Hey everyone from the Elfpath community,

My name is Maarten, I am from the Netherlands (allthough this is the name I am adressed with. I believe I, and everyone, is far more than the name and the flesh body carying it), but lets not make it too complicated.

Before I got here, I think I have wandered through some pretty dark areas for about a year, it all started when I was researching a natural health cure for cancer, and became convinced that there was a conspiracy going on. Pretty soon after I became infected with the conspiracy flu and I saw conspiracies everywhere. Was not nice, not at all. People calling me crazy, too much free time, all's been said. In short: A dark age. Then, after reading some documents I became more aware of the "fact" that all this conspiracy stuff is only here to keep us from seeing the real truth.

The truth that we must find in ourself, the truth that is being held from us by probably science and religion. Who am I, where am I, what am I doing here on Earth?

Developing abilities, opening my 3rd eye, becoming spiritually aware is what I aim for. I've been meditating for about 2 weeks now, and I hope to find out more. I'm greatly interested in the program of this site, as intuition tells me that it will help me in the (short and) long run.

I hope I can be a part of this community and share 'what I know', as well as sharing my experiences with every one of you. I look forward to meeting you.

Thanks for this opportunity,
Maarten

Welcome to you too! It was kind of odd to read that you came here the same way as I did.

I've been very much into conspiracies as well. Guess I still am. See them everywhere, though I'm not sure which ones are "real" and which are not.
Even though I consider life to be a game (I like to think of the current me as some kind of RPG character, with the real me behind the computer), I cannot let it go. I like to know who I'm playing with and what rules they're using. In any case, I need to do something to make this game a bit nicer because at the moment I don't think it's a very fun game. I've got a feeling that people here at Elfpath know how to do this, which is why I signed up.

To me it seems like we've had very similar reasons and ways of coming here. Is that coincidence or is there something else going on? Perhaps Rohaa's article was there at the right time and the right moment.

Anyway, nice to meet you!

Dennis

I don't believe in coincidence, and I do believe in free will. That's controversial by itself, but the whole definition of "philosophy". So I do believe we're both here for a reason. We had very similair reasons indeed, and since we're both into conspiracy, I think there might be a lot we could exchange =P

I don't see a problem with most heavy metal music by the way, except for maybe the 440Hz and the subliminal messages sent (allthough that's with all music and probably especially their videos).

I think that if a song is made with passion, it will help people who are into that genre, while if a song is made with hate, it will hurt others.. There's a difference though between a song that is made with hate, and a song that has hateful words in it.

For example, you love to draw, and one day, you draw a demon for the sake of drawing, I'd say you would have created it with love and it's harmless.
But when you draw a demon for the sake of drawing the demon, it won't be harmless..

It's hard to explain this thought/ idea..

It can perhaps better be compared to intentionally doing something bad, and by accident doing the same bad thing. For example you are bicycling from A to B and you by accident bump into someone, you didn't do anything bad, it doesn't make you a bad person.
While if you on purpose bump your bicycle into someone, it makes you more of a bad person.

Excuse me for using the bad/good context there, bad & good is very black & white.. Can't get a better example right now =P

About good or bad, doing a good thing would be something that is in harmony with your nature, I think. And a wrong thing would be something that goes against your nature. This is hard to justify though, because there are people who, for example, murder because it's in their nature..

We will say he is doing something wrong, but how can we know? For this sake, it's lucky that we have a society with norms and values.. But that's what I say..

Lets get out of that deep thought area and come back to normals.. How old are you, if I may ask? Myself I am 19 years old (since a week today).

MaarX wrote:I don't believe in coincidence, and I do believe in free will.

I have the exact same opinion, but I usually don't state it explicitly. I have experienced people getting offended by the idea that there is no coincidence.

I also agree with you that intention plays a large role in the judging of actions. Being intentionally "bad" (i.e. harming someone) is worse than being accidentally bad. Your example of the drawing of a demon I find more difficult; I don't think drawing a demon is necessarily "evil" in some way, but I also don't think it is completely harmless (meaningless). If you could draw anything, why a demon? You made a (subconscious) decision to draw a demon, so there must be a reason for it.

I'm not sure I agree with your definitions of "good" and "bad" in relation to human nature. I've long believed the same; it must be "good" to act in accordance with one's nature and it must be "bad" not to do so. But is this really so? Why "must there be" this connection? (On a sidenote: I don't believe there are "good" and "bad" people. Everyone is just playing their part. There might still be "good" or "bad" actions.)

Even if we accept this as a premise, then the difficulty becomes knowing one's own nature. Is there such a thing as human nature, common to all people, or is it a purely individual matter? I find psychopaths very interesting, but is their nature really radically different from ours? I'm not so sure.
I think it is useful to make a distinction between personality and nature, but I wouldn't know where one begins and the other ends. Another angle would be in terms of nature and nurture, but again I'm not sure how much is inborn and how much is learned knowledge.

Personally I have huge problems with the norms and values of our society, insofar it is reasonable to speak of "our society". To me they are arbitrary customs (sometimes codified in law) which have nothing to do with "good" and "bad" in an absolute sense. For me this is a matter of principle; even though I agree with some laws I would really like to see the human justice system abolished. Then we're back to the problem of psychopaths and how to deal with them.

You mention a lot of interesting issues, each of which could be a discussion in its own right. For the moment I'll leave my response at this.

Dennis

p.s. I'm 26 years old, will be 27 next month.