Going out and living life means exactly that: going out and living life; not going out with a life-jacket on, with a leash with one end attached to your wrist and the other to your beliefs (i.e., your parents) which will make sure you do not stray too far. Going out there and living life means being free from the illusions, the illusion-based, conditioned beliefs that, in the end, will not be there for us in the way we want them to be, with our eyes closed in faith and fear. We are scared that they will not be there if we open our eyes, and we are right. They will not be there.
But the good news is that we do not need them. You do not need them. You only think you do, society only tells you this, and the people you know who have their eyes closed as well tell you this because they are all scared of opening their eyes. The good news is that the things that you do need, the things that are there for you are there, and have been all along. The things that you need to be happy are there for you. The necessities of life are there for you. But you need to let go of the illusions.
You are looking for love and happiness in the wrong places, for those places are not where they are; rather those places are dark and obtuse, mysterious and baseless, confused and sustained by circular and contradictory logic, if any logic at all.
The thing is, there is a way to be truly happy, to have the real security of happiness. That way is to allow yourself to recognize the illusions of your conditioned, imprisoned existence, and to allow yourself to know and understand the things that really make you happy, and to do them. You want (to feel) freedom without giving up your illusions. But the cart cannot go before the horse. You must free yourself of your illusions, of your false sense of security, before you can know the real security of true freedom. To use a religious metaphor, you are believing in false gods. The true god is no god at all—reality, truth, life without illusion.
Can this be accomplished in American society? I do not know. The inspiring words of the Declaration of Independence may ring true, but as they exist in this society, they are a lie and an illusion. I believe in the words, but I do not believe that this society is about them.
I do not believe that in this society I have the right to pursue happiness. I have that right only as long as I play along, as long as that pursuit involves the system of living prescribed as “right” by this society, namely the endless cycle of working for money to pay for things.
As long as I am tied to this system, as long as I need to do what this system prescribes I must do, as long as I am confined within this prison of false opportunity, I am not free. I am not saying that I do not think I can be happy in this country; rather, I am saying that I cannot be happy bound by the chains of this society’s illusions and worship of false gods. I cannot believe what one must believe to make his way easily in this society, for it is a path that leads nowhere. This I know, as much as I can “know” anything.
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From my personal notes, 11/9/99.
