Runnin’ With The Herd

The herd gave you everything. Even your desire to escape the herd is a gift of the herd.

Are YOU grateful?

The herd gave you your Super Bowl and your Spiritual Awakening. Your HDTV and your Eckart Tolle. Integral Theory and Dancing With The Stars. Hummers and higher consciousness. Chakras and Chocolate chips. Gurus and Gonorrhea.

The herd gave you all you desire to embrace and all you seek to escape. Everything you seek to find and everything you seek to lose is a product of the herd. Whatever you love and whatever you loathe…all gifts of the herd.

You can never “transcend” the herd… because the herd gave you that too…(hahaaa!).

The enlightened master and the pedophile. Charles Manson and Mahatma Ghandi. Adyashanti and Al Capone. The Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Dahmer. All products of the herd and all snug up in your mind. It's all up in your noggin' and all you need do is bring it into focus and....SEE...

...and you do!

But sometimes you loathe the ignorant masses and you actually hate the fuckin’ bastards out there… as if you were not apart of it. For chrisakes, the herd even gave you…your FEAR of the herd.

They gave you fear and loathing (what’d you think, you came up with that all on your lonesome, LOL). And you return the favor by fearing and loathing "them." The herd is your teacher and your mind is the classroom. Would you like to change the world? Sure, the herd gave you that.

Do you really think for a minute that the herd will let you go? That you can somehow go your own way?

Because every path you choose, was mapped out by the herd long before your membership was approved simply by fact of your birth. Without the herd, who or what would you be? Without the herd, what would you think? How would you define your ‘self’?

Are you a rebel? A non-conformist? A pacifist? An activist? An artist? A Buddhist? A Terrorist, a non-dualist, an academic, a master, a butcher , a baker, a candlestick maker? Are you conservative or a liberal? Are you a husband, wife, daughter, son? Are you gay, straight, round, lost or found? Are you depressed, happy, contented, sad, grieving, mad? Are you pissed off and not gonna take it anymore...LOL.

...don’t forget to thank the herd!

Do you follow the esoteric teachings of Zen Buddhism? Are you an advocate of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory? Are you a Born Again Christian or a Muslim Jihadist? Have you experienced the transcendental bliss of the non-dual experience? Get a new car? Diagnosed with cancer? Waiting for Jesus? Lose your job? Win the lottery? Get laid? Get enlightened? Abducted by Aliens? Schizophrenic? Obese? At peace?

Do you sometimes enjoy reading the crap on this blog?

Just don’t forget to thank the herd for it’s bountiful beneficence and its myriad renditions of relative suffering and joy, all of which you have chosen at one time or another, and will continue to choose time and time again, always thinking your choice is "unique" and above the herd. Thank the herd for the cognitive cornucopia you conjure up and, through that, consider yourself uniquely SPECIAL.

Make no mistake, your uniqueness is a product of a collective consciousness just brimming with ideas, most of it nothing more than the same old hag dressed up in snazzy new post-modern mini-skirt.

You want to be free of the herd, to  transcend the vile masses? Yep, that’s provided too.

You’re NOT “unique,” just another member of the herd, demanding the herd approve your uniqueness. And they no doubt will...in fact, they will hand it to you. The herd will give you...

...your "self."

Because not one single solitary thought in your head is free of the herd….

Jump in and fully engage the herd, because you are never NOT engaged. You just like to think you’re not part of it all. You like to pretend that you have nothing to do with what’s out there, with what you see, with what you experience....

But keep IN MIND….ALL the shit you experience and accept as outside YOU…

Is an experience indisputably.... INSIDE YOUR HEAD….

…and nowhere else will you EVER experience it.

Hmmmm....now what do you suppose that means?

I've seen all good people turn their heads each day
so satisfied I'm on my way.
I've seen all good people turn their heads each day
so satisfied I'm on my way. 

Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life.
Make the white queen run so fast she hasn't got time to make you a wife. 

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured
For the queen to use.

Move me on to any black square,
Use me any time you want,
Just remember that the goal
Is for us to capture all we want, (move me on), yea,yea,yea,yea,yea (to any black square)

Don't surround yourself with yourself,
Move on back two squares,
Send an instant karma to me,
Initial it with loving care yourself.

'Cause it's time, it's time in time with your time and its news is captured
For the queen to use.

I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way. 

Artwork by HR Giger - "Landscape XVIII"

The Fucked-Up Symptoms of Your Existential Separation Anxiety

Even though you struggle to keep it to yourself, you have often noted how fucked-up you are. And have you ever noticed how everyone you know turns out to be just as fucked-up, in one way or another, as "you"? Your wife/husband, mother, father, sister, brother, Aunt Ginnie, Uncle Sal, your dumb neighbor Harry, your coworker Jan, your boss Mr. Higgins, your son’s girlfriend and her mother and her mother's mother, society, the world, the cosmos, on and on, ad infinitum, everyone of ‘em…

…all royally fucked-up. 

In fact, just when you meet someone you think might have a handle on his/her “existence”…badabing…nope, fucked up too. Sorry for the crude and crass language here (which just demonstrates how fucked-up I AM) but let’s face it boys and girls, egocentric reality supports nothing more than this assessment easily applied on an ongoing basis.

You can run (which you do everyday, in a million different ways) but you can’t hide.

So why are you trying so hard NOT to be fucked up? Do you really think you can ever be anything BUT fucked-up? Are all your spiritual practices and attempts at purity merely a way to hide “you” from your own fucked-up symptoms? Has it ever really worked for any appreciable length of time? After 20 yrs of your rigidly performed spiritual endeavors, are you really any less fucked up than you were day one? When will you finally be cured?

Fucked-up is nothing more than a symptom of abandonment resulting in a lifelong feeling of “separation anxiety.” It is the universal sense of abandonment that we all experience, but fail to share, because we hide from it. In other words, the ego-self you insist on being “you,” can only sustain its “you-ness” by rigorously keeping itself apart from all the other egos trying to be “them.” It’s not that you were abandoned, it’s just that as an ego-self, you abandoned them and so, they appear to have abandoned YOU. Hahaa!

Separation anxiety is endemic to your very existence and as long as “you” believe you "exist," separation anxiety must be your underlying foundational experience. You have NO choice in this simply because YOU choose it, day after day after day…until eventually you achieve your ultimate goal of complete and total separation or…

..death (what other reason for it?).

Obviously, this leads to a whole spectrum of symptoms, which can be easily categorized as Existential Separation Anxiety. Of course, some people are REALLY fucked up, so much so that they need drugs to hide from their symptoms so they can function in a society where everybody’s fucked up and suffering from the same separation anxiety. Other people need to be locked up, because their fucked-up symptoms are so deadly that they only interfere in your continuing attempts at pretending to NOT be fucked-up. In the post-modern world, you can be fucked-up but only to a point. Beyond that, you need help to keep the world from abandoning you (which is nothing more than you abandoning it).

Ah…but not you! You’ve become expert at hiding your symptoms and don’t need drugs to keep it all under wraps (You meditate it away, LOL!). In fact, you've become so expert at hiding your symptoms that sometimes you actually think that you might NOT be fucked-up at all.

This is actually the worse kind of fucked-up you can be because, unfortunately for "you," those closest to you know that all your spiritual hocus pocus is bullshit. No matter how adept you become at hiding (and some are truly expert indeed), they actually know how fucked-up you really are and, at times, you literally hate them for it (and so, easily abandon them, thereby, further reinforcing your own symptoms). In fact, of all the people in the world, for which you present yourself as symptom free, it’s those who know you the most that you often FEAR the most, simply because they actually know what you really ARE….which is fucked-up.

Well…fuck them, right!?!?

However, there is a part of you that’s NOT fucked-up and that has never abandoned or separated from you. That part knows nothing of the world and the world’s rules of self-development and games of successful symptom relief. That part does not “perceive” and has no use for eyes that “see” (how fucked-up you are). 

This Deeper Spirit has no awareness of your egocentricity and, because of that, the ego ALWAYS feels rejected and abandoned. All your dogged attempts to achieve positive self-esteem and live a productive, "happy" lifestyle in a material world are essentially futile and destined to fail, simply because of this fact alone. The ego can never be anything more than individually fucked-up and feeling abandoned by a part of you that it senses is greater than IT (and, hence, NOT fucked up at all), but that it can never unite with in any way whatsoever. So you may feel your less fucked up than your dumb neighbor Harry, but you’re actually equally fucked up and abandoned.

Your egocentricity virtually assures it.

Contrary to popular belief, egocentric abandonment is a universal experience not exclusive to any particular personality with any specific traumatic life experience. Everybody experiences it on one level or another and experiences it ALL the time. The very nature of an ego-self is to experience the separation anxiety of abandonment. So go ahead and fully accept your deep-seated sense of abandonment and ALL those fucked-up symptoms. Embrace your fucked-up life and engage it fully. As long as you are egocentric, it can never be anything more than fucked-up. So play infinitely in your fucked-up-ness and change the rules form time to time in order to experience all the different modes and means of being fucked-up.

Have fun, Yo!

Separation anxiety can never be cured as long as egocentricity is what defines “you." But the irony of your very existence is that you are only egocentric, BECAUSE you define your “self” as separate and abandoned.


Unfortunately, most of you will read this fucked-up essay and quickly abandon me as being too fucked-up.

But that’s how this game is played…LOL!


Artwork by Karl Perrson - "Self-Portrait"

"Free-Will" is on the Menu (but we all chose the menu)

Are you an individual? An individual actor pressing against the world in order to self-actualize as an individual with goals and dreams, lodged solely in your mind, dissociated from a world of other minds?

People make choices everyday that demand you makes choices in response, demanding choices from them that again, demand you make choices causing choices again from them, etc, etc, etc, on and on and on, ad infinitum.

This is the infinite game that we all play. Although many deny this contingency and become finite players, actually believing they have individual "free-will."

You have no authority over your 'self.' But then neither do 'they.' We are so deeply connected and intricately intertwined as to negate and nullify the 'self' almost entirely. But still... the thought of being a separate individual 'self' persists even though our whole life as been directed by a world of others that direct us as we direct them.

However, it does feel good to think that you have separate authority over your self and make choices that are not contingent upon anything but "you." Ha!

Such is the myth of individuality….

The physical body has nothing to do with it. Animals have a physical body, but they lack a 'self.' Possibly, nature fully realizes its contingent interdependence and therefore, it has no need for individual 'selves.'
We are absolutely contingent on one another. You may choose not to share or cooperate on the surface, but below the surface, your existence is absolutely contingent on an interdependence with others, whether you like it or not or wish to be aware of it or not. It can be a frightening thought for an ego to consider.

Let's cut to the chase shall we... Do you use the word “I” in reference to your 'self.' So where did you come upon this identification? Did you simply conjure up this 'self; out of thin air? Most likely your learned to be a 'self,' so in essence, “you” would NOT exist if not for others. It's too late to consider returning to the forest to live out some primordial feral state of "non-self," because the self you learned to be, will only keep getting in the way. Your individual authority is absolutely contingent on there being 'others' for which to contrast a 'self' as opposed to, or in harmony with, others.

No others = no self.

You might as well engage in the interdependent flow, since disengaging is delusional.

Every choice is contingent on others being 'there.' Even the choice to completely disengage and live as a hermit in the forest, presupposes others for which to disengage from. Your Being is contingent on their Being as their Being is contingent on yours.

But wait, it gets better!

Because “you” were not constructed in isolation from a world of others, not one thought in your head belongs exclusively to “you.” (this includes everything I write in this blog and anything you read in every other blog....all absolutely contingent).
 

I'm not saying there is NO free-will, just that there is NO free-will exclusive to an individual “you.”

This interdependent contingency is absolute, even to make that statement “I am not absolute anything” demands others for which to contrast an “I” as not absolute. We are interdependent on one another and all choices are contingent on choices made by others, which are contingent on choices you have made.

We exist together interdependently, deluded into a belief of independent individuality. Watch how your ego squirms at the idea that individual "awakening" is a delusion and "you" can never have it independent of others. You will have something, but this is no more than individual delusion and any experience you interpret comes from a menu of experiences that we have all constructed together.

You can continue to exercise authority over yourself until the cows come home, but essentially, it makes little difference. You may choose to do anything you like, but your individual authority will always be contingent on the authority imposed by others who share an experience of a world and that world experience comes to you through a mutual exchange. “Free-will” is contingent on the free-will of others, which cancels out all individual free-will. All your choices are made in relation to a world of others and therefore, are never entirely free of that contingency (although this is often unconscious, maintaining the delusion of free-will and choices made separate from a world of others).

Certainly you may feel free to exercise independent choices, but you may wish to surrender the delusion of your choices being freely made. We live in a world of contingency, where the existence of "you" as a concept is contingent on the concept of 'them.' Your individual free-will is contingent on "free-will" being a menu choice. But only because we agree as to what is ON the menu. This makes your free-will choices entirely contingent on choosing from the menu, which means it is NOT free at all.

Free-will is real, but individual free-will is delusional. This is why individuals cannot "awaken" to anything more than what is on the menu.

It's all a 'given,' since you have no choice but to CHOOSE from the menu that the world offers and that menu is a mutual construct we have ALL manufactured collectively. You and I and every mind that thinks as a 'self,' has constructed the menu from which we all choose. If there is only one menu (world of others) to choose from, how are you then implementing free-will? 

We can create a different menu, but only together, because the menu we created is contingent on all of us choosing from that menu for it to exist at all….and we always do.

You and I and everyone are contingent beings, entirely contingent on others defining us from moment to moment as we define them. There is no escape from contingency, best to engage it.

You are NOT free to claim "enlightenment" or "awakening," because if it weren't on the menu, you could NOT claim it at all.

You don't just live WITH others, you are contingent ON others as they are contingent ON you. We are all interdependently contingent on one another, but in our demand for individuality we are intoxicated with the self and so fail to see that, without others, a 'self' could NOT exist.

We may finally awaken, but never individually, simply because we are absolutely contingent on one another. We do not create ourselves in isolation from other selves. We construct the self contingent on other selves being 'there.' No one has any idea what a self-construct manufactured without others would be like and this is why contingency is absolute.

You and I are unique, but only in relation to the menu from which we have chosen our values in order to construct the self. The menu is, and always will be, an interdependent construct that we all created. No one chooses free of the menu, until ALL choose to discard the menu. Until then, individual free-will is a delusion, that we have yet to weary of.

Are you seeking to "awaken" to truth?

Luckily... that's on the menu too.

Bon Apetit!
mikeS


Artwork by Karl Persson - "Lunch Monkey"

EGO DYNAMICS: Healed Perception

The chief hallmark of healed perception (which some call enlightenment or awakening) is the realization that the world is not to blame for your suffering and deserves NO condemnation.

However, as you begin to retract blame from the world, suffering intensifies as ego resists attempts to alter condemnation as the basis for 'perception.' The ego demands the world be culpable and egoic perception is designed to make judgmental distinctions through contrasts, thereby reinforcing the experience of self divided from world.

The ego’s chief instrument of distinction is ‘perception.’ The ego refuses to accept that perception is a product of belief and instead insists that you must always believe what you perceive. Perception is crucial for the ego to exist and to deny what you perceive is to deny the ego.

However, your ego-self is not to blame and neither is perception

The problem is neither the world nor your ego-self but the conceptual construct of blame, which must lead to condemnation. The ego constructs numerous concepts to reinforce the experience of an external world. This is because the ego is nothing more than a belief in an external world. Yet, essentially, you have NO precise knowledge that an external world even exists, since the body that gives you this information (sensation) is itself external to the ego-self (this ontological issue is as old as time itself).

However, although many “enlightened” minds contend that an external world is maya, or illusion, they cannot argue against your 'experience' of an external world. You do experience a world separate from mind and that experience is solely your own. Many bright minds assert that you are NOT separate from your world, but that you have bifurcated, or split, your ‘self’ off from your experience of a world.

"Spiritual awakening" merely identifies that your experience of a world is indivisible from your experience of a ‘self.’ They are one and the same, because they are both within the domain of ‘experience.’ Condemn the world and, since your experience of a world is indivisible from your ‘self’ you condemn yourself. Blame your ‘self’ and you indict the world. Distinctions are delusional because they construct experiences to allocate blame by maintaining dualistic contrasts.

Miraculous perception, or Christ Consciousness/Buddha Mind, does not dissolve the world, but dissolves blame and condemnation in the realization that there is no division to experience.

Nonetheless, many will assert that the ego constructed the experience of blame and thus, is at fault. But the ego also constructed experiences of joy and beauty to aid in contrasting between what is guilty and what is innocent. The ego constructs conceptual preferences to reinforce your attachment to ‘perception’ as the chief means of knowledge and understanding. Therefore, perception seeks out contrasts by its very nature because the ego needs you to rely on it fully, as opposed to something deeper, that it senses, but can never understand through perception.

Blame the ego for your suffering and you seek to divide your experience into parts and ‘perception’ will continue to divide itself from the world by contrasting between heaven and hell, pain and pleasure, good and bad. This merely reinforces a stronger ego against an external world and it is the fundamental fallacy of many religious and spiritual ideologies.

The ego cannot be dissolved by anything “you” (egoic self-concept) could do, simply because you are an ego and an ego denying itself paradoxically reinforces itself. However, the concepts ego-self constructs as experience can be denied and extinguished. This is because the ego perpetuates itself through denial and it does this simply by denying that its experience of a world is unified and indivisible from itself. Blame separates into parts and denies unity to experience.

Deny blame and condemnation to the world and experience an end to all self-condemnation because there is no division between self and world.

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.

(Seng-st'an. Third Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism)

Awakening From The Dream of Dreaming You're Awakening

Can you really awaken from the "dream"? What will you find? Who will you be? Nirvana, pure bliss, absolute truth, heaven, universal consciousness, pure awareness, yourself, God?

Or will you merely awaken to another dream? Much like the last dream, but still, a different dream in which you again dream of "awakening" from the dream? Only to "awaken" to another dream of "awakening" and then another and another?

If truth is infinite is there a point at which the dreaming stops and finally becomes "real"?

Why seek to transcend the illusion, when there is nothing "real"? Note that your term "illusion" is entirely dependent on its contrasting opposite, the "real." Maybe “real” is a concept your ego conjured up so that you wouldn’t have to take responsibility for the "illusion"? Gee, isn't that convenient.

You seek to transcend the illusion, rather than change it, simply because it's not "real" and is an "illusion." Whew! Lucky for you. Just imagine if all that death and destruction were real! Then who would you be? Obviously, you would then have no choice but to seek to change the "hell" you made and if you experience "hell," then no doubt you made it. If it's all illusion, then make no mistake, it's your "illusion."

What about your loved ones? What about your children, are they illusion? Why would you love what is NOT "real"? Or maybe your "love," too, is illusion?

If it all just "arises," do you ever wonder why it arises specifically as YOU seem to experience it? Why do some seem to experience great wealth, abundance and happiness? Obviously, to be conscious OF something is to make it "real," isn’t that what quantum physics now tells us?

Maybe parts of the illusion are real, since how would your ego-self finally come to the conclusion that the world is illusory, if there was not something real IN the "illusion" that informs it of this fact? What part of the illusion informs you that it's all illusion? What are you using to illuminate the contrast between your illusion and the something else you call "real"? If it weren't for the "illusion" you would not be chasing the "real." Therefore, are you not grateful to your "illusion"? But would your gratitude make it "real"?

“Real” and “illusion” is one experience that you split in two. Illusion is as much a part of truth as anything else, otherwise why would you be 'aware' of it. Stop throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Illusion is real and real is illusion. Wrap your mind around that and stop trying to judge between the two. You can’t split truth in two. The whole is not available to the parts, but all the parts are included in the whole. Attach to one part, in contrast to another, and miss the whole entirely.

What’s the matter, don’t you like it 'here'? Then stop your spiritual whining and fix it. But then, why engage an "illusion," right? The perfect copout!

"The world is an illusion" teaches an invalid conclusion based on a faulty premise. The premise being that there is something other than “illusion” that is not "illusion." So rather than remain fixated on your spiritual brainwashing, by continuing to repeat the tired old slogan, "the world is an illusion," try closely examining your concept of ‘real.’

The ancient teachings that point to the "real" come directly from your experience of being IN a world and are part of that whole. However, the teachings seek to negate part of your experience as illusion.

But the illusion is what is teaching you it’s an illusion.

Non-dualism seeks to separate off parts based on the dualistic premise that there are some experiences that are NOT 'part' of the illusion. If it’s not illusory then, of course, this means there is a part of your experience that is "real" (or more "real") than what you now experience. Unfortunately, you just haven’t had the "real" experience yet. Too bad for you.

So what part is "real"? Well, the rules state that the ultimate reality cannot be talked about, since words only relate to the "illusion" and are symbols of symbols. Therefore, you must follow the path of austerity and realize "the real” and this realization is referred to as “awakening” or “enlightenment.” Yet, this premise has resulted in your negating one experience, while seeking out another and the villain in that negation is not the real “you,” but your ego-self.

Thus, the illusion seeks a way out of the illusion.

The claim is that, without the ego-self creating all these illusory experiences, you would be free to experience the real "you" instead. Note how the illusory “you” must now search for the "real" you, which you have not yet been acquainted with (experienced). But don’t worry, says the illusory “you,” we will find the real "you" someday, if "you" sacrifice and struggle hard and long enough in your spiritual practices. HA, what a maroon!

The ego informs you that your “Being” will finally become the ‘experiencer’ of reality, while the ego will essentially cease to exist. Yet, does an ego-self not have Being? Maybe "Being” is nothing more than experience, experiencing itself as ego? Without an ego-self, who or what will experience anything?

Ally yourself exclusively with any part and you deny the whole and this includes "real" vs "illusion." There is no separation to experience and if you choose a part of your experience of ‘world,’ as teaching you that there is no world, then you have divided experience. Experience is what you ARE. It's ALL in your experience. It comes from “you” as a whole and “you” split it in two by negating a part as unworthy of your "awareness." To "Be of one voice" is to be of one experience. The only awakening you need to experience is understanding your ego-dynamics and, not for the purpose of rejection or exclusion of the ego-self, but simply to "know thyself" (Socrates).

Know your experience of ‘self’ and experience surprise in what “you” really are, which does not exclude anything, but includes all of it. The game is infinite because truth is infinite, which means "awakening" never ends. Therefore, this means that there is NO "awakening" and dreaming never ends.

It's all a dream and the dream is real.

Sweet dreams. Hahaa!
mikeS