I hope you find this relevant considering the time and attention devoted to religion in our politics and public discourse. People claim to have revelations all the time about god and from god. This is one of the definitions of revelation, something that is revealed by God to humans or the revealing of a divine truth, i.e. from god. This is a revelation about no god, from no god.
APPRECIATE
To recognize the quality, significance, or magnitude of
To be fully aware of or sensitive to; realize
To be thankful or show gratitude for.
Appreciation
sensitive awareness; especially: recognition of aesthetic values ...
http://www.merriam-webster.com/...
Just want to make sure we are on the same page. This is always the order of the definition for appreciate in good dictionaries.
In the words of Buffalo Springfield, “For what it’s worth”.
below the squiggle we go
The student’s job is to ask the questions.
notdarkyet
Shortly before my husband, Skip, died I had the flu and was deathly sick for two weeks. I spent the first twelve hours in the bathroom vomiting, sweating, freezing, curled in a ball on the cold floor before the toilet, when I wasn’t bent over it. I did not eat for days, food smelled horrid. I slept in the living room. I would not sleep with him for fear of making him sick (I knew he wasn’t well). I forced myself to drink herbal tea, my only nourishment for ten days. It was a Sunday, two weeks, later when I could finally sit in the sun and breath without those horrible smells, and realized I was getting better. Tears ran down my cheeks. Skip asked me why I was crying, and I said, “Because it all made me realize what you mean to me.” (This after almost 26 years together.)
There is something about deathly sickness, being at your lowest physically and mentally, that brings insight. Is it because all of our defenses are gone? I don’t know why, but I know it is true. It has happened to me before. Skip was summed up in this revelation in my sickness, this brush with death. I realized it was not just my love for him and what that, and he, meant to me, or his worth for the person he was, but for what he stood for: appreciation, strength, courage, growth, compassion, love, kindness, nature. A way to live life. I have never known another person that could be so good and so happy. I don’t think I ever heard him say a critical word about anyone, not even those who deserved it. I already loved and was devoted to him. And then to lose him right after. He died a month later. My truth snatched from me just when I realized its true value and how much I appreciated him. Is this the way of all truth? Once we grasp it, it is gone? Can the highest note linger forever, pure, in your ear? Can it be recalled faithfully the way it was played? I wished after that, that I had died then.
Therefore the sage works without recognition.
He achieves what has to be done without dwelling on it.
He does not try to show his knowledge.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
I read (twice, to see if I missed something)
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, and it kept going on and on about the ancient mysteries, all the greatest thinkers and scientists, the profound writers and philosophers, all the ancient holy books and adepts and masters, and its message seems to be: the words have been left to show us the way.
It (the Lost Symbol) had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in Doubleday history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history.[5] It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction[6] for the first six weeks of its release, and remained there[7] until January 24 of the following year.
The popularity of this book shows the hunger in the public for some kind of easy information and path to knowledge that many have spent their lives searching for, and sometimes, finding. They want it handed to them in a novel that takes only a few hours to read. I am going to attempt to give it to you in a few minutes.
Many people have gotten lost in the words and spent their lifetimes trying to understand or decipher them, to find some meaning or revelation that has not, or has already, been found in the millenniums since they were written, whether the early Greek philosophers, the Bible, The Talmud, The Koran, the Upanishads, The Tao (Skip’s favorite, maybe, because it was so primitive) etc, etc. Some people spend their lives reading, writing and searching one book, or all, endlessly, for wisdom, clues, how to be spiritual, how to find God, what we are here for , the meaning of life, like it hasn’t been done time and time again by thinkers, seekers (and much better minds) before them. Dissecting, defining and pondering over the meaning of the words. Searching, thinking, talking, reading. Never learning anything that someone else didn’t already know centuries before. (Some end up just making up stuff, like the secret language of god some Jewish scholars think they have found by computer searches in the Bible.)
(I asked Skip this question, “Why do you think we are here?” He said, “To appreciate.”)
Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of the Tao.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Skip was my search, my master, my book, much as Buddha was for those that followed him. Those who knew Buddha loved him, too. I do not say this lightly. You would have to know all he had studied, traveled and gone through, and who he was, to understand. He had learned something. He saw something I did not see. Maybe I could learn it, see it, too, by being with him. (Buddhism is not a religion. Buddha said, “I am not god.” It is a way to live in the here and now with as little suffering as possible, and as much happiness as possible. It is a discipline. It is about mastering the self, thoughts, words and actions. Its goals are attainable by anyone. When you learn to master the self, you create less chaos, unhappiness, suffering and pain, in and around you. Buddhist methods, yoga, breathing, diet, meditation, were the only ones I ever heard Skip advocate to me, and others, ones that he had studied and followed for many years. But, he said he was not a Buddhist. He saw it as a way to help people and alleviate their suffering, from the pain, that is inevitable with life. Which is Buddha's lesson. Minimize suffering. Increase happiness. He knew that I suffered and felt a lot of pain from life and seeing others suffer, physical, mental and spiritual. This method, at least, is practical to life.)
The conclusion of The Lost Symbol, (sort of, Brown backs away at the last second):
The ancient mysteries are supposed to be instructions for how to harness the latent power of the human mind...a recipe for personal apotheosis. They are about the god within you not the god above you. Each of these texts says, “know ye not, that ye are Gods?”. The Buddha said, “You are God yourself.” Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” Hippolytus said, “Abandon the search for God, instead take yourself as the starting place.” The only difference between you and God are that you have forgotten you are divine”, says Peter Solomon in the book(one of Brown's little cop outs). Brown runs away at the very end, the last two pages, of the book, his book, from the logical conclusion: There is no god.
I thought about how Skip had read all these books, studied all these people, books, and religions, through many years, and a personal journey that lasted ten years, including two years wandering from wilderness to wilderness. I have always thought he was the most enlightened person I have ever known. He knew something, some secret, I had yet to find. He was someone I could learn something real from. He believed in things you can’t see or know. He saw wonder and possibility. The mystery. The worlds yet to be created.
And if quantum physics shows us anything, it shows us how little we really know. It has called into question our whole history of knowledge, our order of the universe that we had so neatly wrapped up in a package, up to, and including, Einstein. Even mathematics is a human construct. There are no perfect squares, lines or circles in nature. Our minds are developed only to deal with our surroundings that we can see, experience and know, and even then not very well. Our limitations are physical, although we have developed tools better than our senses to help us gain knowledge. We are meant to live on this, our planet, though we reach for the stars. We always want what is out of our grasp, distant lands, what we can’t have, ignoring the gifts before us.
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
So while reading this book, I kept thinking, why did Skip not try to teach me what he knew? Why, when I brought up the books and masters he studied and tried to discuss them, or others did, he would quote them and make relevant points but never said “you should read this...” or never said “follow this or that book or this or that person”. If I did ask pointedly, I was always trying, why did you not follow this book or that person or teaching? He would say, “Because it did not grab me.”
I asked him one time why he did not share more of what he had learned and believed, and he said it was because everyone is on their own path to knowledge and will find the answers, the knowledge, on the point of the path when they are ready for them. The old, “you can bring a horse to water” saying. But it is true. You cannot tell people something until they are ready to hear it, otherwise they just don’t listen. It goes in one ear and out the other. Why waste your breath and throw words to the wind, it will only blow them away. We never recognize truth or knowledge until we have already learned it. But, he knew so much and shared so little. So why didn’t he help me, tell me more, I wondered? I had yet to realize that wisdom can speak without words, so quietly it cannot be heard with the ears. Only the heart and mind together can recognize wisdom. You must listen with both.
Then, I realized. This is my profound revelation. He never spoke of god. This from a man who had immersed much of his life in the words and teachings of these books. He lived. His life was his lesson. He tried to show me that none of that, books, words, leaders, prophets, holy men, matters. None of it. Words. Words are words. They can guide you, but they cannot live your life for you. Actions speak louder than words.
Teaching without words, and work without doing
Are understood by very few.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
It was nature, life, he showed me every day, in every little action. He showed me the sky and the clouds, and the sunrise and sunset, each, every day, different, created anew. “Look at the sunset, the colors, how beautiful,” he said every day. He listened closely to the song of the birds, a rushing river, the music of life. “Listen to the birds sing,” he said and sang back to them. He observed the death and renewal of nature. "Celebrate spring, celebrate new life," he said. He showed me the moon and the stars, and the planets and the milky way, “Look at the stars, look at the moon. How bright they shine from so far away,” he said. To look above and beyond that within our immediate sight. Not for god, but to future worlds yet to be created, the mystery. Humans can be so short sighted, and think we can know everything.
He filled me with laughter and pleasure. Pleasure and laughter are our true gifts in life. We dismiss them so easily. Religion wages outright war on pleasure. He showed me, and everyone in his life and every part of nature, love, respect and appreciation, without criticism, without judgement. We are all imperfect and all need forgiveness, because we are human. These words are true, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.” But the forgiveness is in each of us to offer, not from god.
Skip loved children. He played like a child. He was a child at heart. “Play”, he said, as he ran and tussled with the kids. He loved the rain and thunder and lightening. He was not afraid. He loved the wild and wildness, the stormy seas, the highest mountain tops. He met them with laughter and gladness. “Greet the rain, the wild and the thunder with smiles”, he said. All gifts from nature, the earth, our home.
The sage is shy and humble--to the world he seems confusing.
Men look to him and listen.
He behaves like a little child.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
To have enough is enough. Sit in the warmth of the sun. Embrace a tree, it is an anchor to the earth and has deep roots. Watch the river flow, because it is timeless, yet ever changing. Listen to the birds sing, because their songs are pure and true. Laugh whenever you can, laugh at everything, the sound of laughter is the freest sound. Love while you can, nothing lasts forever. It could be here today and gone tomorrow. Stay a child in your heart as long as you can. All these things he told me by his actions.
Therefore he who knows to have enough is enough will always have enough.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Skip had compassion for even the smallest things. He set a lizard free when it was stuck in his shop, and it came back and sat on his knee to thank him. He picked up a bird prostrate in the burning sun and gave it some water. “Be kind to everyone and everything”, he said, “because the world needs kindness.” And through all of this, he gave me his wisdom. By showing me. In actions, not words. And my heart and mind heard and learned.
In dwelling be close to the land,
In meditation, go deep in the heart,
In dealing with others be gentle and kind.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
All his life Skip had a deep, abiding, reverence for nature. If I was having some kind of personal, spiritual or mental crisis, he would throw me in the car and take me to the mountains or to sit by the river. You would be amazed how easy nature can sooth the mind and soul and make all your worries, problems and fetters melt away. It puts things into perspective. I asked him one time why he came out of the wilderness. “It was too easy,” he said. It it easier to understand your place in the universe and be at one with everything in nature, than in the world of humans, which is full of distractions, empty places to worship, artificial churches and hollow gods. We have created our world to cut us off from nature and our real connection to it. Our ancestors did not have this problem. It surrounded them. When Skip was in nature you could see his whole being light up. This was his secret. He understood our connection with nature. We are not lords over it, but one and the same with it. The person who can maintain their sense of perspective and happiness in the human world, nowadays, is truly a sage indeed.
All else is boredom, vanity. A distraction, a hobby, to fill time, stimulate the mind. That is all. We waste a lot of time on things that have no meaning or worth. Pettiness. Pursuit of money, material things or recognition. And on a god that doesn’t exist. “Another days’ useless energy spent”, as the Moody Blues put it. The only logical conclusion to a person with reason and all the knowledge that now exists: “There is no god. Quit wasting your time on god.”
Fame or self: Which matters more?
Self or wealth: Which is more precious?
Gain or loss: Which is more painful?
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
This is the conclusion Brown thrusts at all through his book, and then, at the very last second, refuses to deliver the final blow. He ends with the word: hope. Hope what? That there is a god? Why hope for something that cannot and will not help you? Maybe we are just to cowardly to destroy this god, this sucker of so much life and energy, this imaginary foe. Who is brave enough to slay god once and for all? No one it seems, in the public sphere anyway, our so-called leaders. It is not god’s wrath that is feared, but the wrath of the masses who cling to god. Let them cling. Humans need something to worship. It is psychological. We need something more worthy, higher than ourselves to give our adoration to.
But, if you have your own intellect and instinct to let god go, do it. You are only losing an imaginary friend, a leftover playmate from childhood that you have outgrown. Put god away like a worn out toy and embrace the reality and beauty that surrounds you. Give your reverence to nature, the earth. That which gave you life. If we don't start giving more reverence to the earth, we stand to lose our most precious gift that we have in this life, our home. Love is everywhere if you have it inside you. It is not god’s love that shines over the face of the world, it is yours, the only real love. It is your power and light that can make life shine. Shine brightly.
We would all be better off to learn from the minute we are born: there is no God. We are the only gods. We are the creators and destroyers. Then maybe we would put our all, our passions, our energy, our health, into the life we do have on this earth, to taking care of it, and plant something to grow for the future; instead of thinking we have some immortal life before us that we should be living, preparing and striving for, and to hell with earthly life, denying this body, planet and our reality, like it is of no importance compared to this immortal life that doesn’t exist. Let god go for good. This is the only positive path forward.
Appreciate. Create. Use your gifts, your mind, to create. Create with all the genius in you, whether art, a garden, dance, music or poetry. We are the creators, and we are also the destroyers. We destroy by failing to recognize the power and ability in each of us, and to harness and control it. Be gods. Be creators, visionaries. Don’t be destroyers. Create a better world by creating the world around you, that little part of it you have reign over, and making it better. Skip once told me we cannot save the world, we can only save a little piece of it, the piece that surrounds us and is in our personal sphere to affect. It is up to each of us to create, make, it better.
See simplicity in the complicated.
Achieve greatness in little things.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
You might wonder if my thoughts are worthy of your time or attention, because you don’t know me. Who am I? I am a mirror. If you see something in me that you recognize, it is yourself. Every quality you see in another person is a reflection of yourself, and all my life I have been a mirror. Every truth you recognize is something you have already learned. It has been said many times before, the only person you can really know is yourself. But I learned to know one other. This is the difference. I studied him, his every action and word. I saw his reflection and captured it in my mirror. The finest person in thought, action and speech I ever knew, a person who had studied and searched deeply for many years, gave me his all, all his wisdom, all he learned, with the rest of his life. I try in my own limited way, to reflect it back to you.
Knowing others is wisdom.
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force.
Mastering the self needs strength.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
I cared what Skip thought. His opinion was worth something, because he rarely gave it. That is why it was worth something. He had something of worth to give. And, it wasn’t words, he said very little. He did not spend his time pontificating and postulating on the meaning of life and god. His actions spoke louder than words.
People give their worthless opinions all the time, opinions based on nothing, no facts, no history, no sense of logic or reason. They don’t ever read; they don’t know when to shut up. He saw in me the willingness, the openness, the discernment to know what love and knowledge were worth and what to accept or reject. He knew I was sifting him critically, skeptically, as I did everything. He never told me, he showed me. It took a lifetime to learn this lesson.
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk, do not know.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
If a person is not critical and discerning, one spends, throws away, their love, energy and lives, the only life they have, on people and things not worthy of devotion, attention, and time. Throwing your pearls before swine. (giving them your limited attention is not giving them yourself) But the masses don’t want you to be critical. They can not stand up to scrutiny. They are too shallow. With most, there is nothing there, and it should not take a discerning person long to realize this.
There are seven billion people on the earth right now, many of them worthless, not even a shred of worth there. Empty, selfish, thoughtless consuming vessels. Destroyers of life and our only home, the earth. It would be so easy to waste your energy, your life, if you have no discernment. As population increases, life becomes cheap, and the true worth of any one person gets drowned in the din. It is easy to get lost in the maze, masses and madness. If you think everyone is equal, you are lost already.
Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real
and not what is on the surface
On the fruit and not the flower
Therefore accept the one and reject the other
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
I at least had the discernment to recognize him. I devoted my life, my heart, my mind and soul to him. He was my book. My learning. You can learn much from how a life is lived. Always, I have been a student of life, of people. I have seen their reflections in my mirror.
Life is full of people that are empty deserts, sucking dry everyone and thing around them. Should you give these scorched beings with no hearts, souls and minds of their own, your blood, your life? The ones that drink, but are never quenched, only evaporating all that comes near? Deserts waiting for you to stumble into them so they can scorch your life too.
So much, much time, energy, lives and treasure spent and wasted in this world for centuries on bended knees to something that doesn’t exist, but really has gone to the driest deserts of them all, the priests and their churches. The suckers of life. Sacrifice myself to them? The deserts? Never. Never. I could not do it of my own free will in a million lifetimes. My will fought against it, over and over. If you want to wander the deserts forever and lose your life, that is your choice. My will and intellect are too strong, they keep me from straying in deserts.
There is no greater catastrophe than underestimating the enemy.
By underestimating the enemy, I almost lose what I value.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
“If anyone should believe in god, it should be me. He’s talked to me often enough,” I once joked to my psychiatrist. She didn’t find it funny. Because she believed. Why do people get angry when you try to poke holes in the fabric of the worst fraud, hoax, deceit, ever perpetrated on the world, god? This from a type of person who professes to know the mind. We are no longer goat herders three thousand years ago who should still be mistaking near death experiences, epileptic auras and mushroom visions for proof of god. We don’t know much about the brain, but we should know this.
And, so many people chose to believe without even any evidence or signs, but, maybe, because of indoctrination as children (just one example)? What does that say about them? Your willingness to believe, in spite of all evidence to the contrary and lack of any evidence to proof, is only your willingness to let others deceive you or to deceive yourself. But it seems those who should know better still seem to succumb to the hallucination, disease of the mind, or as Dawkins put it “delusion”, that god exists. The ones who know, who have the proof, ( you think the priests and pope don't know they are frauds?) still continue to defraud the public, in their own interests. So I have decided that psychiatrists (at least ones who still chose to believe in god) rank right up there with priests as the biggest liars and charlatans in the world.
It is religion, the certainty that they know who and what god is, and can tell you how to live because they know what god wants, and their images and constructs (man made) of god that you should worship and bow down to, that is the lie.
Stephen Hawking says it doesn’t even take that spark from god to create the universe.
The universe can and will create itself from nothing, according to Hawking, thus it is unnecessary for God to be in the equation.
Look at the universe through the Hubbell telescope. There are tens of thousands of galaxies with millions times millions of suns and exponentially with planets. And, this is only what we can see with powerful telescopes in space. All inaccessible to us. And if we can't take care of the earth, do we deserve another home?
Our mistake is not realizing that we live here on earth, are one with nature, the significance and magnitude of that realization, and that should be our focus for our reverence, not no god, to people that have minds as good as Hawkings.
Morality is also a human construct. Look at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of self realization, orPlato’s ladder of love. We all can know, discern, deep inside of ourselves what is truly wrong and right, regardless of man made laws. We should all be aware by now at how such laws can be perverted. Yes, we should all strive personally to be the best person we can. We can do this by being aware of how our thoughts, words and actions affect ourselves, others, and the world around us. We do not need religion, god or laws to tell us this.
Better to spend your energy, your will, your life force, making this world, the earth, our home, this life, a little better place for all, including all life, the animals, fishes, plants, forests, rivers and oceans, than wasting it on those who are not worth it and some pointless, worthless god.
Surrender yourself humbly, then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own true self: then you can truly care for all things.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Children? Children are never yours. They belong to the future. Give them what they need to meet the future. The best thing you can do for children is to let them find themselves; to encourage them in the only things that can help and guide them, education and self reliance, the principles that they can use and learn to live their own lives by. You cannot keep them forever from the future.
If I could write one book in my life it would be about Skip. Because what he stood for, his life, is worth imprinting. But it doesn’t take a book to tell what I learned, it is this: A way of life. A way to be happy and to live life. This is my total wisdom that I have learned from the wisest person I knew. I spent a lifetime learning it. He spent his lifetime teaching it. I hold and keep his reflection in my mirror.
Man follows the earth
Earth follows heaven
Heaven follows the Tao
Tao follows what is natural.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Live the life you have. The only life. Do not seek god or immortality or life in the hereafter, it is a chimera, a fake, a waste of life, and a deadly one too, a life denier and destroyer in the here and now. Seek nature, love the earth. It is crying for your reverence right now.
I asked Skip one time what he thought happened when we died, “It’s like a drop of water going back into the ocean,” he said. It was the best answer I have ever heard. No heaven, judgement or angels or futures lives. Your little spark back into the humongous universe. Let your spark shine while you still have it.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Appreciate. Create. Seek life. Seek nature. Love and revere the earth, your home. Pleasure is not sin, it is the joy of life. Enjoy. Listen to the music. Dance. Laugh. Shine. Skip threw me his golden ball. I toss it to you.
In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying has been unsatisfactory.
Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.
Verily, a goal had Zatathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the heirs of my goal, to you I throw the golden ball.
Best of all do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth--pardon me for it!
Thus spake Zarathstra.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900)
note* I want to apologize for selectively quoting the Tao. I tried to use lines that would not change their meaning when taken out of the whole. Each page should be read in it’s entirety. The wonderful thing about the Tao is it is easy to read, and seems simple. But, you can spend days and weeks contemplating on each one. Skip did. There are meanings in meanings in deeper meaning.
8:35 PM PT: I feel very honored that this particular diary made it to the rec list. My husband would be horrified that I used him this way. It was a tribute from my heart to him, but also to show that there are people around us in our lives walking the walk, that we can look to as examples to be better people.
Sun Feb 19, 2012 at 5:37 AM PT: The reason I mention epileptic auras is because I have had several episodes of temporal lobe epilepsy in my life. These can be very, deep, profound and lasting. If you ever experienced it, is would be easy to understand why they can be mistaken as religious experience. This is why it was so hard for me personally to give up god.