING. Feeling contented expansiveness while
nursing a baby. (Suggested by Susan E. Nace.)

* UNSELFCONSCIOUSNESS. Doing what you're doing and being who you're
being without thinking about it at all. Being happy by virtue of not
worrying about whether or not you're happy; enjoying a unified state in
which you are not split between the you who acts and the you who
observes. (Suggested by Valerie Keller.)

* UNTWEAKABILITY. Having a composed, blame-free readiness to correct
false impressions when your actions have been misunderstood and have
led to awkward consequences.

* VIRTUOSO INTEGRATION. Consistently walking your talk; effectively
translating your ideals into the specific actions; creating results that are
congruous with your intentions; being free of hypocrisy.

* VISIONS OF THRILLING EXPLOITS. Experiencing an eruption of intuition
that clearly reveals you will attempt a certain adventure in the future, as
when you spy a particular mountain for the first time and know you'll
climb it one day. (Suggested by Sue Carol Robinson.)

* WEATHER SENSITIVITY. Having a high degree of awareness about your
sensitivity to changes in the weather, and having a skill for managing your
responses to those shifts so as to consistently bring out the best in
yourself. (Suggested by Julie Caves.)

* WHOLEHEARTEDNESS. Having the capacity to give, on a moment's
notice, your complete attention, empathy, and playful intelligence to any
person or circumstance you choose. (Suggested by Susan Coleman.)

* WILD DISCIPLINE. Possessing a talent for creating a kind of organization
that's liberating; knowing how to introduce limitations into a situation in
such a way that everyone involved is empowered to express his or her
unique genius; having an ability to discern hidden order within a seemingly
chaotic mess.

* WHEEEE. A serenely boisterous intensely focused chaos of communion
with streaming fountains of liquid light hurtling softly through the giggly
upbeat tender assurance that all is well and a mysterious unimaginable
intelligence is magnetizing us forward into ever-more wonderful throbs of
naked truth that bestow the humble happy sight of life as a river of
fantastically lucky artful change flowing through us forever. (Suggested
by Sarah Alexander and Jon Kohl Drucker.)

[henry]

way good jana. rob brezsny? the real "secret" is how you fire off your thoughtful intricate posts at the speed of light ... ..henry

[Jana]

The secret is to have a huge storehouse of blatherings with which to draw from. Here Henry is one especially for you.

BLISS AND THE RELATIVE DOMAIN
The bliss is a permanent background which is impervious to both suffering and pleasure....that is we can be in the worst physical or emotional suffering and still be in radical bliss. The bliss just is. Then on top of the bliss there are emotions, desires, suffering, numbness, anhedonia and whatever relative response to life. Bliss scale is 1-10...10 is when you are in a catatonic-like state due to extreme ecstasy. I would say kundi actives hang out between 5-10, I am normally between 6-9 on the bliss scale.

ECSTASY?Both the bliss and ecstasy of kundalini are NOT a mood, but are the pervasive state of the bodymind. Within this moods might occur such as happiness, depression, sadness, anger, fear and all the other emotions, however they all occur within the context of all pervasive ecstasy. Ecstasy is the normal state of a human when the light of life is flowing through the cells. Thousands of years of Western culture however prevents the full flow of light and ecstasy except in those few who pop.

DESIRE?Desire to some extent is reduced once kundalini has been working on the body for many years and a state of permanent bliss or ecstasy is reached...but desire is not a problem unless you use it to destroy your life and body...in which case it is the lack of wisdom that is the problem not desire.

Yea existence IS conditional, it IS dualistic. If you talked about this in biochemical terms it would stop years and years of to and fro...however the toing and froing is why we are here; so I won't do the biochem thing.

While in the bath tonight drinking a gallon an a half of chilled sunwater and listening to Non Violent Communication CD's it struck me that the point I want to get across is...
that in true spirituality (TM), we have to give up our emotional and intellectual partiality to good vs. evil, health vs. illness, growth vs. death etc... And we have to do this in order to "grow" at all. The reason being that if we think the path to permanent Unity Consciousness will be all daisies and light, with none of the cataclysm, then we are just pretending, fooling ourselves and wishful thinking. Evolution doesn't work like that...we cannot establish new circuits in the brain with advanced and superior capacities and integration without the wholesale removal of the former structures. What brain imaging is likely to show us is that those individuals with the most outstanding spiritual depth and performance, are those who have had the most extreme kundalini experiences and perhaps have been through many years of spiritual rehabilitation because of it.

Saying that, it would be possible to "create" a society of Sages and Saints if the container of that society was constructed along enlightened lines. In such a benign society we might all go far easier into the second birth of spiritual attainment. If however, we set about trying to do this from the place of fear, then all we will create would be very stable advanced neurotic paranoid schizophrenics...(sound familiar). Thus nature and happenstance will always show us exactly where we are at should we choose to see it.

"[Garwin] says that for every breakthrough there is a corresponding breakdown of older circuits, that if re-entrained, are a root cause of potential insanity." Arik

In my experience destruction and creation happen in cycles, but like the yin/yang symbol, each part of the hyperbolic curve of growth and decay has a bit of the other side in it as the seed-form of the other. One example of these cycles is that each period of ecstasy will result in a corresponding revelation in the painbody which must be entered into with the mind?s eye and heart in order to stabilize and integrate the light into that area. Thus the light seeks out and presents to conscious awareness that which is holding back from full inclusion in the perfect communication?communion of cells of the organism-total.

[henry]

another good one,jana, thanks...please tell me you were testing to see if i was listening with the "drinking a gallon and half of chilled sunwater in the bath" thing. ...henry

[Jana]

Yea actually it was 3 quarts...will do that again today also.

I am optimistic that the present regime in Gov. are so platently power-perverted (poweritis) that they are hanging themselves very fast. http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25017

 in the tension of the dance between good and evil the smarts just get smarter on both sides of the fence. Thus we get an acceleration in evolution, and both end of forgetting which side of the fence they reside on.