#learn to die

[mtvscreengrabs]

Love Like Blood - The Killing Joke (1985)

[steffenwithfriends87]

[cosmiknots]

We are humanity. We are the dead. They have become us, as we will become the dead of future generations.

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton, pg. 94

[arrowinquiver]

One of the things in which I realised when I have been given counsel by qualified counsellors, people above me, I can’t help but feel shame for my emotions, shame for the things that I did or felt. Shame for being just me. 

And then I realised that a lot of these negative emotions and lies are stemmed from simply the intricate brokenness of this world when sin entered into mankind. Thereafter, a lack of understanding that I am utterly loved by the One who holds it all. That is incredible, and when I rest in that truth, I begin to understand. That means I begin to stand under, I begin to find joy, to find peace, rest and joy. I begin to know who I am, I begin to be unashamed. 

I begin to be powerful, I begin to be beautiful because this has always been the intention of God, when He created us in His image. We are made in HIs likeness, and that is the Truth. We are made out of love, to live like we are not loved is simply living in a lie, a delusion. I am loved by my great Almighty God, and because of what my King Jesus did, I can now live a victorious life as if I’ve never sinned. I can live in this life of unity with Him. He abides in me (wow), and I abide in Him. 

He is the most amazing Lover, the kind the world craves but has no idea what it looks like. So then, there’s us. There’s us who can walk with Him, with like Him, to reflect/represent to the world what Love looks like, being imitators of Christ.

Love lays their lives down. That is love.

[elian-b-v-s-art]

je kijkt in de afgrond, maar de afgrond kijkt terug

Nietzsche 

[neckbeer]

I can see how people want to kill themselves

[makemethesea]

I knelt before him [Zen Master Ejo Takata] with my forehead touching the floor, 'It does not begin, it does not end. What is it?' ....I could only stammer,'Ejo, what do you want me to say? God? The universe? Me? You? All of this? The monk took up a hammer and hit the gong, signaling for all the zendo to hear that I had failed. I bowed, humbled, and began to leave. Then Ejo yelled, 'Intellectual, learn to die!' These words, spoken in an atrocious Japanese accent, changed my life. Suddenly, I realized that all of my life up to that point, everything that I had done, had been carried out by a cowardly intellect that afraid to die, was clinging to the iron bars of reason.... Existence began when the actor-self stopped identifying with the observer-self. In a flash, I entered the world of dreams.

From Parabola magazine Fall 2014 issue, reprint of 'The Dance of Reality' by Alejandro Jodorowsky