Sean, you really think eating or going potty is a strain of some sort? I happen to enjoy both immensely.

quote:

your resources must be eventually exhausted. When that occurs, your miseries will fill the voids as your happiness erodes because misery is effortless and plentiful.

Misery is not effortless and, for me anyway, not plentiful. It takes more energy to frown than to smile.

You're thinking too much. Go to a garden or a zoo. Smell the flowers. Enjoy life. It's much easier than being miserable. More fun too.

Frankly, you're writing like a depressed person would. Are you depressed right now, in your own view?

Jeff

quote:

Sean, you really think eating or going potty is a strain of some sort? I happen to enjoy both immensely.—CompGuy

Jeff,
     I am sure you do, and that is normal. I was pointing out that energy must be expended to make such enjoyments possible: Labor is required to obtain the food you like and a plumber provides the potty at the price of some exertion. You must pay the piper for your pleasures and the plumber for your potty. The energy available to you is limited; that cannot be reasonably denied—One day you'll miss a payment.
     Avoiding too much thought is not an effective way to defeat depression. My cure is to marvel at the progress life has made and to contemplate in wonderment the path that lies ahead. That is an abiding joy. I regret a bit that I shall miss the future, but that cake is in the oven, still.
Seán

quote:

Avoiding too much thought is not an effective way to defeat depression.

Sure it is.

quote:

2. Learn to Detach from Thoughts

Thoughts play a very significant role in determining our state of mind. If we pursue negative thoughts then we give them greater power and influence over our state of being. However, it is possible to decide which thoughts to allow and which to reject. We have to learn to be vigilant and prevent negative thoughts from taking hold. As soon as we become aware of negative thoughts we should let go of them. We can imagine that we are throwing them out of our mind into a cosmic dustbin.

3. Keep Busy.

If we struggle to detach from negative thoughts we should just throw ourselves into other activities. When we get involved in other activities that we enjoy it takes us out of ourselves. Activity forces us to do something constructive, and does not allow us to dwell on our depressed state of mind.

That's from Sri Chinmoy. Source:
http://www.srichinmoybio.co.uk...-becoming-depressed/

quote:

Happiness
Will follow you
If your heart remains
Undisturbed by trifles.

Jeff

Jeff,
     I had not heard of Sri Chinroy, whose biography appears in Wikipedia. If you read it there, I suggest you skip §8:Controversy because it includes discordant thoughts.
Seán

I'm not a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. I just thought the page I quoted from was pertinent to our discussion.

What people do in real life doesn't vitiate their work. I never understood why the fact that Pee Wee Herman was caught masturbating in an adult theater meant that his award-winning wholesome shows for kids had to pulled off the air at once. The shows were great regardless of Pee Wee's personal peccadilos. Same for Sri Chinmoy--he had a lot of good thoughts. If he had inappropriate relationships with women, I don't see how that affects the validity of his teachings. Plus I still think John Edwards had the best health care plan of all the candidates even though he's apparently a sleaze in his personal life.

Jeff

quote:

I'm not a disciple of Sri Chinmoy.—CompGuy

     I am relieved to hear that. I see you read the controversy section anyway, despite my warning. I was not so much concerned with the accusations concerning sexual exploitation of subordinates—after all, the man insists that he was chaste and he obviously was in a position to know—as with the shoddy showmanship he used to divert his audiences' attention from his preachings' paucity.
     I remember Pee Wee Herman and, now that you mention it, his unfortunate experience with wanking publicly. I see where you were heading with that story and I must say you were successful: It cheered me up a lot and banished all traces of depression.
Seán

Hello. One year to live is the title but the conversation ranges pretty widely. Funny.

Linda, sorry to hear about your reincarnation debts. Someone once told me that very ancient souls can actually impart lots of good karma to younger souls. Do you believe this might be within the realm of possibility?

I am not a disciple of Sri Chinmoy.

I am a disciple of the Holy Bhagworm.

I'm a disciple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

May you forever be Touched by His Noodly Appendage.

Jeff

Depending upon which noodly appendage you have in mind, I may second that.
Seán

quote:

Originally posted by comicon:
Hello. One year to live is the title but the conversation ranges pretty widely. Funny.

Comicon,

That always happens here! Happens on the board too.

quote:

Linda, sorry to hear about your reincarnation debts. Someone once told me that very ancient souls can actually impart lots of good karma to younger souls. Do you believe this might be within the realm of possibility?

It was the effing skeptics on the other board...T.E. among others. Stubborn bunch...I don't know how I could have been more explicit, but it was like they didn't even READ what I wrote about it! I told them over and over again I was NOT trying to prove anything to them, but it was like talking to the walls.

That wasn't even the worst of it, though. They wouldn't believe me when I told them I believed I had discovered my past incarnation by accident, and that it was something I was not supposed to know and absolutely didn't WANT to know! I was horrified at the thought that I had been this woman, and I went out of my way NOT to read any of her writings and NOT to read a biography of her either. After I got on the Internet I very rarely googled her name, although I won't say I never did. But I spent a lot more time researching other subjects. I didn't want to know any more about her than I already did.

And I kept telling them that! But TE or CZ (I think it was CZ) said something like "It doesn't do much for your case if you take that approach." I felt like banging his head into a virtual wall Hey...that beats banging his head into a real wall, right? I wasn't trying to build a ****ing "case," and that was the whole damn point! I don't care if they don't believe me, because after all--why should they? They aren't under any obligation to believe me. What was so damn crazy-making was the fact that they weren't even HEARING me.

As for the reincarnation debts (if any), there's no need to be sorry because I'm pretty sure they have all been paid at this point. It isn't so much a matter of "debts" anyway as lessons to be learned--much as I hate, loathe and abominate that whole idea that we're here on this earth to "learn lessons." Personally, I think we're here to self-actualize, to "Be Who We Truly Are" as Neale Donald Walsch put it. "Karma" is what gets in the way of self-actualization. It's kind of like a conditioned response or a set of conditioned responses, except that the conditioning occurred in a previous lifetime. That makes it extremely difficult to uproot and overcome. Not impossible, though.

It shows in our horoscopes (the macrocosm), assuming a truly accurate horoscope could be made. I'm no expert on the subject, but as I understand it traditional astrology is pretty crude and not especially accurate. Then there is our DNA which is the microcosm. That's a lot more accurate, but we are only barely beginning to understand how to read it. Either or both of these would give us a fairly accurate picture of our karma, *IF* they were accurate and *IF* they could be read with understanding. In my never-humble opinion, of course.

Anyway, sometime around Thanksgiving or just before, or whenever it was the whole brouhaha took place on the other forum, was when I decided my past incarnation's karma was nothing but a great big DRAG and I was fed up with it! I told my daughter I was tired of being **** and I wasn't go be her any more. To her credit, and wise young lady that she is...my daughter understood.

Love and Light,
Linda

I think They were convinced that you would announce a past connection to the famous figure and were just stalling for dramatic effect. When someone I know told me who he was in previous lives it seemed weird -- because he was a little guy. Anyway, reincarnation is an interesting idea so people get lost in conversation about it, and they typically go one of two ways when talking about it. I think those guys were lost in it too, although they had a mocking skeptical tone. It is fun to make fun. It was smart for you not to say who it was. Its a secret secret, because you said even you weren't supposed to know it.

quote:

I think They were convinced that you would announce a past connection to the famous figure and were just stalling for dramatic effect.

I see you changed your name...whatever possessed you to pick a name like "dandruffbrain"? Is that a spinoff on "bananabrain" on the other board? I'm going to have to check in there pretty soon so old BB won't feel rejected and think I'm mad at him again. I'm not mad at anyone right now except for the Aants righties, but that's pretty much a permanent condition. They are used to it and so am I.

It's just that no matter how I hard I try, I can't be an active participant on more than one discussion board at a time. Plus I have a whole bunch of blogs I'm now following on the Blogger website, although again I tend to focus on some more than others. And then there's Facebook on top of all that...

Come to think of it, though...you're probably right that they thought I was stalling for dramatic effect, and that's why they were so confrontational about the whole thing. My fault, really. I never should have brought the subject up on a public forum at all. It's a very spontaneous thing, a very impulsive thing, really. I never plan it ahead of time when I do something like that. But sometimes I find myself posting something really personal without intending to do it or planning to do it. And then after it's finished I think "what the hell, let the chips fall where they may" and leave it up there. Especially if I think the post is well written, I tend to leave it up even if I got into some personal issue that is basically none of anyone else's business. And then I get deeply hurt if someone takes a critical or judgmental tone, which really makes NO sense because I was the one who went out on a limb on a public board! You could say I was leaving myself wide open for it...you know, "make sure brain is in gear before engaging keyboard," etc.

Yeah, it's a famous person who died only a few years before I was born. If she hadn't been famous I never would have heard of her myself. But she isn't a role model for anyone, and as I believe I said on the other board, you DO NOT want to have her karma on your plate. It is not fun!

quote:

It was smart for you not to say who it was. Its a secret secret, because you said even you weren't supposed to know it.

I don't know about "smart" exactly, and I'm not sure how deep a secret it is any more either. I just didn't want to say who it was on a public forum. For many years I was so horrified by the whole idea I never told anyone outside of my immediate family. Then finally several years ago, I told a trusted online friend by e-mail. And then more recently still, I told the astrologer I mentioned earlier. He is an old friend who still has the chart he made for me when we were both eighteen or nineteen. Believe me, that was a while ago!!!

I find that I become less sensitive about it the more willing I become to deal with the issues raised by that incarnation, assuming that's what it was. It's entirely possible this person is a Shadow figure for me, in the Jungian sense. Or she could be a past incarnation AND my Shadow at the same time, which is what I personally believe.

Love and Light,
Linda

Nothing possessed me, but I think its funny. When I am handing out the wisdom, I guess I'm trying to say don't take it too seriously, because its just me scratching my head. For a good while I've scratched my head and said all kinds of things in contemplation of how christianity came about, but when I started there seemed like so much information that it was quicker to figure it out rather than simply look for the right people to ask. (When I ask, I never know who I'm talking to, what I'm going to get.) So, I take the years to go through ALL of this trouble....SO much trouble and wind up confirming that probably I could have just asked the right persons and confirmed the answers with a little historical checking. I've had so many great illuminations and discoveries! ha ha ha Did you know that I thought the internet would be a fad?

quote:

Come to think of it, though...you're probably right that they thought I was stalling for dramatic effect, and that's why they were so confrontational about the whole thing. My fault, really. I never should have brought the subject up on a public forum at all. It's a very spontaneous thing, a very impulsive thing, really. I never plan it ahead of time when I do something like that. But sometimes I find myself posting something really personal without intending to do it or planning to do it. And then after it's finished I think "what the hell, let the chips fall where they may" and leave it up there. Especially if I think the post is well written, I tend to leave it up even if I got into some personal issue that is basically none of anyone else's business. And then I get deeply hurt if someone takes a critical or judgmental tone, which really makes NO sense because I was the one who went out on a limb on a public board! You could say I was leaving myself wide open for it...you know, "make sure brain is in gear before engaging keyboard," etc.

Plus, since you're a girl it means you're going to have to talk about it afterwards, so its a double-whammy!