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Life does talk to us, do we listen?


markdohle

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Life does talk to us, do we listen?

The inner world of each human being is vast, deep, and more often than not unavailable to our rational mind.  We come in contact with it through our dreams, moods, fears and anxieties, as well as our experiences of joy and love of others. Our positive emotions are also often aspects of our unconscious as well. For instance, when I am in a good mood, or a bad one, I will often not understand where these moods come from.  I have as I age learned to be at peace with the reality that my conscious everyday awareness is really a small bit of ‘light’ riding over a vast ocean, seemingly bottomless. 

So my conscious self is in a boat riding on an inner ocean with sudden squalls arising and seeking to throw me overboard….would I drown if such a thing happened?  Would I go crazy etc.  The inner world can be something many people want to run from (I know I do), but we really can’t, since the unconscious and its contents are mine…..so where can I run to.  The more I seek to run from it the more it has influence in an often self destructive way.

One safe way to deal with this reality is through art.  Books are one way.  Fictional literature allows us to go inward but actually not know it.  We get into the minds and emotional life of the characters and react in our own unique way.  Fear, anger, anxiety, as well as our deepest longings can be safely experienced from reading.  There can be a lot of learning about the human experience from reading fictional stories.  Paintings can also evoke deep inner reactions that can touch us deeply.  Not only in our deepest longings, but our deepest fears as well; it can be laid out before us.  When we are in touch with the deep unconscious through art we have strong reactions, both positive and fearful.

Philosophy is also a great help for many people.   Reading Martin Buber for instances when he talks about relationships, the ‘I and Thou”, it touches me in a place very deep and evokes emotional states that can be overwhelming.  Science as well, pictures from the Hubble Telescope is one instance where art and science are one and easily accessible to people of all educational backgrounds.

Scripture is also a powerful way to deepen ones relationship with the inner world of the unconscious.  For it is in the reading of Scripture (of all traditions) that we go deeper than the personal unconscious, to a conscious connection with Infinite Consciousness.  Prayer as well is the royal road to the unconscious, for in prayer we learn to not only be honest and open with the Infinite, we also learn to listen to our inner images as ways of finding out what needs healing, and yes what needs forgiving. 

Faith can help us to not be afraid of our own inner life, for deeper than our inner ocean, there is the infinite
ocean of God’s love for each of us.  Our inner leviathans cannot keep us from this relationship when we learn to trust in that reality.  If not, well then we are just small bits of consciousness at the mercy of a dark ocean filled with our inner monsters.  All we can do is to hold on for dear life….or not.  It is not a pretty picture, but human life is often not pretty, messy and teaches us that we have less control and freedom than we would like to think.  Yet our inner journey towards God helps us to grow in freedom which also allows us to relate to our outer world in a more loving manner….in the end the inner and outer world are one.  One mirrors the other.  Life does talk to us, do we listen?

We are not alone in our own inner raging sea, though it can often seem like that.  For like Peter we are called to get out of the boat in faith and to walk across the raging wind driven waters of our unconscious.  We are called to trust, to grow in our ability to embrace all that we see in love and to not repress or pretend that there is not a great deal in us that needs to be seen, loved, healed and given over to that which keeps us all in existence from moment to moment.   Each moment is an act of creation on God’s part, it is not something that happened billions of years ago, but happens in each instant, keeping all intact by the loving Mind of God. “For in Him we live and move and have our being”.

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Do I listen? Usually not, but every once in a great while, usually when I am outside... in the garden, or in the woods... I OPEN up and take it all in. 

I do also occasionally, fall deep into thought, and probe my life of actions and words, and try to listen to what it is I am to do next. Though it is many a time that I hear nothing that is not of my own. Though when I do hear, it often can be a life changing event.

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26 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

Do I listen? Usually not, but every once in a great while, usually when I am outside... in the garden, or in the woods... I OPEN up and take it all in. 

I do also occasionally, fall deep into thought, and probe my life of actions and words, and try to listen to what it is I am to do next. Though it is many a time that I hear nothing that is not of my own. Though when I do hear, it often can be a life changing event.

Well said, thank you.  It often does not take much, all we need do is be attentive from time to time.

Peace
Mark

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I think of it as every person's "higher self"...or the part of us that is still connected to the divine, if there is such a thing. 

I wish I would listen to it more, and I'm not sure why I find it so difficult to do so. Maybe I haven't completely gotten over that innate and subconscious desire to muck up my life.

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10 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

I think of it as every person's "higher self"...or the part of us that is still connected to the divine, if there is such a thing. 

I wish I would listen to it more, and I'm not sure why I find it so difficult to do so. Maybe I haven't completely gotten over that innate and subconscious desire to muck up my life.

The reason is "the world". Omnipresent, insistent, hard to ignore. We are pressured from within by impulses, from without by the demands of interacting with the world. And that is probably more true today than ever before. William Wordsworth captured the dilemma with these words.......

 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
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Just now, Habitat said:

The reason is "the world". Omnipresent, insistent, hard to ignore. We are pressured from within by impulses, from without by the demands of interacting with the world. And that is probably more true today than ever before. William Wordsworth captured the dilemma with these words.......

 


The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers

I'm well aware that the inner voice is always right. Why do I so often ignore it? I find myself wondering if it's that I subconsciously think I know better...or if it's that I'm well aware I don't know better, and I'm still trying to sabotage and punish myself for some "sin" I think I have committed.

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9 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

I'm well aware that the inner voice is always right

So if the inner voice tells me to kill, I should?

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Just now, XenoFish said:

So if the inner voice tells me to kill, I should?

If your inner voice is telling you that, it might be time to see a doctor. Lol. 

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Right now my inner voice is telling me to punch someone in the throat. But I'm suppressing that rage in order to not cause trouble. I've gotten quite adept at suppressing my darker desires. I'm just waiting for the day I explode from them.:)

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7 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Right now my inner voice is telling me to punch someone in the throat. But I'm suppressing that rage in order to not cause trouble. I've gotten quite adept at suppressing my darker desires. I'm just waiting for the day I explode from them.:)

Well, you are a red-head !

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I don't see your age listed Chaos Rose, but if you are young you are entitled to concentrate on more worldly pursuits, rather than the mysteries of the higher self, it is necessary to first become established and comfortable in the world, before detouring into the depths of the soul.

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6 hours ago, XenoFish said:

Right now my inner voice is telling me to punch someone in the throat. But I'm suppressing that rage in order to not cause trouble. I've gotten quite adept at suppressing my darker desires. I'm just waiting for the day I explode from them.:)

Yeah, I get that way from time to time. Usually it is a extreme feeling toward violence. And usually there is no trigger, unless maybe it is sleep deprivation . :sleepy:

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9 hours ago, XenoFish said:

Right now my inner voice is telling me to punch someone in the throat. But I'm suppressing that rage in order to not cause trouble. I've gotten quite adept at suppressing my darker desires. I'm just waiting for the day I explode from them.:)

Suppression is not the problem, it is repression that causes the build up.  Also to speak up when neededcan go a long way in helping in many cases ;-)......

 

Peace

Mark

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3 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Yeah, I get that way from time to time. Usually it is a extreme feeling toward violence. And usually there is no trigger, unless maybe it is sleep deprivation . :sleepy:

For me it is a event that feeds the irrational anger and rage.....now way to fix it, but I have to learn to with it.

 

Peace
mark

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12 hours ago, Habitat said:

I don't see your age listed Chaos Rose, but if you are young you are entitled to concentrate on more worldly pursuits, rather than the mysteries of the higher self, it is necessary to first become established and comfortable in the world, before detouring into the depths of the soul.

I'm not young. And I've already detoured into the depths of the soul. I'm also already "established and comfortable." Not scraping to eke out an existence or anything like that. 

Edited by ChaosRose
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Yet another (of a great many 'anothers') excellent OP topic from Mr. Mark Dohle!!!!!

First, Mark, I'd like to share something that is usually reserved for my "Fiction Theory" students.

Associative Logic: the logic of dreams, of those times when our minds are free to wander, and of those generative, free-flowing conversations that lead us seemingly, yet not entirely far afield from where we started in order to deliver a perfectly paced narrative experience of All Things (cause and effect, love and life and death, good and bad, right and wrong, the past and the history, cruelty and abuse, laughter and joy).

And, to expand further on your sub-topic concerning running away from that inner world, an excerpt from Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. (Take note of that which is in BOLD please.)

"Let us return to the common man and to his religion — the only religion which ought to bear that name. The first thing that we think of is the well-known saying of one of our great poets and thinkers concerning the relation of religion to art and science:
Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt, hat auch Religion; Wer jene beide nicht besitzt, der habe Religion!
[He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion! — Goethe, "Zahme Xenien IX"]

This saying on the one hand draws an antithesis between religion and the two highest achievements of man, and on the other, asserts that, as regards their value in life, those achievements and religion can represent or replace each other. If we also set out to deprive the common man, [who has neither science nor art] of his religion, we shall clearly not have the poet's authority on our side. We will choose a particular path to bring us nearer an appreciation of his words. Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures. 'We cannot do without auxiliary constructions' as Theodor Fontane tells us. There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of the kind is indispensable. Voltaire has deflections in mind when he ends Candide with the advice to cultivate one's garden; and scientific activity is a deflection of this kind, too. The substitutive satisfactions, as offered by art, are illusions in contrast with reality, but they are none the less psychically effective, thanks to the role which phantasy has assumed in mental life. The intoxicating substances influence our body and alter its chemistry. It is no simple matter to see where religion has its place in this series. We must look further afield.
The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them. Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system."

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  • 2 months later...

Enjoyed this very much, sorry did not find it sooner.......this site is sooooo big LOL.  

 

Peace
mark

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19 hours ago, markdohle said:

Enjoyed this very much, sorry did not find it sooner.......this site is sooooo big LOL.  

Peace
mark

LOL.

I, too, had forgotten about this thread.  From open and nearly to close, it describes, hints at or begs sublimation, something for which need once impelled me to write and paint phantasmagorically.  Consuming as some things can be to get just right, I don't know whether I miss the frenzy enough to long for its release.  It was as though I would be feverishly beside myself for the indefinite time it took for me to achieve a satisfactory result.  Then, after giving it a rest, I'd invariably ask myself whether it was worth getting worked up about in the first place. 

The fact is that want of an acceptable outlet, when artistically directed, can be propitious.

Edited by aka CAT
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I do believe your heart speaks volumes........and when in tune with my mind and inner voice......you are guided to the right path........don't ignore these feelings.....

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Though what if are brains are a probability factor of all our past lives choices being swayed in certain directions from the positive and negative outcomes of those choices and with each life we will make the better choice more and more often.

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Because if the universe is a cycle (My opinion) then eventually each individual and their molecular structure will be put back together, allowing them to live there lives over .....this time having a little more know how on how to get through life easier....see through this process eventually everyone will make the right choices.......see i believe this world  is our heaven and our hell its what we make of it and with everyone making the right choices , everyone would be happy ....we would technically live in heaven for eternity ..

Edited by FTWind
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