Your Fate is Sealed

As much as you wish to "believe" that your thoughts, beliefs and emotions originate in some nebulous kumbaya “consciousness,” even that idea is a charged electro-chemical event in neuro-circuitry. Do you channel ancient cosmic travellers? (guess where that occurs?) Are you blessed with precognition? (not without a brain you ain’t) That ghost you saw was purely a neuro-chemical event, and your outa body experiences happen right there between your ears (hence, you have gone nowhere).

Without serotonin and dopamine there’s a high probability Jed Mckenna would not have achieved the illustrious non-dual “awakening” that he seems so proud of proclaiming. To be “done” is nothing more than allowing the circuits to fire as they will, since it has never been up to you.

If your thoughts are not a matter of choice, why fret about what you think? Attempting to control the direction of impulses firing from 48 billion neurons is hopeless and the cause of all your misery. Why not just fugitabout it? Let it do whatever the fook it wants...

Your neuro-circuits are completely locked into the laws of a predetermined physical universe and there is no free-will available in what must happen exactly as it does. You cannot extract yourself from any of it, because you have no responsibility for any of it. It goes on with you and without you.

The sculpted wiring in your cranium has insured that your responses are always as they should be. There is no free-will in alternating electro-chemical currents.They go where they must and travel the same circuits they have always traveled.

Many claim it’s necessary to believe in free-will, else we’d all become a bunch a fat, lazy, do-nothing, sloths. If “believing” in free-will insures your conformance to a specified agenda, then this only emphasizes external influence and the absence of free-will.

Like a well oiled machine, not one microscopic particle in the universe is free of influence by other particles in that universe. There are no coincidences. You may not like what you get, but you can rest assured, you got it for a reason (even if the reason is not presently apparent or never seen).

The electro-chemical illusion of free-will, orbiting your grey matter, is as much a part of the causal order as the orbiting of the planets around the sun.

New conditioning, based on day to day experiences, can alter or modulate hardwired responses (i.e., certain daily stressors become mitigated and diminished over time due to increased tolerance). Nevertheless, you are completely imprisoned within your formative years, (which is why they are referred to as "formative," since you were quite literally sculpted to be precisely what you are right now without any volition or "choice" on your part).

New stimuli is responded to in old ways, generating additional circuitry linking up with other circuits. There is no such state as a “subconscious,” merely dormant circuits that could be easily influenced to fire at any time, often causing unwanted actions and behaviors.

The core self, or ”personality,” is hard wired and the direction the rest of your life takes is entirely predetermined by all the experiences that impacted your grey matter by age 5, in which you were genetically predetermined to respond just as you did. Circuits influence circuits, as the sculpting of grey matter continues on until the current ceases.

You are nothing more than a mechanistic sack of electrified meat. But what’s so bad about that? You are free to do what you do, because you cannot do anything but what the meat demands.

It’s the same old song and dance, because “there is nothing new under the sun.” Your life always seems the same, simply because it is a pattern of scripted impulses enmeshed in a neural network and interconnected to a grand  tapestry of billions of other repetitive networks all influencing you as you influence them. Neuro-circuits respond to the world thus insuring that the world will unfold as it must because your responses are guaranteed.

As neuroscience is gradually demonstrating, the predetermined causal order knows exactly what you will think before you think it.

You are nothing more than a product, an outcome, a result, influencing additional results that end up influencing you in a unified infinite feedback loop that began long before you became a predetermined product of that causal order. The universe set the conditions for your material manifestation and your manifestation is a necessary component of an unfolding natural order. Everything that happened to you today was predetermined to happen in order for tomorrow to be exactly as it must be.

You are both cause and effect, because the universe from which you emerged, and that has shaped your entire life, has itself been shaped by what you do within it. Neither you nor the causal order that shaped you, "chooses" a direction, because that direction has always been certain, regardless of the circuits in your skull that emphasize uncertainty and doubt. It has always been certain that you would experience doubt and uncertainty and, for most, it is certain that will never change.

You are product of a predetermined causal order that has shaped and sculpted every experience that your brain encounters and every response it subsequently projects into that causal order, thereby, generating additional emergent properties that will stimulate more of this same unfolding.

Looking back on your life it is easy to see that everything that happened had to happen exactly as it did. Every electro-chemical ‘thought’ impulse had to arise exactly as it did for you to “think” exactly as you do now.

I have isolated myself from the world in waves of abject despondency and fully engaged it with relentless vigor and vitality. Then one day, I saw the pattern with crystal clarity and recognized “I-me” had nothing to do with it.

Hence, I simply kept on doing what I was doing.

Your fate is sealed. Your destiny is entirely predetermined and what you do in the next moment will be exactly what should be done, no matter how you wish to evaluate it afterward. In a predetermined causal universe, the sinner is as necessary as the saint and neither are responsible for what they must do.

So whatever you wish to do, go ahead and just fooking do it.

You will anyway, whether you want to or not…


Artwork by Igor Morski

The Past Has Always Been Present

 
Some 13 billion years ago, you were born. Certainly not the “I-me” you experience now, but everything that preceded what you experience now had to unfold for “you” to experience this moment now. If the universe unfolded in any other way, you would not experience this moment exactly as you now experience it.

Many Ghandis and Hitlers had to have existed for you to be in the present moment you are now experiencing. Therefore, what you are doing now is what you should be doing now or you wouldn't be doing it.

There is nothing you should be doing but what you’re doing now.

However, if wanting to do something other than what you’re doing now is what you want to do now, then go ahead and do that instead. You are never NOT present to the moment you are now in, even if in this moment now you’re utilizing some practice as a means of trying to “be in the moment” that you believe you are not in now.

Egocentric mammalians rely exclusively on the chronic non-acceptance of the moment as it is, believing that each moment should be other than what it is and it does seem clear this has always been their fate as a species.

Yet, based on a predetermined causal universe, if the moment was to be experienced in a way other than how you are now experiencing it, it is certain you would experience it in just that way and no other.

When you pray for something, you ask for change and for something to be other than what it is. When you meditate, you seek to experience something different from what you are now experiencing, to acquire some new mental state or way of feeling. When you engage in ‘spiritual’ practices based on ideological rules, some “Master of Change” made up, you seek for a different moment than this one now.

The internet is a teeming cesspool of religio-spiritual ideologies, rules, rituals and practices, to aid you in experiencing a different moment than the one you are in right now, by informing you that the moment you are in right now is not the moment you should be in right now. 

Millions of ideologies have been constructed exclusively to cater to your consistent non-acceptance of whom and what you are in this moment and your desire to change this moment into something else by desiring the ‘self’ experience something other than what it now experiences.

Nevertheless, even the desire to change the moment is wrapped up in the moment. You are never NOT in the moment, even when in the past moment. Seeking to change the moment is IN the moment. A thought to achieve a different experience in the future is an electro-chemical impulse of the present, just as a thought not to do what was once done is in the moment.

However, as neuroscience is demonstrating, due to a slight delay in neural processing (Libet experiment) even a moment experienced ‘now’ is a moment that has already passed, making the past an experience in the present moment. Those who prescribe seeking “pure consciousness” fail to realize that all experiences have a miniscule time delay, thereby, making it already a past experience upon being experienced in the present.

That thought that you’re thinking right now, actually occurred a second before you thought it. Hence, the paradox is that every present moment is of the past and every past moment is ultimately in the present.

That spiritual “awakening” you experienced happened before you experienced it, proving “you” had nothing to do with it and there is nothing to be done, but exactly what you’re doing. When the predetermined causal order decides you should wake up to some other moment, then there is no doubt you will, just not by choice.

Every self-proclaimed new age-master-guru-teacher tells you that there is something you must ‘do’ to be enlightened, some way you must think or behave. Over the years I found many to have fascinating ideas, until they prescribe a practice (like meditation or prayer), always with the implication that without this practice your achieving enlightenment is destined to fail.

Egocentrica mammalia wants to know what to do and can never accept that what he is doing is exactly what should be done. 

The tendency to be a teacher is compelling to egocentrica mammalians, since their entire life has been all about learning how to have exceptionally “happy” moments by actualizing a ‘self’ through historically prescribed socio-cultural methods of achieving “happiness.” Unfortunately, all this learning appears to have resulted in the very opposite of what they desire, but they keep plugging away in the “pursuit of happiness,” as only egocentrica mammalians can and must do, because the predetermined causal order compels them to believe they should be always doing something other than what they are doing in the moment.

If you’re supposed to do the prescribed practice, then your neuro-circuits will take you there and you will engage the practice and vigorously baptize it with grand meaning and purpose, simply because you have to, until some other sacred jewel catches your neuro-circuited up-to-the-moment programming. You have never had a choice in what experiences sculpted your brain circuits, even up to the point you made your first conscious decision to do something, in tangent with fully formed memory circuits allowing you to remember making that decision all by your ‘self.’

You are engaged in that spiritual practice simply because childhood experiences that sculpted the developing gray matter influenced other thoughts and actions, subsequently influencing others, on and on, leading you to the desire to be a “spiritual” person who engages “spiritual” practices.

Egocentrica mammalians love to proudly proclaim, “I did that,” as if they had any part in the experiences that program their grey matter, while the predetermined causal order indifferently allows the next thought to naturally arise as it always does, even before you think it and, thus, with no help from “you.”

You are part of an ever unfolding predetermined causal web. Your ‘choice' to become “spiritual” occurred billions of years ago, long before there was a delusion of an “I-me” making choices.

You are simply flowing along with a predetermined force that has shaped your consciousness just as it has shaped the entire universe. The universe not only gave you consciousness, but every object in consciousness as well. Some recommend not resisting this flow, but again, this is not up to “you,” because even your resistance is entirely allowed and enfolded within the causal order. 

Nothing is free of the predetermined causal WILL that allowed for the delusion of free-will to be experienced in the first place.

Every perception in every moment has been exquisitely sculpted to precisely provide the exact details you perceive in the moment of perception and all else is simply filtered out of awareness, because the neuro-circuits simply do not exist for which to experience other stimuli that it has not been precisely sculpted to experience. 

You perceive a world that the conditioned neuro-circuitry allows you to perceive, based on childhood experiences that have been programmed into the circuitry, thus filtering out other experiences. There are experiences all around you that you will never encounter, simply because you were not culturally progammed or genetically endowed with the precise circuitry, as well as dopamine/serotonin levels, necessary for that experience to register in your cranial fatty tissue.

You have no personal responsibility for your thoughts, beliefs and actions and the choice you make in the next moment was made long before your actual birth. The decision you make in the next moment is predetermined to be made exactly as you make it, because a predetermined causal universe has ordained it be made exactly as it is and in no other way can it occur.

Your acceptance of this fact, or your failure to accept, is entirely contingent on the current programmed impulses coursing through your dense noggin right this moment, because you are never NOT in the moment and so can only do what that moment prescribes.

Your neuro-circutry determines what you experience and how you will respond. So relax, kick back and get all jiggy with whatever the fook you’re doing right now, because it has been causally predetermined to be exactly what you should be doing right now. 

There can be nothing “wrong” in a causally determined universe and, hence, there has never once been a “problem” with anything that has happened or will happen, as it can only happen exactly as it must.


Artwork by altair4444

Christ Consciousness: Frying the Motherboard

  “….Christ Consciousness does NOT make correct or incorrect choices regarding the body. Christ Consciousness makes NO choices at all, because it lives in absolute CERTAINTY. In certainty, there is NO NEED to choose. Every thought you think MUST be in the mind, because it has always been certain that you would think it. Therefore, it follows that every action is performed as it MUST. There is no disparity between the certainty of Christ Consciousness and the body’s acting in accordance to that certainty, since the body is only an egocentric idea. In the certainty of Christ Consciousness, no choices NEED be made, because all choices have been made as ONLY they could have been made.” (The Certainty of Christ Consciousness, 2011)

Free-will asserts that there is an autonomous “I-me” that makes choices free of influence and free of the causal WILL that directs the entire universe. Free-will asserts that there is some autonomous ‘being’ in your brain, that “you” refer to as your “self,” that volitionally chooses thoughts before you think them and that your life is completely under the control of a WILL that is owned or ‘possessed’ by that autonomous 'chooser.' Free-will asserts that thoughts don’t just arise, but that you have a personal responsibility to choose the ‘right’ thoughts before you think them and all your life you have been taught which thoughts are ‘right’ and which are ‘wrong.’ Free-will automatically claims that if you have a thought that is ‘wrong,’ and subsequently act on that electro-chemical impulse, you are personally responsible, because you should not have allowed that thought to arise the moment it did. Certain neurons should not fire and others should.

Christ Consciousness (Buddha Mind, no-mind, or whatever you wish to label it) realizes that every thought that arises must have arisen exactly as it did, directed by a WILL not your own and that “you” are not free from.

The very thought you just now had, was simply waiting to arise since the beginning of time. Centuries of preceding activities and situations had to occur, and trillions and trillions of other thoughts had to arise, in other minds, for you to have the very thought you are having right…now. There is no chance, coincidence or uncertainty to a predetermined causal order that continues to infinitely unfold in your head.

Christ Consciousness exists in the certainty that every choice made had to be made exactly as it was and every choice that will be made will unfold exactly as it must. Egocentric free-will must always be uncertain; because it believes it has a choice in what unfolds and can direct a ‘self’ outside the WILL of a predetermined causal universe.

Yet, when you understand that every choice made had to be made exactly as it was, what could you be uncertain about?

For centuries, the unawakened and progressively more unaware, egocentrica mammalia, has done everything possible to achieve certainty in his choices, only to become more uncertain as the social fictions and cultural fantasies that guide his choices become more and more complex and contradictory. He constructs huge centers of higher learning in order to increase his certainty of purpose, whilst the ‘self’ constructed fictions all around him begin to dissolve into chaotic obscurity. “I must learn more!” he exclaims, while his brain clamors for freedom from the mess of his own tangled neuro-circuitry and the 'thoughts' that arise from it. More and more “knowledge” only confirms the utter uncertainty of his existence and seems to remove him further from the predetermined causal universe, even though being separate from that causal whole is impossible.

The delusion is that your life should be different and that you can change it. The delusion is that in this very moment you should be doing something different from what you are doing and this delusion is as much a part of the causal unfolding as any other part, until it’s gone.

What you’re doing in this moment is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. Whether you’re mindlessly masturbating to porn, while pumping down a sixpack of Bud, or actively and sincerely seeking to achieve “no-mind,” by meditating for many hours every day, neither choice is better or worse than the other. Whichever choice you have made is exactly what you should be doing simply because you ARE doing it, otherwise, based on a predetermined causal universe that you are totally enmeshed in and flowing with, you would be doing something else.

In an infinitely unfolding predetermined causal universe, the meditation master is no different or better than the beer guzzling pervert.

In a predetermined causal universe, masturbation and meditation hold no special significance to a causal order that values nothing over anything else, simply because it allows ALL to unfold and be experienced. Happiness and suffering are equally valuable to a predetermined causal order that allows both to be experienced. In the “Oneness” of a predetermined causal universe, life and death are not opposites, but equal in value.

Of course, to egocentrica mammalia, this idea sucks, because everybody knows meditation is more valuable than masturbation. He believes that life is more valuable than death and that a “happy” life is better than one full of suffering.

The non-duality of Christ Consciousness equalizes all opposites. Death and destruction are as much a part of the causal universe as life and construction. Hence, when all values exist in a non-dual equality, choices are no longer made based on free-will, but are just simply made with the understanding that they must be made exactly as they will be made.

Valuing one thing over another is also part of the causal order, until the ‘chooser’ disappears, never to be experienced again, while choices still continue to be made as they always have.

A lot of folks are getting close to this, based on their suffering from the Symptoms of Approach. These symptoms are outside your capacity to control and you will mostly likely seek relief from them as they can be quite uncomfortable and even frightening.

When the fictional realities of a fictional ‘self’ living in a fictional social order, along with other fictional selves, begins to lose value and recede, a deep sense of depression results, since there are progressively less anchor points for the fictional ‘self’ to actualize itself as real. In addition, a tendency to isolate may become demonstrative due to the extreme discomfort of participating in socially scripted interactions, through meaningless roles, masks and gestures. You may gradually find yourself no longer caring about things others find immensely important. None of this can be explained to anyone, because they do not see what you see. Marriages fail, friends fade away, as relationships become almost impossible to maintain. Many things may drop to the wayside, family, activities, hobbies, interests, desires, goals, aspirations, etc, and other things may require seemingly super human effort to even engage at all (socializing becomes a test of endurance). But you’re not approaching some watered down version of truth, but the brute, raw reality of your existing non-existence.

This path to awakening can be a lonely one indeed and some have yet to realize they are on this path. But you have never had a choice in this. You are not the driver and only along for the ride.

The Symptoms of Approach merely indicate that you are coming closer to a complete neuro-circuit overload. A frying of the mother board, burning up useless circuitry in a total shock to the system. This is not a brain disorder like Alzheimer’s, but simply the natural discontinuation of electro-chemical current that fires up circuits not related to truth. Yet, like Alzheimer’s, it is simply not under your control to alter or change in any way and all efforts to do so have been predetermined as part of the causal universe.

You cannot “choose” to take this path, because in a predetermined causal universe, all choices have already been made. There is nothing you can do to alter this path. You cannot slow it down or speed it up. However, all attempts to do so are part of the process and choosing to medicate the symptoms is also part of the process. This may ebb and flow, over many years, in fluctuating waves of engaging the process and running from it in fear, in moving forward only to quickly pull back again. You have been on this path since before you were born. Advancing toward emptiness can be a very frightening experience and many have compared it to death, because it emphasizes the nothingness of all values currently held dear.

In order to get to nothing, you must first be disillusioned by everything and that’s not a good feeling (for all the bliss bunnies out there).

There must be a shock to the system, a complete overhaul of perspective, a gradual frying of the mother board toward the realization that there is no free-willed, autonomous self making choices of its own volition, free and separate from the WILL of a predetermined causal universe.

I mean, think about it…

Who really wants to achieve that kind of certainty, in which everything you were once “certain” about is completely null and void?

I didn’t.

I wanted “bliss.”

In the end, you will die and you will “know,” nothing more than you now know in this very moment and…

…that's “enlightenment.”

Artwork by Zach Johnson

Freedom is Absent Free-Will...

“The distinction between “higher” and “lower” systems in the brain offers no relief: as the conscious witness of my experience, I no more initiate events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat. There will always be some delay between the first neurophysiological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if there weren’t— even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states— I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know— it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?” Harris, Sam (2012-03-06). Free Will (p. 9). Simon & Schuster, Inc.

What will your next ‘thought’ be? You have no ‘idea’ until you think it and what comes up will be influenced entirely by the variables of the moment, such as external stimuli, and your response to those variables will be determined by genetic and socio-cultural programming, all of which you have no control over. In fact, neuroscience is studying how trauma, experienced by your ancestors (parents, grandparents, etc) has genetically shaped your current day neuroses.

It is true that you are a unique little snowflake, but “you” were shaped by preceding events and factors that had to occur to make your existence an actuality. The core ‘self’ is genetically hard-wired in your brain and any changes made are a product of already formed circuitry and, thus, were entirely predetermined. The fact that you quit smoking exactly when you did was preceded by numerous influential factors that shaped that decision right up to the moment it was made.

You struggle mightily against a predetermined causal order in an attempt to wrest some crumbs of control from an indifferent, but infinitely unfolding, universe. Sometimes it seems you have succeeded, only to look back and find that all your failures and successes were pre-scheduled as part of a preordained causal order that began long before you existed, but made your existence possible.

Egocentric ‘control’ is different from the control found in the rest of the natural order. While a lion must control his thinking to acquire an antelope, in order to assuage his instinctual requirements, egocentrica mammalia demands control of his “thoughts” because, as opposed to the instinctual influences evident in the entire natural world, he believes he has free-will over what he thinks and this is his chief delusion and cause of all his suffering.

A lion is certainly in control of his thinking, as he concentrates on the antelope selected for dinner, but this is entirely influenced by the instinctual need to eat and the factual food before him. Hence we cannot say that the lion ‘controls’ his thinking, but that programmed instincts and external conditions specifically control what is thought, when and why, allowing the lion no free-will to think anything other than what is demanded in the moment. His reality is purely factual and there are no fictional considerations for which to concern his thought processes. He need not concern himself with fictional realities, such as what “clothes” to wear for dinner or whether there is enough “money” available to purchase his dinner, because there are no fictional realities involved in filling his belly with food. He has no ‘self’ for which to make fictional preferences as to what antelope he might devour since clearly he will eat the exact one he can most easily catch.

Human egocentrica mammalia thinks that he chooses his thoughts. However, if this were factual, shouldn’t he always ‘think’ only the most advantageous thoughts he could ‘choose’? Why is egocentrica mammalia so fooking miserable? If he can choose his thoughts, why is he then not immensely “happy” every moment of his life, regardless of external conditions? If he can choose each and every thought in his head, why not choose only the most positive and “happy” thoughts? If he can choose a thought before thinking it, why would he choose a thought that causes him to suffer? If he could choose what to think, why think a thoughts that causes anger, anxiety or depression? Why is it so hard for egocentrica mammalians to be “happy” if, in fact, they are in control of their thinking?

The answer is obvious...

Instead, he often thinks thoughts that he would rather not think, but feels compelled nevertheless, because of the suffering those thoughts entail. This demonstrates that he has no free-will to choose his thoughts, because his thinking is entirely owned by the fictional and factual realities of a predetermined causal order that determine his “thoughts” for him and every one of those thoughts are wired up in the circuitry between his ears. Egocentrica mammalian thought processes are often so disparaging and dreadful that he turns to drink and drugs to anesthetize the electro-chemical impulses (thoughts) coursing through his grey matter. An entire fictional world, referred to as “entertainment,” needed to be constructed as a means of distracting him from his own neuro-circuit impulses.

Just like the lion, egocentrica mammalia cannot “think” outside his neuro-circuits and the external conditions that determine which circuits fire up in response to those conditions, thereby, provoking actions and behaviors that the “self” claims are chosen volitionally. This demands that he generate more circuits through a process of “education” which allows him to construct ever more complex fictional realities through which to control his body and his personal world as a means of continually actualizing as fact his fictional ‘self.’ The lion has no fictional ‘self’ wired up in his noggin and, thus, must only give attention to the factual needs of the body. The lion cares not if his thoughts are positive or negative, good or bad, right or wrong. He has no choice in his thinking and moves with the predetermined causal order as that order directs him.

Egocentrica is controlled by his fictional realities, demanding he find ever more ingenious methods to escape that control and thus be in control of the predetermined causal order. “Crime” is a fictional reality that seeks to circumvent fictional “laws” and actualize a fictional ‘self’ outside the predominant fictional realities of the fictionalized social order. But the criminal is as much victim to the fictional realities as those who reverently adhere to the fictional laws. Fictional realities of the social order determine what you ‘think’ and you have never had a choice in that and nor do you have a choice in when you will think what you think as external conditions will prompt conditioned programmed responses to be exactly as they must.

You did not create the fictional realities that currently demand your participation and that give fictional meaning to your factual life by determining how and what to think. I imagine that most people, if they had a choice, would not participate in half the silly social games they now feel compelled to engage with. Fictional realities were thrust upon you with absolutely no choice as to when, where or why. The education and learning of fictional realities packed tightly in your cranium makes all the choices for you based on programmed circuitry that you had no personal responsibility in developing.

The essential fictions were programmed into your head and you now automatically respond from that programming. As much as you try to control your fate, it has already been predetermined, unless of course, the predetermined causal order removes you completely, but you have no choice in that either.

All this may sound fairly bleak; however, for some it could result in a ‘surrender’ to the WILL of a predetermined causal order, but only if the circuits take you there, since it is electro-chemical impulses within fatty tissue that makes choices and not “you.” There is no “you” in there and there never was.

Essentially, a sense of dread and defeatism is often experienced with the realization that every ‘choice’ ever made had to be made exactly as it was, which will inevitably lead to other choices being made exactly has they have to be made. Your ‘life’ is exactly how it should be in this moment based on all the moments that brought you to this moment, because you are always ‘in the moment,’ regardless of how you evaluate what is happening in that moment (also predetermined) and each moment is completely influenced by the moment preceding. You will still make ‘choices,’ but you can rest assured that any choice you make had to be made, regardless of your evaluating it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ after making it. You cannot act any differently than you do act in any moment, as each moment shapes the context of the next since the very moment the universe first came into being.

There is no reason to feel guilt for actions as all actions happen as they must or they would have happened differently. You may claim that you should have acted differently than you did in any moment, but if you could have acted other than you did, and “you” are in control of your thinking, why did you not choose thoughts that allowed for a different action? What is actually occurring is that you’re simply responding on auto-pilot to external stimuli in ways you have been socio-culturally programmed to respond. There was no volitional ‘choice’ involved at all. Actions impacted upon the grey matter years ago, in turn, determine behaviors occurring in this very moment, just as this very moment conditions the brain for future moments.

You are on a path not of your making, but that path has been unfolding long before you were even born.

Although you are certainly making decisions that provide direction, the decisions are merely programmed responses to external events, both of which are outside your control. You cannot understand the ‘purpose’ of the path you are on because it is interwoven with a trillion other purposes that were predetermined to be followed before you were born to be who you are, that had to be made for you to be who you are, and your path is interwoven with other paths that must be followed simply as a result of your manifesting and being who you are. Make no mistake, entire civilizations had to fall, world wars needed to be waged and millions had to live and die exactly as they did for you to be in this moment right now.

Whether saint or sinner, your only purpose is to go where the circuits take you and you will do that, because you cannot exit from that path because “you” did not choose it, but it was determined for you long before you existed. However, you can live in a state of surprise, in which little control is necessary and you ride the causal waves without predicting or preparing for what unfolds before you. Or not... depending on the circuitry.

Since you have no idea what your next thought will be, there is little need to worry about the future. Unless, of course, that just happens to be your next ‘thought.’ But that’s okay too, since it had to arise exactly as it did, exactly when it did and, hence, there is no need to fret about it unless, of course, you’re wired up to fret about it in the moment you do, which is exactly what was supposed to happen as it obviously did or else it would not have happened exactly as it did.

The predetermined causal waves you ride each and every moment have been occurring long before you came on the scene and will continue long after the worms have completely devoured your rotting carcass. Your actual freedom is defined by the complete absence of free-will in the recognition that your life will unfold exactly as predetermined. There is nothing you need do about it, because there is nothing you can do, but watch it happen exactly as it must and how you evaluate each moment is as much destined to be a part of the next moment as the previous moment’s actually occurring exactly as it did.

Based on circuited responses wired up in your brain, you will either joyously ride the predetermined causal waves or suffer through years of madly swimming for some fictionally safe shoreline. Either way, the choice has never been yours to make, but it will always strangely seem that some nebulous shadowy “I-me” experience is ‘choosing’ to madly pump out ‘thoughts’ within a calcium shell and making choices based on its own free-will. This will seem real until the time comes that it recognizes it has never made a choice that was not part of predetermined causal order outside its control, but that it has never been separate from. In the universal ‘oneness’ of an unfolding causal order, every choice made was predetermined to be made long before the experience of making it had occurred.

Your WILL has never been your own.

Artwork by George Grie

Awakening to Fictional Realities...

I received many email questions regarding my previous post Your Fictional New World Order (with thanks to disinfo.com for reposting) and so I would like to further elucidate points made in that post.

A fictional reality is something that is not factual, but engaged with as if it were an undeniable fact and that, thereby, sculpts facts to fit the fiction. 

Factual things are constructed to support fictional realities and entire lives unfold almost entirely through fictions. A need for food is a bodily fact, but grocery stores and restaurants are fictional realities ingeniously constructed to manage factual hunger in fictional ways that we find more satisfying and pleasurable. Hunger is a fact. The many ways we assuage hunger is based on fiction. Starving Ethiopians have no fictional realities regarding hunger.

To live in a fictional reality requires the “willing suspension of disbelief.”

If suspension of disbelief were not possible, fictions such as society, career, marriage, money, government, war, love, truth, etc, etc, etc, on and on ad nauseam, would not be possible. Entire technologies have been invented to support fictions that require the use of factual objects to make the fictional reality a fact. A house, made of physical materials, is a fact, but a “home” is entirely fictional, as are all the factual objects we perpetually stuff into a house to support the fictional reality of a “home.”

However, all fictional realities begin with the most complex fiction of all, that you are a factual “self,” and from that fiction all subsequent fictions magically unfold. 

Belief in a fictional world demands belief in the greatest fiction of all…that you have a 'self' and that 'self' is a seriously indisputable fact and not a fictional reality. You can touch a factual body, but you cannot touch a fictional 'self.'  Hence, this demands chronic, daily self-actualizing through fictional realities to maintain and manage the 'self' as factual.

If the self were to finally be recognized as a fiction, all other fictions would crumble of the weight of their own insignificance, since it was the fictional ‘self’ from which all other fictions were invented. A fictional ‘self’ must constantly be “actualized” to maintain and manage it as an actual fact. The fictional reality of a ‘society’ provides a menu of fictional self-actualizing avenues and paths. A fictional ‘self’ that can no longer be actualized through the fictional realities available through the social menu of fictions becomes a burden to the fictional "society." If the fictional self defies or negates the available menu of self-actualizing fictions, it must be silenced or made to conform (hence, the Snowden affair). The killing spree of Charles Manson was based on fictional realities. But then, so was the military occupation and bombing of Iraq.

As a psychotherapist (fiction), my job is to assist people in managing their personal fictions, because they believe, above and beyond all other fictions, that the 'self' they identify with is factual and not fictional. If they did not believe the “self” a fact, I would be out of work. If I were to emphasize the exact nature of their fictional realities I would also be out of work. Hence, I (a fiction) work delicately with the fragile fictional realities of the fictional selves I meet with, because I recognize the lack of free-will in those attached to the fictional realities of a fictional self. Essentially, in one way or another, we are all victimized by the very fictions we require be factual and this includes the fictional 'self.'

Frequently, there are certain facts that cause fictions to become impossible to maintain. There have been reports of fictional selves who commit suicide because they lost all their fictional "money" in a fictional reality called the “stock market.” In addition, if a fictional self becomes suddenly inflicted with a factually debilitating disease or severe physical disability, then numerous fictional realities may need to be discarded and this is often  highly traumatic for a fictional self, thereby, requiring other fictions through which to actualize it “self” as a fact. Fictional “careers” can be terminated instantly, due to sudden alterations in other fictional realities (i.e. fictional “economy”). Fictionally paired units, called “marriages” could be rent asunder for various reasons, subsequently, taking down with it all the fictional appendages necessary to maintain the fictional reality of “marriage” and “family” that is the cohesive, but purely fictional, micro-tapestry of a fictional macro “society.” Egocentrica mammalians have grave difficulty adapting to changes in fictional realities that become necessary due to changes in factual realities. This is apparent in the numerous ways egocentrica mammalians seek to conserve their fictional “way of life.”

“Society” is an expansive fiction containing myriad other intricately interlocking fictions from which fictional selves function through fictional purposes. It has fictional rules and boundaries that fictional selves agree are fact. The “United States of America” is a fictional reality. It is a fiction that fictional selves agree on as fact, with fictional boundaries, as well as fictional “armies” (factually large groups of fictional selves with factual weapons) and fictional “governments” for which to protect those boundaries. Hence, fictional selves proclaim all people on this side of the fictional boundary “citizens” and those on that side “aliens.” Essentially, if there were no fictional boundaries on a factual planet, there could be no wars. If I cannot locate the enemy within fictional borders, I might accidentally bomb those who agree with my fictional reality and that would suck.

“Terrorism” has become one the most incredible fictional realities ever devised by human egocentrica mammalia. Since there are no fictional borders anyone can be considered a terrorist, requiring ever more abundant fictional "laws" serving to identify a fictional terroroist. This makes it that much easier to control everyone through the predominant fictional reality of fighting fictional "terrorism."

Anything created to support a fiction, must itself be fictional (even though it may have factual properties) and, hence, we exist in a complex spinning vortex of contradictory fictions. Many fictional “citizens” fear their fictional “boundaries” may dissolve and this would require defining their fictional selves in new ways. A fictional “self” could not consider itself as a fictional “American” if the fictional boundaries on a map were not believed, protected and reinforced by fictional authorities with fictional laws and factual guns. A “war” is also completely fictional and it requires that boundaries between fictional “states” be agreed upon by fictional “citizens” existing within those borders.

Egocentrica Mammalians are more concerned with conserving their fictional realities, culminating in fictitious “lifestyles,” then with conserving their factual resources. The “American way of life” is entirely fictional and is a tenuous and fragile weaving together of fictional values and moralities that often require fictional selves endure factual death to protect.

“Christianity” is a fictional story used as a foundation to construct fictional laws for which to maintain order and preserve boundaries. This is why fictional selves proclaim that we are a “Christian nation,” totally forgetting that a “nation” is as fictional as the “God” who blesses our bombs, but not the bombs of that other fictional “nation” over there. The fiction of an omnipotent being in the sky, demanding that you not covet your neighbor’s wife, was merely a necessary fiction to ensure the sanctity of fictional marriages, which serves to bind a fictional “society” together. "Thou shalt not steal" serves to protect the property that we amass to reinforce our fictional realities.

However, currently we are observing a gradual dissolution of fictional realities. A collective awakening to fictional realities is picking up steam. 

Unfortunately, this is resulting in a push by those fictional “selves” who strongly desire to conserve their specific fictional realities. As the fictions that bind a fictional “society” together begin to lose their relevance, chaos ensues because a fictional ‘self’ no longer has any fooking idea what its fictional purpose is, because any purpose a fictional self would have must be, subsequently, fictional and provided only within the fictional “boundaries” that make up the fictional “society” in which it resides.

In many places fictional governments have fallen and new fictional governments take control and perpetuate alternative fictions with fictional laws. Those who disagree with the new fictional laws, invented to maintain and impose order on the fictional selves in a particular fictional society, then seek to overturn that fictional government so as to impose their own fictions as fact. This has been a never-ending theme of fictional selves existing within fictional boundaries and may continue on ad infinitum.

It does appear that conserving fictions is egocentrica mammalias sole purpose for existing and most of the suffering apparent in the world today is related to protecting fictional realities. 

In fact, recall that the fiction of “banks,” invented to manage large sums of fictional “money,” required billions of fictional “dollars,” collected from the fictional “taxes” of fictional selves existing within fictional boundaries, or “society, in order to preserve the fiction of “banking,” considered the cornerstone of a fictional “economy,” which tends to make some fictional selves enjoy the comfort of fictional “wealth,” while others exist in fictional “poverty.”

Nevertheless, the United States was created, by a bunch of fictional selves writing a fictional “constitution” (on a factual piece of parchment) to allow for numerous different fictional realities to exist in some form of peace and harmony. This revered fictional “constitution” made the bold claim that all fictional selves had the right to a factual life with fictional “liberty” and the factual pursuit of fictional “happiness.” The idea was to allow people to have the freedom to invent their own fictional realities without the need to conform to the fictional “nations” fictional “way of life” as ordained by a fictional “dictator” or “king.”

However, living in a fictional “society” in which all fictional realities are equal was very problematic, because fictional selves have a tendency to demand their fictional reality be seen as factual truth and will factually kill non-believers of that predominant fiction. Yet, this problem was easily solved through a fictional system referred to as “capitalism.”

Capitalism is a fiction that claims that the chief purpose of a fictional self is to generate as much fictional “money,” or fictional “wealth,” as possible and, hence, those fictional selves with the most fictional “wealth” have the fictional power to direct the fictional society. Thusly, the fiction of capitalism trumped all other fictional realities and this was seen as advantageous with regard to the horrors endured through centuries of fictional “religions.”

With the fiction of “capitalism” (actually derived from and supported by the fiction of Christianity”) egocentrica mammalians now had a serious fictional purpose, which serves as cohesive glue for fictional “citizens” and maintains and manages the functioning of those fictional selves in a fictional society. This seemed to be the purpose of the fictional constitution, in which all fictional realities could coexist harmoniously and you could worship any fictional “God” you wanted as long as the basic conduct of your life conformed to the fiction of capitalism, or fictional “wealth” creation, no matter which part you played, titan of industry or welfare queen.

Yet, alas, it is the fate of all fictions to have the curtain pulled back, seeing it as nothing more than a naked fiction, with no factual properties whatsoever and often only serving to hide the facts. The problem is that the fictional “self” has very few options left for ordering its fictional “societies” because, as can be seen throughout history, when one fictional reality is destroyed the fictional reality that takes its place is often as fictionally absurd as the one that ended (as can be seen by the dictatorial and oppressive presence the fiction of “capitalism” is now evolving into).

Is there a factual reality that fictions cover up? Is egocentrica mammalia so frightened of the factual reality that he must construct fictional realities to hide from fact? Is egocentrica mammalia cursed with the inability to SEE fact and must only see his conjured up fictions?

Many human egocentrica mammalians continue to perpetuate the belief that there is a better fictional reality that fictional selves can one day realize if we only destroy the current fictional reality that is much worse than the better fictional reality

However, there are fictional selves out there that have developed the unique capacity to separate fact from fiction and they have started with the “self,” in the recognition that there is no need to go any further than that fictional reality.


Artwork by Mark Ryden