"The Dreams In Which I'm Dying Are The Best I've Ever Had..."

Free Willy...

Being in the Neuro-Moment

 
“Who, dear reader, do you think you are? Do you think your mind is capable of independent judgment and largely directs the course of your life? Do you think that most of your decisions in life have been the product of your rational, conscious self? Do you believe you are in control of your life? Do you cherish ideas such as self-expression, a sense of autonomy and a distinct, self-authored identity? The chances are that, albeit with a few qualifications, most of your answers are yes. Indeed, given a pervasive culture which reinforces all these ideas, it would be a bit odd if you didn't.
But the point about this new explosion of interest in research into our brains is that it exposes as illusions much of these guiding principles of what it is to be a mature adult. They are a profound misunderstanding of how we think, and how our brains work. They are fairytales, about as fanciful and as implausible as goblins.”  (Madeleine Bunting, guardian.co.uk, LINK)

The whole enterprise of self-actualization revolves around self acceptance vs. non-acceptance. The entire billion dollar “spiritual” self-help industry is entirely founded on your continued failure to accept your egocentric “self,” just as is, in each and every moment, each and every day. In fact, the one chief principle of most self-help and new age “spirituality” programs is about teaching you to be “in the moment” which, of course, as they claim, you are NOT, else why would you spend the $150 for the DVD box set that will teach you how?

Yet, not one cent would be made if the human brain was not wired for constant REJECTION. Not one religion Could have been developed if the brain were only wired for ACCEPTANCE.

Dualism is hard wired into two opposing hemispheres. With each neuro-circuit that sends a specific electrochemical message, there is the corresponding opposite message at work as well. The pathway that informs me to do some specific act, also has a corresponding pathway negating that act or canceling out the originating circuit. Clearly, only one message can be electrochemically emphasized from which action will be initiated (although we have all experienced the paralysis of indecisiveness from circuit crashes). All this can cause a great deal of tension between neuro-circuits (the actual origin of stress).

Nevertheless, eventually one circuit will supersede another (simply because the ultimate goal of egocentricity is “doing” something…anything) but this is usually supported by adjacent circuitry that we refer to as “values, goals and aspirations” which are nothing more than genetically wired and conditioned socio-cultural pathways of experience taught to you from birth and demanding that you desire something. Very little is experienced outside those parameters, at least by choice (although the delusion of choice is circuited as well).

The great egocentric struggle is between what you believe you should do and what you believe you want to do.

Hence, I may have a conditioned neural pathway that requires I perform some specific act, but which competes with another pathway which insists that this act to be performed is not desired. In other words, what I am conditioned to do often competes with what I have been conditioned to WANT to do instead. I could have a neural circuit that provides positive electrochemical stimulation to watch the football game on TV that is in competition with a circuit that requires the lawn be mowed. No matter which action takes precedence, there will be a sense of dissonance between the two charges. If I mow the grass, I will experience a sense of dissatisfaction that the football circuit was not acted on and if I watch the game instead, the circuit directing me to mow the lawn will intensify, thereby, limiting my satisfaction in watching the game. It does appear that guilt is hard-wired in the brain.

What we call “cognitive dissonance” is merely the experience of two competing electrochemical charges upon brain circuitry, involving both a constant fluctuating, back and forth, of acceptance and rejection.
We have billions of competing neurons laid out over miles of dendrite connections consistently giving a sense of never doing what one should be doing and always doing what one shouldn’t be doing. This causes a sense of nervous system tension, often felt throughout the entire body, which we refer to as anxiety. Anxiety is the primordial emotion and is the origin of all mental illnesses.

Anxiety is essentially nothing more than electrochemical competition between brain neural circuits. Always, one circuit will attain predominance and be acted on, but this action will be attended to by the intensification of the electro-chemical stimulation of the opposing circuitry that has not been acted on, because neuro-circuits do not instantly go away. This is the origin of guilt and guilt is nothing more than competing neuro-circuits. While I am mowing the lawn I will experience the tension derived from my not being able to watch the game and that increased tension is anxiety. While watching the game the pathway requiring the lawn be mowed will intensify resulting in anxiety and a failure to fully enjoy the game as I might like.

This is why there can never be an experience such as “being in the moment” and if such an experience does arise it will be the result of the a spontaneous dissolution of competing electrochemical charges (because you have arrived at an electrochemical point in time in which you just don’t give a sheit about the lawn or the game).

For instance, if a sudden fire erupts in your house, the mow lawn/ watch football circuitry will immediately be redirected, just as if you where suddenly to realize you had the winning lotto number for a ten million dollar prize. All other competing electrochemical charges would cease to stimulate and other socio-genetically conditioned circuitry would take center stage.

You could attempt to generate circuitry that allows for an electrochemical experience of “being in the moment” and there are many “spiritual” programs out there that attempt to teach this as a “skill.” Unfortunately, such ‘learning’ would necessarily compete with other conditioned neuro-circuitry that has been consistently reinforced for many decades. it would be like attempting to alter your gender identity through a ten week course, even though that identity has been reinforced electrochemically for 50 years. A real no brainer! (no pun intended).

Accepting the brain neuro-circuitry that has sculpted you all these many years is much more advantageous to reducing anxiety and, hence, suffering, then constantly rejecting and seeking to change the brain. An attempt to be “in the moment” merely reinforces that you do NOT accept your neuro-circuitry (because you believe you’re NOT “in the moment”) and, thus, that rejection becomes a powerful electrochemical circuit all its own and it will dawg down your every moment in terms of good and bad choices.

You are an amalgamation of brain neuro-circuitry that has evolved genetically and through socio-cultural conditioning over many years. Your rejection of this constructs opposite circuits that cause tension or anxiety. Recognize that with every thought, every feeling and every action you are “in the moment.” Make no mistake, even with the tension of competing electrochemical charges you still are “in the moment.”

The brain is always “in the moment.” Even though, that moment may consist of tension between competing circuitry, there is no reason to suggest that the electrochemical stimulation of neurons is not momentary or actualized at that moment.

Even future thoughts are generated from momentary electrochemical processes firing up instantaneously. There really is NO future moment, only current electrochemical stimulation of brain circuitry providing a sudden experience of future thought.

This includes memory. Although the circuitry that mediates current awareness may not be electrochemically charged in relation to the time you got drunk on your wedding night, that circuit was impressed upon the brain and based on the emotional circuitry attached, is still “in the moment.” Electrochemical charges keep the pathway alive, but only minimally stimulated and when the awareness circuit engages it the electrochemical stimulation will intensify and you will experience the attached emotional stimulation of being a complete asshole on your wedding night. All of this is entirely “in the moment” and you are never NOT “in the moment.”

Of course, you also have circuitry, conditioned over many years, that stimulates electrochemical data providing an experience that you are more than just a brain consisting of experiential-based neuro-circuitry. Couple that with the circuits that provide the electrochemical experience of “self” and you are able to negate brain activity as influencing “you” at all and, hence, must then pay the 150 dollars for the DVD which will teach you how to be “in the moment.”

Unfortunately, you will be disappointed, as will all who attempt to learn specific skills being “in the moment.”

Simply because you are, and always have been, already there, thanks to a brain that keeps you there 24/7.

Artwork by Sebastian Eriksson

Same As It Ever Was....

Why do egocentrics hate themselves so much? Why are they always seeking escape from who and what they are? What’s so bad about egocentricity? what is the driving need to find some ideological exit door to some utopic afterlife?

Get back to where you once belonged...

Oh sure, you’re self-centered and self-absorbed, demanding attention, victim to your desires. You’re oblivious, laughingly ignorant and often cruel and, even in your most charitable exchanges with other people, there is not a nano-second when you’re not thinking of your “self" (you never lose sight of "you"). The stress of keeping the scattered and unrelated pieces of your loosely defined and deluded self-concept together is often literally exhausting, in the recognition it could all crumble into a heap with the slightest change in the weather (and frequently does just that, as you scramble to re-connect the pieces once again).

But that’s the nature of egocentricity.

Why resist your nature?

What should “you” be? Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent?

Dang, what a drag, but go ahead, if that's where the circuits lead you. “You” can be that too, depending on how you’re wired up in the noggin.’

Nevertheless, one of the most universal aspects of all egocentrics IS their omnipresent desire to escape themselves. To transcend or transform. To be something other than egocentric. The incessant desire for self-development into something they are not is indicative of a universal disgust with egocentricity. You can never truly love yourself, simply because it's not in your nature and besides, "you" invented the concept of "love" in the first place. Does nature give a fook about "love"?

But even all that is folded up into the nature of egocentricity.

Does an elephant wish to leap like a gazelle? Does the squirrel constantly suffer through its neurotic pursuit of nuts, wishing life would be better if it could only find truffles? Are bears incessantly annoyed about shitting in the woods, hoping one day for conveniently located porta-potties?

So why do egocentrics want to be other than egocentric? Nature provides NO choice to it’s progeny. Everything does what it’s supposed to do, living out its nature, and the chief preoccupation of egocentrics is to make “important” choices. Doesn't matter that your choices are useless and deluded. You still gotta make 'em anyway.

Hence, the ultimate nature of egocentricity is to make choices in the belief its choices matter. You do this everyday and you don’t even think about it cause it’s as natural as a bear shitting in the woods.

Ever notice how your choices, though seemingly different in form, seem to repetitively give you the same content? Oh sure, you could win the lottery and get all jiggy for a few days. But eventually, the neuro-circuitry takes over and you’ll drop back to your baseline and be what you’re wired up to be, experiencing the world as you always have.

However, there are some egocentrics that couldn’t give a rat’s ass about choices, knowing that choices made are not at all up to him/her (and they don't sheit in the woods as far as I'm aware. At least not regularly).

This type of life-engagement has been referred to as Infinite Play (as opposed to Finite Play in which making “right” choices is absolutely critical to egocentric well-being and takes up ones entire existence). Of course, Infinite Players make egocentric choices, but they tend to react equally to both good and bad choices, which tends to dissolve the difference (hard to describe, cause an Infinite Player never admits to being one).

They tend to make choices with little concern for outcome in the recognition that it’s not up to them, so why worry.

Infinite Players accept egocentricity in all it’s glorious, hellacious bullsheit. I watched one just the other day get all pissed off and cursed his head off cause his phone went dead on an “important” call. He then immediately laughed about how well he did 'pissed off,' responding, "damn, did ya see that! ha!"

Infinite Players play with their egocentricity and are not played by it.

Many complain about being victim to the world, but Infinite Players know that they can only be victim to egocentricity. The world has nothing to do with it. Hence, they are neither victims of the world or their egocentricity.

Infinite Players recognize that even though they will continue to keep ‘doing’ sheit, like they always have, there is absolutely nothing that need be done.

So go ahead, do what you feel compelled to do, because it’s not up to you. You're gonna do it anyway.

Just let the days go by….


You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was  

Artwork by Yue Minjun

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

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"