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August 10, 2011

Comments

maaike

Great, Thanks Brad!

Jason

Lovely, and thought-provoking.

For all that she talks about the negation of self in forgiving debts, I find myself thinking about how much more the true self is found in the negation. It's not just a negation for the sake of a yet-greater positive assertion, but that somehow the negation itself is a creative act that gives birth to the purified soul.

Eric H Janzen

"We believe we have claims over everything. In every claim we believe we possess, there is always an imaginary claim of the past on the future. This is what we must renounce."

Brilliant. This should be the thought of the Week. Recently, I've been pondering the power of regret...mainly because I've been coming up against it a lot for some reason...and trying to figure out what the hook is. Simone really clarifies the heart of the issue in the above quote. Regrets of the past are either linked to something lost we wish we had not lost or something taken we wish we had not taken. Both are rooted in a sense of deep loss. So we are left feeling in our spirit that something is missing and an accompanying grief that lingers, which we often call 'regret'. The power that the lingering grief exerts on our present and future is astonishing and Simone's call to renounce the claims of the past on the future resounds with me. It's like you turn around and call your past Self and say "That's enough of that! Your claims on the future are not valid and you need to stop trying to interfere up here!"
Hmmm there might be a good short story idea in there....

cheers,
eric

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