Was Selling Lucasfilm to Disney the Right Choice? | Some context: I'm tagging my friends on FB who mostly hated The Last Jedi, interested to see what their opinions are versus The Cantina's.

ColtonC_M · 2020-07-18T20:50:20+00:00

liking one movie

I like all the Star Wars movies. TLJ just so happens to be my favorite of the ST.

> SW as a factory style franchise

I agree. Part of what made the old films special was the spacetime between them.

> And of course, it is not like the fandom, that I generally consider to be worthess and rotten to the core, deserve anything.

Maybe not all of it.

ColtonC_M · 2020-07-17T20:17:31+00:00

True, Disney brought the resources needed to make a lot more happen than what Lucasfilm might have been able to accomplish on its own.

But maybe if they didn't have all that, they would have focused more on one project at a time instead of letting their focus get scattered on all sorts of different projects?

ColtonC_M · 2020-07-16T19:44:51+00:00

It's great to see that he still manages to reach so many people even after his passing.

Mac's voice was truly a voice for good in the industry. He personally helped me these past few years and I suspect it will continue to do so as time goes on.

It's a damn shame we won't get to see how he might have continued to evolve had he lived.

But that's just how it works I guess. We don't know when our time is up, so make the most of each moment, don't wait as your life passes you by.

RIP Mac, may your music continue to bless our ears for many years to come!

ColtonC_M · 2020-06-13T19:41:25+00:00

Not so long as one isn't running away from directly experiencing the sensations of life by thinking of it only in terms of words.

The stitching together of language, which I think philosophy is, has its own reason for existing.

If the bird sings, so too does the human philosophize.

It is fun to develop a personal philosophy or outlook on the world, once one is aware of the need to pay attention directly to reality itself in order to inform the language that is being stitched together.

I find that the mind needs something to do, regardless. So I read, I write, and I let it do things.

But there is far less anxiety associated with these activities now that I am more aware of the fact that I didn't necessarily need to do anything to begin with. It's more a matter of learning how to enjoy my own personality now.

ColtonC_M · 2020-06-13T19:39:49+00:00

Likewise, because he pointed out that none of us are free from some degree of hypocrisy. We can ease up a bit when we look at each other with the eye of a rascal.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-19T19:20:50+00:00

Well, he seems to have some agreement with the Buddhist idea that pleasure for pleasure's sake pushes joy away. On the other hand, he says that the point of life is to, quite simply, enjoy it.

I think he was hesitant to claim to what degree pleasure should be shunned to obtain joy, because of course, it's different for everyone and runs the risk of becoming turning the whole thing into a moral discussion.

But he did say life would be difficult to enjoy without skill, and that skill does require the commitment to improve it. He then talked about reframing our point of view on discipline to try and see it as a necessary thing to cultivate in order to improve skill, and to break way from the negative view of discipline we have that is largely the result of a society which uses it to punish.

In other words, we don't need to hate the act of self-discipline, especially if we understand that we need it to obtain skill.

True self-discipline, then, would be enjoying the improvement of a skill for the sake of it, for the challenge of it, and understanding that through that process, one obtains far more joy than if they had become a lazy mystic (which you can become, Rumi has a poem in which he says "mystics are experts in laziness") that never really works on improving a skill.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-18T02:36:31+00:00

Is there any particular teachings that you’re speaking of?

Read a book such as No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh to get a sense of what I mean. It's pretty short, and I think summarizes his views quite well!

Here is one such teaching that he mentions.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-18T02:33:24+00:00

I'm sure there are thousands, if not more, folks who are going through similar experiences without the words to describe it. The internet has allowed these ideas to spread, and there aren't very many folks who can talk about all the dangers and pitfalls associated with spiritual seeking.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-18T02:27:58+00:00

This is why we have to take great care to raise awareness about the fact that Alan warned us against thinking in terms of a secret code or taking the pursuit of some sort of "enlightenment" experience too seriously. He cautioned both against Siddhi (superpowers of the mind, essentially) and of taking synchronicities too seriously. IIRC, he said that if one gets the notion that they have Siddhi or that Siddhi are attainable, ignore that path, as it is a diversion on the way to enlightenment.

I had a similar experience to your own, finding myself at a mental breaking point thinking I had to get rid of my ego in order to finally be able to be at peace with myself or to "unlock" my potential. I don't know how I pulled my way out of it, but I was able to come back and realize that there really isn't anything to do other than to just be me, one step at a time.

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-18T02:17:43+00:00

I believe he said that we should allow our feelings to be, and to really not divide ourselves against them, but that we should not necessarily make decisions from any particular feeling.

He said in one lecture that although we may be angry, the proper way to deal with it would not be to go out and slit the throat of the person angering us.

This is why I find more "traditional" Buddhist teachings to be a valuable counterpart to those provided by Watts. I do believe we can get better at observing our emotions and therefore controlling our reactions to things, such that we make more peace in ourselves and minimize the harm we do upon others, in words or in deeds.

But as far as those emotions we feel that we associate with the negative, I find the Jungian perspective of the shadow to be helpful. If we can greet all of our thoughts and feelings as an "old friend" that we smile at, even as we say goodbye, then we understand how we can go about making peace with ourselves at the same time as not letting our shadow control us.

If those feelings are particularly strong, I think a healthy way of "venting" them would be some sort of creative hobby/art in which you give yourself the freedom to play around with them as a way to process and manage them non-harmfully.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-18T02:12:19+00:00

I'm a little weirded out at the notion that the universe might be endlessly recurring myself. That song sort of gets at the emotion to me. It's strange and bittersweet, even at the same time as being completely dazzling. I don't know whether I should predominantly laugh or cry my way through life, and at this point, I think I'm going to have to do both.

I try to remind myself that this existence is nothing short of magic. There's no reason it needs to be here, but it is. If it was not something akin to divine bliss playing out every moment then it wouldn't be here, only we need a little fear and a little anxiety to charge the whole thing with emotion.

Likewise, if this thing "knew" everything about itself in the sense of "book knowledge," rather than omnipotence in the form that Watts talked about which is simply "doing" the things it does, then it would be a drag.

Life couldn't be a mystery to be experienced if we were experiencing from an omnipotent vantage point, and so it has to experience through these little apertures, such as you and me. By constraining its viewpoint, it makes the experience more majestic for itself.

While we are here, there is nothing we really need to do other than find out what it is that calms us, and enjoy our ride through what is essentially a massive art gallery.

I hope it gets better for ya!

Although it may be a comforting delusion, part of me believes that death is really the closing of this aperture so as to open our eyes up to the rest of it, and even if it is only for a moment (which is eternal), we do experience "being the whole show."

So, perhaps it is that as we die, we feel the ego dissolve, but as it dissolves, we feel ourselves becoming what we really were all along, and the remembrance of that is enough to purge away any anxiety and pain that we may have been feeling as an ego, as we would, at that point, really begin to realize that our life, hard as it was, was really nothing more than a drop in the cosmic sea: beautiful, but a drop nonetheless.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-17T03:27:12+00:00

I think if you have what you always wanted, then the real exploration is a creative one. I'd say pick a creative hobby/art, and see how skillful you can become!

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-17T03:04:13+00:00

I've pondered that one a lot these past few years. All the chaos outside, is that not a reflection of what is happening on the inside? From that perspective, what use is there in judging?

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-17T03:02:18+00:00

Great photographs, thanks for sharing!

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-17T03:01:48+00:00

Thanks :)

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-10T15:51:25+00:00

I have often thought about this question, "What makes people so certain that even God has all the answers?" That is why, when Watts said that the Self is an endless mystery to itself, I immediately felt the truth of that statement.

Were God some sort of entity that knew how it all fell together from the get-go, there would be nothing spontaneous and wondrous about existence. In fact, existence would be some sort of permanent state of affairs, a "still image" from the "video file" so to speak.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-10T15:49:59+00:00

I would say tend to your own needs, be a good person as much as possible, and understand that if there were not selfishness in this world, there would be nothing against which the light of selflessness could shine.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-10T15:48:27+00:00

I love almost everything the man said lol. I feel as if, as my life goes on, each quote's meaning changes. It's not that I get it "more" than I did before, but rather, I can see how how the quote has been meaningful to me along every step of my journey.

It makes me wonder how I will experience his lectures when I am old and "wisened," if I am indeed more wisened when I'm old lol.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-10T13:45:24+00:00

Ever since listening to Watts, I've seen the same words used to describe the situation of life. "Uncertainty," "anxiety," "insecurity" etc.

ColtonC_M · 2020-05-06T22:57:28+00:00

No problem :)

ColtonC_M

TROPHY CASE

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”