Can we outgrow our animal instincts?

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I recently watched the movie Deliverance again, and it makes me wonder if humankind will ever outgrow its animal instincts and unenlightened way of living. But does enlightenment mean to outgrow nature, or is it rather the more violent and destructive—the mindless—aspects of (human) nature? What role does humankind play in the evolution of life? Is there really even an evolution, a progression, a growth out of one thing and into another? There is a part of me that feels that humans are different than the rest of nature, but how, really? Can what we see as peace and violence/destruction co-exist? Are they necessarily opposed to each other? Are we meant to evolve out of the base level of “survival of the fittest?” I think that I agree with the idea that what sets humans apart from a great deal of nature is the capacity for compassion. I see a great struggle between the basic animal instincts and this potential for compassion and enlightenment.

Is this path of enlightenment what has caused us to lose our sight of where we fit into this world, what has put us in conflict with it, causes us to not understand? Or is it a misunderstanding of enlightenment? I think it is the latter. A good question, though, is: where do we fit in? Do we fit in? And yet, I think we separate ourselves too much from nature, and destroy, or ignore and patronize so much from which we can learn a great deal about ourselves. Perhaps such are the pitfalls and growing pains of evolution.

I do think, though, that the great Greek philosophers were right when they saw “the state”, or “society”, as the way of human evolution and enlightenment. We have yet, though, to balance society with the nature it seems to have been so far designed to shut out and evolve past. I do think that society is what will allow humans to evolve and grow and achieve our potential, partially because it is a situation in which we can, and must, give up our ego-based arrogance. But, as is clearly evidenced all around us, this is not what has happened so far. The ego and human arrogance is alive and kicking in Western societies. (It probably is in others as well, but I can only speak with any authority about what I have experienced.)

The trick, I think, is not to get ahead of ourselves. If Western ideology has done anything, it has gotten ahead of itself. Its misunderstanding of nature and the self are two such illustrations. This also fits in with my ideas of “children” and “adults”, and how I see us rushing into adulthood when we are not ready, and why we therefore end up children in adult clothing, which just perpetuates a whole bunch of complications and confusions and problems.

And it is also why I have seen so much so-called “progress” as no such thing. And so perhaps we must “regress” in certain respects, to get “back” to where some indigenous peoples of the Americas and some Asian cultures were. There is so much wisdom destroyed and disrespected and ignored. Western progress is not progress—it is a masquerade ball. Impatience, arrogance, ignorance—just like teenagers.

Western so-called “progress” is not human evolution, but has rather put the brakes on human evolution, or at least thrown a huge detour in the road. To where do we look to find our way back? The Hindus and Buddhists, and even “Jesus Christ”, have all told us: the self. The path of enlightenment is through the illusion of the self. That is the door; the door back; the door forward. You are your answer key. All the answers are in your assumptions and illusions. We all have the answers. We are perhaps asking the wrong questions. Or, said another way, we are asking the right questions wrongly. Rather than asking “What is the meaning of life,” we should be asking: what do we mean by “meaning?” What is “life?” Who am I. Why do I believe what I believe? Why do I do what I do?

To honestly seek the answers to these questions will change your entire understanding of everything.

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From my personal notes, 8/26/00

Martyr-Victim Complex

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Yesterday I was writing about selfishness and selflessness and the important distinction between for and about. I was trying to articulate my point, but a satisfactory explanation remained elusive. I think, though, that using the example of someone I know, I can put it this way: this person’s love for people, for example, is about her love for them. It is about her. It is self-oriented, self-involved. For her, the focus of her ostensible benevolence toward others is her (benevolence toward them). The point is that she does it, and that it is about her own self-validation and self-righteousness; and if she feels she has sacrificed in any way for it then that makes her that much more righteous and virtuous. It is such a “Western”, self-involved, and dare I say it, Judeo-Christian ethos. For, what is cloaked in a confused and false modesty is an over-inflated sense of self-importance (the hallmark of most “religious” people, incidentally). The point is that in the end, it is essentially, and revealingly, about her.

Anyone who exhibits this kind of narcissism, and there are many of them, reveal just how insecure, immature, weak, and unenlightened they really are. The thought that has run through my mind many times over the years when listening to this person bitch, complain, and pronounce in judgment has been, “Jeez, it’s not all about you.” Which, itself, is a beautiful irony for someone who has always considered everyone else in her life to be selfish, cruel, and uncaring for not considering her as much as she has seen fit. These are some of the subtle and complex trappings of the ego-self.

It makes sense in this person’s case, for she has said, ad nauseam, that she was emotionally neglected by her parents. Her reaction was to bolster herself up, to say, “I am important,” and therefore ended up living that way, that “I” am important. But the subtle thing about it is that this was internalized and expressed subconsciously, for on the outside (and this is the neurosis of the victim mentality) she acted the martyr (always subconsciously making you very aware of her sacrificing for you).

But that is victim mentality. It is a fairly common behavior by those who have been abused in some way, or even simply feel that they’ve been abused. A man, say, who was sexually abused as a child will hate his abuser, but will also love him/her in a twisted kind of way, and will often turn around and sexually abuse others. It is a “complex”. The person I’ve been talking about exhibits the same kind of behavior—hating her parents for her feelings of neglect, and so she internalizes the reaction against it (i.e., “I am important”), while on the outside still exhibiting martyr-type behavior that says she is not important. But it is the internal self-obsession that’s really running the show.

This is, in many ways, the very definition of selfishness, because it is all about the self—the denial of the self, the anger for the lack of satisfaction of the self, the frustrated desires of the self, etc. It is a sad thing for people to be this way, but it is important to see the truth of it, and to not condone such things just because it is a sad thing.

People who have this kind of martyr-victim complex exhibit a fucked up kind of selfishness, but it is selfishness nonetheless. Such people’s spiritual/emotional growth is impeded by this self-absorbed attitude, for they often over-emphasize their love of others and end up just a sad martyr. But their “love” of others is about the hole that their own feelings of neglect left in them. It is a subconscious longing to fill that hole so they can feel loved and thus worthwhile. They are simply precluded from (expressing) real love because they are so entrenched in “self issues”.

And so, never really understanding this, they self-righteously dish out ostensibly selfless acts, and feel that because they have done what is (outwardly) “Right” as opposed to what was done to them which was “Wrong,” they deserve, nay, demand, respect and love for it. It slides them, unknowingly, into a duty-based morality, with little genuine concern for the very real consequences of their actions. And so they get stuck in a cycle of self-importance and outwardly selfless acts.

The point here is that it is about them, their virtuous selflessness, about the fact that they are virtuous because of their “selfless” acts, then they are not selfless, but actually utterly self-full; they are literally self-obsessed, because they cannot get past themselves as the do-er of (and thus worthy—though neglected and never really appreciated—recipient of praise for doing) what is Right.

Thus, the question to be asked about a deed to determine whether it is selfish or selfless is not whom it is for, but whom it is about.

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From my personal notes, 8/26/00

Only when you let go of everything are you free to do anything

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Is the process of living truly, of really growing up, a messy—even somewhat dangerous—process? Absolutely. For it is not a clean and simple process—learning to think for ourselves. Because we will make mistakes, and will succumb to our conditioning, and we may think we are right when we are wrong, and we might do wrong things thinking we are right. But this is part of the process, and there is no way of getting around it.

In the realm of ‘child development’ they call this ‘growing pains,’ and that is exactly what adult-children have to go through as well. There is no avoiding it. Some will do it better than others. Some will not be able to do it in this lifetime, maybe not the next, maybe not the next.

If you’re one of the very few people who are actually part of the solution, accepting the fact that you will not see societal fruits of your labor in this lifetime is crucial. Part of this, though, is that you must realize that ‘the path’ (of seeing and living things as they really are) is the goal (in this life-time/dimension). The effort-process is the reward. For in reality, there is no such thing as ‘end,’ or ‘reward.’ They are but illusions as well. There is no end ‘Utopia’ where everyone will just be happy and be living the life of Eden, for let’s not forget that the bliss of Eden was the bliss of ignorance, not enlightenment. For to get to that point of enlightenment is but the beginning, not the end; it is the beginning.

And so you must understand it not in the Christian perspective of getting later on what you work for now, for that is wrong. Rather, you must see that what ‘you’ are ‘getting’ is the work itself, is the doing itself. To know and be and do true to your true not-self is it (in this life). What else could possibly be desired? It is beyond desire.

Only when one truly accepts this can they really do it, for then they are not self-righteously feeling as if they are ‘sacrificing,’ and suffering for a ‘better future’. There is no such thing as ‘future’. There is, and only ever is, now. The future simply does not, and will not, and cannot, exist, as you think of it. This does not mean that one should be myopic, not at all. It means to do, now, mindfully. To do, now, mindfully, will take care of the myopia problem.

Will you be ‘sacrificing’? Probably. There is no getting around it. You will certainly have to/grow to let go of, if not give up, many things that you crave/selfishly desire. But I don’t think you need to give up the things that really matter: food, shelter, warmth, clothing, and best of all, real love. This kind of life does not preclude any of these things. And, especially when it comes to real love, it can be a wonderful life, so much more wonderful, so much more, than the self-deluded life that most people live, for only in living this kind of life is one able to live real love.

The point is to not let your conditioning, your selfish desires, control you; you must control them, you must learn to control yourself, and this takes practice. If you let desire rule, then you’re on the wrong track.

There is nothing wrong with material things, in themselves; what is wrong is to not see them as, and for what, they really are; for when it comes to us humans, it is not the thing itself, but how you see it, that matters, that makes you who and what you are.

And so, you may not need to give up those things you currently desire, but the point is that if you are doing it right, it will be okay if you don’t get them, which is essentially the same as not desiring (getting) it. If it is not okay that you do not get what you desire, then you aren’t doing it right.

“It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”

(Tyler Durden, in Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk)

That is a brilliant—yet often misunderstood—idea, as it is often said from the attitude of losing material things, and losing all hope, but it is not ultimately about that. Ultimately, it is about letting go. And that does not mean having to live a life of poverty or depravity. It means letting go of that to which you cling (physically, emotionally, mentally, ideologically, even ‘spiritually’). It is about letting go of thinking you need what you desire. It means letting go your desire. Only when you let go can you ever then really ‘have’ anything, for you won’t have it in the way you previously understood that verb. And so I would change the phrase a little:

Only when you let go of everything are you free to do anything.

The more you peel away the layers of your conditioned existence, the more illusions you dissolve, the more you understand what is not, the more you feel the love that is reality.

It just doesn’t get any better than that.

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From my personal notes, 8/23/00

Progress is a Process

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Only when people stop giving it lip service, and realize that we are all the same, that we are all one, will things really change. Because at that point things could not help but change. For when you take away the idea of self, of ego, of I, of ‘personal’ ‘property’—’mine not yours’; ‘ours not theirs’—it subverts and essentially negates all of those Western ideas and concepts on which our societies and governments are based and run. There would be, there could be, no capitalism, nor socialism, nor communism, nor any system based at all on the idea of ownership, on ‘me,’ or ‘us,’ or ‘they,’ or ‘you.’

If there is one concept that is the root trouble-maker when it comes to ‘society,’ it is the concept of ownership, for within that concept rests the concept of I, of mine (‘owner’). If there is no me, no self, in the way that Western ideology (mis)understands it, then there simply can be no concept of ownership—it is utterly precluded from existing as a reality—for it is, in really, an illusion.

This is why socialism is the closest of the systems of social organization to reality, but the reason socialism doesn’t work in practice is that the people all need to understand and live these truths. Since that is not the case, it won’t work.

A theory is not wrong because it does not work in a certain practice, with particular conditions; for it is possible to change the conditions and the theory may work just fine. So the problem is not necessarily the theory, but the conditions into which it is thrown. Of course socialism doesn’t work—if for no other reason than the people need to have it imposed upon them, that they still need to be, and want to be, controlled. You can’t toss larvae in the air and expect them to fly. You can dress a child up like an adult, but it will still be, in reality, a child in adult clothing.

The only way for ‘socialism’ to work, and further, for ‘anarchy’ (no central government) to work, is for everyone to ‘get it.’ The only way to achieve this kind of higher level of social organization is to work on helping everyone get it. And that is a slow, and hard, and thankless job. But there is no magic wand to wave over the world that will cause people to wake up the next morning and just get it.

For better or worse, life is process, and as such, we must understand that this, too, is process, is a process, and as a process, we must do the work that we can as being part of that process.

The progress you make may not be what you wished it would be, but then you must at that point realize the work you still need to do on yourself if you are still thinking that way, are still being controlled and led by your ego’s desires and selfish interests.

The only way (I see) to work for the solution is to do what you can do, to help the process of real education, to help people educate themselves properly—that is, to help them learn personal responsibility, how to think for themselves, to see that they actually and really do want to control themselves, to grow up. (This should in no way be understood in the way those slimy Republicans blather on about “personal responsibility”, since that comes from not giving a rat’s ass about people, and what I’m talking about here comes from giving a whale’s ass about people.)

Although it’s a cliché, clichés are clichés because they are often true, and this is no exception: By helping one person you are helping to change the world, for it must happen as a process, and we are a part of that process.

To look for a shortcut is to not get it. That would be yet another indication of lack of true awareness. There are no shortcuts to happiness, to living truly. This is something that anyone who gets it needs to fully accept.

I know that that is one of the things I am personally working on right now. It isn’t easy. It goes against what people call our ‘human nature’. But, as my point has always been, that is not necessarily our entire human nature, it is our conditioned way of being, and what is conditioned can be de-conditioned. But, again, it is a process, and the point is that we need to do what we can to help ourselves and people in the right direction. And to do that means that we need to look at our own lives and examine what we are doing with our time and energy. Are we really working for the solution, or are we thinking we are working for the solution but really working towards the problem?

Are we subverting the system, or are we inadvertently supporting and strengthening it?

It means that we need to realize that we cannot help everyone. We need to choose who we try to help, and work with, and learn from. For it is all also a part of our own path, our own awakening.

This takes much, much effort and concentration. And for better or worse, the more a person realizes these things, the more they will realize, as I have, that they cannot be of this system and work towards the solution, for a part of the solution is the subversion and replacement of that system, not with another system, but with reality, with love, with no longer needing such a system.

The more you realize the truth of things, the less you will be able to live your life the way you have been living it, the less you will be able to fit into the system. If that doesn’t happen, then you’re not on to the truth of things yet. It’s pretty much a guarantee, actually. And that is another reason why most people fail and give up—because they don’t have the strength to do this. They may see a part of the truth, but their egos, their selfish desires, are still more powerful. In the end, they are weak.

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From my personal notes, 8/23/00

Seeing the World Through Tinted Glasses

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I think that people actually want to live the truth, and feel/express/be the love in them; the love they really are wants to get out from underneath the suffocating ego-self that keeps it down, and that is why people are so unhappy and confused—because they feel it, it is in there, but they are just understanding it from the wrong perspective, from one perspective that they believe in without questioning, and thus they live that one perspective without even realizing that even when they consider other perspectives, they are still resting on these basic self-assumptions when they consider the other perspectives. It is like wearing colored glasses without realizing they are on, and looking around. You are looking around at different things, but unbeknownst to you, everything has that tint over it. You don’t see the tint, though; it looks normal to you; you don’t realize there is a tint there at all. So you may look around, but it is all coming from the same tint.

And so people might not be aware of the tint, but it is there, and it affects us, everything about our perception and cognition of things, whether we realize it or not. And so while your real ‘natural’ inclination is to love, to be your true not-self, your conditioning is so powerful, so cunning and subtle and stealthy, so successful at what it does, that it keeps that real not-self under wraps, and if, or when, your real not-self tries to break out, your conditioned ego-self tells you that that is wrong, and so you push it down, and team up with the tint-ego-self, never realizing that you are doing it.

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From my personal notes, 8/23/00

Focusing on Self

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Some people get fed up with the world and end up just focusing on themselves. Other people never really outgrew the childish, almost primitive self-regard that precludes ever really focusing on anyone but themselves. But here is where it gets complicated—the only way to outgrow that childish way of being is to focus on yourself, but only in the ‘Hindu’ and ‘Buddhist’ sense; that you must focus on yourself to know and be who you really are, which, if you do it right, will mean that you will realize that the self, the ‘I’ that you thought you were focusing on, isn’t your real and true essence, that it is really an illusion, and your real, true ‘not-self’ is not only the ‘same’ as everyone else’s, but that in a difficult-to-grasp way, it is them as well.

When you can go through that stage, when you can see that truth, then you realize that, on the level underneath, or beyond, this illusory Matrix-world, ‘me’ is ‘you’, ‘we’ are ‘they’, what is right for me is right for you, what is good for me is good for you, because we are all the same underneath.

Then, and only then, will you realize that when ‘I’ focus on ‘me’, ‘I’ am focusing on ‘everyone’.

It is going in a circle in a way, but you are not who, or what, you thought you were when you started, and you realize that it is the way you understand things, the way you live, the way you do [things], that matters; it is the way you understand ‘the self’ and ‘everyone else.’ For, once you understand that I is you, that my not-self is your not-self, then you look at the world totally differently, you look at yourself totally differently, and you realize that you can’t consider only yourself, because you realize that you is everyone, everything, that when you focus on yourself, you are really focusing on everyone. You can’t escape this.

But, let’s be honest, most people don’t get to this point. They just turn back on themselves and consider themselves without getting to the point of realizing the illusory nature of what we call ‘the self.’ And so they end up living selfish lives, which is not the right way. It is in the right direction of focus, but is seen, and understood, and done wrong. Only when you realize that there is no ‘me’ is it okay to think about and talk about me, which we can’t avoid as of now because it is part of the way we communicate, it is part of our grammar. But, as I have said before, people mistakenly look to language for truth when it is really the other way around.

People look at our languages and see that there are these pronouns, that we say ‘I’ and thus they assume that such a thing exists (in a real, non-illusory way). They are looking at the illusion as reality as opposed to looking at the illusion to help us see/get to the reality.

And so it is integral that one looks and focuses on their self, but it is how he or she does it that matters. He must focus on his self with the attitude of deconstructing and seeing it as, and for what, it really is, not feeding, and nurturing, and catering to, it. This is the key. To understand the ego-self in this way is to enter the only door there really is towards beginning to be able to understand what real love really is. And then you can understand that—to paraphrase the Buddha—in love (the verb) there is only loving, no lover and nothing (or no one) loved. It’s just love/loving. And that can only be in the absence of ego-self.

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From my personal notes, 8/23/00

Become Less Ignorant

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I think that I can forgive people for doing something wrong [to me] if, and only if, they make the efforts to understand why they did what they did, why what they did was wrong, and to grow and awaken and mature so they do not do it again. Most people make the same mistakes over and over again. One time can be forgiven, because I believe that we learn by doing, and a part of that is often making mistakes. But I cannot respect people who do not learn from their mistakes, for that is a sign of weakness and laziness. The remedy to something done wrong out of ignorance is to better yourself, to learn and grow and awaken, to become less ignorant.

The only real way to make up for a mistake or a thing done wrong, or a ‘sin,’ is to make the efforts to grow up and thus to be more mature, which will, as it turns out, preclude doing the same thing out of ignorance, because you are no longer ignorant, and so ‘couldn’t do it again if you wanted to,’ which you of course wouldn’t ‘want to’ because you would look back and see how ignorant and selfish and childish it was to have done it. This is the way. This is the only way. Growth/maturity precludes acting out of ignorance. It is not by apologizing, it is not by ‘confessing,’ it is by actually working to grow and become more self-aware. And this is why I do not believe in guilt. For guilt is wholly useless in this process. Guilt is a means of control, and it is also a means of not moving forward. It is an utterly unproductive feeling and concept. Guilt is a tool of control, and nothing more. The solution to these issues is the same solution to everything: self-awareness and honest efforts to know and be who you really are.

This is why I do not believe in the Christian concept of ‘sin’ and guilt, and why I have always had a problem with this ridiculous notion that “Jesus died for your sins.” The idea that I do something wrong, a ‘sin’, and then should feel guilty about it, and then another person should scoop up my sin and die a horrible death because of my sin, is so unproductive I don’t even know where to start. The reason it is unproductive is that I will either feel even more guilty, thereby allowing authorities to demand loyalty and fealty to a controlling system (Christianity), or it will make me feel absolved of my sin without having to have done any work to understand why I did it or why it is wrong. Neither way leads a person towards real awareness and happiness. In fact, both move him/her further away, in the opposite direction.

The idea that someone else should be punished for something I did wrong is utterly unacceptable to me on account of it being devoid of any valid justification. I can understand the Jesus Christ story as a way of teaching people that we are all connected, and that our actions do very much effect other people, but this is not the way the story is interpreted nor used. It is used as a means of control, as means of keeping people in a state of weakness and subjugation.

It is also unproductive, for it teaches people that forgiveness is given for the wrong reasons, that it is given when it is not earned. Forgiveness—like trust, and respect—is earned. To say it is earned means that it is worked for, efforts are made to procure it. To forgive someone for something that they have done when they have not earned it, when they have not done the work to understand why they did what they did and why it was wrong, is to do them, and everyone, for that matter, a disservice. It teaches them to not make the efforts towards self-awareness. And this is probably why the Christian version of forgiveness (which we are all conditioned by, whether we see that or not) came about in the first place—because the people in power do not want people to become self-aware, because then they couldn’t control them, and couldn’t satisfy their own ignorant and selfish desires. It is a deplorably elegant system, and as we can see simply by glancing around the world, it works very well for those in power.

The way to show me you are sorry is not to say you are sorry, but to show me that you have made the efforts to ensure that you will not do it again, that you have moved forward from the place you were when you did it. Unfortunately, these are things that most people simply do not do, and so it is impossible for me to trust that person (for they are untrustworthy), and it makes it impossible for me to forgive that person, even though I might really want to. But, as I have said, for me to try to forgive a person when it is not earned or deserved would be wrong, for it would only serve to hinder that person’s growth, and would mean both of us living a lie, which is unnacceptable to me.

I think that you know when you can forgive someone when you realize that you don’t need to. Forgiveness, like so many of our concepts, is a kind of ‘training wheel,’ it is the support mold, that when the work has been done, is simply no longer needed. And so once you are in the place to be able to forgive, you realize that it is no longer necessary.

And this is why I think that if you need to forgive someone for/about something, then the issue is not really resolved. If you need to forgive someone, then either they are not ready to be forgiven, or they are ready, and you are not ready. Being ready to forgive is like anything else: a matter of knowledge, of awareness and understanding. If someone is worthy of forgiveness and you can’t do it, then maybe you need to work on yourself.

The only other way we can get to the place where we feel that we no longer have to forgive someone is when we have given up on them. For it is not the forgiveness that is the real issue here, but it is the efforts we make to care about that person to spend the time and energy on them. Again, though, if I didn’t do anything wrong, and you are unable to forgive me, then the problem is not mine, but yours. And, again, the right solution in this situation is the same as before: to realize that there is no need for forgiveness. In other words: awareness of reality, seeing reality, things as they really are.

If someone truly makes the efforts to grow past the issues that caused them to do the thing in the first place, then forgiveness is just a word, the act of forgiving just a formality, an empty ceremony. And this is why I don’t believe in ‘forgiveness,’ for it is but an illusory training-wheel, whose—like all other illusions’—function is its own eventual obsolescence.

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From my personal notes, 8/20/00