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Post by Horace on Aug 19, 2002 17:15:02 GMT -5
Dear WishIKnew, First off - thanks for your words particulary the suggestions and preferences for tea. My own green tea has jasmine flowers in it and the earl grey I used to drink also had bergamot blossoms in it - your peach tea sounds great. The best part of your post for me was your question.. The question is why do two people try to build something together and then fail? It would be a great exercise to look at some statistics (suggest it to your professor) although several tales may be told with that particular hammer of rhetoric. Here is a list of some suggestions for why people try and then fail. The levels of explanation are mixed as are the moral perspectives, personal and social sources. My feeling is that these are pressures that challenge all of us in marriage and love altough there are many other reasons besides. Lack of courage, self knowledge and maturity. Lack of practice and application to the art of love. Commodification, and technification of human relations. The interference and inconsistency of biological and spiritual human processes The penetration of universal aloneness to the castle of shared egoism. Too much coffee and not enough tea (particularly with flowers). The gradual eating away at the neocortex by TV, computers and cocacola. Boys no longer share a toolbox with their fathers Laziness, lack of discipline, concentration and patience Moral amnesia. Persistent adolescence. Dwelling on the fear of not being loved, and, possibly, way down at the bottom, because it was all over and everyone had drifted apart and got lost on their way back from the supermarket (a statistical and cultural favorite which recently replaced "irreconcilable differences"), and, of course... 21 years is a long time and there's fun times ahead. Whatever their reasons, and without ever having met him, I'm certain that Bach is a great guy and I'd like to wish him and his new wife a tremendous future together. Be strong and live long. Everything is going to be OK. Blessings, H.
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Post by saddened on Sept 7, 2002 18:25:01 GMT -5
Maybe I align myself too closely with Lesie and have a Richard of my own who has choosen a different path and new adventures. But who is taking Lesie's point. What if RB didn't learn anything. What if he just fell back into his old ways. I've just recently re-read Bridge across forever and I'm sorry what if he neglected Lesie, their love, her love for him. What if he got selfish again. What if he left her on the dirt floor dying of heat exhaustion and didn't even notice again. Sure she says go ahead Richard, you want something different. Go for it. She hasn't stopped loving him. She doesn't want new adventures elsewhere. She wants him. She wants love and respect. But if it ain't happening of course she's big enough to say "it's your Karma buddy. I tried. Have a nice life." But I bet she still loves and wants him with her. Just a thought.
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Post by sadlittlee on Sept 7, 2002 18:26:38 GMT -5
Maybe I align myself too closely with Lesie and have a Richard of my own who has choosen a different path and new adventures. But who is taking Lesie's point. What if RB didn't learn anything. What if he just fell back into his old ways. I've just recently re-read Bridge across forever and I'm sorry what if he neglected Lesie, their love, her love for him. What if he got selfish again. What if he left her on the dirt floor dying of heat exhaustion and didn't even notice again. Sure she says go ahead Richard, you want something different. Go for it. She hasn't stopped loving him. She doesn't want new adventures elsewhere. She wants him. She wants love and respect. But if it ain't happening of course she's big enough to say "it's your Karma buddy. I tried. Have a nice life." But I bet she still loves and wants him with her. Just a thought.
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Post by sadlittleme on Sept 7, 2002 18:57:12 GMT -5
I've actually heard the theroy that if you have something unfinished with one person in one lifetime, you will finish it up with that person in the next - which I guess could explain the endings of relationships. My own views of soulmates is still a bit shaken up, lately, but I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe it's not quite the thing Plato invisioned - maybe it is just souls that touch briefly, brought together by a lesson they both need to learn. Has everybody given up the split-apart, same person two halves.? Person only for you destined to meet then stuggle like hell to be one again! You don't become two different halves, and then just waltz back together everything fine. Two people ripped apart, cast into nothingness to fend for themselves, screw up too many times to count then re-unite and have all their mistakes laid bare and thrown in their face. It's hard to be soul mates. You have to face yourself from anothers perspective EVERYDAY to stay together. Not only do you have to honor yourself but you have to see the mirror image of you, the other side, the opposit half and honor that as well. It's not an easy thing. But to say, oh well, it really doesn't exsist. It isn't real. Soul mates only meet, pass on a few good pointers and walk away. I think people like Richard who are the smartest, wisest most spiritual people in the world can teach us alot. But he's still running and it's not FROM Safety. It's from true 100% unselfish love. Leslie, I suspect, although who can be sure. Is the rescuing angel in this senario. But even angels have to give up when the recucuee refuses to want to be rescued. Just a thought. My own Richard may be influencing my opinion here...if you hadn't guessed
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Post by Horace on Sept 10, 2002 12:57:35 GMT -5
Hmm, Plato - great guy... I read that story once a long time ago - and aristophanes and everyone since has ridiculed it - but it seems useful to explain everyone's confusion around this area. Anyhow I got you this to as consolation for the departure of your own mr. bach!
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Post by sadlittleme on Sept 10, 2002 13:14:32 GMT -5
Horace-
Thankyou for the consolation. Just trying to make my whole belief structure still work in his absence. Any more thoughts on life love and breakups? Anyone else?
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Post by Nausikaa on Sept 11, 2002 15:48:13 GMT -5
...open your eyes guys, he changed her to a younger female.
- LP is 67-year-old now, the new baby 32.
Transparently, overspecialized in these celestial - but in one sense two-dimensional and naive - philosophies he had a FREEDOM to do that.
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Post by Nausikaa on Sept 11, 2002 15:52:16 GMT -5
He is an Artist. He takes his Art out of everyone near him. Romantic?
He has been an interesting writer, but he has diminished in this career at the same time as in his private life: writes about pets and has a new little pet wife... Everyone gets elder though, that’s human.
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Post by Nausikaa on Sept 11, 2002 15:55:31 GMT -5
RB seems to be very unable to process his problems in the sense "harm I caused to others". Having read all his work as teenager and having understood them as "blood of his heart" it is interesting to know by now about things he did not write about - unable to look in the mirror as whole. Indeed, in his work he constantly describes only himself as a victim. - Why do you think LP asked him to never mention her name again?
He is able to process his problems only in the sense "is someone trying to block my freedom". [Clap your hands RB fans, someone mentioned FREEDOM ...]
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Post by Penelope on Sept 11, 2002 15:57:53 GMT -5
"Different footprints on the bridge..."
...open your eyes guys, he changed her to a younger female.
Transparently, overspecialized in these celestial - but in one sense two-dimensional and naive - philosophies he had a FREEDOM to do that. Clap your hands RB fans, someone just mentioned FREEDOM ...
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Post by Penelope on Sept 11, 2002 16:07:17 GMT -5
I don't know... When heard about the 32-year-old new "soul mate" I realized that RB is a just male who just met a younger female... and she was so beautiful and sexy wasn't she ?? - Why would you think Leslie Parrish had asked him never mention her name again? I don't believe in RB's personality any more, or indeed I think I see it more clearly now. This is something you find often among "artists", the key word being narcissism. He's someone immature "adult" with an egotistic and self-loving character, someone able to break any family for his personal freedom. And we let him do that because we believe in this freedom, we love it as ours. Indeed, as I dare to criticize him I am a dead weight, am I not? I used to love his early books - they ARE good and supremely well written - but now I hear the narrator's voice as a never-grown-up's childish egocentricity.
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Post by Horace on Sept 18, 2002 1:13:15 GMT -5
Elliot Eisner once said something like... "When fiction conveys a message that deeply resounds in the experience of the reader it is much more truthful than the surface scratchings of reality that emerge from statistics" I wonder if my friend WhatdoIknow is reading this! Anyway it doesnt matter if Bach is a dude or an divinity - his messages are full of hope and empowerment. So long may he live! It would be almost worth protecting Him from himself for the future readers.
Blessings, %208-%29
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Post by wishIknew on Sept 26, 2002 11:39:15 GMT -5
Hey Horace,
Have you renamed me "WhatDoIKnow" or do I have a close cousin out there with a similar name? Actually, your misnomer is probably a better descriptor than the one I'm using!
Anyway, I am not sure whether I partially agree with your Elliot Eisner quote or if it depends on what the message is and who is touting it.
For example, if I am searching for the best information available on weight loss plans, naturally I am going to gravitate to an expert whose personal account illustrates success, as opposed to someone who lost 100 pounds and then gained back 200.
I have this same issue with people who claim to be relationship experts and then you find out that they've been married 6 times.
So, if readers of Richard's stories take his message as if it is a model for marital success or read "A Bridge Across Forever" as if it is a guidebook of Do's and Don'ts for relationship perfection, I think that they are in for a bumpy ride.
If, on the other hand, some of his story resonates with their own experience and is helpful is some way, then fine. But I think the readers need to keep in mind that it is "HIS" story. Not theirs, and not Leslie's. She didn't write it and we don't know how much of his writing is fiction vs. fact. Better, to read it for entertainment and to take what is personally meaningful without making assumptions about "Richard the man" vs. "Richard the Relationship Guru." He's not Dr. Phil you know!
P.S. On an unrelated note, Horace, have you read the Four Agreements, and if so what did you think of it?
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Post by wishIknew on Sept 26, 2002 11:40:17 GMT -5
Hey Horace,
Have you renamed me "WhatDoIKnow" or do I have a close cousin out there with a similar name? Actually, your misnomer is probably a better descriptor than the one I'm using!
Anyway, I am not sure whether I partially agree with your Elliot Eisner quote or if it depends on what the message is and who is touting it.
For example, if I am searching for the best information available on weight loss plans, naturally I am going to gravitate to an expert whose personal account illustrates success, as opposed to someone who lost 100 pounds and then gained back 200.
I have this same issue with people who claim to be relationship experts and then you find out that they've been married 6 times.
So, if readers of Richard's stories take his message as if it is a model for marital success or read "A Bridge Across Forever" as if it is a guidebook of Do's and Don'ts for relationship perfection, I think that they are in for a bumpy ride.
If, on the other hand, some of his story resonates with their own experience and is helpful is some way, then fine. But I think the readers need to keep in mind that it is "HIS" story. Not theirs, and not Leslie's. She didn't write it and we don't know how much of his writing is fiction vs. fact. Better, to read it for entertainment and to take what is personally meaningful without making assumptions about "Richard the man" vs. "Richard the Relationship Guru." He's not Dr. Phil you know!
P.S. On an unrelated note, Horace, have you read the Four Agreements, and if so what did you think of it?
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Lila
New Member
Posts: 5
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Post by Lila on Sept 27, 2002 1:40:24 GMT -5
Quite amazing. You wishfully create a god for yourself, than with the same easiness disgrace him. Bach is a human being, his books and his life and your opinions about both have very little connection. Or rather should have.
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