What Are You/We Looking For?

Thank you for your posts. That's what I am looking for. Please keep being honest and open. I truly appreciate it. It makes me feel good.

Personally, I am not seeking anything. I am being myself. And that is here as a Jedi, experiencing the path.

Personally, I'm looking for spirituality and a way to be better, to improve the world. I really think that TOTJO can give it to me, because it's close of what I believe in.

But I'm still thinking of what I truly looking for here, I think I will discover it gradually

For now, i can only say i'm here to experience

Consciously aware community that cares and supports each other.

A foundation of people that are willing to do what it takes to do the work necessary to live a loving, connective and spiritual life amongst the seeming distortion that is around us.

People willing to honor and surrender to the Force.

I enjoy being with people that hold a high perspective that allows for the knowing that all is well, all is perfect, we are all doing our best with what we have, and we are here for each other.

We look for things whether we know we're looking or not ...

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?

And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has always sought, he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 3

And, of course when we find something that tickles our existential fancy for a time, convinced (though not quite) that we've found the path --

Let me repeat that these images do not propose moral codes and involve no judgements: they are sketches. They merely represent a style of life. The lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd. But equally well, if he wishes, the chaste man, the civil servant, or the president of the Republic. It is enough to know and to mask nothing. In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them. The leap in all its forms, rushing into the divine or the eternal, surrendering to the illusions of the everyday or of the idea—all these screens hide the absurd.

~ Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 59

The absurd here is the meaningless of Life which confounds us constantly in the face of all of our desperate "looking" -- as per the question in the Opening Post. Whether Life, our individual lives or the ensemble of Life at all of its myriad levels has a "meaning" is not the only question. What makes us look so ardently for a meaning, or, as the existentialists since Kirkegaard have done, try to give it one ? As we can only intuit the value of our rationality, and this rationality has to fit within the pre-existing conceptual models for us to recognise - and thus make meaning - of it, then how could we even find - or create - an over-arching "meaning" for Existence and then go tracing out pathways to it ? Now, that's ambitious ...

By the time I got to the TotJO, I had found enough things to curb my enthusiasm for finding spiritual paths. Note I said "curb", not eliminate. Not that I find them entirely useless, but I do not expect to find the ultimate answers to the ultimate questions ... and that is more or less fine. We share a human condition and all the varieties of human conditioning that goes on in it. In such a structure as the TotJO, we at least have the space we need to be confused, full of hope or angst (or even a mixture of the these), scared or delusional and can honestly (and even dishonestly, according to our 'condition' ) share our experience of Life however hopeful or hopeless we are finding it at the moment.

It is doubtful that Reason, Rationality or Science is ever going to help up too very much with these existential dilemmas ; hence the privilege of such an assembly as this. We can believe what is useful to us to believe (whether it is in the slightest true or not) and talk to one another about what we feel. It is only going to have, at its best, a representational value - not definite precision. The transcendent cannot be expressed except through art. But, the beauty of this is that our exchanges make up a sort of dance - delicate and graceful, or wild and exuberant - to the rhythm of the Life that we are not so very content to accept as only instrumental - without any particular "meaning" to it at all.

Tao Te Ching 14 :

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped. Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception. Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

On Self-Knowledge
Kahlil Gibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

I seek the Force in all it's glory, to understand it, feel it and use it to help achieve peace in the world. A lot to ask for I know.

I am looking, for looking. The journey itself is its own reward, regardless of whether or not you find a destination.

I came because of curiosity.

I stayed because everything else.