To See Dangers, Avoid Them

The Biblical couple Adam and Eve got names for some reason. Adam means "the one formed from the ground" (from Hebrew, adamah "ground"). Eve is Late Latin from Hebrew (Semitic) Hawwah, literally "a living being". Eve is associated with "life".

Your wife may influence your life. Your husband may too. Folk tales and folk teachings are rife with choosing partners with much care, by seeking to look beneath their "Sunday clothes and facades" and see them at work in working clothes. In Hollywood much may be different, for some reasons -

The daughter you want to marry may be a chip off the block - may resemble her mother, and perhaps in unforeseen ways. Some come to the fore in during the honeymoon, and some later, and can be demanding. Skills, attitudes and much else may go into it. There is no way around that for most people. Inner drives to couple are powerful.

In astrology, however, much else is considered too for partner horoscopy. Answers depend on the sort of astrologer you visit or ask, how skilled and deep-seeing he or she is, and, what form of astrology is tried.

Astrologers say one may detect at least potential dangers in a horoscope, and may often sketch or maybe specify how to avert many of them if not all of them. Ideally, it is for the sake of getting a good life, a suitable mate, and making able use of one's opportunities. Many of these intentions look good. How well are the claims backed up by research, you may wonder, and look in vain for it. Despite that, about half of the Americans believe in astrology - more or less.

There are many knacks to astrology that Western astrologers do not learn, yet astrologers might furnish you with maps for your life's journey, saying that some roads or options seem good and possibly rewarding, while others might appear to be too strenuous and unrewarding for some reasons. And so on. They observe an overall pattern based on the firmament at the time of birth and later on too, and seek to grasp main things from such ideagrams.

There may not be a real need to know all that, only what actually works. And of what works, what is profitable. That boils down a wide, complex "thing", but to what? Some steering ideas, maybe. Regardless of how they are astrologically well-founded or not, mottoes may steer the course ahead. Enabling mottoes should in time show helpful, but there are many influences in a life and family. Conformism, for example, seems able to hinder a lot of tender, personal interests and latent tendencies to grow well.

To strengthen one's inner sides well could be the most needed thing in a conform society, apart from reducing the all too common stress in a society that makes use of all - plants, animals, people. Common adaptations may get sour, and married couples may find that their common life gets set or stale and too little rewarding.

From an interview

UCLA student reporter Rachel Kelley asked: "Maharishi, what is 'enlightenment?'"

Maharishi: Enlightenment means ... no mistakes, no weakness, no shortcoming – success everywhere, fulfillment of desire everywhere. That is enlightenment. One is living in full accord with Natural Law. Spontaneously Nature is supporting us: then we are not in the dark about anything.

Question: What do you think students can do for the world?

Maharishi: They can re-create the world. The world must be re-done ... there is only one thing to restructure the world, and that is enlightenment for everyone.

Maharishi: When people meditate the inner creativity comes out and then, with increased creativity, they don’t have to work that hard.

The principle of Transcendental Meditation is: No hardness in life. This great principle is: Do less and accomplish more. [1]

Learn, follow up intense interests, and reap a maturing character thereby

Life goes through many phases or stages. Through all of them it normally helps to keep one's vividness (of id, libido) intact and not thwarted and led astray. For the lack of it the organism flounders through diseases, great boredom, lacking in character and much else, some other ways. Play also serves to prepare humans and mammals for grown-up living.

To be able to learn throughout life and stay well, try and keep your child-nature intact and solidify it throughout life. If not, life may become stale, if not morbid, health endangered or worsened, and so on. This view is relatable to psychoanalytic and psychodynamic thinking, where it is held that thwarted libido makes dysfunctional, maybe with bodily diseases on top of it, and that character development, on the other hand, results from natural interests that are followed up wisely and for long.

Toward a Happy Garden of Life

'Eden' is related to 'joy' in ancient Hebrew. Hence, the first man and woman lived in joy and were naturists. When the Bible's man and woman were at their peak, so to speak, they didn't know any difference between being naked or dressed and were without shame, says the first book in the Bible.

The first humans were set to tend a fine garden. Sound garden protections and precautions often help: protected by walls and hedges and more, bushes, trees, humans and little animals can thrive together.

To feel free and natural in the nude; good garden walls help.

Mammon is Aramaic and means 'wealth' - it is one of the sure signs of divine blessings in the Old Testament.

Deep within, the natural id appears to like clowns.

Stages

There are good reasons for asserting that good health depends on healthy id, which is like the Child in Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis (TA). Id manifests through phases, says Sigmund Freud and later psychodynamics. Erik H. Erikson's scheme for sound id-related unfoldment is useful for calculations. [Link]

This does not mean it is wise to remain like a child or kitten only; that could be dangerous in the long run. Besides, children differ, and kittens too. Some artists, however, excel in manifesting id sides as if they were children. Pablo Picasso, for example, said it took him a lifetime to be able to paint like children. Hew surely worked for it. Now acat can paint too. Maybe not every cat, and maybe not every human may end up as a Picasso, but take a look: [◦A cat paints (2 videos)]

There are no tricks to it; just go ahead and do it.

Let the surface appearance count

To become like a child is hardly losing one's adult likes and dislikes totally. What should be fruitful, is to keep one's id (zestfulness, joy of living, ado) intact throughout life. It means that the personality factor that is called the Child in Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis (TA) is to be catered to, as health depends greatly on it.

Keeping one's inner Child (libido) alive and well throughout life is different from reversing one's development. To be bland in accepted and acceptable ways should be part of that overriding lesson.

What an innocent beginner - a child - can handle are things that most likely pertain to surfaces only, but hardly many facts. Some children do not always judge a book by its cover.

To cater to relaxed awareness is one of the boons of practical Zen training.

Avoid sufferings to succeed in time

As a grown-up you have to plan. Teen-agers too are served by it, as are children, more or less, depending on their plans and realism.

But there is more: To see dangers, avoid sufferings. It is basic, and often works the other way round too: To avoid sufferings, see dangers (to steer outside them and so on). In psychology, it is an existential tenet that we cannot allow ourselves to see things if such seeing (insight) infects us with too much suffering. Defence mechanisms tend to abort very hard insights in time. In other words, to understand a thing, be strong enough to tackle it. Otherwise the insight may not work very well for you.

Persistent clarity helps through life. Attain to all-round pleasant living.

Like a five-year old child

Have your own Child rather than an idol to think fondly of.

Idols become idols by being targets of naïve, recurrent mental projections of others. Especially children go far in projecting sides to their own, inherent id onto imposing or respectable others. Fear and insecurity may pave the way for such losses to native id also.

Striking some balance should assist you. There are facets of the art of saying what you mean without offending nearly everybody, in part depending on circumstances, or contexts.

You can sort out what you can accomplish, and take care of yourself and maybe put good talents to use as blandly as you can.

To be bland and fair is much to hanker after. To be bland in a fair and neat way is the lesson for nearly everyone that comes to this planet. In Kindergarden and at home he learns to adjust to bosses and others by toning down some expressions rooted in self-centred will. Besides, "The paramhansa is like a five-year old," tells Ramakrishna [Tas 207]

Still a health-preserving middle way of avoiding extremes is largely fit. And one fine root of deep stability is to have a will of one's own.

The Tactful Fare

We may have to balance these life factors as best we can:

Family living consists in part of showing off blandly. Perhaps by a nice house in some all right neighbourhood, filling it with nice outfit, competing with the Joneses.

A secure home base is for serving innocent ones as they naturally grow up. It is pointed out in an Indian fable that what is helpful may be welcomed, what is not, should be left out. It is basically like that. A good garden and lots of fences and mounds in cities may help too.

It is fair - but may not be welcome by all - to take due credit or place it where it belongs.

Good and sensible art is a great boon and helper.

To become like little children has to be mastered in activity.

For Kindergarten children the croaking rooster and animals in a rustic setting can be good helpers somehow. But to get furiously envious like bad little children is not a sign that things run well.

Proficient networking may lead to reports of many kinds.

In Pop Art (q.v.) the artist is at liberty to select, cut up, rearrange and re-compose anything he likes. The end result of such activity - it does not have to pertain only to paintings - can be termed neither quoting nor not-quoting.

Modernistic and Pop Art-like essays are not wholly a quotation circus. They can be rife with observations and many points and may be put to use too, in a quite consistent manner.

As it often happens, new art forms may scare the tradition-bound. What happened to Picasso during his first ten years of renown? He was called insane and more by critics. [Kok; Pap]

A project entepreneur knows that he should adapt or fit in with a minimum of overt nuisance, a minimum of boasting for improving the chances of success on an even keel.

Reminders

Many a criminal has got on in the world by Jesus and Jehovah. Opposed to the Christian and Jewish "scapegoat and ransom brutality called justice", where helpless innocents pay to let scoundrels carry on, we have the vastly more mature moral and ways of Buddhism and of Vedanta Hinduism.

Those guilty of theft, bearing false witness, and inducing others to heinous crimes a heinous criminal may feel impelled to go on through "Jesus has atoned for my sins. The blood of the lamb of Golgotha covers all." But to protect heinous sinners who never make amends or do it full well, means going in the way for divine justice.

For a while it could be seemly to have ulterior motives and plans.

What alarming bosses may do and thrive on top if, is to make use of assets of devoted and obedient contracted servants and workers, and so on.

What helps is to ensure our own way.

Adamant self-presentation matters in some waters and to some people.

Go into dominant attunements the day you can.

You are at liberty to select, cut up, rearrange and re-compose a lot yourself.

Modernistic and relevant poetry tends to be characterised by largely isolated pieces put together without much in between them.

A loaf of bread doesn't harvest many insights.

It happens that fine thing looks like nonsense or thin ice. So maybe skating on thin ice is great art.

We can't all be serving-men.

Centralisation has its ugly aspects, and many can be counteracted by flat-top local democracy.

One of Maharishi's key ideas is that we could all do better if we adapted to fit in well with a minimum of nuisance.

How could Jesus come to the lost sheep of Israel when God said he himself had destroyed them much earlier [Matthew 10:6; 15:24; Hosea 1:4; 13:9,11; Amos 2:13; 5:2]?

Jesus came like a mother hen in vain on his save-only-Jews mission.

Solomon didn't take good enough precautions, and the ark of God vanished.

The Good Life