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Post by Admin on Jan 24, 2016 19:37:23 GMT
We've been going strong with our other thread and I still have intentions of contributing to the Unconditional Love/Open Acceptance (and other emotions...?) thread which I'm excited about discussing.
I hope also to have a little effort devoted to discussing certain writings by awesome folks. I re-discovered my love for Dostoevsky today as I re-read the (very) short story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I am realizing that Dostoevsky the Christian is a wonderful influence for me. As I read, I made notes in and out of the book connecting my thoughts to meditation, thoughts of liberation from attachment, loss of shame, consciousness, the meaning of Christ, the nature of our observations and representations of the reality we attempt to perceive and express. It's only about 20 pages and I am hoping if you are up to it to read over it (you can probably download for free) and give me some reflections of my notes and/or of your own thoughts.
If it's not your thing, cool. I'll probably just add to it anyway for my own amusement.
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Post by Admin on Jan 24, 2016 20:17:32 GMT
SPOILER ALERT --- Basic synopsis (open to be edited) A sad guy sees life as not mattering. Wants to and plans to kill himself by shooting his right temple. Gets gun but waits for the right time (when it would actually matter that he did it - he doesn't know why he waited). After seeing a strangely meaningful star in the sky when walking home, he decides to make that night the night he finally shoots himself. Immediately after seeing the star, he has an encounter with a desperate young poor girl on the street wanting her mother - for whom, like most other things in his life, he feels pity or pain, but still sees it as insignificant due to the fact that basically if he weren't there to consciously perceive it, it would wouldn't exist. He rarely sleeps at night, but he falls asleep that night and has a dream that he shot his heart, died, was buried, realized it was not all over because he died, was taken by a mysterious human-like (but not human) figure to another planet identical to Earth but with a different Sun (the star he saw on the street) and very far away (far enough for the constellations to change). The people on the planet were essentially what Earth could have been like without "the Fall". He is changed in the splendor of witnessing such a possibility of living. He accidentally corrupts them to be like Earth-dwelling humans.
"But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the Truth?" Section II
What is D's 'the Fall"? See quote of new people in section IV that begins "They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe.." and "They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue." (Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals"; the "Dostoevskian Fall" = shame that gives way to virtue and pride. This "post-Dostoevskian Fall duality" created between "virtue" and "shame" similar to that presented in quote "why could I not hate them [citizens of the his home-Earth] without loving them?" setting "love" and "hate" apart from one another.
"...we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love." Section III - a "post-Dostoevskian Fall" view of love/Truth
Compare D.Fall and character's view that we are not evil with Isaiah 53:6 "All we, like sheep, have gone astray" (loosely paraphrased) What is being lost/astray? Certainly not "evil"; just mistaken/confused/clouded/ignorant... enter Christ's unconditional and fully accepting and unquestioning Love.
Not sure what I think about D hanging his whole message on "do unto others as you will have them do unto you"... Golden rule? Seems there is not space for alleviation of personal shame and living life without so much obsession for the knowledge of consciousness of life
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Post by Admin on Jan 24, 2016 20:30:55 GMT
Quick follow up...
I probably read a lot into D. Kind of one of my boys...
He's like a "Christian" Nietzsche for me
But after all: "But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the Truth?"
Too soon?...
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Post by Sindder Streg on Jan 25, 2016 4:51:52 GMT
I will read it this week, my friend. I didn't read the spoiler.
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Post by Sindder Streg on Jan 26, 2016 2:54:58 GMT
Finished reading it. I'm going to let it soak in overnight and may look into some of your ponderous questions the next day or so.
"Love others as yourself".
Section 5 - I like the idea of the failed Christ. He was so not a threat that he never received punishment. It ties back to the beginning: he sees their fate and loves them anyway. He can't offer a way out like Christ did. There was the part about he caused the "fall" as you call it, and I thought of God in Heaven knowing he had created all the evil in the world and feeling shame so killing himself, as Christ, and he reverts back to not feeling shame while humans are still screwed but he can now wipe his hands of it because oh well I gave them a choice.
D seems in the end to have transcended good and evil. Good for him.
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