I want, you want ...

Conflict: a natural order of the species. We want things, and we can't all have them. Whenever I see a religious system that is supposed to get rid of conflict, I laugh. If we could get beyond conflict, we wouldn't be human anymore. It might be better, but it wouldn't be human.

So getting beyond conflict ain't bloody likely. There's always going to be the problem of people wanting what they can't have. So how do we conflict without warring? I don't have an easy answer to this. I don't think there is one. I do think that the most important thing that we as a species need to stop doing, though, is demonizing each other. It's easy to declare a conflict because the other person isn't human (or the same kind of human, or whatever you classify yourself as). It's harder to be honest that you simply want the same thing. And it's almost impossible to think about which person actually deserves the object (or whatever) more. But we should.

Questions:
What is worth striving for? What isn't? Well, clearly anything needed for survival is worth it. survival good. After that, it's really a cost-benefit analysis .. is it worth what I need to go through to get this object? If it's a child's toy for Christmas, probably not. If it's something you've wanted all your life, it's probably worth it.

How do I handle conflict with grace and dignity? Poorly. :) Conflict scares me. I tend to simply withdraw, and if I can't withdraw, I panic. I try, though, to deal with the issues rather than the people, and to see all sides of the question. I don't always succeed, but I do try.

How do I see the things I'm in conflict with? As very, very scary. So I try to avoid it when I can. I try to see conflict as natural, but it scares me. Anger in general scares me, my own and others. I don't know how to handle it, so I avoid it. But I try to see conflict as natural and an opportunity. Some day, maybe I'll make it. But I do my best to always see the people I'm dealing with as actual people. Win or lose, I don't want to demonize people. That's just not healthy to anyone.

Bad things gonna get you

I can't stand the idea that misfortune is the result of some angry god keeping score with your life. What happens is a result of what's happened before and what you do about it .. cause and effect. The idea that someone's keeping score, and that good things will "eventually" happen to good people and bad to bad .. it makes me sick. It's such a cop-out.

We are responsible for what happens in life. That's a collective "we" .. I'm not responsible for your actions in any way, but I'm also not responsible for what's done TO me. I'm only responsible for what I do then. I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here. You're only responsible for the choices you made (which does, however, include the choice to do nothing). But the Divine doesn't act through other people to reward or punish you. What happens is what happens, nothing more.

(this means, of course, that I have to take responsibility for my carpal tunnel problems. I didn't know that typing the way I did could cause problems .. I didn't know what I was doing was damaging myself. But that doesn't change the damage or the fact that it's my own damn fault.)

Question time!

okay, I've no idea where I was going with the first question. Let's assume it made sense at the time. Do my actions match the desired consequences? Well, I certainly try to get the results I want! But more clearly .. since I want to be an author, I don't sit there and moan about my brilliance. I sit on my butt and get my hands on the keyboard and write. And write. Then I edit and edit. THEN I do the hard part, and stick the damn thing in the mail. I don't sit there and assume that if I'm a good person, the Divine will come down and plop a book with my name on it on my lap.

How do I manage misfortune gracefully, and does it help? Well, bitching and moaning doesn't really do much good .. to use the earlier example, my carpal tunnel problems. Sure, I could bitch and moan about it a lot. I could complain and try to get sympathy. I could sit on my ass and try to get other people to take care of me. OR, I can recognize my limitations and live as full a life as I can around my pain. Let me tell you, the second one works a lot better.

Destiny control: there is no man behind the curtain. This is freeing and terrifying. Because it means that if I succeed, I did it because of myself .. but if I fail, that's on me as well. And not because of some bug I squished as a kid, but because I just wasn't good enough/tried at the wrong time/got thwacked with bad luck. What I do affects the people around me, as they affect me. But basically, I have to accept that things are going to happen. It's how I deal with what happens that I grow as a person.

Oh, you can go to BLEEP!

I even do it myself. I see something horrible, and I wish a nasty afterlife on the person. Sometimes, you just want to believe the person is somehow, in some way going to pay for what they do. However, I don't believe it will happen.

I think afterlifes are a hedge against the possibility of death or eternity being something we don't want. We fear the idea that we may at some point close our eyes and not be able to open them again, that there will be absolutely nothing.

I find the idea of actually WANTING to damn people, WANTING to believe that they're going to rot in hell or suffer a bad afterlife or anything like that, morally reprehensible. You want something bad to happen to someone, fine. Sit there and wish an anvil would fall on their head. But wishing someone to suffer FOR ETERNITY .. ugh. If we are the Universe, and what we wants reverberates into the Universe, us wishing any part of the Divine ill for eternity is wishing ourselves to suffer as well.

If there is such a thing as hell, or karma and reincarnation, or anything like that, the Divine will handle it. What matters is living THIS life as best as we can.

Questions:
Why do we wish bad lives/afterlives on people? Because we're not very nice. Only we like to think we're nice, so we dump it on the Divine and then claim it's out of our hands. But mostly because we're not very nice people. There's always been more interest in Hell than Heaven .. in punishment rather than reward. Reward bores us. Punishment for people we don't like, though .. that's interesting!

As far as controlling actions .. that's why we have laws and moral suasion. Sure, you can do something I don't like .. then I get to not like you, tell you it was bad, whatever seems appropriate. Wishing someone to suffer for all eternity for doing something I don't like seems a bit overkill .. who am I to get the power to do that to someone?

Controlling the afterlife .. I think most people confident of going to Heaven tend to be jerks, honestly. There's a feeling of entitlement. And for Hell, people convinced they're going THERE have nothing left to lose .. nothing. It's a control mechanism, but once it snaps, everything goes out the window. When we use karma, we start paralizing ourselves for the fear of what might happen from what we do. (By karma, I'm using the Western notion .. I don't understand it in context well enough to make a statement). And when we assume that "karma" will take care of a person, we don't necessarily protect ourselves or pay attention to our own actions.

In short, we need to take responsibility for our own lives and our own communities. We can't let people go because karma will get them or they'll go to hell, and we can't do what we want in this life in the comfort that we'll be rewarded in heaven later. Life is our responsibility. Now we have to live it.

In the Beginning ...

I'm not sure how I feel about this essay, actually. I don't find it wrong in any way, but I'm not sure I find it very meaningful personally.

Clearly there was a moment of creation. Once there was nothing, then there was stuff. (either that, or both physics and our concept of cause and effect are very off). But I'm not sure that creation after that is very meaningful. After all, we ARE here .. that doesn't make us an inevitable reaction of creation. Simply that if we weren't here, we wouldn't be asking this question. :)

It's easy to get caught up in questions of why we're here and what the gods are like and other such questions. After all, we're naturally a curious species. Anything we don't know the answer to is of interest.

But what's important, to me, is that we are the Eyes and Hands of the Universe. We need to remember that we are Divine and that we are instruments of the Divine. The specifics are interesting, but probably pretty irrelevant.

Questions:
Why is it so hard to communicate directly with the Divine? Because it's completely ahuman. If there are aliens, it's all of them, all of us, all of the bugs and the plants and EVERYTHING. My mind shudders back at the attempt. I do think we can touch that force with our minds .. but we can't understand it or chat with it. Simply experience it.

The whole individual/part of the whole thing .. I don't know how to put that into words. It is to me a natural state, not a question. Like many things, we are the eye of the paradox .. both completely individual and completely part of the whole.

Why are we alone and lonely? Because there is always the fact that inside ourselves, there is just us. We can have invisible friends, characters, even gods in there .. but we're still just us. We are a social species, but there is always a part of ourselves that we feel is separate. As far as how we cope with that .. I'll let you know if I ever figure it out myself. Best I can come up with is to be honest with the people around us, to lower our boundaries to those we trust.

I embrace the Universe

I really never know how to put my relationship with the Divine into words: and so, often, I don't. I avoid the topic and stick to the stuff that does go into words more easily. I fear misleading people, and so say nothing at all.

Questions first:
How do I see the Divine? I don't have a picture, clearly .. The Divine is everything, and I can't see that far. I find it easier to look at small pieces. I can see the Divine in a leaf unfurling on a tree, in my son's eyes, in the bird that lands outside the window and chirps at me. There really aren't any words to describe the way the Divine moves in my life. I see the mundane things .. the bird, the leaf .. but at the same time, I see them as sacred and part of the Divine. The Divine is all things. The Divine is love. These things I take on faith.

What do I wish I could hide from the Divine? The list is endless. I can be petty, I can be heartless .. I routinely stick my foot in my mouth. There are so many things about myself that I wish I could hide from the world. To show them to the Divine .. to be honest in myself before the Divine is painful sometimes. I can't even lie to myself about these things, as much as I wish I could. But at the same time, I know how loved I am for myself, which is something I couldn't know if I lied.

What is the way I should relate to the Divine, and how can it be messed up? I need to be honest, both with myself and before the Divine. It's so easy to lie, to pretend. And sometimes it's necessary to pretend: my son doesn't need to know I just want to bawl instead of change his diaper or feed him. Better that he sees a happy Mommy. But I can't lie to myself, and I can't lie to the Divine. When I try to lie, I end up talking only to myself.

I think one of the most important things about relating with the Divine is accepting that you're not in charge of the relationship. I have to accept that my life is going to get pushed in ways I hadn't intended. (like, y'know, this blog. and the other blog. and this entire religion thing). I'm not powerless in this: I have the ability, the right, and indeed the duty to be sure that where I'm going is where I want to go. I can refuse anything. I just have to accept the consequences that come with my choices.

I am not subservient or a child .. I am simply a part of the Divine. As a part, I have responsibilities towards the whole, and it has responsibilities towards me(itself). But most of all, there is love.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

We live in a pleasure-centered culture. If you watch commercials, or listen to them, or whatever, everything circles around pleasure .. getting something and having the momentary flash of glee about it. But most of the stuff that we're told we absolutely can't live without doesn't actually bring us happiness. It drugs us for a second into pleasure, but .. pleasure is easily found and easily lost, leaving us to seek it again.

I try really hard to not get sucked into the pleasure-seeking game. (sometimes it works better than others - there are some REALLY cute clothes this season ... *g*) But it really is never enough. No matter how many clothes I have, they won't make me happy. No amount of chocolate or sex or other quick-passing pleasure will ever make me happy.

The real problem is, pleasure is easy. I feel down, I buy some shoes. Or have sex, or gamble, or have a drink .. These are seen as actual ways to solve problems. On paper, it looks rather silly, but we still all do it to some extent. If you think about it rationally, though .. do those shoes actually solve anything? (unless, of course, you were barefoot before or otherwise actually NEEDED shoes). Do they grant you happiness? Or do you just bring them home and stick them next to your other shoes and want to buy more the next time you feel down?

Happiness is hard work. There are so many things that can make a person UNhappy .. but finding a way to accept and enjoy what you have is hard. Our own culture strives against that .. after all, happy people don't bring in money as much, because they're not out buying shoes. Good little consumers need to be perpetually dissatisfied if they're going to buy more. Isn't that lovely? We want other people to be unhappy so they'll impulse-buy our goods/services/whatnot in an attempt to feel better. It's rather sick what we do to ourselves that way.

I choose to be a revolutionary. I seek long-term happiness instead. (and if I find pleasure along the way, that's good too).

Question time!

How does pleasure differ from happiness? Pleasure's easy and quick. Happiness takes work and maintenance, but can last for a lifetime. How do you balance wanting both? By accepting that I can't have everything. :) If something offers me pleasure at the expense of happiness, I just don't take it. (or, well .. when I'm good. I'm human too, ideals fall short of reality). But, y'know .. I might want the chocolate, but I'd rather feel good about my diet. I'd like the shoes, I'd rather have food for my son. Once you get into the habit, it's not as hard as you'd think to be responsible .. because as long as you think about it the right way, it feels better, too.

How do we overcome our desire for pleasure? Well, that's one of those conditional things. We're always going to want and like pleasure, and that's just fine. But we need to think first and indulge later, not the other way around. Pleasurable things are always resistable. That doesn't mean we should always resist .. but it does mean "I couldn't help it" makes a lousy excuse. We need to learn to be able to resist when it's detrimental, or get help if we can't do it alone. (there's no shame in getting help. It is shameful to continue to injure yourself when you could get help and don't).

How is happiness unselfish? I think a large part of it is because happiness doesn't cost anyone anything. My being happy doesn't hurt anyone. There are no limits of happiness, so that if I have some, someone else can't. How do I define being truly happy? Being content in what I am. Finding each day something to look forward to instead of something to dread. Celebrating my life instead of just living it.

And lately? I'd say I'm doing pretty well, too. :)

Ahh, Ego and Masks

This was a hard essay to write, and an even harder one to apply to myself.

I don't like people much. I don't like the way I act around people, I don't like the assumptions people make .. I have a very hard time fitting in with groups. So I wear masks when I deal with people. I try to be nice, to keep from pushing my mind onto people. (I don't actually succeed often, which is part of why I don't like people: they tend to not like me).

Society doesn't like people as they are, and the Divine doesn't accept people for anything but themselves. It can be very hard to thread those lines. Some days I manage that better than others. (It's one of the biggest reasons I hermit myself. I'm working on it).

So what do all these masks really mean? They're stifling. A mask can never fit right, can never feel right. I hate it when I feel the need to act "appropriately", the need to be a good little office drone, to keep the conversation off of topics that people just shouldn't know. (Ask me about TV shows, I'm blank. Ask me about something weird and esoteric? I'll go for hours. It can be fun, but not in an office!)

This is, however, the face I present to the Divine. I do my best to be myself, even at times when it's inconvenient .. I tone it down, but I don't erradicate it. After all, this is who I am. If I can't love the Divine as myself, then I cannot love it at all.

What masks do I wear? The one I wear the most is one of confidence and competence. I like to project that I know what I'm doing and feel confident about it, but it's really a lie. I'm not confident at all. I constantly have to remind myself that other people see me as competent, that I have skills and worth.

What dissonance does it cause? Other people don't see me as I do. And while I prefer their image, it isn't necessarily a true one. Sometimes I wonder just who it is that people are friends with, and if they'd like me if they saw the real me. On the other hand, confidence isn't the sort of mask that really fools people, so it's a silly thing to worry about. Not that that changes the worry, of course.

How do I drop masks? I force myself to be aware of them. The more I realize something isn't real, the more I don't like being it. How do I live without them? One day at a time, of course. One day at a time.

Order! Chaos! Crazy Weird Life-Stuff!

I've always found the idea of order as some ultimate good odd. Order is certainly easier in a lot of situations. When the order that you're dealing with is good, it aids in good-things happening faster and more reliably. But order in and of itself isn't a "good". It's a system, and like all systems, it's as good or evil as the people and building blocks that create it.

This doesn't mean I'm an anarchist, either. (I'm not tough enough for anarchy. Big people would walk all over me. No good). I'm a big believer in order and routines where they work. I simply think that it shouldn't be kept simply because it is there. When it stops working, it needs to be re-evaluated and scrapped if necessary. Changing things up might be scary, but sticking to a system that doesn't work anymore is just silly.

I'm not going to answer the questions in order this time, because I think I've already answered them. Order and Chaos aren't opposed .. they're opposites, but they're not opposed, and you certainly can't append "good" and "evil" to them. They're limited in the way they don't bend to the realities of the situation, they're good when they promote the good of the people involved.

How do we balance security against change? Security needs to be constantly re-evaluated. Are we staying put because it's what we want, or because it's there? Are we happy where we are?

My life currently is pretty ordered. (ordered around the baby!). My day tends to be fairly repetitive. However, this doesn't strike me as a problem because it's the life I want. I'm doing something I greatly enjoy: mommying and writing. If I hated mommying full-time, though, it would be time to start looking into other options. The order in which I do things isn't the problem: it's how I feel about that order.

I really love the life I have right now. And in loving it, I accept that it may change, and that I can't cling .. I can't cling to my son being a baby, because he will grow up. I can't cling to writing /this/ novel, because one day it will be finished and I will be writing a different one. Things change, and things stay the same. And I love it all the more knowing that I have to love it /now/, because someday I won't have it to love. (I will still have my son, but he won't be my baby anymore ....)

I Deserve Minions!

I wrote this essay in much more of a first-person than usual. I'm not sure why.

I do think this is an important idea, though. We think so much about what we deserve. It occupies our language, our thoughts, our dreams. So many people wait for what they "deserve" to fall into their laps. So many people wait for life to come to their door instead of running out and claiming it for themselves.

We deserve many things from each other, just as we owe many things to each other. It's what we get for living in society: debts and gifts. But the Divine itself owes us nothing. Life is a gift, as is what we do with it. For that give, WE owe the Divine to use it .. to live fully and share ourselves with the world.

What do I deserve? Nothing, from the Divine. From people around me, I deserve to be treated fairly .. good for good, and ill for ill. Doesn't mean I always get it, but that's what's deserved, and that's why when someone acts against that implied deserving is so harsh. But that's all we "deserve".

How would my life change if I saw life as a gift? I try to do that already, and it has changed my life. Joys are more clear when they're gifts. Even when I've earned the gift, it's still a gift, because that is life. I could focus on the bad things .. but I like life better when I focus on the good. :)

I think owing things to other people and to the community at large is easier. We can see who does and doesn't follow through with their obligations, who is and isn't honorable. This is clearly easier in smaller communities. But we all owe things to each other. What's owed to us .. It's very different to look at things as what we should get and what we should give.

We focus so much on what we want, what we think we've earned, what we can get. Life is so much richer for everyone when we focus on what we can give, what we can be for each other. Sure, you can live your life for your gadgets and your perfect house and what you can get out of people. But it's a pretty lonely way to live.

Stop "deserving". Start earning. And actually LIVE.

More submission

This is more about submission directly to another person.

And I'm still not talking about the little things. If you agree to go along to a movie you don't particularly want to say because it will make your husband happy, that's not a big deal. I'm talking about serious submission .. letting someone else choose for you what you will do with your life, or whether or not you will do something of a serious moral nature. I've known people that try to give over everything to another person. They define themselves as submissive to the point that all they want is someone to take control for them. And you know what? That's not living. That's not even remotely living. That's just existing.

We are each our own person. I can't give over my responsibilities to you, and you can't give yours to me. It might be easier if we could .. hell, I know there are days I'd love to just turn everything over to someone else and be a monkey with opposable thumbs. But I'm not, and if I tried to live that way, I'd be cheating myself and the Divine.

Why is submission wrong? Because it's impossible and a lie to oneself. Why is it impossible? Because we can't give ourselves over to someone else. We're not robots and we don't have a remote-control. Trying to be someone we're not and give over our responsibility to someone else just doesn't work, and the more we try things that doesn't work, the more messed up we get. Attempting submission stands between ourselves and the Divine.

Why do we try to dodge moral culpability for our actions? I'm the one that asked this, and I still want to respond with "duh". We don't like seeing ourselves as bad people. We hate to see ourselves as doing bad things. So when we feel trapped (for whatever reason) into doing things we don't like, we find a way to prove that it isn't our "fault". Even if it's a lie.

Why isn't the law an excuse? Because nothing's an excuse. Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral. Slavery was legal for most of human history under various permutations, but we now look at it as abhorrent. It never changed the moral culpability of the people involved, either. Nothing does. You can't change what's moral by changing the law.

Submit unto Me!

Or, actually, don't.

Submission is one of those issues that is a real hot-button for me. And by submission, I don't mean letting someone else make a decision when you don't care about the answer. I'm talking about a total giving up of control.

Do we need to give up control? Yes and no. I think we need to stop pretending we have control over things we don't, certainly. I don't control my cats .. and believing I do, or even that I can, is only going to leave me irritated when they go off and do their own cat-thing. (and even if I could control the behavior, their minds are their own). I think submitting one's life to that acceptance of reality is both healthy and necessary.

People mess themselves up all the time trying to control things they can't. And they mess up their lives trying to relinquish control over things they have to take responsibility for. It's a hard balancing act. But it's also really quite pragmatic. Trying to control things that you can't is never going to work, after all, and can only make you miserable trying.

What do we need to submit to? Everything we can't control. That doesn't mean LIKING it, certainly. I can submit to the fact that my baby's teething without liking that fact! But at the same time, I'm not going to punish him for screaming, either. It's not his fault. But until I accept that he's teething, it's not my fault, and it's something we need to get through, I'm going to be trying to handle situations that don't exist. And nothing will get solved.

Moral culpability means it's my choices that caused something. I did it, so I need to fix it. Which means that things that are under my control, I am morally culpable for. Anything outside of my control, not responsible.

Why must we accept a lack of control in our lives? Because as long as we believe we can control everything, we're going to drive ourselves crazy. Much of the daily wrongs that happen in our lives are attempts by people to control things that they can't. And yet we have to accept that we do have control over some things. We control ourselves and our decisions, and we need to take responsibility for that. When we refuse to admit our own responsibility for our own decisions, we also run the risk of committing great evils.

I fear people that refuse to admit they have control over themselves, because they will act as they please and deny the inevitable consequences. And I fear those people that try to control others (not convince, control), because they will never be happy with themselves.