It’s wonderful to see where the path can lead us if we take the risk to follow our inner artist’s dreams… congratulations Fernanda & Esteban!

Something to read:  

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.  Helen Keller

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde

To go on reading and thinking about the topic for our  next meeting: selfishness/ selflessness! Saturday 14th

Egoism

The terms “egoism” and “egotism” may refer to:

• egotism, an excessive or exaggerated sense of self-importance
• ethical egoism, the doctrine that holds that individuals ought to do what is in their self-interest
• psychological egoism, the doctrine that holds that individuals are always motivated by self-interest
• rational egoism, the belief that it is rational to act in one’s self-interest
• solipsism, (sometimes called egoism), the belief that only one’s self exists, or that only the experiences of one’s self can be verified
• Egoist anarchism, a form of anarchism, as most often represented by Max Stirner 

Definition:
 

The quality or state of being selfish; exclusive regard to one’s own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others.

– Nathaniel Branden

Reading “The Book”

The author says in the excellent chapter “So What?”:

“We are gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in – because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?”

The Wave

The wave subsides and the wave rises.
The flower withers and the flower blossoms.
There is no end to human wants
And human achievements.
Nothing is permanent and nothing is fleeting.
Then for whom shall we cry,
For what shall we cry?
Whom shall we invoke
With a new thought and new form?
Everything eventually blossoms.

Sri Chinmoy

From:Between Nothingness and Eternity

Anger says:

“I can destroy

The whole world.”

Peace says:

“Not when I work

Inside you.”

                             Excerpt from Somebody Has To Listen by Sri Chinmoy

From: “The Book” by Allan Watts

“No one can be moral – that is, no one can harmonize contained conflicts – without coming to a working arrangement between the angel in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his manure below. the two forces or tendencies are mutually interdependent.”

It has been a very interesting recommendation by our friend Valerie, in order to keep on working with the “self-deception” concept.  It seems to be a clear way to see what it is called “hiding something in plain view.” Its approach is to prevent the observer from seeing the centre of the truth… as when we are sometimes distracted with a big event and don’t see the real obstacle, at least momentarily… Hope those of you interested enjoy the reading.