It seems that it's becoming clearer to me that fear of death is inversely proportional to desire for freedom in Life.
Fear of Death ∝ 1/Desire for Freedom in Life
Or to say it another way, those who fear death the most are the same people who crave and demand security the most. These same people are most easily willing to exchange their freedom for (perceived & temporary) security.
Thus, spiritually Waking Up to one's eternal essence gives all of us the best chance to make things right. The best thing anyone can do toward establishing freedom for all is first get free yourself.
From a review of Scontenti by Marcello Veneziani (published by Marsilio): "a surprising book. It awakened in me a strange hope: that of a reformed Faust, capable of evoking, together with the medieval Mephistopheles, the ancient Seneca. This essay was a specialist in recovering the sense of limitation and destiny after having almost entirely lost it alongside Nero. He knew that the excesses of the infinite come from passions, but both Seneca and current politics ignore the "counter-logic" of the unconscious. And yet, if one horn of the dilemma is ignored, one does not manage to temper it thanks to the other horn - that of Aristotle's "logic". The unicorn is evil! "
Below is the review:
We are discontented with ourselves and with modern civilization… Discontent is not just about inequalities and hardships since it also pervades the wealthy. We are long-lived and wealthy, we have effective techniques and medicines, yet in every class we live badly. Discontent is now a universal condition, which in the West declines in a peculiar way. Discontent is not unhappiness, because it is also about context; nor is it sadness, melancholy and restlessness that do not lead to the animosity proper to the unhappy.
Once upon a time politics led to contentment - the worst was at hand - while today it arouses stable dissatisfaction with what we are, do and have, enslaving ourselves to unlimited desires and consumption that alienate. It is an individual and social malaise typical of modernity, which concerns human and institutional relationships, the pre-eminence of technology and the economy over culture, aggravated by the pandemic, environmental emergency, inequality and war.
Discontent is a state of incompleteness which has no religious outlet and which leads to discontent or rebellion, even if no revolution has freed us from discontent, because it does not depend only on oppression and injustice, being an internal and general, psychic and anthropological evil. Discontent is an alien who says to himself: "I am more than what life gives me in terms of body, age, gender, family, status, religion and expectation."
The ancients, on the other hand, ignored discontent: most resigned themselves soberly and easily to institutions, events and realities: they had fewer pretensions than amor Fati. Latin has the term contentus - "one who contains himself" - which is equivalent to being tenuously but lastingly content. Yet the Romans did not have the opposite term equivalent to "discontented." The imperial power did not want disgruntled citizens: it gave bread and circuses, as well as instilling fear. The ideal citizen of today, on the contrary, must change everything: status, ties, nature, sex, place of origin, houses, things and technological devices, moving forward the goals and sharpening the shortcomings to be filled.
Uninterrupted flow is the opposite of identity. If peoples and the weak lose their primary heritage, they no longer recognize each other and feel alone amidst consumption, suburbs, waste and global upheavals. Free time is a void to be filled with the most disparate goods, appetites and services. Desire has now replaced destiny, passing from identity to fluctuation, within liquid lives, temporary domiciles, precarious jobs. With no more principles, loyalty and coherence, we enter a void of firm points, of ties of origin, of horizons of expectation, of moral imperatives… It is the freedom of maniacally pursued whims that subjects us to the yoke of discontent.
More free time and means have led to less culture and the more wealthy one is, the more sumptuous one can be ignorant: opulence favors laziness, the pursuit of vulgar pleasures and addiction to distractions. In the United States Michelangelo's David has recently been mistaken for a pornographic image: we are - the United States is part of our intercontinental world - the opposite of what we have been... But culture is the only truly emancipatory energy, which the school destroyed it no longer arouses. Meanwhile, the banalities of the ignorant and the transgressions of the wise are rampant, united in disgust for Western civilization, for which we would be responsible for much of the evil in the world (while Putin seeks colonies and vassal states like an emperor).
Modernity is time, the West is the place and the mass is the subject of discontent: dissatisfied with the finite and the unfinished, it navigates the infinite, feeling omnipotent. The patron of modernity is Faust, to whom Mephistopheles gives all power. The first movements towards discontent were Sturm und Drang and Romanticism, which loved what was not there, the contradictions and confusions that are the faces of emotions… In antiquity there certainly were supermen who imitated Greek heroes — supremely amoral and arational (Brelich) —, like archaic and imperial tyrants. But the philosophers of the first Greek cities - together with other archaic sages of the globe - had discovered morality and reason, accusing omnipotence of arrogance and praising moderation.
Of course, discontent is inherent in Sapiens, because it has always been devoured and revived by faiths, emotions and desires. But this vice capable of changing into virtue has not remained the same in history: first the order of Fate governed by Zeus; then the salvation of that great impatient - if compared to the prophets - who wanted the Messiah immediately and the kingdom of God on earth within a generation... Thus Jesus broke up the cyclical time of the ancients and built unilinear time: officially from the end of the fourth century AD, when paganism was abolished. It is as if Christianity had said to the globe: "Do not afflict yourselves and be content: you can harbor infinity on this earth, however, living in goodness, because you will only reach it in heaven".
The industrial revolution killed God and humans began transferring infinity from the sky onto the planet. Then the divisible real and the indivisible fantastic began to fight each other more and more actively, giving the triumph to discontent. Thus were born the ideologies of progress, as strong as faiths even if they do not have an afterlife. The single God has been replaced by Mammon, with his entourage of goods and rubbish. Thus we are faced with the maximum contradiction: we feel the homogeneous and indivisible infinite while we experience the finite and divisible.
Science and technology, in progress, justify omnipotence, which however also arouses discontent in the rest of the humanities. Stretched out in the frenzy of satisfactions, we have forgotten the limits demanded by morality, value, duties, wisdom, beauty and education, sinking into the will to power, nihilism, relativism, ugliness, anger and sloth. We desire infinity and eternity and we obtain discontent, because there is nothing more that helps to contain greed in satiating us, benefiting us as only the spirit can do.
The ‘ awake’ is by degrees and seems to be on a scale with an unlimited range.
Just today, quietly, I discovered the might US dollar is no longer the World’s reserve currency, tipped that way a few weeks ago. You won’t hear it on any news source, for a while anyway. I think the media heads are all spouting things to produce calm, normalizing things, high crime rates, murders and the perpetrators being released. All this may be to make the masses calm, ‘don’t get upset, it may be dangerous for you to think for yourselves’. Trust us to handle all, don’t worry your little heads about anything.
Just the Postman here bringing the latest gossip ;)
Apr 24, 2023·edited Apr 24, 2023Liked by Ray Horvath, "The Source" :)
Having been very rudely awoken precipitously a couple of decades ago, the genesis of which was a very rapid fall from good health into chronic disabling dysfunction, I have survived long enough to re-prioritize what "waking up would entail".
My first priority is to retain and where possible regain enough life force to address the very close next priority for me. Can't do the work if you can't breathe.
That very close next priority has been to take a deep, hard honest look at myself, my responsibility for who I am and what I do way beyond just in this 3D world of predator/parasite/prey paradigm. And then own it, all of it.
More importantly for my bigger picture is how I treat my relationship with eternal God/Source/Love, however one views or labels that indefinable power.
Last priority for me on what waking up entails is to share, whenever that looks like it would be advantageous to all involved, whatever I've experienced that might provide some life value to others in my sphere.
Thanks again to you and your discerning subscribers for the very useful forum. 🙏
It seems that it's becoming clearer to me that fear of death is inversely proportional to desire for freedom in Life.
Fear of Death ∝ 1/Desire for Freedom in Life
Or to say it another way, those who fear death the most are the same people who crave and demand security the most. These same people are most easily willing to exchange their freedom for (perceived & temporary) security.
Thus, spiritually Waking Up to one's eternal essence gives all of us the best chance to make things right. The best thing anyone can do toward establishing freedom for all is first get free yourself.
STOP AND FRISK Kennedy: Stop and frisk is constitutional, let New Orleans use it to prevent crime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfOo_igjLj8&t=3s
Does anyone know if your post/your name can be hijacked?
I JUST realized that 9 people liked a posting that wasn't mine!!
Further, I MAY have written the first 2 sentences. But the anecdote
was impossible as I never had a 'grandma', let alone one who
worked outside. Ray critiqued the use of 'we', which I FINALLY
realized I never wrote.
At first I took the criticism, then REREAD, and WHOA, I didn't
write this, but it's my avatar name.
Why would anyone do that?
Yes, it's TIME.
From a review of Scontenti by Marcello Veneziani (published by Marsilio): "a surprising book. It awakened in me a strange hope: that of a reformed Faust, capable of evoking, together with the medieval Mephistopheles, the ancient Seneca. This essay was a specialist in recovering the sense of limitation and destiny after having almost entirely lost it alongside Nero. He knew that the excesses of the infinite come from passions, but both Seneca and current politics ignore the "counter-logic" of the unconscious. And yet, if one horn of the dilemma is ignored, one does not manage to temper it thanks to the other horn - that of Aristotle's "logic". The unicorn is evil! "
Below is the review:
We are discontented with ourselves and with modern civilization… Discontent is not just about inequalities and hardships since it also pervades the wealthy. We are long-lived and wealthy, we have effective techniques and medicines, yet in every class we live badly. Discontent is now a universal condition, which in the West declines in a peculiar way. Discontent is not unhappiness, because it is also about context; nor is it sadness, melancholy and restlessness that do not lead to the animosity proper to the unhappy.
Once upon a time politics led to contentment - the worst was at hand - while today it arouses stable dissatisfaction with what we are, do and have, enslaving ourselves to unlimited desires and consumption that alienate. It is an individual and social malaise typical of modernity, which concerns human and institutional relationships, the pre-eminence of technology and the economy over culture, aggravated by the pandemic, environmental emergency, inequality and war.
Discontent is a state of incompleteness which has no religious outlet and which leads to discontent or rebellion, even if no revolution has freed us from discontent, because it does not depend only on oppression and injustice, being an internal and general, psychic and anthropological evil. Discontent is an alien who says to himself: "I am more than what life gives me in terms of body, age, gender, family, status, religion and expectation."
The ancients, on the other hand, ignored discontent: most resigned themselves soberly and easily to institutions, events and realities: they had fewer pretensions than amor Fati. Latin has the term contentus - "one who contains himself" - which is equivalent to being tenuously but lastingly content. Yet the Romans did not have the opposite term equivalent to "discontented." The imperial power did not want disgruntled citizens: it gave bread and circuses, as well as instilling fear. The ideal citizen of today, on the contrary, must change everything: status, ties, nature, sex, place of origin, houses, things and technological devices, moving forward the goals and sharpening the shortcomings to be filled.
Uninterrupted flow is the opposite of identity. If peoples and the weak lose their primary heritage, they no longer recognize each other and feel alone amidst consumption, suburbs, waste and global upheavals. Free time is a void to be filled with the most disparate goods, appetites and services. Desire has now replaced destiny, passing from identity to fluctuation, within liquid lives, temporary domiciles, precarious jobs. With no more principles, loyalty and coherence, we enter a void of firm points, of ties of origin, of horizons of expectation, of moral imperatives… It is the freedom of maniacally pursued whims that subjects us to the yoke of discontent.
More free time and means have led to less culture and the more wealthy one is, the more sumptuous one can be ignorant: opulence favors laziness, the pursuit of vulgar pleasures and addiction to distractions. In the United States Michelangelo's David has recently been mistaken for a pornographic image: we are - the United States is part of our intercontinental world - the opposite of what we have been... But culture is the only truly emancipatory energy, which the school destroyed it no longer arouses. Meanwhile, the banalities of the ignorant and the transgressions of the wise are rampant, united in disgust for Western civilization, for which we would be responsible for much of the evil in the world (while Putin seeks colonies and vassal states like an emperor).
Modernity is time, the West is the place and the mass is the subject of discontent: dissatisfied with the finite and the unfinished, it navigates the infinite, feeling omnipotent. The patron of modernity is Faust, to whom Mephistopheles gives all power. The first movements towards discontent were Sturm und Drang and Romanticism, which loved what was not there, the contradictions and confusions that are the faces of emotions… In antiquity there certainly were supermen who imitated Greek heroes — supremely amoral and arational (Brelich) —, like archaic and imperial tyrants. But the philosophers of the first Greek cities - together with other archaic sages of the globe - had discovered morality and reason, accusing omnipotence of arrogance and praising moderation.
Of course, discontent is inherent in Sapiens, because it has always been devoured and revived by faiths, emotions and desires. But this vice capable of changing into virtue has not remained the same in history: first the order of Fate governed by Zeus; then the salvation of that great impatient - if compared to the prophets - who wanted the Messiah immediately and the kingdom of God on earth within a generation... Thus Jesus broke up the cyclical time of the ancients and built unilinear time: officially from the end of the fourth century AD, when paganism was abolished. It is as if Christianity had said to the globe: "Do not afflict yourselves and be content: you can harbor infinity on this earth, however, living in goodness, because you will only reach it in heaven".
The industrial revolution killed God and humans began transferring infinity from the sky onto the planet. Then the divisible real and the indivisible fantastic began to fight each other more and more actively, giving the triumph to discontent. Thus were born the ideologies of progress, as strong as faiths even if they do not have an afterlife. The single God has been replaced by Mammon, with his entourage of goods and rubbish. Thus we are faced with the maximum contradiction: we feel the homogeneous and indivisible infinite while we experience the finite and divisible.
Science and technology, in progress, justify omnipotence, which however also arouses discontent in the rest of the humanities. Stretched out in the frenzy of satisfactions, we have forgotten the limits demanded by morality, value, duties, wisdom, beauty and education, sinking into the will to power, nihilism, relativism, ugliness, anger and sloth. We desire infinity and eternity and we obtain discontent, because there is nothing more that helps to contain greed in satiating us, benefiting us as only the spirit can do.
Nice graphic that I sometimes resemble!
The ‘ awake’ is by degrees and seems to be on a scale with an unlimited range.
Just today, quietly, I discovered the might US dollar is no longer the World’s reserve currency, tipped that way a few weeks ago. You won’t hear it on any news source, for a while anyway. I think the media heads are all spouting things to produce calm, normalizing things, high crime rates, murders and the perpetrators being released. All this may be to make the masses calm, ‘don’t get upset, it may be dangerous for you to think for yourselves’. Trust us to handle all, don’t worry your little heads about anything.
Just the Postman here bringing the latest gossip ;)
Having been very rudely awoken precipitously a couple of decades ago, the genesis of which was a very rapid fall from good health into chronic disabling dysfunction, I have survived long enough to re-prioritize what "waking up would entail".
My first priority is to retain and where possible regain enough life force to address the very close next priority for me. Can't do the work if you can't breathe.
That very close next priority has been to take a deep, hard honest look at myself, my responsibility for who I am and what I do way beyond just in this 3D world of predator/parasite/prey paradigm. And then own it, all of it.
More importantly for my bigger picture is how I treat my relationship with eternal God/Source/Love, however one views or labels that indefinable power.
Last priority for me on what waking up entails is to share, whenever that looks like it would be advantageous to all involved, whatever I've experienced that might provide some life value to others in my sphere.
Thanks again to you and your discerning subscribers for the very useful forum. 🙏
Ray, possible edit.
'thing' should be 'think' in subheading.
:)