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Calm Again
7 min read
Throughout the centuries, we have asked ourselves the question of how to discern truth. Philosophers have provided clashing and circular reasonings over not only how one finds truth when truth has indeed been found, but what one does when they find truth. Yet for all their logical tinkering and the multitudes of pressed manuscripts, there has always been an exponentially greater number of individual people who may search their entire lives to find even one bit of the universe that is truth. For now, I ask you to keep an open mind. You may think that I am merely going to provide another way to try to find truth in any aspect of reality, but as I have often done, I prefer to ebb on the side of experience speaking for itself; I am here as the mere observer of my life thus far. Now, I ask you, based on your life and the contemplations of mine to answer this: Where does any person's perception of truth differ from the society's truth? How does a person come to seek truth?
All too often I have found that a person will look the other way from a supposed truth and try to prove their own thoughts to be right. A radical (note: radical) Creation Story believer might say that such things as 'evidence' of dinosaurs or the concepts of evolution are simply tests put on Earth by God to test our faith in The Bible. I do not know what goes through the minds of today's masses to push these people along the societal line from being 'devoutly faithful' to 'radical.' The inhabitants of the early Medieval Era would very well have tortured the greatest minds of academia were the society still present.
Then again, the same argument could be directed at the idea of science itself. Is it possible that the sciences of today are some kind of devil worship; that mankind is moving, step by step, to becoming the new masters of reality? What of such things as paranormal entities, which have yet to have clear explanation from the scientific community? Wouldn't the lure to the greatest mystery in life, the trajectory of the soul after death, be an absolute addiction to the knowledge-seeking mind, thus causing the greatest amount of research to go into it? I do not know.
I do, however, know that there is a mere hobby that science grew from. It allows us to create new tools for even the most simple tasks, and assures us as, at the very least, the masters of Earth: learning.
For the potentially avid scientist, the power of discovery and exploration is the foothold that drives people to extend their minds beyond the confines of the skull to expand the knowledge collected thus far from a few thousand years of tedious picking.
These two things, the stubborn faithful and the eternally unsatisfied questioner are the two ends of a spectrum, much like a person's political view can be liberal or conservative. However, I again remind you to ask how a person comes to seek truth.
For me, even though I am only nineteen years old, the quest for truth began a long, long time ago. It began early on as the mere act of trying to simulate possibilities in my mind based on the small world I had explored. I could sit with a Buzz Lightyear action figure as a toddler and puzzle out how a laser might work, or mentally criticize the lack of wingspan and the unbalanced mass of the suit. I think that I often lacked a more child-like curiosity, and instead of just asking an adult about how something worked, I would try to figure it out myself and then ask the adult only to further contemplate the answer in a broader spectrum; a very internal process. This marked me as a person of questions, and if you ask anyone who knew me from my earlier years of Junior High School, they are likely to say that I was the introvert.
I have changed in many ways from that initial point. Upon moving away from the act of just thinking, I began trying to find places where other people had supposedly already found truth. The Bible seems to have stood the test of time, but I parried with the fact that The Bible was physically written by men, and not God- no matter how much others assured me that the writings were guided by the divine being. Once I (temporarily) let go of that inhibition, I started to just trust. I began to let people who had been dead for ages sate my appetite for answers, even if the answers had flaws; I became naive. However, because of trust, I experienced a mutual first love. People also told me that the power of the truths set in The Bible coupled with my concrete and thick logic would make me an avid minister.
I remember beginning the process of asking again. I woke up one day and asked myself: How do I know?
My old mentality was quick to rise. Even to this day, I don't know. I couldn't explain it at the time, but I had a subtle fright at the fact that a little bit of logic had crossed through a barrier of emotion. Within not more than a few weeks of personally transitioning away from trust, I began to go by feeling; several internal sources firing a new intuition. The first love broke, my grades began to decline, my emotions began to shut down on me, and I couldn't think straight. It was confusing to have to feel at one instance obligated to remain committed to Holy Scripture, yet at the same time challenge it.
I am still very confused. Even more now than before because so many other huge things have happened. I've realized that maybe my family is getting too old for summer vacations together. I had been thrown into a large university and granted the freedoms therein.
I have just recently been given a partial diagnosis of an Auditory Processing Disorder, and I have pulled out of academia until I can resolve these things.
However, there is a flip side: I've learned that there is not a single answer for anything.
There is not one religion, and that there are even major flaws in my religion.
There is no way for me to be anything I might simply wish myself to be; I would not do well as a teacher or speaker at all.
There are too many things that I could expand upon, but I hope to give the slightest glimmer of hope for a wandering mind:
As an expression of just my pure self, I have done a lot of parkour. Through this expression form, I have found that hidden in the deep recesses of my heart, there is still something that is flowing inside of me all the time. There is something in parkour that I knew I had in me all along, but it was suppressed. I found that there was a place between my grieving heart, my questioning soul, and my logical mind that, every time I got closer to it, could make me feel like I was flying. One might call it an adrenaline high, but I disagree. I had experienced it even before parkour when I would do meditations. No, not the kind of meditation where I try to have a quiet moment talking to God. I would just sit, relax, and try to empty my mind and let everything in me resonate.
It was balance.
What is the moral of this huge story? What direction am I going in? What was the result of challenging your faith if it was not strengthened in this time of trial?
Interestingly enough, I remember from the time in my past when I was searching for places of truth that the Buddhists had nine levels of a meditative process, and that through my own personal, separate methods of meditative relaxation that I have discovered the first level, the first lesson in meditation, by myself: Trust in Life.
All too often I have found that a person will look the other way from a supposed truth and try to prove their own thoughts to be right. A radical (note: radical) Creation Story believer might say that such things as 'evidence' of dinosaurs or the concepts of evolution are simply tests put on Earth by God to test our faith in The Bible. I do not know what goes through the minds of today's masses to push these people along the societal line from being 'devoutly faithful' to 'radical.' The inhabitants of the early Medieval Era would very well have tortured the greatest minds of academia were the society still present.
Then again, the same argument could be directed at the idea of science itself. Is it possible that the sciences of today are some kind of devil worship; that mankind is moving, step by step, to becoming the new masters of reality? What of such things as paranormal entities, which have yet to have clear explanation from the scientific community? Wouldn't the lure to the greatest mystery in life, the trajectory of the soul after death, be an absolute addiction to the knowledge-seeking mind, thus causing the greatest amount of research to go into it? I do not know.
I do, however, know that there is a mere hobby that science grew from. It allows us to create new tools for even the most simple tasks, and assures us as, at the very least, the masters of Earth: learning.
For the potentially avid scientist, the power of discovery and exploration is the foothold that drives people to extend their minds beyond the confines of the skull to expand the knowledge collected thus far from a few thousand years of tedious picking.
These two things, the stubborn faithful and the eternally unsatisfied questioner are the two ends of a spectrum, much like a person's political view can be liberal or conservative. However, I again remind you to ask how a person comes to seek truth.
For me, even though I am only nineteen years old, the quest for truth began a long, long time ago. It began early on as the mere act of trying to simulate possibilities in my mind based on the small world I had explored. I could sit with a Buzz Lightyear action figure as a toddler and puzzle out how a laser might work, or mentally criticize the lack of wingspan and the unbalanced mass of the suit. I think that I often lacked a more child-like curiosity, and instead of just asking an adult about how something worked, I would try to figure it out myself and then ask the adult only to further contemplate the answer in a broader spectrum; a very internal process. This marked me as a person of questions, and if you ask anyone who knew me from my earlier years of Junior High School, they are likely to say that I was the introvert.
I have changed in many ways from that initial point. Upon moving away from the act of just thinking, I began trying to find places where other people had supposedly already found truth. The Bible seems to have stood the test of time, but I parried with the fact that The Bible was physically written by men, and not God- no matter how much others assured me that the writings were guided by the divine being. Once I (temporarily) let go of that inhibition, I started to just trust. I began to let people who had been dead for ages sate my appetite for answers, even if the answers had flaws; I became naive. However, because of trust, I experienced a mutual first love. People also told me that the power of the truths set in The Bible coupled with my concrete and thick logic would make me an avid minister.
I remember beginning the process of asking again. I woke up one day and asked myself: How do I know?
My old mentality was quick to rise. Even to this day, I don't know. I couldn't explain it at the time, but I had a subtle fright at the fact that a little bit of logic had crossed through a barrier of emotion. Within not more than a few weeks of personally transitioning away from trust, I began to go by feeling; several internal sources firing a new intuition. The first love broke, my grades began to decline, my emotions began to shut down on me, and I couldn't think straight. It was confusing to have to feel at one instance obligated to remain committed to Holy Scripture, yet at the same time challenge it.
I am still very confused. Even more now than before because so many other huge things have happened. I've realized that maybe my family is getting too old for summer vacations together. I had been thrown into a large university and granted the freedoms therein.
I have just recently been given a partial diagnosis of an Auditory Processing Disorder, and I have pulled out of academia until I can resolve these things.
However, there is a flip side: I've learned that there is not a single answer for anything.
There is not one religion, and that there are even major flaws in my religion.
There is no way for me to be anything I might simply wish myself to be; I would not do well as a teacher or speaker at all.
There are too many things that I could expand upon, but I hope to give the slightest glimmer of hope for a wandering mind:
As an expression of just my pure self, I have done a lot of parkour. Through this expression form, I have found that hidden in the deep recesses of my heart, there is still something that is flowing inside of me all the time. There is something in parkour that I knew I had in me all along, but it was suppressed. I found that there was a place between my grieving heart, my questioning soul, and my logical mind that, every time I got closer to it, could make me feel like I was flying. One might call it an adrenaline high, but I disagree. I had experienced it even before parkour when I would do meditations. No, not the kind of meditation where I try to have a quiet moment talking to God. I would just sit, relax, and try to empty my mind and let everything in me resonate.
It was balance.
What is the moral of this huge story? What direction am I going in? What was the result of challenging your faith if it was not strengthened in this time of trial?
Interestingly enough, I remember from the time in my past when I was searching for places of truth that the Buddhists had nine levels of a meditative process, and that through my own personal, separate methods of meditative relaxation that I have discovered the first level, the first lesson in meditation, by myself: Trust in Life.
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Dear Friends and whomever may view:
I come again with the power of my words again. However, as much as I try to find words to describe my current state, I know that I will only come up short.
The result becomes the question: How to relieve oneself of regret?
Oh, to regret is but almost to die of things worse than death. Slowly to ascend into insanity, which I have now surely reached. The sheer vastness of confusion I have about me now if petrifying. I have been taught how to view the world so that it makes sense and yet in one thought all of that window has been shattered. I have questioned my religion, my existence, my feelings, and my capability. It is a cliche, but cliches tend to make things more bearable these days.
Go do your schoolwork, you only have to reach the end. Yeah, you'll be working your whole life, so suck it up.
How lonely of an existence is that? As much as I thought I could continue to work and even as I push myself further into the future, there is a massive void of knowing, of purpose.
I cannot do things with the furious speed I used to have, I cannot play my music as expressively as I would like, and I have been plainly unthoughtful with my actions. For too long I have been like this, and I have thought in passing that there has to be a definitive reason for it. I pushed it aside on the basis that most bad things pass in short time to bring better and ripened fruits, but it was not to be. Still this damned weariness pulls on me, tells me how easy it would be to just let go and have other people care for me where I will not.
Oh, but to say that this is depression would likely be quite accurate. It has been much too drawn-out of an emotion to say that this is anything else. The remedies vary along the planes of drinks, therapies, or simple retreats for a worn out soul. There I say no. There I say that there has to be another way. I will not be a drunkard, or a self-elevated specimen, or a simple wasting meat-bag.
A friend of mine suggested I look into rekindling an old love. One that I had tried to forget, but has stuck with me too much. That thing now holds a dread for me- a fear. It was an abrupt end, and there were reasons that we held valid. Many times I have questioned if it was all for the best, and as much as I have swayed between both desires to throw away the memories versus grip to them dearly to pull it back, I am too resolved, too proud, to say that I could ever go back. It is likely the cause of my ill, but it shall never be the remedy.
Besides, if I were to try again, I would likely end up making the same mistakes as I had before and then some.
I just absolutely hate regret. I hate that I cannot shake this off. My parents will likely call farce and say that this is merely a winter depression that everyone is going to go through, but I say that it has gone on for much too long for this to be the case. I wear a smile with friends that is genuine, of course they make me happy. I will never be truly satisfied, never truly wholesome until I have purpose. Purpose is not self-created, and I find it is not within my nature to fight without purpose.
In conclusion, if there is one, is that this is a cry for help. I want to love again. I want to fight again. I want that energy that I have waiting inside me. Do not give me a scripture or a condolence. Do not give me kind words about what should or should not be done. Do not tell me how to feel or how to act. Do not even consider giving me a single word! Give me something real. I crave for something real because ideologies and visualizations prove too fallible. The world is about as real as it gets, and what I need is love because that is the only thing that is going to push far enough through my grief to finally resound the beautiful chords of the heart that I only barely remember.
Sincerely,
David A. Patterson
I come again with the power of my words again. However, as much as I try to find words to describe my current state, I know that I will only come up short.
The result becomes the question: How to relieve oneself of regret?
Oh, to regret is but almost to die of things worse than death. Slowly to ascend into insanity, which I have now surely reached. The sheer vastness of confusion I have about me now if petrifying. I have been taught how to view the world so that it makes sense and yet in one thought all of that window has been shattered. I have questioned my religion, my existence, my feelings, and my capability. It is a cliche, but cliches tend to make things more bearable these days.
Go do your schoolwork, you only have to reach the end. Yeah, you'll be working your whole life, so suck it up.
How lonely of an existence is that? As much as I thought I could continue to work and even as I push myself further into the future, there is a massive void of knowing, of purpose.
I cannot do things with the furious speed I used to have, I cannot play my music as expressively as I would like, and I have been plainly unthoughtful with my actions. For too long I have been like this, and I have thought in passing that there has to be a definitive reason for it. I pushed it aside on the basis that most bad things pass in short time to bring better and ripened fruits, but it was not to be. Still this damned weariness pulls on me, tells me how easy it would be to just let go and have other people care for me where I will not.
Oh, but to say that this is depression would likely be quite accurate. It has been much too drawn-out of an emotion to say that this is anything else. The remedies vary along the planes of drinks, therapies, or simple retreats for a worn out soul. There I say no. There I say that there has to be another way. I will not be a drunkard, or a self-elevated specimen, or a simple wasting meat-bag.
A friend of mine suggested I look into rekindling an old love. One that I had tried to forget, but has stuck with me too much. That thing now holds a dread for me- a fear. It was an abrupt end, and there were reasons that we held valid. Many times I have questioned if it was all for the best, and as much as I have swayed between both desires to throw away the memories versus grip to them dearly to pull it back, I am too resolved, too proud, to say that I could ever go back. It is likely the cause of my ill, but it shall never be the remedy.
Besides, if I were to try again, I would likely end up making the same mistakes as I had before and then some.
I just absolutely hate regret. I hate that I cannot shake this off. My parents will likely call farce and say that this is merely a winter depression that everyone is going to go through, but I say that it has gone on for much too long for this to be the case. I wear a smile with friends that is genuine, of course they make me happy. I will never be truly satisfied, never truly wholesome until I have purpose. Purpose is not self-created, and I find it is not within my nature to fight without purpose.
In conclusion, if there is one, is that this is a cry for help. I want to love again. I want to fight again. I want that energy that I have waiting inside me. Do not give me a scripture or a condolence. Do not give me kind words about what should or should not be done. Do not tell me how to feel or how to act. Do not even consider giving me a single word! Give me something real. I crave for something real because ideologies and visualizations prove too fallible. The world is about as real as it gets, and what I need is love because that is the only thing that is going to push far enough through my grief to finally resound the beautiful chords of the heart that I only barely remember.
Sincerely,
David A. Patterson
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Lest We Forget
1 min read
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kX_3y…
To those who died in the fight of Freedom, please have two minutes of silence.
To those who died in the fight of Freedom, please have two minutes of silence.
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Bionicle Bike
1 min read
Well, after I have seen many other people try to create Bionicle bikes and posting the how-to-makes online, I must say that I am thoroughly disappointed in the lack of creativity and ingenuity.
In light of this, I have been working on my own model, and so far I'm having great success! So, keep your eye out for something great!
Sincerely,
dapatters
In light of this, I have been working on my own model, and so far I'm having great success! So, keep your eye out for something great!
Sincerely,
dapatters
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Halloween Costume
1 min read
Well Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have officially comitted myself to being the Phantom of The Opera.
I hopefully will have some cool pictures on dA of the costume when it's done, however I am to warn you that everything will be nice except for the cape. Cape was bought cheap at Wal-Mart because I want to keep costume cost under $8.00.
I have officially comitted myself to being the Phantom of The Opera.
I hopefully will have some cool pictures on dA of the costume when it's done, however I am to warn you that everything will be nice except for the cape. Cape was bought cheap at Wal-Mart because I want to keep costume cost under $8.00.
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