The Body

Our bodies are the vehicles in which we experience the world.  It is the zeitgeist of my country that the soul is separate from the body, and ignoring easily offerable rebuttals to this mystical notion, they still must accept the fact that their souls dwell within these flesh vehicles and are influenced by them.

Now, I have experienced moments where I felt a distinct separateness between ‘me’ and my body. These moments have been some of the most profound moments of my life, but they are always fleeting and temporary. These moments should be pursued, but the baseline existence….

Fuck this.

I feel obligated to write highbrow, or at least my poor attempt at highbrow, but why? If I want my message to impact the most people, which is what I want to do, and I want them to be able to use the information to better themselves, which I want them to do, than shouldn’t I write in a style that the majority will be able to digest?

Well this won’t fit in a tweet.

But I can write in a conversational manner, and I should. I should also condense any major points into short video clips. Also, if I can learn how, or find someone to do this with me, create music that extends the same message. Basically, there are new mediums at our disposal to distribute ideas. Writing is still good, but I should roll with the tide if I want to impact the greatest number of people in a beneficial manner.

So, what I was trying to spill out at the beginning of this post is the importance of our bodies. It is the primary way you interact with the world. Take care of it! Eat well, work out, have sex, meditate, forgive yourself, and do yoga.

I have a theory that 99.9% of us don’t have full control of our body. We cannot do things it is capable of because we haven’t learned how too. I’m not talking telekinesis, but handstands, back flips, yoga poses, and things like that.

The hypothesis, is that people with control of their bodies, and those who improve control, are much more confident. This confidence can translate into happiness, douchbaggery, or evil depending on your philosophical perspective on life and reality.

Give it a try. This is a page I found 2 days ago and I’m going to start attempting the moves today. If I can keep some semblance of organization, I’ll update this post with my progress.

My Why, and Why I Cried.

I wept today. Music did what music does and took me back to a MDA trip I had with some of my loved ones. My intention for the trip was to get an answer to my question, “Who is my audience?” (regarding writing.) The answer MDA and my loved ones synthesized for me that day was, “our children.”

Its 6 months later and the truth of the realization hit me today. Hence the glorious weeping. My life I live is for my children.

I’m going to write books. I’m actively working everyday towards this goal. I’m obsessed by what is fundamentally the urge to help people heal themselves. Before I feel adequate in giving advice, I need to heal myself, heal my Self. And this is no short order. And honestly it is not a goal with an end. Life is a constant growing.

I don’t know what caused it exactly, but the tears were more a culmination of a few things. On one side, the human condition is abundant in its suffering. On another side, my personal luck staggers me. Like most of you, my childhood was full of trauma large and small. All of ours are. Our parents were all parents of child abuse. Most of this abuse was well-intentioned naivety. Trauma it was regardless. The third side is the experiential fact that the adaptation and fortitude of the human condition is greater than almost all trauma. There is hope and growth and healing available.

This hope consumes me. I live in it every day. It breaths purpose into my body. My existential void from adolescences is filled. The answer is, I do it for my children, and all the children of those I love. Honestly, I do it for everyone, but my closest cloister of proximity is that of my loved ones. I do it for our children. 

Stream-of- Consciousness 7/2/15

I love you. Thank you for the intense pervading beauty that saturates my life. Thank you for throwing me winks and signs that lured me from a sterile atheistic reality tunnel. Thank you for bring me into this realm of the Human; the pulsating, sweating, stinking, living, breathing, moving, and dirty. Alive.

I feel my consciousness assimilating new programs which are liberating and freeing me. I almost cry thinking about the little cracks I'm exploring and the lessons I'm learning. Thank you for Bassnectar's mixtape this summer. The wink is not lost that the mixtape is called Mixtape 13. Thank you for loving, knowledgeable friends who are helping me repair the shelter my mom lent me. 

Thank you for my health. Thank you for my mind. Thank you for a childhood that surrounded me with love. Thank you for the physical injuries that led me to books. Thank you for books. Thank you for the great minds who lived before me who wrote. Thank you for language. Thank you for my ability to manipulate language. 

Thank you. I love you. I'm glad I've found you. I hope we continue together. Through romances, friendships, illnesses, blisses, successes, and deaths. I look forward to experiencing whatever you are once entropy wins the battle it's constantly waging with my body. 

I hope my intention matters. I hope that my goals align with your energy. I hope I can help people in a significant way. I think there are a lot of people who need helping. The person needing the most help is my culture. She's a kind of mother. What greater gift can a son give his mother than to alleviate her woes. All of our mother is our culture. All of us share the same grandmother; Earth. I hope to fix my mother so she will be able to fix her's.  

That's the big picture. These perspectives, ideas, and experiences that have healed me, I want to try to reconfigure them by manipulating language. I'd love to try to heal my culture. But, ego lulled, my healing is far from complete. I bow my head. I know I have many more years of trials, many thousands of pages needing reading, and sun salutations needing flowing before I'm really ready for whatever is destined for me.

Or at least this is what I choose to believe. 

But in the mean time, I continue to thank you every day. I'm so fucking fortunate. Thank you. I feel you with every full moon, every sunset, every sunrise, every new friend I share sassy with. I see your winks. They haven't lost their meaning and I hope they never will. For now I will think of you as love. I you you. I love love. I love you. I you love. It's all the same. Thank you. 

Illumination

An idea that I've been exploring more due to a resonating articulation from a friend, a synchronistic podcast by some enlightened comedians, and a wink from Reddit, is the trite sounding idea that we are not our thoughts. 

So it goes a little something like this. You are not your body. Your body is a beautifully complex biomass you've been gifted. But You are not your body. 

You also are not your thoughts. Thoughts are energies that You are able to experience. Like your body is able to feel cuts or kisses, You are able to experience happiness and fear. The key, the code, the secret, is that You are not any of these things. You are the Light that illuminates these things. You are the Witness that witnesses these things. That thing that is truly You is that thing that cannot see itself. That thing is godly. You are godly. 

You forgot. And those who have remembered, forget. 

Everyday is a new day we awake with amnesia. Thus meditation. Remind yourself that this beautiful body you have is not You. Remind yourself that these thoughts, as they rise and fall, ebb and flow, they are not You either. You are the witness in the back, the light of your mind, and you are eternal. 

Okay, that eternal part is a little poetic. I don't know if the light is eternal, but the idea as a whole is a beautifully liberating one. 

A quick materialistic translation: The emotions and thoughts you experience are temporarily charged neural pathways that will continuously change, so do not identify with them. 

Namasteezy

You, the reader, know what inspires you. At least spend 15 minutes today doing that thing. We are going to die. We are atomic symphonies falling through time and we will hit the ground. You've got enough time for a few cool tricks between the womb and tomb. Do what you love. I love you. 

Namaste. 

Stream of Consciousness 5/22/15

Hey. I'm back. I know you've never left but I tend to forget. I'm here to reconnect today. Another Prayer.

Thank you. I've been feeling frisson again. That feeling when I get goosebumps, I feel a warm, wet feeling go from the back of my skull down my neck. I've missed that feeling.

There is a pattern
that causes this awe
its music
music about revolution.
Genre doesn't matter
Its a zeitgeist.
It is relentless
to attract me
for years and years
and I have done my best
to ignore her call
Revolution.
She beckons.
I know she is my soul mate.

My voice will change. My form will change. Day by a day a new frequency may affect me. My creative gift is logos. SHe has many forms. Exploring them is love.

Thank you for my job, my security, my friends, my health, my mind, my family, and my muse. I love you Gaia and all that I have yet to comprehend.

Namaste. 

A prayer

Image by Archan Nair

Allison Grey, Alex Grey's wife, was asked if she prays, and if she prays, how does she go about it. Her answer resonated with an idea that had been swimming in my head the last couple of days.  A little synchronicity; another wink from God.

"I create. I make art." Her idea of prayer is the act of creation. What could honor God more than to exercise the most godly aspect of our animalist physical self? What would honor the Creator more than creation? These words are my prayer today. I'd like to share them with you, and whatever you create today, know I'd love to experience it. Thank you for reading.

 I'm still learning to live with these new consciousness programs I've downloaded, or maybe I'm the computer the divine downloads into; either way, my subjective life has changed radically in the last couple of years.

Where I was once a secure rational atheist, I am now an uncomfortably unsure agnostic. My atheism was supported by experience, but now so too is my agnosticism. My first 21 years of life, whether by fact or ignorance, were void of any transcendent experiences. Life was godless and rationality made sense. But these last 3 years, I have experienced a reality that is very much alive and sentient.

Unapologetically I admit that most of these experiences have been catalyzed by chemicals that structurally resemble serotonin. If "drugs" turn you off to the validity of an experience, you're now in the cultural minority. I sincerely hope your unconscious filter on this subject is liberated, because it will improve your life if used intelligently.

Yet, I can see clear benefits for maturing this way. Studying logic and her offsprings have equipped me with tools that save me from my deeper psychedelic voyages. It is easy to fall in love with one's own ideas glimpsed on the psychedelic landscape. Idea's can be seductive. Like lust and love, there are different types of ideas; those that help us and our loved ones grow, and those that only induce awe, but offer little more once the neurotransmitter's have been metabolized. I aim to capture the lovely ideas, the ones that will help me and my tribe grow healthier, happier, and godlier.

I'm a work in progress.

Interestingly, I can see in my own development, that many of these ideas I catch on my transcendency hunts were ideas I had developed in my sober life, but the drugs breath a crackling life into something that was cold and dark. I built a cement foundation with logic and put up some wooden pillars with science, but mushrooms brought me electricity and LSD added solar panels. MDA has planted beautiful plants around my home and DMT installed a floatation tank.

The foundational idea was that there is no Objective truth, therefore, we get to create our own truth. A little trite, and a little cold. Now this truth has been electrified into; we are the gods of our lives. We alone are capable of creating the meaning that saturates our reality. If you do not choose to use this power, you unconsciously adopt someone else's reality. Being enslaved to another's truths is unfavorable enough, but forfeiting your godliness out of ignorance is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

The asterisk to this fundamental belief is, not all perspectives are equal. And thus enters the life work of being receptive to new ideas, developing a system of analyzing the merits of these ideas, and using these ideas to build your personal home of beliefs and myths.

My current schemata for analyzing new ideas is this;

Does the idea reflect reality as I experience it?
Is the idea useful, practical, experiential?
Does the idea enhance my experiential life?
Is the idea dope af?

A couple of years and dozen's of books and pounds of drugs and this is what I have too offer to God today. I love you. Thank you. Namaste.

Link to the Podcast with Alex and Allison Grey. 

Link to Terrence Meckenna barding on a topic similar to this post. 

International Women's Day

As is frequently the case, this started as a facebook post, got too long, too serious, and too ranty. So I decided on making it a blog post. Here is a stream of consciousness in honor of today. 

* * * * * 

"All men come into life through women." -Freud

Our patriarchal political system oppresses women, because they fear women. If you think this sounds Feminist or White-Knightish, you may as well bow out now. 

Biologically, women are the stewards of life. They literally create. Men offer their sperm, but after that, we contribute very little to the actual cultivation and nurturing of life. Women have within them the genetic information to play God. Women create men.  And so, our monkey egos are a little hurt. 

In Evolutionary Psychological terms, only women know if a child is theirs. Men can't know for sure. This causes our ape brains some anxiety and allows men to rationalize some pretty fucked up shit. (see r/TheRedPill). 

Religiously, fuck. Women have been systematically suppressed all over the world for thousands of years. This is due to the same reason our cultural establishment (media, movies, politics) fears women. 

Frankly, it's because of female sexuality. 

Seriously. 

You want to get a movie rated NC-17, and subsequently banned from theaters? Show a woman masterbatuing and oragsming (see; This Film is not yet Rated.) Would you like to be thrown out of the Republican party? Propose a bill allowing women to choose what they do with their body. 

Female sexuality scares the fuck out of most men. Check the myths. Female sexuality destroyed Kingdoms, seduced Gods, and created Universes. 

To get less esoteric, men get insecure when they are confronted with the fact that the women in their lives are sexual beings. Girls start mastrubating as early as 3. The female orgasm fucking embaresses the male orgasm. We like to believe we are comfortable with female sexuality but we are only comfortable with a certain kind of female, between a certain age, being sexual in a submissive relationship to man. 

That has got to change. There is no shame in your mother having sex. There is no shame in your sister masturbating. Nothing the human body does is shameful. 


The female sexual energy is creative. It is godly. Respect it. Embrace it. 

In lak'ech ala k'in

Hermetic

This was going to be a facebook status but if the word count gets over 200 or the subject too pessimistic, I bring it to the blog. It is a rant.


They gotta tell us its a secret, they gotta hide it in books and codes and price tags because if they told us that separations are cognitive illusions, that all perceptions are subjective, that soul carries on after physical death, and that we are nakedly free to choose the way we behave in this life, we'd nod. We'd agree. And we'd continue living a life, where with every shallow, unconscious breath, we contradict these ideas.

We are awashed in data. Not all data is information. Not all information is knowledge. Only a little knowledge is wisdom, and even less wisdom is useful.

Chris Hedges has me feeling some kind of way. Namaste.

(every status, mine and yours, we're talking at others, to ourselves. The advice we give others, we're giving to ourselves. We don't recognize it. The shit we complain about, they're things we don't want to see ourselves doing. We're playing a narcissistic game with ourselves and we are active participants in dozens of our friend's game.

And to step back one more step, this observation I'm proud of pointing out is just another level deeper of the game I'm playing with myself, ad infinity.

Consciousness is a self-referencing loop.

Artist: Sebastian Wahl

Still Lost.

I feel a little lost in life. 

I know its not a unique perspective. The one where the economic promises that enticed our parents and their parents simply don't allure us. The promise that if we work hard, likely at a spiritually unfulfilling position, we will be able to afford a home -- pending the grace of a morally sound loan lender. And with this new home and debt, we will have a place to raise a family, and everyone wants to raise a family.

I'm even less fit to be a parent then I am to be a meal preparer. Why is it that there are more societal  requirements to allow an 18 year-old to make someone a McDouble then it is for that same 18 year old to summon a soul from nonexistence? I'm talking about fucking. I'm talking about that thing scientists claim genes use our flesh sacs for (1). I'm talking about procreation.

We do not give enough attention to the idea. The responsibility of raising a child is monumental. Especially now. We are living in a world that is changing, growing in complexity, at a quicker rate than any recorded time in history. We don't have brains equipped to grasp the width of depth of useful, even common, knowledge. More content is being created in 2 days than what existed throughout all of mankind since recorded history up to 2003 (2).

What chance does your child have, spending hours every day being raised by an blue screen, to understand our world? We've got social taboos for little Jimmy to memorize. We have an arbitrary economic system Daisy better understand quickly if she doesn't have nice legs and a Freudian fascination with lollipops.

I used to think my ultimate goal was to be a good father. A part of me still wants that, but what if being a good father is choosing to not ever become a father? No over emotionality here. Pragmatically, is this a world that needs a partial genetic copy of me? A partial genetic copy that will absorb all my bias and bigotry and stupidity? And my debt. Or can the planet use a generation of mankind choosing to hold off on fucking copying themselves. Or is the earth going to be okay, and its us who could really use a generation to not reproduce. (3)

Most of us don't grow spiritually beyond 18. We still completely identify with the ego as self. We still take offense. We are emotional children. We want and expect. We get upset when reality doesn't meet our expectations. We are petty. We, etrophy ridden material bags, waste priceless and finite time on saying rude shit about other flesh bodies. The things we say about other people that we intend to be insulting reveal our own pettiness, the narrowness of our perspectives, as quickly as genuinely shouting nigger or sneering faggot. We have no moral high ground. We are all equal, standing zombified on The Plain of No Self-Awareness. To be fair, some are passed-out-drunk.

If you have a child, this is not an attack. It is only a stream-of-consciousness. In my infrequent moments of self-awareness I wouldn't judge you. Thats genuine. I do hope that you selflessly give yourself to the task of raising this child as best you can. I mean, the data shows you only need to be on your best performance those first 6 years (4). Its funny how sound logic, statistics, and behaviorism can proclaim that last sentence with seriousness and ladened positive intentions.

I'm doing too much telling. We are too prideful to be told. We want to be shown.


1) In Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene, he argues that humans are a byproduct of the natural compulsion of genes to reproduce. Genes are the puppet masters and we are the puppets.

2) Eric Schmidt wrote an article on this idea. Information may be defined vaguely in his article. I don't know how useful my Flappy Bird High Score is, but that counts as information. Not quite Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.

3) "A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil"

4) For a shot of science on the issue of raising children, check out this infographic. 

Hopefully Paying the Synchronicity Forward.

Synchronicity. I try to stay alert to this phenomenon. First introduced to me by Carl Jung, this idea was the first metaphysical idea the staunch atheist I labeled myself as years ago first grasped onto. It was he crack that brought down a confining paradigm I found myself in.

Synchronicity is basically two or more events that seem connected but don't appear to have a causal relation in the Aristotelian/Modern Scientific sense.  As the human construct we call "years" passed by, I found more idols who also heeded the power and significance of synchronicity, notably Terence Mckenna and Robert Anton Wilson. Both of them, Wilson and Mckenna, believed that this phenomenon presented itself when the individual is following their path, their life's purpose, dancing to their soul's song. (Insert whichever religious paradigm helps you grasp and accept this idea, its a powerful one.)

Today while I was sending an email to a professor, I tried regurgitating this quote from memory. Too lazy to google it, I butchered it. After the email I happened to message a friend which led to a conversation that could possible change the course of my naively predicated life. This phone call had me in some kind of mood, which led me to watch an obscure interview I saved from Reddit which I wouldn't normally watch.

The guy in the interview is spitting knowledge. He's blowing me away, His self-help cliches aren't destroying my bullshit meter. Its a good interview. He drops the quote I tried recalling earlier. Goosebumps. Ah shiiit. Synchronicity. I'm charged up. I finish the hour long interview, smiling hard, three pages or notes in front of me, and eager to find another interview from another multimillionaire investor. I look through the site's archives and find one from almost a year ago.

10 minutes in, a totally new guy recants the same quote. No. This is too much. The universe, she's done whisper. She's screaming. SHe's Eddie Mercurying all over my prefrontal cortex.  The path I'm on, the mood I'm in, I need to get ready. These boots are about to get worn. I best sharpen my machete. This path is getting made.

The first thing this man spouted that summoned my pen to write was what he called the four stages of attitude. My bullshit meter twinged a little as he labeled the stages;

Level 1: To me
Level 2: By me
Level 3: Through me
Level 4: As me

But as he went on to explain them, they made sense. The lowest level is the "to me" stage. Its victimhood. Its the people who experience the world as happening to them. They have no power. Their weak. This is most people. Most people have valid reasons to consider themselves victims. Regardless, this attitude will lead you to an unfulfilling and despondent life. You and only you are responsible and capable of changing your perspective. Just do it. (Nike, contact my lawyers.)

The stage are the people who through sheer will, bend reality to their desires. They work hard. They watch Fox News...

Level three are the faithful. They believe in a higher consciousness and that since they are living according to their perceived true calling, they need only have faith and the world will allow them their dreams and aspirations. (Must be Nice).

Level 4 is Buddha. No one is there. No one I've met can stay there. I've glimpsed it, never sober. Its the perspective where one truly understands and feels an unbroken bond between themselves and all other. There is no other. Language begins to break done.

You're probably at level one. If you're my peer and you're reading this due to my shameless facebook or twitter post, you're young and broke. Its easy to see life as happening to you. That is a perspective. You have the choice to change. You know you can eat better. You can save money in all kinds of ways. You can work out. You can get the degree. You can make your partner happy. You can do.

But you sleep in. Eat shit. Bitch and complain. Drink when you can. Smoke when you can. Binge on Netflix and hulu. Passively letting life sodomize you. There is no time like the present to change your habits, subsequently your life. In fact, you will only ever have the moment.

Well, I'm rambling.

Indra's Net

We don't understand that we live in magic.

Just know, just in the fucking 6 hours I've been awake, I've been exposed to a greater diversity of information, both beautiful and disgusting, then my great grandparents could have experienced in a year.

We sit in front of these teleportation devices. We have labels for them, we call them "computers," and these labels seem to stifle the awe these machines should elicit in us. I am, in a literal sense, able to teleport my conscious mind almost anywhere within the electromagnetic web that connects these devices.

The internet is the physical manifestation of hundreds of collective LSD journeys. Do some treasure hunting, Silicon Valley, 1960s...

There is a Buddhist myth I've heard told by Alan Watts, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terrence McKenna. It talks about a Goddess named Indra who had an infinite cosmic net. The vertical strings represented time, the horizontal strings space/location. At each intersection of the space and time strings, there is a pearl. This pearl represents possible realities/perspectives/conscious beings. When the goddess looks into any pearl she sees not just that pearl's reflection, but the reflection of every surrounding pearl in that pearl's reflection. The beautiful thing about myths is the reader can choose to let the symbols represent whatever they want them too. For this, this represents the infinite possible perspectives there are of reality and that our perspectives are both explicitly and implicitly altered by the consciousnesses around us.

Where in the past your pearl's reflection was limited to your physical location, we now have the opportunity to bend Indra's Net. We have the choice which cosmic conscious perspective pearls we wish to be reflected in our cosmic eye.

Those fucks on facebook and twitter probably aren't the pearls you want around you.

Love and Ambition

My perspective is little removed. If I were an expert I would know my audience and be able to write to their point-of-view.

Not an expert.

It feels like I write to an audience, but with a little investigation and honesty, I know I'm writing to myself with the knowledge that anyone can read it. This unique situation creates an interesting psychological atmosphere. I wonder how honest the more removed areas of my awareness allow my present self to be.

That rant was meant to set up a point, but now I'm wondering if I should pick a girl to focus on. Focus on her perspective. Direct this little issue I want to flest out at her. But who?

I read a passage in PIKHAL where a Jungian psychoanalysis described an anima women.

"she's a person who, when she's attracted to a man, intuitively senses what's lacking in his emotional life, and she has a compulsion to become whatever that man most needs in a woman. She probably convinces herself each time that she's truly in love, but I doubt she's capable of what most of us would call real loving. The Jungians have a term, 'anima woman.' The anima woman lacks a solid identity; like many great actors, she borrows - she takes on - a sense of wholeness from playing the part. In this case, it's the part of the muse, the inspiration, the adored dream-woman. She fulfills a fantasy, and you can imagine the tremendous emotional rewards there are for her in such a role..."

I think I'm the male version of this.

Step One: Das Body

I've been struggling lately. Its not a unique struggle. There are plenty of much less fortunate kids my age facing the same situation; about to graduate college and trying to find their way in this economy. I get easily overwhelmed thinking about how many possible paths my life could take depending on how I act every day in the following couple of months. I can't dwell on it though. Its too heavy.

Fucking money. There are the things I'd like to do, and there are the things I'd be able to stand doing to make money. This is what I've been mulling over almost everyday since the start of this semester. What can I do to make money? Can my degree get me any work in my field? These are questions ignoring the deeper questions of what do I want to devote my life too? How can I contribute to mankind? How can I afford car insurance...

I think I've made up my mind as to where to start. I've had many inspirational thoughts as to what to devote my life too. Almost all drug induced. Today though, I had one of these thoughts sober. I'm going to devote the next couple of years of my life to understanding and playing with the human body. I'm going to try my hand at personal training. Without getting to side tracked, I think our psychologies are more affected by our relationship to our bodies than almost any person recognizes. I also have a feeling therapy could be drastically improved if the counselor and patient workouted together, but thats an entirely other subject.

Now there is the finical aspect of this pursuit. I want to do this on my own. I think I'll need to start another blog specifically for this endeavor. Also, I'm sure a smart person in a boardroom somewhere has thought of this, but I think social media changes the amateur entrepreneurial game. Most of my peers are entering the age where they have a little bit of money to spend and some of services to offer. Why are we not asking and paying our friends to provide services for us? We get to support our friends, we know we won't be getting cheated, and well, no taxes...

For the next month or so I'm going to start doing the research. Once that time comes, if you trust me, let me train you. Starting out I'm not going to charge any money, but my broke ass will be accepting donations. Be my ginny pigs. And if you have services you can offer, I'm willing to return the favor.

Psychedelic walk

Schools been stressing me lately.

As I was walking from class, on a whim, I tried to see the world as if I were peaking on mushrooms. I imagined the boarders of buildings waving as if they were mirages. I pretended I could feel tree's talking, telling me how nice it is to be. I focused on how all solid objects are mostly empty space, how all solids are vibrations.

I looked up at the sky. Realized that blue cocoon is a illusion, that beyond it, the real ceiling is blackness. I realized that there is no ceiling. How we are one of a jumble of plants circulating around a star, which circles around a body of stronger mass, how that body of mass circles around another. I tried to picture a cosmic twist of infinite bodies of decreasing mass circling each other creating a universal dance beyond perception. Okay, they're not technically circles.

I looked at people. Only then did I become self-aware. I had walked most the length of campus stupidly staring at buildings, trees, and the sky. I didn't realize the expression on my face. Once I started looking at my fellow conscious flesh sacs, the psychedelic feeling would end. Our collective self-consciousness, false bravado, misplaced anger, stress ladened eyes, artificial smiles... litered their faces.

I had to look away.

The awe returned. I walked a few more minutes. Now I'm here writing. I want to help people.

The fact is, whether my observations be true or not, they are projections of my self unto these strangers. Those are qualities I see because I feel them too. I want to help people, but it starts with helping myself.

Writing helps. 

A thought March 8, 2013

We all think we're crazy. Our definitions of crazy vary. My crazy is masculine. He refutes. He's always somewhere within conscious-shot, ready to argue any thought, be it positive or negative. His crown is my complete belief that there are no absolute truths, which he happily points out that such a claim is a paradox. And so the black hole spins.

Well, another mini-epiphany struck while I was coming home from the gym tonight. I've established my staunch stance on absolute truths and I've talked about how we can create our own beliefs. I'm deciding to start. After I thought about fleshing out this idea, while in the shower, I thought about waiting until my experience next week, but I decided against it. Just more excuses. I'm not laying cement, but foder. I think I'll be bringing some foreign nutrients to the soil come next weekend.

So, my current metaphysical beliefs. (hahaha, I've spent a great deal longer and wrote a great deal more than I had expected too and got wildly off topic, this is going to be difficult for me.) Formal logic aside, I'm choosing to believe that whatever I believe will be as true as I am capable if believing it. Therefore, I'm choosing to believe that there is a Godhead version of all of us who chose this location is time/space to play a game in.

This idea is heavily influenced by Alan Watts. We basically gave up the knowledge of our Godheadness and created this universe to enrich with our trillions of conscious fragments. The course of this game has been a growth from less complex to more complex. We are pretty close to the end of game, in the perspective of the whole of time.

Basically, we're Godhead and we're afraid to admit it.

I'm going to stop here for now...

Another Perspective

I haven't written in awhile. Life seems busier then it has ever been before. This may always be the case. But today has been special, so I think it'd be best to end with one of these.

I've be on this stint for awhile now, that there is a shared reality most sane people accept but that this reality offers only a few answers, begs more questions, and doesn't withstand most philosophical questions. I'm talking about the collectively observable world, the one that can be scientifically tested. A reality that can only be measured by a few 'hard' sciences. But don't look to closely at water dynamics or light or gravity or time, because when you do, even this sliver of shared reality begins to shake.


I'm convinced every single human who has ever lived has had a unique and irreplicable perception, experience, and thus truth about life.

I'm rambling, the point of this post is that I'd like to offer a particular perspective. I've thought about this perspective before, and I may have hinted at it in other posts. Its not an original idea, I think I picked it up from an Alan Watts lecture. It seemed to be on my mind today. I was on the way from the gym and I was hit with that feeling of awe that causes goosebumps. I hope you know the type. The casual thought was what if this life and all contributing factors, i.e. the world, the laws of nature, humankind, this location in time/space, was something I chose.

The way my mind works, the first four thoughts after writing that sentence are rebuttals. I'm going to ignore those for this post.

There are two logical reasons why this idea lingers with me. The first is my luck. I have access to a abundance of food. That puts my luck in the upper half of mankind. I am without any major or even mild illnesses or handicaps. Top ten percent. I live in a 1st world country, own a car, about to have a degree, and I'm relatively intelligent. Top maybe two or three percent. Now, a less quantifiable variable, and maybe controversial, is that I'm a tall, white, average weight male. The science is out there that on a subconscious level, in the culture I live in, there is a statistical significant chance I will be offered the job, given the raise, trusted, accepted, and forgiven more often then other gender/race/body-type combination. I am lucky.

The second, a more profound, and a less egotistical logical reason why this may have been a reality some ethereal me chose is the time we live in. We are living at that point on an exponential line graph where the line starts fucking exploding nearly vertical. The line is technological growth. Life has been on Earth for millions of years, varying types of humans for 100,000. We've had civilizations for maybe 10,000 (interesting debates over this timeline are out there). The industrial revolution was less than 500 years ago. 50 years ago there was no internet. More information was generated last year than the entire collected human-race has created and kept in our history. That data will only multiply.

We literally may be the generation bridging the old world, the world before whatever technological singularity is to come, and the world after the singularity, a world who's following generations will be unable to grasp the primitivity we lived in. The more wealthy amongst our generation may very realistically shop on the moon, stay in a hotel on mars, live in a computer game indistinguishable from real life, where they are gods, and live far longer than our natural life allows.

If you believe in reincarnation, being our age in 2013 is the best evidence you've got.

So what if I chose this life? To really give into the idea makes my spine tingle. What am I going to experience? What if the unique perspective you experience, is a life the GodSelf you chose?

Don't let some shitty metaphysical system cap your imagination. Atheism is no better than Christianity, Islam, or Judaism in this regard  Fuck the boundaries these systems impose on truths no one can claim. Playing with what could be is a little maddening, but ultimately thrilling.

Synchronicity has been abundant today. I'm not sure whats causing it, if anything causes it, but I've had a day like no other. I love every one I have a chance too. I hope this post did something for you. It didn't turn out as I expected but whatever.

Goodnight. 

Stories

We do not heed the power of stories. Our life’s meaning is measured in chapters. Culture wishes to be our author. Only with our consent via apathy can culture provide us our story.  Be the hero. Write your own story. Beware the consequence of living by a story too far from your cultures master story. In that void outside the master story lies the birthplace of both genius and insanity.

2013

I've five months until my vacation ends and I feel anything but prepared. I've never had to trade my time for paper. I've been supported by my parents and parts of the american machine. That teet suckling ends at the end of this semester. Being cognizant of how one event can cause cascading repercussions, I can't ignore that how I behave in this remaining time will affect the rest of my life.

A frank and brief assessment of the world only adds to my unpreparedness. Humanity is holding on to a faltering interconnected global economic system. I don't think it can continue in the direction it is going but trying to envision a world without it is far more frightening. Its easier for us to imagine and accept the destruction of the world than a fundamental change in our economic doctrine.

How learning basic body language can forever change your perspective on human interactions, so too does reading the works of people like Alan Watts, Terrence McKenna, and Ram Dass forever change your perspective on unfulfilling work. Had I remained ignorant to this paradigm, I could have an unfulfilling job, a passionless marriage, and vegetative evenings with a beer in my hand and still be relatively content. No more doe.

My main issue is I don't know where to focus. Given the momentum of technology, and it is exponential momentum, what should I spend my finite time learning? My answer to this question at the moment is the human body, specifically the brain. My intuition tells me I'll have work in this field ten years from now, but I'm tempted to believe this is more an ignorance of technology and a defense mechanism than any real insight on the matter.

There is a threshold that before crossed boredom exists. If its ever crossed boredom ceases to be but is replaced by stress. No afterlife is promised. There is finite time my body will function. I can learn almost anything, but the price is priceless time. I could have a thousand lifetimes and not do all that there is to do. So what to do? Thus my stress and confusion. "Be here now" is my ultimate defense lol.

So like most pseudo philosophers, I'll do anything not to have to do real work. I recognize the need for those pieces of paper, so some work must be done. If you need a diet plan, workout plan, personal trainer, someone to write your papers, or a therapist, contact me. That's pretty much my skill set and I think I'm above average at most of them. So if you have some green slips you'd like to trade for any of these services, please let me know.

Why you'll never be happy, and other sensational headlines to get you to read my shit. (Hedonic Adaptation)

Hedonic Adaptation. Sounds fancy. Sounds like some ivory tower elitist bullshit. Now that I've appealed to my FOX News demographic; on with whatever the fuck this blog is.

Hedonic Adaptation is proposed by some as being the single most important and influential factor fucking with our happiness. If I was scholarly I'd go find some sources, but as a chronic moderate achiever, I'll pass and just assume what I'm saying isn't bullshit. To be fair, I'm being as honest as I am capable but I've had a few drinks.

If you're reading this, you have access to the internet. You have a piece of machinery completely beyond your ability to recreate or fully understand. This machine is capable of sending your thoughts thousands of miles, in seconding, to potentially billions of people. This machine basically allows you to be telepathic. The network this machine is a part of encompasses not only the world, but the air space that coats this rock, even extending into space, where thousands of other machines circle around this planet at hundreds, maybe thousands of miles a second. These machines absorbing, bouncing, and redirecting energy we can't see with our unassisted body. For this connectivity, Kings would have sent tens of thousands of men to their death if even the slightest hope existed that they could obtain it. These machines inspire no awe in us.

Hedonic Adaptation.

We believe we are good at predicting how happy or sad a future event will make us. Science says?!...Nope. (Insert sources I'll give to anyone interested). We're not. Hedonic Adaptation asserts that each person has a unique baseline of happiness. This is influenced by genes and a host of mostly adjustable mental factors. You could win the lottery, in 6 months you'll be back to baseline. You could become paralyzed by a spine crushing car accident, 6 months later--baseline. Therefore happiness will never be achieved by obtaining anything material.

This force drives american culture. Capitalism fucking feasts on the 300 million plus flesh sacs who embody this mentality.

I'm laughing. Its ironic. I decided I'd write on this topic last night. I was excited. I believed it'd be fun and fulfilling  Here I am writing...and its not fun nor fulfilling because I feel like I'm failing to capture the gravitas of the topic and its impact on our happiness. I'm a victim of the fucking thing I'm writing about. I'm not too upset. I seem to have a high positive baseline. I could be completely delusional and be in a state of utter depression with wall after wall of cognitive dissonance and not know it.

Thats the funniest thing, the things I've learned most from college is that we don't know shit. This isn't some high schooler regurgitation of Socrates in an attempt to sound deep. No. Our memories suck. One of my professors makes a living explaining to jurys how eyewitness testimony isn't accurate enough to convict. Scientists have repeatedly put fabricated memories into participants minds, and these people truly believe these stories happened to them. If you let that sink in, a few logical steps and your at a scary place. Then there is the whole philosophical matter on what can you know, how can you know, and how do you know you know. Blah blah blah (this is what I think whenever I bring up philosophy to almost anyone :c )

I'm rambling.

Hemingway said something about drinking and writing.

He's a greater man than I cause I'm butchering this shit.

Stop being uninspired.

Stop watching TV.

Create something.

Thanatos and Eros

There is a theory about reality I'd like to ramble on about. I'm not sure what its called or who wrote it, but I've encountered it enough to know it is not my unique idea. If anyone reading this knows of any antecedental influences, please feed me dem links.

The theory goes a little like this; our global connectiviness, call it consciousness, sociology, or the internet, existes by maintaing a balance between two forces. To borrow Frued's terms but leaving aside the sexual obsession, these two forces can be called Eros and Thanatos. A simpler but much more ambiguous explanation would lend the terms Good and Evil. Eros is the drive to connect, love, nurture, help, and so on, where Thanatos is the drive to destroy, deconstruct, hate, and hurt. The theory asserts that when one force becomes too powerful, thus shifting the balance our existence requires to maintain, a zeitgeist begins to emerge allowing the birth of the opposite force to explode forth which reestablishes balance.

I know little about the history of humanity so I won't pretend to take you on a knowledgable trip through our collective past, however I have been exposed to an interesting supporting claim to the balancing theory. Credit is due to Alexander Shulgin, I am only filter regurgitating his findings, who I'm sure would admit he was another filter of more original idea, and such is the creative process.

In 1942, a group of american scientist discovered they could control nuclear fission, thus the birthing of man's ability to end all life on the planet. Oppenheimer recalls the event as such (1). (The sadness in his eyes eclipses any acting I've ever seen.) The balance between Thanatos and Eros had shifted wildly in the favor of destruction.

A year later, seemingly by accident, Dr. Albert Hofman accidentally assimilated a chemical he had created 5 years ago. What ensued was the introduction of LSD, and as it applies to the theory of Thanatos and Eros, an explosive resurgence of the Eros force. Man believed he had mastered matter, this translucent substance reminded him he had not yet even fully explored himself.

My peers and I struggle to understand the Zeitgeist between the 40s and 70s. We fail to appreciate how close this planet was to total destruction. We can't comprehend the significance and reverberating repercussions of the counter culture. I could and normally do fall into rants lampooning my peers but I should stop. That comes from a place of Thanatos rather than Eros.

Psychedelics are not for all. They are not a panacea. However, they are important. They are powerful. They are useful. If you have the mental durability and conscious curiosity, try them. Be responsible.

A quick rant on drugs and addiction. Coffee and sugar; drugs. Television and texting: addictions. Ultimately the term "drug" and "addiction" are arbitrary symbols we as a group have accepted to have some kind of meaning that was constructed by a group of people other than ourselves. Take a second and stand back for a moment and think about this. You fear these substances. You use excuses like they're illegal or they're bad for your health, but you speed, drank before you were 21, eat and drink absolutely synthetic shit. You're afraid because deep down you know the life you live is not the life you dreamt of, and in order to kill that voice inside of you that cries with agony and regret, you willingly offer your consciousness to noise. Don't be afraid, with a little risk, the rewards are far greater than the monotony you subscribe to everyday. Risk your life, death is guaranteed regardless.

What would you choose?

This rant is inspired by the beauty of a forgotten friend sharing sensitive secrets. Thank you.

What if what you believe happens to you after death is exactly what happens to you after death? What if your belief determined your afterlife? But what if you really had to know it would happen, that if even the slightest doubt was held in the mind at the moment of death, you would leave the dying flesh tomb to only enter another one, repeating until you came to this realization? Do any of us have this sense of doubtless belief in what happens after this fleshy bag runs out of matter to metabolize?

Would you want to be a Christian? Would you want to be an Atheist or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim? Would you create your own belief? What would you do with that kind of mind melting power and responsibility? Would you be able to maintain your self-created beliefs in the face of persecution  resentment, mockery, or violence?

What kind of peace would a person with this kind of confidence live with? How enjoyable and entertaining would the struggles of life be? Would a person even want to live in this world after this realization?

Were would the limits be drawn? Would there be any limits? What if we are sleeping gods waiting to realize the awesome power we have?

What if we have already made this choice? What if our choice is this life we are living now? What if this life, at this point in time, is the life we have been working towards? Have we forgot? Are we squandering our gift to ourselves? What are we doing?

If you had the power to chose your existence after death...would you chose or accept another's? If only your own imagination limited the potentially eternal existence you would be greeted with after physical death, what would you choose?