Kelsk’s kreed

Unconventional Conventionalism

[philosophybits]

“Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism…. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”

— Emma Goldman, “What is Patriotism?”

[kelskskreed]

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Being a patriot means defending your iron gated plot of land from those who would change your plot to their own perceptions.

It is the invaders who come to change your plot that are conceited, arrogant, and egotistical.

This misconception is what leads to people in today’s society putting down our militaries. Having lived the military life, I have lived being put down due to these misconceptions. Understand that people join the military for a plethora of reasons. Most are patriots to one degree or another, but rarely are they conceited, arrogant, or egotistical.

Those who would start wars and call it patriotism have forever been the bane of patriotism. It sound like a good thing when it’s in the name of patriotism, but people do not think beyond what they are told. They do not know what patriotism is, because they are told to go to war IS patriotism. They are unable to see it for the farce it is. Defending ones nation is patriotic. To invade another without just reason is conceited, arrogant, and egotistical.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophybits]

“Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.”

— Euripides, Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977

[kelskskreed]

The wiser one becomes, the easier it is to tell the type of person before you in any given situation. People give suttle clues about themselves in everything they do.

To know when your words will fall on deaf ears is truly wise. To know when to hold back, because the one before you cannot handle what you have left to say, is wise truly.

The unspoken; the silence of the wise, the wisdom to hold ones tongue, and the foresight to move forward in the best manner.

- Kelsk 🍻

[gnosticinitiation-deactivated20]

Anger is the cause of pain in hell.

There is nothing that can make an angry person happy.

There is no vice like hatred.

The mind does not find peace when hatred lives in the heart.

Anger and hatred have no other function but to harm.

I shall remove the fuel of that foe, anger, for it has no other goal than to cause harm.

One should cultivate instead, patience, in many ways.

Master Santideva

From The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, the Bodhicaryavatara

[kelskskreed]

We are all taught to stand strong like a mountain and face adversity, to steel ourselves for the future, or to build pillars to hold our mental fortitude up. These things are all necessary to protect ourselves from outside threats.

The only question is, where is the sponge? You see, we have an enemy from within us that can destroy us. As has been said, it is anger. Anger is like water. It gets into the cracks and erodes our mountain, corrodes out steeling, and fills us up until our pillars are flooded. Patience is the sponge that allows us to soak up and remove the water that is our anger.

Patience manifests itself in many ways to apply to many situations. Many cannot find patience as anger fills them and consumes your thoughts. If one is at this point, they must look outside of themselves. Look to the hand that brings the sponge. Someone or some event will happen and there will be a moment when you realize the water within you. That person or event is the hand. Take the sponge and learn patience.

- Kelsk 🍻

[best-shower-thoughts]

People get post traumatic stress flashback even years after a horrible experience. It is a shame our brain doesn’t give us post euphoric flashbacks years after genuine happy moments. (source)

[kelskskreed]

Oh, but our brains do my friends. The problem is that most don’t know how any of this works. Let me preface this with the following. I have been to war. I am now disabled because of it. I have experienced much post traumatic stress. In learning how to handle “flashbacks”, I have learned how to elicit “happy” flashbacks.

Traumatic events are stored in your unconscious. Your unconscious mind takes control when certain parameters have been met. These parameters are something from the traumatic event that your subconscious mind thinks, “it’s happening again! I know what to do!” and it floods into your conscious (Hence the flashback). The parameters could be sight, smell, sound, or more.

Your subconscious mind stores the happy too! The problem is most people are to busy staring at their phones, going to social events, or whatever else they do. You need to allow your subconscious to take over. One just needs to relax and allow the parameters surrounding your happy memories to invoke the subconscious into action.

The easiest example is if you have listened to music most of your life. Your happy memories can get attached to sound just like the traumatic. When you hear a song that brings a positive memory to mind, your subconscious goes, “Oh yeah, I know what to do!” and it floods into your conscious. Most people can say a song reminds you of a certain good time. This is the same process as a “flashback”.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophyquotes]

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[kelskskreed]

This is an absolute truth! These days, society has whittled away at protocol for beginning relationships. This has led to many unhappy marriages.

In days past, one would spend many months dating another before moving forward to the physical side of relationships. Usually, the sex was withheld until married. In this way, you become friends before moving forward with marriage.

These days, it’s often in the first or second “date” couples begin engaging in sex. This drastically changes the dynamic of the relationship. This also would not be a problem, but people do not stick to intelligence at this point. Instead, lust takes over the rationalization of compatability. In this way, friendship is set aside.

Another issue is that society has brought sex to a point where there needs to be no bond. It’s no different than going to dinner with someone. It used to be something that was shared only with someone you had already established a relationship with and decided to marry.

What all this means, is that society forgot how to build a quality relationship. Those issues don’t have to be issues. In fact, they would not be an issue if couples would build a friendship as they moved forward as was the custom.

The key to building a good relationship is communication. You must know your partner. What do they want out of life, where are they headed, and what do they want out of you? These are things all friends know about each other. If you don’t know these things about your friends, they are in fact not friends but acquaintances. We are treating significant others as acquaintances. You would not marry an acquaintance and hope you are compatible enough. These are things society has forgotten as it shifted toward sex as foremost priority.

- Kelsk 🍻

[quote-diaries]

Remind yourself that you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.

[kelskskreed]

Beyond the simplicity of this truth, look to the why.

Why are you following what everyone else is doing. Is it really what you want?

Why haven’t you asked yourself that question before? Have You been living through others?

Why is everyone else following each other in the first place? Is that really who you are too?

Why does everyone else think that’s the right direction? What’s the right direction for you?

- Kelsk 🍻

[quote-diaries]

Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.

[kelskskreed]

Simple yet true. What the fear pertains to varies from person to person. Most of the time it’s the fear of failure that hinders. We are are own worst enemy. We can be so afraid of failure that we fail by not even trying. We simply stress our body and mind out for no reason.

We must challenge our selves to see beyond. That if we at least try, we will either succeed or know how to Better approach for next time. No matter the result, by simply pushing forward we can cause less stress to ourselves and take pride in what we were able to accomplish.

Before you know it, your dream may be made real.

- Kelsk 🍻

[quote-diaries]

Worrying will never change the outcome.

[kelskskreed]

This my friends requires a little perspective. If the subject matter is completely out of your control, then yes, this applies 100%. However, if you have a part to play in the outcome, then worries can be detrimental to the outcome.

Worry means you are thinking from a place of fear. A place of fear will impede you from making certain choices which could be beneficial to the outcome. To conquer your fears you must obtain courage. Courage, in this facet, is simply confidence in yourself. Remember you made it this far, take pride in that and face your fear head on.

The best way to defeat worry is to educate yourself, to gain the knowledge you lack. The internet is at your fingertips. Search well enough and you will find. With knowledge you build confidence in your thoughts and views on the matter at hand. With confidence you build the necessary courage to face your fears and therefore defeat your worry.

- Kelsk 🍻

[kidphilosophy]

“How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever meet them? But you’ll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter.”

— Charles Bukowski (via qvotable)

[kelskskreed]

While there is much to take from this, we must not make love so insignificant so easily.

Love is not a chance encounter. The chance encounter is more about the level of compatibility with your personality. Let’s look at the fact that people can be in great depths of love and still not have many interests in common. We can also look at the fact that opposites attract. Love itself is something that is built by choice. Someone we once loved can still be hated as time moves forward.

We can look at chance as well. Chances can be increased or decreased. You will not find someone as compatible as you should like staring at tumblr everyday. In fact, social media decreases your encounters and creates false perceptions of people. You have to take the core of your interests and go to a common place, actual or virtual, to increase your chances of encountering what you seek. Beyond that, you must actually communicate with each other about your future goals and desires.

Love is what you make of it. If you sit and ponder that there may be someone better because you have yet to encounter them, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your partner. In fact, if you are wondering such things, it is likely you are not in love in the first place. More over, you likely lusted and pressed forward. You must desire to build your love mutually. It is in this way you will be truly happy in love.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophyquotes]

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

[kelskskreed]

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Love concerns feelings/emotions toward another. Respect is how you treat another without regard to your feelings/emotions.

For instance, there are plenty of folks I have worked with whom I despised as people for their various views or personalities. Therefore, there was zero chance of love from me toward them. However, I was able to respect them for how they held themselves within the work environment. I was also able to respect them for their abilities and the heights they attained with those abilities within their career.

Just because two concepts may be construed as similar in nature does not mean they are interchangeable. Just as well, because you choose to fill a void by lying to yourself that respect is the same as love only makes you ignorant. At best you may receive pity. As I have mentioned before, pity is far from love and is, in fact, even farther from respect.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophyquotes]

“We do not want to improve ourselves or be bettered, we merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.”

— Albert Camus, The Fall

[kelskskreed]

Unfortunately, all too often do folk fall into this state of being. I have been in this state before myself. It can be position of weakness and an attempt to feel something (typically a form of love) from others. The problem is what others give is not what it appears. In no way is pity love or encouragement.

When someone shows pity it is because they are looking down on you and seeing that they are above you. They may feel sad for you at best because you have fallen so low. Encouragement to stay the course you’re on does anything but help you get back to a healthy state of being.

If your ship is sinking, who wants to hear; you’ll be ok, at least you’ve made it this far, or things will get better. None of that stops your ship from sinking. That is them standing above you thinking “that’s a pity, I’m going to watch this ship sink.” Once you can see this fact, you can begin to change your state of mind.

The encouragement that comes sans pity is actually positive as YOU have shown progression. That feeling from others will from a point of pride. They shall see you plug the hole in your ship and have a genuine smile from the same viewing platform. They are no longer looking down upon you.

It is once you bring yourself up that you can take pride in yourself and continuing up will be all the easier. Your future happiness is in your hands and yours alone. If you are relying on others to feel good about yourself, you are not living your life. You are living through others.

- Kelsk 🍻

[kidphilosophy]

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”

— Plutarch (via thebuddhistmind)

[kelskskreed]

Quality over quantity is something that is struggled with for many. Popular society is to have many “friends”.

A friend should be much deeper than what you find in popular society. Friends are people who have their own thoughts and opinions. They share common interests with you. They love you at times and hate you at times. Theirs is a bond that goes on because they are connected to you though countless hours of conversation. They will be honest to you even when you might get your feeling hurt.

What friends are not are those who would pull you down, steal from you, climb over you for their own desires, or tell you what you want to hear for fear of hurting you.

“Friendship” is the essence of any relationship. Your parents are friends that discipline, teach, and take care of you. Your spouse is a friend that you have sexual relations with and build a family with. Friends are mutual partners of one degree or another.

Finally, understand that a friend does not have to be a part of every aspect of your life. They don’t have to enjoy all things you do. They don’t have to have the same life goals as you. All they need is to be true to you and you to them.

[philosophybits]

“It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

— Pierre Marc Gaston de Lévis, Maximes et réflexions

[kelskskreed]

Indeed it is. Answers are given to fabrication to fit ones needs if desired. This can give a false perception if the desire is not true. However, questions give insight as to what a person is thinking and which direction their mind is going.

If ever you are unsure, try to let them take the lead to see where they intend to go.

- Kelsk 🍻

[ancientorigins]

Quote of the day…

[kelskskreed]

This is great to keep in mind, especially in our current society. Opinions are everywhere and from everyone. Some are good and some are not.

One can have an opinion with very little knowledge. The issue is when folk adhere to an opinion and think themselves wise. To do so is ignorant.

Remember that an opinion is a persons attempt to bring knowledge to life, to convey knowledge this way or that way. Use an opinion as a research tool to further your own knowledge. Opinions can give you a direction to source knowledge. Do not take it as knowledge.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophybits]

“To have knowledge one must know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

— Confucius, Analects

[kelskskreed]

This is so simple yet should be so obvious. If we think we already know, we believe ourselves wise, and therefore not ignorant. That is the most ignorant.

We must always understand that we do not know everything. That we are, in fact, ignorant to one degree or another. With that wall down, we are open to receiving knowledge. With that mindset and the gaining of knowledge we become wise.

- Kelsk 🍻

[books-n-quotes]

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

[kelskskreed]

This can be applied to most any aspect of ones life. Whatever the mountain you must climb, you should do it for yourself. It should be for your own goal. It should be for your own view. If it isn’t, then it is wasted.

Humans are egocentric. If you climb the mountain to say, “look at me”, you will only be judged. Beyond that, it would be saddening that you climbed your mountain only to look down upon those around you.

When you reach the top and look down upon others, it should be only to help them up. For that will fill you with much more.

- Kelsk 🍻

[philosophybits]

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

[kelskskreed]

This is just one perception and not truth. This view looks at the people who believe as feable beings, cowering behind their “big brother”. Most religions are merely a form of our modern social contract theory. A manner by which we should live our lives to be “decent” people which most can agree upon.

Further than that most of the ancient long standing religions are very similar in their origins. One might say they are different points of view of the same thing. Just as today, people have various degrees of belief. They also have varying degrees of staying within the lines. Perhaps that variance was enough at one point to have the origin split into different religions. This would be similar to say catholic or baptist of the Christians of today.

The fact is religions point to something “out of this world” as a beginning point. This point pre-history (before humans began writing). Whether someone chooses to believe it was Angels/God, aliens, or a micro organism is all personal perception. That perception is the basis of religion, not fear. Fear is just a reason that some choose to believe.

- Kelsk 🍻