I haven't written for awhile. Nothing you don't already know, but really it is something you don't know because you don't read my blog. Then again, I don't really know who you are either. I was thinking about this blog the other day and I thought of some of the things I wrote, and oh boy how cliche and embarrassing! Nevertheless, it was part of my life even if I gag thinking about it now. I didn't know what I wanted this blog to be about for awhile, it was about fear and sharing things I think, then it became like a journal, then it was trying to force the world to see how great I thought my life was, then about a breakup I think and then a lame attempt at a food blog...of course that was only one haha. If I'm going to keep writing I need to have a purpose in writing though, not this rollercoaster of whatever this blog has been. I can be honest still if I have a purpose for this blog. I most likely will be more honest, I think. Well, my blog title is we grow. We grow what? A garden? We grow up? We grow fond of each other? We grow bitter? We grow together? We grow towards the sun? We grow old? I'm not really sure maybe D) all of the above. I said I love being barefoot, but now I find any excuse to wear shoes. I like good and plenty candy: now that is still true, but I can't tell you the last time I ate it. Actually I can and it was at home a month ago and then I was mad about it because I had been trying to cut out sugar. I'm going to start letting go of the fear inside of me and this blog will help hopefully help me document it. Speaking of documenting, I love watching documentaries. I rarely watch them now, but can I suggest Wild China? I'm obsessed. and I think life is dang good. I don't know if I think life is dang good. At least the way I used to, but I do think it is good. I know I would be selfish and ungrateful if I didn't say it was good. And the more I think about it I think it's fair to say my life is dang good, but sometimes I even need convincing or reminding of that.
I skipped one.
I'm going to start letting go of the fear inside of me. I go through phases where I don't really even feel. I try to avoid feeling actually. So I need to start feeling again so I can let go of the fear inside of me.
Buddha believed that all forms of life experience suffering. The cause of suffering is attachment. To end suffering all attachments must be severed. You achieve non-attachment by following the 8 fold or middle path. Enlightenment is self discipline, meditation, and careful cutting off of attachments.
I think the key here is careful cutting off of attachments. In an attempt of self-preservation, I cut off any attachment:I cut off feeling. I think this is where the self discipline comes in: C.S. Lewis said that "without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless..."
Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian artist, talks about the intellect and about songs in our souls. He first speaks of the songs:
"It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state listening to their own song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect…Yet we live in the memory of these songs…They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within…"
Living only within the intellect entails suffering as well. So I need to carefully cut off attachment to intellect and attachment to emotion and find the balance between the two.
I will still suffer, but "Passion: that which I suffer, allow, endure, to me is done." I will be alright. When I feel, I will fear, but I can overcome my fears through facing them. Facing my fears will make me suffer to some degree; however, I think that is how I learn to detach myself from them ultimately.
