“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”
My PDC just sent this to me. It is absolutely essential to where I am at right now. I took a few hours off of writing to be a mom and before getting back to writing tonight, wanted to re-post this (for those keeping track, I'm at 150pgs). Just remember how important and powerful choice is. It can affect love, disdain, everything. Much like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", it is possible to erase a memory or at least change your emotional reaction to a situation or a trauma. I am going the Spotless Mind route: light therapy to erase, or rather shift, a recent relationship in order to move forward. One valuable lesson I'm learning is to be very careful who you befriend or allow in your life. When you're on the road to success, people will come in and try to knock you off course. Be stronger than that, stronger than them. In the end the real friends, the really valuable people in your life will be there and when you can't always spend time together, it never changes the core of your relationship. Real is real. Period.
While this post is more Eastern Philosophy, it applies to success, to people, to art. All of my artist friends know exactly what this means. It seems in order to be a real artist, one must endure a tremendous amount of suffering. I always remember the torment Einstein endured. The fact that Walt Disney was fired twice for "lacking creativity and imagination". People, the people who cannot fathom you will do exactly what you dream, will try and tear you down and tell you "you can't". Who cares what they say! They are miserable, unhappy people who tear you down because they 1)lack imagination, 2) are too self-absorbed to imagine you'll do what they can never achieve, 3) live in a gossip, insane bubble that allows them to "try" and judge you, put you down because they clearly haven't the gull or intellect or will to do what you are doing. Nay-sayers exist for the sole purpose to prove them wrong. They are not the exception. YOU ARE. Artists, you know who you are, remember the things others have endured and you will know you are on the right path. The more people tell you, "you can't" the more you should know, "you will". Jealousy rears its head at every turn. Mediocrity is not the artist's "M.O." - determination, endurance, and the mere knowledge that they will - and can - achieve something miraculous is why we do what we do in the first place.
To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.
The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.
The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.
There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the
Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.
For more on this: http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html
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