From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   "Basically we are not really that much different from other mammals and   
   creatures. Beyond our ability to talk, the thing that makes human beings   
   really stand out is our apparent ability to create a conceptual image of   
   the world and then relate to that idea (or any idea apparently) to the   
   exclusion of virtually everything and anything else.   
      
   Thus, our densely populated human world is full of different cultures and   
   beliefs, all competitively vying and clamouring for attention. So much so,   
   that some suggest humanity has gradually become divorced from the   
   underlying background reality that all other living creatures on this   
   planet still have and retain an awareness of. Accordingly, human beings,   
   via this ability, have created their very own multifaceted ‘version’ of   
   reality, one that increasingly flies in the face of the way things are in   
   reality for the rest of nature, to the point that most people these days   
   generally feel that they lack a deeper connection to the rest of the   
   universe, an idea that leaves them feeling somehow empty or incomplete and   
   thus has people searching for some kind of deeper meaning to life, whether   
   it be religion or philosophy.   
      
   The standard social norm of having a good job, a nice home and family,   
   doesn’t always seem totally to fulfill that yearning need. I suppose this   
   is precisely where religion and philosophy are supposed to come into the   
   picture, except that those religions and philosophies themselves also   
   often seem to fail us, in that almost all our religions only really   
   succeed in distancing us even farther from nature instead of bringing us   
   closer to it. Our religions comfort us by pertaining to answer all our   
   questions, only they don’t really answer them beyond telling us to behave   
   ourselves in the meantime, while at the same time, rather frustratingly,   
   just putting off the whole subject until after we die. As such they are   
   more a way of ‘explaining away’ the mysteries of life rather than bringing   
   us closer to them.   
      
   I suspect the simple truth is that there is probably no ‘sense’ (no   
   meaning per se, or at least not a rational one) to life in quite the way   
   we might want there to be; that while we are alive we can, of course, do   
   all the usual things that the majority of people like to do, such as   
   working and having homes and families. Nevertheless, we still have to   
   understand that all these ‘things’ do not really constitute nor represent   
   the ‘meaning of life’ in and of themselves. Yet in modern society that is   
   exactly and precisely what people are encouraged to turn to for some sort   
   of sense of completion and solace. The end result is that no one really   
   knows what they are doing any more. More often than not, we merely bluff   
   our way through life instead of consciously living it to the full in   
   complete awareness of doing so.   
      
   What then is this ‘fullness’ we seek, where is this ‘life more   
   abundant’   
   that everyone inwardly craves but can’t really find? I don’t have any   
   definitive answers, although being a keen observer I do think I’ve managed   
   to pick up a few clues here and there that might just well be of interest   
   to those with similarly inquiring minds. For example, if there’s such a   
   thing as a meaning to life and we are part of it, then we really shouldn’t   
   have to look any further than into our own inner being in order to be able   
   to understand it all, or at least our own part in it.   
      
   Perhaps by going along with the universe, instead of rebelling against it   
   by indulging in all our own ideas that we project and superimpose upon the   
   world instead of dealing with it the way it really is, we might just gain   
   a few insights. Not because we have so cleverly figured it all out with   
   our pencils and computers and such like, but because by going along with   
   things sometimes you can also come to understand more of its true nature   
   and that, although it may not be able to give you straight verbal answers,   
   that doesn’t mean you can’t still learn something from observing the way   
   it behaves and conducts itself with you and with everything else.   
      
   Maybe what we have to try and first understand and accept is that nature   
   itself isn’t intellectual and that, in the main, it has got to where it   
   has today after billions of years of unfolding without the benefits of   
   rational thinking and language to explain it; that although its purpose,   
   its (and thus our) whole reason for being, is a totally silent one that   
   requires no explanation to function, which doesn’t mean we can’t still   
   learn to go along with it and pick up a few interesting and useful things   
   about it and ourselves in the process.   
      
   Nature is our friend. Nature doesn’t lie. In other words, if we start off   
   at home by looking a little more into our own nature and our own natural   
   abilities, then later may come a view of the bigger picture in which we   
   all naturally belong."   
      
   --extract from: 'The WILD Way To Lucid Dreaming'   
      
   ### - originally wrote the above in the clear realisation that one of the   
   accumulated 'effects' of WILDing is to reach a point of enlarged   
   perspective wherein the world one is completely familiar with - the one   
   bursting with normal activity - is suddenly perceived in hindsight as   
   being somehow incomplete and lacking in terms of having any real depth to   
   it... upon arriving on planet earth we thus struggle to support ourselves   
   in an already firmly established society, one that offers only very   
   certain ways of getting by, and if you don't (or can't) fit in and make   
   with the program then you're basically doomed to struggle even harder &   
   more harshly: a square peg that can't be fully forced into one of the neat   
   little round holes society demands, a reject as such!   
      
   even those that do manage to fit in and get with the program, rich or   
   poor, find their activities seriously proscribed to a small set of   
   socially accepted norms, the wealthy may indeed eat in better restaurants   
   and live in better houses but it's still basically all the same thing from   
   top to bottom to varying degrees: we wile away our time acquiring some   
   kind of standard education only to then work our lives away paying for   
   houses and hopefully families, all done at such a hurried and systematic   
   pace and takes up so much time that it basically leaves no time for   
   anything else at the end of it all besides retirement and old age!?   
      
   and that was it! THAT was our whole life! we went to school, got a job,   
   made a home and, if we worked hard enough and were lucky enough, hopefully   
   families too, but that's all! that's really ALL most people ever make of   
   their whole lives! content perhaps to think that if nada else they at   
   least made it a little materially easier for the next generation, and then   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)