Here’s a new word: Equanimity.
I can’t even pronounce it.
Tag Archives: Darkness and light
Purging: A first peek
Laughter is the best medicine.
Podcast – Loving All
God is BOTH darkness and light.
Loving All
See Isaiah 45:7, Psalm 139:12.
Related: When Gandhi Introduced America’s Civil Rights Leaders to Nonviolence
Related: Forgiving the cosmos
Music: XTC, “Merely a man”
Police brutality 1
Not everyone is cut out
to work with the scum of the earth.
Dealing with physical pain
Physical pain can make you irritable.
Saturday, December 8
The arthritis in my knees has been getting worse and worse in recent weeks. Continue reading Dealing with physical pain
The wandering will
A vector in a three-dimensional space.
I envision the emotional or spiritual world as a ten-dimensional space, in which a vector (arrow) beginning at the origin (the center of the space) depicts a person’s emotional state at any point in time. The vector’s length indicates the intensity of one’s emotions at a given moment, while its direction indicates what kinds of feelings those are — equal parts joy and sadness, for example, or some anger and much love.
These are the energies one is emanating at that moment, the kinds of light or darkness one creates.
Continue reading The wandering will
Why do roses have thorns?
Are thorns happy?
Friday, December 1, Bounce showed Steven Seagal’s Above the Law.
He always plays opposite some eye candy, a term I learned from a Doonesbury strip about Uncle Duke’s presidential campaign. In Above the Law, it was Sharon Stone. In On Deadly Ground, it was Joan Chen, a Chinese actress cast as a Native American, with no real function but to look nice and follow him around.
“Eye candy” isn’t a mere phrase. I saw again that when I see a pretty woman, such as Stone in that scene, I get a sweet taste in my mouth. This is a physiological reaction, and potentially raises lots of questions about how we respond to beauty — or ugliness.
Related: For us.
I have much the same reaction whenever I see a rose.
Which recalls my interactions with that rose bush in the garden. Continue reading Why do roses have thorns?
Sifting dichotomies
(Originally published 06/08/13 at Trojan Horse Productions. Republished here 10/30/13.)
In recent days, I’ve spent much time trying to sort out my understandings of Good and Evil, order and chaos, darkness and light. I read a lot about Zoroastrianism, wanting to be sure my thinking isn’t “dualist” like that religion. On 06/11/13, I wrote:
Like Manichaeism, a truly false religion, Zoroastrianism emphasizes a conflict between Good and Evil, which is absent from my thought. I prefer to think of something more like Yin/Yang.
Yin and Yang are both necessary, and alternate but don’t necessarily conflict. Yet the traditional concept of them also errs, trying to connect that same dichotomy to almost every other one imaginable:
| hot and cold | life and death |
| female and male | young and old |
| too much and too little | north and south (magnetic) |
| stability and change | negative and positive (electrical) |
| past and future | truth and error |
| large and small | night and day |
| wet and dry | creation and destruction |
| grace and works | mercy and justice |
I wrote 06/12/13:
So, needy people fail to make the transition from infantile to post-infantile behavior. Regardless of worldview, and contrary to the notion that self-love is subconscious, Christianity’s teachings would tend to facilitate that transition; people can consciously learn right conduct.
Transition is a key concept. One could ask if Good and Evil don’t just correspond to stability and change; Vishnu and Siva. But the nutrients in my bloodstream are destroyed and converted into wastes as I use them. Fire releases light and heat, but destroys that which it consumes; and, in most cases, produces wastes.
Many of these dichotomies are independent, and many — as with fire — involve ambiguities and shades of gray.
on air talent, talk show host, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
* The wandering will
A vector in a three-dimensional space.
I envision the emotional or spiritual world as a ten-dimensional space, in which a vector (arrow) beginning at the origin (the center of the space) depicts a person’s emotional state at any point in time. The vector’s length indicates the intensity of one’s emotions at a given moment, while its direction indicates what kinds of feelings those are — equal parts joy and sadness, for example, or some anger and much love.
These are the energies one is emanating at that moment, the kinds of light or darkness one creates.
Continue reading * The wandering will
* Sifting dichotomies
(Originally published 06/08/13 at Trojan Horse Productions.)
In recent days, I’ve spent much time trying to sort out my understandings of Good and Evil, order and chaos, darkness and light. I read a lot about Zoroastrianism, wanting to be sure my thinking isn’t “dualist” like that religion. On 06/11/13, I wrote:
Like Manichaeism, a truly false religion, Zoroastrianism emphasizes a conflict between Good and Evil, which is absent from my thought. I prefer to think of something more like Yin/Yang.
Yin and Yang are both necessary, and alternate but don’t necessarily conflict. Yet the traditional concept of them also errs, trying to connect that same dichotomy to almost every other one imaginable:
| hot and cold | life and death |
| female and male | young and old |
| too much and too little | north and south (magnetic) |
| stability and change | negative and positive (electrical) |
| past and future | truth and error |
| large and small | night and day |
| wet and dry | creation and destruction |
| grace and works | mercy and justice |
I wrote 06/12/13:
So, needy people fail to make the transition from infantile to post-infantile behavior. Regardless of worldview, and contrary to the notion that self-love is subconscious, Christianity’s teachings would tend to facilitate that transition; people can consciously learn right conduct.
Transition is a key concept. One could ask if Good and Evil don’t just correspond to stability and change; Vishnu and Siva. But the nutrients in my bloodstream are destroyed and converted into wastes as I use them. Fire releases light and heat, but destroys that which it consumes; and, in most cases, produces wastes.
Many of these dichotomies are independent, and many — as with fire — involve ambiguities and shades of gray.
(Reblogged 01/05/17.)
on air talent, talk show host, radio talk show, the homeless blogger
The Homeless Blogger 