Studying the "Lifestyles" of Egocentric Mammalia

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

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

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

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

“The eternal is not born nor does it die. We confound the appearance with Reality. Appearance carries it's end in itself. What is it that appears anew? If you cannot find it, surrender unreservedly to the substratum of appearances; then Reality will be what remains."
 
Do you realize that the smarty pants who proclaimed this had to be hand fed, cause his “awakening” resulted in having had no interest in keeping his body alive, let alone providing for it through any particular "lifestyle"?

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

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

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

"Enlightenment" could kill you!!

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

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

Or is it utterly hopeless?

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

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

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

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

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

Artwork by Kazuhiko Nakamura - "Automaton"