Lots of contemplation happening these days. Life-long friends seem to be asking the same questions and running into similar confusions, experiencing similar epiphanies.
If there really is something dramatic happening in the collective, it’s not enough for anybody to freely talk about. I also doubt the importance of advertising it here. Then I often question whether I am a victim of my own subjectivity, taking my mental filter of reality too seriously.
TV and movies are talking about the similar subject matter… secrets revealed, the mayans exposed, what 2012 means, the paranormal, the unexplainable, doomsday.
Does nobody else think this is strange?
Does anybody else think this should have been on the news more than Tiger Woods?
It blows my mind what the media brushes aside, what they fixate on, and what the mass is okay with absorbing every single night on the tube.
It also blows my mind that we still play the game of following or voting for politicians, pastors, or school faculty who often make a valiant effort to hide anything human about themselves.
Why don’t we think rituals like church communion or even the opening ceremonies for the Olympics are a little strange (i.e., people in white robes zombie-flocking to the speech-master)? Do we ignore original ideas or questions in our mind relating to why we do things the way we do?
Why do priests wear conical hats and peculiar robes, and carry that staff around? Why does the clergy stick to the same structure that breeds child molesters? What is psychological reason for it, despite its self-declared connection to God? What if God doesn’t like religion? What if God doesn’t “like”?
Why does a graduating class wear a square hat at graduation, move the tassel to the side, and throw it up in the air? Why do we agree to participate in rituals without asking or knowing what it all means?
Why do so many relationships end with break-up lines from movies or t.v. shows? Why does anybody think “The Bachelor” is reality/real? Why are extremo-masculine and extremo-feminine themes in movies something enjoyed and sought after in real life? See: The Transporter or The Time Travelers Wife.
Why are we okay with repeating empty catch-phrases when giving somebody advice?
I decided to re-watch Zeitgeist The Movie last night, mainly because it is the new remastered version, and has a little bit extra added to it.
Zeitgeist is not for the feeble, or even strong set-in-stone minded people. It challenges the biggest things relating to the conditioned mind of humanity, and most likely, even you have some of it.
It confronts what many Americans think we know about religion and government. So if you feel offended or irritated by those kinds of things, you probably won’t want to watch it.
I came around to watching Zeitgeist years ago because a friend of mine posted a link to it on myspace. I had a long phase of reading about religion and “the worlds biggest secrets”, and this came at an interesting time.
Whether or not you buy into this stuff, there is a clear sign of insanity in the way things are run in this world.
I feel like I’ve always known it, and have been fascinated by it in a way. Unfortunately, sometimes I’m so repulsed by human behavior that it causes problems of their own and doesn’t really help anything. My theory is that the ego’s problems can’t be solved by the ego. There has to be a new way of thinking, or even no thinking at all; that is, settling down the compulsive conversations we carry in our heads.
If the planet were small enough to study under a microscope, humans would look like little cells. We move about, build things, are drawn to other humans, repelled by others, and we reproduce. Our actions may even be recognized similar as the behavior of cancer cells, because, like cancer, humans are not working in harmony with life around it.
Ego appears to be the problem, because we’re so invested in it’s beliefs and self-image. We could still have egos and function fine, but without keeping the ego in check, or even recognizing its behavior, we are owned by its fears and limitations. A false sense of identity is steering the human vehicle. We are not free, but at the mercy of our ego-based neural wiring to make decisions. That includes all of the conditioning of our past, and preoccupations about our future. If you don’t think you’re a prisoner of your conditioning, try to notice when you get angry or defensive about something you believe, and see if it makes any sense to you.
Then there’s affirmations, the attempt at re-conditioning the mind to something of a more positive nature. “I love myself,” or “Everyday, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” Those hypnotic phrases might help you become productive for a while. The problem is, there’s nothing integrative about affirmations. You can pump your mind with positive reinforcement all day long, but you still have the polar opposite lingering around somewhere in the shadows. And when it rears it’s ugly head, you’re like the Patrick Swayze character on Donnie Darko; a self-help guru catatonically rocking back and forth, crying in his bedroom.
There’s an intelligence that is completely unique to our mammal-hood; one where new ideas are formed, intuition is developed, and flow is experienced. And it’s been proven that it only arrives when the mind enters small windows of silence amongst the internal conversational mind-chatter.
In my own rare experience, it’s those times of clarity when a new perception arises, and nothing more is needed. People on the outside even react to your state. It’s almost like the exaggerated portrayal of a monk walking amongst the forest with birds and squirrels perching on his shoulder, displaying an auric sheen. If a person can hold this state long enough, included that past and future are no longer a concern, then new experiences unfold. There is a whole new respect and appreciation for life, nature, animals, even for the squarish assholes on T.V.
I once read something where a guy had an epiphany. He suddenly considered that if he experienced life through another human being, from birth to death, same physiology and life-events, he would BE that person. He would act, look, dress just like them, and completely 100% be them, inside and out. It was a sudden paradigm shift from judgment to compassion. It was Joe Rogan who wrote that on his blog.
What is the part of you that could possibly experience the life of another person? It’s essentially what is experiencing your own life now. The part of you that is aware of what you see, touch, feel, taste, etc. It is what every single human, animal, and plant have. It is awareness capable of observing. It’s the lingering “something” that’s under the mind-chatter, and what steers your cells into the proper places for your body to even exist.
Then there is the trick of becoming aware of awareness. This awareness can expand or we can confine it within our own little mind-based world. But if it expands enough, that’s when we get a sense of being plugged in to the whole, and we start living in harmony with our surroundings. It can only happen when the mind is immersed in the present moment. The same idea is in the beginning of Zeitgeist.
I’m not a big fan of getting entangled in worrying about petty things, or getting involved with human micro-dramas. A lot of people experience a strange pleasure in living dysfunctional lives. I can’t say co-dependency and power-struggles have had lasting positive results for me. Human insanity is starting to rear it’s ugly head at this point in time, I think to the point where humanity might be forced into a major shift in direction before we all destroy ourselves.
Weird times.
So the solution to human crazy-ness is always a foggy one. But I think we can have confidence enough in ourselves to remember an experience or state of mind that may have once harmonized on a much deeper level than any words can ever describe. If we’re lucky enough, we may find it again hidden in our present experience. Then, life may be so kind to bestow the next little piece of the puzzle.
Birthdays seem to have multiple celebrations in my family, so they’re more like birthweeks.
Today Erin threw a surprise party for Josh and a group of us played pool at a cool-people bar, where the prime selection of women and men appear to be manifestations of an MTV reality show cast. It’s always better for me to leave these types of bars before coming down from a beer buzz. Otherwise a part of me buys into the illusion that I don’t belong on this planet.
What I found particularly interesting is how the server girl came to our table multiple times through the night, and would ask everybody individually if they needed anything, skipping me each time; no eye contact, not even a glance. I traded seats with somebody, same result. I thought maybe it could be that she liked me or something, but then I remembered that male/female interactions don’t really work that way after elementary school.
I spent the entire day recovering from my stay in Roswell for the last week, then went to work tonight for some local hip-hop R&B show.
It’s been a long time since I’ve absolutely dreaded being at work. Tonight was one of those nights. I’ve reflected on the times where I’ve felt similar, and it usually relates to a sense of losing hope in the future of the human race.
There was no reason for me to work tonight; there were almost more performers than there were audience members. Despite the small turn-out, a guy from security told me how everyone was treating themselves like VIPs, exchanging passes to get access back stage, free drinks, etc. It was like neanderthals parading self-glorification, making sure to have poop readily available in hand if chucking became necessary. The music was like plugging headphones into excrement. The lyrics were 99% about pride in being 100% worthless. The bloated confidence behind it is what made the experience unbelievable.
I watched two girls get in a fight, one standing at a lower level behind a handrail, the other facing in the opposite direction at a table. The one standing below grabbed a handful of the other girl’s hair and tried to pull her over a railing by her head. Her neck was surprisingly bendable, as the other girl was yanking, as if tugging a rope in tug-o-war.
Cops were everywhere and security was doubled because of the potential for gang violence. If the venue made any money at all, it would only be because of the excessive purchases of Corona and Bud Light.
My thoughts fed on the atmosphere of negativity. I slammed down a mallet of judgment like never before. Most of the time I can laugh it off, but tonight, a part of me was considering that maybe it’d be good for a portion of humanity to become extinct.
Lately I’ve been chewing Vitamin C like cud, fighting off something like a cold. My nose runs and everything is 20 decibels quieter.
I stopped by Josh and Erin’s tonight, threw some darts, and had some beverages. Then we watched some HD Planet Earth as Sigur Ros played through the sound system; a mind-blow.
Nature. It’s filled with organisms that live to consume one another. It is beautiful, and we accept it as it is (minus the occasional sad-remark when a monkey gets eaten by a lion).
Due to a Sigur Ros induced thought-stream as the imagery of nature was displayed in front of my face, I got thinking about what we don’t accept about human nature. We consume each other all the time, not on a physical level, but energetically. We still try to dominate one another in one way or another. I’ve been resistant to the way humanity manages itself through incessant power-seeking, from the micro (one human over another) to macro (one human over many) level.
Maybe it is in our nature to be spreading across the world like cancer. Maybe there’s supposed to be an elite ruling class of people. Maybe your boyfriend is supposed to manipulate you into staying in a terrible relationship. This is nature where galaxies consume galaxies, and atoms attract and repel other atoms. The stronger is supposed to win, and dominate the weaker.
But, even the strongest alpha-male creature at the top of the food chain will eventually become acquainted with the vultures who circle his head and begin to peck at him before he lets out his last breath.
Nature is beautiful. Nature is ugly. It’s still nature.
People say that humans have cut themselves off from nature. Maybe it’s our nature to do so.
The good thing about humans is that we have the ability to do with ourselves what we want, by figuring out what we allow to consume us, and to know what/who we consume and why.
Something that I’ve noticed; the most memorable human-beings in history have become noteworthy, not by being consumers of energy and power, but creators. Humanity likes to glorify and hold on to what a genius creates because there is a glimpse of something higher, more preferable than usual human thinking, found in each piece of brilliant creative work. Something happens in any creative process and art form; a transcendental shift occurs, in the artist and viewer, which is absolutely unexplainable by a human-eat-human state of consciousness… something that takes us closer to the truth behind it all.
Maybe we don’t have to be able to explain something to know our own truth, because the deepest truth we can experience and express is that which is unexplainable.
