Sébastien; The Story Collector

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Sébastien; The Story Collector

Postby William Renegade on October 23rd, 2013, 3:37 am

As you can guess Sébastien's my real name, as such it is what I prefer to be called out of character. The goal of this thread? I have none. I just do what I've always done, share and collect stories as well as what I can understand or have come to learn from them. The rules? There are none, criticism and bashing are even welcome. I love a good challenge as much as I hate hypocrisy. Who am I? No one special really. I’m no scholar or scientist, none of my knowledge is backed up by any kind of educational institute or serious research. Everything I’ll share comes from experience rather than knowledge.

I’ve always had a passion for two things, psychology and spirituality. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not a religious person by definition. I don’t promote any kind of holy book or faith system. Personally I think claiming to wield absolute truth is the worst kind of arrogance out there (sorry if I offended anyone but I am more than willing to elaborate on that (might do so in a future post)). What I do know after spending my life studying humans is that there’s quite a lot about us science can observe but can’t explain. My goal? Building that bridge.

So let me start at the beginning with a quick summation of my own story in relation to my study of spirituality:

I was four years old when my mom died. What got her? Good ‘ol cancer; The most profitable medical research field that’s never gonna go anywhere... but that’s beside the point. My father: Kinda guy that got raised by good catholic parents, had good friends and met the love of his life at 16. To sum it up the guy had it easy his whole life till that happened. Result: Turned into a workaholic, hellbent on running away from reality for the rest of his days rather than raising his kids. My older brother: Spoiled rotten from mommy’s generous income. Take a wild guess as to whom he took out all his rage on. Yup, the easy target. The rest of the world: I won’t sugar coat it, the average Joe has no clue what to say to a little child that’s already been threw more shit then him, easier to avoid the issue altogether. Final result: Four year old kid trying to understand wtf happened to mommy and nobody’s helping.

Course the subject of religion popped up in my mind plenty of times. One and only subject trying to explain death after all, also because of the faith of my grandparents and the frail trembling grip the catholic church still had on the educational system at the time. Problem with a little kid that spends more time thinking than playing is that I got analytical real freakin fast. It was a matter of time before I dumped the whole religion subject into the “bullshit” box. What can I say, kinda hard to believe in Jesus when you got shoved in your face real early that people who die stay dead.

Now we skip to 18 years later, two years ago, since everything in between has nothing to do with the subject. That and I’ll be honest, doesn’t get any better. The subject of religion pops up in the most unexpected form ever; I met a Christian. Now note that I'm canadian. Christians are pretty damn rare here. Guy over time shoved into my thick smart-ass skull that not all religious folks are” sheep” or “hypocrites”. More precisely he taught me three lessons. 1. Never judge anything until you’ve studied it thoroughly. 2. Everything written in the holy books is written in symbolic form, in other words they are allegories that can have countless meanings that can only be perceived by changing one’s point of view. 3. The definition of faith.

Now there are three forms of confidence in the world. There’s unfounded confidence or foolish pride, which is based on nothing. Nothing encourages it and nothing discourages it, to a significant level that is. There’s blind confidence, which remains regardless of overwhelming opposition. Finally there’s true founded confidence, based on facts/knowledge/wisdom/experience. That is the meaning of faith, real faith. The rest is naught but bovine excrement. From that point of view I went on to studying the subject in the most efficient way for my overly logical mind; Science. Damn right I said science. Three specific fields helped particularly; Psychology, physics and astronomy. The first naturally grew from my lifelong hobby and dream of actually working in that field someday but more precisely because of symbolism in relation to point 2 of the previous paragraph. Then there’s physics because of the countless so called “impossible” things I’ve started noticing ever since. Finally astronomy and its fine tuning argument which is strongly defended by a Christian astronomer named Hugh Ross who’s written plenty of books and has lotsa good stuff on youtube.
Last edited by William Renegade on October 23rd, 2013, 3:56 am, edited 5 times in total.
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William Renegade
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Sébastien; The Story Collector

Postby William Renegade on October 23rd, 2013, 3:45 am

Now welcome inside my head. This much shorter post is my final thoughts on a conversation I had with a close friend about the diference between pleasure and happiness. Ironicaly it's not the conversation itself that inspired it, but rather a story that I finished writting for her months latter.

Pleasure, Pain, Happiness and Love:
Pleasure is not happiness; it is but a counter balance to pain. Happiness is that which stands in the balance between pleasure and pain. Pain is an essential part of the process due to it being a result of effort. That fragile balance can only be reached through patience, understanding and love. Now I do not mean love as in finding a person you like and making a life with them, that is but a single form of love amongst millions. Love at its core is the will to accept and embrace something for what it is. It is the art of learning and teaching in its purest form. A person you love is someone you can truly learn from and whom can truly learn from you. In a way it can be measured by the efforts made in accomplishing these; embracing the truth, learning from it, then sharing this knowledge threw actions or words. These can be observed both when sharing and receiving love.
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William Renegade
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Posts: 29
Words: 17572
Joined roleplay: September 30th, 2013, 9:48 pm
Race: Human
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