The meaning of life

[Scáthach]

I think purity and strength of intent can lend a deeper purpose or meaning to actions. Being a habitual stoned waster may not be very useful unless your intent is to get fatter on snacks. A well timed joint can help break habitual thoughts and feelings if you want to get into a good book, movie or piece of music.
We have all had experience of a bad gig, where it seems the band is just phoning it in and the music fails to connect. Similarly, I know I can feel really energised by a good gig where the band seem focused and engaged when the music really hits home. In this way too, I think the difference between music as art or music as entertainment can depend on the intent of the creator(s). Of course it's success as such depends largely on the (right) audience.
As an aside, I hope I'm not coming across as up on my soapbox, just enjoying this discussion is all.

[Pedrito]

Nqh that's class man. It's the same with martial arts amongst other activities. Getting so goof at something that it becomes an expression of wjo you are as opposed to just cloberring lads in the schoolyard. Being a master of your body, movements and emotions.

Again, going back to the ancients. Just did a tour of Tulum there..Mayan ruins on the coastline, incredibly spectacular. The 'meaning' that was given to life, birth, manhood, death etc etc etc is something that modern life has probably all but done away with. Again, are we moderns REALLY that advanced. Has science and tech and some brainwashing made us far too cocksure of ourselves? Hard to know. I'm also wary of conferring upon past people some greatness or mystical quality. They all got up and had a shit in the morning too. I'm more referring to their veneration of life and nature. A good big schlug of.mushy tea and some Pink Floyd would go down lovely here instead of sitting in Starbucks haha

[Scáthach]

Colour me jealous, it's a place I'd love to visit... Maybe need to start a holiday snaps thread   

[Caomhaoin]

I went for 10 days hiking in the Scottish highlands during Easter, and there were moments every day when I was completely alone (couple of hairy cows aside), no phone and feeling of calm and the erasure of my 'problems' was something I'd never experienced in my adult life. My work life (I'm a secondary school teacher) allows me little time for thought and reflection bar parroting what I've been reading or watching, so that pure solitude, not a car or wifi signal anywhere near me allowed the auld mohín to feel that slack jawed wonder and immersion in my surroundings that I only remember having as a young lad.

Going back a bit further north again Easter 2020, already consumed with the thoughts of it. Magic, highly recommended to anyone who feels fried by working and living in a city.

[Cosmic_Equilibrium]

Where in the Highlands did you go? If you're going to return and go further north I would recommend Torridon.

[Pedrito]

Nothing like a bit of peace Kev..sounds class.

With Bölzer's Hero album in mind, I've been reading Jung and now I've had my head turned towards Joseph Campbell. I really don't like the way they put meditation music on every fucking interesting lecture in youtube land, but if you can disregard the music, this video is really great..

https://youtu.be/uRRrdmD3Bak

A lot of the stuff I'm reading and listening to at the moment seems to all be focussed on the same ideas..Nietzsche, Jung, Joseph Campbell, Herbert's Dune and Bölzer  Campbell talks here about affirmation as opposed to this modern hatred of life, or rather, life as suffering. Nietzsche was at great pains to find a way out of the Schopenhaurean 'life is suffering' fix. Campbell in another video talks about how we have this concept of Jesus suffering on the cross and yet, he tells, it should be seen in completely the opposite way, that Christ went as a bridegroom to the cross, he went to the cross with his head up, a 'Hero' as such. All very interesting, and worth a listen, for anyone interested in Myth, Religion, Philosophy, Science, whatever the hell you're into.

Interesting little fact that Campbell was great friends of one of my great Heroes, John Steinbeck, and it seems a lot of these themes were reflected in Steinbeck's writing.

[Eoin McLove]

Sounds interesting.  I'll give it a whirl on a bit.  Currently listening to 'A Single Point of Light' by Terminus which is pretty damn uplifting stuff.

[Pedrito]

The Campbell vid without shitty mystical music

https://youtu.be/0ksSRNl0n2A

[mickO)))]

I was suppose to suggest the The Hero with a Thousand Faces to you here but forgot and also thought you most likely had read it before.

[Pedrito]

I'm a bleedin philistine trying to catch up with stuff that I should have been reading 20 years ago

[Caomhaoin]

Where in the Highlands did you go? If you're going to return and go further north I would recommend Torridon.

Didn't go past Fort William this year, 2020 I have the BnBs booked from there are as a starting point and finishing around the Inverness area with a few days leeway to continue if I feel like it. I'll give Torridon a look there, cheers.

[Eoin McLove]

I wonder with the current state of the world, with the BLM protests and the ongoing lunacy (in my view) of the trans debate, are we, as a species and a global society, seeing a deeper search for meaning or are we seeing a complete break from/ breakdown of meaning? Could all of these various fractures and all of the copious, disparate interpretations of them be taken as evidence that there is, in fact, no meaning to be gained or lost in the first place? Certainly no single common meaning or truth beyond that of the individual. Maybe trying to find substance in, and quantification of, existence through the collective is a spiritual cul de sac. If events can be legitimately viewed from two diametrically opposed view pints that lead to completely different versions of reality,  then is it simply a matter of picking one reality over the other,  or picking one unreality over the other?

[Juggz]

I think there is definitely a move way from "The last shall be first and the first shall be last" mentality as people realise, no, the first are always first and the last are always last and the first have a vested interest the last thinking they shall be first. If you accept that you only get one go on the ride, you're less likely to squander it "knowing your place" and being the shit on someone else's shoe so you can be rewarded after the ride ends. The move away from organised spirituality would, arguably, also mean a movement away from shame, resulting in people being more likely to assert themselves as they feel they are, rather than bottling it all up. We accept that there has always been homosexuality, transgenderism (even if not acted upon), only now we are seeing people finally express themselves.

[Airneanach]

Harking back to the psychedelic chit chat awhile back, I do see them as having quite a prominent place in novel, emergent forms of seeing ourselves and our place on the planet moving forward into the next few decades. They've been an elephant in the room since they fell out of psychiatric circles in the fifties, and one fantastic thing now is that their potential is being handled and rationally espoused by people with a little more nous and respect than the likes of Timothy Leary.

I love listening to Terence McKenna's take on things, admittedly. He was barking, and his Timewave Zero theorem really showed that up. Towards the end he bowed to some of that real bog standard 2012 stuff. But a lot of his speeches are absolutely brilliant, knowingly poetic takes on human conscious and the role psychedelics may play in them. His main overriding theme was always to keep questioning, don't succumb to dogma but awareness and the imagination etc has an inherent epic of mystery and driving meaning to it that's worth exploring.

I like that, and think it's a decent blueprint to follow today. Proper meaning, mind you. And proper mystery. Not subscribing to some new age bollocks which is just another systemic way of examining yourself, which only goes so far because it is ultimately based on somebody else's system. That's another of the great man's quotes: "You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding."

I like his send up of the Big Bang theory as well of being science needing one free miracle - that everything exploded from nothing for no apparent reason - before it explains the rest. Admittedly modern scientific understanding is trying to get inside that one a little more, too, but it's cheeky out.

I say this as someone who can't take psychedelics, either. I done my nut in on the other side of my twenties and every time it's tempting to just take the leap and order some truffles, there's that hesitancy there that I know has the potential to grow into a demon if I'm off tripping. I find the discourse around them genuinely irresistible, though.  The lore that others have brought back from their obviously meaningful, narrative driven, directed experiences gives me a vague sort of hope in the mystery and potentiality of nature as a sort of massive connected oversoul.

I think from enough mindfulness, long walks and good old fashioned bookworming you can reach those same heights, though it'll be a gradual ascent with less visual fireworks and wondering why you're still standing in the bathroom. I respect the journey, though, and it gives me belief that there can be one. I'm genuinely fine with  never taking DMT because I believe people's accounts that they really were somewhere else. I do. It's just too fucking mental.

[mugz]

I think purity and strength of intent can lend a deeper purpose or meaning to actions. Being a habitual stoned waster may not be very useful unless your intent is to get fatter on snacks. A well timed joint can help break habitual thoughts and feelings if you want to get into a good book, movie or piece of music.
We have all had experience of a bad gig, where it seems the band is just phoning it in and the music fails to connect. Similarly, I know I can feel really energised by a good gig where the band seem focused and engaged when the music really hits home. In this way too, I think the difference between music as art or music as entertainment can depend on the intent of the creator(s). Of course it's success as such depends largely on the (right) audience.
As an aside, I hope I'm not coming across as up on my soapbox, just enjoying this discussion is all.

all that sounds great but usually it's too late in life by the time we settle on that philosophy.

I pushed hard for that stuff for a year here and there but it's so easy to be undermined by others, or to let yourself down on your own.

following your true inner voice is usually the best approach, even if most of us barely do it.