The Peaceful Self.com

Down the Toilet of Pure Consciousness

2013-05-10T15:57:00.000-04:00

How can you possibly control of your life, if you can't even control your thinking, particularly if even thinking that you’re in control of thinking is delusional?

If it is delusional, and you have no such control, do “you” even exist except as a delusional thought of having control? From whence was this thought learned? Who taught you that you had control? Is egocentricity nothing more than the thought of having control of thought? How can that be true if thought is always prompted by external circumstances and your response to those circumstances is always predicated on the nuero-circuits wired up in your brain?

The “Return to Pure Consciousness” folks authoritatively inform you, through their weary and worn out “Ancient Lexicon of Profound Concepts,” that thought is the problem and to achieve this “Direct Experience of Consciousness” you must be thoughtless, or have “no-mind,” and they provide numerous abstract ideologies, esoterically magical techniques and amazingly mystical practices to help you in returning to pure consciousness. Of course, you have to think about what they teach, because teaching requires thinking, which seems a bit counterproductive to a direct experience of pure consciousness that does not include thought.

Egocentric mammalians are plagued by thought from the very moment the “I-me” neuro-circuit begins developing. Following this momentous, but obviously cursed occasion, you were taught to take great pride in your ability to “think for yourself” by accurately judging between good and bad thoughts based on the prevailing morality of the herd in which you are a member. Hence, the post-modern world is inundated with “positive thought” prognosticators, not to be confused with the magical “pure consciousness” proclaimants, who insist that thinking specific thoughts, as taught through their miraculous thought-control techniques, will enable you to make all your dreams come true, which only demonstrated that they were culturally programmed with the same delusional idea that one can control their thinking.

Obviously, all this tends to be smashed to smithereens at the very moment you suddenly become ‘aware’ of the fact that you’re outa toilet paper and just when you need it most (and ain’t that a bitch).

In that very moment your pursuit of the elusive “Direct Experience of Pure Consciousness” dissolves into mid-air like a fart on a windy day . In addition, now you’ve suddenly engaged with a negative thought like, “Crap! How’m I gonna wipe my arse?” (apologies for the scatological references) which then causes you to realize that the thought is negative and, with all your years of struggling to maintain self-affirming thought processes to help you feel good, you’ve now once again plunged down the black hole of abject failure. Needless to say, this kicks off a cascade of subsequent culturally programmed thought processes, all bordering on varying levels of self-loathing, which then only causes more sloppy thinking, demanding you fortify your future efforts to have the life you’ve always dreamed of just by thinking the right thoughts that will aid you in literally “manifesting” those dreams.

In a dualistic world, negative thoughts are like pink elephants, as hard as you “choose” not to think about them, you’re right this moment thinking about a pink elephant simply because I mentioned it and you never had a choice. Does the world control your mind or do you? Are you in charge of your thinking or is your thinking in charge of you, because if thought is in charge of you, you basically cannot exist as a free-willed being. So then what dafook are ya?

As you floated in an amniotic sea, the first genetically programmed neuron reached out its microscopic dendrite arm, grasping with its little synaptic fingers the next genetically coded neuron and this went on and on until the moment you were painfully dumped into reality, causing a billion more neurons to transmit signals resulting in a continuous ‘linking-up’ of circuit after circuit. For the first 5 years life impacted upon your grey matter cursing you with all the joys and sufferings of a developing egocentric brain. From the start, you had no idea how to define the experiences impacting the fat between your ears and you soon learned that no matter what you wanted to happen, essentially, sheit just happened and your reactions were already hard-wired into the network.

Fortunately, there were other brains, with greater circuit density, caring for you and teaching you to adequately develop your grey matter to process external world perceptions within the correct socio-cultural format, so that you could believe that you had a choice in what happened and would then attempt to make the "right" choices. In fact, you were taught that all the neuro-circuit signals firing off in your brain in the form of “thoughts” were highly indicative of a unique and separate “I-me” that “you” must now assert against a world full of other “I-me” neuro-circuits who are also asserting their right to control their environment. People, situations and events were impacting upon your developing brain every day and you responded quite easily based exclusively on the genetic and culturally programed circuits tangled up in your noggin. At first, you simply bawled your eyes out, but then you learned the effectiveness of just yelling “NO!” as a means of getting what you wanted. In fact, you could NOT have responded in any other way and you will never respond in any other way than the conditioning demands.

However, you may contend that you’re not the child you once were, although you cannot deny that the neuro-circuitry that you now call “me” is a direct descendent of the child you once were and you would not be in this moment right now if not for the neuro-circuitry of what you once were and still continue to be. If not for your specific neurocircuits there would have been absolutely no chance of your reading this right now. The path you follow has always been in your cranium and nowhere else but there. It is an external world that has always controlled you, because your responses are completely hard-wired and will unfold naturally as they always have. This is often why everyday seems exactly the same, because your responses have always been exactly the same and only tiny miniscule changes can ever be expected for the programmed responses you have become used to (but, of course, that’s wired in as well)

Not one thought belongs to “you” because there never really was a unique you, merely genetically spawned neurons which have been acted on by experiences that you had no choice in encountering. The universe shaped and molded “you” and every thought you now have is evidence of the fact that who you “think” you are has never existed as a unique and separate you. What does exist is a monstrosity of nerve fibers constructed exclusively from the past and all you attempts to break from that past must ultimately lug it along everywhere "you" go.

Obviously, there do seem to be times when a thought comes up and you wonder, “now why the hell did I think of that?” and no doubt your years of “Return to Pure Consciousness” training compels you to frequently consider this, because the training, and not to mention all the circuits that led you to that “spiritual” path, has added its own circuits to be included in the random signals bouncing around in your cranium.

Let’s face it, your attempts to move your thought processes down distinct channels has been, at times, a test of endurance but, for the most part, a complete failure. To stay focused on your “Return to Pure Consciousness,” in that inopportune time when the toilet paper is absent, is a true test of the “enlightened master.”

You are a universal construct that has become confined within a social construct, with as much free-will as the gravitational movement of the planets. You can no more break free from this fact, then the earth can break free from the sun. Not one thing in the entire universe was created by itself or for itself, yet egocentrics actually believe they have the power to sculpt and shape their lives to what they WILL and that they have the power to disengage from the very WILL that gave life to everything around them. Your current course was made certain from the moment of the “Big Bang.” The direction you are now on has nothing to do with any willpower you could assert because even the very belief in willpower was a product of socio-cultural indoctrination allowing you no choice in direction. There are only so many ways you could go and each one of them has been provided to you with no volition on your part.

Take a good long look at your life and note the repetitive patterns that have brought you to this point, and will continue to dualistically fluctuate, back and forth, as experiences in your brain, and understand that there will be no end to this. Some of what you want you get, because the patterns never fail. But patterns are always dualistic and what goes up must come down. There is no direct experience of pure consciousness only the direct experience of patterns within consciousness. They can easily be seen by those NOT seeking to be separate from the patterns or attempting to deny, through assertion of some nebulous “willpower,” that they have not had one tiny speck of control over the direction they have traversed and will have no control in any future that manifests.

This way it becomes so much easier to just enjoy the ride…

Artwork by Naoto Hattori- "Genesis"

Relax…You are Only Receding

2013-04-13T16:46:00.000-04:00

You were taught symbols to superimpose upon a material world as a means to enhance the meaning of your egocentric existence. Cars, houses, money, sex, possessions, work, bodies, clothes, food, relationships, entertainment, etc, etc, are constantly being formatted and reformatted within your gray matter to increase symbolic value and, thereby, enhance you existence by making "you" special, unique and more meaningful.

The symbols experienced are nothing more than ‘thought' or electro-chemically induced synaptical currents (did you ‘think’ it something more mysterious?) and you have millions of miles of networked dendrites all generating random electrochemical "thought" currents, circuitously linking up to numerous other dendrite branches to become the closed circuits referred to as “belief systems.” There are numerous belief systems within your cranium and, because you have so many, you often have difficulty making correct decisions because of the tangled up mess in your head. Your daily "stress" is nothing more than the constant battling of neuro-circuits, each vying for the most electrochemical current for which to pull your puppet strings.

Yet, no need to worry, since you will always do what the programming requires. You have no other “choice” but to make the choices your programming requires and, no matter how intensely you seek to claim ownership of your choices to assert your unique specialness into a world that doesn’t seem to give a crap, what other choice could you make than the one you will make? There was never a better choice than that. Based on the development of your cranial circuitry, that was the choice that had to be made.

Of course, the exalted “Return to Pure Consciousness” folks have a problem with such a deterministic equation. They want all solutions to be 'mystical.' Nevertheless, when you do finally return to “pure consciousness,” after all your years of diligent efforts to shut off your neuro-circuitry; will your brain still function well enough to get you to the toilet on time? Will engaging with pure consciousness cause you to forget how to drive a car, ride a bike or even walk? Will sex still feel good in your brain? Or will you simply exit reality for the the magical nirvana of Shangri La? (actually this, or something very close to it, is the conventional belief taught in most new age seminar/retreat groups)

Hence, “Returning to Pure Consciousness” has its drawbacks. But, how ‘bout giving a little credit to the neuro-circuitry that, fortuitously, linked up the exact dendrite branches, thereby, allowing you to ‘think’ about “Returning to Pure Consciousness”? (otherwise, you might be drinking a Bud and watching NASCAR).

Nevertheless, cultural programming requires no conscious effort, because recognition of the programming is instantaneous and unreflective, making the symbolic representations in your occipital lobe patently obvious to you, based on the herd mentality through which you identify (not to mention that any effort made is based on conditioned neural impulses anyway, so why bother). You will always do what the circuits demand. You will think the 'thought,' perform the action, behave as directed, speak the words you are destined to utter and take offense to what others say and do just as your programming requires.

This begs the question, can people change? No, they cannot. Particularly if we mean by "change," altering circuits outside or external to the already conditioned circuitry through free-will. Which is to say, the script of your destiny was written in your formative years. Now you're just reading the lines someone else (the world) wrote, in direct accordance with your experience du jour.

However, if this cultural programming is somehow short-circuited by a traumatic event, the symbols that make up your comfort zone could suddenly be smashed to smithereens, causing neural networks to short-circuit and electro-chemical currents to cease firing, resulting in varying levels and degrees of irrational fears, delusions of grandeur (Eckhart Tolle), phobias, nervous disorders, mood instability, behavioral compulsions, addictions, mental illness, suicide, murder, institutionalization, etc, etc, etc.

However, there are egocentrics whose cultural programming has resulted in a compelling desire to generate circuits for which to judge the existing network that reflects the symbolic representations of self and world. This is not a choice, but simply the result of years of evolving circuit formation literally directing "you" to a point where the symbolism can no longer be relied on for accuracy and so they actively begin to question the symbols that the world relies on for meaning. Indeed, this can also result in trauma symptoms, due to the fact that many of their most basic assumptions about ‘self’ and world will be totally smashed to smithereens. But, based on the preceding influences from already formed circuits, they've had no choice in this whatsoever.

Some neural networks must remain “asleep,” lulled to complacency by the conditioned cultural programming, and we see this fact in the majority of egocentric mammalians existing today, demonstrating the incredible power of conditioned brain circuitry to fully direct every aspect of communal herd existence. While others, due to the direction their programming has driven them, will burn away circuits one by one, all the while feeling that they are somehow deviant or deranged, because they have no desire to graze with the herd.

Apparently, when certain symbolic meaning circuits lose electro-chemical current, they cease to fire and, thus, the symbolic meanings are no longer experienced as before. Obviously, this impacts other circuits causing radically new perceptions of sensory data input, which completely alters interpretations, thereby, changing responses. This is similar to altering neuro-chemical composition through various drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, peyote, mescaline, ecstasy, etc, but unfortunately, altering neuro-chemistry is temporary, while altering entire brain circuits is more consistent and, hence, “abiding.”

Nevertheless, for this very reason, there are those among us who can SEE the dream consistently and are no longer controlled by the symbols within the dream.

Even though the experience must be different for each separate, individual neuro-circuit network, there do seem to be signs of this type of neuro-network development.

Maybe you are one of those who seem to interminably question everything even, and especially, that which is most obvious, to the constant dismay and agitation of those around you? Maybe you find it a struggle to participate in the symbolic socio-cultural games that others have been programmed to believe crucial to achieving “happy” and meaningful lives?

Have you become overtly aware of the social games as vapid and vacuous? Do you find yourself avoiding most interactions even, and especially, with those closest to you, due to the shallow verbiage necessary to maintain social engagements? Do you find yourself barely able to control fits of laughter at “inappropriate” times, because the symbols tend to lose boundaries and merge into one another in a strange purple haze? Do you often have absolutely no motivation to perform the symbolic functions of life and feel no guilt about that failure in recognition of its meaninglessness? Have you at times realized that everything you do seems consistently repetitive, as if your reactions and responses are not of “you”? Does everything that happens in your world, no matter how sad or happy, often seem exactly the same?

These may be signs of the direction your circuits are taking you, with no volition on your part, and this is why there really are so few individuals who can consistently ‘abide’ in this state and most only have brief experiences, which they then refer to as "enlightenment" or "awakening."

Without your culturally programmed symbolic representations of the world, there could be no “self’ to exist in that world, because the self is nothing more than a total composite package of symbolic representations. It is the symbolic ‘self’ that must accept a symbolic world, for without the symbols you would exist no differently than your pet dog or cat, completely reliant on mammalian impulses and instincts in relating to an outside world.

The truth is always behind the symbols and a symbolic existence can only be false by nature of its symbolizing. What is "real" when the real is unknown? Yet, Egocentrica Mammalia recycles and reformats its symbols because there must always be meaning in its world for IT to exist as meaningful. Egocentricity cannot fathom its abject meaninglessness and still function.

So if you are one of the very few in which the symbols seem to be gradually failing you, one by one…

…relax, it only means “you” are receding.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb

Artwork by Sam Weber

The Symbolic Existence of Egocentrica Mammalia

2013-04-10T08:49:00.001-04:00

When the next war commences, threatening all of egocentric civilization, will your life have been in vain? Will all your symbolic goals, dreams and aspirations have been for naught? Will all your objects and possessions completely lose their symbolic value?

Egocentricity could be defined, quite simply, as a perpetual state of repressing death by constructing an elaborate symbolic world from which to contrive fictional meanings that only result in a spectrum of cognitive-behavioral symptoms and compulsions sporadically erupting from the chronic denial of death.

Death is a a fact that makes all symbols utterly meaningless. But has your symbolically meaningful life ever resulted in “happiness"? How can a symbolic reality, or that which is not real, ever have any meaning whatsoever?

Yet, due to the ever constant fear of death, egocentric mammalia had to imagine the means to avoid reality, minimizing abject terror into a numbing sense of persistent anxiety. Why would you ever be anxious or nervous about anything? Could it be that your anxiety is merely a result of the ongoing repression of realizing a destiny that will only end in death?

Egocentric mammalia constructs fictions to avoid facts, whimsically weaving more complex and complicated symbols of grandeur. Since birth, the idea of death gradually linked-up with developing circuitry and the consistency of childhood awe and wonder slowly dissipated over time as the real context of your existence became more undeniable.

However, to avoid a complete shut-down, neuro-circuits were formatted to repress of this fear. This repression has resulted in a myriad of symptomatic eruptions, but never the full abject terror that would arise if a loaded gun was pressed against your forehead. This is evident in those who have been fortuitously released from the reapers embrace only to experience the dissociative numbness of PTSD, when the meaning of life has been short-circuited or re-routed and many electro-chemical currents, that once gave life symbolic meaning, have simply shut down for good.

Prior to all this, we mindlessly ate, shit, slept, copulated and died, without even a thought that things should be any different. But as neuro-circuits increased, egocentric mammalia needed to struggle mightily against the confinement of its own brief and meaningless existence, requiring perpetual embellishment of normal functioning by adding a whole host of trivial features to aggrandize and fluff up its life through avoiding, at all costs, the moment-to-moment omnipresence of death.

Nature has no reason to construct symbolic fictions to avoid fact and exposes the patent absurdity of egocentric symbolism. This requires egocentrica mammalia to totally and completely divorce itself from nature, as a means of protecting its symbolic existence, thereby, minimizing the natural world as an absurd anomaly of existence. This is why so many feel a magnetic pull to return to the natural reality. Alas, it is now simply too late…

Egocentrics have developed miles of cranial neuro-circuitry providing an array of complicated, but needless, impulses and electro-chemical currents, useful in detracting from the fact that death could strike at any moment and no amount of preparation or prediction can avert that event. But to consider this fact on a daily basis would be to live in mortal terror. Hence, terror is minimized through billions of useless brain circuits that serve to modulate the terror into a dull throbbing state of perpetual anxiety. This requires egocentrics scurry about performing "important" symbolic functions to maintain the miles of synaptical distractions.

This is a bargain egocentrica mammalia had to make, since it is cursed with the realization of its own destiny, knowing that all are destined for the same outcome. The terror of death required egocentrica to fully develop an aspect of its neural network we refer to as “imagination.” Tightly compacted neuro-circuits within a calcium shell, every dendrite essentially useless to eating, shitting, sleeping and copulating, but absolutely crucial to hiding from death.

egocentrica mammalia imagined into existence a symbolic world for the sole purpose of denying the black abyss of total nothingness that is the certain outcome of all its projects, since ALL its symbolic projects were made up purely from the emptiness of “imagination.”

Now all egocentric mammalia need do is retrieve from the imagination all manner of conceptual abstractions to make life more meaningful by extracting “life” from reality itself. This entire project evolved simply to avoid considering its finite existence. The fear of death was hidden away and folded neatly within conceptual abstractions such as “God,” “heaven,” “karma,” etc. Millions of imaginary concepts resulting in a million more complex ideological circuits, firing randomly, allowed egocentric mammalia to believe itself master of the universe, as opposed to being slave to death.

Yet… alas…it was all imaginary and he is master of nothing, because he has yet to master the meaningless networks of nothingness tangled up in his brain. Empty circuits serving useless causes leading to a deep, abiding sense of nothingness that anxiously hums and throbs right up to his terminal breathe.

It was all conjured up, shaped out of a vacuum of total nothingness and completely contrived out of thin air. Your entire world was invented out of fluffy clouds of imaginary concepts as a means to protect yourself from the egocentric curse of realizing the stark reality of death and the meaninglessness of everything that precedes it.

Hence, everything egocentrics do to increase "self-esteem" by perpetual activities, does nothing to thwart his eventual demise, and means nothing after it. This anxiety is nothing more than a perpetual state of managing the stark terror undeniably associated with the fact that you could drop dead one minute after reading this very sentence and not one of your fictions could do a damn thing to avert that fact.

The blatant narcissism, endemic within egocentric neuro-circuits, demand life have meaning above and beyond simple mammalian bodily functioning and so more and more circuits are packed into an already overloaded motherboard, with the only objective being to avoid death.

What difference does it make what you do or who you think yourself to be when the outcome is the same for all, no matter what they have or have not done, while existing? Whether serial killer or savior, cop or criminal, saint or sinner, what difference is there in any role when only one factual outcome is assured for all roles?

Thus, egocentric mammalia constructed imaginary religions, with symbolic rituals, rites, ideologies. It imagined exotic spiritual theories with symbolic practices, like yoga, prayer, meditation, etc, and a myriad of other fictions to appease the underlying terror of total and complete nothingness that death demands. It insured centuries of devout and revered personalities to coach the players in these repression games. It imagined sciences for which to apply useless symbols to sensory data to fabricate a comfortable existence with greater potential to deny death. A science that tells us how to prolong life, while those following such guidelines die as often as those who do not. Cigarettes will kill you, unless of course, you’re one of those smokers who live to a hundred.

Is it ever a good day to die?

Nevertheless, you will die and that is certain. In fact, it is more certain than your symbolic existence.

To keep the dream alive, by avoiding the reality of the dream, everybody must play his part as expected and every imaginary part played, is played to avoid death and has no other purpose but that. The grand significance of your entire life trajectory merely serves to hide from the reaper who walks with you everywhere you go, and will one day take your hand.

Nevertheless, once egocentric mammalia comes face-to-face with its own death, all the imaginary roles required for life’s games, dissolve back into the thin air from which they were imagined. All games lose their value and the rules no longer matter. In the moment of death, life passes before your eyes simply because it is receding back into the empty nothingness from which it was symbolically extracted and shaped.

Thus, everything you have done or will ever do, has exclusively served one purpose only and that is to avoid looking into the abyss of your own factual nothingness that only death can show. Everything the world has taught you has served to keep you from the only Teacher that knows the truth. But you really don't want the truth.

Your beloved teachers claim that you are inhabited by some cosmic energetic spirit or divine soul, which lives on interminably. They explain that you are a well of infinite love and this makes you able to forget asking, “what difference does it make, since I could drop dead at any moment.”

So in what way has your life drastically and radically improved by knowing that everything around you is pure quantum energy derived from the cosmos? Does this help you levitate above the traffic on the interstate? Do you pass through walls on your way to the toilet? Or does it simply help you avoid the inescapable fact that you’re merely passing the time while death patiently waits around the corner.

"Play your games my children, for soon you will be mine to take at my choosing and all your games will be like sandcastles at high tide”

Any spiritual ideology that does not bring you face to face with your utter insignificance, is nothing more than a tool of repression to aid in keeping you in the dream of death. This is why the Buddha must be disemboweled.

The main problem with egocentrics is that they stink of the fear of death and that stench permeates their lives, giving death value through destruction, murder, war, greed, corruption, etc. If not for the socially programmed fear of death, what value could war ever have? If not for the abject terror of death, what value could life have? The only reason you seek to aggrandize life is because of death and you are terrified of this fact.

Die to your symbolic existence and SEE the dream.

This is what every true “Enlightened Master” has proclaimed. Why has this content been so distorted over the centuries? Look at what you value and disembowel it.

This begs the question, if death has so much to teach, why are there so few students?

Simply because the “master” you wish to learn from will hopefully keep you from knowing that you are really nothing at all, a fiction, a meaningless story, a useless fable, a trite composite of imaginary symbols that minimize fear while producing a perpetual state of numbed anxiety leading to an array of symptoms we call “mental illness.”

Nevertheless, eventually, everyone arrives in the classroom and passing the final exam is completely assured.

Fear of Death Link

Artwork by Nefandus Nafsee - "Kirilll"

I Don’t Know Why She Swallowed The Fly…

2013-04-04T11:46:00.000-04:00

I know an old lady who swallowed a cow
I don't know how she swallowed the cow
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I don't know why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die?

So, how the hell did you get here?

Was it something he said?

Not entirely.

More likely it was what she said that brought you to him that got you here. But even that isn’t the whole story.

Because... if that event hadn’t happened when it did, you would have never been in the ‘place’ to hear and understand what she said that brought you to him that got you here.

But wait!

There's more...

If you weren’t in that situation when the event happened, you would have never been in a ‘place’ to hear what she said that brought you to him that got you here. But more specifically, if you hadn’t been in that mood, while in that situation, when that event happened, you’d have never heard her, which brought you to him that got you here. But being in that particular mood stimulated a specific emotion while in that situation, in which that event occurred, causing you to hear what she said which led you to him that got you here.

But then, why that specific emotion?

Well, obviously to have that specific emotion there must have been a preceding interpretation in the form of a concept, which only arose because of the mood you were in while that event occurred, during that situation which motivated you to listen to her that eventually brought you to him and then here.

But from where did the particular concept come from that caused the interpretation, while in that mood, which led to that emotion due to that event happening in that particular situation, which caused you to hear and understand her that brought you to him and got you here at this very moment?

When you were a child you learned that concept. You don't remember how, why or when, in fact, you're not even fully conscious of the concept itself or that it has the peculiar capacity to evoke specific emotions in certain situations and events.

None of this has ever been available to you...

Nevertheless, it is the reason the mood arose that evoked the emotion due to this event in that situation that allowed you to hear and understand her, which brought you to him and that eventually led you here.

This is precisely how your entire life has unfolded and transpired. It may seem random at times, but there is always a pattern for those who can pull back the curtains and SEE. Notice that "you" had nothing to do with any of this and it all unwound simply by nature of your ‘birth.’

Isn't it "true" that your existence is contingent on making choices, because it does seem that making choices is something you do everyday?

Hence, if no 'choice' has ever been made by you, and never will be made by you, therefore, do "you" even exist?

When the time comes, after a series of non-volitional "choices," made by what certainly seems distinctly "you," there will pop-up in your head an answer to that question.

In the meantime, while dreaming seems "real," there will be an apparent feeling of being controlled by it, instilling a desire to struggle against that control. The belief that you have even the slightest, tiniest control of your “destiny” is probably cause of all your suffering. Just as the belief you can choose other than suffering has the same net effect.

Egocentric Mammalia is the only species intently focused on altering its destiny. If you are seeking to control your destiny to achieve a state of future “happiness,” then clearly, you are destined to succeed in failure.

It seems to take many years before achieving this degree of 'understanding' and most never make it because they believe it requires a correct ‘choice' be made in order to 'understand.'

But be of raucous and jubilantly good cheer!

You are not the cause of even that….

Hence, you may construct a volitional, choice-based context for why you are here at this moment and, because of that, the real reason will only elude you. The invisible oscillating patterns that direct your movement are beyond the capacity of most to detect. Hence, they must fabricate comfortable theories of God, universe, ‘vibrational energy,' etc, etc, to make it all seem... reasonably ordered and not chaotically absurd.

Nevertheless, no need for guilt or regret. No need to worry about what to do, because you will no doubt do exactly what will be done each and every moment and, even though you may rate these experiences as “good” or “bad,” they will happen regardless of what context you wrap them around, as a means of emphasizing the wonderful conscientious decision-making skills that you diligently honed to perfection your entire life through various positive "choice" reinforcing educational experiences (but that have failed in teaching you the best choices for which to be "happy," because you have yet to experience that state with any considerable consistency worthy of such grand educational endeavors).

Right now, at this point, in this very moment, on this exact spot, some of those who came here, through whatever experiences they had no choice in experiencing, are beginning to understand that there’s no reason to consider what will happen after here (because of meeting him due to hearing her, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...). It most certainly will lead to something, because everything does, just nothing you could “choose.”

But if you’re not choosing your destiny, then who the hell is?

Ahhh…

...allow the meaningless nature of your egocentric self-absorption to flow over you like cool rain on a hot summer day...

So that, if the time is right, you can get the answer to that question and you will be one of a very rare few who now KNOW...

...why the old lady swallowed that fly.

Artwork by SheerHeart - "Where is my dream"

Studying the "Lifestyles" of Egocentric Mammalia

2013-04-02T14:02:00.000-04:00

The word “lifestyle” is repugnant to me. Every time I see or hear it used, I cringe. But the concept is quite ingrained in social discourse and egocentricity is always busily at work attempting to maintain and rigorously defend its “lifestyle” as the imaginary framework from which to actualize a meaningful existence. Egocentric Mammalia is the only creature deeply attached to a "lifestyle" and will even bomb other Egocentric Mammalians in order to protect its treasured lifestyle. It will even slowly destroy its own habitat to accommodate this illusionary framework it glorifies itself through.

What lifestyle do you identify as the social veneer through which to assert your egocentric identity and contrive a sense of “happiness”?

Is the bland routine drudgery you engage in daily considered necessary for supporting the lifestyle that you believe you’ve chosen as most valuable among all lifestyles you could have chosen? Is money crucial to your lifestyle? Have there been times when you’ve feared losing or having to down-size your lifestyle? Do you feel “proud” of your chosen lifestyle? Does your choice of lifestyle include various spiritual pursuits and practices which afford you the capacity to offset the mundane activities that maintaining your lifestyle demands? Do you feel guilty that you live an 'abundant' lifestyle, while others live in abject poverty?

All egos claim ownership of a “lifestyle” to support the psychological egocentric belief circuits tightly housed between the ears. Lifestyles are determined by cultural conditioned childhood training and, hence, are generally similar within each socio-cultural herd, with only minor alterations to that conformity. Egocentric capitalist lifestyles are centered around financial distinctions, such as upper, middle, lower, etc, and egocentrics tend to rigidly conform to the expectations of each corresponding level (beer vs martini, golf vs nascar, etc). Within each class there are practitioners who claim “alternative lifestyles,” but even these are encompassed within the overall ego-centered herd configurations and most “alternative” practitioners seek acceptance by the herd as opposed to being perceived as deviating from the herd (note: gay marriage). There are no deviations from the herd that are not easily encompassed within the herd's grazing behaviors.

“The eternal is not born nor does it die. We confound the appearance with Reality. Appearance carries it's end in itself. What is it that appears anew? If you cannot find it, surrender unreservedly to the substratum of appearances; then Reality will be what remains."

Do you realize that the smarty pants who proclaimed this had to be hand fed, cause his “awakening” resulted in having had no interest in keeping his body alive, let alone providing for it through any particular "lifestyle"?

Nevertheless, what do you think you might get out of that quote? What basis could it ever have in your comfy suburbo-urban lifestyle? So what the fook do you do with this “teaching”? Memorize it and recite the words on your morning commute? Or maybe subliminally plug it into your head at night so as to stimulate the subconscious while you sleep, so you can then wake up and start your 'awesome' day? How do you incorporate this into your “lifestyle” because, make no mistake, egocentrics must have a style of living conducive to enhanced identification and opposed to any cracks in that identity.

You haven’t even disengaged from your treasured lifestyle, how do you expect to engage the “eternal”?

What you need to worry about is lowering the damn mortgage payment, otherwise how the hell are you gonna pay for your kid’s college, since you’re still paying on the braces for the two little heads you feed daily (without gratitude I might add, which bugs the sheit outa you). I mean… sure, these contemplative cracker-jack concepts gives you a mental hard-on, when ya hear it spoken by the beloved master, but it ain’t gonna pay the health insurance premiums and god knows, you absolutely cannot be caught dead without health insurance or all the other insurances necessary to protect your precious lifestyle (“the precious, must have the precious!”).

Let’s face it, the new age guru has health insurance and you, and thousands of others just like you, pay for it through seminars, retreats, books and DVDs. They’s sittin’ pretty thanks to your financial support. But with all your egocentric worries and concerns, do you really have the time for “spiritual enlightenment”? I mean, can you consciously incorporate “abiding non-duality” in your menial 9 to 5 job and still pack boxes and sell useless sheit nobody needs? And what the fook ya gonna do if suddenly you get “awakened” at 80 miles an hour on the interstate in you daily commute?

"Enlightenment" could kill you!!

Holographic fractal universe? Yep, it’s right there in your plasma HDTV? It’s true that learning quantum mechanics will alter your life experience, but only on weekends. Higher levels of consciousness? Well maybe, but only after you get your tax refund, then you can really be “in the moment.” You say you want the “direct experience of Being”? Just not at the pump while gas is over 4 dollars a gallon (you could really “Be” when it was under 3). How can you “awaken to truth” when you’re 50 lbs overweight and still afflicted with sporadic Big Mac attacks? (Truth don’t want no fatties). "Oneness"? Yep, sure, but let’s not include your boss, who’d want to join with that A-hole anyway? "Non-duality"? Ha! As long as there’s still a Starbucks, you’re all for it! "Buddha mind"? Absolutely! And maybe it’ll even help you get off Xanax. Sure, you want to achieve the "Unity of Christ Consciousness," but only after the divorce is finalized. No-mind? Damn straight! As long as you remember how much you love a good ole’ orgasm in the morning.

This then, begs the question. How can you expect to achieve the “enlightenment” you seek or “awaken” to truth, if still attached to the pains and pleasures of an ego-centered lifestyle? Could it be that it’s the socially conditioned space between your ears that needs to be cleaned out first? The billions of neural dendrites, developed over years of social indoctrination through mind numbing public education, that must be burnt away?

Or is it utterly hopeless?

Can you fully realize the "One Truth" that beats out all other truths, if you continue to participate in socio-cultural fabrications which compromise with truth to make it whatever you say IT IS, whenever you say IT IS, and what you say IT IS can only ever be what you were taught to say IT IS, because you don’t know anything else but what they’ve said IT IS, which requires incredible amounts of fortitude to maintain cause deep down you know this can’t be what IT IS and that IT IS something else entirely, even though you still have no idea what IT IS?

Can you know the truth and remain in your roles, continuing to play by the scripts of conventional, status-quo games within the comfort of socially prescribed grazing fields? Or maybe you know the One Truth, but in order to continue playing your roles you have to forget you know, thereby, requiring the Truth du Jour as guiding light?

The paradox is that you know your “lifestyle” is bullsheit and has nothing to do with really living at all, but it’s ALL you know.

"It is not the ferocity of the beast of prey that requires a moral disguise but the herd animal with its profound mediocrity, timidity and boredom with itself." - Neitzsche

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." - Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind, 1955

Artwork by Kazuhiko Nakamura - "Automaton"

The Generic Futility of Blue Goo

2013-03-27T10:46:00.001-04:00

Ahhhh…waking up to another day of ‘doing’ things and getting things ‘done.’ Not just things, but fooking important things that give a sense of self-actualizing grandiosity in the battle against the deeper sense of your abject insignificance. Sliding down the smoothly polished pipeline of productive people participating in perfectly normal pastimes and polite dinner parties. As Bill Hicks so accurately stated “it’s only a ride.”

It’s a “normal” ride though.

You find it normal negotiating through traffic to arrive at a place where you’ll perform pointless tasks to secure your daily bread and you will do this until the years long burden of earth gravity and brain senility accelerates your physical and mental feebleness demanding an exit affording you the opportunity to make countless trips to the doctor to remind you of the fact that, not only are you physically dying but, more importantly, you’ve have been psychologically dead for years.

You believe it normal to sculpt your delightful little progeny into socialized little lambs, institutionally educated to memorize the required scripts and engage in the same weary roles so that they too can be constructive members of a bipolar communalism and "work" at insipid, vacuous tasks, feeding their faces with chemicalized faux-foods to eventually copulate their way to the formation of new herd members. You believe that working hard to contrive “rest and relaxation” through sporadic episodes of “vacation” as symbolic of a well rounded “lifestyle.” You participate in various causes in defense of your values, but in the black of night when you’re most alone, the angst of your actual condition permeates your every pore and so pills are eventually a precondition to slumber.

But most of all, you believe it “normal” to live a “meaningful life,” denying that every tiny scrap of meaning you have ever held onto for dear life was handed to you from the moment of birth and even now you can’t remember the last time you had a unique and exciting idea that did not come directly from the socio-cultural lexicon of herd grazing normalcy…. baa, baa, baaaaaaa…

Do you even know why you chose marriage, career and children? Nah, you really have NO clue, other than the fact that everyone else was doing it and still is. Essentially we all do what we believe we’re supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

But what do you do when one day you awake and realize it’s all a sham and you’ve been duped from the start. That somebody else wrote the lyrics to your song and that every choice you’ve made was weaved into your cranial neurocircuitry. Will you have the wherewithal to cut yourself free from it? Will you have the courage and fortitude to self-lobotomize your own habitualized thought patterns?

What happens when getting outa bed to start your glorious, awesome “day,” is a test of mental endurance never before experienced. When all the things that you must do, you have not a shred of desire or even the slightest drop of willpower to get done and all you can do is stare into the abyss of nothingness and perseverate on how you must be mentally ill not to want to play the games and follow the rules as you’ve always done, like everybody else does through the assistance of diversified distractions.

This is a level of ‘awake’ that absolutely no one would choose to engage, because it’s so damn fooking inconvenient. The problem with that “Dark Night of the Soul” is that it can last years.

When you understand that all the things you have done are as utterly pointless and banal as the things you will do and you become completely drenched in the Generic Futility of your entire life project, you can then consider yourself ‘spiritually evolved' or, in other words, 'fucked.'

If reading this post offends or disgusts you then, rest assured, you’re about ready to pop. If this post makes you depressed, angry, anxious or guilty, then brace yourself for impact. It may still be a ways off, but you’re racing to the wall. A wall of complete and total despair.

But be of good cheer! Buddhism will save you or maybe the No-Mind of Zen. Or maybe years of diligent meditation or adopting the precepts of Advaita, the Power of Positive Thinking or the Law of Attraction. There are plenty of drugs to aid in abstaining from your deepest dread.

But if you’re here, then make no mistake, you’ve been traveling to this point all your live long days. and there are very few who ever make it this far with any regular consistency to their despair, because egocentricity will play with you like a fish on a hook, reeling you in and letting you out, reeling you in and letting you out. The rule is that despair MUST be sporadic and inconsistent to avoid the potential that you might wish to exit the herd.

This is why your life themes are so dualistically repetitive and it seems no matter how much progress you ‘believe’ you’ve made in your spiritual practices and life goals, here you are once again playing out the same old patterns, conforming to the same rules, playing the same weary games, on an on, ad nauseam.

Egocentricity is essentially defined by keeping all your tenuous and fragile beliefs delicately interwoven to support the routine drudgery you define as “life.” Yet, like a cloth weaved out of Silly String, one wrong move, or even the slightest contradictory thought carried to its obvious conclusion, could rip it all asunder leaving you in a mess of blue goo.

Such is the nature of your “stress.” Day in and day out egocentrics must senselessly struggle to make it all seem “sensible.” Common sense and wisdom are merely egocentric mental farts that seek to make meaningful the generic futility of blue goo.

Forget the wise masters and go for the goo!

One must do this, one should do that and never must/should one do this. For egocentricity to survive, and keep on popping out humanoid-like mimeographed copies, it must have a hierarchical belief system of prioritized fears and worries for which to pass on to its progeny as a means of positive reinforcement for itself. Maslow unintentionally proved this through his “Hierarchy of Needs” and the higher up the scale you go, the more entrenched “you” become in mundane mental constructs and whimsical psychological abstractions that reinforce the egocentric self as real and, more importantly, true. The concepts that you believe give life meaning, i.e., good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugly, honesty, truth, pride, fidelity, etc, etc, are so muddled and complex that they tend to loose all differentiating boundaries, only to merge into one cacophonous concerto of dissonant noise.

The only way to maintain this pathetic structured existence is to see it mirrored through other bodies that seem to have minds of their own and who also believe in the same vacuous values you claim to own and that you must defend through your choice of “lifestyle.” It’s all about the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the school you send your kids to and the square feet of your living space. It's about the causes you support and the political parties you cheer for.

It's all about blue goo...

This begs the question, if it’s all a dream, an hallucination, an illusion, an atomic mirage, an apparition, a shape shifting fog, a mass of undulating dualistic energy, then who gives a sheit? If everything is a “lie,” why worry about telling the truth? If everything is true, then you can’t tell a lie. Why care about “honesty” in your dreams, if dreams are false? If it’s all bullsheit who cares about values or morals? If it’s all illusion, why concern yourself with working for a “living” and paying your bills? Why even concern yourself with your next meal?

Why not let it all crumble to pieces around you? Let it all fucking die and take “you” with it? Because without the pieces that make up this delusional puzzle, all you have is an empty box and nobody wants to hold onto an empty box (even though that’s exactly what they do).

Egocentrics have “responsibilities,” because without pieces to fit together what the fook would you do with yourself? They have ego-centered structures to maintain. So rather than nothing, egocentric mammalia must not evolve beyond it’s confinement to normalcy, allowing the dream to incorporate every thought in your head, while you claim it real and true by simply not looking close enough.

But one day, when you SEE it for what it is, you will recognize a generic quality to EVERYTHING, so it all becomes nothing, lending a dazzling sense of utter futility to doing anything at all.

Once you dive into the Blue Goo of Generic Futility, you will likely swim in it for many years, completely and totally…alone.

But no worries, I'm here. Come in and join me for a spell.

The Blue Goo is always warm….

Artwork by Illathias - "Blue Goo"

Choose “Life”!

2013-03-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

“Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.

Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.

Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchased in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?” (Trainspotting)

Does the the opium of your Buddhist philosophy maintain your comfort zone and keep you in good cheer and positive spirit? Does your Zazen provide you a sense of well-being through neurochemical whiz-bangs? Does your Advaita make you feel special and raise you above the quiet desperation of the ignorant masses? Does your meditation, meticulously scheduled-in twice daily, help medicate you from the meaningless rigors of your mindless middle class, status-quo existence? Does your particular brand of Christianity help cope with your continued participation in vacuous and insipid social games that you sometimes sense are absurd and pointless? Are your spiritual retreats sprinkled with love and comradery?

As the beloved guru was claiming that we must “serenely mirror the divine love of the universe,” and that we must “engage the world exclusively through universal compassion and unconditional love,” I looked out the side window to observe a cat shred a bird to pieces, devouring each piece then vomiting up the bones and feathers, only to lightly prance off into the trees, tra la la la la….

Does the cat not know of this "divine love"? Where is its “compassion” and “unconditional love”? Nature couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your dreams, goals and desires. Nature essentially sheits on your spiritual aspirations and practices. Nature doesn’t care if you’re satisfied, discontent or kumbaya happy. Nature doesn’t give a spit about “you” and you are an integral part of it, regardless of silly ideas and activities you employ to generate a belief of extracting your “self.”

If you are not nauseatingly depressed and morose. If you’re not discouraged, disgusted and disenchanted with every choice you have made, thus realizing every future choice can only mirror that same fucking generic futility, then you’re still hypnotized by the invisible jewels of your egocentric conditioning and aren’t even close to the truth of your confinement.

Therefore, you can only choose “life."

It does seem that when you finally reach a point in which nothing gives relief, then you can count on breaking through. Unfortunately, egocentrics struggle mightily against this natural current and it may take years to get to that point, if you get it at all. But that doesn’t matter because it’s not something you choose. Mostly, though, you will choose “life” in an attempt to find a way out of the massive sinkhole of despair you have serendipitously dropped into, but when no further ropes are available for which to climb out, then be of good cheer, for you are almost “’there” (from which you learn you’ve gottin’ nowhere at all and what a “happy” day that’ll be).

Alas, until then, egocentrics MUST choose “life” for no reason at all, except that its really no different than heroin.

Or you can choose something else…

…and very few will ever do that.

Artwork by Sean Donaldson - "Clyde The Evil Cat"

"The Dream Marks Are All Present..."

2013-03-18T14:22:00.001-04:00

For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our tiny world and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. He had come to say good-by, he told me, and for the last time. He had investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for his return.

"And you are going away, and will not come back any more?"

"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant--pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more."

"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"

Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is no other."

A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true--even must be true.

"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?"

"No. How could I? But if it can only be true--"

"It is true."

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, "But--but--we have seen that future life--seen it in its actuality, and so--"

"It was a vision--it had no existence."

I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. "A vision? --a vi--"

"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God--man--the world--the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars--a dream, all a dream; they have no existence.

Nothing exists save empty space--and you!"

"I!"

"And you are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me....

"I am perishing already--I am failing--I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever--for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free.

Dream other dreams, and better!

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago--centuries, ages, eons, ago! --for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane--like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!...

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks--in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.

- The Mysterious Stranger, Chapt. 11, Mark Twain LINK

Ridding the World of Ego-Doers

2013-03-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

‘Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof.’ (quote from some ancient smarty pants)

Like zombies, the ego-doers are everywhere, interminably doing the same sheit over and over again....and each time they revel in their uniqueness.

Alas, the important seriousness of the ego-doer, who feels compelled to inform you that you must do THIS and not THAT or THAT and never THIS. To think… you've had it all wrong since birth.

The universal claim is that, from the moment of birth, you’ve been DOING the wrong damn stuff over and over again. Or so they tell you, in their most authoritative tone, “I am descended from the lineage of the great and venerable Master Grand Puba Rinpoche.” If you give a rat’s arse, they’ll have a great day. Otherwise, the Crypt Keepers of Doing True Stuff (as opposed to doing dumb things) become indignant that you could be so irreverent to their Grand Master Flash. Brainwashed Troglodytes of the Conceptually Divine, spewing out the ancient rules, demanding you fall in line and JUST DO IT.

Nevertheless, from the moment of your birth, completely unbeknownst to you, you were engaged in an unconscious constructive process of linking up billions of neurons to create an egocentric network as big as the universe and all right up under your thinking cap. This all began with your parentally inherited DNA, predetermining the expectation of certain responses, which then kicked into third gear with moment to moment experiences dumped upon your developing brain, turning fragile neural pathways into concrete superhighways of normalized expectations and socially sculpted responses.

With the most absolutely importantly significant response being...I AM DOING THIS.

Therefore, the only real purpose all those miles of dendrites serve is to insure that you’re always DOING something. Doesn’t matter what (except to you and the horse you rode in on) but all egocentrics must DO something because it is the very nature of Egocentric Mammalia to be incessantly DOING something. Indeed, it is the very nature of Ego-mammalian's to seek pleasure in what they DO in order to maintain the motivation for continued DOING. It is not important what "you" do...only that "you" think it is.

After it eats, sleeps, shits, fucks and dies, notice how expertly nature does absolutely NOTHING that means anything to nature.

But go ahead, keep trying to DO nothing. It’s impossible! All egocentrics are DOER’s and everything they do is essentially meaningless except to each individual egocentric mammalia, who attains pleasurable neurochemical experiences from the doing of 'special stuff.'

However, this herd believes that doing THIS is downright God ordained. But that gaggle over there demands that this is what God wants. So proclaims the moral neuro-circuitry of righteous ego doers when circuitry is linked up into herd formations.

One day your neural circuitry somehow brings you to a special book written by some grand wizard who informs you that your “ego” is the problem and must be discarded, transcended, destroyed and your ego hears this and screams “hallelujah!” Suddenly, what you spent decades shining and polishing must now be smashed to bits. You’ve been moving toward this your whole life and didn’t even know it. How’s that for “free-will”?

What a grand project! Finally, you have a true purpose (as the circuits subsequently link up to this new self-righteous neural train wreck that you will spend your life crashing into repeatedly)

Unfortunately, the million miles of dendrite-synaptical circuitry that make up egocentricity is beyond your power to reprogram, except for tiny acts of behavioral conditioning (like ending your nicotine addiction, but even that was a royal bitch, yo!).

Egocentric Mammalia is what you are and the power that innately fuels that egocentricity is your moment to moment non-acceptance of what your DOING in that moment. Your daily non-acceptance keeps the joint jumpin’ (brain), demanding ever more new things be DONE to assuage your egocentric self-abnegation over what could be DONE but wasn’t and what what was DONE but shouldn’t be, in opposition to what you DO but don’t want to DO and what you aren’t DOING but want to DO.

Let’s face it, you basically can’t DO anything “right” and, in those moments that you might actually do something right for once, it eventually fades away to become just not good enough. But the whole huge religio-spirituo industry is entirely founded on your NOT being good enough and needing to DO something else to be better by DOING better things.

We must rid the world of ego-doers by short-circuiting the guilt that fuels them.

Hence, the best way to rid the world of ego-doers is to tell them to simply keep DOING whatever it is their DOING. Just go ahead and do whatever the hell ya want to do or do what you think you have to do, while wishing you were doing something else. No need to reroute the circuits, just go with it, cause you have NO choice. Even if transcending the ego is what you feel compelled to do, go ahead and keep doing it, even though my ego feels compelled to tell you what a dodo you are for attempting such a silly thing. Ha! Ain’t this sheit grand!

The only way to rid the world of ego-doers is to tell them that they are doing exactly what they should be doing, each and every moment their doing it. This insures the ego will ultimately crumble from the immense weight of such unconditional acceptance that comes from a complete and total lack of free-will.

Top Artwork by Dimitri Kozma - "The Gold Brain"

2013-02-14T08:31:00.000-05:00

Actually, on average, it strikes me about 5 to 6 times a day, and in seemingly 'normal' times too, and that number is growing. I imagine I will soon wake to my own raucous laughter over all the absurdities I will engage with throughout the coming hours....Ha!

Sadly, there are few this can be shared with....

Who am I? Damn…I forgot.

2013-02-06T12:30:00.000-05:00

“It takes a lot to make a memory. New proteins have to be synthesized, neuron structures altered. While some of these memory-building mechanisms are known, many are not. Some recent studies have indicated that a unique group of molecules called microRNAs, known to control production of proteins in cells, may play a far more important role in memory formation than previously thought.” LINK

Indeed, neuron by neuron, science is deconstructing “you" down to tiny little incoherent, totally chaotic, microdots of electrochemical goop.

“And it looks as though miR-182 may be promoting local protein synthesis, helping to support the synapse-specificity of memories.”

Egocentrics are defined exclusively by a past they seek to alter due to its lacking, even though the memory of the past exists as nothing more than synaptical spurts of electrochemical current, lighting up in tandem with current thoughts. Note once again, how you never really leave the moment, because each moment is nothing more than instantaneous brain firings provoking other synapses to engage and fire. Even a memory is… NOW.

And “you” have absolutely nothing to do with any of it....

You have about as much to do with reading this post as I had in writing it…NOTHING, Zero, zilch, nill, nada.

No need to defend any of our brief, episodic, spur-of-the-moment “truths” anymore or…go ahead and defend till your hearts content. You will only ever go where the neurons take you. There is no choice in the matter and that ultimate absence was initiated upon your birth.

"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts."

"This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.

The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision." (ACIM, Wkbk Lesson 8).

Artwork by Shaytan666 - "Neuron"

"Thoughts Just Emerge in Consciousness"

2013-02-03T13:32:00.003-05:00

"If you pay attention, you can see that you no more author the next thing you think than the next thing I say...thoughts simply arise in the mind"
-Sam Harris

Defending Bullsheit....

2013-01-30T22:45:00.003-05:00

The purpose of egocentricity is to give meaning to bullsheit and defend that meaning as if it were "true." But the point is not whether the bullsheit is actually "true" or not, just the purpose of having something to defend as "true" (cause deep down in your mammalian brain is the understanding that none of your bullsheit is true, but your fatty gray matter has snuffed that out completely and called it "logic"). You experience a "world" of a million "truths," each requiring a choice and, once the choice is made, demanding its own uncompromising defense (yet, surprisingly, egocentrics still believe there can be peace in such a "world").

Egocentrics can only recognize their egocentricity by pressing it against other egos in competition for truth.

Which begs the question...does truth need defense?

Only in a dream....

Jettison meaning, purpose and direction and everything becomes a surprise...

What to Keep and What to Lose...You Choose?

2013-01-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

Sitting in a corner, attempting to shut down all neuro-circuits, seems like a noble pursuit (you could be out robbing banks). But then, how does one pick and choose which lines to disconnect? I'm sure you prefer not to extinguish the ability to use a fork and knife, drive a car or use a cell phone? Maybe you prefer just extinguishing childhood trauma or the day your spouse left you for another lover? Or the time you had your car repossessed cause you lost your job?

Or are you actually, unknowingly, constructing new circuits to compete with the old? It seems Buddhist's have extinguished much of the circuitry that deals with material possessions (but they still like their statues, incense and pillows).

But what circuits brought you to that corner anyway? What circuits gave meaning to the meditation causing you to desire the practice? Is your spirituality an offshoot of cognitive-emotive circuits that eventually failed in seeking pleasure from the world?

The circuits will never let you escape, so go ahead and keep doing what your doing. You were always meant to do it....

...from the very moment of your birth.

Gonna Wipe that Gray Right Outa Your Brain...

2013-01-24T07:34:00.001-05:00

We are extremely pleased to announce a new and revolutionary form of therapy that will put an end to all your suffering and give you the peace that passeth all understanding.

UnReality Therapy...

UnReality Therapy begins with the premise that “true” and “real” are simply concepts and there is nothing either true or real outside your head.

You have superimposed upon your experiences all the meaning they have for you. You have simply weaved together neural networks of socially derived and constructed meanings and values into a tangled web of complex and contradictory electrochemical impulses that you naively refer to as thoughts and emotions, but that entirely rule your life.

When thoughts and emotions are generated through such a tangled mass of competing circuitry, you are never upset or happy for the reason you “think.” Actually, “you” have nothing to do with it and will never fully understand why you think and feel the way you do, causing you to do the sheit you do, day after day. You have only the barest notion of what you want, not just from day to day, but from moment to moment.

Everything you SEE must pass through the visual cortex, which itself is linked up with memory circuits that immediately fire upon stimulation giving you a meaning-based experience which is then attributed to whatever is perceived, completely neglecting the fact that what you see is defined exclusively by circuitry. You would have absolutely no idea what a “tree” is if memory circuits did not automatically light up in tandem with imprints upon the visual cortex. Without the circuitry informing you that the figure standing before you is, in fact, your husband, how would you ever know who to be angry with when your conceptualized “love” circuits have not been adequately stimulated in ‘meaningful’ ways? And good grief, you’d run around spanking ever misbehaving child if you had no circuits to inform you of which little cretin you actually owned.

Nevertheless, even though neuro-circuitry is necessary for various survival tasks, it also can lead to long periods of chronic unhappiness and disappointment unless networks are effectively stimulated to reroute dysfunctional thought-emotive networks and extinguish stale and useless conditioned pathways. Do you really KNOW what a tree is or do you simply know the experience your brain provides? But is that really a tree? Do you really know your husband or simply the circuitry that allows you to perceive him in the exact same way all the time? Can you genuinely relate to the joys of your children or does the circuitry only generate anxiety about their feral behaviors? Are you really engaged with your world and the people you love or does neuro-chemically magnified fear impede your ability to live joyfully?

Through UnReality Therapy you can learn to SEE the world in a way that lets its meaning be given to you, rather than the unnecessary predictability of incessantly superimposing your neuro-circuits upon the world and, thereby, only experiencing your beaten down and paranoid gray matter. No longer must you grit and grind over ridiculous tasks, care a hoot about purposeless social responsibilities or be constantly discouraged that you fail to meet unnatural expectations just because everybody else is doing it.

No more worries, because we’re gonna wipe that gray right outa you’re brain!

Through our revolutionary techniques of extinguishing old dysfunctional circuits (90% of all your circuits are essentially useless except to mindlessly stare at TV and computer screens for hours on end) you can learn to see the world with awe and wonder. Through our patented Neuro-Dissolving strategies you will be amazed at the beauty of a world you have not experienced since childhood (now long since forgotten), simply because you demanded it conform to your conditioned circuits and all its exhausting rules and laws. People will fill you with joy as you see them completely free and clear of all your prejudicial and judgmental neuro pathways. Believe me, my friends, when the circuits have been cleaned the world will literally bend to meet you with nothing but love, because your socially-defined concepts of “love” will be wiped entirely…clean!

BUT WAIT.... THERE”S MORE!!!

With our patented Neuro-Blocking application fear will be a thing of the past! (because your past will be no more).

After completing the rerouting and extinguishing processes we will insert our patented "Neuro-Stints" to block fear circuits from forming and joining up with other circuitry. Never again will you experience guilt from your profoundly ignorant judgments of other people, nor anxiety by not conforming to useless social rituals. No longer will you experience self-esteem depreciation because you’re driving an 1999 Huyndai, while your neighbor drives a 2012 Escalade with spinning hubs. We have wiped you clean and purposeless social displays and performances are gone for good! (it was all uselessly fake anyway)

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, neuroscience is demonstrating that more than half of all brain neuro-circuitry has actually evolved from old fear-based survival circuits. Now you no longer fear the saber tooth tiger, but your beer-bellied belligerent boss and his threat to fire you if you don't kiss his rotund ass. Well not to worry, because after completing our full spectrum of neuro-processes, he’ll be getting a big bear hug for your pink slip as the excitement of unemployment evokes new levels of raucous joy.

My friend, it’s all in the neuro-circuitry and through our patented UnReality Therapy you will find joy in everything you do (and don’t do).

No longer will the guilt of not living up to social expectations interfere with your ability to jump for joy when your car’s repossessed and who’s to say foreclosing on your mortgage is NOT a beautiful day! Make no mistake, our processes will wipe that silly “American Dream” right out of your head, because there’s nothing “real” or “true” about it. Just neuro-fantasies that you were conventionally conditioned to believe “real” and “true.” Wouldn’t it be great to have no cares or worries about “money” anymore? We make it a reality! Because money and wealth are dysfunctional circuits that have only resulted in nothing but stress, anxiety and guilt and have served no other purpose.

You have never seen reality, only your neuro-circuited interpretation of a “reality” you were taught to believe is “true” and “real.” Fortunately, my friends, it’s simply NOT THERE. Look around you. Do you really believe all this surreal absurdity is real? In your world of utter hypocrisy and contradiction, what is really true? Do you often feel as if you just don’t belong, like this is not your home and not where you’re supposed to be?

There is a world out there, just not the one you “think” you’re in. There is a world waiting for you to love and enjoy, if you could only see it without your neuro-circuitry, without your socially conditioned preconceived notions superimposed upon sensory impulses giving you distorted and dysfunctional conceptions of what is true and real.

It’s like a bad dream. But no worries, you made it all up and we are here to wake you up!

Artwork by wolfepaw - "Your Brain of Fractals"

How Is It Supposed To Be?

2013-01-24T01:54:00.000-05:00

Egocentrics live their lives always wondering if this is how it's supposed to be.

Even though they're never really sure how it's supposed to be, they're chronically worried that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing to be "happy" and so they rarely ever are, simply because they have no clear idea how it's supposed to be.

However, they do seem "happy" in pointing out how it's not supposed to be and they're quick in demanding you do the opposite, except when that's not how it's supposed to be, because it's supposed to be this.

Egocentrics can never be "in the moment" unless that moment is how it's supposed to be, even though they don't have a clue how that's supposed to be and if they did, no doubt, that wouldn't be it.

But then, obviously, with egocentrics....

....that's how it's supposed to be.

"The Dreams In Which I'm Dying Are The Best I've Ever Had..."

2013-01-13T20:05:00.000-05:00

Free Willy...

2013-01-13T17:33:00.002-05:00

Being in the Neuro-Moment

2013-01-11T08:06:00.000-05:00

“Who, dear reader, do you think you are? Do you think your mind is capable of independent judgment and largely directs the course of your life? Do you think that most of your decisions in life have been the product of your rational, conscious self? Do you believe you are in control of your life? Do you cherish ideas such as self-expression, a sense of autonomy and a distinct, self-authored identity? The chances are that, albeit with a few qualifications, most of your answers are yes. Indeed, given a pervasive culture which reinforces all these ideas, it would be a bit odd if you didn't.
But the point about this new explosion of interest in research into our brains is that it exposes as illusions much of these guiding principles of what it is to be a mature adult. They are a profound misunderstanding of how we think, and how our brains work. They are fairytales, about as fanciful and as implausible as goblins.” (Madeleine Bunting, guardian.co.uk, LINK)

The whole enterprise of self-actualization revolves around self acceptance vs. non-acceptance. The entire billion dollar “spiritual” self-help industry is entirely founded on your continued failure to accept your egocentric “self,” just as is, in each and every moment, each and every day. In fact, the one chief principle of most self-help and new age “spirituality” programs is about teaching you to be “in the moment” which, of course, as they claim, you are NOT, else why would you spend the $150 for the DVD box set that will teach you how?

Yet, not one cent would be made if the human brain was not wired for constant REJECTION. Not one religion Could have been developed if the brain were only wired for ACCEPTANCE.

Dualism is hard wired into two opposing hemispheres. With each neuro-circuit that sends a specific electrochemical message, there is the corresponding opposite message at work as well. The pathway that informs me to do some specific act, also has a corresponding pathway negating that act or canceling out the originating circuit. Clearly, only one message can be electrochemically emphasized from which action will be initiated (although we have all experienced the paralysis of indecisiveness from circuit crashes). All this can cause a great deal of tension between neuro-circuits (the actual origin of stress).

Nevertheless, eventually one circuit will supersede another (simply because the ultimate goal of egocentricity is “doing” something…anything) but this is usually supported by adjacent circuitry that we refer to as “values, goals and aspirations” which are nothing more than genetically wired and conditioned socio-cultural pathways of experience taught to you from birth and demanding that you desire something. Very little is experienced outside those parameters, at least by choice (although the delusion of choice is circuited as well).

The great egocentric struggle is between what you believe you should do and what you believe you want to do.

Hence, I may have a conditioned neural pathway that requires I perform some specific act, but which competes with another pathway which insists that this act to be performed is not desired. In other words, what I am conditioned to do often competes with what I have been conditioned to WANT to do instead. I could have a neural circuit that provides positive electrochemical stimulation to watch the football game on TV that is in competition with a circuit that requires the lawn be mowed. No matter which action takes precedence, there will be a sense of dissonance between the two charges. If I mow the grass, I will experience a sense of dissatisfaction that the football circuit was not acted on and if I watch the game instead, the circuit directing me to mow the lawn will intensify, thereby, limiting my satisfaction in watching the game. It does appear that guilt is hard-wired in the brain.

What we call “cognitive dissonance” is merely the experience of two competing electrochemical charges upon brain circuitry, involving both a constant fluctuating, back and forth, of acceptance and rejection.
We have billions of competing neurons laid out over miles of dendrite connections consistently giving a sense of never doing what one should be doing and always doing what one shouldn’t be doing. This causes a sense of nervous system tension, often felt throughout the entire body, which we refer to as anxiety. Anxiety is the primordial emotion and is the origin of all mental illnesses.

Anxiety is essentially nothing more than electrochemical competition between brain neural circuits. Always, one circuit will attain predominance and be acted on, but this action will be attended to by the intensification of the electro-chemical stimulation of the opposing circuitry that has not been acted on, because neuro-circuits do not instantly go away. This is the origin of guilt and guilt is nothing more than competing neuro-circuits. While I am mowing the lawn I will experience the tension derived from my not being able to watch the game and that increased tension is anxiety. While watching the game the pathway requiring the lawn be mowed will intensify resulting in anxiety and a failure to fully enjoy the game as I might like.

This is why there can never be an experience such as “being in the moment” and if such an experience does arise it will be the result of the a spontaneous dissolution of competing electrochemical charges (because you have arrived at an electrochemical point in time in which you just don’t give a sheit about the lawn or the game).

For instance, if a sudden fire erupts in your house, the mow lawn/ watch football circuitry will immediately be redirected, just as if you where suddenly to realize you had the winning lotto number for a ten million dollar prize. All other competing electrochemical charges would cease to stimulate and other socio-genetically conditioned circuitry would take center stage.

You could attempt to generate circuitry that allows for an electrochemical experience of “being in the moment” and there are many “spiritual” programs out there that attempt to teach this as a “skill.” Unfortunately, such ‘learning’ would necessarily compete with other conditioned neuro-circuitry that has been consistently reinforced for many decades. it would be like attempting to alter your gender identity through a ten week course, even though that identity has been reinforced electrochemically for 50 years. A real no brainer! (no pun intended).

Accepting the brain neuro-circuitry that has sculpted you all these many years is much more advantageous to reducing anxiety and, hence, suffering, then constantly rejecting and seeking to change the brain. An attempt to be “in the moment” merely reinforces that you do NOT accept your neuro-circuitry (because you believe you’re NOT “in the moment”) and, thus, that rejection becomes a powerful electrochemical circuit all its own and it will dawg down your every moment in terms of good and bad choices.

You are an amalgamation of brain neuro-circuitry that has evolved genetically and through socio-cultural conditioning over many years. Your rejection of this constructs opposite circuits that cause tension or anxiety. Recognize that with every thought, every feeling and every action you are “in the moment.” Make no mistake, even with the tension of competing electrochemical charges you still are “in the moment.”

The brain is always “in the moment.” Even though, that moment may consist of tension between competing circuitry, there is no reason to suggest that the electrochemical stimulation of neurons is not momentary or actualized at that moment.

Even future thoughts are generated from momentary electrochemical processes firing up instantaneously. There really is NO future moment, only current electrochemical stimulation of brain circuitry providing a sudden experience of future thought.

This includes memory. Although the circuitry that mediates current awareness may not be electrochemically charged in relation to the time you got drunk on your wedding night, that circuit was impressed upon the brain and based on the emotional circuitry attached, is still “in the moment.” Electrochemical charges keep the pathway alive, but only minimally stimulated and when the awareness circuit engages it the electrochemical stimulation will intensify and you will experience the attached emotional stimulation of being a complete asshole on your wedding night. All of this is entirely “in the moment” and you are never NOT “in the moment.”

Of course, you also have circuitry, conditioned over many years, that stimulates electrochemical data providing an experience that you are more than just a brain consisting of experiential-based neuro-circuitry. Couple that with the circuits that provide the electrochemical experience of “self” and you are able to negate brain activity as influencing “you” at all and, hence, must then pay the 150 dollars for the DVD which will teach you how to be “in the moment.”

Unfortunately, you will be disappointed, as will all who attempt to learn specific skills being “in the moment.”

Simply because you are, and always have been, already there, thanks to a brain that keeps you there 24/7.

Artwork by Sebastian Eriksson

Same As It Ever Was....

2013-01-09T14:01:00.000-05:00

Why do egocentrics hate themselves so much? Why are they always seeking escape from who and what they are? What’s so bad about egocentricity? what is the driving need to find some ideological exit door to some utopic afterlife?

Get back to where you once belonged...

Oh sure, you’re self-centered and self-absorbed, demanding attention, victim to your desires. You’re oblivious, laughingly ignorant and often cruel and, even in your most charitable exchanges with other people, there is not a nano-second when you’re not thinking of your “self" (you never lose sight of "you"). The stress of keeping the scattered and unrelated pieces of your loosely defined and deluded self-concept together is often literally exhausting, in the recognition it could all crumble into a heap with the slightest change in the weather (and frequently does just that, as you scramble to re-connect the pieces once again).

But that’s the nature of egocentricity.

Why resist your nature?

What should “you” be? Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent?

Dang, what a drag, but go ahead, if that's where the circuits lead you. “You” can be that too, depending on how you’re wired up in the noggin.’

Nevertheless, one of the most universal aspects of all egocentrics IS their omnipresent desire to escape themselves. To transcend or transform. To be something other than egocentric. The incessant desire for self-development into something they are not is indicative of a universal disgust with egocentricity. You can never truly love yourself, simply because it's not in your nature and besides, "you" invented the concept of "love" in the first place. Does nature give a fook about "love"?

But even all that is folded up into the nature of egocentricity.

Does an elephant wish to leap like a gazelle? Does the squirrel constantly suffer through its neurotic pursuit of nuts, wishing life would be better if it could only find truffles? Are bears incessantly annoyed about shitting in the woods, hoping one day for conveniently located porta-potties?

So why do egocentrics want to be other than egocentric? Nature provides NO choice to it’s progeny. Everything does what it’s supposed to do, living out its nature, and the chief preoccupation of egocentrics is to make “important” choices. Doesn't matter that your choices are useless and deluded. You still gotta make 'em anyway.

Hence, the ultimate nature of egocentricity is to make choices in the belief its choices matter. You do this everyday and you don’t even think about it cause it’s as natural as a bear shitting in the woods.

Ever notice how your choices, though seemingly different in form, seem to repetitively give you the same content? Oh sure, you could win the lottery and get all jiggy for a few days. But eventually, the neuro-circuitry takes over and you’ll drop back to your baseline and be what you’re wired up to be, experiencing the world as you always have.

However, there are some egocentrics that couldn’t give a rat’s ass about choices, knowing that choices made are not at all up to him/her (and they don't sheit in the woods as far as I'm aware. At least not regularly).

This type of life-engagement has been referred to as Infinite Play (as opposed to Finite Play in which making “right” choices is absolutely critical to egocentric well-being and takes up ones entire existence). Of course, Infinite Players make egocentric choices, but they tend to react equally to both good and bad choices, which tends to dissolve the difference (hard to describe, cause an Infinite Player never admits to being one).

They tend to make choices with little concern for outcome in the recognition that it’s not up to them, so why worry.

Infinite Players accept egocentricity in all it’s glorious, hellacious bullsheit. I watched one just the other day get all pissed off and cursed his head off cause his phone went dead on an “important” call. He then immediately laughed about how well he did 'pissed off,' responding, "damn, did ya see that! ha!"

Infinite Players play with their egocentricity and are not played by it.

Many complain about being victim to the world, but Infinite Players know that they can only be victim to egocentricity. The world has nothing to do with it. Hence, they are neither victims of the world or their egocentricity.

Infinite Players recognize that even though they will continue to keep ‘doing’ sheit, like they always have, there is absolutely nothing that need be done.

So go ahead, do what you feel compelled to do, because it’s not up to you. You're gonna do it anyway.

Just let the days go by….

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Artwork by Yue Minjun

The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

2012-12-21T15:28:00.000-05:00

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy. (Robert Burns)

I have no idea what will happen after writing this sentence. Oh sure, I have a repertoire of what I want to happen and what I don't want to happen (and it looks like I just went ahead and wrote the next sentence, beat that!). But not one ounce of certainty as to what will happen and that’s certain. Whatever happens I may interpret as good or bad, but that really doesn’t make a difference to what actually happens, cause something is bound to happen and something happens all the time. I will most likely interpret my 'self' as cause of much of what happens, but all I can really count on is just a succession of neuro-circuit influences continually bringing me to a 'happening.'

This then begs the question, if your life is a series of happenings, then the only choice you have is in your response to that stimuli? But then, if you are utterly defined by your responses, are your responses truly yours or are they simply indoctrinated influences, originating from birth, that have defined your responses up to death by sculpting neuro-circuit networks?

“One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is, is three or four big days that change everything.” (Beverly Donofrio)

Your most well laid plans, all those years of hard work and struggle toward that illustrious goal, can come crashing down simply through the consequence of an apocalyptic sneeze while driving on the interstate.

Nevertheless, the primary avocation of egocentricity is CONTROL. Nothing else matters, because the “pain/pleasure principle” demands it. You move away from pain and toward pleasure. Some circuits cause pleasure, some pain. So it seems your job is to redirect the electrochemical currents (problem is, you sometimes don’t know the difference). You’re wired for this.

Yet, deep down (most likely in the brain stem) all egocentrics understand their complete lack of control and, hence, turn to an ideological afterlife through which they fantasize of achieving complete control (if only through an absence of anything to control) in which all desires will be miraculously met.

This is it my friends. There is nothing else. No afterlife. No infinite eternity. Nothing else but what you got and what you will continue to get. Experience is NOW and is completely egocentric. Not tomorrow because, as we all recognize, tomorrow may never come. But egocentrics don’t like to “think” about that for some reason. If this is all there is, then nothing you do in this life makes a spit of difference.

Stop fighting your egocentricity and taste the freedom...

Heisenberg’s "Uncertainty Principle" basically states that you never know what’s gonna happen. But you can always be certain something will happen, you just can’t predict ‘what’ with any degree of certainty because your predictions alter what happens in ways you can’t predict. You can predict probabilities, based on past outcomes. Yet, all probabilities must essentially affect other probabilities which, in turn, affect other probabilities, making the measurement of your life’s direction obscure and basically useless.

It’s your predictions that obfuscate any chance of surprise and make your life an utter cesspool of abject routine boredom.

Nevertheless, this is what you predict and what you’re in constant preparation for experiencing. It does seem that even though your life changes, there is a predictable undercurrent that remains the same and gives you generally the same egocentric experiences day after day.

"Flies in the Vaseline, we are. Sometimes it blows my mind. Keep getting stuck here all the time" (Stone Temple Pilots)

I will admit to an unusual, and somewhat strange sense of "understanding" when you finally get that there is no way out and there never has been.

But then egos become free simply to be egos, which is all you can ever be until death do you part. It’s what your wired up for. You can be a big ego (like me!) or a little ego. You can be a sociopathic ego or a save-the-world ego. You can be a guru ego, an "asleep" ego, an "awakened" ego, etc, etc, but you will always be... ego.

But egos don't like this, for some peculiar reason, and continue to run around trying to extract themselves from themselves. They read umpteen spiritual books (yo-yoing from one "master" to another), watch innumerable "enlightened" videos, engage in a lifetime of seeking the next "spiritual practice" and fixate on one "transcendence" ideology after another in the hope they will one day generate an experience that will immediately (like a bolt of lightening!) inform that they are not what they are, because they are now something different.

Silly, I know, but it's been going on for centuries...

Artwork by Igor Mosrski

Life happens

2012-12-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

...and you have no 'choice' in either (just the illusion of 'choice')

So chill baby....it's ALL good.

From the moment of birth there has been no mistake in "where" you're going and you will get "there" whether you like it or not.

(probably best if you like it though)

2012-12-09T16:35:00.001-05:00

Only $9.99 for a box of 12 (small shipping and handling fee)

The Disenchanting Egocentric Dream of Meaningful Delusions

2012-12-06T08:28:00.000-05:00

Many have seen the WHOLE dream, but most spend a lifetime attempting to understand and accommodate to this maladaptive perception.

Fluctuating periods of macabre dissociation pop-up for the un-accommodated, simply because they fail to recognize they are IN a process of accommodating. Rather, many experience a morose depression from interpreting a cascade of disappointments and do not realize that their disillusionment is necessary.

Whether you label it a dream, illusion, delusion, Maya, unreality, dualism, universal consciousness, or whatever, it makes little difference since concepts only have illusory patents anyway. You can argue that the “world” is real or illusion till the cows come home, but your conceptual interpretations are nothing but electrochemical spasms designed to adapt to perceptive sensation and it is through those concepts that you experience anything at all. Experience is never devoid of concept.

You have never had an experience you could not, or did not conceptualize. Reality is not experienced through sensation, but only through concepts superimposed upon sensation. An un-conceptualized sensation is like a fart on a windy day. A non-memorable event.

For many there does seem to be a feeling of detachment from the usual learned aspirations that most center their lives around. There is a general dissociation from conventional value systems dredged up from the past associations. Most get little further than this nagging sense of meaninglessness, with meaningful purposes fading like fog on a sunny morning. A sense that all endeavors do not lead to fulfillment but only result in further disappointment. Most will attempt to invest heavily in a particular sociocultural aspect, hanging on for dear life.

Once the disenchanted disillusionment sets in, egocentricity works diligently to avoid attaining any substantial understanding from that experience. There is a constant yo-yoing between egocentric goals and seeing the emptiness of all conditioned aspirations. Hence, egocentrics will struggle mightily in anchoring to some sustaining value system, conventional or cultish, religious or spiritual, political or philosophical. Some distinct cause or reason must be chosen for which to fill time by giving time meaning. Meaningless time cannot be experienced (which is why "being in the moment" is meaningless (if you’re in the moment and it’s ‘meaningful,’ then you’ve obviously missed the point by conceptualizing it).

This can be a difficult period and can last many years, even a lifetime, and is very limited in anchor points or concepts for which to define the experience.

Yet, this is only preliminary, because “you” are NOT the dreamer. Hence, the dreamer cannot be part OF the dream, but is utterly fixated and under the control of the ‘meaningful’ delusions it dreams up.

A constant nagging uneasiness with status-quo convention tends to gradually percolate throughout the circuitry from which a new understanding begins to take over, rerouting messages and constructing new experiences within the dream. Hence, one has not left the dream or transcended the experience of dreaming, but clearly sees its full nature as a whole, rather than distraction with the parts .This is NOT "awakening" or "enlightenment." It is merely a transitional period of accommodating to a new type of perception that can assimilate a complete lack of any meaning to the whole. Hence, preferences tend to dissolve, since past associations no longer direct perception. Without a full spectrum of meanings, perception would simply NOT know what, or even how, to ‘perceive’ anything whatsoever. Temporarily losing the capacity to ‘discriminate' is a type of ego death and has occurred for many, but only briefly.

Unfortunately, all this is outside your realm of control. There’s little you can do and this gives “you” a sense of being controlled from an external force that is not “you” (hence, the concept of “God”).

“You” are NOT the dreamer, but the dream and, hence, you're seeking your source. The purpose of the dream is to locate the dreamer.

This usually runs up and down the spectrum from intense excitement to utter boredom to penetrating fear to chaotic confusion and back up the ladder once again. Most likely this has been occurring for you over a period of many years (but if you’ve been “diagnosed” then you may fail to recognize it). It is hard to pinpoint the exact transitional moment, because the past is receding (as so much becomes meaningless, the past obviously loses flavor and fails to direct perception down the usual avenues). No one evades or escapes this experience. They just interpret it away until it becomes too difficult to resist.

Most of the modern “mystics” who claim “awakening” have merely attained a momentary glimpse of the WHOLE dream and not just the parts they prefer or disdain. Discriminating or judging between parts is what we all do. But to take in the whole is a different experience entirely. This is what the mystics talk about. Yet, many tend to mistake this for “awakening,” “enlightenment” or non-duality, because it is a complete jolt to the neuro-circuits, thereby, involuntarily redirecting perception (even shutting it down for a brief time). These descriptions do a disservice in attempting to apply ‘rules’ to the experience, but there is always an incredible desire to share what cannot be shared because it does not adhere to the rules of dreaming. However, all conceptual interpretations must adhere to rules.

The most that can be said is that it will come to you when you’re ready, but you can never know when that is and, therefore, preparation based on years of prediction, requiring rules of action or thought, are utterly useless (although they do well too fill up time).

In the disenchanting dream of meaningful delusions, only ONE can awaken.

But first you have to find the dreamer.

Artwork by grohsARtig - "THE INDISPENSABILITY OF DREAMS"

The Certainty of Every Choice Ever Made

2012-11-21T12:42:00.002-05:00

Out you popped, from your utopic slimy existence, only to be compelled to employ muscles to accept rancid air. Your senses sprang to life and immediately microscopic neurons started to branch out into umpteen billion electrochemical connections.

You had no choice in this process, because choice was not yet installed ("choice" is exclusively egocentric). You were influenced by sights and sounds not of your choice and people, whom you did not choose, influenced each and every circuit in your noggin. You were a complete and utter victim of your environment and the actions/reactions of your bodily states. You sheit and pissed without discrimination and when hungry you howled in pain till the mushed peas were shoved down your gullet.

Nevertheless, even in your minimal egoic state, those in your care anxiously anticipated those wondrous moments when you would begin to exhibit your glorious egocentric “personality." They dutifully trained you to become a unique and separate egocentric like them, but different (in cooperation with the genetic DNA they unconsciously blessed and cursed you with). You had no choice in this egocentric instruction and even when the day finally came and “you” made the ultimate distinction between “them” and “me,” that distinction was packed full of judgments of your “self” by your “self” that you had no participation in altering or adjusting, other than to express what was writ upon you.

You were told do this, not that, act this way, not that way, be this and definitely never that. Values unfolded into a neuro-web of tangled circuits all criss-crossing and shorting others out, while intensifying the current of others. Models appeared, mirroring the behaviors you would mimic. Egocentricity blossomed and you reveled in it. Your childhood ecstasy of wonder and awe was distinctly coupled with perceiving the world as an “I-me.”

Before that there was nothing.

You allowed all of this to happen because you had no choice. Although you seemed to make decisions, your life moved in directions clearly not of you. But off you went anyway…tra la la...

Most of your childhood was influenced by a series of sensations completely outside the purview of any control you could ever assert. Of course, you did seek to apply control (in direct accordance with your egocentric training) and offset ‘chance’ events through preparation and prediction skills, but much more powerful forces honed and shaped even those brief moments of self-assertion in ways you had no control over. In fact, you have been trained to be almost totally oblivious to your complete lack of control and you had nothing to do with that either. Whether you were showered with love or beat mercilessly (or a little of both) outside processes influenced your neural development and channeled you directly to this very moment right now.

Do you believe you had a “choice” in reading this blog post right now? Note how egocentricity must always insist you did.

Indeed, we cannot argue that you did make that choice, but why did you make it just now? Was that choice available before you made it? What other choices were not made that could have been made? Was that specific choice merely waiting to be made, in the certainty that it would be made at the moment it was, because of the choices that preceded it? What choice preceded this choice, from this moment now, all the way back to your first breathe?

Could it be that all your separate choices are merely parts of an entire whole? Can you see that whole, or only the choices that seek to influence the parts? Could it be that every choice made was meant to be made so that the next choice could be made as it was, so that the next will be made as it must?

Does it feel as if there is a “force” beyond your comprehension directing and channeling you down specific avenues that subsequently, at the time, you wish you had chose differently, yet now you see it all as crucial to this moment? If so, are you open to the destiny you’re able to see? Do you understand the pieces that make up the whole? Do you no longer reject some parts as bad or tragic nor long for the parts that were wonderful or good? Has the past lost the capacity to influence the choices you make now because, in seeing the whole, you realize the certainty of all the parts?

Can you accept the CERTAINTY of every choice you have made and will continue to make?

Egocentric individuality is constructed entirely upon doubt as to what it is and what purpose it must serve between birth and death. Although it struggles to inject various “reasons,” it exists with no real idea of why it was born or why it must die. It exists in a sweltering cauldron of uncertainty and confusion that it must routinely deny or eventually be devoured by. To consider, on a daily basis, your true purpose while, simultaneously recognizing that the purposes you have been engaging in are meaningless, would lead only to deep anguish.

Although they say “the unexamined life is not worth living,” how far down that rabbit hole are you willing to go? To constantly doubt every meaning and truth you’ve been taught can only result in a life of quiet desperation.

Yet, logically, if every choice made was CERTAIN to be made, so that every preceding choice could be made as it must, then egocentricity obviously cannot exist within that certainty and….

….has never really existed at all.

Artwork by Mark Ryden - "Rosie's Tea Party"