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jamenta
- New Age Perspectives, yet another Perspective!
Mary,
Thanks for your reply.
You wrote:
> "I’m sorry my message there didn’t resonate with you,
> but not every idea is viable for every person.
On the contrary! I did find your article resonating
and thus my posted response. I see no need for you
to be sorry, not everyone will agree with you 100%
in what you have to say; and I am assuming the idea of
your forum on New Age perspectives is to allow for
the discussion of different view points? (If I
assume to much, please let me know, and I will write
my own New Age perspectives else where!) Indeed, what
would the world be if everyone agreed with everyone
else, and everything was absolutely perfect? Sterile
and boring would be my guess (and hardly New Age).
> Just to clarify, I did not mean to suggest that I
> hated my work. On the contrary, I love working with
> the horses and gain great satisfaction from it. My
> point was merely that many people work at things they
> don’t enjoy and feel that they cannot simply stop
> doing so.
I appreciate your candour Mary. And I believe if you
re-read my original reply, you will find I never did
make the proposition that you in particular hated your
work or found it unsatisfying. And I did understand
your point! Thus the reason why I posted my reply,
because I wanted to contribute to your forum another
"New Age perspective" in the hope it might generate
discussion and further comments.
Indeed, I am curious on what your thoughts
are in regards to the alternate "perspective" I
ventured forth? You seem to think that I did not
understand your original post, but I think I did.
You make the assumption one has to work to survive
in this reality, and if one dislikes one's work,
one can learn to focus on the positive aspects of
work instead of the negative; and one way
to do this is to focus your attention in-the-moment,
"and not withdrawing the mind from the activity".
By doing this, you claim "feelings of resentment
vanish" because one is completely immersed in one's
actions. You also state, "Only when we cease
to work in a negative and distracted state of mind
and begin to apply our will to the task can we
experience the flowering of consciousness that can
be gained from our labor".
Now that was your "perspective" that you posted on
this forum and I believe I understand it, though
I may not necessarily agree with you on the truth
of it. Since, for one - you do make the assumption
"We all have to work at something". Let me say a few
things about that one assumption...
I think you would agree with me that one well known
new age tenet is the belief there are no accidents.
And since you wrote the following to me:
"While I am familiar with Richard Bach’s work and
the ‘entity’ Seth, it would be presumptuous of me
to suppose that they comprise spiritual wisdom in
its entirety."
I will quote other authors besides Bach and Seth,
so you can rest assured that all my New Age ideas
do not come from a single source. (I am curious,
by the way Mary, from what source did you base your
original article on? I would assume since you
believe it is presumptuous that any single source
comprises spiritual wisdom in its entirety, that
your article is not based just on your own personal
assumptions?)
Let me quote from two well known, (usually)
respected authors:
"Only shallow men believe in luck"
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"That power which erring men call chance."
-John Milton (the poet)
Carl Jung also believed strongly in the concept of
asynchronous-synchronous events, based on his many
long years of study of the unconscious. His essay on
synchronicity describes in detail the idea that
an individual's reality is not governed by chance
alone.
This being said, I do not believe your proposition
"We all have to work at something" is necessarily
true. This type of statement assumes the
soul is powerless to decide its own destiny, and
again I quote your original article:
"that’s the way of survival in this particular
reality"
An assumption that this is the way reality is and
there is nothing one can do about it. And yet,
if there is anything about reality I have personally
learned over time; and which a great deal of reading
has helped teach me, it is the truth that there is still
much to learn about what reality really is, nor do
we yet know fully the role chance and "coincidence" plays
in each of our lives.
And that brings me back to the "Lillies of the field"
quote I posted in my original reply (not Seth or Bach
again, but certainly a New Age kind of thought). This
is the belief that - one does not have to work
in order to live - your soul is not forced to do anything
it does not want to do. If you have the courage to
follow your heart, to do what you really want to do,
and not do what you think you must do, because you
believe you "have to do it" or you believe reality is
this way and that's that; but rather, if you trust the
spirit within you, you will indeed find a flowering
of your consciousness much like the Lillies of the field;
and you can trust in the synchronicity of life to take
you where you want to go.
The trick is to be much like children are, spontaneous,
free to follow what is within you, and believe that
what is within you is good and right; and if you followed
those impulses from within, you would not find it
necessary to find a way to "enjoy work".
Your article did strike a resonance within me! As I
think my response to your article struck a resonance
in you Mary. And I do think my finding this forum
was no accident. And I challenge you to think more
about your concept of Work and Spiritual awakening.
I challenge your assumption one must work in this
reality we live in. And I challenge your assumption
that spiritual awakening can happen by learning to
enjoy work; for you assume one must work in the first
place, or that spiritual awakening occurs when an
individual believes she is powerless to change the
physical circumstances in which she is forced to work.
Love and Peace,
John
