The Net Outcome of Your Gross Reality

"Consciousness (which is the only virtue) is only born when I cease to believe automatically in my own thoughts, my own opinions, my own beliefs. Consciousness only appears on the scene when I cease to believe in my own conditioning, in other words. But because I perceive my conditioning to be myself, this is the one thing I never do. Who would want to go against themselves? Who would want to stop believing in themselves? This doesn’t seem to make any sense – ‘believing in myself’ is supposed to be a good thing, after all…" CSGlobe

The sole purpose of egocentricity, similar to any other sentient species, is to survive. Hence, survival for egocentrics entails asserting control of the body to increase its odds. Effective bodily control includes controlling the reality through which the body seems to exist and function.

You exist in a perpetual contest between an egocentric conceptual “self” and a physical body. Egocentrics know they are not cause of the body but they do, with all their might, believe they are cause of a “self” all snuggled up in the folds of their grey matter and that each individual brain has the potential to shape the “self” to enhance survival in its corresponding reality or “world.” 

The chief dilemma you struggle with is that the “self” cannot annihilate the body (other than suicide) yet the body and the reality it exists “in” has the power to easily terminate “you” at any time and every self-concept you identify with is simply another method of hiding from this fact.

The body is a gross physicality that oozes goo out of every orifice and pore. It engages immediate existential experiences of a material world completely outside the conceptual ego’s ability to thwart or even direct.

The body is gross reality, while the “skin encapsulated ego-self” is merely a net reality made up of conceptual meanings that stem from the demands of the body. Therefore, as a means of extracting itself from its slave status to the body, the ego-self must repress its own modus operandi of serving the master by deluding itself that it is the master. Egocentricity must construct meaningful ‘stories’ of purpose to deny that at any minute the purpose of the body might be to shut down completely, taking the “self” with it as food for worms.

Egocentrics invent concepts which cannot be seen or touched and are essentially anonymous to bodily sensation. They invent complex value systems that have no more reality than a puff of smoke on a windy day. They conjure up rules of conduct and moral codes, ritualistic traditions, cultural customs, ideological norms, dogmatic commandments, expectations, styles, etiquette's, habits, laws, protocols, policies, etc. etc., that have no attachment to gross reality whatsoever, but that simply rest on a foundation of programmed “belief,” in which the egocentric mind ‘thinks’ that by performing various scripted routines the net reality will overcome the grossness of their existence. They run around demanding freedom, justice, love, compassion, equality, etc., never even considering that these are nothing more than conceptual figments of a net imagination. 

This is the stuff “you” are made of and that gives purpose to a gross reality you have no choice in by minimizing its existence, while the gross reality stands firmly unaffected and impervious to all your dreams, goals, objectives, projects, pastimes, aspirations, etc, but which has paradoxically determined every need you seek to satisfy through such mental fantasies. The bodily desires have always been there, and every species will attest to that through instinctual behaviors, but you have made your desires “spiritually magical” through a net reality that completely fails to reflect the actual nature of your existence. 

The actual reality of your ‘head-stuff’ is a permeable, undulating mass of conceptual abstractions that require nothing more than that you believe it “real.” Net reality is slave to the gross and all abstract belief systems serve to modulate the utter dread and anxiety of this actual condition and the fact that, in the face of gross reality, your net fantasies are utterly pointless and can come crashing down around you without a moment’s notice.

“We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center.” (Becker, Ernest, 2007-11-01. The Denial of Death (p. 55. Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition).

Egocentrica mammalia feels secure in his gross reality simply by obfuscating truth through centering himself in an imaginary net reality of glorified conceptual incantations repeated on and on, ad absurdum, emphasizing the ‘specialness’ of his otherwise banal existence, demanding life be “wonderful” and that the world be “beautiful” and when the world fails to conform to these specifications, as it always must, egocentrics are loathe to alter their head-stuff to conform to the actual truth of their condition (unless ultimately forced to). This results in a myriad of psychological neuroses and behavioral maladaptions which serve to keep gross reality minimized as nothing more than a background glitch in the system, so that a delusional net reality can thrive and grow prosperous. 

Egocentricity cannot possibly exist in the realization that the ‘beautiful world’ can annihilate their ‘wonderful life’ in a split second. Narcissistic self-awareness is a necessary precondition for all egocentric grandiosity and the fantasies of existence that unravel from that delusional narcissism.

What is not real is consequently illusory and net reality is a tenuous, desperately spun web of illusions that serve to disengage with the gross reality of your natural world. This web is comprised of an interlocking aggregate of abstract concepts in a delusional loop that breeds neurotic tendencies simply because it has no involvement in the reality. 

Your abstract concept of “honesty” must be fortified by the abstract concept of “truth,” (which exists nowhere else but in your head), to support a net reality that has no reflection to the universal gross. The natural world doesn’t give a sheit whether or not your "honesty" reflects some relative homespun tale of truth. The concept of “value” reinforces the concept of “money” which bolsters the concept of “wealth” and none of these abstract mental inventions reflect anything in the natural world, but serve to disengage you from the gross reality which is the final arbiter of your existence or non-existence. 

What you require to direct the conduct of your life is made of nothing but fragile conceptual smoke rings floating aimlessly upward before dissolving into thin air. But although this psychological smoke screen changes with the wind, you continue to rely on it to extract your “self” from the gross sheit that is your only real truth. Death is a concept reflecting gross reality, while the “afterlife,” and all the millions of symbolic references derived from that concept, reflect a better net return.

All conceptual reality is a net reality seeking to protect you from your gross existence. Your “spirituality” is nothing more than a net of conceptual illusions and “you” are securely tangled within those circuits, all the while, claiming some nebulous “freedom” within the prison walls of your physical mortality. Such spiritual narcissism serves to disengage you from your world and all the experiences of that world, simply because such a repressed existence demands you daily engage your neurotic egocentric tendencies, depressions, anxieties, addictions, guilt complexes and, of course, the daily utter vapid boredom that you refer to as your "life."

Yet, what if your gross reality does not allow you a net return? What if your socially programmed narcissism has done nothing but disengage you from a gross reality where the true treasures of your existence can be discovered? What would it be like to fully engage gross reality without your fantasies of a better life and a better world? What if you woke one day to discover truth, honesty, love, spirituality, value, money, compassion, wealth, etc, etc, completely absent from your mind? What if you had no goals, dreams or aspirations? What if you were to discover your “self” completely devoid of all the concepts that you rely on to prop up an otherwise meaning-free existence? Could an egocentric 'self' even exist without the concepts that make it a “skin encapsulated package of beliefs”? Without such conceptual filters, what would you see? What would you experience? What would you do? Who would you be?

You did not cause your “self” but are, in fact, a construct of the natural order and you have no existence outside that causation. You do absolutely nothing not ordained by a universal causative that you did not create nor control. Any freedom an egocentric could possibly stumble upon would consist of realizing this and diving head first into the natural currents of gross reality, no matter where they take “you.”

Definitely not a comfortable practice for a neurotic egocentric scurrying about chasing smoke signals that can only dissolve into thin air. 

Artwork by Ryohei Hase - "Drown in the Empty Dried-up Room"