Give Up Now!

The following is an antidote to misguided tendencies in Western society -

In our culture there is a certain standard narrative that seems to ooze out of most movies, pop music and general common sense. It is the idea of never giving up, of pushing through no matter what in order to, finally, take home the gold. "It matters not how strait the gate, how filled with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul", as William Ernest Henley put it. At the center of this concept and hence strongly advocated in our culture, is the use of will and determination, of obtaining power and control and of general mastery and domination.

No Block

Muscle tensions inhibit flexibility. Sounds simple, right? The more flexible you are, the more you can move around freely. Right? Right. The way you move your body, from your head and face to your feet and legs is how you express yourself. Hence, if you are really tense, you will not be able to express yourself to the fullest extent. Now, where do chronic muscle tensions come from? Trauma. Trauma can be physical, like damaging impacts in an accident, or emotional, in a shit happens kind of way. They can be more or less bad, but they can manifest themselves in more or less strong chronic tension. The answer is, to let go..

Mountain Presence with Nietzsche, Lin-Chi and Conan the Barbarian

Lin-Chi

This text can probably be described as one step further from the last one. In the last text (Let the Thunder Rumble: Natural Movement with Thoreau and Chuang Tzu) I wrote about how moving in accordance with nature, which means constantly adapting, may reduce some of the suffering most of us live through (caused by the refusal to accept nature/change). Going further, it seems to me as if embracing this chaos of change, also makes for a special kind of person. "The torch of chaos and doubt, that's what the sage steers by.", is how the Daoists put it.*

Let the Thunder Rumble: Natural Movement with Thoreau and Chuang Tzu

Alan Watts once called change a synonym for life. For if something does not change anymore, does not move anymore, it is dead. Movement is life. Nothing stays in one place forever, as Heraclitus put it, "everything flows". The nature of reality seems to be dynamic rather than static. Everything moves, grows, is in decay, wins, loses, inhales and exhales. It is an up and down that is often hard to accept. Almost by design we as humans seem to want things to be permanent. We want to keep things the way they are. Change provokes insecurity and monotony in change presents us with familiarity. These, however seem to be unrealistic expectations. Reality doesn't work that way*. Taking a look at it usually confirms this: The movements of waves, tides, birth and death all point towards an impermanent reality. It may be argued that all of this is part of a huge cycle of coming and going, yet it is evident that most things do not last, at least not in the form in which they are perceived at the moment.