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Some thoughts and quotes on love , life and death.
As "modern/western" societies have moved further away from the authentic natural world - developing a perception that humans are somehow "beyond" nature - has there also been a tendency towards denying the reality of death as part of the cycle of life ?
The following quotes are from over the past century.
I think they contain some wisdom on accepting a more positive attitude to life and death - although I find the prospect of putting that wisdom into practice extremely challenging , if not actually beyond me at present…..
Any opinions/comments welcome -
“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox !
This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.”
- D.H. Lawrence 1922
“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”
― James Baldwin 1963
" Because of the warped & terrifying attachment dynamic our species has wrought with earth, I believe that the neuro-biology of most humans-under-capitalism are in such a threat response that they can really only "think" in terms of either/or competition.
We have a lot of softness to remember in terms of living together with earth and with each other in a distributed network way, and not in a centralised network way.
Our attachment relationships are human-centric instead of earth-centric.
we have confused what secure attachment actually is.
we have dreamed a dream of betrayal, of earth/mother as the great betrayer,
thus we project-and-reflect only that story of imminent betrayal,
Death being the "final proof" of this great betrayal.
To engage with wisdom, truth, liberation is to actively participate in our own un-doing.
an un-winding, un-raveling, un-weaving... a death practice, a dying towards wholeness.
it is not always about what we "want" or what we "enjoy".
- Darius "Dare" Carrasquillo aka Dare Sohei 2022
The Death Practice Group | Animist Arts
As "modern/western" societies have moved further away from the authentic natural world - developing a perception that humans are somehow "beyond" nature - has there also been a tendency towards denying the reality of death as part of the cycle of life ?
The following quotes are from over the past century.
I think they contain some wisdom on accepting a more positive attitude to life and death - although I find the prospect of putting that wisdom into practice extremely challenging , if not actually beyond me at present…..
Any opinions/comments welcome -
“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox !
This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.”
- D.H. Lawrence 1922
“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.”
― James Baldwin 1963
" Because of the warped & terrifying attachment dynamic our species has wrought with earth, I believe that the neuro-biology of most humans-under-capitalism are in such a threat response that they can really only "think" in terms of either/or competition.
We have a lot of softness to remember in terms of living together with earth and with each other in a distributed network way, and not in a centralised network way.
Our attachment relationships are human-centric instead of earth-centric.
we have confused what secure attachment actually is.
we have dreamed a dream of betrayal, of earth/mother as the great betrayer,
thus we project-and-reflect only that story of imminent betrayal,
Death being the "final proof" of this great betrayal.
To engage with wisdom, truth, liberation is to actively participate in our own un-doing.
an un-winding, un-raveling, un-weaving... a death practice, a dying towards wholeness.
it is not always about what we "want" or what we "enjoy".
- Darius "Dare" Carrasquillo aka Dare Sohei 2022
The Death Practice Group | Animist Arts