Loss of Trust and Oral Sex

"It doesn't mean anything," she said, referring to a fling while I was away. She looks at me tenderly. "Are you okay about this? It doesn't mean anything, you know."

She's right. A roll in the hay, a sport and a pastime, it doesn't mean anything.

"I had to tell you," she says. "I couldn't just not tell you."

I examine her face, the mysterious brown eyes with curving lashes and black brows, the playful smile, the elegant sensual mouth ... that mouth! I realize with a shock, that henceforth forever I will be driven to see as one that has sucked another man's cock! And is unchanged! Yet is totally changed! I'm going mad! That exquisite mouth on which my lips linger at night, lovingly, breathing in her breath as it comes from deep inside her, that mouth! unchanged yet gone forever; and I realize also, with a deep and mournful wonderment, that should I undress her and open her legs and examine her most intimate and hidden places, i would ... however bright the illumination, however diligent the search ... find no trace of the use to which they have been put. She is unchanged, the damage is all within me.

~~~Allen Wheelis, The Way We Are~~~

Is a heartache real if no one will listen?

Sometimes when the pain is so bad words just do not adequately comfort.

So simply feeling the hurt is about all that I can endure at any given time. At least I know that I'm alive.

Sometimes we suffer desperately, would do anything, try anything, but are lost, see no way. We cast about, distract ourselves, search, but find no connection between the misery we feel and the way we live. The pain comes from nowhere, gives no clue. We are bored, nothing has meaning; we become depressed. What to do? How to live? Something is wrong but we cannot imagine another way of living which would free us.

Yet there must be a way, for no sustained feeling can exist as a thing in itself, independent of what we do. If the suffering is serious and intractable it must be intimately and extensively connected, in ways we do not perceive, with the way we live. We have to look for such connections. Sometimes there is nothing to be done until they are found.

~~~Allen Wheelis~~~

I don't ask much from my fellow man except a little respect.

And you can damn well believe that I'll show them their due respect but I better get it back in return.

Is that the proper way to be?

Probably not but at least everyone knows where I stand on the issue.

"By nature, we do not perceive ourselves or others accurately. We magnify the importance of ourselves and diminish that of others. In the beauty of a clear night, however, we look at the stars and feel ourselves small, unimportant, and at peace. On an objective scale, we sense our insignificance. Somehow the realization comforts us. The return of the illusion hurts us, takes our peace away, allows us to magnify slights, rejections, and humiliations as others challenge the illusion of our self-importance with theirs. It is in our human nature that this be so; it is our task to transcend it."
- Barry Grosskopf
Hidden in Plain Sight

"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from - my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back."
- C.S. Lewis

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

"The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one through many a dreadful night."

~~~Friedrich Nietzsche~~~

When life has meaning, desire is held to its proper place ... "proper" being the shape and scope and authority allowed to it by the interlocking structure of values that constitutes the meaning of life. When life is without meaning, desire is a wildfire out of control.

~~~Allen Wheelis~~~

"Now you just remember this ... heaven is as blissful and lovely as it can be; but it's just the busiest place you ever heard of. There ain't any idle people here ... after the first day. Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity is mighty pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive. It would just make a heaven of warbling ignoramuses, don't you see? Eternal Rest sounds mighty comforting in the pulpit too. Well, you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands. Why Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn't anything to do. Heaven is the very last place to come to rest in! ... and don't you be afraid to bet on that!"

~Mark Twain, Stormfield's Visit To Heaven~

If we believe that all people are equally good, then we also have to believe that all people are equally bad.

And if we believe ... as I do ... that black people are equal to white people, then we have to believe that, if and when they gain the power and the might, black people will behave precisely the way white people behave.

And so, I said, if I live to be eighty, I expect to see white children marched into the gas chamber at the hands of a black Eichmann.

~~~Will Campbell~~~

Can Divine Harmony Be Worth The Price Of Human Suffering?

It's not worth the tears of ... one tortured child ... It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for.
They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony.
But how?
How are you going to atone for them?
Is it possible?
By their being avenged?
But what do I care for avenging them?
What do I care for a hell for oppressors?
What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured?

~~~Ivan, "The Brothers Karamazov"~~~

The Otherworld lies all about us, an earthly paradise ... if we would but cleanse 'the doors of perception', as Blake put it, and see the world as it really is, 'infinite'.

Plato illustrated the unreality of our normal perception of the world by an extended analogy. We are like people in a cave, he says, who sit facing a wall with a fire burning behind them. As people and objects pass to and fro in front of the fire, we see only their shadows, and the shadows of ourselves, as they are cast on the wall. We mistake these shadows for reality. (It is as if we mistake a film at the cinema for reality.) To achieve a truer perception of reality we have to turn around ... to revert our point of view ... and see both the fire and the objects in front of it directly. This is perhaps as close to reality as most of us ever come.

~~~Patrick Harpur~~~

We humans like to believe that we are smarter than other living creatures, and we often cite our language skills as proof.

But before you jump to any conclusions, consider this: a gorilla can learn how to communicate to people using rules that govern human speech, but we have yet to learn how to have a conversation with gorillas using their form of communication.

~~~Andrew Newberg~~~

Joseph Campbell: "There are a number of ways of thinking about Satan, but this is based on the question, Why was Satan thrown into hell?

The standard story is that, when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself.

Then he created man, whom he regarded as a higher form than the angels, and he asked the angels to serve man. And Satan would not bow to man.

Now this is interpreted in the Christian tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being the egotism of Satan.

He would not bow to man.

But in the Persian story, he could not bow to man because of his love for God ... he could bow only to God.

God had changed his signals, do you see?

But Satan had so committed himself to the first set of signals that he could not violate those, and in his ... I don't know if Satan has a heart or not ... but in his mind, he could not bow to anyone but God, whom he loved.

And then God says, " Get out of my sight."

Now, the worst of the pains of hell, insofar as hell has been described, is the absence of the Beloved, which is God.

So how does Satan sustain the situation in hell?

By the memory of the echo of God's voice, when God said, "Go to hell."

That is a great sign of love.

Bill Moyers: Well, it's certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love.

That's why I've liked the Persian myth. Satan is God's lover ...

Joseph Campbell: ...and he is separated from God, and that's the real pain of Satan."

~~~conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers~~~

Euripides said, 'A coward turns away but a brave man's choice is danger.'

What the ancient Greeks learned, as the first truly intellectual and philosophical people, is that there is more danger to one's hope, one's mettle, one's pride, in venturing into the battle of ideas, than in murdering a man who disagrees with you ... and that doing so therefore takes proportionally more courage.

Most people tend to think of courage as a warrior virtue, as belonging typically to battle, and therefore, by analogy, to endeavor on the upper slopes of Everest, in the deep sea, and even on the sports field ... in other words, wherever endurance, grit and determination in the face of physical challenges are required.

That is true enough.

But courage is often demonstrated, because it is often needed, in greater quantities in daily life, and there are even times when 'merely to live', as Seneca put it in a letter to Lucilius, 'is itself an act of courage'.

~~~A.C. Grayling~~~

Does a given individual's religion serve to break his will, keep him at an infantile level of development, and enable him to avoid the anxiety of freedom and personal responsibility?

Or does it serve him as a basis of meaning which affirms his dignity and worth, which gives him a basis for courageous acceptance of his limitations and normal anxiety, but which aids him to develop his powers, his responsibility and his capacity to love his fellow men?

~~~Rollo May~~~

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.

I don't think that's what we're really seeking.

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

~~~Joseph Campbell~~~

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only to his friends.

He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret.

But there are other things that a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

~~~Fyodor Dostoyevsky~~~

photo:stephenstephen.blogspot.com

There is a real pain in your heart, a pain that truly belongs to you.

You know now that you cannot avoid, ignore, or repress it.

It is the pain that reveals to you how you are called to live in solidarity with the broken human race.

You must distinguish carefully, however, between your pain and the pains that have attached themselves to it but are not truly yours.

When you feel rejected, when you think of yourself as a failure and a misfit, you must be careful not to let these feelings and thoughts pierce your heart.

You are not a failure or a misfit.

Therefore, you have to disown these pains as false.

They can paralyze you and prevent you from loving the way you are called to love.

~~~Henry Nouwen~~~

There is no effort that we can make to still ourselves.

True stillness comes naturally from moments of solitude where we allow our minds to settle.

Just as water seeks its own level, the mind will gravitate toward the holy.

Muddy water will become clear if allowed to stand undisturbed, and so to will the mind become still if it is allowed to become still.

Neither the water or the moon make any effort at achieving a reflection.

In the same way, meditation will be natural and immediate.

~~~Deng Ming-Dao~~~

Every age thinks it is in crisis.

Things have got worse, people say, clucking their tongues; crime is up, the quality of life down, the world in a mess.

People of religious bent are inclined to think that their personal epoch is so bad that it probably marks the end of the world.

Such sentiments are misleading because they premise a belief that somewhere or sometime the world had something which has since been lost---a cozy, chintzy, afternoon-teatime era when there was neither danger without nor unease within.

But when we begin rummaging among these myths to provide solutions to present day troubles, which is what moralizers do, we are in trouble indeed.

~~~A.C. Grayling~~~

We are not suited to be free.

We are suited still, as when we were children, to live under the protection of, and within the limits set by, loving parents.

As adults we strive to continue this arrangement, with kings and gods slipping into the place of parents.

~~~Allen Wheelis~~~

The Talmud expresses this subtle relationship in an apocryphal story of a dialogue between God and Abraham.

God begins by chiding Abraham, "If it wasn't for Me, you wouldn't exist."

After a moment of thoughtful reflection, Abraham respectfully replies, "Yes, Lord, and for that I am very appreciative and grateful.

However, if it wasn't for me, You wouldn't be known."

~~~Leonard Schlain~~~

Beware of those who attach great value to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in making moral distinctions.

They never forgive us once they have made a mistake in front of us (or, worse, against us): inevitably they become our instinctive slanderers and detractors, even if they should still remain our "friends".

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get over their stupidities, too.

~~~Friedrich Nietzsche~~~

We have never followed the advice of the great teachers.

Why are we likely to begin now?

Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others?

Because He is the best moral teacher?

But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow Him.

If we cannot take the elementary lessons, is it likely we are going to take the most advanced one?

If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance.

There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years.

A bit more makes no difference.

~~~C.S. Lewis~~~

Free To Choose

Man, oh man, to be completely and totally free to do anything that I want to do.

And I mean absolutely anything ... all restraints lifted. No holds barred.

It has been said that a man can not choose how or where they will die but only the kind of life that they live.

I disagree with that.

If I want to, if I so chose to do it, I could choose exactly how and when I will die. I could chew the end of shotgun or take a handful of sleeping pills or crash my vehicle into a steel wall while running 150 mph or slit my wrists in a warm tub of water until I bleed out. That would be the mark of absolute freedom, would it not?

The only question presently remaining for me is this, "Why don't I do it, what am I waiting for?"

Am I waiting for the next T-bone steak to see if that one will possibly be better than the last?

Maybe it's the thought of not seeing another sunrise or sunset. Or maybe I'd miss the feeling of having my arm gently stroked by someone that loves me.

I'm not afraid of dying ... I'm just afraid of no longer having the choice to decide to live.

Maybe I had it all backwards.

Maybe choosing to live is mankind's ultimate freedom.

©2009/Lucifer-Saytan

Lucifer: "How do you tell the difference between Methodists, Pentecostals, and Baptists when you see them in a liquor store?"

Jesus: "The Methodists will at least speak to you before they leave."

Hindsight may have the benefit of 20/20 vision, but in real life the capacity to act is often greatest when the clarity to see is worse.

Conversely, by the time everything is crystal clear, freedom to act may be heavily constrained.

Adolph Hitler, for example, could easily have been stopped in his tracks early in his career; it was not until he could only be stopped at enormous cost that people knew beyond doubt why he needed to be stopped at any cost.

~~~Os Guinness~~~

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself.

You have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.

The essence of this matter is to understand that this self of ours, this other man within us, has got to be handled.

Do not listen to him; turn on him; speak to him; condemn him; upbraid him; exhort him; encourage him; remind him of what you know instead of placidly listening to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you.

~~~Martin Lloyd-Jones~~~

"There is an underbelly of terror to all life.

It is suffering, it is hurt.

Deep within all of us are intense fears that have left few of us whole.

Life's terrors haunt us, attack us, leave ugly cuts.

To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives.

We take beauty as the only worthwhile thing in this existence, but it cannot veil cursing, violence, randomness, and injustice.

That is why spiritual progress is slow: not because no one will tell us the secrets, but because we ourselves must overcome sentiment and fear before we can grasp it."

~~~Deng Ming-Dao~~~
Powerful life quote used at Whiskey River

Why Does Evil Lure Us So?

Why does evil excite us so?

Everyone feels its silky lure.

Most of us ... maybe just that one time ... have blown a Commandment, lost our way, gone too far in the blurry hours after midnight.

And no wonder: Evil seduces with promises of passion and excess ... of transcendence over the merely physical and rational and present.

It guarantees perfection, as the Serpent did to Eve, which is why the figures of Dracula and de Sade and Hitler and Manson not only terrify and enrage but also beckon.

"Evil" may sound like an echo from a bygone, candlelit era.

Yet it can still send shivers down a modern spine ... shivers of fear, shivers of delight.

~~~William Hart~~~

~~~~~~~

We should admit that we love evil too much to give it up.
~~~Ghandi~~~

photo: philzine.files.wordpress.com/2008/01

Sex or Bowel Movements ... What's More Important?

photo:www.trendhunter.com

“Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.”

~~~Charles Bukowski~~~

"It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one must suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.

Perhaps, however, there was a good reason.

There has been in England, ever since the rise of the textile industry in Lancanshire, a close alliance between missionaries and the cotton trade, for missionaries teach savages to cover up the human body and thereby increase the demands for cotton goods. If there had been nothing shameful about the human body, the textile trade would have lost this source of profit. This instance shows that we need never be afraid lest the spread of virtue should diminish our profit."

~~~Bertrand Russell~~~
Technorati Profile

"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely-powerful infinitely-knowledgeable universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."

Andrew Lias

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. It's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving.

~~~Col. Walter E. Kurtz~~~

"Pictures of the invisible world can have wild inaccuracies, but every view that flourishes does so because it solves at least one major problem.

Building pictures of the invisible world is the human way of trying to deal with the world we see.

Animals and human beings are both up against a world where most of what determines their fate is invisible to them at the moment.

To a monkey in a clearing, food is nowhere in view.

Often, neither are the males he's competing with or the females he's competing for.

The infants he's contending for the right to father do not, as yet, exist.

The predators who could end his life are equally hidden from sight.

But he has to deal with all of these to send his genes into the next generation."

~~~Howard Bloom~~~