And I like the clear-eyed appreciation of how that state works. I've succumbed, in the past, to the feeling that I'd overcome once and for all that state, and that I'd never think in that way again. — csalisbury
What I want to say is that the depressive state has to be met on its own terms. — csalisbury
So the really good state wants to dance and exult and see the bad state as 'blindness' or 'confusion' that is over now that the truth is revealed. And the really bad state wants to see the good state as deluded and sugarcoating. — csalisbury
I'm not the type to dismiss ecstatic states, but I have been trying to figure out how to integrate them into my life. — csalisbury
I'm sorry - I wasn't posting with the intent of upsetting you, but I can see how the way I responded was callous. I'm trying not to respond to the stories and thoughts of others with the same ' corrective' impulse I've used for a while, especially on here with philosophy, but thats just what I did, I think. — csalisbury
. At least for me the mood was just so thick and physical that it was all going on below ideology, even if an icy logic of suicide was a symptom. Indeed, I'd often get a little risky with substances in such states. While this isn't ideal, it often helped.
Yeah, this is tricky. I'm not good at living in the middle. I'm not at all claiming that I live in a state of ecstasy. I mean I usually really approve of myself or I am really disgusted with myself. While there is a healthy or unhealthy-but-enjoyable narcissism involved, there is also a genuine lust/curiosity that directs me beyond myself when I am happy. (I assume this is pretty common: happiness as being on the hopeful chase.) — sign
There are others who are vexed with themselves when they observe their own imperfectness, and display an impatience that is not humility; so impatient are they about this that they would fain be saints in a day. Many of these persons purpose to accomplish a great deal and make grand resolutions; yet, as they are not humble and have no misgivings about themselves, the more resolutions they make, the greater is their fall and the greater their annoyance, since they have not the patience to wait for that which God will give them when it pleases Him.
Though for me it was - and occasionally still is - alcohol. And sometimes adderall. But it was very much about doing whatever was necessary to get to a state where I could try to connect with others, at whatever cost. It does sometimes work, is the thing. I'm of two minds here. — csalisbury
It's only becoming clear to me now that the real gem of the book is how it deals with the art(?) of integrating ecstatic and nonecstatic states. — csalisbury
I've been toying with another idea that the point of nonecstatic interludes is to fashion a soul or self that is able to retain the insights of the ecstatic moments without being disintegrated — csalisbury
How, but by the medium of a world like this?" — Keats via csalisbury
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/
In the introduction to Thoughts Feuerbach assumes the role of diagnostician of a spiritual malady by which he claims that modern moral subjects are afflicted. This malady, to which he does not give a name, but which he might have called either individualism or egoism, he takes to be the defining feature of the modern age insofar as this age conceives of “the single human individual for himself in his individuality […] as divine and infinite” (GTU 189/10). The principal symptom of this malady is the loss of “the perception [Anschauung] of the true totality, of oneness and life in one unity” (GTU 264/66).
...
Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is
a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137) — SEP
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