Thursday 18 April 2013

Eternal peace versus eternal striving? Or a cycle of refreshment?

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Endless striving, in mortal life and then eternity, is to me a somewhat horrific prospect!

I think it is probably a weakness in me - a lack of vitality - that I often tend to fantasize about attaining an ultimate state of peace in which there is a stasis of rest, vaguely conceptualized as aware, blissful and endless sleep.

I see this as my Platonic mood - a wish to enter into and lose-myself-in the world of eternal forms: in an everlasting moment...

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But this is probaby a pernicious desire. A living death surely cannot be one's aim - even if the emotions were pleasant.

A more viable thing would be to see a life in a day: a day as a life.

To be embarked-upon, adventured, and then to end in a little death of sleep - with expectation of re-birth next day.

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So, although the prospect of endless striving would be, for me, terrifying; it becomes much less so, and perhaps indeed appealing, when there is hope of a cyclical process of waking-striving and sleeping-resting - a cycle of refreshment.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes imagine God taking me home after I've lived the most acceptable day. It is God's good gift to give dust an experience of His own life, the only thing we can live on after death.

The Crow said...

Imagine a state where time does not exist. And no body to do the striving. Just awareness, and oneness.

George Goerlich said...

You are very certainly not the only to feel this way!

Wm Jas said...

Well, even God rested on the seventh day.

The Crow said...

Nobody sleeps in the afterlife.
No body = no sleep.
No body = no need.
Peace. Calm. Everywhereness.