|
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Profile Zanzibar Age. 39 Gender. Female Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him Location Altadena, CA School. Other » More info. The Weather The World The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into: Samarinda Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is. The Phases of the Moon Module CURRENT MOON Writings
Poetry The Tree and the Telephone Pole The Spider I Do Not Know Their Names The Mouse Blindness La Plante The Moon Today I am Young A Night Poem Celestial Wandering Siren of the Sea If I Were a Dragon To the Dreamers Leave the Sky The Honor of the Oyster Return From San Diego War My Study Defeat A Late Summer's Night Of Dragons and Men Erebus The Edge of the World The Race Dragon's Spirit The Snake's Terror Spirit Island Metaphysics Metaphysica Transponderae Metaphysics and the Middaymoon Of Adventures in Foreign Lands The Rogue Wave: The Unedited Version Adventures in the PRC Voyage of Discovery Drinking the Blood of Goats Ticket for a Phantom Bus Os peixes nadam o mar Three Villages Far Away The River Weser Children I Should Have Kidnapped, Part I Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes Radishes Three-Piece-Lawsuit If Underwear Could Speak Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s) Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee. The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration T: Cook a nice dinner W: PARKOUR! Th: Parties, movies, dinners F: Picnics, the Louvre S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR Su: Philosophy, Religion The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006 A Crocodile on the Sandbank Looking Backwards Wild Swans Exodus 1984 Tales of the Alhambra (in progress) Dark Lord of Derkholm Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The Lost Years of Merlin Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress) Atlas Shrugged (in progress) Uglies Pretties Specials A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!) The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time From Magma to Tephra (in progress) Lady Chatterley's Lover Harry Potter 7 The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency Introduction to Planetary Volcanism A Child Called "It" Pompeii Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women? Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress) What's So Great About Christianity? Aeolian Geomorphology Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits The City of Ember The People of Sparks Cube Route When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard Bound The Golden Compass Clan of the Cave Bear The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip) The Incredible Shrinking Man Twilight Eclipse New Moon Breaking Dawn Armageddon's Children The Elves of Cintra The Gypsy Morph Animorphs #23: The Pretender Animorphs #25: The Extreme Animorphs #26: The Attack Crucial Conversations A Journey to the Center of the Earth A Great and Terrible Beauty The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Dandelion Wine To Sir, With Love London Calling Watership Down The Invisible Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Host The Hunger Games Catching Fire Shadows and Strongholds The Jungle Book Beatrice and Virgil Infidel Neuromancer The Help Flip Zion Andrews The Unit Princess Quantum Brain The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated Delirium Memento Nora Robopocalypse The Name of the Wind The Terror Sister Tao Te Ching What Paul Meant Lao Tzu and Taoism Libyan Sands Sand and Sandstones Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew The Science of God Calculating God Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill City of Bones Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne Divergent Stranger in a Strange Land The Old Man and the Sea Flowers for Algernon Au Bonheur des Ogres The Martian The Road to Serfdom De La Terre � la Lune (ip) In the Light of What We Know Devil in the White City 2312 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Red Mars How to Be a Good Wife A Mote in God's Eye A Gentleman in Russia The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism Seneca: Letters from a Stoic | If We Are The Body Tuesday. 6.21.11 10:35 pm mood: metaphysical listening to: Casting Crowns: If We Are The Body watching: streams of photons entering my photoreceptors Peter, my male chess-playing soul-twin, once said that he viewed the body as the interface through which the soul interacted with the physical world. When he looked at my body, he said, he wasn't actually seeing me, he was merely seeing my interface-- my avatar, if you will. In some ways, my physical appearance served as something a distraction or an obstacle that could cause a person to misinterpret who I really was-- the real me... my soul. I suppose my views of the body are not so different from my soul-twin's. I have always viewed my body as an instrument, or a suite of instruments, like a telescope or a seismograph or a motorcycle. In orbit around Mercury right now, for instance, there is a NASA satellite made up of a chassis carrying a suite of science instruments. There is a light-detecting device which can determine mineral compositions, a radar beam that can determine altimetry, a neutron detector that can be used to calculate elemental abundances, and many more. My body is like that satellite. It has a chassis (my skeleton), a circuit board (my brain), a motor (my heart), and it carries on board several important scientific instruments. There is an instrument for collecting light in the visible spectrum (my eyes), an instrument for detecting pressure differences and acoustic pressure waves (my ears), an instrument for analyzing aerosols (my nose), an instrument for detecting chemical composition (my tongue) and a large heat and pressure-sensing membrane that fills in all of the empty space between instruments and protects the inner workings from stray particles and radiation damage like a gold foil wrapping (my skin). Sure enough, the NASA spacecraft cannot smell, and I cannot detect neutrons. Each of us is an incomplete set of instruments. We can learn a lot about Mercury using the suite of instruments on the spacecraft, and I can learn a lot about the physical world around me by using my five senses, but neither of us can claim that the limited amount of information that we process constitutes anything close to the sum total of Reality. Peter's focus is on getting to know the soul behind the avatar. My focus is on getting to know the physical world that is so incompletely described by my instruments. Each of us is aware of the limitations of our bodies, and that all of reality is viewed through the clouded and imperfect lens of humanity. So what is the body then, and how should it be treated? Perhaps in Peter's thinking, the body takes something of a subsidiary role to the mind. Perhaps he would advocate achieving a kind of stillness, the kind that mediation experts seek to attain. The mind is constantly bombarded by stimuli from the body... if there were a way to quiet the insistent voices and needs of the body perhaps the soul would be given free rein to fill mind and the meditation subject could capture just a tiny glimpse of The Infinite. In my thinking, the body should cared for like an important instrument or device. It should be well-oiled, it should be cleaned, its tank should be filled up, routine inspections should be carried out. It should be trimmed and toned and built up so that the user can take full advantage of all of its capabilities, and so that the world can be experienced at maximum capacity. Everyone knows if you are not taking care of your instruments, they will eventually rust or break, and though these days you can easily replace many of your organs, eventually all the peripherals will go and the chassis will break and your device will no longer take you anywhere. The link connecting your eternal soul to your mortal body will be severed, and your soul will return to being part of The Infinite. [Heaven. Nirvana. Take your pick.] But while I might take care of my computer by defragging it periodically, or installing anti-virus protection, or keeping it away from unsavory situations and websites, do I ever love and appreciate my computer for what it is? Do I ever sit back and say, "I want my computer to feel good--- not because I want it to run faster or I want it to perform better, but just because I appreciate the beauty of my computer and I want it to be happy." No, I don't. So should the body be appreciated for merely existing? Should the body be taken care of not merely as a means to an end but as an end in itself? Is who I am only fully realized through my body, or is my body a set of blinds through which my true self is shining? Food=Fuel? 1. Is the goal of life to reach out and understand the eternal souls of those around us, despite the limitations of our bodies? 2. Is the goal of life to explore and understand the physical world, despite the limitations of our bodies? 3. Is the goal of life to appreciate the sublime reality of self-awareness, manifested in being incarnate? I don't know. Right now my body is sick, so I leave you with Marcel Proust's thoughts on the matter: It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. 6 Comments. Mmmm would you also so differentiate between the mind and soul? » middaymoon on 2011-06-21 11:47:04 This reminds me of my Humanistic Psychology class, in which we were taught that the body and mind/soul were rather inseparable. Though we describe ourselves as "having" bodies, really we "are" bodies. A lost limb is not a mere detached object, but "part of me that is gone," and its absence changes the world for the person in question... That was just what the professor told us, though. » randomjunk on 2011-06-22 01:00:46 Your input is appreciated! "Quandry" is a pretty swell word. And yeah, I'd probably make the same argument about mind and soul. There's a brace of physicists who are enamored with the idea of the quantum brain, and it seems to me that quantum mechanics is the perfect vehicle for some other-worldly source to have input on our otherwise self-dependent brain chemistry. » middaymoon on 2011-06-22 05:24:45 Well put. There was this guy who was wearing this really ridiculous hat in Thailand. All of the street dogs thought he was an alien and started to surround him and harass him. However, just by removing the hat he was his old self again. I always think of that when I think of the body and the soul. This body that we wear is so easily confused for who we are. On the other hand, when you read about the ascetics and the lengths to which they go to achieve that separation, you see another cautionary tale, like when Mother Teresa wanted to have her nuns live on nothing but white rice. It says that you are only able to do the 'work' you were set here to do as long as you 'avatar' is in functioning order and its almost irresponsible to damage it to glimpse the Infinite which is with us and surrounds us whenever we percieve it or not. At least that's what I think. I'm sorry that you're sick :( » jinyu on 2011-06-23 08:14:51 Re: I didn't choose agnosticism. It chose me. Just like any religion chooses a person. » thaitanic on 2011-06-26 08:33:34 Re: I didnt move here I'm just here on a temporary basis.. haha, until further developement. It depends, but yea, I'm enjoying myself. :) I like the way you view the human body, it makes sense, in a way.. » Xboyz on 2011-06-28 11:17:01
If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here. |
NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.283seconds. |
|
Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark | Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s |
All content © Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com. |