As the Story Will Tell Itself: To Become the Mouth Which Holds the Universe

I am plagued with an anxiety of presenting my work and what kind of feedback I could get from said work. The article 6 Mental Habits That Sabotage Your Success highlights 3 issues that I know that I have: "believing self-doubt",  "putting yourself down", and "second-guessing yourself". I am especially guilty of second-guessing a lot of the work that I do, like writing blog posts for this class. I put too much effort into thinking what I am trying to convey and then worrying about whether it would be taken the wrong way or just not being my best writing. This then ties into putting myself down and believing self-doubt. Such leads to the need to Silence the Critical Voices in Your Head . I tend to ignore or doubt most of the positive feedback or comments I receive. I focus on what is wrong with my work and ask for how to fix or improve that. It is easy to forget that you need to actually hear the positives as well and how to play those as strengths. My ...

The Deva and Devi . I am not familiar with the Indian gods and goddesses, yet the more I have been doing research over topics to write about this semester, the more my interest grows in this area. From the storytelling research, I feel I am definitely interested in writing about Saraswati . I plan on going to the library try to find her comic book soon. I noticed that she is also a goddess of music and is depicted with a vita. This gave me an idea where Saraswati would form a band that has the power to defeat demons. I'm not sure if I could implement this idea, but I'm sure it would be a fun one to try. Animals . I find learning about the significance about certain animals across different cultures fascinating, and Indian culture is no exception (even though I know nothing about this either). What are especially interesting are the divine mounts and other animals associated with the gods and goddesses: Airavata , Indra's elephant; Garuda , Vishnu's eagle; the swan an...

In a world where the specter of Capitalism no longer haunts Europe, the Bodhisatta was born into the form of our lord and savior, Karl Marx. During his time in this world, he worked to bring peace and prosperity through the philosophy of his holy book, The Communist Manifesto . By this point, he had managed to exorcise the accursed spirit from Europe, but his work was far from over. Not everyone was happy about his actions. There was one particularly disgruntled capitalist: Ayn Rand. She despised how the prosperity of the land was seeping with altruism; she desired said prosperity for herself and her fellow "elite," individualistic heathens. She pondered how to accomplish this. Then she thought, "Perhaps if I could steal and destroy The Communist Manifesto , I would be able to seize the means of production for myself..." Wringing her hands in delight, she set out to find him. Beloved Marx sat meditating under a pine tree. "Dearest Marx," Rand said to...

Reading through the Jataka Anthology , one story stuck in my head as a story I would like to retell: The Crocodile and the Monkey's Heart . I like stories about tricksters getting caught in a situation and then managing to get out of it with their wit. In my notes, I wrote brief summaries of parts of the story and then below gave a general explanation of these parts . Notes: crocodile's mate desires monkey's heart an unreasonable desire someone is set to fulfill  crocodile comes to monkey promising of a place across the river with amazing fruits the one set out to fulfill desire comes to potential victim with a promise that is too good to be true crocodile offers a ride across river, monkey agrees, crocodile begins sinking to prepare to take monkey's heart one to fulfill desire offers chance for promise, victim agrees with or without suspicion, betrayal is revealed   monkey tells heart is in fig tree, tells crocodile to take him there if he desire heart...

In all honesty, the unfamiliarity and sheer number of choices made searching for topics of interest daunting at first. Thankfully, I still managed to find some that I would like to try to read and learn about later this semester, which turned out to be just some of the gods and goddesses. Saraswati . The first thing I looked through was the comics page. Nothing stood out to me except for the comic about the goddess of wisdom,  Saraswati: Stories of the Goddess of Wisdom . There is no special reason why I chose Saraswati; gods and goddesses of wisdom are one type of deity that I find intriguing. Sarasvati appears to Yajnavalkya Web Source: Wikimedia Commons Kali . Kali is a devi I remember having learned a little bit about some years ago, though where I do not remember. It was just a short text telling about how she was in a destructive and bloodthirsty rampage, and she did not stop until she realized she was dancing upon her husband, Shiva, who laid himself ...