the beautiful conclusion of the Beijing 2008 Olympics!

Here is "Gravity of Love" by Enigma. Enjoy the symbolism and the enlightening comments gathered from Youtube

"Don't think twice before listening to your heart."


Here's my analysis.
There's several ways to interpret it, but I think it has to do with understanding the divine, and the struggle between diffrent types of love, for God, for others, and for sex. It also may be associated with the conflictions between Fate and Free Will.

"Gravity of Love" this means weightlessness.(Gravity=weight)Religiously, love raises the soul to heaven, but it also represents hell, as bad love weights the soul. It could also mean God, from which all love gravitates
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"The path of excess leads to te tower of wisdom" This is where the sexual implications come in, this is a misquote from William Blake from the Proverbs of Hell, cince Blake was all about Hedonism, he's saying that pleasure is the best way to go.

"O Fortuna, Velut Luna" This means, "Oh Fortune, like the moon!" and the rest goes "ever waxing, ever waning" this refers to the capriciousness of Lady Luck.

"To the limits of your choice" Free Will
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Experince of Survival," this relates to one's life choices, as you act in life, the weight of your soul changes due to sin or virtue. And since all actions are derived of Love, you choices influence wether you go to Hell or Heaven, and the weight of your soul.
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it's symbolic.. Uniting the opposites. Which makes sense, since God is one.
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I loved the song now i love the video...it's French, it's art. I love the masquerade ball theme and the lesbian love between prostitutes. The saint tries to ignore all the sex around her and still end up having an orgasm...there is even sign language and cannibalism as well as "O Fortuna" ...even the appearance of a sensual ghost world...How gothic can you get? How intense. So beautiful and true...not just sex but love as a means to God.

Some thoughts on integrity:

There are some things a person just should not do for anyone. Each human being has integrity, a selfish, egotistical integrity that is justified because everyone deserves the right to be who they are no matter who they love or have to protect. To give up oneself, one's integrity, even for a loved one is the highest crime. Yet many can not distinguish one's life from one's integrity and therefore do not value who they are enough to not change to fit others' standards. 

To lose one's life is not the same as losing one's integrity. That is why early Christians were willing to be executed when their faith was threatened. It is always worse to give up one's self, to sell out, to give in. Doing so is cowardly and weak. That is why the end of 1984 was so tragic; the protagonists betrayed themselves. Also, in V for Vendetta, the self is one's most prized possession; no one can take it away, it can be only be relinquished by the owner.
 

An artists perfects his art as a selfish and egotistical act.  

This is because art, an effusion of the self, is really supposed to be made for the happiness of its creator. Artists who fail to do this can only make art to please others, and in doing so lose their voice and are no longer masters of themselves. What makes art, in all its forms, so shocking is that it isn't what people want or what people are used to, but fresh, unique, and therefore, powerful. An artist must have the courage to stay true to himself, regardless of how many like his work or not. As a poet, I know this.

 

Poetry is....hard to describe. The experience differs from poet to poet. I know what works for me but the methods of other poets can be completely the opposite. The good thing about poetry is that there is no right or wrong way to write a poem; the end result just has to be unique and insightful.

For me, I write wherever I want, whenever something such as nature, music, or love excites me. Such themes are frequently seen in my poems. I carry around a poetry notebook so I can write as soon as an idea hits me. I write on the train to school. I write before going to bed. I write when I experience something new or in a new way: a thunderstorm, a park, a trip with a friend. My style has a number of influences, namely Björk, The Killers, and Walt Whitman. Depending on my state of mind, I can write as many as five poems a day. I rarely alter my poems afterward. I enjoy reading the raw versions of my thoughts, ideas and feelings. However, I'm not afraid to scratch out lines that seem out of place.

I like being spontaneous when I write. It's a break from my structured life. Poetry allows me to color outside of the lines for once. I try not to think, nor to censor myself, so that I am writing straight from my subconscious. Most importantly, I try not to think of other people's reactions to my poems. I do my best not to be afraid of what my heart is dying to say. There are so many restrictions in this life, fear being major one. So, I write to free myself. It is then no surprise that I prefer open verse to sonnets. However, I do not find rhyming beneath me and I will rhyme in order to emphasize a point. Poetry is all about breaking the rules, not creating new ones.

I choose words for how they interact with other words or how they sound. There are so many ways to convey one meaning using different sets of words, or by using the same set of words simply arranged in different ways. Therein lies the poet's freedom and the poet's burden. I love playing with words along with their singular and collective meanings. I do this using allegory and metaphors, many of which come from mythology or the Bible. I also write many poems in ways so that it isn't immediately clear who is talking or how time is flowing. This is yet another way a poet can diversify the meaning, and hence, the impact of a poem. Regardless of whether they are complex or straightforward, my poems always have a point of view in the form of either charged emotions, wistful reflections or simple observations. A view gives a poem its spirit and significance. In the end, I just want to infuse my poetry with philosophy, pathos, and most of all beauty.

Currently I am putting together a manuscript in the hopes that I might win the Walt Whitman Award offered through the Academy of American Poets. My hope is to be able to publish books of poetry that will shock people all over the world. Even if only a few appreciate my work, I will still be happy that I was able to share my view of the universe with someone. I know what it feels like to read an invigorating book, and to actually feel my mind expanding to encompass what I have just consumed. Such books like those written by Ayn Rand, Paulo Coelho, and Friedrich Nietzsche, force one to think. I hope to do the same with my own audience.

Just had to share this piece of enlightenment with my Gaia family.
The link to the original article is below:
http://mysticsaint.blogspot.com/2006/06/maktub-it-is-written.html

Maktub - It is Written
by MysticSaint on 6/21/06

I think to understand the concept of Maktub, one of the greatest paradox we need to look at - is the nature of time. A lot of mysteries are hidden inside the very concept of time.

Let me try to give brief explanation about how both ‘God knows all' and ‘we perfectly have our own choice and responsibility' can be true at the same time (just as a half empty glass is ‘half full' and ‘half empty' at the same time, both are statement of truth).

God is the Creator of everything, including Time. God is beyond Time. Now imagine - Past, Present and Future as residing on the same plane or same straight line. This whole plane is viewed by God at the same time since He is beyond Time. Now we (creation) are always bound inside time dimension (imagine a particular, limited area on the plane). To be precise we are always bound in ‘present and now'. And this "now" is constantly in transformation. We can only think about future (kind of illusion) and before we grasp what is ‘now' it becomes past.

Since God is beyond time, He knows all, and His knowing itself signifies everything is written. Because God can see past, present, future on the same plane (don't take it too literally, its concept only). So the claim that God is all knowing is true because Knowing Everything is part of His Essence.

At the same time, as human being we live in present all the time, we are given choices. We can not skip choices and simply jump to future. We have to chose, we have to be responsible how we transform our ‘now' into future. So there is this validity of judgment by God. Because by the very nature of time, we are responsible for carving our future.

Quantum physics often say that it is possible that past, present and future can run parallel at the same time (hints theoretical time travel). The possibility is there. And it also gives a hint what I meant by saying God is beyond Time and how He knows all the component of Time (past, present and future).

And please don't be confused about paradoxes. This creation is full of (apparent) paradoxes and mysteries. God Himself holds the paradoxes in His Essence. He is the Creator, again He is the Destroyer. He is the Hidden (Batin) again He is the Manifest (Zahir). He has a Feminine Face (Compassion, Mercy, Love) and also has a Masculine Face (Wrathful, Destroyer, Punisher). The ancient symbol of Yin and Yang also holds that truth. Also, our birth and coming into existence is mystery, so is the death. And what is in between? Isn't life itself the greatest mystery of all.

In your opinion, when you are trying to make your dream a reality does the Universe conspire against you or in your favor? Thanks for contemplating,

~Sora Ryu

 

"What is love?" asks Haddaway before begging "Baby, don't hurt me!" in his hit dance song. Clearly, going into a relationship without a sufficient knowledge of love can lead to disaster. Yet, is not love a precursor to such relationships in the first place? And so, it becomes imperative to find out what this "love" is. Where does it come from? When are we "in love?" Most importantly, why do we love?

Such questions have plagued me from my earliest years to this very moment. As a child, I, like many others, was exposed ti the Disney version of love, complete with the knight on a white horse and the princess locked in the tower or held under a wicked spell. Instinctively, I knew that such tales of love couldn't be true, even if such tales were tailored to appear realistic in the tv shows of the 1990s.

As I grew and read books with more depth, like The Fountainhead, I understood how important love was to mankind. Why else is every song on the radio dedicated to some aspect of falling in and out of love? I recently asked my dad "How did you know Mom was the one?"in order to get the best definition of romantic love I could find. My dad responded with a few key points: Firstly, love can not be forced; it is a force within itself. Secondly, love is a complex force; a pluralistic entity, a coagulation of several emotions. Finally, although love can fall apart with tragic results, it is not love that is tragic, but the humans themselves who fail to understand the complexity of love and somehow manage to botch things up.

This being the most authoritative advice I had on the subject of love, I automatically proceeded to compare my life experiences against it. In first grade, when I desperately wished to kiss my playmate, did I really love him or was I really just curious? When my first and only boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) first told me that he like me, did I accept out of mutual attraction or out of the desire to have something to brag about about to the girls of my seventh grade class? Were all my junior high school crushes that were either one-sided or never acted upon love or simply useless infatuations? Was my best friend in high school the subject of my first true passionate desire or a failed unrequited obsession?

I am deeply concerned about the integrity of my love and love in general. I wonder, with my track record, whether or not I will ever experience "true love" and "live happily ever after." I asked my dad for advice in order to discover the secret to a successful love life and the subsequent sound marriage. Drawing from his words, have all my intrigues been the result of a forced love or some sole aspect of love such as lust, admiration or common interest? When I was younger, I saw that love was significant, but I did not think it would become necessary in my life. I would even used to declare that I would never get married, much to my dad's dismay. My apathy had nothing to do with becoming a "liberated" woman or having a career. I just thought that love would never happen to me. Perhaps love still has not happened to me.

Love itself, which so many people subscribe to, used to seem like a giant cliché to me. Today, I see why love is so universal, so necessary to life. Love is not needed for reproduction, but humans can not survive without love. Humans generally do not like the idea of spending their entire lives alone. It is psychologically not appealing. Additionally, humans know that they possess a few good traits that could be appreciated by a significant other. Therefore, it is commonly believed that no one deserves to be lonely, that no one is so awful as to warrant an absence of love in their lives. All humans should have the potential to find love. I realized this because I feared being alone for the rest of my life; I feared being somehow not worthy of love. So, the need for someone to appreciate me on a deeper level pushed me to embrace humanity's greatest cliché.

I fear for myself mainly because with every disappointment I have experienced with love, (or what I thought was love at the time) I have raised my standards for a spouse a bit higher. I am afraid of getting to the point where I will reject all but a soulmate, a vision of perfection who can do no wrong. My consideration of perfection distresses me because, as everyone knows, soulmates are hard to come by. With all the people in the world, where is the special one set aside just for me? What if I fail to recognize him or her? What if I manage to botch my single chance at true love and consequently am doomed to remain unfulfilled and lonely forevermore? Do I go out and actively seek my soulmate or do I sit back and let love happen to me? Am I the force of love or am I just a toy of this force coupled with merciless fate? All of these questions and fears plague me.

Despite my grappling with the concept of love, I can say that I have emerged from puberty pretty very much intact. I admit that if it were not for the honorable way my parents raised me, perhaps my questionings would have left me worse for wear. However, I will not always have my parents at the helm, especially as I enter the real world with college as its threshold. I certainly know more about love than I did at age six, but by no means do I know everything. I know that I can make wise decisions, but I fear the consequences that will occur if I somehow fail to do so.

I notice I have overused the word "fear." Fear, as I have realized and illustrated, can constrict and cripple a person. It is an opponent to love and trust, as well as a stepping stone to hate. Much hatred in the hearts of men begins with the fear that one will not have a place in the world. Much fear in the hearts of men originates with the possibility that one will not be able to find someone to love who loves back. Fear prevents people form attaining their highest aspirations. Dad says that, in his estimation, no one, poet or otherwise, has given an adequate and complete description of love. Perhaps this inability is the result of humanity's innate fears: "Does she love me?" "Am I being too bold?" "What if I am rejected?" Maybe, in order to find love, humanity must refuse to be hemmed in by its fears. I, for one, should be cautious, but never fearful.

In this essay, I see I have failed to give a solid definition for the complex emotion that is love. I do not fully understand love and I doubt I will suddenly understand love when I find the one I will share my life with. However, I can conclude that despite my frenzied questioning, I have nothing to fear. I can also conclude that I do not need a perfect understanding of love in order to experience love. Humans become afraid when they can't understand something. Yet, love, it seems, was meant more to be felt than to be understood. In addition, neither perfection nor soulmates are necessary for love to exist. Removing perfection out of the picture takes a lot of fear out of love. Plus, the beauty of love is that it is able to exist without perfection. Understanding the connections between love, fear and perfection has given me greater confidence that in the future, I will be able to love and be loved. The quest for love will not be perfect, but, at most, I will be fearless. Of this only, am I certain.

For those of who love the movie Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children or just love the videogame series heres a treat! It's the entire soundtract of the movie in all its glory. A beutiful blend of rock, techno, heavy metal, classical and chorale, this music of this amazing CGI movie has a range that can only be of epic proportions. Please, enjoy.

A teacher comforted me with these words
I hope they are a consolation to those who have felt unneeded, insignificant or unloved:

  you'll never be insignificant--- and be careful about needing to be needed.  being loved and being needed are not the same thing.  being important to others is better than just being needed.
 
  lighten up--- be a kid--- go take pictures--- write a poem---- practice your college essays---- run around the block on a nice day---- notice the sunset (or the sunrise) --- empower yourself!  

Introducing the best patron of trance music: DJ Tiesto. Here are some of his big hits largely chosen from his smash hit, Grammy-nominated, latest album Elements of Life. He is eons ahead of his time. Hope his mixes blow your mind. ^_^