life axiom: elation only exists with suffering?

[itsjustaname]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...be4cfd4470.jpg

fun proof

seems like you can only have light with darkness, happiness with sadness, night with morning, ugly with pretty, kind with mean, tall with short, etc.

opposites define each other

so setting aside nirvana, it seems like life is a constant samsara to use another buddhist/hindu idea

you will suffer no matter what. some people in the public sphere have to largely suffer in privacy because people expect god/christ figures in leadership - people who transcend problems of the world

that is different issue though,

the point is grabbing on to axioms (of life), and expecting suffering just as much as expecting happiness, things go around in a circle

any other intuitive axioms ya'll know about?

[dannerz]

Your body effects your perception heavily.
Not all life has a sense of duality.
There are probably planets out there where nobody will eat each other. That's just an example.

[Starman]

Life, in my opinion, is not happiness or sadness rather what we do with the energy of life determines
whether we experience happiness or sadness. Life in its pure uninterpreted formlessness is constant bliss.
It transcends happiness. You say that you can not experience happiness without suffering but if that
were true than you can not experience suffering without happiness. If what you say is true then it goes
both ways; no suffering no happiness, no happiness no suffering, but I have a very different perspective.
Happiness is not dependent on anything; we do not need a reason to be happy.

P.S. Most people have married their happiness or sadness to external events when in truth happiness is
an inside job; a labor of love separate from our external lives. Happiness is a prelude to love, it comes
before love but love goes much deeper. Love and happiness are definitely related; we are all related.

"Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do

Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don't hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I'll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don't waste your time
Here's why

(Happy)
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
My level's too high
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down"

Verses from "Happy," Sung by Pharrell Williams

[itsjustaname]

What about sensual (read: SENSE-ual) pleasure?

Things like candy and sex?

Surely those things produce a state of bliss. And surely those things are very different from an "inside job".

Indeed I don't ever recall a feeling from internal life comparable to sensual pleasure.

Also I don't see how you get a constant form of bliss. Unless you are talking about nirvana or reaching heaven after death, but both of those seem without a shred of evidence to support.

I like the Pharrell song, mostly because it reframes the conversation to what we are all seeking in our different means to ends analysis. But, at the same time, like I just said, aside from nirvana or heaven, a state of perpetual bliss seems like a false hope.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by itsjustaname

What about sensual (read: SENSE-ual) pleasure?

Things like candy and sex?

Everyone is addicted to something and these addictions take place on many levels. Indeed, some of the things which we are addicted to are essential for a healthy human existence. But even though pleasure is not the same for everyone it does satisfy the same need, or want, that a person, or persons, may seek. There is a commonality in seeking pleasure. It is as a prelude to eternal bliss that humans crave ecstasy.

Surely those things produce a state of bliss. And surely those things are very different from an "inside job".

The greatest bliss is spiritual bliss, and as I do not view things as being isolated, rather everything is a continuum of everything else; the bliss which one experiences in sensual pleasure is but a facsimile of spiritual bliss, but nonetheless a transformation along a continuum towards spiritual bliss. From a spiritual perspective everything is inside; on another level our physical body is within us when we literally expand our consciousness. The outside is but a reflection of what is going on inside.

Indeed I don't ever recall a feeling from internal life comparable to sensual pleasure.

The experience grows in intensity with the deepening of our focus. Yogis have long said that the conscious merging with the light is the greatest possible sexual orgasm. Our senses allow us to experience the outside world but they also allow us to experience an inner world. We have outer sight and we also have insight, we can feel things in this world and we also have intrinsic feelings. Our senses go deep within us, and many who have practiced quiet meditation can attest to this. We are learning how to reach out with our feelings; that is another way of saying opening our heart of hearts, at the core of our being deep within our capacity to feel; because feeling, or touch, is the primordial sensation, it embodies all other sensations.

Also I don't see how you get a constant form of bliss. Unless you are talking about nirvana or reaching heaven after death, but both of those seem without a shred of evidence to support.

The only person you have to prove it to is yourself, and once you discover it, you will not be able to actually tell anyone about it anyways. It transcends words and thoughts, and has nothing to do with logic. I used to know of a few yogis who were in constant bliss; they ate little if anything and were detached from this physical world, Samadhi, etc. Yoga has been around for more than 5,000-years and it was a much stricter practice back then than today. These experiences are still foreign to many, if not most, who live in the western hemisphere.

I like the Pharrell song, mostly because it reframes the conversation to what we are all seeking in our different means to ends analysis. But, at the same time, like I just said, aside from nirvana or heaven, a state of perpetual bliss seems like a false hope.

Yeah, I like it also!

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Starman

Life, in my opinion, is not happiness or sadness rather what we do with the energy of life determines
whether we experience happiness or sadness. Life in its pure uninterpreted formlessness is constant bliss.
It transcends happiness. You say that you can not experience happiness without suffering but if that
were true than you can not experience suffering without happiness. If what you say is true then it goes
both ways; no suffering no happiness, no happiness no suffering, but I have a very different perspective.
Happiness is not dependent on anything; we do not need a reason to be happy.

P.S. Most people have married their happiness or sadness to external events when in truth happiness is
an inside job; a labor of love separate from our external lives. Happiness is a prelude to love, it comes
before love but love goes much deeper. Love and happiness are definitely related; we are all related.

"Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do

Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don't hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I'll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don't waste your time
Here's why

(Happy)
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
My level's too high
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down"

Verses from "Happy," Sung by Pharrell Williams

I think that song represents the modern 'obligation to be happy', and within that obligation exists a demand you be sad. The song sells precisely because 'it makes you happy', using the same commercial strategy as the self help genre. This expectation is that one should be happy, and the spiritual economy is fundamentally preying on this premise. In our secular society its the same, where distress and adverse emotion is diagnosed in some way, and treated therapeutically or medically, and the 'cure' is basically happiness. The reality that a human being will experience a wide rage of emotions isn't actually 'taken to be true' because distress and adverse emotion would then be 'normal', and we can't have that, because this whole market, the whole spiritual parade, is predicated on instilling a sense of lack and a promise that sense of lack can be fulfilled by whatever it is they one wants to sell or get you to believe in - religion, coca-cola, self help books or well paid therapy.

This then comes down to lack and desire, not happiness and sadness, as what we are promised in the objects and ideologies is not that object or ideology itself, but the deeper promise of fulfillment it symbolises. Look at the spiritual wisdoms for example: simplistic one liners that appeal to uncertainty by posing as answers, as knowledge that can be acquired. Acquired. It is somehow satisfying to nod sagely as one reads simple truisms and mutter "so true, so true".

Even that desire for acquirement is not for acquirement itself, whatever object or ideology is acquired, but the deeper promise of acquirement, which is the promise of desire itself. The promise that desire will continue. And so we come the circle where by instilling a sense of lack based on the real lived experience of adverse emotions, the desire for fulfillment can be elicited, and objects presented as a promise of fulfillment, but not the object itself, but what that object represents, maybe fun, prestige, or life itself as in 'Coke adds life'. It doesn't even have to be specified at all: "Coke is 'it'" "the 'real thing'", and all portrayed with a perverse excess of happiness - just like that song and its video. Such a one dimensional 'bit of fun' passed off as a spiritual truism, but also perfectly suited to a Coca-Cola ad.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by itsjustaname

What about sensual (read: SENSE-ual) pleasure?

Things like candy and sex?

"Sex and Candy" is a song worth a mention.

Surely those things produce a state of bliss. And surely those things are very different from an "inside job".

Indeed I don't ever recall a feeling from internal life comparable to sensual pleasure.

Also I don't see how you get a constant form of bliss. Unless you are talking about nirvana or reaching heaven after death, but both of those seem without a shred of evidence to support.

I like the Pharrell song, mostly because it reframes the conversation to what we are all seeking in our different means to ends analysis. But, at the same time, like I just said, aside from nirvana or heaven, a state of perpetual bliss seems like a false hope.

[Starman]

Originally Posted by Gem

I think that song represents the modern 'obligation to be happy', and within that obligation exists a demand you be sad. The song sells precisely because 'it makes you happy', using the same commercial strategy as the self help genre. This expectation is that one should be happy, and the spiritual economy is fundamentally preying on this premise. In our secular society its the same, where distress and adverse emotion is diagnosed in some way, and treated therapeutically or medically, and the 'cure' is basically happiness. The reality that a human being will experience a wide rage of emotions isn't actually 'taken to be true' because distress and adverse emotion would then be 'normal', and we can't have that, because this whole market, the whole spiritual parade, is predicated on instilling a sense of lack and a promise that sense of lack can be fulfilled by whatever it is they one wants to sell or get you to believe in - religion, coca-cola, self help books or well paid therapy.

This then comes down to lack and desire, not happiness and sadness, as what we are promised in the objects and ideologies is not that object or ideology itself, but the deeper promise of fulfillment it symbolises. Look at the spiritual wisdoms for example: simplistic one liners that appeal to uncertainty by posing as answers, as knowledge that can be acquired. Acquired. It is somehow satisfying to nod sagely as one reads simple truisms and mutter "so true, so true".

Even that desire for acquirement is not for acquirement itself, whatever object or ideology is acquired, but the deeper promise of acquirement, which is the promise of desire itself. The promise that desire will continue. And so we come the circle where by instilling a sense of lack based on the real lived experience of adverse emotions, the desire for fulfillment can be elicited, and objects presented as a promise of fulfillment, but not the object itself, but what that object represents, maybe fun, prestige, or life itself as in 'Coke adds life'. It doesn't even have to be specified at all: "Coke is 'it'" "the 'real thing'", and all portrayed with a perverse excess of happiness - just like that song and its video. Such a one dimensional 'bit of fun' passed off as a spiritual truism, but also perfectly suited to a Coca-Cola ad.

Actually everyone is a salesperson, and what you have described is but another sales pitch and
the same can be said for what I posted. We all serve some message, even if that message is
to be lazy and sleep in all day, and most people feel their message is "the message" to pay
attention to; which is the nature of humankind.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Starman

Actually everyone is a salesperson, and what you have described is but another sales pitch and
the same can be said for what I posted. We all serve some message, even if that message is
to be lazy and sleep in all day, and most people feel their message is "the message" to pay
attention to; which is the nature of humankind.

I'm not selling for a simple reason: I don't mind if people are happy, sad, distressed, prideful, humble, material, spiritual or any other way. I have no message because I don't know the answers to anyone's questioning, I do not know 'what's true', and there is nothing of that sort in anything I say. I just say what I think - there's nothing special about it.

[running]

Originally Posted by itsjustaname

What about sensual (read: SENSE-ual) pleasure?

Things like candy and sex?

Surely those things produce a state of bliss. And surely those things are very different from an "inside job".

Indeed I don't ever recall a feeling from internal life comparable to sensual pleasure.

Also I don't see how you get a constant form of bliss. Unless you are talking about nirvana or reaching heaven after death, but both of those seem without a shred of evidence to support.

I like the Pharrell song, mostly because it reframes the conversation to what we are all seeking in our different means to ends analysis. But, at the same time, like I just said, aside from nirvana or heaven, a state of perpetual bliss seems like a false hope.

Yes you can have a constant state of bliss. Many do. So there is tons of personal evidence. It comes from becoming open in the chakra system when the kundalini shakti has become active in the bodys nervous system. When that has happened it is effortless and without gaps.