Friday, December 21, 2012

The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men



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

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The Disenchanting Egocentric Dream of Meaningful Delusions

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"

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Certainty of Every Choice Ever Made


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"

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

The System



So who will you look to as savior now? Who will you "elect" to bring your hopes and dreams to fruition? What personality has the power to finally invoke enduring "change"? And who will eventually betray your dreams? Who will fail to fulfill as only you have come to expect?

The problem is NOT the person, but The System.

Individuality gets sucked up into The System like dust bunnies in a vacuum to be invalidated entirely. The System eventually invalidates all 'individuals' who seek to change or restructure The System.

The System is indestructible and growing exponentially day by day, year by year.

The system demands you seek the "antichrist" and provides many to choose from. Reflections of good and evil pop up like jack-in-the box clowns, easily distracting you from The System. The System actively obfuscates itself into obscurity because it cannot risk your awareness of its ultimate aims and intentions.

But your continued obedience keeps it well fed.

It's a natural symbiosis as The System feeds you, while you feed it. It gives you all your fears so that it can provide a sense of comfort and safety. Every attempt to dissemble The System merely results in a replicating substitution. For instance, did “slavery” ever really end?

Nothing can exist outside The System and even renouncing The System is simply subsumed and incorporated into it. The System distracts and engages, fascinates and enrages. With its nebulously complicated details, all the while it maintains your unconscious allegiance to its universal intent.

Your very desire to be an “individual” demands you allegiance to The System. The System is a labyrinth of complexity aiding in your failure to see its stark simplicity. The System actually reinforces that there is NO exit by providing you seemingly infinite escape hatches that only bring you back into The System.

Everything you identify with is a gift of The System (even, and especially, your "God"). The system provides what you loathe as well as love. The System is always with you, from the moment you wake until you close your eyes in sleep and even your dreams are consumed by what The System provides.

Can you feel it in you? Moving you? Motivating your actions and desires? It breathes life into you and you never tire of thinking of it in all the ways it has determined it should be considered. Because without The System “you” could NOT exist.

It is not the Illuminati or the International Banking Cartel. It’s not the Republicans or The Democrats, conservatives or liberals. It’s not Christians or Muslims. It’s not the government, the CIA, Halliburton, the Rothschild’s, the North Koreans, Al Qaida, your boss, your spouse, your mother-in-law, your dumb-ass neighbor, etc, etc. None of this matters...

It’s The System and everything is merely a part of that WHOLE, acting and behaving as the system requires.

It demands you remain pitifully weak and ignorant by installing saviors who must eventually bow down to The System. Your “Jesus” and “Buddha” were easily assimilated and injected with the chief motivating principles of The System and every leader you choose has been chosen first by The System. Why else would they now be so inconsequential and insignificant? Why else have they not saved the world?

The System invalidates ALL it touches and it touches everything. Nothing is free of The System. That which is free of The System, does not "exist."

Sometimes you fantasize leaving. Sometimes you wish you could get out from under it. That too is Systematized.

But be careful trying to identify it by its parts, because The System is a WHOLE that demands you know it by its parts. It can only be seen clearly by being seen in its TOTALITY and its prime objective is to keep that from occurring at all costs.Look around you and try to identify what is or is NOT a part of it. The System thrives on your intellectual differentiating, your righteous discernment.

The System taught you the very act of "judgment."

The “self” you love so much (and even your “love") is a product of The System. Rest assured, The System “loves” your children more than you ever could and it loves "you" more than you could love yourself. The children are its future and have inherited that role from those before them. Indoctrination into The System is in perpetual motion, never ceasing and always grinding away that which stands before it attempting to impede its goal.

Think of any one thing or entity that is the origin of The System, or that controls the motivations of it, and you will be entirely wrong. Raging against the specific parts that you loathe only reinforces the strength of The System. It is becoming very strong as of lately.

The System consumes “you” as you consume it. There is little choice, because you really have NO concrete conception of who or what “you” are, just tenuous ideas and notions that are easily sucked up into The System. Egocentricity maintains it and will defend it with its life. The System counts on this and this alone for its continued existence.

The System requires you grit and grind over the individuals The System provides. It makes no difference what personality you choose to save you, or to improve your lot in life. It makes no difference who you choose to hate or fear, because the system will eventually invalidate any and all dreams that do not support IT.

The System loves your rage and lives off your fears. To remain an active participant of The System you MUST remain afraid of something, anything. Hence, The System will continue to develop ever more ingenious methods of assuring your safety and protection and you will continue to accept this no matter how increasingly fearful it makes you.

Yet, not to worry, The System will provide you brief periods of respite through entertaining and engaging pursuits and pastimes, which IT provides as you ASK. This serves to intensify your undying allegiance to its universal intent by remaining unconscious to that intent, till death do you part.

A commitment to total unawareness is all that it asks from you and nothing more. Everything else has been taken care of...

Death is the chief control mechanism of The System, but it is not interested in doom or apocalypse, just your continued fear of an END. But the one essential variable that keeps The System well oiled and fully operational is your hope for "change."

The System has NEVER changed, but it is most certainly growing in strength and your meticulously informed ignorance insures that its growth will continue unabated in perpetuity.

See all of it in WHOLE or you simply won't see The System at all.

Artwork by Anton Semenov - "Society"

This a re-post originally posted Dec 28, 2011

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Wasting Time....



Out you popped from your utopic fluid existence, only to be compelled to employ muscles to suck in 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 part of the circuitry. You were a complete and utter victim of your environment, and all who populated it, and this included the actions/reactions of your body. You sheit and pissed without discrimination and when hungry you howled in pain till the peas, that you now loathe, were shoved down your gullet.

Nevertheless, even in your minimal egoic state, those in your care anxiously anticipated those wonderful moments when you would begin to exhibit your glorious egocentricity “personality” and, adept in their own egocentric skills, dutifully trained you to become a unique and separate egocentric (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 on your “self,” by your “self,” that you had no participation in constructing, 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. Value circuits unfolded into a neuro-web and 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 (and "nothing" is a very frightening idea now).

You allowed all of this to happen because you had no choice.

Your childhood was influenced by a series of sensations, most of them completely outside the purview of any control you could ever assert. Of course, you did seek to apply control, in adherence to 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 completely 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? Why this? Why now?

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 a 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 a reason, 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, and will, engage in are meaningless, would lead only to deep and unendurable anguish.

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.


Sittin' in the morning sun
I'll be sittin' when the evening comes
Watching the ships roll in
Then I watch them roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

I left my home in Georgia

Headed for the Frisco Bay
Cuz I've had nothing to live for
And look like nothing's gonna come my way

So, I'm just gon' sit on the dock of the bay

Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

Looks like nothing's gonna change

Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, listen

Sittin' here resting my bones

And this loneliness won't leave me alone, listen
Two thousand miles I roam
Just to make this dock my home, now

I'm just gon' sit at the dock of a bay

Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
Sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

(Ottis Redding)


Artwork by Best Design - "Illustration of In The Midst Of Surreal Time"

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Introducing the Craftmatic Egocentric “Slice and Dice Machine"


I have no idea what might happen next.

Do you?

So why care?

The “journey” you think you’re on is NOT the one you’re on and the path you’re following is not the one that will take you “there.” But don’t sweat the small stuff. Just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.

Most of your “life” has happened to you, with little involvement from “you.” Life unfolds and you adjust accordingly, based on thought patterns that were provided to you by a “world.” Yet, it does seem these thoughts are conjured up entirely by your “self” and that “you” have something to do with it. Can a “self” that has no unique attributes, be considered a separate “self”? If you were molded and shaped exclusively by an outside world (which includes your body), can you still proclaim some sense of “individuality” separate from that which made you?

The egocentric “I-Me” adores all attempts by itself at dismantling itself to reach some “true” center of itself. It relishes the constant pursuit of elevating the “self” above itself by cutting away parts of itself in the belief that this will eventually result in freedom from itself. It eagerly lives in anticipation of each new egocentric experience of “selflessness.” Ego longs for the day it will no longer be egocentric through its serial conceptual lobotomizing.

Something must be “done” in order to get “there.”

But what???

Ego-self cannot comprehend doing nothing. There aren’t any neuro-circuits that allow for NOTHING and all circuits lead to SOMETHING. The defining factor of egocentricity is “doing” something about itself, as a means of knowing itself. To laughingly inform an egocentric self that everything it does has one purpose and that is to maintain self-awareness, is absurd to a brain packed full of neuro-circuits that require meaning to maintain the currents and current to maintain the meanings.

So egocentrics must keep ‘doing.’ You can’t NOT do. It is impossible NOT to have a goal. Try NOT having any goal at all. 

There must be some place to get to and some journey to get you “there.” There are many “theres” to get to, whether you choose to engage or disengage your “world,” there is a “path” toward attaining that goal. You just have to pick the one that fits well with your circuitry (and you always will. You have no choice). There must be some meditation, some mantra, some religion or spirituality, some ideological premise, some skill or some practice worth doing. There must be some guru, some master, some guy somewhere, who knows what to “do.” Go to any so-called “spiritual” forum and watch how it’s all regurgitated ad infinitum (...ad nauseam). A thousand years from now the same platitudes will be mouthed until death terminates the brain waves that produce linguistic drivel. Each year some new spiritual celebrity gives you the same sugar coated diarrhea, to soothe your tired soul.

Your life has been a series of choices, each an antecedent of the next and each time you think you’re just a tad bit closer, there's always…the next choice to be made. You’ve had no choice in your choices, just as you will have no choice in the moment of your death. Hence,choices will be made regardless, and each choice is an embryo of the next.

The paradox is that the more you do, the more you must do. The more you cut away from egocentricity, the more there is to cut away. The more you believe you have deflated your ego (as if “you” and ego were separate) the more inflated it becomes (take out one drug dealer and ten more pop up to take his place).

But go ahead keep slicing away at the “self, because with each cut comes an experience and each experience adds to “you.” Not like the old “you,” mind ya, but a better, more improved version (less is always more) each and every time. One that you can take pride in because it proves you are not like ‘them,” and isn’t that what “awakening” is all about? They repulse you and that repulsion is the premise from which you seek alternatives. But, alas, “you” are like them and everything you do demonstrates that to “you,” up to, and including your end.

What you give “attention” to in any moment is based on developmentally imprinted neuro-circuitry. You were taught how, and what, to “think” and everything you aspire to is based on a socio-culturally conditioned brain circuits.

Ego-transcendence, in all its “spiritual” forms, is nothing more than your attempt to escape your brain. You don’t like what it shows you? You find the thoughts, generated through socially conditioned neuro-circuits, that you had no choice in the making, often negative and disparaging and you want out?

Hence, you look to the world you seek to escape for aid in generating additional circuits that you hope will eventually lead to an exit door. You seek out those whose words ignite positive limbic system emotional experiences in the pleasure centers of the brain. You want the guru that gives the whiz-bang, yo!

But eventually all circuits lead back to you. In other words, the circuits generated through the words of your beloved spiritual teacher must eventually be overwhelmed by the reality that you must negotiate, regardless of what the master tells you.

In other words, if you’re getting all jiggy with the new practice or technique the “master” taught you, it won’t make a spit of difference when that virus or bacteria knocks you on your butt. If you lose you job and can’t pay the mortgage, you can do your spiritual “autolysis” till the cows come home, but you’re still gonna lose your house and that sucks cause you haven’t finished your spiritual “autolysis” yet! Damn, if you’d only be finished, life wouldn’t suck so bad, right?

Reality is in your brain and manifests through a billion neurons branching out through miles and miles of neuro-networks. Other than brain damage or suicide, there is no shutting this stuff off and it will take you wherever it will (even to brain damage or suicide!).

But there is pretending that you have overcome your circuitry and are no longer affected by the “thoughts” it generates.

And there is a circuit for that too…

Friday, October 5, 2012

In a dream, "choices" must be made...


We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process in each moment. Although we continually notice changes in our experience— in thought, mood, perception, behavior, etc.— we are utterly unaware of the neurophysiological events that produce them. In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself.  By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are.

 I generally start each day with a cup of coffee or tea— sometimes two. This morning, it was coffee (two). Why not tea? I am in no position to know. I wanted coffee more than I wanted tea today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have “changed my mind” and switched to tea before the coffee drinker in me could get his bearings? Yes, but this impulse would also have been the product of unconscious causes. Why didn’t it arise this morning? Why might it arise in the future? I cannot know. The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness— rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.   
Harris, Sam (2012-03-06). Free Will (pp. 7-8). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition. 

If there is no free-will, and all thoughts, feelings and behaviors are entirely influenced by influences that were themselves influenced by previous influences, which have therefore been influenced, how can we stake claim to a unique self-hood?

If every intention you claim as yours, is merely the product of previously developed neuro-circuitry, why intend anything at all except what you’re supposed to intend, which you cannot know until that intention circuit fires up in your brain? What choices need to be made that won’t be made and, if they’re not made, then they were not to be made anyway?

You intend nothing that is not already intended and your intention was intended long before you became aware of it and acted on it.

Why has it been so hard to just "enjoy the ride"? 

You have no choice but to go wherever it takes you, why suffer through where you are (unless of course, this is what must be experienced).

I have written much that does not get posted here, but everything I have posted must be posted, else it simply would not be here. I have had no choice in the direction I have been influenced to follow, based on the circuits that direct "me." I have intended nothing.

If all thought is generated through predetermined neuro-circuits that have been influenced from birth by billions of internal and external experiences, generating ‘memory’ circuits of their own that will influence other circuits, is there still a self? If everything “you” are and everything identified with as “you,” had absolutely nothing to do with “you” or any sense of a free-willed ‘choice,’ can there even be a “you”?

The Egocentric self is defined, and experienced, on the belief in a will to make free and autonomous choices from its desires. But if those desires have been determined and subsequently influenced by other influenced desires, then so has each and every choice made up to now and ALL choices that will be made in the future...  

....have already been made.

Hence, the obvious fact is that there is no “you” making choices. There is only a “you” experiencing choices made from previous determinations all the way back to the womb.

How can an ego-self, that is not free to make choices, be an ego-self when egocentricity demands the capacity to choose and has spent a lifetime developing and honing judgment circuits in the brain to enhance and emphasize that capacity?

You had no choice in your birth, just as you will have no choice in your death. But the "Good News" is that you have had, and will have, no choice in between either. If you have never had free-will to choose, do you even exist, other than as a lump of mobile flesh acting out pretensions that are not in any way based on the capacity to choose?

In a dream, choices need be made. When you awaken, no such illusion remains.

I have had numerous correspondence from many who have sought ways to spiritually transcend their individual egocentricity. But they experience anger in my attempts to show that an independent ego-self cannot be transcended, because it exists but with no capacity to make choices.

Clearly, egocentricity enjoys attempting to transcend itself and has built up centuries of theoretical texts to show the way. But this has always been a fools errand (but a necessary one).

You have shaped and molded NOTHING. All your self-actualizing, self-development techniques, to become an improved and happier “I-Me,” was nothing more than doing what you were genetically and socio-culturally conditioned to do. “You” had no choice, nor will you ever. Your intention to "transcend" you egocentricity has been influenced by past influences that have also been influenced, completely outside your control, with as about as much meaning and purpose as the intention to take out the trash. Everything you are now you have had to be. It was not under your control. “You” are out of the loop, simply because you have never been IN the loop.

Why suffer through right or wrong, good or bad choices, when each choice made…had to be made? You are on a "path" but in no way a product of your choosing or in any way influenced by any thoughts you think "you" conjure up "in the moment." Every moment you experience has been influenced by the moment before it, and so on, back to conception.

So now that you have read this and consider it (not just my words but the words of a reputable neuroscientist) what circuits are forming up that will influence other circuits? Will your belief circuits demand you ignore this post or maybe seek out a memory-based linguistic circuit to refute the obvious? Or will you suddenly experience less intensity of “mind,” with less of a need to invest in any particular ideology or "path," because if there is no free and autonomous “you,” what good is any choice "you" make? What about your constant daily struggle to maintain a fixed self based on past and future choices? Does it matter?

It really makes no difference what you choose, simply because you will choose what you MUST.

But...if you're following your guru then...

..."And now you do what they told ya.
 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me"
(Rage Against the Machine)

Artwork - "Time Guardian"

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Bow... to Dr. FeelGood



Alas, it looks like the natives are growing restless…

There is NO such action as “thinking.” You have never had a “thought” in your life. Just electrochemical synaptic firings experienced in, and by, a brain. We refer to this electrochemical processing as "thought" or "thinking." But you can call it whatever you want.

Instead of “thinking,” why not call it “yodeling”? You could say, “wait! I’m yodeling about what you just said.” Or how about “kipockling”? Or maybe “stupencracking”? You could say, “wait! let me kipockle about what you just said” or “let me stupencrack about that for awhile.”

What is a “thought,” if not a circuit linked up to other circuits giving an experience you refer to as “conceptual”? Why make it anything more than this, unless you want some thoughts to have particular relevance? Unless you want some “thoughts” to have special significance?

Unless you want some thoughts to lead to your “awakening”?

And they will most certainly set up the circuits that lead to your "awakening," whether "awakening" is real or not.

What I write here, on this very page, is the domino effect of a billion neural circuits rapidly linking up and firing off. This provides a “linguistic” experience in specific centers of the brain (they’re electrochemically lighting up like a xmas tree right now!). From that I tap, tap, tap away, through the use of other circuits involving movement and hand/eye coordination. And all this is happening in a separate, individual brain, protected by a cranial shell atop a bipedal frame.

Nothing “sacred” about it. Nothing special.

However, it is “emotion” that drives the cranial machine. Limbic system synapses are what you seek and what you live for. You want to “feel” your “thoughts” and so, you seek out the guru or enlightened master who will give you the “thoughts” that make you “feel” good.

This is all pretty simple when you break it down….

So you bow at the feet of the one who gives you the “thoughts” that jazz up the limbic centers of your brain. Doesn’t matter if “awakening” is real or not. Doesn’t matter whether “enlightenment” exists or not.

In the moment, you “feel” good and that’s basically what it’s all about.

And these circuits will have you chasing more. You think it’s because it’s “true.” But truth doesn’t matter to the brain. What matters is how you “feel” when certain synapses fire. What doesn’t make you “feel” good (like this blog) you avoid (and may even attack). But that which allows you to fire-off ("think”) positive “emotions” you bow to and keep coming back for more.

It’s not rocket science, folks.

But, as you can see from the comments on other posts, reading these words may tend not to make you “feel” good. In fact, some are processing “fear” through the amygdala (you can tell by the ranting and shouting, which is processed through the limbic system).

You want your "thoughts" to be special. So you've fixated on stringing together particular "thoughts" so you can "feel" good.

Nonetheless, since you have NO control over the circuits in your head, everything is to be expected to occur exactly as it does.

So who cares?

Now.... doesn’t that make you “feel” good to “think” about?
 

Monday, September 24, 2012

War of the Circuits



I tread on hallowed ground because, as you can see from some of the comments left in here, there are those who want their brain states to remain sacred. Yet, this is merely how they’re wired up. Hence, they give attention to what the brain directs and filter out what does not conform to the socio-culturally conditioned pathways.

For them, “enlightenment” is sacred and they will chase that tail to the grave. What are they chasing, but a concept that someone taught them is a higher state of the “I-Me” then what they have experienced up to now. Yet, keep in mind egocentricity must lower itself in order to lift itself up by its 'sacred' bootstraps. There must be a dissatisfaction with your “self,” in order to seek a greater satisfaction with your “self” through the sacred concepts you've learned.

But the postmodern “masters” are finally coming to their senses. They realize that there is NO end to egocentricity and it cannot be done away with entirely. This requires some subtle back-pedaling.

After centuries of teaching that you must completely transcend your “self,” ("self is suffering") the "enlightened masters" finally see that you cannot ever exit your cranium and, hence, can never NOT be ego-centered.

Now what they teach is that you can’t totally transcend your egocentricity, but you must make it into a “faint” ego-self. Now you must transcend Big Self so you can become tiny Little Self. You must become a Little Big Man and demonstrate to your "self" how “faint” you really are as Little Self, rather than the Big Self you once ‘thought” you were.

The way to do this is simply to stop thinking. But you can’t totally stop thinking. Your brain won’t let you, cause you'd die. Now, you just need not identify with the thoughts that make up your Big Self story and identify with a Little Self story. 

But don’t leave out the thoughts that help you stay alive. Oh, and you might want to attend to those thoughts that help you take care of your children. And, come to “think” of it,  it’s probably a good idea to hold onto the thoughts that get you to work in the morning so you can make the money to pay your bills. But all those other thoughts, you don’t need them, so just stop thinking about ‘em. Or, if you do ‘think” them, just pretend they’re not in your brain but in somebody else’s. Just put on your tin foil hat so that the members of the Galactic Federation can no longer implant thoughts in your head.

It’s simple! All you need do now is construct the neuro-circuits that aid in ignoring other specific neuro-circuits. Big Self circuits must be overwhelmed by the Little Self circuits. Make the loud ones quiet and the quiet ones loud. Make the big one’s little and the little one’s big.

There is a battle in your brain. A battle for control. 

It is The War of the Circuits and the modern gurus will teach you how to win by making bigger more powerful neuro-circuits. But these powerful circuits must be weak and “faint” because, as we all know, the meek shall inherit... the brain.

Now, when your lion roars, you respond with a mousey…

...squeak.

All you need do is differentiate between true and false neuro-circuitry produced "thoughts." Unfortunately, ya still gotta ‘think” ‘em, though. But you can think of them "faintly," making them weak and puny thoughts, rather than the big thoughts they used to be before you read Jed McKenna or saw Scott Kiloboy’s vids.

Obviously, this war is not winnable, but you must participate in the battle anyway. You have no choice and must become the veteran of a thousand psychic wars.

Unless, of course, you no longer pick a side, because if the war cannot be won, why bother?

But then, that might mean that there is no right or wrong thought. No good or bad neuro-circuit. No need to meditate or contemplate. No need to seek “enlightenment.” No need to become “awakened.” No need to do anything other than what you’re doing right now.

Damn! That would suck….


Artwork by TLBKlaus - "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"

Sunday, September 23, 2012

AWARENESS: The Constancy of Electrochemical Synaptical Stimulation



“Awareness” is a concept for which is attached all manner of transcendental mystical kumbaya. But, as many “master” practitioners of the meta-spiritual have proselytized, you are already aware.

However, to maintain fixation on their metaphysical teachings, they rely on "levels of awareness," with the additional claim that they are experiencing a higher level of “awareness” to which you are not yet "aware," but for which they can teach you how to become "aware."

Every time a neuro-circuit fires it is an electrochemical experience in the brain. As long as the brain is still electrified then there is never a time you are NOT aware, because there is never a single solitary nano-second in which some circuit somewhere in the brain is NOT firing at some moment.

And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is “awareness.”

What the brain is giving attention to in any moment, through electrochemical stimulation is “awareness.” What you're not aware of is simply unstimulated neuro-circuits. Only the most powerful circuits cause the most awareness so, essentially, what the "enlightened masters" teach is how to construct circuits more powerful than others.

Yet, we still cannot deny circuitry. Awareness cannot be extracted out from any specific electrochemical synaptic stimulation, because awareness IS... electrochemical synaptic stimulation.

The concept of “awareness,” in other words, my writing or talking about "awareness," is the same neuro-stumulation as if I were in deep meditational bliss. My conceptualizing “awareness" has a circuit all its own, linked up with numerous other socio-culturally conditioned circuits to give a linguistically based concept for engaged communication with others . Meditational bliss also has a circuit all its own, linking up with billions of other circuits.

But, what you loathe to hear is that you are nothing more than neuro-circuits and I am truly sorry for informing you of such (not!).Yet, in realizing "thoughts" are nothing more than electrochemical neuro-circuit firings, you no longer need to struggle for control. Let them fire off and disappear, rise and fall, because you can no more control your brain circuitry then you can control the weather.

So it makes no difference (except to the pseudo-gurus and pretenders who want your attention and, more likely, your money) what kind of awareness one experiences, because awareness itself will attend you to your death and you have NO choice in this.

No matter what other neuro-circuitry you link up to awareness as conceptual, in your efforts to construct more circuits such as “pure awareness” or “direct awareness, it is still nothing more than electrochemically stimulated brain circuitry. You could drop some great acid or ride the worlds tallest roller coaster and both would give you a neuro-circuit experience that would seem more than just... awareness. But it is still just... awareness. However many ways you wish to slice and dice it through conceptual interpretations (additional brain circuitry), it is still brain-centered and synaptically stimulated and it has no other basis but that.

Ahhhh...now isn't that "liberating"? (also a circuit).

So what makes awareness, while alcoholically intoxicated, different from awareness of a "non-dual" state?

Nothing. They are both synaptical stimulation, just different electrochemical cocktails. One is stimulated through chemical ingestion, but both are brain-based in origin. The only difference is related to socio-culturally conditioned brain circuitry which superimposes different meanings upon specific brain-based experiences. Thus, achieving an experience of .10 alcohol intoxication does not help fire off positive limbic center emotions, the same as achieving the non-dual state, simply because you are wired to perceive alcohol intoxication as a less VALUABLE experience or for different purposes, although both employ the same types of chemicals, GABA, acetycholine, dopamine, seratonin, etc, etc.

But achieving the "non-dual" state is as electrochemically constructed as achieving alcohol intoxication. In either case, both experiences eventually wear off and you go chasing after it again.

I watched a video recently in which a scientist reported on the effects of the non-dual state ON the brain. This was a spiritual video, so he stated his research as if the non-dual experience affected the brain rather than the brain actualizing or generating the non-dual experience. In other words, out of the great universal cosmic consciousness, “non-duality” magically seeped through the subjects cranium (or up the “chakras”) and, thereby, interacted with the brain to cause electrochemical stimulation associated with a brain-centered experience referred to as the ""non-dual state (but is it? or just a great whizbang synaptical explosion?).

This helps keep the ancient texts alive and the mystical prognosticators of non-dual awareness can still write more gobbeldy goop in books that you’ll pay big bucks to read.

The brain is the cause of every experience “you” encounter as effect. There is no other cause and no effects exist outside your grey matter.

It is true that as long as you’re alive, you are aware and conscious. Levels of awareness are brain activated, but you will always return to your baseline level of awareness because that’s simply how you’re wired-up (a schizophrenic will return to baseline wiring, although we may interpret that as mentally ill).

Like me, I’m sure many of you can attest to such experiences. So you have to wonder how these “enlightenment” practitioners get away with perpetrating themselves as somehow different from you or I and as having something to teach you about awareness that you and I need to learn. Nah, what they are actually teaching you is their special concept of awareness, which you cannot achieve, since the ‘concept’ arose specifically from their unique brain circuitry. You cannot experience their concept. You can only experience your own concepts.You can have an ‘experience’ and then fire off a bunch more synapses to generate a linguistic understanding of that experience through a ‘concept.’ But you are experiencing words and the special emotional significance attached to the words are linked up with the emotion producing Limbic system.

Awareness was initially generated in the womb. Circuits then gradually linked up to other circuits causing a neuro-circuit superhighway of continuous awareness. If you wanted you could have large portions of your brain lobotomized in the desire to return to the very limited awareness prior to birth that would come from the reduction of circuitry. But a more important question is why is your brain circuitry what it is right now at this moment. What experiences imprinted upon the brain creating the circuitry that you are aware of right now? Why did you have the experiences you have had that formed your particular brain to "think" and "believe" as it does now? This was not WILLED by you. How could it, since you had no choice in your birth, parents or childhood experiences? Not one circuit in your brain, that you now experience as your “self” existing through a “life,” was chosen by you, but all circuits are “you.”

What brought you to this moment, to this very sentence you read right now? All the imprinted experiences of your life has constructed neuro-cicuitry that brought you to this very moment, only to lead you to the next and the next and the next.

So here you are….

Why?

Are you ever so slowly, gradually, unbeknowst even to your ‘self,” on a path to approaching...

…God?

Simply go where the circuits take you.

What other choice do you have?

Artwork by Adam Sicinski "How to Mind Map"

Sunday, September 9, 2012

“You” are an Electrochemical Synaptic Feedback Loop



I know you want your thoughts to be more than just synaptical impulses in an electrochemical goulash. You want your big, bright ideas to be more than interlocking neuro-circuits lighting up specific lobes of fatty tissue based on genetic and socio-cultural conditioning.

You want it all to mean something and will struggle to keep the dendrites from redirecting into sputtering sparks of randomness. You want your spiritual beliefs to be more than neural firings along axon networks and you want all your years of seeking to "awaken" to be more than just electrochemical jolts of meaninglessness.

But the synaptical messages you've been repetitively sending are losing juice.

The circuits are shorting and dendrite branches are in retrograde. Without current, how can the circuits fire? Without the right neurons, how will you ever “awaken”? How can "awakening" happen if your not imprinting the correct circuits upon the neo-cortex, if you're not adequately mapping your journey to "awakening" within the neural network?

The joyful experiences of your big beliefs are into diminishing returns. You’re starting to recognize a lack of purpose to all your seeking (which can only mean another damn circuit!)

Because reality owns you and neuro-circuitry gives reality to you in living color.

Everything you do, every action you initiate and every behavior you engage in, is fired up by the Mother Board. You can’t even shove your pinky up your hairy nostril unless the brain sends that precise signal (and you never can tell when that urge will fire up, can you?).

All your goals and dreams are nothing but neuro-circuits that have as much meaning as does the urge to pick your nose. The electro-chemical impulse to seek "awakening" is made of the same neural material as the impulse to pick your nose and neither one is under your control (Funny, though, how we want to "awaken" publicly, but only pick our nose in private).

“You” are an aggregate composite of electrochemical impulses all going off randomly based on other impulses resulting in further impulses stimulating ever more. You think you’re in control. But the chaos of the cortex is outside the realm of control and always has been.

You want to be more than a tangled mass of brain circuitry in 3 lbs of fat and, through your spiritual practices and study of the ideologies (especially your intense readings of Jed Mckenna), you’ve managed to actualize numerous neuro-circuits igniting an electro-chemical experience of having wonderful ‘ideas’ and ‘concepts.’

These experiences link up with the limbic system and, for a couple of days or so, you feel really good and uplifted about what’s going on in your brain. For a couple of days life takes on new meaning and your perspective seems "happier," more positive.  You believe you're finally getting close to the  “awakening” you’ve been seeking all these years. It seems you’re finally ready to achieve the “enlightenment” you’ve always wanted.

But then, eventually, as is always the case, the circuit fades and fizzles. The juice peters out and the limbic system disengages, while the amygdala of fear comes rushing in, never letting you forget the actual predicament your in.

This is because Reality Circuits require constant stimulation (cause your boss is a jerk, your kid’s on dope, your two months behind in the mortgage and your cholesterol is way too high). All the electrochemical synaptical impulses, that allowed you to experience your bright ideas and beliefs and facilitated your processing all this “spiritual awakening” data (that you’ve been diligently studying for decades), must fade against the immediate and undeniable power of reality.

The reality of your brain.

But you were oh so close to ‘awakening’ weren't you? You could feel it, right up in that emotional limbic system. But nope, no “awakening” yet, and with that thought, guess which circuits light up the grey matter?

The not-yet-awakened Seeker Circuits extend axon/dendrite branches further into the grey matter, linking up with other circuits and constructing additional synaptic relay stations to maintain the current and engage the actions and behaviors of your incessant need to ‘seek.’

This pathway builds up its own electro-chemical momentum and everyday that you fire up a neuron with, “I guess I’m not awakened yet,”or "geewhiz, maybe Jed McKenna's the way to go?", the circuit strengthens (no doubt reading about all these “awakened” dudes also helps jack up the electrochemical juice even more, cause you soooo want to be one of those dudes, eh?)

Everyday, Reality Circuits reinforce Seeker Circuits and vice versa. Back and forth and back and forth, the dualistic current flows, each impulse one way jets another in reverse, with a feedback loop reinforced by the momentum of the two poles, of what's real and what you want to be 'real,' (so that you can finally escape the bullsheit of whats real)

Each thought-circuit pumps up the volume just a little bit more. Each day reinforces the neuro-circuits that will determine the next day and the next and the next…

This feedback loop is “you” and whether you’re seeking to “awaken,” or get laid tonight, it is the constant neuro-electrochemical actualization of an “I-Me” that seeks to have something it wants against a reality that informs it that it is lacking. However, you may certainly get laid tonight and relieve the electrochemical juice of that current for a time. But you will never "awaken" to any experience but what the brain provides and it will NEVER provide an experience outside what it is wired to provide. You can seek to alter the circuitry through neuro-plasticity, but you will never be completely free from the wiring that allows experience in the first place.

Many of the circuits that provide the "I-Me" experience are genetically hard-wired, auto-reinforced and give you the experience of an “I-me” that owns its brain...

....but is actually owned by its brain.

Artwork by Shadowtuga - "mind control"

Friday, September 7, 2012

The Neuro-Circuit of Destiny



If all experience is brain activated and brain-centered, why have you had the specific experiences you have had? Why has your "life," as experienced in your brain, unfolded specifically as it has? Could it have been experienced differently?

If every single experience "you" have is processed in your brain, and no where else, why did you have, and why do you continue to have, the electro-chemical brain-centered experiences that you have?

The neuro-circuitry of your brain was sculpted by specific experiences that happened only to you at the moment they occurred and those experiences constructed the sense of “self” your brain now provides. Other than genetically based circuitry, all the meanings and interpretations that you superimpose upon your life experiences were taught to you through life experiences. You are who "you" are because of a lifetime of moment to moment neuro-circuitry connections. Billions of axonal arms and tiny dendrite branches linking up in a neuro-circuit synaptical super highway of electro-chemical connections.

Where is it taking you? Where are you going and why?

Even more fascinating is that earlier formed neuro-cicuitry has determined later experiences, which are also imprinted and linked up with other circuits which take you to other experiences. From the moment of conception and birth, experiences construct neuro-cicuitry that directs thoughts/behaviors that lead you to additional experiences, constructing additional circuitry leading to subsequent actions, which also direct actions that lead to more experiences and more circuitry and more experiences and more circuitry.

We call this “destiny” and it was activated upon the very moment of your conception. You had nothing to do with it at all. It just happened and will continue to happen.

You had no choice in that first moment and you have had no choice in each subsequent moment that followed, because the brain-directed action in each moment followed from the previous moment (but you do have a neuro-circuit that provides an experience of choice, thereby, giving you an illusion of control). If you could trace the formation of neuro-circuitry back to the very moment the first neuronal cell was formed in your developing brain matter, you'd be amazed at how it all brought you right here and right now.

You'd see that it all happened exactly as it was supposed to...

Why the hell are you reading this drivel? What experientially constructed circuitry brought you to this very moment of reading and interpreting these specific l-e-t-t-e-r-s? What circuitry construction, originally initiated upon your conception, directed you to other experiences and the subsequent circuitry formation from that experience that lead you to other experiences, finally bringing you to this moment right…

…now.

If you have never had control, never had free-willl, then what is there to fear? If from the moment of conception your tiny brain began forming circuits which would lead you to actions that would form additional circuits leading to additional actions, on and on, ad infinitum, what control have you ever had over your destiny? What struggle need be maintained? What choices must be made?

It's already written....

All your joys and all those moments of grief and depression and those times of incredible pain and suffering. Everyone you fought with and everyone you loved. All those moments of sexual passion and those moments of rage. All those times of incredible pleasure and of intense dread and despair. Your addictions and your personality quirks. All your fears and anxieties. Each and every moment you laughed out loud or shed a single solitary tear.

All of it had to happen and could NOT have happened any other way or at any other time for any other person. And it will continue to happen. You need do nothing, because it will continue to happen and unfold regardless of what you do, but by nature of your brain.

You really have nothing to do with it and never have and anything you do will have had to be done.

If you have never had control over your destiny, why not just let it unfold as it will…as it must…as only it can? What is there to suffer through? Why seek something different than what you are experiencing right now? (unless, of course, you must). Why become victim to “meaning,” or morality and value, circuits when you had no choice in the formation? (unless neuro-circuitry requires your victimization at this point in time). How can anything be “wrong” with your life? (unless the neuro-circuitry demands you see it in such a way).

But if you had no say, no choice and no control, in the neuro-circuitry formation that provides the experiences you have had since conception and that have brought you to this very moment…

…who or what did?


All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon. 

(Pink Floyd)


Artwork by Kosmur - "assemblor"

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

TRUTH NEURONS: The Manufacturing of Neuro-Circuitry



The constantly fluctuating brain neuro-circuitry of confusion can only result in firing up withdrawal circuits. The cortex can only experience paralysis, when action-circuits become overloaded and you finally have NO idea what the point is anymore.

The amygdala processes fear, actualizing additional circuits of pacification and complacency, coupled with limbic system emotions of hopelessness and helplessness. Too much outside stimuli results in the construction of filtering circuits and filtering circuits exist to maintain the circuitry of status-quo security.

Due to hard-wiring, reality will always overpower your wishful thinking. Your dreams and aspirations are merely axon-dendrite wisps of dwindling electro-chemical current that reality circuits often redirect when necessary. Closely examine the directions you’re life has taken and notice how little was activated by you. You can never know what’s around the next corner, you can only follow the neurons wherever they take you and the brain is always going somewhere.

Do you sometimes feel confused about your purpose? Do you sense a persistent dissatisfaction with the world and your role in it? Do you sometimes notice a desire to dissociate from society? Are your “meaning” circuits shorting out and do you worry they may NOT be stimulated again? Does sleep often seem the only relief for the thoughts you wish to avoid? Circuits of “right” compete with “wrong," while “truth” conflicts with “false” and “good” battles “bad,” and all these electrochemical currents flip-flop back and forth like a carnival ride.

Is there a neuro-circuit in your brain that can electrochemically induce an emotional experience of non-existence?

Some neuro-circuits guide us gently to sleep, while others drive us into war. Some deliver sadness, while others lead to madness. Some nurture and love, while others are involved solely with pain and suffering. Such electrochemical impulses can change in an instant, love to hate, hate to love, sleep to war. The brain circuit that hates is inadvertently linked up with circuits that love. Is it sometimes hard to tell the difference between love and hate? Do you really think you have a “choice” in which way the electrochemical current flows? Which neuro-pathways rule your “thoughts”?  Has it ever been under your control?

But, of course, there must be circuits to hide the truth.

The electrochemical circuit of “right” can only exist when “wrong” is an alternative pathway. Brain circuitry is dualistically stimulated and electrochemical currents fluctuate from output to input, excitatory to inhibitory, stop and go, red light, green light.

Do you own your neuro-circuitry? Did you “think” that you had control over the electrochemical messages being fired through your grey matter? Did you “believe” you have a free and unfettered, uninfluenced, unprovoked choice in the thoughts generated by brain neuro-circuitry? Of course, there is a circuit for that too….

Do you “think” you know what the truth is? If you rely on “thought” then you rely on socio-culturally designed wiring. Is there another way of “thinking” external to conditioned circuits?

Do these “ideas” make you “think”? Or simply confuse already muddled circuits?

Does your brain need to experience a circuitry meltdown before it can ever comprehend anything like truth? Until then, do you simply rely on “wisdom,” which is nothing more than the best “thought" circuits firing up till a better path is imprinted? Is “truth” the total cessation of all electrochemical firings? But then, isn’t that also death?

The brain circuitry of compliant obedience is directly related to “mirror neurons” or the '”monkey see, monkey do” neurons that have, and continue to, construct the brains electrochemical channels and networks. You have nothing to do with it, as it happens day to day, without your knowledge. But you do experience the effects and this you refer to as your “life.”

The brain demands that you “see” and that you “do,” and you conform as directed.

Do you sometimes recognize how everything seems to be repeated? How wars and conflicts just seem to be exact duplications of previous wars and conflicts? Is war genetically programmed in grey matter? Is the brain circuitry of greed and corruption growing in electrochemical power?

The control of brain neuro-circuitry is the current post-modern agenda and it’s a very uncomplicated process. Your media/government seeks not to control you, but simply to conform to the status quo neuro-circuits that you live by and seek to conserve. Why would you ever be concerned about the government controlling your brain? Have you ever been in control of the electrochemical impulses that course through your cortex? Or does it just feel that way?

“Peace” is a lonely neuro-circuit in the brain that has been losing electrochemical stimulation for some time. Fear is an amygdala circuit that seems to be growing in power. Some circuits must be disenfranchised in the name of progress. “Peace” has never had a chance when it comes to genetically constructed, socio-conditioned neuro-circuitry. It has tried for centuries, but it never seems able to intensify the electrochemical processes necessary to overcome the circuitry of fear. Notice the neuro-circuitry of every “peace” demonstrator and you will also witness the synaptical firings of “rage.”

All spiritual/religious practices rely on brain plasticity to redirect circuits of pain and suffering.  Can you delete neurons like obsolete software? But if hate circuits are interconnected with love, how can you disconnect one without disturbing the other? Can we build a brain that will only think of peace and love and never fire off neuro-circuits of hate or fear?

Is neuro-plasticity a means to the awakening you seek?


THE ONION: “Search for Self Called Off After 38 Years”

Artwork by Malgorzata Jasinski

Saturday, September 1, 2012

The Itsy Bitsy "Circuit" Climbed up the Water Spout...



Hey! What’re you doin’ here???? Why are you here? What brought you to this blog, this page, this post, these words, this moment?  Why are you reading this? Why are you right here, right now, at this very moment?

If you look back in time you will see an unfolding stream of events, thoughts and action that brought you here, but that “you” had no control of and all choices were influenced beyond any “free-will” you might wish to claim for your “self.”

You woke this morning and a cascade of uninvited thoughts competed with intentionality circuits as to what you WILLED to think and do. Even thought that you consider intentional provokes unintentional counter-thoughts and contrary ideas.

Maybe your first thought upon waking was that "it’s Saturday," which then initiated thought-experiences of actions to be performed and this circuitry activated motivational circuits with Limbic based emotional circuitry interacting from frontal cortex circuits all working together to institute movement towards specific goals (the brain is all about 'movement'). The lawn must be mowed, but the game is on TV, which generates circuits that seek to manage "time" based networks and circuits that engage interactions with your wife and circuits that must take into consideration your kids, but then suddenly your eyes send messages to the visual cortex which must include the dog and memory circuits engage the need to walk the dog, generating circuits that inform you that you have to hurry or the lawn will not be mowed before kickoff time, which engages negative amygdala electrochemical spurts causing bodily changes requiring your wife to ask “what’s wrong,” which engages linguistic centers processing speech and centers processing facial muscles. But the tone was wrong (based on her circuitry) and you perceive that she perceives you’re angry with her, engaging stored memory of your resentments toward her, but these conflict with other circuits generating positive “feelings” and circuits that require more conciliatory gestures and circuits that fire off other circuits firing other circuits firing off….

…and here you are now at PeacefulSelf.com, from a web search you initiated because you feel your life is often out-of-control and suddenly other circuitry made you desire “peace of mind” and number 15 in Google listed a blog called “peacefulself.com” and that must provide some ways to a more peaceful life….

Now you think, "damn what a stupid choice this was. This blog sucks!" based on meaning circuits engaging meaning circuits engaging additional meaning circuits...

For chrisakes dude, you are all over the place! Get focused. Control yourself. Get it together…

But then at what “place” should you be…but all over the place.

So why does that bother you so much? Why struggle to control your brain? Why do you sometimes "think" it's in control of you?

So just stop THINKING!!

"If anyone could enter my head," you THINK, "it would blow their mind?"

WELCOME TO NEURON HELL.

"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!
"

Do you actually realize the work required to stay fixated on one solitary thought, when 100 billion neurons are firing off in your brain and sending messages through a quadrillion dendrite connections?

Is it any wonder people get drunk? Is it any wonder people become addicted to TV? Is it any wonder people gravitate to any number of distractions to get the hell outa they’re HEAD.

But if you could only accept the chaos of your brain. If you could only accept that you have NO control over it. Because what you avoid through distraction will only engage the periphery nervous system and the body MUST accept the consequences. It has no choice. Brain controls it.

But go ahead and spend your lifetime attempting to terminate the actions of neurons. Go ahead and seek a way to shut off the biological processes of neuro-circuits. Make attempts to rearrange 100 billion neurons and a quadrillion dendrite connections. Pick and choose the circuits you want and shut-off those you no longer desire. Continue on with your precious self-development, which is nothing more than constructing additional circuits for which to conflict with other circuits that you can't shut off if your very life depended on it.

One day you will surrender your illusion of control (thereby, constructing a new circuit, which will activate circuits you forgot you had).

But the brain cannot be denied. It cannot be escaped. It cannot be “thought” away or cajoled into non-existence. Nature will NOT be denied. Nature must be accepted and the chaos of the brain… is natural.

But there is one tiny itsy-bitsy circuit that is a problem. One circuit that is cause of all your distress, all your pain and all your misery.

That circuit is called “I-Me” and it has a tendency to claim all electrochemical activity as its own. It’s a circuit that demands all activity, thoughts and actions, belong to it…. alone.

But like one audacious wave in the massive ocean, claiming ownership of the whole ocean, it is only one tiny circuit amidst trillions in a sea of interconnected neurons and dendrites.

Pay it no "mind."

The itsy-bitsy circuit
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And shorted the circuit out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy circuit
Climbed up the spout again

Friday, August 31, 2012

Your Brain on...."Thought" (also a drug)





LINK - Neuroscience News

Seeking Brain “Neurotopia” (cause it’s all you’re ever gonna get to)



Ah, the mysticality of exploding synapses in electrochemical consciousness.

The “I-Me” brain circuitry loves to mystify itself through brain firings that evolve into all manner of intellectualized "concept" experiences, thereby, stimulating other neuro-circuits giving an experience of satisfaction and pleasure with our  many splendored magical mystery tour.

The metaphysical conspirators love to theatrically conceptualize abstract nonsense into meaningful circuits firing off experiences of “truth.” Take the concept of “consciousness” for example. Neuroscience is clearly demonstrating that electrochemical brain circuitry is continually emitting signals through a quadrillion neural dendrite networks and this is what you experience as "consciousness" or "Being." If your brain were to suddenly stop sending/receiving all neural signals, guess what would happen? Yep, you guessed it, NO consciousness! No more Being. Flat out, and to the point, you’d simply be deader than a 16th century doorknob.

For years purveyors of abstract word games have mesmerized and confused otherwise halfway decent gray matter. It’s fascinating how the brain constructs electrochemical circuitry in an attempt to escape itself and it’s own miles of genetically and socio-culturally constructed neuro-circuitry.

It’s through this type of mystical confusion that we suffer. What is a “belief” but a series of neuro-circuits that are electrochemically charged through repetitive use? What is a “thought” but socio-cultural conditioned circuitry (education/learning) that electrochemically fires initiating numerous patterns into one experience that, subsequently, fires randomly, giving an experience of a “stream of thought" (Freud). Think of a “thought” as a synaptic explosion, generating other explosions into a “belief.” I do not dare to speculate how many explosions were required to complete this sentence.

SEEKING  “NEUROTOPIA”

“The mind is what the brain does”

Spiritual Metaphysics is nothing more than an attempt to evade uncomfortable experiences based on universally (everyone) objectifiably observable facts, by continually stimulating and reinforcing prefrontal thought processes that further stimulate emotional circuits in the Limbic System. It seems that in attempting to rebel or extract ourselves from the ‘experience’ of specific neuro-circuits, we simply construct and become fixated on other neuro-circuits as substitution (hence, “religion”). Is it any wonder the world is becoming more confusingly complex and complicated? What’s right? What’s wrong"? What’s good or bad? Who’s lying and who’s telling the truth? Who the hell knows!

The chaos of the post-modern age is nothing more than circuitry overload.

Actually, neuroscience has explained consciousness and even how it has evolved to the point were we can become completely lost in intellectualized abstractions in order to make an escape attempt from our own neuro-circuit experience. Circuitry that an “I-Me” had absolutely nothing to do with constructing. Spiritual Metaphysics (can you talk about “non-duality” using only one hemisphere of the brain? Ah, the Oneness!) are the most absurd conceptual abstractions that neuronal dendrite relationships can conjure up as experiences generating from electrochemical neuronal networks. But metaphysics is produced from the exact same brain circuitry that scientists use to determine clearly observable facts about the brain.

It’s like… thank God my brain keeps my heart beating and my blood flowing, but all these other experiences of objective reality in my brain, well, that’s all just “illusion."

But it’s really not surprising that we all seek a way to escape our prison. All the circuitry in your brain is entirely related to observable phenomena but is NOT the phenomena, just electrochemical representations of reality entirely restricted to 3lbs of electrified fat swimming in a chemical stew, incarcerated within a cranial prison.

Such is the definition of “you” (or the “I-me” you rave about).

Even the circuit constructed to conceptualize a “non-duality” would not exist if there were not also a circuit to give you a concept of “duality.” Is it hard to understand that consistent stimulation of one concept only electrochemically stimulates the other? That’s what happens in the duality of brain matter. Concepts are electrochemical experiences no different than any other thought you experience. Every “thought” expressed by the non-dualist, Zen-Buddhist, spiritual cosmic universalist, are based on observable phenomena in relation to electrochemical charges that can be easily studied.

The brain starts with reality and then constructs all manner of inauthentic absurdity to escape from what it is resigned to as REAL (but generally crappy).

Every time you get all giddy with the concept of “illusion,” your brain lights up in specific lobes and this can be seen in an FMRI scan (looks like the “illusion” is real after all) They’ve done studies on Buddhist monks showing that they have attained the skill of lighting up specific parts of the brain.

If we wish to evolve to a universal spirituality that will take us into the next century, we need to end our fear of the objective world and stop trying to escape that world as represented in the brain (and the fact that our brains determine experience). If you finally electrochemically induce a temporal lobe experience of mystical proportions from sitting hours in meditation over several years, then don’t go around singing metaphysical praises to yourself and charging people money to hear your mystical blah, blah,blah…simply thank your temporal lobe for providing you with it (and why not donate it to science?).

Surrendering to the facts of reality will take us into an evolved consciousness that does not attempt to explain away what we all clearly experience and what science demonstrates is the source of that experience.

Metaphysical dialogue should be considered nothing but poetry and the poets have always been useful in temporarily alleviating our brain pain. I’ve always enjoyed the poets (and often tip-toe through the tulips of that “mystical” field myself). But poetry should emphasize the grounded nature of the facts, not provide escape plans that only avoid the truth that there is no escape.

Make no mistake, it will be science that completely dissolves the “I-Me” concept and NOT metaphysical poetics that individually exalt in all the mystical concepts that the “I-me” can construct, and make linguistically accessible to the emotion producing Limbic System, and they will do it by use of the very tool that made up the “I-Me” in the first place.

You’re IN there (brain) and there’s no getting out. So get used to it and surrender your attempts to escape.

Artwork by James Hill - "Utopia City"