Troy Loney wrote:I've always seemed to avoid the sort of philosophical dilemma you are dealing with, though I think I've flirted with it a few times here and there. Maybe I'm just a simple hedonist at bottom, but I've always felt like I've been able to mix material pursuits with spiritual pursuits.
I feel as though material pursuits can end up being completely arbitrary and unending. I believe you really need to fully understand yourself and what makes you lead the most fulfilling life, not the most fulfilling life in terms of social norms, but in terms of your individual mind. I think a lot of american culture is based on comparing yourself to everyone and continually judging people. I don't believe it is either healthy or natural.
I agree with that. I was reading the wiki on Tolle, and I identify a lot with what he is saying. At some point in college, while studying with an amazing professor, I reached what you could call a sort of state of contentment. I lose sight of it from time to time, but I can usually go back to it pretty easily. At bottom it really amounts to the fact that I absolutely love myself. That may said cheesy and/or conceited, but it all really starts there. I wouldn't want to be anyone else and I wouldn't want to not be me. I love living, feeling, being -- even on the worst day filled with bad news, that I am here in the universe living and experiencing is
amazing. Having the chance to be alive, even for so brief a time as we get -- that's about the greatest thing in the universe.
When people me ask me about not drinking coffee, I always joke "I'm high on life", but its a half serious answer. I don't know how anyone can need something to get going in the morning, you're up, you're alive, you have a day of life ahead of you. If you can't get up for that, then I don't know, man...
But I kind of live in my head a lot. I'm definitely really the only judge of my life that I care about. My pursuit of material things is really a means to an ends, certainly not the end in itself. I don't know... I kind of agree with the thing on Tolle's wiki that you can't really teach it. It just sort of happens. Maybe I don't really get it and I'm just crazy, but I feel like I do.