Re: Well, I like soul (and orgasms too) for starters.... -- <font size = "4">The Drunks Bar </font size "4">

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Date Posted: 10:07:47 07/24/01 Tue
Author: SM78
Subject: Re: Well, I like soul (and orgasms too) for starters....
In reply to: SteveH 's message, "Well, I like orgasms for starters...." on 08:54:10 07/24/01 Tue

The machine (our body) is generally asleep and uses sleep as a defense mechanism. The sleep I refer to is, of course, spiritual sleep. Life gets scarier as you age and become more vulnerable. The thrill and visions of youth have not been attained and there is depression, ennui, and even the hope for the release of death. This is the essential human condition of unenlightenment. Yet enlightenment also has its drawbacks because it is hard to work to awaken in the face of suffering and death, for who wants to be conscious of suffering and death? Who wants to be present and available to those deep emotions and fears?

Betsy, I have read far too many worthless books because their title, dustjacket notes, and first few paragraphs were good. I have taken a risk and purchased many awful CD's (we used to call them "albums") because they had one great song on them.

When I discovered the book was bad I stopped reading it and wrote its one good idea in my journal so I could memorize it and save it for future use. When I found the rest of an album to be horrible, I recorded its one good song into a "greatest hits" tape along with the one song from twelve other bad cd's. In this way, very little of my bad buys were wasted because I got at least one good thing from them.

But oh the joy when I find a truly good book or cd! It is heaven. A book I would recommend to you, dear Betsy, is Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul. It has been my contsant companion for many years. Why? Consider Moore's powerful insight:

"Care of the soul, looking back with special regard to ancient psychologies for insight and guidance, goes beyond the secular mythology of the self and recovers a sense of the sacredness of each individual life. The sacred quality is not just value -- all lives are important. It is the unfathomable mystery that is the very seed and heart of each individual, Shallow therapeutic manipulations aimed at restoring normality or tuning a life according to standards reduces -- shrinks -- that profound mystery to the pale dimensions of a social common denominator referred to as th adjusted personality.

Care of the soul sees another reality altogether. It appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. It sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel. The uniqueness of a person is made up of the insane and the twisted as much as it is of the rational and the normal. To approach this paradoxical point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature."

all for the delight

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Well, SM -- Betsy, 11:27:06 07/24/01 Tue