YOU CAN START A MOST WONDERFUL JOURNEY

from your comfortable bed,in a horizontal yoga pose, or slightly upright in you comfortable armchair in the 'meditative pose advocated also for 'Westerners'. Either position,either way,involves a passive 'body' a relaxed 'mind', and positive 'emotions' among other things plus a lengthy period free from any and all distractions: basically, 'attention','concentration''awareness' ,'self-observation', and 'meditation'-leading to 'contemplation' and/or 'ecstacy/enlightenment'--WORDS THAT ARE NOT IN MOST ORDINARY PERSONS VOCABULARY OR INTEREST. 'Sensation' & 'excitement';'stimulation' and 'arousal'; are what contemporarypeoples want and desire, seek,search and devote their lives and energies until they are 'wasted' and 'devoured' by 'THE HUNGRY GODS WHO FEED ON MANKIND-the source of all vampire/demon stories, of course......Watch out for 'demon lovers' in particular.....

OVERSTUFFED FURNITURE: COUCHES & CHAIRS AND SOFAS AND DIVANS

Victorian type homes and houses,both in England and the US, for example, often had an air of elegance and charm and so on, even if some people were not wealthy or had homes that resembled castles......Today's crap with its ultra slim and light materials for moderns and contemporaries who occupy apartments, flats, and pads or live in tents,etc. and hate to lift heavy chairs or use large tables and often prefer to sit 'yogi'style on the floors and roam around the rooms 'doggie' style, then one can understand why old furniture is often seen as 'antiques' commanding high prices if any good stuff can be found....well, of course, wood and timber in the US is hard to come by,that is, the great trees of long age are seldom to be found and usually have to be protected in various ways, otherwise they are turned into wood pellets and bio-fuels... Anyway, the armchair and the couch,now used mostly for TV and other entertainments, rather than for rest and meditation, seem archaic and obsolete for many...but some of the world's greatest thinkers have made use of such furniture in their own way to come up with some ideas and things that still exert an influence on mankind, at least to those who read and understand them perhaps.

THE ARMCHAIR

I grew up using real armchairs that were soft, huge, comfortable, with nice arms and which allowd room for thinking and writing and doing a lot of meditational work and which are 'a great invention'..MOST GREAT ENGLISH WRITERS AND MAGICIANS all used arm chairs in some way when doing things....mulling things over by even fictional characters sitting in armchairs is well-known especially among Victorian Detectives of note and literary fame.........The armchir is a sort of throne but it is more than that...IT IS A VEHICLE OF TRANSPORTATION OF THOUGHTS WHICH HAVE WINGS...a place to view VAST VISTAS and to receive IMAGES...and to take flights of the imagination...at true LAUNCH PAD....today's abominable abodes, those slick modern apartments and senior centers with glizy, trendy furniture and modernistic twists, do not have such a thing.....children are relegated to a culture of clutter and plastic and cheap, light materials that eventually are disposed of and thrown away to be replaced by 'adult' toys of crap that has not lasting value or significance...but which fills landfills .....When was the last time you sat in a real armchair?

THE CARTESIAN CONCLUSION

SI FALLOR SUM: JE PENSE,DONC J'E SUIS; COGITO,ERGO SUM----I THINK, THEREFORE IAM..... to which I add, EVEN IF I ERR, I AM!

BOTH ENDS OF THE STICK

For those familair with sticks and also martial arts systems, this analogy may prove of interest in looking at this question of:WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? If someone, for example, holds a stick and extends it towards you and holds the otehr end so it is in a horizontal plant and asks you to graps the extended end of the stick and you do so, he has 'given you the stick' roughly speaking! Or, as some say, 'the shaft'! THIS 'STICK' is 'LIFE',what you are handed when you are born, when you come into existence, when you set foot into this world, and what you do with this stick and how you 'hold it' is important.....despite its implications... TAKE a stick and label one end 'good' and label the other end 'bad(evil) and when someone hands you such a stick in such a way yoiu cannot see or read the labels, in the manner previously described, you cannot tell which end you hold until you fully hold it in your hand(s). SO IT IS IN LIFE, you may be given the bad end or the good end and what does this ultimately mean? If you continue to hold, say the bad end, and use the stick to do bad things, like attacking the weak and innocent and the helpless, or vice versa, if you have the good end first, what will you do? THE POINT(of the stick) and of this example is that the good end can be used for a bad or evil purpose fi the stick holder wields it to do so. If LIFE is like a stick and yhou control that stick(live life) then you can controle which end you will employ the most, whether for good or evil or both......more on this another time......

BAD THINGS/GOOD PEOPLE: HEADS OR TAILS

The question has been asked, almost 'ad nauseum, WHY DO BAG THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? Perhaps if we approach possible answers to this troubling observation many seem to share, from the viewpoint of gambling, games or pastime of chance, where people bet on the odds in an attempt to win something,many take on bets that have 'a high risk',we shall see something about this question few usually consider..... HOWEVER,without entering into a mazeof various pitfalls and confusing anecdotes about 'win-lose-break even' situations of all kinds, let us use the KISS METHOD: KEEP IT SIMPLE,STUPID! and since I am, at many times,if not most times, incredibly stupid, I think I can discuss this 'perplexing problem' that people wish answered or solved-the questions that causes me, but perhaps not others, about why 'bad things happen to good people'...... Take a coin or disc and call one side,bad(things) and the other side good(people) or just keep it 'heads' or 'tails' and begin flipping the coin in the usual way and have someone jot down the result of each flip,whether it comes up heads or comes up tails. If you go all day long with this activity it will get boring and here is where another element enters- aprize, a goal or whatever,and this means usually using the coin to determine the 'winner' in some type of contest or situation or in a tie where opponents-participants come up 'even-steven'. No matter the number of trials undertaken in this noteworthy endeavor, the tables of probability will show what to expect from this, if all other extraneous factors are eliminated as much as possible. To discuss what these extraneous factors are will take a lot of time and and will be done another time, ir at all, and really 'demo' nothing for the average mind.....which always raises objections to most everything... In LIFE the same chances of 'BAD THINGS' or 'bad events turning up for 'GOOD PEOPLE' will prevail. This does not mean exactly that 'good attracts good' or that 'bad is merely, as some philosophers have held, is the absence of good. IF NO GOOD, THEN BY DEFAULT THERE IS BAD! BUT we all sense somehow that even in the absence of 'bad', there may be no 'good'! When we say 'bad things' we mean bad events or happenings and not merely objects,such as a tree or a ball or a car.... We also mean 'good people' to be ordinary persons, like ourselves, for perish the thought we are bad or evil(it's always someone else, of course)! BY THE SAME TOKEN(COIN)(PUN INTENDED) 'GOOD' & 'BAD' THINGS HAPPEN TO 'BAD' PEOPLE,but we all think they go what they deserved, they all got their just desserts and needed some punishment for their ill deeds, AND, if they somehow got punished we immediately assume it a 'DIVINE ACT' by 'GOD' OR 'justice',when it is merely a mechanical operation. The dispension of any justice or revenge need not be immediate-I know, for I have seen it happen at times. LIKEWISE, when good things happen to good people, we assume they deserve such and are being rewarded for 'good deeds',for being 'good', for 'obeying orders' or 'Mommy' or 'Big Daddy" and the like. MORE ON THIS ANOTHER TIME.....

ASSUMPTIONS IN THE INITIAL QUESTION ASKED

Two assumptions in the question,WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE are within the question: one, that 'bad things' exist and that 'good people' exist....and we can compile vast lists of both assumptions which will take 'forever and a day' or all eternity.....an infinite series, that the use of the dictionary and encyclopedia will not cure. The problem of GOOD & EVIL seems in these things a relative consideration when it comes to specific acts and states of being or existence on this level of 'human' consideration....the search for CAUSE rather than effect, the search for reasons, as well as fate/destiny descriptions,etc. Have to dash as the computer is closing.