11.23.07
Posted in Friendship, Relationships at 7:17 pm by Ryan
… and there are storms we cannot weather.”
Sometimes it seems, no matter how much you think you have life “figured out” or understand what is going on and how to act in every situation, life throws you things you hadn’t planned on and challenges your reality. And your morality. And even your humanity.
I learned in church that life was a series of decisions between good and evil. But it isn’t. It is very often a decision between good and better and maybe even best.
There are no punishments and no rewards. There are only consequences.
Since I have opened myself to examine the beliefs that I carried around for a very long time, my worldview has been challenged again and again by powerful people or situations. Shaken to the very core, so to speak.
In terms of these experiences, there have been decisions and critical lines in the sand to cross–forever leaving the old behind–or not–then staying with the old way. Lacking a solid guide to what to do aside from my conscience and my feelings, I try to make those decisions which I hope are best for all participants.
People can do something they feel is right and have others vehemently disagree. See Jesus or Ghandi. Or Hitler or the KKK. In these cases, perhaps only time can tell what the best decision was.
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11.22.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 2:12 pm by Ryan
From the book by Hans-Joachim Maaz (translation mine):
“Eva is the ‘mother’ humble, chaste, loyal, subservient to the man. Lilith is a sensual, seductive, lustful, passionate and self-fulfilled life. Men are both afraid and drawn to both aspects of the feminine. They fight their fear of the boring and listless in marriage with Eva by visiting prostitutes or a lover while they, in fear of female power, passion, and independence try to fight and condemn the Lilith aspects in every woman.”
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Posted in Miscellaneous at 2:04 pm by Ryan
For three months, there were rainbows everywhere. The birds came to my hand and spoke to me. The sky sparkled.
Now, the sun is just yellow. The sky is just blue, or sometimes grey. Birds don’t come to visit anymore. And they are silent.
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07.30.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 10:43 pm by Ryan
I want you to know that no matter how much you fight, no matter how hard you try, no matter how strongly you try to resist, you will still stay the same wonderful, impetuous, passionate, loving person you are today.
And, for people like you (maybe most of us are like this after all), this, if you continue to believe “the traditions of your fathers”, can cause you a lot of pain. And I know what I am talking about, because I have been through it. I have felt that pain.
The pain of loving too much.
You see, we live in a world, in a culture where we have been taught that, if we can concentrate all of our love on just one person, and keep that that way forever, then we have succeeded. When the reality is, we are more likely to win a wrestling match with a crocodile with our tongue than do that.
Oh, you can do it if:
- You are the only two people in the world
- You simply turn off your feelings
- You avoid other people like the plague.
All very unhealthy things to do.
Some people talking about their spouse as being their best friend. I say, “Who else have you given a chance to?”
For me, the real purpose of every real-ationship is spiritual growth. Now, nature may have created some strange chemicals to get you to enter into those “growing” relationships, but really, that is what they are for. And once you realize that, you lose the addiction to the “drug of love” that “forces” you to begin a relationship with someone for sexual or physical reasons. Instead, you can evaluate the person honestly–not as someone who will “solve your problems”–but as someone who can help you to move forward at this part of your life the most possible.
And, when the time comes to move on, you can hopefully hug one another, and do just that. Not wonder whose fault it was that you both changed.
If you try to change your nature, you will lose, just as completely as if you were try to change your gender.
http://blog.realisticrelationships.com/
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03.31.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 4:09 pm by Ryan
When Gregg was here, we were walking through Dresden and I re-used the line that the guy on the Big Red Bus used with us during our tour of London, “Here, there are two kinds of pedestrians. The quick and the dead.”
Just then, we saw some flashing lights in front of us and came up to a bunch of police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, etc.
They were (and I’ve never seen this done before anywhere) drawing a line of chalk around a single shoe. Wow, I thought. You made my point.
Thirty feet further, in a chalk outline was, the other shoe.
I kid you not.
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02.21.07
Posted in Music at 3:36 pm by Ryan
The secret to playing the piano is to not play any wrong notes. What you are trying to do when you are playing a piece is to understand it. You cannot play it correctly without undersatanding it–if so, it is because of dumb luck.
To understand it, you must know where your fingers are going and why. If you stop at any juncture at which you do not know where you are going and why and only continue after you are perfectly sure that you are going to hit the right notes, then you will learn to hit the correct notes. Practice errors and you will learn errors.
Thanks to Ed for the tip.
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02.18.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 9:18 pm by Ryan
I believe that in the near future, we will see that the larger a particular governmental, social, religious, or even business system gets, the more inefficient it becomes.
Therefore, these systems will have to be small and simple in the future, in order to run efficiently. Somewhere between a family and a village.
My dream is to establish a place of intentional community where people can come to live in happiness and harmony. To create that, if possible ASAP and to figure out something “different” than what is being done already.
To, for example, rent a castle or something with 30 people and grow our own vegetables, run our own businesses, etc.
Interesting example: www.zegg.de
* The Mondrogon cooperatives have found that above 500 members, their “member-based” cooperatives are too unweidly because of the lack of “true democracy” in them”.
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01.28.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 2:52 am by Ryan
A thought from a friend. Yes, I have tried to do two pages for quite awhile. And I wrote daily in my journal for years.
But perhaps a line will do sometimes. And it is certainly better than nothing . . .
Can I dictate it?
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01.09.07
Posted in Miscellaneous at 3:27 am by Ryan
I have decided to make this site useful. Not just for my friends (who don’t visit it anyway lol), but for Other People. Normal People. For that reason, I am going to start writing about things that can actually Help People in their Lives. Sort of like Steve Pavlina. But, different. Stay tuned!
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08.03.06
Posted in Politics at 4:12 pm by Ryan
After numerous debates with friends, the results of which have given me to think that these ideas make sense, I have endeavored to write those principles which I consider eternal and bedrock for political theory. The following of these principles I believe would solve many problems and avoid misery and pain for literally billions of people now and in the future.
Let it be set forth:
1. Government is an organization created by men.
It is a social organization or “social compact”. Without governments, there would still be men. Without men, there would be no governments.
Therefore, man is greater than government. (Men > Governments). Man has the original power that created the government. The government will never (as a created “theoretical entitiy”) have the same power man has.
2. Men delegate specific rights and responsibilities that they personally have, to some extent, to governments in order to solve problems that they can solve better or easier collectively than singly (i. e., building roads, large-group [national] defense, etc).
3. Government has no rights or powers which were not delegated to it by men.
Government is not an independent entity and has nothing of its own. Without the citizenry to supply it with “real value”, it cannot perform any of its delegated tasks or even maintain itself.
Therefore:
When men seek for solutions from Government (capitalized as representing a type of God), it is as logical as men looking to be saved by any other structure they built. Men are greater than government. Men solve the problems of government, not the other way around.
The creator, in our example, is seeking help from the created. The created cannot provide the help, in fact the creator and the created will perish if men insist upon “receiving salvation” from the created long enough. And the creator will be left at the end to:
1. Create another Created and
2. Solve the problems he was trying to delegate to the Created (to solve for him) anyway.
* Men = people throughout this essay.
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