Down the Toilet of Pure Consciousness

How can you possibly control of your life, if you can't even control your thinking, particularly if even thinking that you’re in control of thinking is delusional?

If it is delusional, and you have no such control, do “you” even exist except as a delusional thought of having control? From whence was this thought learned? Who taught you that you had control? Is egocentricity nothing more than the thought of having control of thought? How can that be true if thought is always prompted by external circumstances and your response to those circumstances is always predicated on the nuero-circuits wired up in your brain?


The “Return to Pure Consciousness” folks authoritatively inform you, through their weary and worn out “Ancient Lexicon of Profound Concepts,” that thought is the problem and to achieve this “Direct Experience of Consciousness” you must be thoughtless, or have “no-mind,” and they provide numerous abstract ideologies, esoterically magical techniques and amazingly mystical practices to help you in returning to pure consciousness. Of course, you have to think about what they teach, because teaching requires thinking, which seems a bit counterproductive to a direct experience of pure consciousness that does not include thought.


Egocentric mammalians are plagued by thought from the very moment the “I-me” neuro-circuit begins developing. Following this momentous, but obviously cursed occasion, you were taught to take great pride in your ability to “think for yourself” by accurately judging between good and bad thoughts based on the prevailing morality of the herd in which you are a member. Hence, the post-modern world is inundated with “positive thought” prognosticators, not to be confused with the magical “pure consciousness” proclaimants, who insist that thinking specific thoughts, as taught through their miraculous thought-control techniques, will enable you to make all your dreams come true, which only demonstrated that they were culturally programmed with the same delusional idea that one can control their thinking.


Obviously, all this tends to be smashed to smithereens at the very moment you suddenly become ‘aware’ of the fact that you’re outa toilet paper and just when you need it most (and ain’t that a bitch).


In that very moment your pursuit of the elusive “Direct Experience of Pure Consciousness” dissolves into mid-air like a fart on a windy day . In addition, now you’ve suddenly engaged with a negative thought like, “Crap! How’m I gonna wipe my arse?” (apologies for the scatological references) which then causes you to realize that the thought is negative and, with all your years of struggling to maintain self-affirming thought processes to help you feel good, you’ve now once again plunged down the black hole of abject failure. Needless to say, this kicks off a cascade of subsequent culturally programmed thought processes, all bordering on varying levels of self-loathing, which then only causes more sloppy thinking, demanding you fortify your future efforts to have the life you’ve always dreamed of just by thinking the right thoughts that will aid you in literally “manifesting” those dreams.


In a dualistic world, negative thoughts are like pink elephants, as hard as you “choose” not to think about them, you’re right this moment thinking about a pink elephant simply because I mentioned it and you never had a choice. Does the world control your mind or do you? Are you in charge of your thinking or is your thinking in charge of you, because if thought is in charge of you, you basically cannot exist as a free-willed being. So then what dafook are ya?


As you floated in an amniotic sea, the first genetically programmed neuron reached out its microscopic dendrite arm, grasping with its little synaptic fingers the next genetically coded neuron and this went on and on until the moment you were painfully dumped into reality, causing a billion more neurons to transmit signals resulting in a continuous ‘linking-up’ of circuit after circuit. For the first 5 years life impacted upon your grey matter cursing you with all the joys and sufferings of a developing egocentric brain. From the start, you had no idea how to define the experiences impacting the fat between your ears and you soon learned that no matter what you wanted to happen, essentially, sheit just happened and your reactions were already hard-wired into the network.


Fortunately, there were other brains, with greater circuit density, caring for you and teaching you to adequately develop your grey matter to process external world perceptions within the correct socio-cultural format, so that you could believe that you had a choice in what happened and would then attempt to make the "right" choices. In fact, you were taught that all the neuro-circuit signals firing off in your brain in the form of “thoughts” were highly indicative of a unique and separate “I-me” that “you” must now assert against a world full of other “I-me” neuro-circuits who are also asserting their right to control their environment. People, situations and events were impacting upon your developing brain every day and you responded quite easily based exclusively on the genetic and culturally programed circuits tangled up in your noggin. At first, you simply bawled your eyes out, but then you learned the effectiveness of just yelling “NO!” as a means of getting what you wanted. In fact, you could NOT have responded in any other way and you will never respond in any other way than the conditioning demands.


However, you may contend that you’re not the child you once were, although you cannot deny that the neuro-circuitry that you now call “me” is a direct descendent of the child you once were and you would not be in this moment right now if not for the neuro-circuitry of what you once were and still continue to be. If not for your specific neurocircuits there would have been absolutely no chance of your reading this right now. The path you follow has always been in your cranium and nowhere else but there. It is an external world that has always controlled you, because your responses are completely hard-wired and will unfold naturally as they always have. This is often why everyday seems exactly the same, because your responses have always been exactly the same and only tiny miniscule changes can ever be expected for the programmed responses you have become used to (but, of course, that’s wired in as well)


Not one thought belongs to “you” because there never really was a unique you, merely genetically spawned neurons which have been acted on by experiences that you had no choice in encountering. The universe shaped and molded “you” and every thought you now have is evidence of the fact that who you “think” you are has never existed as a unique and separate you. What does exist is a monstrosity of nerve fibers constructed exclusively from the past and all you attempts to break from that past must ultimately lug it along everywhere "you" go.


Obviously, there do seem to be times when a thought comes up and you wonder, “now why the hell did I think of that?” and no doubt your years of “Return to Pure Consciousness” training compels you to frequently consider this, because the training, and not to mention all the circuits that led you to that “spiritual” path, has added its own circuits to be included in the random signals bouncing around in your cranium.


Let’s face it, your attempts to move your thought processes down distinct channels has been, at times, a test of endurance but, for the most part, a complete failure. To stay focused on your “Return to Pure Consciousness,” in that inopportune time when the toilet paper is absent, is a true test of the “enlightened master.”

You are a universal construct that has become confined within a social construct, with as much free-will as the gravitational movement of the planets. You can no more break free from this fact, then the earth can break free from the sun. Not one thing in the entire universe was created by itself or for itself, yet egocentrics actually believe they have the power to sculpt and shape their lives to what they WILL and that they have the power to disengage from the very WILL that gave life to everything around them. Your current course was made certain from the moment of the “Big Bang.” The direction you are now on has nothing to do with any willpower you could assert because even the very belief in willpower was a product of socio-cultural indoctrination allowing you no choice in direction. There are only so many ways you could go and each one of them has been provided to you with no volition on your part.


Take a good long look at your life and note the repetitive patterns that have brought you to this point, and will continue to dualistically fluctuate, back and forth, as experiences in your brain, and understand that there will be no end to this. Some of what you want you get, because the patterns never fail. But patterns are always dualistic and what goes up must come down. There is no direct experience of pure consciousness only the direct experience of patterns within consciousness. They can easily be seen by those NOT seeking to be separate from the patterns or attempting to deny, through assertion of some nebulous “willpower,” that they have not had one tiny speck of control over the direction they have traversed and will have no control in any future that manifests.


This way it becomes so much easier to just enjoy the ride…

Artwork by Naoto Hattori- "Genesis"

Relax…You are Only Receding

You were taught symbols to superimpose upon a material world as a means to enhance the meaning of your egocentric existence. Cars, houses, money, sex, possessions, work, bodies, clothes, food, relationships, entertainment, etc, etc, are constantly being formatted and reformatted within your gray matter to increase symbolic value and, thereby, enhance you existence by making "you" special, unique and more meaningful.

The symbols experienced are nothing more than ‘thought' or electro-chemically induced synaptical currents (did you ‘think’ it something more mysterious?) and you have millions of miles of networked dendrites all generating random electrochemical "thought" currents, circuitously linking up to numerous other dendrite branches to become the closed circuits referred to as “belief systems.” There are numerous belief systems within your cranium and, because you have so many, you often have difficulty making correct decisions because of the tangled up mess in your head. Your daily "stress" is nothing more than  the constant battling of neuro-circuits, each vying for the most electrochemical current for which to pull your puppet strings.

Yet, no need to worry, since you will always do what the programming requires. You have no other “choice” but to make the choices your programming requires and, no matter how intensely you seek to claim ownership of your choices to assert your unique specialness into a  world that doesn’t seem to give a crap, what other choice could you make than the one you will make? There was never a better choice than that. Based on the development of your cranial circuitry, that was the choice that had to be made.

Of course, the exalted “Return to Pure Consciousness” folks have a problem with such a deterministic equation. They want all solutions to be 'mystical.' Nevertheless, when you do finally return to “pure consciousness,” after all your years of diligent efforts to shut off your neuro-circuitry; will your brain still function well enough to get you to the toilet on time? Will engaging with pure consciousness cause you to forget how to drive a car, ride a bike or even walk? Will sex still feel good in your brain? Or will you simply exit reality for the the magical nirvana of Shangri La? (actually this, or something very close to it, is the conventional belief taught in most new age seminar/retreat groups)

Hence, “Returning to Pure Consciousness” has its drawbacks. But, how ‘bout giving a little credit to the neuro-circuitry that, fortuitously, linked up the exact dendrite branches, thereby, allowing you to ‘think’ about “Returning to Pure Consciousness”? (otherwise, you might be drinking a Bud and watching NASCAR).

Nevertheless, cultural programming requires no conscious effort, because recognition of the programming is instantaneous and unreflective, making the symbolic representations in your occipital lobe patently obvious to you, based on the herd mentality through which you identify (not to mention that any effort made is based on conditioned neural impulses anyway, so why bother). You will always do what the circuits demand. You will think the 'thought,' perform the action, behave as directed, speak the words you are destined to utter and take offense to what others say and do just as your programming requires.

This begs the question, can people change? No, they cannot. Particularly if we mean by "change," altering circuits outside or external to the already conditioned circuitry through free-will. Which is to say, the script of your destiny was written in your formative years. Now you're just reading the lines someone else (the world) wrote, in direct accordance with your experience du jour.

However, if this cultural programming is somehow short-circuited by a traumatic event, the symbols that make up your comfort zone could suddenly be smashed to smithereens, causing neural networks to short-circuit and electro-chemical currents to cease firing, resulting in varying levels and degrees of irrational fears, delusions of grandeur (Eckhart Tolle), phobias, nervous disorders, mood instability, behavioral compulsions, addictions, mental illness, suicide, murder, institutionalization, etc, etc, etc.

However, there are egocentrics whose cultural programming has resulted in a compelling desire to generate circuits for which to judge the existing network that reflects the symbolic representations of self and world. This is not a choice, but simply the result of years of evolving circuit formation literally directing "you" to a point where the symbolism can no longer be relied on for accuracy and so they actively begin to question the symbols that the world relies on for meaning. Indeed, this can also result in trauma symptoms, due to the fact that many of their most basic assumptions about ‘self’ and world will be totally smashed to smithereens. But, based on the preceding influences from already formed circuits, they've had no choice in this whatsoever.

Some neural networks must remain “asleep,” lulled to complacency by the conditioned cultural programming, and we see this fact in the majority of egocentric mammalians existing today, demonstrating the incredible power of conditioned brain circuitry to fully direct every aspect of communal herd existence. While others, due to the direction their programming has driven them, will burn away circuits one by one, all the while feeling that they are somehow deviant or deranged, because they have no desire to graze with the herd.

Apparently, when certain symbolic meaning circuits lose electro-chemical current, they cease to fire and, thus, the symbolic meanings are no longer experienced as before. Obviously, this impacts other circuits causing radically new perceptions of sensory data input, which completely alters interpretations, thereby, changing responses. This is similar to altering neuro-chemical composition through various drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, peyote, mescaline, ecstasy, etc, but unfortunately, altering neuro-chemistry is temporary, while altering entire brain circuits is more consistent and, hence, “abiding.”

Nevertheless, for this very reason, there are those among us who can SEE the dream consistently and are no longer controlled by the symbols within the dream. 

Even though the experience must be different for each separate, individual neuro-circuit network, there do seem to be signs of this type of neuro-network development.

Maybe you are one of those who seem to interminably question everything even, and especially, that which is most obvious, to the constant dismay and agitation of those around you? Maybe you find it a struggle to participate in the symbolic socio-cultural games that others have been programmed to believe crucial to achieving “happy” and meaningful lives?

Have you become overtly aware of the social games as vapid and vacuous? Do you find yourself avoiding most interactions even, and especially, with those closest to you, due to the shallow verbiage necessary to maintain social engagements? Do you find yourself barely able to control fits of laughter at “inappropriate” times, because the symbols tend to lose boundaries and merge into one another in a strange purple haze? Do you often have absolutely no motivation to perform the symbolic functions of life and feel no guilt about that failure in recognition of its meaninglessness? Have you at times realized that everything you do seems consistently repetitive, as if your reactions and responses are not of “you”? Does everything that happens in your world, no matter how sad or happy, often seem exactly the same?

These may be signs of the direction your circuits are taking you, with no volition on your part, and this is why there really are so few  individuals who can consistently ‘abide’ in this state and most only have brief experiences, which they then refer to as "enlightenment" or "awakening."

Without your culturally programmed symbolic representations of the world, there could be no “self’ to exist in that world, because the self is nothing more than a total composite package of symbolic representations. It is the symbolic ‘self’ that must accept a symbolic world, for without the symbols you would exist no differently than your pet dog or cat, completely reliant on mammalian impulses and instincts in relating to an outside world.

The truth is always behind the symbols and a symbolic existence can only be false by nature of its symbolizing. What is "real" when  the real is unknown? Yet, Egocentrica Mammalia recycles and reformats its symbols because there must always be meaning in its world for IT to exist as meaningful. Egocentricity cannot fathom its abject meaninglessness and still function.

So if you are one of the very few in which the symbols seem to be gradually failing you, one by one…

…relax, it only means “you” are receding.


There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb


Artwork by Sam Weber

The Symbolic Existence of Egocentrica Mammalia

When the next war commences, threatening all of egocentric civilization, will your life have been in vain? Will all your symbolic goals, dreams and aspirations have been for naught? Will all your objects and possessions completely lose their symbolic value?

Egocentricity could be defined, quite simply, as a perpetual state of repressing death by constructing an elaborate symbolic world from which to contrive fictional meanings that only result in a spectrum of cognitive-behavioral symptoms and compulsions sporadically erupting from the chronic denial of death.

Death is a a fact that makes all symbols utterly meaningless. But has your symbolically meaningful life ever resulted in “happiness"? How can a symbolic reality, or that which is not real, ever have any meaning whatsoever?

Yet, due to the ever constant fear of death, egocentric mammalia had to imagine the means to avoid reality, minimizing abject terror into a numbing sense of persistent anxiety. Why would you ever be anxious or nervous about anything? Could it be that your anxiety is merely a result of the ongoing repression of realizing a destiny that will only end in death?

Egocentric mammalia constructs fictions to avoid facts, whimsically weaving more complex and complicated symbols of grandeur. Since birth, the idea of death gradually linked-up with developing circuitry and the consistency of childhood awe and wonder slowly dissipated over time as the real context of your existence became more undeniable.

However, to avoid a complete shut-down, neuro-circuits were formatted to repress of this fear. This repression has resulted in a myriad of symptomatic eruptions, but never the full abject terror that would arise if a loaded gun was pressed against your forehead. This is evident in those who have been fortuitously released from the reapers embrace only to experience the dissociative numbness of PTSD, when the meaning of life has been short-circuited or re-routed and many electro-chemical currents, that once gave life symbolic meaning, have simply shut down for good.

Prior to all this, we mindlessly ate, shit, slept, copulated and died, without even a thought that things should be any different. But as neuro-circuits increased, egocentric mammalia needed to struggle mightily against the confinement of its own brief and meaningless existence, requiring perpetual embellishment of normal functioning by adding a whole host of trivial features to aggrandize and fluff up its life through avoiding, at all costs, the moment-to-moment omnipresence of death.

Nature has no reason to construct symbolic fictions to avoid fact and exposes the patent absurdity of egocentric symbolism. This requires egocentrica mammalia to totally and completely divorce itself from nature, as a means of protecting its symbolic existence, thereby, minimizing the natural world as an absurd anomaly of existence.  This is why so many feel a magnetic pull to return to the natural reality. Alas, it is now simply too late…

Egocentrics have developed miles of cranial neuro-circuitry providing an array of complicated, but needless, impulses and electro-chemical currents, useful in detracting from the fact that death could strike at any moment and no amount of preparation or prediction can avert that event. But to consider this fact on a daily basis would be to live in mortal terror. Hence, terror is minimized through billions of useless brain circuits that serve to modulate the terror into a dull throbbing state of perpetual anxiety. This requires egocentrics scurry about performing "important" symbolic functions to maintain the miles of synaptical distractions.

This is a bargain egocentrica mammalia had to make, since it is cursed with the realization of its own destiny, knowing that all are destined for the same outcome. The terror of death required egocentrica to fully develop an aspect of its neural network we refer to as “imagination.” Tightly compacted neuro-circuits within a calcium shell, every dendrite essentially useless to eating, shitting, sleeping and copulating, but absolutely crucial to hiding from death.

egocentrica mammalia imagined into existence a symbolic world for the sole purpose of denying the black abyss of total nothingness that is the certain outcome of all its projects, since ALL its symbolic projects were made up purely from the emptiness of “imagination.”

Now all egocentric mammalia need do is retrieve from the imagination all manner of conceptual abstractions to make life more meaningful by extracting “life” from reality itself. This entire project evolved simply to avoid considering its finite existence. The fear of death was hidden away and folded neatly within conceptual abstractions such as “God,” “heaven,” “karma,” etc. Millions of imaginary concepts resulting in a million more complex ideological circuits, firing randomly, allowed egocentric mammalia to believe itself master of the universe, as opposed to being slave to death.

Yet… alas…it was all imaginary and he is master of nothing, because he has yet to master the meaningless networks of nothingness tangled up in his brain. Empty circuits serving useless causes leading to a deep, abiding sense of nothingness that anxiously hums and throbs right up to his terminal breathe. 
 
It was all conjured up, shaped out of a vacuum of total nothingness and completely contrived out of thin air. Your entire world was invented out of fluffy clouds of imaginary concepts as a means to protect yourself from the egocentric curse of realizing the stark reality of death and the meaninglessness of everything that precedes it.

Hence, everything egocentrics do to increase "self-esteem" by perpetual activities, does nothing to thwart his eventual demise, and means nothing after it. This anxiety is nothing more than a perpetual state of managing the stark terror undeniably associated with the fact that you could drop dead one minute after reading this very sentence and not one of your fictions could do a damn thing to avert that fact.

The blatant narcissism, endemic within egocentric neuro-circuits, demand life have meaning above and beyond simple mammalian bodily functioning and so more and more circuits are packed into an already overloaded motherboard, with the only objective being to avoid death.

What difference does it make what you do or who you think yourself to be when the outcome is the same for all, no matter what they have or have not done, while existing? Whether serial killer or savior, cop or criminal, saint or sinner, what difference is there in any role when only one factual outcome is assured for all roles?

Thus, egocentric mammalia constructed imaginary religions, with symbolic rituals, rites, ideologies. It imagined exotic spiritual theories with symbolic practices, like yoga, prayer, meditation, etc, and a myriad of other fictions to appease the underlying terror of total and complete nothingness that death demands. It insured centuries of devout and revered personalities to coach the players in these repression games. It imagined sciences for which to apply useless symbols to sensory data to fabricate a comfortable existence with greater potential to deny death. A science that tells us how to prolong life, while those following such guidelines die as often as those who do not. Cigarettes will kill you, unless of course, you’re one of those smokers who live to a hundred.

Is it ever a good day to die?

Nevertheless, you will die and that is certain. In fact, it is more certain than your symbolic existence.

To keep the dream alive, by avoiding the reality of the dream, everybody must play his part as expected and every imaginary part played, is played to avoid death and has no other purpose but that. The grand significance of your entire life trajectory merely serves to hide from the reaper who walks with you everywhere you go, and will one day take your hand.

Nevertheless, once egocentric mammalia comes face-to-face with its own death, all the imaginary roles required for life’s games, dissolve back into the thin air from which they were imagined. All games lose their value and the rules no longer matter. In the moment of death, life passes before your eyes simply because it is receding back into the empty nothingness from which it was symbolically extracted and shaped.

Thus, everything you have done or will ever do, has exclusively served one purpose only and that is to avoid looking into the abyss of your own factual nothingness that only death can show. Everything the world has taught you has served to keep you from the only Teacher that knows the truth. But you really don't want the truth.

Your beloved teachers claim that you are inhabited by some cosmic energetic spirit or divine soul, which lives on interminably. They explain that you are a well of infinite love and this makes you able to forget asking, “what difference does it make, since I could drop dead at any moment.”

So in what way has your life drastically and radically improved by knowing that everything around you is pure quantum energy derived from the cosmos? Does this help you levitate above the traffic on the interstate? Do you pass through walls on your way to the toilet? Or does it simply help you avoid the inescapable fact that you’re merely passing the time while death patiently waits around the corner.

"Play your games my children, for soon you will be mine to take at my choosing and all your games will be like sandcastles at high tide”

Any spiritual ideology that does not bring you face to face with your utter insignificance, is nothing more than a tool of repression to aid in keeping you in the dream of death. This is why the Buddha must be disemboweled.

The main problem with egocentrics is that they stink of the fear of death and that stench permeates their lives, giving death value through destruction, murder, war, greed, corruption, etc. If not for the socially programmed fear of death, what value could war ever have? If not for the abject terror of death, what value could life have? The only reason you seek to aggrandize life is because of death and you are terrified of this fact.

Die to your symbolic existence and SEE the dream.

This is what every true “Enlightened Master” has proclaimed. Why has this content been so distorted over the centuries? Look at what you value and disembowel it.

This begs the question, if death has so much to teach, why are there so few students?

Simply because the “master” you wish to learn from will hopefully keep you from knowing that you are really nothing at all, a fiction, a meaningless story, a useless fable, a trite composite of imaginary symbols that minimize fear while producing a perpetual state of numbed anxiety leading to an array of symptoms we call “mental illness.”

Nevertheless, eventually, everyone arrives in the classroom and passing the final exam is completely assured.

Fear of Death Link

Artwork by Nefandus Nafsee - "Kirilll"

I Don’t Know Why She Swallowed The Fly…

 
I know an old lady who swallowed a cow
I don't know how she swallowed the cow
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I don't know why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die?

So, how the hell did you get here?

Was it something he said?

Not entirely.

More likely it was what she said that brought you to him that got you here. But even that isn’t the whole story.

Because... if that event hadn’t happened when it did, you would have never been in the ‘place’ to hear and understand what she said that brought you to him that got you here.

But wait!

There's more...

If you weren’t in that situation when the event happened, you would have never been in a ‘place’ to hear what she said that brought you to him that got you here. But more specifically, if you hadn’t been in that mood, while in that situation, when that event happened, you’d have never heard her, which brought you to him that got you here. But being in that particular mood stimulated a specific emotion while in that situation, in which that event occurred, causing you to hear what she said which led you to him that got you here.

But then, why that specific emotion?

Well, obviously to have that specific emotion there must have been a preceding interpretation in the form of a concept, which only arose because of the mood you were in while that event occurred, during that situation which motivated you to listen to her that eventually brought you to him and then here.

But from where did the particular concept come from that caused the interpretation, while in that mood, which led to that emotion due to that event happening in that particular situation, which caused you to hear and understand her that brought you to him and got you here at this very moment?

When you were a child you learned that concept. You don't remember how, why or when, in fact, you're not even fully conscious of the concept itself or that it has the peculiar capacity to evoke specific emotions in certain situations and events.

None of this has ever been available to you...

Nevertheless, it is the reason the mood arose that evoked the emotion due to this event in that situation that allowed you to hear and understand her, which brought you to him and that eventually led you here.

This is precisely how your entire life has unfolded and transpired. It may seem random at times, but there is always a pattern for those who can pull back the curtains and SEE. Notice that "you" had nothing to do with any of this and it all unwound simply by nature of your ‘birth.’

Isn't it "true" that your existence is contingent on making choices, because it does seem that making choices is something you do everyday?

Hence, if no 'choice' has ever been made by you, and never will be made by you, therefore, do "you" even exist?

When the time comes, after a series of non-volitional "choices," made by what certainly seems distinctly "you," there will pop-up in your head an answer to that question.

In the meantime, while dreaming seems "real," there will be an apparent feeling of being controlled by it, instilling a desire to struggle against that control. The belief that you have even the slightest, tiniest control of your “destiny” is probably cause of all your suffering. Just as the belief you can choose other than suffering has the same net effect.

Egocentric Mammalia is the only species intently focused on altering its destiny. If you are seeking to control your destiny to achieve a state of future “happiness,” then clearly, you are destined to succeed in failure.

It seems to take many years before achieving this degree of 'understanding' and most never make it because they believe it requires a correct ‘choice' be made in order to 'understand.'

But be of raucous and jubilantly good cheer!

You are not the cause of even that….

Hence, you may construct a volitional, choice-based context for why you are here at this moment and, because of that, the real reason will only elude you. The invisible oscillating patterns that direct your movement are beyond the capacity of most to detect. Hence, they must fabricate comfortable theories of God, universe, ‘vibrational energy,' etc, etc, to make it all seem... reasonably ordered and not chaotically absurd.

Nevertheless, no need for guilt or regret. No need to worry about what to do, because you will no doubt do exactly what will be done each and every moment and, even though you may rate these experiences as “good” or “bad,” they will happen regardless of what context you wrap them around, as a means of emphasizing the wonderful conscientious decision-making skills that you diligently honed to perfection your entire life through various positive "choice" reinforcing educational experiences (but that have failed in teaching you the best choices for which to be "happy," because you have yet to experience that state with any considerable consistency worthy of such grand educational endeavors).

Right now, at this point, in this very moment, on this exact spot, some of those who came here, through whatever experiences they had no choice in experiencing, are beginning to understand that there’s no reason to consider what will happen after here (because of meeting him due to hearing her, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...). It most certainly will lead to something, because everything does, just nothing you could “choose.”

But if you’re not choosing your destiny, then who the hell is?

Ahhh…

...allow the meaningless nature of your egocentric self-absorption to flow over you like cool rain on a hot summer day...

So that, if the time is right, you can get the answer to that question and you will be one of a very rare few who now KNOW...

...why the old lady swallowed that fly.


Artwork by SheerHeart - "Where is my dream"

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"

The Generic Futility of Blue Goo

 

Ahhhh…waking up to another day of ‘doing’ things and getting things ‘done.’ Not just things, but fooking important things that give a sense of self-actualizing grandiosity in the battle against the deeper sense of your abject insignificance. Sliding down the smoothly polished pipeline of productive people participating in perfectly normal pastimes and polite dinner parties. As Bill Hicks so accurately stated “it’s only a ride.”

It’s a “normal” ride though.

You find it normal negotiating through traffic to arrive at a place where you’ll perform pointless tasks to secure your daily bread and you will do this until the years long burden of earth gravity and brain senility accelerates your physical and mental feebleness demanding an exit affording you the opportunity to make countless trips to the doctor to remind you of the fact that, not only are you physically dying but, more importantly, you’ve have been psychologically dead for years.

You believe it normal to sculpt your delightful little progeny into socialized little lambs, institutionally educated to memorize the required scripts and engage in the same weary roles so that they too can be constructive members of a bipolar communalism and "work" at insipid, vacuous tasks, feeding their faces with chemicalized faux-foods to eventually copulate their way to the formation of new herd members. You believe that working hard to contrive “rest and relaxation” through sporadic episodes  of “vacation” as symbolic of a well rounded “lifestyle.” You participate in various causes in defense of your values, but in the black of night when you’re most alone, the angst of your actual condition permeates your every pore and so pills are eventually a precondition to slumber.

But most of all, you believe it “normal” to live a “meaningful life,” denying that every tiny scrap of meaning you have ever held onto for dear life was handed to you from the moment of birth and even now you can’t remember the last time you had a unique and exciting idea that did not come directly from the socio-cultural lexicon of herd grazing normalcy…. baa, baa, baaaaaaa…

Do you even know why you chose marriage, career and children? Nah, you really have NO clue, other than the fact that everyone else was doing it and still is. Essentially we all do what we believe we’re supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less.

But what do you do when one day you awake and realize it’s all a sham and you’ve been duped from the start. That somebody else wrote the lyrics to your song and that every choice you’ve made was weaved into your cranial neurocircuitry. Will you have the wherewithal to cut yourself free from it? Will you have the courage and fortitude to self-lobotomize your own habitualized thought patterns?

What happens when getting outa bed to start your glorious, awesome “day,” is a test of mental endurance never before experienced. When all the things that you must do, you have not a shred of desire or even the slightest drop of willpower to get done and all you can do is stare into the abyss of nothingness and perseverate on how you must be mentally ill not to want to play the games and follow the rules as you’ve always done, like everybody else does through the assistance of diversified distractions.

This is a level of ‘awake’ that absolutely no one would choose to engage, because it’s so damn fooking inconvenient. The problem with that “Dark Night of the Soul” is that it can last years.

When you understand that all the things you have done are as utterly pointless and banal as the things you will do and you become completely drenched in the Generic Futility of your entire life project, you can then consider yourself ‘spiritually evolved' or, in other words, 'fucked.'

If reading this post offends or disgusts you then, rest assured, you’re about ready to pop. If this post makes you depressed, angry, anxious or guilty, then brace yourself for impact. It may still be a ways off, but you’re racing to the wall. A wall of complete and total despair.

But be of good cheer! Buddhism will save you or maybe the No-Mind of Zen. Or maybe years of diligent meditation or adopting the precepts of Advaita, the Power of Positive Thinking or the Law of Attraction. There are plenty of drugs to aid in abstaining from your deepest dread.

But if you’re here, then make no mistake, you’ve been traveling to this point all your live long days. and there are very few who ever make it this far with any regular consistency to their despair, because egocentricity will play with you like a fish on a hook, reeling you in and letting you out, reeling you in and letting you out. The rule is that despair MUST be sporadic and inconsistent to avoid the potential that you might wish to exit the herd.

This is why your life themes are so dualistically repetitive and it seems no matter how much progress you ‘believe’ you’ve made in your spiritual practices and life goals, here you are once again playing out the same old patterns, conforming to the same rules, playing the same weary games, on an on, ad nauseam.

Egocentricity is essentially defined by keeping all your tenuous and fragile beliefs delicately interwoven to support the routine drudgery you define as “life.” Yet, like a cloth weaved out of Silly String, one wrong move, or even the slightest contradictory thought carried to its obvious conclusion, could rip it all asunder leaving you in a mess of blue goo.

Such is the nature of your “stress.” Day in and day out egocentrics must senselessly struggle to make it all seem “sensible.” Common sense and wisdom are merely egocentric mental farts that seek to make meaningful the generic futility of blue goo.

Forget the wise masters and go for the goo!

One must do this, one should do that and never must/should one do this. For egocentricity to survive, and keep on popping out humanoid-like mimeographed copies, it must have a hierarchical belief system of prioritized fears and worries for which to pass on to its progeny as a means of positive reinforcement for itself. Maslow unintentionally proved this through his “Hierarchy of Needs” and the higher up the scale you go, the more entrenched “you” become in mundane mental constructs and whimsical psychological abstractions that reinforce the egocentric self as real and, more importantly, true. The concepts that you believe give life meaning, i.e., good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugly, honesty, truth, pride, fidelity, etc, etc, are so muddled and complex that they tend to loose all differentiating boundaries, only to merge into one cacophonous concerto of dissonant noise.

The only way to maintain this pathetic structured existence is to see it mirrored through other bodies that seem to have minds of their own and who also believe in the same vacuous values you claim to own and that you must defend through your choice of “lifestyle.” It’s all about the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the school you send your kids to and the square feet of your living space. It's about the causes you support and the political parties you cheer for.

It's all about blue goo...

This begs the question, if it’s all a dream, an hallucination, an illusion, an atomic mirage, an apparition, a shape shifting fog, a mass of undulating dualistic energy, then who gives a sheit? If everything is a “lie,” why worry about telling the truth? If everything is true, then you can’t tell a lie. Why care about “honesty” in your dreams, if dreams are false? If it’s all bullsheit who cares about values or morals? If it’s all illusion, why concern yourself with working for a “living” and paying your bills? Why even concern yourself with your next meal?

Why not let it all crumble to pieces around you? Let it all fucking die and take “you” with it? Because without the pieces that make up this delusional puzzle, all you have is an empty box and nobody wants to hold onto an empty box (even though that’s exactly what they do).

Egocentrics have “responsibilities,” because without pieces to fit together what the fook would you do with yourself? They have ego-centered structures to maintain. So rather than nothing, egocentric mammalia must not evolve beyond it’s confinement to normalcy, allowing the dream to incorporate every thought in your head, while you claim it real and true by simply not looking close enough.

But one day, when you SEE it for what it is, you will recognize a generic quality to EVERYTHING, so it all becomes nothing, lending a dazzling sense of utter futility to doing anything at all.

Once you dive into the Blue Goo of Generic Futility, you will likely swim in it for many years, completely and totally…alone.

But no worries, I'm here. Come in and join me for a spell.

The Blue Goo is always warm….

Artwork by Illathias - "Blue Goo"