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Etsy

An online marketplace for selling and buying all things handmade!

It's like shopping at the artists market, but from your own home. I discovered the website just in time for Christmas and along with my trip to Blue Banana Market in Toronto, have managed to get almost everyone on my list home made gifts.


Contemplation

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.

Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The Question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don't have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don't have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy.

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive at the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment. ... Thich Nhat Hanh


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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Free Will[y]

I’ve always held the belief system of each individual having (the experience of) free will. But as I reach deeper states of contemplation I am beginning to see the absurdity of it all.

The whole existance and personality of the individuals identity is but a series of conditioned actions, re-actions and thoughts. In this conditioned existance, how is there an ability to produce free will? Is this not the illusion - the appearance of free will. A desire to bring about comfort in uncertainty.

As we let go of notions and belief systems and just allow the Universe to guide us the desire of free will softens completely. Being in the moment and allowing what unfolds to unfold completely free of the illusions of our minds. An action which is free of choice.

~~~~

Woke up last night completely soaked in sweat. Not sure what that was about as the heat was turned down. Had to change my shirt at 3 in the morning cause it was drenched.

My energy today has been completely drained. Wanted to so badly just lay down and fall asleep. Now that I actually can, my body won't let me :|

posted by I Am This at 11:37 PM

Comments on "Free Will[y]"

 

Blogger Hayley's Bed said ... (8:36 PM) : 

Believing that i have free will, i reach out to impose my desires on my environment. When the response is as i desire, i believe that it was "i" who willed it...but is this "i" separate from the environment or is it like an amoeba, moving and constantly reshaping to encase the entirety?

Without 'separateness' can there be free will?

 

Blogger W.P. Martin said ... (10:56 PM) : 

"the whole existence and personality of the individuals identity is but a series of conditioned actions, re-actions and thoughts."

Do we have original ideas then? If no, where do ideas come from? Have they been alive and waiting for someone to express them since wahtever beginning? Sorry, I just got out of my Ancient Phil class - in a Socratic mood. And my only huge insecurity is not being original.

 

Blogger I Am This said ... (9:11 AM) : 

In my experience Martin, originality only comes through experience. Not the thought of an experience or the interpretation of an experience or the labeling of an experience.

Thoughts, ideas .. are secondhand. They are a product of the mind. And the mind is a conditioned product of schooling, parents, tradition, belief system...

 

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