Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
embracing chaos
mettafou
Veteran
well it's 5-23 at 5 o'clock. the number 5 is the number of decay, chaos, ambivalence, struggle, etc. i've had my life saved and come close to death so many times around the number 23, even graffitid in huge letters on a bridge i jumped off of. in 2012 i'll be 23
so how do we relate to chaos, to the unknown, etc. in 23 of the dhammapada the elephant we hear about effort; that we need to strive diligently for our own salvation like a wild elephant. part of me wonders why not embrace the chaos? then again, if we do this in a skillful way, as the buddha would have us, there will be no more chaos. while there will be pain and remainder there will be no suffering, no nama conflating itself with rupa, no mental aggregates feeding off of eachother's delusions and only selfless process, with right view beyond the suffering and impermanence, which upon death we can abandon completely if we strive diligently on the path. :rant:.
When you start looking for something you tend to find it. This wouldn't be like Simon Newcomb, the great astronomer, who wrote a mathematical proof that heavier than air flight was impossible and published it a day before the Wright brothers took off. I'm talking about people who found a pattern in nature and wrote several scientific articles and got it accepted by a large part of the scientific community before it was generally agreed that there was no such pattern, it was all just selective perception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma
0
Comments
You might want to stop that bridge jumping thing; it sounds unhealthy. :rolleyes:
With loving acceptance in as far as we cannot change it, and with prudent determination in as far as we can change it.
Cheers, Thomas
So three days later I went over to her mothers to wait untill she got off of work to meet her. So she dragged in from work and grabbed a beer out of the fridge, popped it, and sat down and took a long pull. I grinned at her mother cause I had already told her what had happened.
So I told her "Hey, ya know what? Guy (my son) has come home to try to find a job here. She said "What? he did? When did that happen."
"Oh a couple of days ago and he hooked up my Roku."
She about choked on her next long pull of her beer. "WHY YOU LITTLE BRAT! YOU LIED TO ME. She looked at her mom who was already laughing. "SHE LIED TO ME MOM....SHE TOLD ME SHE HAD HOOKED IT UP WITH NO PROBLEMS!
But me and her mom couldnt stop laughing. I got up to go get another drink from the water pitcher and I couldn't figure out how to get the doggone lid off. Dora (her mom) told me "Oh that twists off."
I grinned at Stella and said "Ya right...I cant even open a water jug and you thought I put my Roku together."
So we were all laughing. And Stella says "I Oughta COME OVER THERE AND SMACK YOU. YOU LIED TO ME.
Maybe sometimes Chaos creates a lot of laughter. heh heh
Now.
What the hell is a rocu?
or is it Roku?
And I want a Rocu so badly but don't have internet at home!
LOL...indeed indeed.
On the outside, chaos for me is not a problem, as my life is lived in a quiet and peaceful way, away from people and other potential causes of stress and mayhem, but in my case, the chaos happens within.
Very cool even though it doesn't always end up well for you. In the book I'm reading, the author (still on my Tara Brach book) relates letting go of control to what happened back in the 1950s when the US sent some fighter pilots up to altitudes they'd never flown before. Once out of the denser atmosphere, they found that the normal laws of aerodynamics no longer existed. So they did what anyone would do, tried to gain control of their aircraft. But with each correction, it would send the plane even more out of control, tumbling, and almost all of the first pilots to do so died.
Chuck Yeager accidentally found out the solution to this problem. When his aircraft started tumbling, he was knocked unconscious when he was thrown around the plane. Seven miles later, the plane reentered the denser atmosphere, Yeager woke up, and he just got the plane back on track and landed safely. He found that despite all basic training and survival instincts, sometimes the best thing to do in order to survive is to let go of control and not DO anything.
p.s. lightwithin, you randomly popped into my head during my prayers last night! Sending out lots of well wishes your way!
Interesting story. Letting go for me, means to let my mind and body do what they will and that's not easy to do. It's pretty scary, but sometimes it helps me regain some solid ground after I do it.
That's very sweet of you, thank you very much. You pop into my consciousness often too when it's Monday and I see you have the internet again and you start posting after a weekend of disappearance. LoL. And also when I read your journal entries. Sending good vibes your way as well!