Morning Trip (273)

“We find ourselves torn by confusion, by conflict, by affirmation and denial, by emotion congested by fear, congealed by pride. We are afraid of the Universe in which we live, suspicious of people around us, uncertain of the salvation of our own souls. All these things negatively react and cause physical disorders.

Nature seems to await our comprehension of her and, since she is governed by immutable laws–the ignorance of which excuses no man from their effects–the bondage of humanity must be a result of our ignorance of the true nature of Reality. The storehouse of Nature may be filed with good, but this good is locked to the ignorant. The key to this door is held in the mind of Intelligence, working in accordance with Universal Law. Through experience, man learns what is really good and satisfying, what is truly worthwhile. As his intelligence increases, and his capacity to understand the subtle laws of Nature grows, he will gradually be set free. As he learns the Truth, the Truth will automatically free him.

When we learn to trust the Universe, we shall be happy,prosperous, and well. We must learn to come under that Divine Government, and accept the fact that Nature’s table is ever filled. Never was there a Cosmic famine. ‘The finite alone has wrought and suffered, the Infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.’ God is always God. No matter what our emotional storm, or what our objective situation, may be, there is always a something hidden in the inner being that has never been violated. We may stumble, but always there is that Eternal Voice, forever whispering within our ear, that thing which causes the eternal quest, that thing which forever sings and sings.”
–Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind

Black and White Thinking

Sometimes we dont’ have to persue happiness, we just have to pause and let it catch up.–unknown

More Desire

What is desire really? Is it what marketing has taught us? thin slick glistening bodies?

lascivious actions?

the word for the relationship of the opposite creations of lack and want? a way to drive us to continue to ignore our enchantment and to seek what others directs us as perfection?

Another response to a belief that there is no such thing as happy.

Lips Like Sugar

Happiness is not the opposite of depression. The pursuit of happy is much like trying to be hot or to be cold. The concept of happy robs all of the enchantment of simple experience,
creating both the illusion of depression and the biochemical state of the brain caused by the stress of trying to obtain a thing that does not exist. The illusion of leaving depression comes from the lift from moving forward and taking action on each daily thing. The relief of the state of depression does not equal happy, it equals healthy choices, though such choices can come from avoidance of unpleasant feelings and emotions. Perhaps underneath it all, humans are so used to listening to others that we have some thing to escape, that we are always attempting to create an alternative to heaven–the ultimate escape artists.

Gloom Merchant–To be truly happy we must be pessimistic

Roger Scruton

“The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt. Human beings may not be as good as the shallow optimists pretend; but nor are they as bad as the prophets and curmudgeons have painted them.

In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. I don’t go along with Schopenhauer’s comprehensive gloom, or with the philosophy of renunciation that he derived from it. I have no doubt that St Paul was right to recommend faith, hope and love (agape) as the virtues which order life to the greater good. But I have no doubt too that hope, detached from faith and untempered by the evidence of history, is a dangerous asset, and one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions….” (see remainder of this most excellent article here)

Morning Trip (23)

Happiness is not the opposite of depression. The pursuit of happy is much like trying to be hot or to be cold. The concept of happy robs all of the enchantment of simple experience,
creating both the illusion of depression and the biochemical state of the brain caused by the stress of trying to obtain a thing that does not exist. The illusion of leaving depression comes from the lift from moving forward and taking action on each daily thing. The relief of the state of depression does not equal happy, it equals healthy choices, though such choices can come from avoidance of unpleasant feelings and emotions. Perhaps underneath it all, humans are so used to listening to others insisting and promoting the concept that we have some thing to escape, that we are always attempting to create an alternative to heaven to possess right now–the ultimate escape artists.

Morning Trip (22)

Does a person have the ability to achieve happy? Or, is happy more like a state, such as being hot or being cold? Can one decide to be hot or to be cold?