#corpus clock

[thesargasmicgoddess]

Today, I say goodbye to England...

**warning: emotions and ramblings ahead. 😆

I'm toasting the end of what I'm fondly calling my "2023 World Tour" 😆 I've been home for exactly 7 days since the end of May. I've traveled over 25000 miles over 7 weeks to Asia and England. I've packed and unpacked over 20 times and have been on countless planes, trains, and automobiles.

This last week, I've been overwhelmed with emotions I can't quite fully place yet--but they all seemingly revolve around an aching theme of feeling bittersweet about new and old experiences and longings.

(Well, THAT was a plot twist I didn't expect on this trip. 😂)

There are certain growths that can only be experienced through pushing beyond comfort zones. I was, surprisingly, stronger, less introverted, and more flexible than I ever expected. There were challenges and new things: the nostalgia of old friends and old haunts; the paying of respects to those that are no longer with us; the visiting of those I grew up with; the first time meeting of a longtime online friend.

As exciting as all of this travel has been, I'm ready for home. Maybe it's the absence of routine and home comforts, or maybe it's the mental shifts required for traveling this long and traveling alone, but I seem to be more emotionally vulnerable during this last week. That bittersweet feeling I've had all week hasn't wanted to let up, and I've been trying to chase down all the reasons behind this feeling.

Visiting places that had helped shape the person I am today, 22 years ago, is in itself, bittersweet. I remember 20 year old me thinking about the passions of the future and yearning for more. I've changed quite a bit, yet the buildings and memories remain. It is an odd feeling of time flying by, yet standing still.

I've pondered a lot about the magic of connections on this trip, juxtaposed with the blessed angst of being someone who feels too much. Every touch, every step, every memory, every feel--I want to capture it all like lightning in a bottle, yet it's almost too much to take in all at once some days. I tell myself to breathe, but sometimes I can't quite catch my breath because I feel so much. Wanting to live a full life can be quite overwhelming for introverted souls who feel too much, but I am so blessed to have the fortitude and opportunities to live fully--albeit sometimes a bit crazily 😆

When you think about the growth of a person throughout their lifetime and the range of intense emotions, experiences, thoughts--it's really quite amazing.

I know my blog hasn't exactly been on "fun smut" brand this last week, but I've always been authentic here. And what has been authentic this week has been....well...a lot of writing, emotions, and processing. I believe in balance-- and I believe that to each irreverent light fun side, there is a darker, more soulful, extremely sensitive side lurking right beneath the surface. I've definitely been more of the latter this last week.

If you've read this far, thank you. This was a needed catharsis for me and a step in processing everything.

So, where to go from here?

I'm not sure. It will take me a minute to mentally and emotionally decompress, unpack, and process all the experiences I've had over the last 2 months. My posts have always been mood-dependent and my moods have been all over the place so......stay tuned 😆😂

Since I can't do anything in a normal, typical fashion--I just have to go with the flow and say cheers to adventures and unexpected soul-searching vacations. I will still take living passionately and deeply over feeling nothing at all most days....

But a break for the rest of today might be a good idea. Or else I'm drinking on the plane.😂

After all this rambling, The Corpus Clock and all that it represents seems appropriate for this post 😂

Onward...

[tiffypoxphoto]

The Corpus Clock, Cambridge 🕑

[moonywalker]

• C O R P U S C L O C K

The weird grasshopper-like creature (lovingly nicknamed ‘Hopsie’ by the local students), is actually a ‘chronophage’ which means a ‘time-eater’. It is constantly eating away at our time. The  inscription at the bottom reads:

“The world will end, and all it’s lust thereof.”

[porterdavis]

How I spent my Sunday

[Possibly too personal, perhaps too boring, certainly way too long. You've been warned]

There's never a good time to be sick. I don't mean sniffles, or heaven forbid even something as deadly as a man-cold. No, I mean something that lays you out flat in bed wishing you weren't too old to be calling out for your mommy.

That was me. I got a cold when I was in Halifax visiting my daughter and family (love those kids!!). For a variety of reasons, mostly stupidity in my youth, I almost always develop bronchitis as a parting gift from a cold. Somehow I had forgotten to bring my 'action pack' medicine -- prednisone and a lung-specific antibiotic prescribed by my doctor, meaning the bronchitis had a free 2-day head-start in my alveoli.

I started my meds as soon as I got home and went to bed. I kept hoping for signs of improvement but there were none. By Friday afternoon my breathing capacity had sunk to mouthfuls of air at a time. Fevers and chills took over my corpus and a wracking cough convulsed me while providing no relief. It was almost impossible for me to lie down without having phlegm choke me. Somehow near dawn I managed to sleep for a few hours and as the hours went by I thought I was getting better and dismissed thoughts of going to the hospital. My biggest fear is pneumonia, which a previous doctor had described to me as God's helper in clearing out nursing homes. But I've had it twice and felt I knew it's symptoms and I wasn't there.

Unfortunately by late afternoon I had declined even further, I felt as if the proverbial elephant was sitting on my chest. I couldn't draw a deep enough breath to inhale a dose from my inhalers. By nightfall I was sitting slumped on my couch, wracked by coughing fits every time I took more than a wisp of air. Minute after minute, hour after hour, I watched the clock above my TV barely progress. I felt like I had to take a sip of air as if through a straw, otherwise a spasm of coughing would set me back, creating an oxygen debt that would take minutes to overcome.

And that is when my mortality hit me for the first time in my life. I realized that I could die then and there. I don't say that to be dramatic, just that I had never before faced dying in such a specific manner. Of course I'd had near-death experiences, but those were mostly accidents, inexplicable, unpreventable (mostly), and thus understandable.

In the early hours of Sunday I had led my life into a pass where I could die. People would say 'what a shame', but I'm old enough that no one would be surprised. Another book closed, another bridge crossed. I was too weak, too fevered, to take any steps one might reasonably take. I thought it was an impossibility to find my phone and call 911. How would they get in? How could I even speak...make myself understood? Laugh if you must but these seemed insurmountable obstacles to someone in delirium.

Well, not to give away the plot, but I survived the night. After all, I'm here writing about it. I spent 11 1/2 hours in the ER of my local hospital, shuffled from one test to another, one waiting room to another, always treated respectfully, but the pace was dreadfully slow. My triage must have read 'sick, but won't die here' so I was gently but repeatedly moved down the ladder as normal Sunday ER trade filled the rooms.

By the time I finally got face to face with a doctor I hadn't slept more than three hours in two-plus days, I hadn't eaten in 24 hours and I was feeling a little cross-wise. She asked me what I wanted and not wanting to get all dramatic on her I just said I wanted to know if I was going to get better. She shuffled my charts a bit and finally said 'we sometimes have to remember to look at the patient, not just the numbers. Yes, you're going to get better. You're very sick, but we've got you covered'.

And that's when I cried. There's more to the story, but this is long enough already.

Hug the people you love.

[have-you-been-here]

Corpus Christi Clock, Cambridge, UK

[yuucandoit]

Separated them bc they are long. I suppose I should make a mer form.. but I'll come back to that

My Hook twst guy - wasn't sure if he would be a ghost or alive

credit to https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/716126 and https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/611021

@chaoticgremlinbrainspace

Jas Blacklock (Hook twst)

Octavinelle 3rd year (he's an (crocodile) icefish mer. Because they have white blood and I thought it was kind of ironic that his issues could line up in that way (Hook hates the sight of his own blood). He has a prosthetic left hand that can be switched to a hook.

Age: 18

Height: 182cm

Homeland: Coral Sea/Sunshine Lands

Birthday: March 15

Likes: Spatchcock duck

Dislikes: Oysters

UM Corpus Croc - it's basically a targeted magic attack with all sound being slowly drowned out until the only thing that the person affected by the magic can hear is the sound of many many ticking clocks - meant to induce a state of delirium/hysteria/displaced sense of time

[magicaldogtoto]

First attempt at sketching Momo. I imagine her skin is darker than it appears here, but that would be something for when I make a colored image. The pose is inspired by that one photo of Alice Liddell that Lewis Carroll took (Alice was meant to be a "beggar girl," which made me think of Momo), while the insectoid creature is inspired by the Chronophage from Cambridge's Corpus Clock. As a creature meant to eat time, it seemed as an appropriate symbol for the Men in Gray, while also doubling as something the Men in Gray would promote to scare humanity into "saving" more time.

[consumerofsoup]

I beat The War Within!! It was a lot shorter than I was expecting lol but it was very good! Still have no idea what the honor system(??? the circle thing with three choices) means or does but we ball

I replayed Saya's Vision a few times to level up some gear and get some dream pearls so I could get Koumei's prex card and got attacked by Stalker and an enemy syndicate in back to back missions so that was. Interesting. If you need Koumei blueprints hit me up I have so many

Then yesterday I fumbled 2 Railjack missions back to back. The first was a new mission type that opened up after I completed TWW and I had NO idea what it was until I, with my unranked Mote Amp, got bodied by Sentients. The second was to disable a Corpus reactor in a void storm and as the clock was ticking down before the reactor had a meltdown I kept jumping into a wall and failed.

On the plus side I found out you can pilot the Railjack as the Operator so now all I can imagine is one of the crew mates walking in, seeing the Warframe A-posing near Navigation and a kid piloting the ship and being like "whose lost child is this"

FIRST OF ALL MOST IMPORTANTLY: go to market. search pride. buy the color palette for 1 credit if you haven't already. otherwise you will have to wait a year. it leaves the shop June 30th and color palettes are the most important part of Warframe fashion

if I remember correctly the circle of good evil neutral has exactly 0 impact on the game, it’s just a scale of the player’s morality. the correct name for the Duiviri bunny is Sol, though (I jest, but I’m right). also I promise you that you’re climbing to the peaks of Warframe’s story!! (also under cut because. yeah I yap a little. a lot actually)

Chains of Harrow is where it gets a little spooky, then lore quest, and then the beast that cracks the cage wide open, The Sacrifice. hoooly shit that quest. The New War is the REAL long quest I promise you that one is a saga in itself. ofc after The New War you get into the toxic old man yaoi arc that ends with you getting to romance British people

fun fact: Saya’s Vision wasn’t out when I started playing and for the longest time I had no idea it existed! the only reason I found out about it was because I didn’t have the emblem you get once all nodes are completed on Earth! fun quest!! yuuuup the more you clear out the bosses on each celestial body, the more Stalker pops up :3c also he’s the main character of the side quest Jade Shadows. side note the side quests are spectacular, you get a decent number of Warframes from them, too!!

ough and the railjack… railjack my neutral associate. the only time I’ve done the railjack in the ship was in the New War and I was confused the entire time. the archwing mode and mission type is smoother to play than railjack imo, but ao;ushfjks it takes SO long getting used to it. even if you’ve got Warframe movement down, archwing is so different that it’s like my muscle memory is hindering my job. I don’t know where I’m going so many walls why spaceship why

quick tip for the Mote Amp if you didn’t know, if you want to completely ignore upgrading it and brute force your way through the story (as I did), you can switch between invisibility (I think it’s the second ability for the Operator/Drifter?) to regen your power and avoid enemy detection, then come out and shoot until your power runs out. repeat ad nauseam and you can get through the main story!

finally (wow I yap), tbf the more you find out about the Operator, the more you find out that they are the ‘what are you holding?’ ‘a knife’ ‘no’ kid. they are elmo burning in the fire. they are terrifying,, but also ten years old and can do no wrong :)

[open-hearth-rpg]

Open Hearth Video Roundup - December 2, 2024

Welcome to the monthly Open Hearth Gaming video roundup!

These recorded sessions represent only a portion of the games we play every month, and anyone is welcome to join the fun! If you'd like to play in games like these, join our Playabl community and click on the "Calendar" tab to sign up for upcoming games. To browse our entire library of session videos, please visit our YouTube Playlists page. To hear our recorded sessions in audio-only form, please check out our Playing at the Hearth podcast.

Discussions, Panels, and Seminars

Talking Game Facilitation Lowell Francis A talk on running games in our community and generally. Chapters marked to make it easier to find material.

Open Hearth Gaming Calendar

Eclipse Phase - DECAY: Season One (Episode 2) Paul Rivers runs for Horst Wurst, Lowell Francis, Puckett, and Will H The team finally escape the Titan Quarantine Zone (TQZ) heading for the city of Noctis. A worrying pattern emerges within the group when many of them recognise that they are all missing roughly six months worth of memories. This gets confirmed as the enter the city when they learn they are only beta forks of themselves. With clock now ticking on their legal status and the status of Dr Mobius unconfirmed they rush to locate the only person that my know where their true selves are. They arrive at the doctors residence to find that chaos software has been released onto the house AGI and the doctors faithful friend Habeas Corpus down for the count. Can the team discover what has happened to Mobius, and can they find their original selves before they are outlawed and sentenced to erasure?

Eclipse Phase - DECAY: Season One (Episode 3) Paul Rivers runs for Horst Wurst, Lowell Francis, and Will H The group navigated through a chaotic situation at Dr. Morbius's residence in the city of Noctis. They discussed various scenarios involving a synth, a skinned body, and a telepresence robot, as well as making decisions about the game's progression and exploring the situation. The team also discussed strategies for dealing with a robot attack, the identity of Dr. Klatu, and the connection between the killer robot and the warehouse. They finally discover what is behind the Titan Quarantine Zone (TQZ) disturbance, but are still left without the knowledge of their true selves or what has happened in the missing six months they cannot remember.

Girl by Moonlight: Lumina Danny Rutherford runs for Clarisse, David S., Fumi, and Will S. A group of magical girls use the powers of friendship, expression, and starlight to contend with the strict social hierarchies of the mundane world and the nefarious plots of an abyssal court of nobles. With each of their victories, a long-absent star returns to the night sky.

Heart: The City Beneath (Session 1 of 4) Marc Majcher runs for Eliot, Nic, and Sabine V. Our new Deadwalker, Junk Mage, and Deep Apiarist set out from Grip Station to acquire some totally safe fungus for a Legitimate Doctor from Redcap Grove. Surely the Druid syndicate there will be no trouble at all.

Star Wars Saturday

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 5) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Cody Eastlick, and Steven Watkins The Gundarks run roughshod over the Gilded Fangs, party, and meet with the Three Hooks.

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 6) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Greg, Marc Majcher, and Steven Watkins The big Limmie game happens! The gang drives out their rivals! Party party.

Swoop Gangs: Niamos (Session 7) Rich Rogers runs for Anders, Cody Eastlick, Greg, Marc Majcher, and Steven Watkins Sen dies and Slise rises!

Outblastered (Session 1) Anders runs for Greg G., Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Escape from Corellia - The first session in a monthly run of Outgunned set in Star Wars. Iceman, Leblanc, and Azer get run out of Corellia by the Pyke Syndicate. Surely nothing worse will happen in this series.

Outblastered (Session 2) Anders runs for Greg G., Marc Majcher, Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Betrayal of the Crimson Dawn

Outblastered (Session 3) Anders runs for Greg G., Marc Majcher, Rich Rogers, and Steven Watkins Showdown on Mustafar! - Our intrepid heroes face the many dangers of Mustafar in their desperate attempt to find the ancient Sith artifact. Will they succeed? Will they survive? Will the dice roller be more annoying than usual?

Off-Calendar Highlights

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 3) Madelancholy runs for Jonn, Michael D., and Rod Santos Jade Starlight lets his friend Pan Haoran know what he really thinks of Soup. Mu gets some good advice from an elder then causes some misunderstanding when he tries to help out an acquaintance. Pan starts to become suspicious of Soup, especially after talking with Mu. Jade has lunch with one of the competitors. Mu enters the tournament only to find a very familiar face lined up as his first match.

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 4) Madelancholy runs for Jonn, Michael D., and Rod Santos An accidental dinner date, stalked, is ambushed. Well-meaning advice becomes a calculated way to get information. And a practice match is filled with amusement and bemusement. Another competitor is dead by the end of the night...

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Session 5) Madelancholy runs for Agatha, Jonn, Michael D., Rod Santos, and Thomas Manuel Soup blames Pan for Radish getting hurt in the ambush at the tea and dumpling shop. Jade applies a temporary balm to Jintong's rapidly advancing condition. So much unsaid between Jintong and Soup. A Puzzle Sword could be a motive for murder... During a sabotaged match where Mu and River Glass compete honestly, yet another ambush awaits Pan where he found the coded message.

Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets: Gaze into Silken Night, Season Two (Episode 6) Madelancholy runs for Agatha, Jonn, and Rod Santos Pan Haoran survives the ambush, but in his delirium reveals more than he should. Jintong thinks to take care of this threat once and for all but River Glass intervenes. Mu checks on the King of Pearls, concerned about his success. Jintong has a drink or two with Skycast Red to find out more about last year's competition. The players take some time to go through the Revelation Move.

[swampert]

✨ 🌠 🔥 for the ttrpg ask game!!!

ooooh yayyy i get to answer questions

✨ A game I wish more people were talking about.

there's so many!! but i think i'll choose DOMINOES by @jeffstormer which is an incredible game about playing as bronze age superheroes, low-powered vigilantes who stand against a threat to their city and hope to survive on the other end. it's incredibly well designed - a Doomsday Clock hangs over the whole game which you're filling up with dice as you roll throughout the game, and at the end when you come face to face with the ultimate threat and the clock is filled, all the dice are rolled and we see how each die result describes a moment of the final battle! sick as shit and designed with such absolute love and understanding of the genre.

jeff's also putting out Back Issues that you can modulate the game with, which are also incredibly worth picking up. imo this should be getting talked about in every conversation about superhero ttrpgs

🌠 A game with a mechanic I love.

obviously there's a million games with a million mechanics i love, but the one i'm thinking about right now is A Place to Fuck Each Other, a three player game about queer women and the complex relationships they build together. scenes proceed in a rather freeform way, but (this is the mechanic i love here) as soon as one of the characters thinks to themself "i shouldn't be here," the scene IMMEDIATELY ends.

setting up your room in your new partner's house when you see a picture of them with your ex? hooking up with that cute girl from the bar in the woods at night when you hear an unexpected shuffling of feet coming closer? interrupted by a call from your bestie after you skipped out on them to go to a concert with an old flame who's back in town? "i shouldn't be here." "we shouldn't be here." "i shouldn't have done this." the scene ends, and instead of playing out the conflict we come back to this character later in the game at a later point in their life, seeing how they've reinvented themself or reimagined their needs.

🔥 A game designer whose whole design corpus I admire.

again, there are SO many, but i think here i want to bring up sniperserpent who is just constantly putting out games that are thoughtfully made with regards to genre, how simple mechanical tools like table rolling and card draws can be used to drive a game's theme forward, and the importance of yuri.

[theresattrpgforthat]

🌠 🔥

🌠 A game with a mechanic I love.

Okay, this is hard. I have a lot of mechanics that I think are really cool. I could talk about Clocks from Forged in the Dark Games, which really heighten the pressure and keep the players on a timeline. I could talk about the Theorize Roll from games like ECB and Apocalypse Keys, which allows the players to generate the mystery organically, rather than expecting the GM to figure it all out. I want to give an honourable mention to Troika's initiative mechanic, which has the GM draw random tokens from a bag that represent players and NPCs.

I think that instead I'm going to focus on a mechanic that has a different name depending on the system it's in. Willpower (WoD), Player Intrusions (Numenera), Tokens (BoB), Force Points (Star Wars FFG), Momentum (Scion), Fate Points (FATE). You get the picture.

Basically, it's a personal or communal pool of an abstract resource that allows the players to tweak fate, add a narrative detail, or re-try a failed action.

It's such a ubiquitous thing; I think every game has it in some shape or form. It's a nod towards the players, telling them that they have the ability to change the story. It's not all up to the GM. Perhaps that's supposed to be a given but I think it's something that seasoned role-players take for granted, something that someone new to the table might not realize they have the power to do. It reminds us that we are telling a story together, and that's my favourite part of TTRPGs.

🔥 A game designer whose whole design corpus I admire.

Gotta be John Harper. Their games got me into roleplaying, with the extremely easy-to-learn Lady Blackbird. One year later, a friend of mine introduced me to Blades in the Dark, and it took one read-through for me to fall in love with clocks. And then last year I picked up AGON and ran it and was impressed all over again. I haven't played Lasers and Feelings yet, but I have my eye on it and I have a feeling it will be a fun time.

[grandhotelabyss]

What's your opinion on MFA writing programs? Not a very favorable one, I suspect. I'm not living in the States now, but it seems to me the Iowa Writers' Workshop doesn't enjoy quite the same reputation it did when luminaries like Cheever and Salter taught there. Am I right?

The network it makes available is still the only way into the husk that remains of literary publishing. (Note how all the tributes and elegies to Louise Glück are from her former students or colleagues; I may be the only "common reader," and I am just a common reader when it comes to poetry, who has written anything about her.) But as literary publishing has lost prestige, so has the program. I didn't get an MFA, so I can't comment on the quality of the pedagogy. I'm sure everyone is trying their best. Obviously, however, the whole idea seems misconceived from the start, and not only because of the CIA seed money.

In reducing art either to craft or to psychology, the MFA has made fiction into a set of routinized procedures (show don't tell) and a form of group therapy (find your voice). You do have to learn techniques, but techniques alone cannot create great art, and the very greatest art has often been careless of technique. And individuation is part of the writerly vocation, but you're not finding your voice per se; you're finding a much larger, much more agonized and conflicted thing, which is the whole of your sensibility. If you want to write more than one book, this had better contain a veritable pandemonium of voices.

Such an education keeps you, almost as if it were calculated to do so, from the only true literary education: an encounter with the best literary works of the past, with the main line of the tradition. (There are non-literary educations that will also shape you as a writer, both in life and in school, everything from what you learn as a person in the world to what you learn as a student in physics class or history class, but those aren't my concern here.) The purpose of this encounter is not to make you slavishly worship literary tradition, but to enable you to transform it, even to escape it, intelligently; if you don't know your tradition, you are the one who will only be repeating it. But no, we have taken Hemingway's canny modernist streamlining of a vast corpus he had tenderly internalized—he did this for a good reason: a chivalric kitsch version of the canon had been used as propaganda to lead a whole generation of young men to their slaughter—and we have made an idol and a fetish of it, so that educated people today can no longer appreciate, perhaps can no longer even comprehend, a complex periodic sentence. I hold the MFA partly responsible for this decline in the general intelligence.

Meanwhile, the academic setting of the MFA turns the literary enterprise into a game of social oneupmanship, the pettiest form of competition. In the same way that runners and swimmers say you'll only make your best time if you race the clock rather than your competitors, you should be writing with and against Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf, and Faulkner, not some random matriculates on either side of you, themselves as stupid as you are, in a cramped and sweaty seminar room. Such environments—small groups full of young people either trying to be nice to one another or, more likely, trying to be cruel to one another in subliminal and deniable ways—also encourage the ideological herding we've seen in recent years. This helps to account for the vaguely "Soviet" feel of contemporary mainstream fiction: its endless promotion in book after book of the same collectivist ideological pieties, its implicit disparagement of strong imagination, unless this take the form of tediously allegorical fantasy.

In general, MFA fiction feels both overworked and underthought, the product of much tinkering but little experience (personal or mental), a filigreed little balsa wood figurine, and nowadays moreover inevitably carved into the shape of our age's political idols. To quote the old headline the malicious LRB editors slapped onto Elif Batuman's 13-year-old essay, whose arguments I have rehearsed above: "Get a real degree."

[kafkaoftherubble]

^THAT'S exactly why!

I mean, I (presumably; never went for any diagnosis /scratches head) don't have ADHD, and still "time lost in a bathroom" is a problem.

Yo, if I manage to make more people hang clocks in their bathrooms, that's gonna be so sick. I contributed to the grand growing corpus of Pragmatic Organizational & Living Solutions, y'all!

From the book Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD:

Putting a coat on the back of a chair by the door is fine, but if you prefer, use coat hooks and a large catch-all basket for dropping keys, hats, gloves.

Small bookcase end-table next to the couch to store craft projects, books, and other things being worked on for easy access.

Add a storage unit near the dining room table to transition between eating and working there.

Daily toiletry items should be stored in a basket that you can move easily

Extra toiletries and medicine cabinet items go in open shelf/basket storage so they can be seen and used easily. If items no longer fit, purge the excess. Don’t obscure the view!

If you disrobe in the bathroom, place a tall hamper in there.

Keep a set of cleaning supplies in each bathroom

[jiejing-lifechanyuan]

In the Second Home of Lifechanyuan, the World is Transparent and the Soul is Free

Jiejing Celestial

May 21, 2025

（Edited by ChatGPT)

In the secular world, I once believed that the end of this world was nothing more than the struggle between life and death; everything depended on the weight of material things—only what could be seen was real, and what couldn’t be touched was illusion. Though the sky was vast, it could not suppress the restlessness within my heart. Like millions of others, I ran through the forest of steel, clutching time and money, thinking that was the entirety of life. Every morning, I was awakened by an alarm clock; every night, I was numbed by numbers. I firmly believed that only seeing was believing, and only matter could bring security. As for the soul, it was merely a fragile fantasy that arose occasionally.

At that time, I was trying to understand the gentleness of light with a stone, and to measure the weight of the soul with a scale.

Until one day, I stepped into Lifechanyuan International Family Society Thailand Branch.

At first, I didn’t carry many expectations—I was simply exhausted in body and mind, yearning for a brief moment of peace. But here, I encountered a way of life I had never known before—one that did not fight or compete, yet radiated a moving, crystal-clear happiness. There were no dramatic turns, only a quiet serenity that spread like the morning light. The air became softer, and time seemed to slow down. Life here was no longer about calculation, but about feeling; no longer about competition, but about mutual support. People didn’t speak of personal gain, but of cause and effect; they didn’t dwell on success or failure, but observed the harmonious flow of energy.

I began to realize that material thinking is like trying to contain the universe in a tiny cup—it can never be full, and it never feels like enough. But what flows through the Second Home is a different logic of LIFE: the wisdom of celestial beings and Buddhas, and the loving projection of the Greatest Creator.

All of this wisdom was wholeheartedly written by the Greatest Creator’s messenger—Xuefeng, the guide. In Chanyuan Corpus and Xuefeng Corpus, he authored approximately 6,500 articles, totaling nearly 13 million words, offering a comprehensive explanation of the birth of the universe, the origin of the Greatest Creator, The origins of LIFE and humankind, the mysteries of time and space,the meaning, purpose, and value of life, the crises faced by humankind, the future of humankind ,the origin and function of the moon, and especially the meaning of LIFE, the levels of LIFE, and the meaning and extension of Tao—these insights flow like spring water, nourishing every corner of life in the Second Home.

At first, I couldn’t fully grasp the deeper meanings within those writings. But day by day, through lived experience, the life in the Second Home gradually helped me understand some of the truth and compassion behind them. Here, there is no conflict, no deception, no indifference or alienation. In the eyes of others, I saw trust and stability—a gentle resonance that seemed to come from the Kingdom of Heaven.

Recently, I began listening to the Soul Purification Course. Through Teacher Baichuan’s teachings, I’ve gradually come to understand that the Greatest Creator is not a lofty judge sitting on high, nor an angry ruler of the universe, but a compassionate Father—like one who willingly plays and laughs with His children. He created the laws of the universe, yet never forces them upon us; He is flawless, yet allows us to discover His wisdom through our mistakes. He is not a distant, unreachable supreme being—He is love itself. Though boundless and vast, He quietly watches over us with a gentle smile.

I truly enjoy the stories that Teacher Baichuan shares—beginning from ancient times, from nothing to something, from gods to human beings. Jesus, Satan, angels, and the first light and rhythm of creation unfold in my heart like murals gently stained by time. I learned that Satan no longer wanted to be a child and sought to control everything, while Jesus chose to keep listening to the Father’s voice. Even then, the Greatest Creator did not become angry; He simply allowed them to freely carry out their own “games of creation.” I felt that this was not a tragedy of conflict, but a grand cosmic adventure. Every LIFE, every story, is a continuation of love—an expression of freedom.

Through these stories, I feel I’ve begun to understand some of the “rules of the game” that govern the universe—cause and effect, order, and the rhythm in which the micro and the macro dance together. True joy, I’ve learned, does not come from trying to control everything, but from living in harmony with the Tao. Like wind flowing through valleys, or water following its riverbed, we naturally move toward the vast ocean of happiness.

As I continued listening, I suddenly felt as if the veil over the world had been lifted. Words I once dismissed as fantasy—the Thousand-year World, the Ten-thousand-year World, the Elysium World—began to reveal their true outlines through the morning mist. Thoughts I once dared not speak in the secular world were gently accepted here, cradled in love. And so, I began to learn to see LIFE anew: no longer as a narrow line between birth and death, but as ripple after ripple of reincarnation, leading toward higher levels of conscious existence.

I felt that the Second Home is a sacred space. Not because of any outward grandeur, nor because of strict or rigid systems, but because it carries a profound spiritual vision—one that reconnects people with the Greatest Creator, with nature, and with their truest selves. The systems here are indeed well-structured, yet not in the conventional human sense of rigid institutionalization; instead, they flow in harmony with the Heavenly Way, forming a spiritual order that arises naturally. This helped me start to believe: that celestial beings and Buddhas are not myths, but realizable states of being; that Heaven is not a distant, unreachable realm, but present in every moment of my right thought and kind action.

I’ve also begun to learn how to see through the illusion of the material world and to understand that the nonmaterial realm, the high-frequency energy spaces, are the true home of consciousness. I now realize I came into this world not merely to eat, work, and grow old, but to experience, to grow, and to transcend. For if my soul cannot soar, then even the most beautiful body is nothing more than a heavy shell.

I began to realize that life in the Second Home is not about escaping the secular world, but about seeing it become transparent. We still farm, cook, and build, but we do so with a sense of clarity and joy. We do not avoid reality; instead, we find true peace within our consciousness.

I’ve begun to feel gratitude—gratitude for the self that once struggled in material thinking, for the coldness I once experienced in the secular world, and for this sacred space, where the seeds of celestial beings and Buddhas' consciousnesses have quietly taken root in my heart.

Now, I am learning to let go of attachments to worldly gains and losses. I have also learned that the deeper my connection to the nonmaterial world becomes, the brighter my soul shines, the freer my consciousness grows, the higher my frequency rises, and worries gradually fade away.

I know that I am still on the path. But with the wisdom of Lifechanyuan Values as my guide, and the loving nourishment of the Second Home surrounding me, I am willing to dedicate the rest of my life to journeying toward the Celestial Islands Continent in the Elysium World.

Please read more about Lifechanyuan Thailand Branch from: https://newoasisforlife.org/new/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=135

[traeuthaeou]

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