Enlightening Conversations


  1. fascination

    fascination Site Moderator Staff Member

    and from the little prince; "it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye", "it is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important", "you become responsible forever for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose"
  2. DL

    DL Well-Known Member

    Try here:
  3. fascination

    fascination Site Moderator Staff Member

  4. Phew I was late discovering this discussion

    Good Thread Larinda!

    I think in terms of the latest discussion about how we perceive people...
    I often wonder about it too...

    Because, if it is all our perception, then lets say someone "was disrespectful to us"(just an example). And we went home really upset/angry....So the question is, was our anger justified?

    Someone was disrespectful to us, and we reacted.

    So spirituality teaches us to step back and realize that we do not own any of that other person's anger. Maybe he had a bad day, or he is not able to cope with his anger so he needs to let it out, and it just happened to be you today.

    So I guess the enlightened one, would be able to recognize that "life is a game", and that our ego created our whole reaction (upset mood/anger).......

    While it sounds very reasonable and graspable, only few can live it....
  5. Peaches

    Peaches Well-Known Member

    Just because, as you contend, our "ego created our whole reaction" does not necessarily mean that our anger in response is not justified. Is there no room for righteous indignation, or outrage for things which are wrong?

    To say that "life is a game" trivializes so much which, IMO, really should not be.
  6. Larinda McRaven

    Larinda McRaven Site Moderator Staff Member

    As long as you realize that your "righteous indignation" is still just a thought in your head....
  7. Yes, exactly.

    What is right and what is wrong? Is there such a thing, or is everything just perception?

  8. life is a game to me in a way that mostly our day to day interactions are simply "forms"/"illusions" (in spiritual sense).

    Basically, when you get angry at something, you think anger=you....your ego equates anger with your identity....
    when you think life is a game, you understand that these are just illusions and do not really exist....they only exist in the form realm.

    What I have been reading/learning, still learning:
    We all play roles.... I play a dance instructor role, he may be a dentist, she may be a person who likes to instigate people, etc. They are just "forms".... they aren't really us.. they are something we chose to play in this world...

    We are just energy...

    LOL, maybe i am taking this talk too deep..

  9. samina

    samina Well-Known Member

    i'd say, if you actually got angry in this situation, it's a pretty real experience for you, and all about you and your own expectations & attachments rather than the other person. people get angry when they perceive that someone has violated a personal rule to which they are strongly attached. change the rule or the attachment to it and the anger dissolves.

    it's certainly possible to be around anger or disrespect intensely directed at you and to not experience any anger in response. although that doesn't necessarily mean you won't be motivated to set some strict boundaries.
  10. Larinda McRaven

    Larinda McRaven Site Moderator Staff Member

    Well said.
  11. DL

    DL Well-Known Member

    Perhaps true, but would we be better off if people were never steadfastly principled? Sometimes rules shouldn't be changed, nor attachments to them weakened.

    Emotionalism lends human substance and meaning to every personal interaction. IMO it is often better to develop self awareness and reason as adequate tools to experience, express, and use emotion wisely, than to evade it.
  12. I guess then the argument would have to be, do you want your emotions to control you? OR do you want to control your emotions?

  13. Larinda McRaven

    Larinda McRaven Site Moderator Staff Member

    I dont think she is saying to avoid or evade emotion... If you feel it, it is real, and there is no reason to hide from it or push it away. But rather to understand that you are creating the emotion, rather than thinking it is something being imposed on you.

    And if somone is living a life of emotional pain then it might be time to let go of their attachments and principles.... seeing the world without their personal prejudices could make things a lot easier.
  14. DL

    DL Well-Known Member

    I think we all verge on violent agreement here.

    Well, the words "might" and "could" seem operable to me, there.

    Sometimes a combination of attachments, principles, and circumstances causes unhappiness -- but the reason is that the circumstances are lousy and outside the control of the unhappy person, while the principles are laudable and beyond reproach. If we make general statements on this subject here, then I think we have to admit the possibility of such situations. An argument that adjusting principles is always a valid response to unhappiness seems a slippery slope away from moral relativism to me, which I would reject if it were proposed as such.

    However I have extrapolated quite far from the particular case that Leonid posed, so one could reasonably claim that I've taken some of the responses out of their original context (mostly because they seemed to me to be worded in a general way).
  15. By the way DL,

    I like your bottom line: "the more I learn, the less i know"

    Now, thats enlightening... lol
  16. DL

    DL Well-Known Member


    (Sometimes I'm better at bearing it in mind than others.)
  17. Larinda McRaven

    Larinda McRaven Site Moderator Staff Member

    Circumstances never cause unhappiness. Your thoughts about your circumstances cause unhappiness. BIG difference.
  18. DL

    DL Well-Known Member

    Well, in some sense I agree in principle. However, there are people in the world who face pretty rotten circumstances (as in, much more rotten than I've ever seen anybody describe in a DF post); and for many such people I at least would have a tough time telling them that their problem is their outlook on life.
  19. samina

    samina Well-Known Member

    You can have principles without being attached to the expectation that others follow them...or at least, without having an emotional stake in their following them.

    And the "rules" I mentioned could be "the correct way to do laundry" or "proper gift-giving etiquette" or "never question me in public". I've seen people go off into extreme anger over all three of those rules.

    Evading emotionalism would involve suppressing the anger one feels. I'm describing the situation where no anger occurs, so there's no evasion of emotionalism at all.
  20. samina

    samina Well-Known Member

    Yep...thought, conscious or no, and core beliefs. No exceptions.

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