PANGON

Quote from Epictetus (from a poem featured today on the Panhala web site)

"When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone. The
will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within. Listen to
its importunings. Follow its directives."

Nature as "revered" by the World Pantheist Movement (WPM) is largely
nature outside of us, nature as apprehended through the senses. The WPM
website asks:
"Do you feel a deep sense of peace and belonging and wonder in the midst
of Nature, in a forest, by the ocean, or on a mountain top? Are you
speechless with awe when you look up at the sky on a clear moonless
night and see the Milky Way strewn with stars as thick as sand on a
beach? When you see breakers crashing on a rocky shore, or hear wind
rustling in a poplar's leaves, are you uplifted by the energy and
creativity of existence?"

Certainly this Nature of mountains and oceans and starry skies is
worthy of reference, but I think the WPM captures only half of the full
spirit of Pantheism. The other half is pointed at by this quote from
Epictetus. "When your doors are shut and your room is dark," he writes,
in other words when we no longer experience through our senses, "you are
not alone/The will of nature is within you." Turned away from our
senses, turned inward, we also find Nature. In fact we find the most
incredible of all of Nature's creations: conscious awareness,
understanding, and intentionality. This is what we are made of. This
is what CAN feel a deep sense of peace and belonging in the midst of
Nature.

Years ago I spent some in a little concrete windowless jail cell. Had
my spirituality been based solely on Nature as experienced through the
senses, I would truly have been deprived of what was most valuable to
me. But fortunately, I was already an accomplished meditator, so I was
able to treat my cell as a little Buddhist ashram; I spent my time in
jail blissed out in meditation, wondering the endless expanse of Nature
Within.

This is not at all to denigrate Nature as experienced through the
senses. One does not have to choose between Nature without or Nature
within, it is not either/or. My own way of expressing this is "Nature
is the sensible aspect of God. God is the un-sensible aspect of
Nature." Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism, the Yoga traditions, the Jewish,
Christian and Moslem mystics all point to paths that lead ultimately to
the un-sensible aspect of Nature. In their quests these traditions
sometimes undervalue or even turn against the world of the senses. I
think Pantheism provides a balance between the outward and the inward,
the sensible and that which must be experienced directly, but I think
the WPM is currently has too little emphasis on the inward.

T



///////////////////BTGON



/////////////////////READINESS POTENTIAL OF BRAIN



////////////////SOCIAL SKILLS ARE PART OF INTELLIGENCE


///////////RELIGIOUS INSTINCT IS MEANING-MAKING DEVICE TO COPE WITH UNCERTAINTY



///////////////AMYGDALA-FEAR CENTER


////////////////EMOTION IS BUILT INTO OUR DECISION MAKING



////////////////TST-VH-OUR PRIMAL SENSES GIVE DELIGHT ESP WHERE FOOD IS CONCERNED



////////////////FOOD /SX GIVE PRIMAL DELIGHTS



//////////////////ALSO SOCIAL INTERAXN


//////////////////EMOTION HELPS MEMORY



///////////////////MOST OF US SPEAK 120-180 WORDS PER MINUTE



///////////////////PLAY IS CRUCIAL TO A CHILDS LEARNING


//////////////DONT GV UP HOPE,UNLESS IT IS STG 4 CA



//////////////MID-ANTR ORBITO FRONTAL CORTEX-HEDONIC CENTER OF BRAIN



//////////////DONT BLINDLY FOLLOW FOOD DESIRES INTO OBESITY



////////////////SOLVING CONFLICT WITH SX-BONOBO WAY




/////////////////TRYSEXUAL



///////////////ORGASM-CHANGES IN RT PREFRONTAL CORTEX




/////////////////MONKEY PRN



/////////////////Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the
ultimate as knowing what to do next."

-- Herbert Hoover



//////////////////////////////////HANUMAN PUJA-TUESDAYS AND SATURDAYS



//////////////////First direct evidence of substantial fish consumption by early modern humans in China

Freshwater fish are an important part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became an important part of the year-round diet for early humans. A new study by an international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows it may have happened in China as far back as 40,000 years ago.



//////////////////Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

- Helen Keller



///////////////////NJ FATIGUE



////////////////I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state? Lord Byron, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 5 July 1821



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