Yin and Yang after all/ The Awkward truth

Kono,

Life as we know it cannot live without death, for all life feeds on death at some point. All that is created will some day be destroyed, but in doing that will create space for new life. Is there a beginning, is there an end? Who knows, because we are in the midst of it all.

We are a small speck in a huge universe. We in turn may be a huge universe at another level for the millions of microbes that live within us, who would not even exist without our being. But we also would not exist without them. Watch them for they move, they are aware to some point of their environment. They know what to eat, what to avoid, they have various ways to create their own descendants.

They in turn are made out of atoms that remind us of our solar system. What lives in them.

You are part of life, you too create life and death, by your very existence. You affect the living around you in ways that you never are aware of, including people who you are not aware of, people you pass by, or they pass by you. Someone you look at, a smile or a frown on your face. Someone whose direction is changed because they saw you at some point. You directly affect all those that you interact with in both big and little ways. You are there lesson that you teach them, or that they choose not to learn.

You will die, just as you were created, you had no control over either. Until then your survival has never been completely in your own hands. Until the time of your death, you will survive everything that happens to you, whether you know what your are doing, or are fleeing in blind panic. You are the future of your ancestors just as much as they are your history. You are the history of your future descendants, just as they are the future that you try to imagine. Nothing and no one exists without a purpose, if you were not needed in some way, then you would not exist. You may never be fully aware of your purpose, hopefully you will discover part of it by experimenting with your life, and see what happens as a response to your actions, your thoughts, and your words.

Neither creation, nor destruction ever end. Life and death always interact. You experience both, but how often? That remains to be found out some time, but I have no idea when.

To both of you:
You are probably right, but when i think about nature i can only picture baby animals being eaten alive as they scream in horror and agony, its heartless and cruel.

To me nature is cruel, and something we have to ascend above, to grow beyond the physical, and since i am as sterile as space i have no descendants to worry about. [Smile]

As for my purpose, i can say i made my own.
I certainly don't believe in a Godess and the God the way Wiccans do, they exist but they are not related to me.
And thusly not my problem. [Smile]

And only my physical body will die. [Twisted evil]

PS: The problem is that i have to rethink a lot i thought i knew, and its both awkward and overwhelming.
To be honest i really hate it.

Life and death are connected and so is everything else in the universe.

The Anglo Saxon concept of wyrd. Not exactly fate but that people, actions, things are tied together and have some influence on each other. Like a spider web being pulled and putting the whole web in motion, or the casting of pebbles into still water and watching the ripples interact. All things have some influence on the world around them. From the stars in the sky that you look at millions of miles away to the sound of a horn down the street they still enter our consciousness, making some small little change.

This little thread has been looked at over 600 times already and your first questions have sent ripples out to be read by many others on the forum. Did they find something interesting here? Did they pass it on or talk to someone else about a comment or concept... the ripples extend outward.

On rethinking things, it just proves your alive... We all do it. Many of my concepts of things are the same from many years ago but others are vastly different.
We all learn and grow and the world changes along with our vantage point.

Kono,

Certainly nature can be little babies getting eaten, but it is also little babies being well watched over by their parents, following their parents and growing into adults themselves, and starting the process with their babies. Quails live in and nest in little tufts of grass, very much in danger of predators.

But a few years back I noted a quail couple that managed not to get a single baby eaten. One day they and their little ones were running down my driveway when a Road Runner took interest in watching them. The adult parents knew exactly the reason for the road runner's interest, he was a predator. So the two parents charged after the roadrunner. All ten of their chicks grew to adulthood and some of them had learned off of their parents as we have several other pair that now raised all of their chicks to adulthood. Now we still have some quail that are not that smart, and lose most of their chicks, but those are the ones that may not long be around. The smarter ones are growing in number and now the road runner is going to have to get smarter to survive.

So that is how natural selection works. If you are normally prey, it is you job to get smarter, faster, and more healthy and stay alive so your children will stand a better chance of surviving.

If the predators get too successful at catching prey, then they starve get sick and die, giving the prey chance to rebuild their populations. If the plants get over eaten, then the plant eaters sicken and die and that to takes out the predators. It takes at least three years for the populations to build back up.

This was what used to happened to humans every year when winter hit. Farming and cattle raising stopped that for awhile, but it still happens in many places where there are more humans than the land can support. Normally when people are starving and sick, their birth rate drops until enough die off. However in our trying to help, sending in food, the birth rate climbs and some areas we have been sending food for starving people all of my life and then some, but the situation will never improve until their birth rate drops for good with birth control.
Unfortunately as these are poverty places, people still hope that many children with give them support in their old age.

Our consumer society also creates shortages, not only in us owning more and more things, but things that break down and cannot be fixed, which makes raw materials ever higher priced and inflation get ahead of salary. Eventually the economy collapses. It would be better to have fewer things, things built to last, that we could even pass down to our children and there children and still be worth having. We used to do that and in many ways were richer then than we are now. But no economy can grow forever, not on a finite planet. Meanwhile most of us are working such long hours that we have no time to live with our wives, children, friends. Time has become far more precious than money even. Same goes for having space around us, instead of being crowded together so close that we know when our neighbors is having sex, a fight, or flushing his toilet. I can't imagine how people can live that way and call it living.

My three and three quarters of an acre, is mine, along with those plants and animals that live on it. So I feed and water my fellow critters as my rent and they entertain me. As they are eating the seed that I provide, more of the local plants are spreading, so someday they will provide the animals provide the food when I am gone. Meanwhile there is still space around me in my desert, if I could still hike I could spend hours hiking and not be next to another person. Meanwhile the few that I meet are strangers traveling though my area, so we enjoy each other with our different stories. Normally I deal with perhaps six or more people a week. That is the right number for me.

Christopher

Kono,

Humans were not always hunters. Even as hunters, hunting only provided about 5% of the food. Most of it was by picking gathering and digging it up, most of that was by women and children, not the men. Our first meat was mostly what was left over of other predator's kills. It was not until after our learning about fire that meat grew in importance in our diet. That also led to the growth of our brain.

By the way some chimpanzees in Western Africa has been seen using fire in hunting. So likely their meat intake is increasing. Perhaps they will be our replacements.

To Mike The Blacksmith,

Well, i am probably to dominated by fear, i keep having nightmares of being eaten, maybe that is the reason for my beliefs.
At least i am not saying my personal beliefs are facts.

I hope they found something, or at least have a little laugh.

I know, yet i hate it, i am tired of this degrading process of being humiliated like that.

To ChristopherBlackwell,

I know how how natural selection works, it just makes me feel scared and gives me nightmares.
I get why it works that way, but why all the pain?

Sorry but i can not see passed it.

Maybe that is one of my biggest flaws?
Than again, i am not a wise old sage like Zellayas.

And I also know about evolution and I get the chimp part, but to be honest I would prefer to be a non ethereal being on the astral planes.

than he is. Most men, and I suspect most women I would imagine, have had that feeling that something else is better. In my case being both tall and very skinny did not help at all as I felt like I stuck out. Picture me 6 foot, 3.5 inches tall and only 140 pounds. I ate as much as I could, and when we had eggs fried in butter, I would have a dozen at one sitting. I came out of the Marines at 170 pounds, still thin but an improvement. I have stayed between170 to 185, and only once went over weight in my late forties at 210 pounds. Had that been muscle, that would have been ideal, but not as fat. Right now I am a bit over 180, a little more than I would like to be, but not enough to show in a tee shirt. Compared to most men my age, I look great. Don't even have any serious wrinkles. Have lately lost some hair in the last decade, but even so, I have a lot more than most men in my family.

You talk of your fear of being eaten, and of pain. Pain has been a big part of my life over the last twenty years, only recently have they come up with a pain med that make it only a nuisance. But that ability to feel pain is also what gives us that sensitivity to pleasure. Just as death teaches us to enjoy life and living while we can. I wish there was some way for you to explore what you are, and find out whatever good that there might in being what you are. But that is up to you.

As to being eaten, I actually have the possibility of being eaten. As I feed so many birds and small animals, I have at least one mountain lion that hunts on my property. It is impressive in the mud after one of our rainstorms to see a cat paw print bigger than the palm of my hand, and I have large hands. When, I go to my sanctuary building, that short walk after dark with my walker, so I could face a possibility of meeting a mountain lion, but it is a short walk so I never carry a weapon. But I suspect my mountain lion gets well fed, so my danger is small. Now as we head into late fall and winter, I am out later at night. So the odds might change. I doubt I would be much of a match fora 300 pound mountain lion any way. But I suppose I could shine my flashlight into his eyes. But should he catch me sometime, it is perfectly okay if he eats me. Same if I die in my home and my cats decides to eat me.

Anyway, just my view of things, and I am somewhat different then you.

Christopher

Kono,

Every one has fears, it just how they handle them that differs.
You just have to find a way that will work for you.
Try to change the outcomes of the dreams you have. I have rerun dreams by thinking of a change as I awoke and fell back asleep to change it.

I hope they read the thread because of you, and that they are sending you good thoughts.
And if they laugh it is only because when they thought about their fears, they now realize they were not alone.

I have a personal belief,
That you are trying to work past your fears, and you will find a way to do it.

Christopher,
You are, i guess you are more brave and less spiritually wounded than me.
Stay strong warrior!
And bright blessings.

,Mike The Blacksmith,

Thank you, i have, use magic now to defend myself in my dreams, which helps most of the time.

Except those where the same young man gets killed, which i seem to have a lot.
And somehow i care WAY to much. [Embarassed]

Anyhow, thanks and bright blessings.

Thank you, but bravery is different than what most people think. Back the 70s some Vietnam Veterans had a conversation on this with a guy who had a shit load of medals, and was embarrassed by them because he had not been what he thought was braved, but scared out of his wits at the time of each situation he won a medal for.

The first thing we came up with is bravery does not mean without fear. Only a fool is without fear because he is unaware of the danger. This is not the kind of man you want with you in a deadly situation.

No bravery has to do with what you do while afraid, or don't do. A brave man is just as afraid as a coward, but scared, he does what has to be done. This includes the care needed to get out alive if possible.

The alleged coward, is afraid also, but it freezes him or makes him run away in panic. He is likely to die as a result of not taking action, and may endanger the others with him.

Now here is the hard part, you never know which way you will react until you are in danger. But over time you will have taken your best action more and more often.

As to spiritual wounding, there are a great many ways to get wounded, in a world that you learn by the end of grade school that life is rarely fair and people who ever follow the rules seem to win more often then those that are good.

Being wounded is not always a bad thing. Those that have been hurt, often become those that heal others, and have great Empathy for those that are hurt. So what you may perceive as your weakness, might also form the base of your greatest strength. Each person has their own strengths and their own weaknesses. So now the important question is how to use them in the best possible way? I hope some day you can explore that inside yourself and discover your particular purpose this life time. There are no useless people, only those that have not yet discovered what they were meant to do. That discovery may come at any time in your life.

Well, to be honest i would rather make up my own goal than be controlled by some deity or force of nature.
I mean who or what, according to your beliefs, gives these purpose to me? A deity? Nature? I am just not following your philosophy. [Smile]

I mean a lot of people believe everything is a lesson for the soul but to what end?
What is the graduation when its all over?

Kono,

Christopher and I have had different life experiences but what we have in common is the knowledge that fear is the killer.
Each person controls their own reaction to fear.
You control yours.

I have been in fire and flood, been involved with body threatening dangers.
At those times I did not even think of fear, yes I knew the dangers involved but focused on what had to be done.
If i had not kept a cool head things would have turned out very differently.
I just knew what had to be done and did it... no second guessing, no hesitation just action.

I am just a regular person, the only thing different is ability take steps when needed.
Anyone can do it they just have to act.
You can do it.
If you want.

The answer is in you...