BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Willie-O
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 03:56 PM

Soon as I hit the New Brunswick line (from a westerly direction), including, if it happens, being in Nova Scotia or PEI.

Kayaking in big challenging (interesting) water.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 05:01 PM

Let me take this a step further. Let's say that I'm not really talking about when a person feels happy, satisfied, alert- I'm talking superlatives here. I've often been happy, have often had a GOOD day, even often been very much in love. I have NOT often had a transcendant moment.

I'm not really talking either about a moment of time when everything is totally focused. For instance, if I am hanging from a root on a crumbling cliff, an unknown chasm below, I am FOCUSED. If by one mad swing I find myself grasping a secure clump and and am able to scramble myself out of there, I may experience a transcendant moment- or I may not. I may be gloriously happy to find myself alive and out of danger- but that is not, in my mind, a transcendant moment, in and of itself.

Sorry for changing the rules!

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 06:39 PM

it's tricky
if you've never been dead - you don't really know whats intrisically different about being alive
perhaps you don't feel at all when you're dead
"aliveness" considered as an experience - discuss.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 08:38 PM

Interesting question, wld. My brother told me that his church teaches that death is a "dreamlike state". Until the resurrection and the judgment, I surmise.

I don't believe that if only because of some 'bleedover' I seem to have experienced.

Further, I tend to think that there are people - dead people- who don't realize their state of being, so one has to consider the propostion that dead people feel about the same as live people. (Only colder.) Sorry. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Grab
Date: 24 Jul 05 - 04:41 PM

Playing guitar, obviously. Occasionally there comes that transcendant time when you're playing on your own, and you know it's all perfect. Best though is playing with others, when you're getting really tight as a band, and you know it's good bcos you can see the smiles on the other guys' faces.

Hang-gliding and skiing as well. Skiing is nice, but hang-gliding is better - take the feeling of a wonderful clean fast schuss, multiply by some, and that's hang-gliding. Approximately 1 part scared to 4 parts excited!

Also walking. I love anywhere without light pollution, where you can feel in touch with the land around you. The ultimate expression of that was age 18 when I walked the West Highland Way. There's a long section over Rannoch Moor which I did in a day - it had rained every day up to then, but that day was clear and stayed good, so I decided to push on. At the end of the moor the path goes up over a ridge and down into the Kingshouse Valley beyond. I reached the top of the ridge at the end of the day, just when the sun was starting to go down and the heather was shining. I don't know how long I stood looking down the valley, and I couldn't begin to describe the view, because words couldn't match it. The only suitable word would be "holy" - no church or cathedral or preacher has ever come close to inspiring that feeling.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Jul 05 - 04:58 PM

Where do you feel most ALIVE? / Perception

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Jul 05 - 05:04 PM

Ah, Grab. That's what I'm talking about. One never forgets that.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Jul 05 - 05:17 PM

On the back of a motorbike (preferred being on the front but can't do that anymore....), with the wind in my helmet and bugs in my teeth!

Or standing on top of St Catherine's Chapel Hill, Abbotsbury. My granfer used to farm that hill (cattle) and it was our Sunday habit to go help with the milking, walk up to the chapel, eat a picnic tea then go down to the beach to get fresh mackerel that came in on the evening tide with the seine netters.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Janie
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 02:38 PM

Midchuck,

Catfish "Man of the Woods" Gray, an old herb doctor from WV used to say that the three best things on earth were communion with God, mutual orgasm with a woman, and a slippery elm sh-t!

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: MMario
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 02:45 PM

you changed the rules ebbie - but my answer stays the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 04:26 PM

They aren't actually rules, of course, Leo. And I still agree with you- the awe and joy and pure pleasure and the connection to the ages that pervades and saturates one's being holding a baby is VERY close to what I'm thinking of.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Amergin
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 04:33 PM

Leo...having held my own daughter....I know exactly what you mean...and the feeling doesn't go away.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 26 Jul 05 - 03:48 AM

In the crypt, when I climb out of my coffin at midnight........

Subject: RE: BS: Where do you feel most ALIVE?
From: fat B****rd
Date: 26 Jul 05 - 05:14 AM

Anywhere above ground.......(not a joke)