Aellyce

Yes. This quote from TS Eliot nails it for me: "I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

In other words: we should not wait to start our lives in the ways we envision our lives. It goes too fast... "In my beginning is my end." Also TS Eliot.

Aellyce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTFDfR47dl4

Leshar

Haennie,

What an excellent thread, and a timely one for me.
From what poem is the T S Eliot quote? I find poetry very soothing.
Well done on your sober journey.

Notimetoloose, I love this: "Stark raving sober", yep, that about sums it up! There it is, it's what we do about it for the better that matters!

Haennie, love your posts, and of course the thoughtful and insightful responses of the folks here!

Soberpotamus

Yes, how apt Love this phrase. Exactly how it feels at times.

Aellyce

Thank you.

The TS Eliot quote was from Four Quartets, East Coker. Listen to Susan Sontag reading it, if you would like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjGloA6zxY

Cow

Very nice. Four Quartet is my favorite. Along with Walt Whitman Song of Myself. Is chock full of quotable quotes.

Aellyce

Yes, and I like these lines especially (amongst many other parts of Whitman's poem):

"There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. "

Aellyce

I think I'm very satisfied about most areas of my life right now. My living condition needs work, but I am looking for a new apartment in NY. Hopefully one where I can have a cat, as that has been something I've fancied for a long time.

The gf situation is a different issue... not sure about it yet, to say the least.

Cow

Yes, you should get kitty cat! Pet is very good help to get outside you self, yes? As for Whitman, here is what I wish to be read at my funeral:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Aellyce

Yes, Cow, but we are not yet at our own funeral, right?

The cat issue: I want either a sphynx (like Raider's here), or probably more suitable for me, a Savannah F1. Like in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SZEPNYHMKQ

Cow

Actual, I not really want funeral, I just want to wanders off into woods, like Native American and animal do.

I not think those is kitty cats. One is small leopard. And other one I think star in Gremlins. Maybe you think about adopting a cow. Cows have unsurpass adorability.

Boleo

I tried to fix my life with positive thinking for decades. Never got more than 2 - 3 days with that Red Herring.

After getting a Spiritual Awakening, I never needed anything positive ever again. I just needed to smooth out the bumps in my road so that I never ended up so eccentric that life became unbearable (off center). Equanimity is the name of my game now.

Old Chinese saying:
"In this life - pain is inevitabel - suffering is optional."

Aellyce

Yeah, maybe. I could have my own Riddle Gate, akin to the gate with the Sphynxes in Neverending Story. But instead of the sphynxes the gate to my soul would be guarded by a small leopard (aka Savannah cat) on one side, and a cow, on the other side. Try to enter if you dare

Aellyce

Yes for equanimity, I agree with that. But not sure about never having to work on being positive? I, unfortunately (or luckily?), don't have the privilege of getting these things in my life without effort. Yes I do know that current, when our life is on the right track, many additional good things seem to come into it. But for me, my life experience so far has been, if I stop doing my part, the other good things will also stop.

Maybe I misunderstand you. I certainly think it's not good for me to be as eccentric as I used to be. There is this default desire in my head to lead me into all sorts of eccentric endeavors, because that's something I know very well, how to do. Have done since my childhood. So now trying to stay in a more "middle way" conventional route is pretty hard at times, but I'm trying

Boleo

[/QUOTE]

You just described what I call Spiritual Detachment

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...turn-over.html

[/QUOTE]
Maybe I misunderstand you.[/QUOTE]

Try looking at the following examples of Spiritual Detachment (a rose by any other name...):

Wu wei - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nishkam Karma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DHARMA WITHOUT BORDERS: "Beginners Mind and Zazen" - Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Aellyce

Thanks, Boleo, for the links. I've actually read some of it already before, but some were also new.

So is this "spiritual detachment" a good thing or a bad thing, or just neutral without qualification?

Boleo

"Detachment is the highest of all principles, the most noble of all virtues and the only purely unselfish motive for doing anything."

"He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.”

(Meister Eckhart - Eckhart Tolle's namesake)

Aellyce

This discussion on detachment reminds me of a psychological personality theory system I was very into a few years ago... To be brief, basically, that "assessment" suggested to me that detachment is both my best personality feature (virtue) and can also be my main psychological defense mechanism. It draws a fine line between healthy non-attachment and unhealthy detachment, and I totally identify with all that (and many other things in that theory). I think I'm getting what you are suggesting.

Boleo

Unhealthy detachment is on the same level as apathy.

healthy non-attachment is on the same level as Holy indifference:

Holy Indifference And Decision-Making | SoulFormation

courage2

My fav Walt Whitman:

What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.