Tempted by silence

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Probably all depends where you live. I may have been too hasty. I daresay it's not like that in small communities, and even in some cities and parts of the world.

what i find akward is that some people don't say hello, even if you two are the only one in kilometers, and if i say hello they pretend like i'm air, very strange feeling (i now know i have to expect it and this makes it easier, but when younger this completely overwhelmed me)

Also, why is distance a variable?
Many of my neighbours feel no need to talk with me ( or i to them).
But if i saw them in another country; on holiday or a 1000 miles away, then it is more likely they would greet me as if an old friend.
I don't understand this.

I find my neighbours sometimes are very friendly and want to say hello and chat, and then the next time I see them and say hello, they don't speak at all! I find people very strange sometimes, and also embarrassing. At least with friends I know I am expected to speak, lol.

It’s not only refusing to be contaminated by falsity. It’s also the hope, at least now, to make up for missing life with some stratagem. One of these stratagems might be the search or the acquisition of some form of ecstasy. To pierce through reality to reach some intensity. I cannot explain better, but I guess that this is behind mystic experience, even if I am not religious (but mystics have always been outside religions even when formally inside).

Comes to mind:

“As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment…
And
“Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion…”

Reminds me of this quotation, about two elderly men seeking the ecstatic experience:-

I, then, and Cadmus whom though laugh'st to scorn,
Will wreathe our heads with ivy and will dance-
A greybeard pair, yet cannot we but dance.

They found ecstasy through dance, through their sensations, by being completely in their bodies (as opposed to their heads, if you know what I mean. I identify with this a lot as I live so much 'in my head')

Coincidentally, I am reading an excellent book at the moment, about this subject, it might be of interest to you. It's called 'Fate, Love and Ecstasy' by John A Sanford.

Sufism and the whirling dervishes. Have seen them here two years ago.

Reading all the previous posts I realized that I am not as weird as I thought. I have a phone that never rings and when it does I know exactly who it is: my neurologists or someone from his office.

I used to have friends or what I thought as friends but slowly realized that I had no connection to them especially after I became very ill and had to have heart surgery and after I discovered I had a genetic neuromuscular disease. I told my friends about my illnesses. Not only they did not seem to give a damn, but they slowly stop contacting me.

In the last year I live in silence. I have no family. I am home most of the time because of my neuromuscular disease that makes it very hard for me to walk and because I have a lot of pain (from the nerve degeneration).

I spend most of my day in front of my computer or doing some art/craft things that I like. I go out about 2-3 times a week for a few hours to see my physiotherapist or neurologist or go to the pharmacy or supermarket.

I have discovered that the less contact I have with my so-called friends the less frustrated I feel, the less I need to cry, the less anxious and angry I feel.

I do miss human conatact, but it is so hard to be around people and not feel they have no clue of who I am, or tell me the stupid things NTs say when one has a severe illness to cheer them up, that I get more irritated by them than just not talking to them at all.

One time I told a friend "listen, why do you tell me that maybe there will be a cure when I know there is no chance and give me this stupid advice when you have no clue of what it feels to have my illness" he became so annoyed, feeling that I had humiliated him that he found an excuse a bit later to just leave my house. He never called again.

I was not sad when he left. I knew he would not call again. I just watched TV and forgot about him.

Star

The symbolism of dance in combination with the spiral is very interesting. I have been reading about this lately as I have been trying to understand a dream I had of dancing.

The dance symbolises the act of creation and cosmic creative energy, this energy being fixed, by the action of dance, in time, (kairos), and a spiral dance, a 'whirling' dance fixes this energy also in the dancer, for the time he or she dances. The dance also is to enable the dancer to enter an ecstatic state through the 'hole', the mystic centre, created by the spiral dance.

This reminds me of Dionysus, of course, and the dancing Maenads who believed that when they danced the god appeared and actually entered their bodies and danced through them, and they then experienced ecstasy, in the sense of the original Greek word ekstasis, to stand outside of one's(usual)self~ an altered state of consciousness.

You are very right about the word ekstasis. It is made from 2 Greek words exo and stasis, exo means outside, and stasis means to stand to remain. Together they form ex(o)stasis = ekstasis.

Dancind until a trance or meditation state is reached is very common in many cultures. Native American tribes used dance to reach the spirits of the animals that guided them. Many African tribes do the same because by dancing (usually around a fire as central focus point and in a circle) helped them to reach the spirits of their ancestors, etc.

This dance in a circular motion is now still seen in many modern cultures as remains of the original spiritual basis.

Star

Yes, in some cultures the religious experience is reached through the physical process of dance. So...we have the question of how people in the west, maybe who do not have a particular faith, nor want to dance, but who still feel the need for a religious*/ spiritual experience, can experience this. (I personally believe it to be a fundamental need/desire). I have heard people say that they have experienced ecstacy by climbing a mountain, which is of course also a very physical thing to do.
Probably that is also why people take drugs, to try and reach the state of ekstasis of being outside of their normal state of consciousness, but this is not a 'safe' thing to do. Drugs can sometimes completely shatter the fragile ego/conscious mind.

* I am using the word 'religious' here in the sense of the original religare ~to unite, to bind together, (to experience a sense of wholeness).

Just a few thoughts.