The Mystical Man

MacGuffin - Wikipedia What is a MacGuffin? Definition, Examples, and How-to I didn't actually enjoy the movie, but at least I learned about MacGuffins.

There's nothing wrong with masturbating, just as there's nothing wrong with egoing. It is, however, advisable to seek something beyond it.

That Wikipedia article also states that animals engage in necrophilia. I don't think it's good to use animal behavior as an excuse. Our task as humans is to become cultured:

What's the evidence?

The longer I abstain from masturbating, the more I get the sense that it's not natural. It's a perversion of the sexual instinct. It's similar to the ego, which is a normal but unnatural state that needs to be outgrown.

I'm not really interested in rating works of art. That's why I usually don't write reviews. I'm just compiling a list of films, books, and songs that I like.

It's better than expected.

Wet dreams are allowed. I just hate them. Cum everywhere. Which is one of the reasons why I hate wet dreams.

Third dreamless wet dream. Frankly, I can't wait for this month to be over.

Charlie Kaufman is great. "If what you're doing does not have the possibility of failing then, by definition, you're not doing anything new."

Being John Malkovich is highly entertaining; it's a bizarre and brilliant film, written by Charlie Kaufman, writer of "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

A film by David Lean, director of "Lawrence of Arabia": It's a bit boring, but I'm glad I watched it.

Joke's on you:

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Paul Brunton was a cultured man: "The cultural arts offer a path to reality, whether one can actually create or can only enjoy their products. Through good inspired drama, painting, writing, poetry, or opera, there is the possibility of achieving contact with its transcendental source." "Although it is true that aesthetic appreciation is relative and not absolute, it is also true that the process of evolution has set up standards within us which are progressive from a lower to a higher, a vulgar to a finer one." "Art opinions and reactions are more than just a matter of personal taste. They are also indicators of evolutionary status." "It depends on a man's taste, which in turn depends on how mature he is, how rich an experience garnered in former lives he possesses, how developed and balanced is his judgement, and, lastly, how refined are his feelings." "In scholarship, in the arts, in precious classics of poetry and literature and music, wide-ranging over the entire world and back to ancient eras but not deserting the latest knowledge of science, he will find nourishment for his mind and feelings. Culture, real education, makes man man, puts him over the animal." "Art cannot be dismissed as mere embellishment. It answers a human need. As Plato saw, the search for the beautiful is only another aspect of the search for the true and the good." "No nation can call itself truly civilized which does not encourage the teaching, the practice, or the appreciation of the arts." "A country without culture, without music, painting, poetry, drama, and literature, is a country without a soul." "Judge a work of art by analysing its effect. Does it leave you feeling better or worse, inspired or disturbed, calmed or restless, perceptive or dulled? For every opportunity to behold great paintings or listen to inspired music or read deeply discerning literature is itself a kind of Grace granted to us." "When art or literature inflames negative passions, it renders a disservice; but when it purifies, redirects, and exalts them, it renders not only a cultural service but also an evolutionary one." "To recognize, appreciate, or create beauty is to bring gladness into life." "Whether it be applied in the home (furnishing and decorating), expressed through sound in music or paint in pictures, in poetry or prose, drama or dance, the mission of art is to create images of beauty which attract man to refinement ever-increasing."

"The longest book on yoga can teach you nothing more about the practical aim of yoga than this: still your thoughts." - 1 "Catch your thoughts in their first stage and you catch the cause of some of your troubles, sins, and even diseases." - 18

A lesser-known but great spiritual teacher: https://www.paulbrunton.org/ https://www.paulbrunton.org/notebooks/

"It is better that strenuous effort at self-improvement and self-discipline should go side by side with efforts in meditation." - 474 "Some measure of moral culture is indispensable both as a preliminary course and parallel endeavour to meditation. The Path is beset with moral risks and mental dangers for those who have not previously prepared their characters and personalities to engage in its practices, for those who are still largely gripped by selfish instincts and undisciplined passions, for those who are emotionally unstable and intellectually unbalanced. Hence preliminary and accompanying courses of ascetic self-denial, self-control, and self-improvement are usually prescribed. Sensual lusts and low desires have not only to be curbed, but also ignoble thoughts and unworthy attitudes, if meditation exercises are to be done with safety and finished with success." - 492

"Sins of omission are just as important karmically as sins of commission. What we ought to have done but did not do counts also as a karma-maker." - 89 "Since it is demonstrably true that it is the degree to which events affect your thoughts or move your feelings that they have power over you, it must also be true that to gain control over thought and feeling is to become pleasurably independent of fortune. If you let your life be managed entirely by the hazards and chances of outside happenings instead of by your own intelligence, you imperil it. Our outward miseries are symbols and symptoms of our inner failures. For every self-created suffering and every self-accepted evil is an avoidable one. It may not depend entirely upon yourself how far events can hurt you but it does depend largely upon yourself. If you had the strength to crush your egoism by a single blow, and the insight to penetrate the screen of a long series of causes and effects, you would discover that half your external troubles derive from faults and weaknesses of internal character. Every time you manifest the lower attributes of your internal character you invite their reflection in external events. Your anger, envy, and resentment will, if strong enough and sustained enough, be followed eventually by troubles, enmities, frictions, losses, and disappointments. Yes, if you wish to understand the first secret of fate, you should understand that its decrees are not issued by a power outside you, but by your own deepest self." - 101

"All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind's bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable." - 17 "The more I reflect about my global travels, observations, and studies, the more I hold firmly to this truth: 'Character is fate.'" - 46 "We ought not to ask men to express qualities of character and mind which neither experience nor birth enable them to express." - 76 "If it were true that a bad man must always remain bad, where would the hope be for mankind? But in the perfect wisdom of the Infinite Mind, human lives are so arranged that the bad man will go on garnering the untoward results of his deeds until his mind, first subconsciously but later consciously, perceives the logical and causal connection between his act and his suffering and begins the attempt to control his evil tendencies. Both this education and this effort will continue through many births for a single one would be too short in time, too poor in opportunity, for such a total reformation to be achieved." - 225 "Even those who are well-intentioned and spiritually minded make many mistakes in life simply because they cannot see the unfortunate results to which their wrong decisions and actions must necessarily lead. Only experience can lead to their correction and only reincarnation can give enough experience." - 226

"Go to art galleries, listen to music, know what's happening on the news, in the world, and form opinions, develop your taste and judgment." - Alan Rickman

Great theme.