theosociety

[theosociety]

patience isn’t a synonym for inactivity or complacence: it’s also a necessary quality in the most fervent activity, in the most committed engagement

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Virgen de Guadalupe - Marion Martinez’s Circuit Board Art

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By religious, I mean actively believing in a higher power(s). Cultural experiences related to religion (holidays, days of rest, sayings) don't count for the purpose of this poll.

This is hardly very scientific, but I'm curious.

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“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

— Oscar Wilde

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This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...You must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.

Hermann Hesse

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(45/54) A jar of soil. That’s all I have left of my home. It’s good soil. A guidebook once called Nahavand ‘a piece of heaven, fallen to earth.’ But there’s blood in the soil too. There have been more wars on Iran’s soil than any other country. We’ve had more battles, more bloodshed, more defeats than any other people. And this has been one of the worst of them. The people who stayed in Iran tried their best. But one by one they fell: anyone who stepped out, anyone who spoke up, anyone who said: ‘This is not working for us.’ They were silenced. It was a savage violence. A violence from fourteen hundred years ago. From the moment of those very first executions on the roof of the school, there has been no coherence. No 𝘥𝘢𝘢𝘥. The smallest act could lead to death: a blog post, a sign at a protest, a few strands of hair showing beneath a headscarf. The regime needs fear to stay in control. And for fear to spread, the violence must be random. So that everyone thinks: ‘I could be next. It could happen to me.’ They’ve turned the country into a dark forest. When there is light, when there is law, when there is 𝘥𝘢𝘢𝘥, you know where danger comes from. You can keep away from it. But in the dark danger can come from anywhere, at any time. Parvaneh stayed. The young woman from 𝘕𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘰. The one with the strongest voice. She tried to work for change within the country. In an interview she told a reporter: ‘Iranians abroad can provide spiritual support, but the front must emerge from within Iran.’ She kept writing. She kept speaking out. She kept fighting for political freedom. Only now she was fighting for one-tenth the freedoms that she had before. One night the intelligence services broke into her home. They stabbed her to death, alongside her husband. Dariush was a tall man, much bigger than Parvaneh. But they stabbed her twice as many times. Either they hated her twice as much, or she fought them twice as hard.”

 شیشه‌ای خاک است، از خانه‌ام ایران. همه‌ی آنچه از زادگاهم برایم مانده است. خاک خوبی‌ست. خاک نهاوند. زمانی کتاب ایران‌گردی آن را “پاره‌ای از بهشت بر زمین افتاده" نامیده بود. خون بسیارانی با آن خاک درآمیخته است. خاک ایران بیش از هر سرزمین دیگری درگیر جنگ و ستیز بوده است. ما بیش از هر ملتی نبردها، پیروزی‌ها و شکست‌ها داشته‌ایم. اما این یکی از بدترین‌ها بود. مردمی که در ایران ماندند، تلاش‌ خود را کردند. ولی آنان را یکی پس از دیگری از میان برداشتند: هر کس پا پیش نهاد، پرسشی کرد، هر کس گفت: “این برای ما کارآمد نیست.” همه را خاموش کردند. خشونت دهشتناکی بود. خشونتی برآمده از هزار و چهارسد سال پیش. از آن دم که نخستین اعدام‌ها بر پشت بام آن مدرسه آغاز شد، بیداد پهلوان میدان بود. کمترین‌ جنبش مرگ‌آور بود: یک پُست وبلاگی، یک پوستر اعتراض، چند تار مو که از زیر روسری نمایان باشد. رژیم می‌داند که خشونت باید ناگهانی و بی‌دلیل باشد تا ترس همه‌گیر شود. تا همه بپندارند: “شاید نفر بعدی باشم. این رویداد برای من هم رخ خواهد داد.” کشور را جنگلی تاریک کرده‌اند. هنگامی که روشنایی باشد، هنگامی که قانون باشد، هنگامی که داد باشد، خطر را می‌توان شناخت. تاریکی اما از هر سو و هر آن تو را غافلگیر خواهد کرد. پروانه ماند. جوان‌ترین عضو نیرو. آنکه رساترین صدا را داشت. ضد شاه بود. از اینرو فکر می‌کرد در امان است، تلاش کرد از درون کشور تغییر ایجاد کند. به روزنامه‌نگاری گفته بود: “ایرانیان خارج از کشور می‌توانند پشتیبان معنوی باشند، اما کارزار می‌بایستی در درون پا بگیرد.” به نوشتن و سخن گفتن ادامه داد. به نبرد برای آزادی، برای یک دهم آزادی‌هایی که پیش از این داشت! یک شب دژخیمان رژیم اهریمنی به خانه‌شان ریختند. او و همسرش، داریوش فروهر را با زخم کارد کشتند. داریوش مردی بلند‌‌بالا و بسیار نیرومندتر از پروانه بود. پروانه را دو برابر او زخم زده بودند. یا کینه‌شان به او دو برابر بود، یا او دو برابر پایداری کرده بود

[theosociety]

We're Serious. It's Publisher's Binding Thursday!

We came across this striking publisher's cloth binding on an 1895 book on theosophy. The front is decorated with eye-catching symbols of theosophy, but the back cover also bears a serious looking fellow with a serious sort of message.

Sinclair, Marie, Countess of Caithness. Serious letters to serious friends. 2nd ed. London, C.L.H. Wallace, 1888.

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An excerpt from an undated conversation (pre-1989) with filmmaker John Cassavetes, who apparently was a prophet.

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The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

-Robert M Pirsig

[theosociety]

No Complaints

If you want to have no complaints, stop complaining. Complaining is a symptom of the basic dissatisfaction of life. It is the natural response to suffering. It is habit forming. One of the obstacles to becoming happy is the social encouragement of complaining. Even if you are feeling pretty well, there is always something not quite right that you can use to spark a conversation. If you fall into the habit of exchanging complaints with your friends and family, then you may start to believe that all of life’s little annoyances are actually bad. You will be ever vigilant for problems so that you have something to talk about.

Mindfulness can help you combat a complaining habit. If you spend a day noticing all of your complaints, you will see just how ingrained the habit is in your outlook. If you notice just the complaints that find their way into your speech, you will see who your complaining buddies are. If you notice all the complaints that cross your mind, you will see how you resist life.

When you remain mindful of complaints, your unconscious complaining will stop. You will be slightly amused by your reaction to perceived problems. You will also notice how people around you complain, but you won’t get sucked into the idea that the world is a series of minor and major inconveniences. You will build some immunity to negativity. Of course you can, and will, still complain, just for fun, but you will know that beneath it all, life is good.

[theosociety]

I just saw this and I’m cackling:

[theosociety]

It's not the peaks or troughs

They're there, obviously, but the important stuff happens between. If we're fortunate, that's where we spend 90% of our lives: somewhere in the middle. So don't despair when you descend and don't be wary of enjoying success. It's perfectly human to be exactly where you are, where you have been, and where you will be.

[theosociety]

“Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds in this world are in their lover’s eye–lilac opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child’s Sunday, lost voices, one’s favorite suit, Autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.”

— Truman Capote, from Other Voices, Other Rooms, (Random House, 1948)

[theosociety]

"We believe that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence." — Charles Alexander Eastman (Santee Dakota)

[theosociety]

Feel free to rb for more varied input