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Post by E on Apr 27, 2009 12:36:26 GMT -5
The path, the journey you have embarked on. It can be called many things, but what is it really? A choice. A way to find what one is, who one will become?
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qira
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Post by qira on Apr 27, 2009 13:28:58 GMT -5
One thing it is, or has been in WINDING. Julie and I were just talking about this - about how our paths have been anything but straight. we've wondered around, had fits and starts, and taken a good long time to get to a comfortable, productive place. From the drama of teen years and the excitement of my twenties, to the slow settling and flowering of my thirties...it's definitely a ride!
~qira~
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Post by E on Apr 27, 2009 17:47:15 GMT -5
I agree! I was just posting somewhere else in here..couldn't tell you where... that I wondered where I would have ..Oh it was an email to Kali.. wondered where I would have been if I had found a community like ours in the outset of my journey. But hearing you describe your road so like mine makes me think I've been on the right track all along. I think that life takes us where we need to be, not necessarily where we have wanted to be. But that is another discussion all together! My road has been more of a bare beaten hiker's path, I think. I have gone from the stages of needing to break away from what I was, to being so very comfortable in my own skin that I can look in the mirror and actually like who I see. It has been a long one but I have needed every step and am excited to be the woman I become because of it!
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Post by Shannon on Apr 28, 2009 10:46:26 GMT -5
I was about to say that I felt things were circular, but its the events that are cyclical. I really don't know what my trajectory is.
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Post by Denethor on Apr 28, 2009 18:57:54 GMT -5
Hm. No roads, paths, journeys or whatever here. The metaphor just doesn't do it for me somehow. Just a person and a practice.
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qira
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Post by qira on Apr 29, 2009 7:28:59 GMT -5
how interesting! I really can't imagine NOT thinking of my life in some kind of narrative fashion. neat!
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Post by E on May 2, 2009 14:03:41 GMT -5
So Den, do you have a destination in mind? Somewhere you would like to be?
I do and I don't. I do know I'd like to be more spiritually centered, I'd like not to have a near anxiety attack when I think of how BIG the cosmos are.
But it's the getting there that is hard for me. I don't see the "how to" get there.
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Post by Denethor on May 2, 2009 14:41:42 GMT -5
No...the "destination" and "getting there" thing seems particularly invented, arbitrary, a turn-off to me. The whole concept is just too new-Agey, if that's an understandable descrip.
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Post by E on May 2, 2009 17:10:10 GMT -5
Umm.. yes and no. Could you elaborate? I catch that the "angle" of having a destination and the ..well road to get there, are not good for you. What do you think as far as what "is"? Expand my horizons?
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Post by Denethor on May 2, 2009 23:59:12 GMT -5
Oh dear. I can't elaborate - I completely do not understand your last post...
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qira
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Post by qira on May 3, 2009 13:20:32 GMT -5
is it particularly the **destination** that is an issue? I have that too -- like there's some pre-determined path set out for me, and there's some (determined by siomeone else) destination for me. Drives me crazy.
still, the metaphor of journey/path/way are still really useful for me.
q
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Post by E on May 3, 2009 18:43:36 GMT -5
Oh dear. I can't elaborate - I completely do not understand your last post... Well, you said that "there is no road" and that you are just a person and a practice. I'm curious for you to elaborate on that. Like, do you see things as an ever unfolding spiral that can lead anywhere or do you think there is no where to lead? Does that make sense? And by no means am I giving you the only options for an answer... just guessing at A-Z possibilities.
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Post by Denethor on May 4, 2009 14:39:55 GMT -5
Not easy to explain, but, I'll be a sport about it. To tackle one possible concept, I don't see the world or individual people as having preset "purposes". I might joke that "I was put on this earth to X" but I never exactly mean that seriously. I see the Universe, as it were, as sort of making itself up as it goes along, and individual people as following goals they set by a sort of "illusory" free choice; illusory because most people are entirely unaware of the things that affect their choices, be they unconscious influences, circumstantial matters, genetic factors, or whatever, and those who are aware of such influences are often unable to do much about them. But it's not really a "journey" or a "road" or anything else with a map or an ultimate plan. It's more a string of happenings, some directly related, some not. I run into a somewhat similar problem with the concept, common at outfits like my Lodge, of a "Grand Architect of the Universe". I'm the first to admit that the idea has a great deal of a sort of romantic, poetic appeal (especially for all those architects and builders and real estate people that seem to populate Lodges, sorry to mention it but it's true, and I think it's a significant influence there), but I just can't quite believe that way. It doesn't jive. If there's any "planning", polytheism would make more sense, because the world, if "designed", shows every evidence of having been planned by committee. I'm more inclined to think it hasn't been "designed" at all; that any "design" coincides with the Universe itself so much as to be indistinguishable from it. The concept of a "road" or a "journey" doesn't fit for me for somewhat analogous reasons; the "destination" part even more doesn't fit, being even more like a plan or a cosmic goal. Worse yet obviously is the concept of "the plan the God/dess/es has/have for me" (which hasn't been brought up here, but deserves mention at this point). It's just kind of too simplistic. I suppose any life could be told as a "story" by writing the events of it down in the order they occurred. But that doesn't exactly have significance as a metaphor, it doesn't really add up to a "journey". Hope that helps.
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Post by E on May 4, 2009 17:45:38 GMT -5
Oh it does! And I like it.
I can understand and somewhat agree with the "plan" part of it. I don't think that we have a planned out life. I don't think there is some cosmic "unknown" guiding us where s/he want's us to go. I think that is up to the factors you mentioned (those we do and do not control) and our own drive.
Anyway, just to toss my 2 cents, I think we are the mapper's. I'd like to be able to look back on my life and see a path I've beaten rather than look ahead and see where I'm going.
But that's just me.
Thanks D, you gave me alot to think on. I like that.
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Post by Denethor on May 4, 2009 17:52:38 GMT -5
"I was put on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die."
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