Life as Feast - My Own Perspective

Life is a feast in which everything is there for all to taste...and I ain't the type to go on a diet ;-)

My own take on life has always been, shall we say, "gregarious". As someone who buys into various philosophies that enhance and are "active" type of philosophies (particularly those of Say Friedrich Nietzsche, Crowley's Thelema from a philosophical perspective, and Existentialist philosophy where by the individual has to live life by their own guidelines, their own manner of "Being" and also one's own level of choice.......choices, we can't avoid them no matter how difficult they may be. My perspective on life and how one should live it has always been an individualistic thing. Choose or don't choose, there is no choice but to choose. Even if you choose not to choose, you are still paradoxically choosing not to choose as Sartre points out in "Being and Nothingness", even refusing to go to point A, B, or C et al is still making a choice. Choice, a damn hard and tricky thing to avoid. But why does this thing of "choosing" mess with so many people's heads? Why can having to choose bring humans to such a level of fear, procrastination and downright paranoia about life? Simple........its because of a little thing called "freedom".......and freedom most people believe is a good thing, right?

It is! Until you realise (and it's like an abyss of fear that can open up in some people when they truly realise this) that real freedom means the choice to do or be literally anything........yep, anything (obviously if you're wanting to be an mage with dazzling super-powers of turning people into talking flowers or transform others or yourself into a green ogre etc then we may have a problem, eh)? :-)

When a vista of possibilities opens up before us, its easy to be both dazzled by the options and also fearful of them, not just the big life options such as choosing a job, marriage (is this person right for me, really, how do I know that gorgeous guy or girl who I could feel a deeper connection with won't just come around the corner) or doing something that might just be a point of finger-pointing or disturbing to one's family and friends that is a huge change of gears or path to them. Imagine the consternation that one would get for example if someone suddenly announced before their local Church congregation that they no longer could be a Christian, but had become an atheist or (gasp, shock horror) a full blown Satanist - yeah, awkward moment eh, and yet life from an existentialist perspective would demand that you be authentic to yourself rather than be bound to the dictates of what one may state the "crowd", the "herd" or just plain ol "people" want from you, and will (in some ways) emotionally blackmail you to given the chance and the person involved. And don't kid one's self on that people don't use emotional blackmail or try to label you "the bad guy", because when one truly awakens to the possibilities of what one can do in life, then some within life will try to do just that. Keep you in the small, awkward box that would be easier to keep one's self in rather than spread out on your own way, your own Will, your own truth. And that's the hardest part of being "authentic", trying your damn best to stay true to thyself in stead of taking the easy option where others are being kept happy but yourself is remaining in a position of unhappiness.  As Nietzsche once stated "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently"......conformity has a terrible price if one is forced to conform to every little thing that people would have you do and think similar to them rather than thinking for your own self.

However there is the other side of the coin as well when one realises the dizzying possibilities of life - what I label the "Dionsyian" experience (and in other blog-posts I will go further into this)........that moment when emotionally, mentally (hell and even spiritually as well) when one in their minds eye see's across the great plains and mountains their choices laid out as if life was a banquet to taste, that wonderful dizzying vista of possibility, and a healthy affirmation of life kicks in..........that dazzling, ecstatic "Its all mine" experience! Remember the first time you ever kissed someone (the delightful, sensual brush of lips the increasing heartbeat, that sense of pure joy at the pure touch of another's intimate being merging with yours), or heard a piece of music that lifted you up and done strange things inside you like a mystical ecstatic experience of pure joy and boundless energy, a real boost, a get-up-and-go feeling of being unconquerable and that the universe was right there in the palm of your hand? That's the pure feeling of life-affirmation, that feeling of life as a feast, and pure joy at being alive! As it states in the Thelemic holy book "Liber AL vel Legis", Chapter 2 Verse 9. "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains".  Will life be a total joy? Of course not, there will always be moments of grief, sadness, things that go wrong etc etc in every one's etc etc in every one's existence, but "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" as Nietzsche once stated and as it states there in the Law, your sorrows are as shadows, and they too shall pass, nothing stays the same forever, change is the only constant as Heraclitus says. They may terrify or scar one at the time, but treat them as learning experiences, even the darkest moments of life can be loved if one understands that only growth can result from the hardest of experiences if your Will is strong enough. One can learn to say a life-affirming "Yes" to all things. As Jim Morrison of The Doors once sang "No one here gets out alive", so break on through and light your own fire as well as others whilst you got the time, live!

Train hard, play hard, fight hard, love hard, live hard, laugh hard, sing hard.......




(The above blogpost was originally composed for my blogspot on Temple Illuminatus, and first appeared there)