The Perennially Apposite

"Most daemoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable."
"... this comfort in suffering is the last resort of the hopelessly trapped ego, trying desperately to find a way of doing the right thing..."
"... wait without thought... so the darkness shall become light, and the stillness the dancing..."
"... some sort of passive mirror which merely reflects experience..."
"Look as I may, I will find no knower - only knowing; no doer - only doing."
"... the Indestructable dares all extremes..."
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~HP Lovecraft


disappointments will be your failure; your own self-deception and self-doubt will condemn you
Only those that truly see what it is to climb - only those who are the best of themselves can surpass their doubts and inhibitions, and join me for the spectacular view from here. It's getting awfully boring looking at it alone.
I wait to be truly surprised by something - anything - because there really is nothing else that matters.

I abandon myself to inanition - it reigns me as my purpose, then.

Patience is my absolution, and I quietly watch the rare and beautiful forms of humanity play out before me; there only for me to appreciate, because I can no longer touch them - I could never touch them. My smile protrudes as my heart sinks, knowing all too well that its saturnity is the consequence of my own delight. How silly such a feeling is, however, even as rich and bitter food, so too is all feeling better when noted and savored but cursorily.

I know there are those that would contest me on a philosophical and political basis for this, but I think that most people would behoove themselves to take one simple thing into consideration: objectivism - in the sense that one is completely and irrevocably accountable for oneself and no one else.
If one fails to be responsible for oneself, regardless of fault, one cannot possibly be of any use to anyone else - one would be a potential hurt to all others, despite well-meaning intentions.

Be honest to the point of pain; be detached to the point of objectivity; be understanding and compassionate to yourself so you may be compassionate and understanding with others; face your fears; once you have passed through them, you'll realize that it wasn't so bad after all, that the darkness really wasn't there. No matter what the outcome, it was the journey that matters.

From love to peace: a response to the error in the practice of detachment:
Be careful: detachment and deprivation/isolation are not the same thing. Detachment doesn't mean that you can't have enjoyment and be sociable; it means that you are not affected in negative ways by what goes on around you because of a lack of control over how you feel. When you are attached to something, it clouds your judgment: you anger easily and love passionately (passion means misery) because of need and dependency. This usually results in defensiveness and unhappiness. Detachment is a lack of dependency on those things around you and the reactions to which you cannot control. It is the allowance of taking pleasure in small things that might not always be good, but they are only capable of affecting you in ways that you permit them, because you are detached from dependency.
This, like most things, constitutes a semantic misunderstanding. Detachment in a general understanding of one ignoring the world around him and aspects of one's own existence is not healthy. Detachment from dependencies, however, allows for operating freely without constraints of defensiveness and fear. Thus, you should be able to detach yourself from a situation in order to observe its nature with as little bias as possible. To do so, you must not be emotionally invested upon the outcome.
A healthy detachment comes when you can quiet your mind from emotional excess so that you can allow yourself to see what is really there instead of what you tell yourself. Emotions have their purposes, but they are bombarded and wholly over-extended because of the environments, "entertainment," and food chemicals we are subjected to. To quiet the mind allows you to detach from some aspects and reattach to others: such as the "universe" as Crowley describes it, or "source" as does Wayne Dyer.

Having peace and quiet around you and your being is not easy to live with; things become futile and purposeless because there's no reason for it all except what reason you allow it to have - it becomes painfully obvious that all your suffering is meaningless, and that is also hard to accept. This is why most people strive to maintain a religious faith, because that degree of futility and self-definition is hard to live with: namely, can one live happily without mattering?

But what of the ability and power to define the entirety of your own existence...

How divine

quotes from Critical Appendix, "The Birth of Christianity: Reality and Myth"

1. 

"...Thus, the family of Jesus is presented as having thought him out of his mind, to begin with, and as explicitly repudiated by Jesus. This is complemented by the contemptuous description of the Apostles, who also constituted, together with Upright Jacob [Jesus' brother], the core of the Jesist coterie in Jerusalem. They are constantly described as bickering over precedence and rewards..."
"... The counterposition of these two attitudes--that Simon the Rock recognized Jesus as Messiah but denied the salvational function of the resurrection--is no more than a way of indicating that the Jerusalem group headed by Upright Jacob did not believe in Jesus except as the Jewish Messiah [the bringer of the very terrestrial Kingdom of God that would simply restore Hebrew sovereignty and defeat the Romans]. His role as Lord of the Universe, of Divine Savior of Mankind, meant nothing to them. In short, the viewpoint of Paul is put forth in Mark in such a way as to take advantage of the Jewish debacle. The ground plan of Mark goes far beyod details; it has a profound apologetic aim..."
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2.

"After almost 2 centuries of the most painstaking, intense study by scores of thousands of able, conscientious scholars, the amount of information refined out of the sources can be contained in a few lines.
"There is no assurance of the most primitive facts about Jesus the man: the significance of the word "Nazarene," the date and place of his birth, his parents, his family, his milieu. All such information is summed up in a disconcertingly barren statement: in the words of Charles Guignebert, Jesus was 'born somewhere in Galilee in the time of Emperor Augustus, in a modest family that aside from him numbered a good half-dozen children.'
"Moreover, the paucity of information about the background and personality of Jesus the man is reinforced by the utter absence of any indication of original teaching; whatever Jesus thought about religion, and in particular about Judaism, his own ideas failed to survive his death. He could neither have foreseen nor desired the state of affairs that replaced the Kingdom of God he was promoting, and even though the genetic relationship between himself and Chrisitanity is evident, it can only be in the narrow sense that the new religion coagulated through speculations around the meaning of his death."
...
"Generations of higher critics have stubbornly disregarded the titanic fact staring at them from out of the desert of the documentation-- the causal connection between Jesus's initial emergence as a herald of the Kingdom of God and his execution by the Romans as an insurrectoinist-- and have accepted as plausible what was a mere apologia on the part of the believers of the first phase of the evolving faith [roman converts]."
...
"But once it is accepted that the thought of founding a new religion never even crossed Jesus's mind, it becomes obvious that Christianity derives not from anything Jesus did but from what happened after his death. Thus it was after his death that the germination and efflorescence of a new religion took place, rooted in the primordial vision of Jesus resurrected and glorified... 'If Jesus was not resurrected the faith was in vain.'
"But if this is so, it means that the entire vast library of literature on Christian origins, to the extent that it struggled to fling a bridge from the religion itself to the figure of its putative founder, was condemned to sterility... Jesus had originated nothing in the religion that sprang up over his dead body."

Veggie Tomato Soup

24oz creamy tomato soup
12oz roasted red pepper soup
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1 chopped zucchini
1/2 pint chopped mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic
1 chopped tomato
1/4 cup slivered sun-dried tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 lb raw shrimp - skinned/deveined
Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp chili powder
stale baguette/ stale sourdough bread

Rinse and chop all veggies and set aside. Heat large pot and add soups and stock. Once simmering, add chopped veggies and olive oil. Heat sauté pan, add enough oil to coat pan - once hot, add shrimp : pink shrimp on both sides, then add to soup pot. Simmer just until all ingredients are hot ~15 min. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat, cut stale bread into 1" cubes. Dish soup and add bread cubes on top to serve.

Roast Veggies/ Fruits

Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes and Plums
[seen w/ Morrocan spiced short ribs]

Tomatoes are actually fruits, work with their sweetness and acidity when preparing with heavier foods like red meats to give a warm and light flavor contrast

the key to great veggies is to not overcook and let their naturally delicious flavors come out

1 qt heirloom tomatoes
3 plums cut into ~1" cubes
1 Tbsp honey/agave nectar
grapeseed oil
sea salt

place tomatoes and plum cubes in roasting dish, drizzle with oil and honey/nectar, dash of salt, toss to coat the fruit
roast at 350°F and remove as soon as tomatoes start to split

Raw Veggies I

raw veggie dip

3 raw Brussels sprouts

3 green onions

1/2 avocado

2 garlic cloves

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbsp grape seed oil

1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

salt

steak seasoning



put all ingredients into food processor

[to prep avocado: slice in half around pit, twist the two halves, use spoon to remove flesh from skin]

season to taste

eat with naan, rice crackers, or celery

or leave corsely processed and serve as a slaw

Preparing Veggies I

simple salads: dark leaf base, 2+ tasty veggies, protein / starch, acid, and oil

here:
baby spinach
1/2 bell pepper-julienne
1/2 onion- sliced
toss with 1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar and 1Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, pinch sea salt/cracked pepper
topped with roasted red potato and white cheddar wafer

to make cheddar wafers: heat small non-stick pan to low-med, lay single layer of shredded white cheddar. allow to melt, use paper towel to soak up extra oil. once it can be moved with a spatchula, flip for 10 seconds, remove from pan to paper towel, and shape quickly while warm

Preparing Veggies II

easy tasty veggies... if they were this good when i was a kid, i woulda eaten 'em

Green Beans

4 Red Potatoes

1 lemon cut in wedges

1 TBSP butter

Blanch a hand full of whole green beans :

- use beans at room temp

- bring pot of water to a boil

- add green beans and boil until they are neon green ~5 min, quickly strain

- cut red potatoes in ~1" cubes
- heat non-stick pan med-heat, melt 1 TBSP butter
- add lemon wedges and potatoes - once potatoes start to brown, add blanched green beans
- toss in the pan until potatoes are just browned ~3-5min - don't need to be cooked through, the raw crunch adds to the texture
- pinch salt/pepper