Ever since I read Maslow after several peak experiences I've had as a teen, my underlying motivation has been self-actualization for first myself and my friends & family.
My strategies for achieving that have met with varying degrees of success.
I often invoke the metaphor of dueling as a desirable mode of interaction.. not because I crave violence or victory, but because the duel forces us into a mode where we must draw upon our most powerful reserves and become the best version of ourselves.
I've always wanted a nemesis, not so I can flail around in negative emotions, but because it excites me to rise to a challenge, to unlock a puzzle, to have someone who is your equal or your superior force you to discover reserves you weren't even aware you possessed.
I want to step up my game and forge a fellowship that only becomes stronger under the hottest fires.
If you're with me let's stand together, let's tell each other the challenges we each have, and how to overcome them.
One step at a time.
My strategies for achieving that have met with varying degrees of success.
I often invoke the metaphor of dueling as a desirable mode of interaction.. not because I crave violence or victory, but because the duel forces us into a mode where we must draw upon our most powerful reserves and become the best version of ourselves.
I've always wanted a nemesis, not so I can flail around in negative emotions, but because it excites me to rise to a challenge, to unlock a puzzle, to have someone who is your equal or your superior force you to discover reserves you weren't even aware you possessed.
I want to step up my game and forge a fellowship that only becomes stronger under the hottest fires.
If you're with me let's stand together, let's tell each other the challenges we each have, and how to overcome them.
One step at a time.
" ... D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road, and
instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what
he calls the confrontation between their souls. It's like freeing the
brave, reckless gods within us all."
To be honest, I wasn't familiar with that particular idea when I saw the movie back in 2001; back then my mind connected those words to something similarly expressed in the lyrics of an old Pink Floyd tune called Echoes.
You moved me to actually look up quotes from D.H. Lawrence and I found something rather intriguing :
"When I meet another man, and he is just himself - even if he is an
ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox - then there is no question
between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man.
We are ourselves. There is no question between us.
But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he
should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the
gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it
is more at one with the gods than is his very self.
If this is conceit, I am sorry. But it's the gods in me that matter.
And in other men.
As for me, I am so glad to salute the brave, reckless gods in another
man. So glad to meet a man who will abide by his very self.
Ideas! Ideals! All this paper between us. What a weariness.
If only people would meet in their very selves, without wanting to put
some idea over one another, or some ideal.
Damn all ideas and all ideals. Damn all the false stress, and the pins.
I am I. Here am I. Where are you ?
Ah, there you are! Now, damn the consequences, we have met.
That's my idea of democracy, if you can call it an idea."
I see that you are interested in Eastern philosophy and I assume that you're in line with the tenet that perhaps all souls are really ONE soul, therefore this "confrontation of souls" could be interpreted as a reflective action, though this path might lead to the realization that the knowledge of ones' soul is too heavy a responsibility to bear. Some might break under the pressure to keep ones' soul "pure".