standing_chest_deep_in_the_dark oldephebe test 030918 ... oldephebe 6:20am EST today okay please don't post anything here yet, I'm going to fill this up with the this time not so random ruminations..I'm constructing a synthesis of the spiritual, philosophical and psychological, in essence giving my self a pep talk, or any one else who cruises by but for the next 48 hours please don't post anything here..Eternal truths never wear out..they just need to be sifted through the apeture of the age..they can become our shade, shield and shelter..let me wrap myself in it's mantle..okay..so..I'll be back sometime after lunch today, maybe around three p.m. EST - so just totally ignore this blathe page for the next 24 - to 48 hours please - or just ignore it all together forever..it's all good.. 030918 ... oldephebe ... (taken from wisdom thought it was apropo(s)) crimson I want to cut out the Best Years of My Life and go straight to being wise and experienced, elderly. I would be calm and wrinkled, I would know exactly what I thought and wanted and would have patience. I would know about many many beautiful and painful THINGS. But I suppose all of that is achieved by living so long. You can't just skip to it. 030915 ... oldephebe but sometimes we can attain wisdom without standing in it's searing rain, without waiting until all our potential is exanguinated by years of folly..this knowledge is there for us, it is waiting for us..the true knowledge of ourselves and our origins, our truer natures, and it is just waiting for us to ccome back home to envelope us in its loving embrace..more to come.. 030918 ... oldephebe (copied here from self mutilation) oldephebe that was very moving, it's none of my business but i'm glad you're learning to cherish yourself, honor your own uniqueness - out of the love of and from another youhave found a measure of self-acceptance - this is the gold you've garnered from within, a sense of self-worth - living on the edge of a scream tears a person down, rends the spirit, 'till the things we say to ourselves become a self-fullfilling prophecy - and yet some will say who am i or anyone to speak upon someone strappped in tightly to their subjective emotional state..or as a cognitive psychologist would say..we can slowly through disciplined incremental inculcation sculpt by gradations how the mind processes the emotional significance of stimuli - or lack thereof..and uses this information (yes, yes unconsciously displace or ameliorate those triggers, and add some new ones..a really rigorous renovation..)and uses this new inculcation to to control or suggest or inform behaviors apppropriate to the emotional meaning of the stimuli..that is if the cognitive psychologist had a strong spiritual tether..but i think you get the drift.. has the meaning been irretrievably obfuscated in that little clinical tangent..those scars endow you, or anyone bearing striations on their skin or in thier soul - with more than you think..our scars can be the path to anothers (or our own) healing..more on this later..forgive me for being intrusive how did your recital go - the ah quartet thingy..were you able to find a decent viola? later, oldephebe..a surcease? never! and ah there's the rub, the meaning of the stimuli, what is an appropriate response to the "meaning" of the stimuli, i was trying to be so clever, or sound pedantic that i totally overlooked that pesky variable in the whole emotional equation - not really a freudian or a jungian..don't know much about either one..be frank and blank..heh heh heh..and now i'm coming perilously close to defiling these sacred streams unhinged, ferret et al have poured aspects of their beings into..okay so what meaning do we attribute to emotional stimuli? right.. and that is what informs the appropriate emotional response..thankyou for completing that faciley constructed syllogism..when we learn the Truth about ourselves..that tends to ameliorate to an extant the normal range of potential emotional responses..ah available..there is a personalized methodology that can be constructed to guide, to keep (me) grounded in the Real..sure the path is packed with mine fields a plenty..what else is new, and all the agendas, we wear our hearts out loud sometimes - so folks know just which buttons or threads to pull..some of this i'm writing merely for me, it's not like i'm oracular or imparting anything new, but that's just it the crux and the critical..there is a knowledge that is so basic and simple and pure, we've been weaned on the poison of this world, and the venom in our own hearts for far to long..spiritual enema "ya'll" ugh hate that word..but still..i don't think any of us were created to be miserable..i think we all devoutly desire to be happy, genuinely so..to stand tall against the gale..and not undermine our very essence by pursuing "happiness" or an idea of "happiness" that slowly grinds our bones to dust..laying the seeds in our bodies..to scream out in pain months, years or decades down the road..i probably should have put this and the prior post on ah somewhere else.. sometimes i feel the worlds ache so acutely..there is another way for us to be, even with our sensitivities..that's something that can't be scoured out of our spirit..but our sensitivity can be the avenue of our souls ascension or it's abeisance to the abyss.. what have i said in all of these musings..does any over arching idea crystallize into a holy halo of ahh's please be patient with me blatherdom..lord knows i've tested your patience enough already but i'm slowly growing into it's clarity or vice versa, maybe most of what i will share in subsuquent posts will seem like the spiritual equivalent of pap..corn mush for the newly spiritually indoctrinated, well if so..then at least maybe i'll get something out of it and if one other soul spins out his/her own leitmotif and is validated in his own eyes by her own soul then well yeah..pretty awesome.. 030918 ... oldephebe It all comes down to learning to trust the mind of "God" or whatever you choose to call your higher power, the source of Light and Love. This trust is manifested in our lives by a certain not constrained circumspection. Out of Life are these behaviors learned, adopted, weaved into our strata. Sure, we will always have those moments where we'll howl, with the path of tears etched deeply into the plain of our sorrow stricken faces. And out of melancholy I will say "The ground has been broken, its mouth has been shaped, this is no mere gash in the earth..this hollow is my grave..it awaits its tenant"..Right. We can come out of the shadow of Deaths Winged embrace, vieling our yes our face from the radiance of God's countenance. It shines into and upon us even while we stand chest deep in the Dark. Okay hurrican isabel is really starting to churn so i'll resume this tommrow..i will not respond to any comments on this blathe until Saturday..so please don't put anything here until then..I'm still working out this thing.. later, ... 030918 ... oldephebe God's thoughts..toward man, that primeval wisdom, a Love that can reach us in our blackest hours..From the first breaths of eternity the vessel of His love for us was shaped, being prepared for us..I choose to identify that vessel as Jesus Christ..others may acribe a different nominative nomenclature..fulcrum of Faith to It. The God thought crystallized into the corporeal, the God thought made audible. This wisdom can reach into the labyrinth of woe, and bitterness, our tenancy in Hell's heart..to be our shelter shade and shield. Whether you are walking upon the crest of a cloud or riding the rapids of despair hurtling to the bottom of a bitter well. "and His name shall be called Immanuel..meaning God with us.." I think that's from Isaiah. This is the knowledge that grounds us. A life stretched taught toiling in these fields alone..yearning for the cup of Grace it does not even know how to request. The spirit has forgotten so long apart from Love.This is the cup of Grace to drink amidst the shattered vase of my vows..the porcelain plate of your potential. We are all destined to look upon death (not just the literal corporeal manifestation..the cesstion of life, but also the depredation a life under goes during its stay here..the cessation of hope..and "Here is my potential in pieces like a plate hurled against the wall shattered into pieces..See how I languish in a lifes disarray.." Yeah I get that. The greatest minds in History etched upon the scrolls of Time concur with these sentiments, with its underlying ethos. Again in my life these teachings have reached down and pulled me out of Hell, heaved my soul out of havoc. So then begins the journey, the enterprise of inculcating our spirits, mind souls with a ballast that constitutes another set of metaphysical triggers, a new mode of mind "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.." I believe that's Proverbs, I could be wrong though. (Where appropriate I will subsequently acribe the words in quote to a general source..quotes not followed by a source is just me trying to personalize my own thoughts.) I will try not to make every thing a permutation of platitudinous of banalities here..The writings of philosophers, poets, mystics and scholar Kings, prophets from different faiths all convene to bring us to some of the truths set forth in Scripture..Bible, Koran, some of the teachings of philosopher Kings, the benevolence of various Buddhist diaspora..and so on. There is help for the soul of man. Let the acolyte, the wayist the student who would not just listen, not just hear, one who would be taught..let us write these things in flame upon the tablets of our heart. And my soul will say "Here is the new inculcation, out of the rags of my ruin, out of the stigma and shame my family has bequesthed to me..I will think a new thing..old as the first breaths outside of Time..This is my true inheritance, a divinely inspired methodology to break the intractable, habitual lapses into irretrievable despair, negative or destructive thought processes that hammer our souls into the coffin." The evil that we practise upon our own minds, or that we allow our minds to practise upon our hearts is far more insidious than any instantiation of evil we perceive, or experience as being practised upon us. (most of the time) I believe most of us want to be happy..not the deliriously overt happiness of the indefagitable ebullient; that really tends to send me scurrying. You don't need to acend the highest peak in India, waiting for your sword from the stone moment..to be fed out of these streams to attain a sense of self worth, or a spiritual ballast. We want to be blunted from the bruising wind of this world and not spend our time writhing on the floor every time we experience profound pain..so christians tend to believe that their lives should be exempt from feeling angish..or emptiness. Nice fantasy. But still don't you get tired of drinking the last dregs of your dying breaths? I know I do. How can a soul be sustained upon that? Let those dregs drizzle down the drain. Even Odessyus says there is no shame in fleeing ruin. that's all for now later, ... 030919 ... oldephebe The first verse of Psalm one speaks about the path that leads to blessedness A consecration of a life to more than just a rigorous codification of conduct that constitutes most peoples idea of piety. So here I am again come to spatter you with my chatter. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers " It also goes on to say and I'm paraphrasing and reading this with the eyes of my heart turned toward the New Testament - that the heart that delights in the Law of the Lord (which really is the law of love when you distill it down..and upon those loving words of guidance he meditates upon them in the height of abundance or out of the depths of famine. "He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.. whatever he does prospers..(this is not neccessarily a circumstantial state..it refers to the person who lives out of his/her spirit in good and bad times will always reap the reward of walking in the wisdom of the spirit..too many charlatans mislead earnest, and devoted people into basing thir fatih upon material gains. This is acutely abhorrent. These are the emblems of a life lived in the light of His wisdom, not out of the well of envy, or gamesmanship..the heart not stirred to stoop to the Darkness of another. Again most people enstrusted with the sacred duty of inculcating, teaching the way of the Cross, guiding earnest yearning souls shape the Bible into this bludgeoning implement. These are not the harsh dictates of an unloving task master. The Psalmist is really dilineating the defining attributes of a life lived out of these living streams of life..a life lived out of these consecrations bears a certain fruit, and out of this treasure of life my spirit is fed, held together. ... 030919 ... oldephebe So we are all strapped in to our subjective states of consciousness right? Somewhere in all of us, from some ineffable heretofore unreachable place is this yearning..we all want to hear the words "Welcome home..Your search is over..I love you.." Such things issue out of the imperishable part of our selves. See by what measure a woman or man will shape a life.."the hieght of impiety.." or the humble gentle way. When we neglect our spirits to the mean and narrow, the avaristic, these depleting things..we are starved of the essence wherein our proto-spirits before the encumberances of this sack of flesh. We fall within ourselves by negation and neglaect. A reat teacher once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) omissions make way for commissions, and once in its inertia, its gathered force..these ineluctable and imperceptible gradations the heart hardens, calcifies..this is true in any relationship that is neglected. I equate the term ungodly to the state of being unsettled, to aim at no certain end, to walk only moored to ones appetites, fears..all angst without an anchor. Does any one expect you to just one day intrepidly embark upon this expedition into enlightenment? 180 degrees with the swiftness of a sneeze? I mean just out of nowhere to abdicate every thing you know wether good or bad and say.."that's it today I'm a new man! And this time it's gonna stick, no inevitable recidivism here no sir!" Well there are some spiritual encounters that have that kind of profundity, that call unto us out of our depths..the experience of being bathed in white light emanating out of the Eternal. Real change comes about for most people not out of flagellating our flesh for every lapse and impiety.. Real consecration comes out of a kind of discipline, but not the fastidious and fevered teutonic brand..no. It comes out of an affection, a reverance born of seeing the fruit in ones own life. "I've tried these truths, and they have carried me out of darkness, through trajedy, ..these trails of tears have led me to triumph, seared somethin' strong in me..through an intimate acquaitance." ... .. . 030919 ... oldephebe If I asked you "What is your idea of happiness? How would you define it?" What if I told you that it was possible despite ones emotional orientation, despite ones susceptability to a seemingly infinite sub-set of interrelated triggers, despite having something skewed in the neural chemical soup. You can say to the deepest corners of your being, "I will be well, I will stay that way..upon this testament is built a new archetecture of coping. No more will I be shackle by "persitant painful emotions" A self-negating mysticism, the conditioning of our souls to negative self-talk. A great christian counselor who reached out to me many years ago..who at the time may have thought her words and ceasless guidance over the course of years never reached me. She said this negative self-talk and subsequent conditioning of our minds needs an equally or more powerful counter point. When you let go of one thing so powerful and constant in your life you have to replace it with something. She called it mis-belief therapy. It was developed by William Backus and Marie Chaplan, two psycho-therapists esteemed by colleagues. Misbelief therapy is the consistant injecting of the truth into our value systems, life-ethos, expectations, our sometimes lofty or ruderless (ie immature) moral and emotional assumptions. I believe all major faiths and cosmologies each concure on this one thing: it is the truth that not only sets man/woman free..the truth makes you free..that is a performative utterance..a radical interior transformatin takes place when one is exposed to the truth and accepts its authority. I am not a psychiatrist, or a theologian, or a counselor. However I have had countless friendships with emotionally damaged people, victims of incest, rape, verbal and physicall abuse, and the whole litany of depradations the human soul endures. I also have several people some related by blood and others through a special emotional bond who have been ravaged almost irrevocably by the horrible things said and done to them. My heart is broken every time I come across a broken life. We treat the tiny little precious people our children horribly. We slash with our tongues at our siblings, friends, wives, scalding even absolute strangers with our malicious stares..up and out of a soul steeped in venom bred of misery and insecurity. This doesn't have to be our natural state, perpetually in pain, or perpetually causing pain. We can invest our being with a living truth..dynamic..resilient. Let every thought be infused with the truth, let us hold every thought captive to the truth, the truth we tell ourselves about what is really happening to us at any time in any place. We can be restored. I believe it as fervantly as I believe the breath flowing in and out of my lungs..it is a source of life, in my own life over the course of many trajedies and deprivations, degradations, depradations the underlying ethos of this eternal truth has been my tether, my tutor to life, it has unfailingly resuscitated my broken soul/life many times. The scourge of schizophrenia which often starts out as a slowly crippling neurosis has struck down too many lives in my life, more than I care to acknowledge. Some people are imbued with a natural strength, so maybe these words aren't for you..others are not so blessed being differently constituted. Earlier I wrote that the ache of this world wears me down..I can feel it sometimes, feel the pain throbbing out of an inconsolable hurt..maybe I'm writing these words just for me..maybe in a week or so I'll lapse back into the choking desolation that has colored most of my blathes here..but every time the wisdom, the love of myself, the love of my God calls me out. I'm not holier than you, or anyone, but this is what has held me all these years. This is the penultimate paragraph of this introduction. The next time I visit these blue pages I will begin to get into the meat, the practical therapeutic modes of thinking that are neccessary to arm ourselves against neurosis and defeatist thinking, the words that we can say to ourselves to help quiet that unreachable ache. Can anything scour out all sorrow, all hurtful emotions? Of course not but by watching what we tell ourselves about the conscious experience of these emotions can produce a powerful transformation. ... 030920 ... oldephebe give me a few days..i haven't had the time to consider these things..or maybe I haven't been in the most positive frame of mind..so this discourse will resume in a few days..or maybe sooner..but i just don't want to sit down and start typing randomly..not about something this serious to me. if it matters to anyone..post here if you want..i probably won't respond to anything until this thing is done..and being the scattered brained type of guy i am..i can't say for certain how long this thing might be..it's kind of a pep talk to myself and what not.. ... 030923 ... ... Did you finally drown in there? Oldephebe, I think you are a deeply flawed, lonely guy who in your verbiage "promenades pathetically for attention." And no, I didn't even bother to read your bag full of fluff blathe. 040129 ... oldephebe Perhaps those are some aspects of my personhood..maybe when I respond to the gyrations of my ego, the needy bleeding bottom of me. But I'm learning not to be afraid of the silences. How about if we both agree to "Let's learn to let God live in the silences." 040129 ... oldephebe No not holier that thou...more like more flawed, more dependant than thou..so that's where i must abide even when ocean's bottom floor black knits a shawl over my soul..i must abide in this verity..that i am not the things i say to myself, or even the shades of contempt glistening in others eyes..furrowed brows have a tendancy to drag me down, so i must abide in this verity that the grace of god, the perfected grace, heart of christ is where i will abide.. 040224 ... Doar wow! 040224 ... oE wow yourself be well doar 040428 ... Heres how to stop the pain slashing through yo "The Truth shall make you free" Love yourself. ... 040428 what's it to you? who go blather from