The desireless self

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Philosophy, Waiting and Here, , , 2 Comments on The desireless self

Ask yourself, “What is the real motive behind everything I do, think, want?” You’ll see that your real desire is to be desireless. Your real desire is peace. Jean Klein, The Ease of Being The main aim of each want is to end the want itself. To be desireless, as Klein says. Once we get…

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The space we take

By: theintrovertedtree
Books, Inner search, Second half of life, , 4 Comments on The space we take

Prompted by this excellent post by Andrew (thank you!), I read Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. The book navigates a succession of inner thoughts, feelings, states of mind in six disparate characters described with empathic but also stark accuracy, sometimes using mental images that may seem unrelated to a situation, but which provide such a precise…

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Mirror musings

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Liminality, Psychology, Unconscious, , , 2 Comments on Mirror musings

Projections are my favourite psychological phenomenon. The transfer of part of our unconscious content to another being. That transfer of energy occurs from one part of our mind to another part of our mind. It is not really externalised. The external ‘hook’ does not demand projection, it mostly remains unaware. The part of our mind…

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Little gods

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Philosophy, Unconscious, , , , 1 Comment on Little gods

It seems to me that most gods in the different mythologies are quite childish. If they don’t get their way, they release their wrath. I am guessing they never got ‘no’ for an answer. What did they want all that power for? They were bored and lacked a purpose. I wonder if they created men…

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The lingering question

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Philosophy, Waiting and Here, , 2 Comments on The lingering question

We spend our lives asking ourselves who we are while, at the same time, we try to become someone else through every single action that moves us from here to there, as if ‘there’ were any different from ‘here’. Asking myself who I am used to lead me to a brick wall that seemed to…

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The watching neighbour

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Psychology, Unconscious, , , 2 Comments on The watching neighbour

One of the most repeated sentences in my school was “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. As a child I always thought the difficult part was to love others, taking for granted that I would always love myself. With time I realised that loving oneself was the toughest half of the sentence and an…

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The soil, the seed, the gardener

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Introversion, Psychology, Second half of life, Waiting and Here, , , 2 Comments on The soil, the seed, the gardener

There was a moment a few years ago when I stopped defending from the world. When I understood my aim was not to look for a more appropriate place, different from this one, but to fuse myself with this world to which I belong. To be one with it, accepting life as a permanently changing…

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The Glass Bead Game

By: theintrovertedtree
Books, Liminality, Second half of life, , Leave a Comment on The Glass Bead Game

(Spoiler alert: do not continue reading if you plan to read the book) In my youth, after reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Demian and Siddhartha, which I loved, I enthusiastically started The Glass Bead Game. I found it incredibly slow and boring. I made two new attempts later, still boring. After re-reading those three books again…

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A sack of ideas

By: theintrovertedtree
Inner search, Philosophy, , 2 Comments on A sack of ideas

In the old days, ideas were regarded to be in an ethereal cloud. Having an idea, being inspired, would be experienced as if one of those drops in the cloud was passing through us. We wouldn’t be the source of the idea, but the channel. How often do we wonder where this or that idea…

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The beauty of the empty space

By: theintrovertedtree
Books, Inner search, Philosophy, Waiting and Here, , , , 3 Comments on The beauty of the empty space

I have a mug on my desk with blue stars on it. Each star occupies an empty blank space in the shape of a star. Some blank spaces lack their star. I had this silly feeling that those spots had not yet found their match. But then I saw them for what they really are:…

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