Tag Archives: conditioned existence

What does it mean to be self-sufficient?

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The ultimate solution to the problem of poverty is not to give poor people (or figure out ways for them to make) money—that can only ever be a band-aid. The ultimate solution it is to progress beyond the money system, to subvert the system itself; and the way to really do this is to realize—and then educate people on—what really matters, to help them think for themselves, to learn about truth, and reality, and real love.

This is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to find a worthwhile job, because no ‘job’ I can find comes even close to providing me with the opportunities to work for the solution, since all the jobs that I can see out there are part of the system in one way or another, and serve, directly or indirectly, to support and perpetuate the system. Apparently ‘alternative’, activist organizations, as far as I can tell, are, for the most part, also part of the problem, in the way that armed revolution never really solves anything.

Most people in such ‘alternative’ ‘activist’ organizations, while possibly well-meaning, are not necessarily very enlightened, and as such, are (cannot help but be) part of the problem by being perpectualy unenlightened. I do not criticize them, but rather wish them to go deeper, go further, see beyond the level on which they deal in the system. The real revolution is, and can only be, within. That is the only way. Everything else comes from, with, and after that. Everything.

What people who believe in this system (in the lie of the ‘American Dream’) don’t understand is that by helping someone to become ‘self-sufficient’—which, ironically enough, is understood to mean supporting oneself financially—you are doing nothing of the sort; you are not helping them to really be self-sufficient, because by becoming a cog, they are more dependent on the system, they get a vested interest, no matter how small, in the system, the system that is really keeping them down and stunting their growth and development. It is truly a viscous, self-sustaining cycle.

The challenge, and the frustrating thing, is that since it is so hard, it takes so much strength and effort to see the truth, to see reality, and because most people are so ignorant of it, that they want the system, they do not want to really be free, they want to be children and to be told what to think and do, what to like and what to hate, what to believe. For to grow out of (‘spiritual’/emotional) childhood takes serious strength, it takes serious courage to really confront your fears, and it can be spiritually and emotionally brutal; for it is a death of sorts, a death of that self that you thought was who you are; and since people tend to love and nurture their fears more than a mother with a newborn, we can see just how difficult and daunting it is to try and work for the solution.

The system in place is truly a brilliant system, because it is so efficient in being self-sustaining; for it fucntions to defend itself from people like me, it is designed to condition people to resist and fight against people like me (even and especially when they don’t think they are). It is a system that is frightening in its efficacy of keeping people ignorant, for it conditions them to believe that they are becoming less ignorant the more ignorant and less open-minded they get. This is the incredible power of ego, of ‘the self,’ of arrogance combined with the child’s longing to be controlled. It truly is a brilliant system.

It gets frustrating sometimes, because there is so much more to life than people think, there is so much more that people could be doing with their lives, and yet people’s lives are being used up trying to be a part of a system that exists to use them as tools, and to undermine their chances for real happiness.

I need to keep remembering not to buy into what people mistakenly call ‘human nature,’ for what people call human nature is not human nature at all, but is rather more accurately called ‘conditioned existence.’ The problem is that most people believe in the illusion of the conditioned existence, and so the way people are is mixed up with the way people really are, because they don’t see the difference. And this is why I need to remember that I should not, and truly can not, study the illusion as truth, but rather as a way to get to truth. This is absolutely fundamental.

It is the same way that I say that people look to language, to human language and grammar, for the truths of the world. They are looking at the illusion as reality, as opposed to a way to get to reality from the illusion. This is a very subtle point, for it sounds backwards, but it isn’t.

Another way to understand this is that truth is not to be found in the illusion, but in its absence. This is another very important subtly that causes many problems. For if you don’t see this difference, if you are looking for truth in the illusion, or ‘from’ the illusion (as in, a lesson), then you will have a vested interest in the perpetuation of the illusion, which is, as we have seen, the exact opposite of the way to really get to truth.

And this, what I have just described, can be seen everywhere in this world, in this life. People foster what they believe in, even and especially when it’s subconscious. But why do they believe in it? If they only had the courage to really question their beliefs, and to try to study and understand the reasons why they believe what they believe, and the tangents, they would see once they started this process—it would literally change the world.

People defend and nurture what they believe in. This is why they are so easy to control and manipulate, for once you tell them what to believe, they will defend it themselves! Just look at organized religion.

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From my personal notes, 8/29/00

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

I Study People

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I study people. I want to understand why and how they do what they do. [I also study what I call "the system," or "the Matrix" (as metaphor, of course).] I am not studying this in order to be a part of it, for selfish reasons, to get the better of others, to be able to manipulate them to my will, to better get what I desire. My goal is happiness for people, for life.

But while I study the system, ‘the matrix,’ I know that it is not real in the way reality is real. To do within and of the system is not to be a part of the solution. The point is not to give this illusory existence more credit than it deserves, not to buy into it too much, but rather to see it as, and for what, it really is. And as such, my study cannot fit into any of the established –ologies, for these branches all study the human condition while simultaneiously buying into what ‘is’ without the understanding of the difference between what is and what really is.

One cannot buy into the illusion if he/she wants to understand reality. You can’t look to the illusion to give you positive knowledge of realty; rather, you must study the illusion as an illusion, and as such, ‘negatively,’ in that you learn from the illusion what is not, not what ‘is’. It is about direction, and I think that most people are going in, approaching stuff from, the wrong direction.

One of the reasons I mention this is that people may wonder why I don’t study most people in more depth. It is because most people are not study-worthy. Most people live and express themselves as an illusory ego-self, and as such are boring to me.

Most people are at a level of denial, their wall is at a certain place, and, as such, one can only go so far with learning from them.

Everyone is as complex as everyone else. The difference is where their walls are. And so it ends up being a matter of speculation—which can be fun, but ends up being academic.

The point is that people who are mostly controlled end up behaving in the same ways as other people who are controlled. And so it gets repetitive. After initially getting to know people, they tend to be fairly derivative, which is a bummer, because I wish they would be more original—meaning: more themselves; not simply a product of the typical illusions by which most people live their lives.

If such-and-such a person is not able, or willing, to push the wall back, then there’s nothing to learn from them, as all you’re going to get is their conditioned self at the level of unawareness at which they live and are.

And so I may go out with a friend, who I know is incredibly complex under the surface, but if they hide that complexity behind the wall, all I get is what is in front of the wall, and after a time, I’ve seen what there is to see, and it is often quite similar to what is in front of most people’s walls.

I get it. I’m interested in who people really are, not (just) what they have in front of their walls. The problem is that it is hard to find people whose walls are not so far out in front of their real beings. This is why I don’t spend so much time on most people, on those who are so plugged into the system, for though I think it is important to study and try to understand the system, we must keep in mind that it is a system, it is the Matrix, it is not reality, it is an illusion, it is what it is. And keeping that in mind, it is waste of time to spend time on that which will provide me with no further understanding.

I am sure that there is a lot out there that will give me more understanding, whether it be art, people, experiences, places, etc. And these are the things I want to seek out. The surface level of why people do what they do is rather simple once it is understood. Which essentially comes down to ego and selfish desire. On the other hand, it is what happens—what people are like, who they are when they deal with these issues, when they really start to ‘awaken’, when they start deconstructing their conditioned existences—that I am interested in. For that is closer to, and in the direction of, reality, love, truth, what really is. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that such people are rare, and thus hard to find.

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From my personal notes, 8/12/00

Passive Activity

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It is interesting to observe people and see how much they try to control their lives. This is interesting because it is a great contrast to what I am talking about with ‘self-control.’ There is a difference between being able to ‘control yourself,’ and trying to control reality, trying to control other people and the world around you.

People try to insulate themselves from the bad things about life, and many people often can (people with a lot of money, for example). The analogy can be made of a rich person living in NYC, high above the street in their luxury home, always taking limos to the beautiful places, only seeing beautiful people, and never touching the ground, never having to deal with the dirt, the sweat, scum and intensity, the beauty and ugliness and reality of what is going on in the streets.

This is not to say, of course, that the amount of money one has indicates their level of awakening and maturity, that poor people ‘get it’ more than rich people; but, rather, that rich people are able—through the means afforded them in a capitalist, materialistic society—to avoid reality more (or, at least, differently) than poor people. (Or, it might be better to say, “attempt to” avoid reality.)

As I have said many times, anyone—rich or poor—can choose ‘awakening’. The rich/poor thing is, rather, a metaphor for trying to mold life in such a way as to avoid and escape from having to deal with reality.

To be sure, a homeless person can do the exact same thing as the penthouse snob, just in a different way. He can construct a version of the way he sees the world, a version of ‘reality,’ and he can avoid having to deal with reality, with having to deal with himself in a brave and honest way.

We all have our egos, our ‘identities,’ our simple-minded and unquestioned understanding of the self and how it fits into the rest of reality; and we also try to manipulate, control, and mold reality in a way that suites us, suites our desires, values, and beliefs (in other words, our illusions). Instead of learning how to adapt and work with and in reality, we try to make reality adapt to us; and if we can’t, we ignore it and just move on with our agenda.

And, to be sure, most people don’t even actively control and mold their lives, but, rather, as conditioned beings, it is pre-molded, ‘pre-installed,’ and so they just go along with this conceptual framework that was conditioned for them, they ‘mold’ and ‘control’ their lives according to the way they see the world—passively, under the illusion of real action. The way to understand this is to think of passive activity; for example, a remote-controlled robot may be active in that it is moving, but it is not in control of its movement, and so its activity is passive.

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From my personal notes, 8/12/00

When Things Fall Apart

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Our lives, the ‘houses of cards’ we’ve buillt around ourselves, can be so fragile.

Sometimes something happens, something comes along, or something just grows that we might not have seen before, or never dealt with, and was just lying dormant under the surface, and it is something that we can’t deal with, something that feels impossible to solve in the way that we would want to—meaning in a way that keeps us going in the direction we are currently going. It is one of those ‘change of venue’ things, that bumps you off course, and you realize that you might have taken for granted that the course you were on would just always go in that direction, and that you could deal with anything that came along.

But life doesn’t always work that way.

And, sometimes, what comes along tells us that the course we were on wasn’t exactly the right course. A lot about it might have been right, but it was a little off, and that ‘little off’ might—because it is only a little off, and because it is so hard to deal with that when so much else was going so right—cause trouble, and it is so hard to deal with, harder than if it was way off course, or if it was more cut-and-dried.

This is when life gets messy, and it becomes so hard to tidy it up. Unlike all the things that came along before, this one gets out of your hands and you can’t seem to get a grip on it all, you can’t seem to hold all the pieces in your hands—you keep trying to gather it all together, but when you pick up one piece, another piece falls, and then another, and then you lose where the first one fell, and so on, and it’s just a mess.

This also speaks to how fragile our lives, our constructed existences, can be; that one little thing can be the little stray piece of string that begins to unravel the whole thing.

What, in life, is harder than something like this? It is a total up-ending of a person’s understanding of life, of how they fit into the world. It’s an upheaval of the very foundation on which the rest of our life and identity rest. It literally feels like things are just falling apart.

These kinds of situations…going through them without denial is so hard. We are not conditioned to be able to go with life without at least some level of denial. We are too clingy. We are too forward-looking, and yet also too myopic. And so maybe if it happens once, even though there is the opportunity for growth—to be able to deal better with the flow of life—a person might instead react the opposite way, and instead of dealing better with life, instead of growing from and with the situation, they regress farther back, and get worse; because they have been so hurt and confused by this situation, they become more self-protective, and end up in more denial than before. This makes sense, if only because it is so hard, and most people don’t have the strength to go through that kind of thing and come out the other end better and more mature. I know it is hard for me. I think I’m doing it, but it’s very hard, and I sometimes feel like I’m walking on a tightrope.

How do different people deal with such things when they come along? Obviously people will deal with them differently according to their conditioning and their inner character, their level of open-mindedness or close-mindedness, their assumptions and beliefs.

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From my personal notes, 8/12/12

The Sandbox

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Part of the problem is people’s assumptions and general misunderstanding of what it means to be an adult, and so they think they are adults because their bodies grow out of childhood. People—in their narrow-minded way—limit growth, limit what it is to be a child or adult to biology, or physiology. Growth, life, development, enlightenment, our ‘paths’, are much more than our biological bodies. So, people think that puberty is the door to adulthood, but it’s just a part of it. And their lack of awareness about everything else that’s involved with true growth cuts them off from it, because they think they are grown when they are not. They are children in adult bodies.

. . . Certainly, I am not saying that all children are born pure and perfect. Children are born with certain inclinations, are dealt a hand, so to speak, which may hinder or help them as they go through life, but I do not think, contrary to the opinion of some, that some people are born doomed. Or, even if that were true for a very small percentage of humanity, it does not doom all of humanity, and does not mean that we should not, and cannot, do what we can to divert humanity back to the right path, for I do think that, as bad as things are, I do not think it is hopeless. In fact, the fact that I don’t think it hopeless is pretty much the only reason I go on.

But as much as children might have cards against them, in varying degree, I still think that most, if not all, children are born with the natural life force to grow and learn and be happy. And so children are what they should be when they are biologically children: children. But adults are not what they should be when they are biologically adults: they may have adult bodies, but they are children in the ways that really matter, in the way that people call ‘spiritually’.

Human beings certainly have the potential to be ‘more’ than many other forms of life, but by confusing this potential for growth with superiority and entitlement, they veer off the path they could be taking.

I am, personally, tired of being in the sandbox. It can be fun for a lark, but for most people it is their lives, and I see that it is a sandbox when they do not. This makes me seem like I am arrogant, or acting superior, but I am old enough now to realize that that is just a manifestation of their ignorance, fear, and weakness.

This is what I mean when I say that I am ‘not meant for this world’. I am not meant for this world in that I am not meant to be of the playground, of the cave, of this one particular—and in many ways, arbitrary—society. I have finally begun to take hold of my strength, to be able to admit that to myself, and to try to deal with the consequences, to try and live who I am without fear.

It is not easy. Man, it is not easy. But what choice do I have? I am who I am. If nothing else, I think that I am one miniscule speck in a long, long, long process, and I must always remember that it is a process; it is not ‘my’ process, it is not ‘my’ world or process to ‘save’, but, rather, I am a part of what I feel is the solution as opposed to the problem.

I can only do what I can, but I must do that, and try not to think of it as ‘just’ what I can do, but to see it as doing what is right, of truly and fully being who I really am. That is what I can do, and by god, I’m going to fucking do it. Or at least I will try.

I know that I am moving forward, though; and, for now, that is enough to get me to the next day.

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From my pesonal notes, 8/2/00

Are All Opinions Equally Valid?

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These days, maybe because of the influence of the PC movement, many people have the belief that everyone’s ideas and opinions are on equal footing and have equal validity. I simply do not think this is true. In fact, if pressed, most people who have the belief that all opinions are equal would have to agree that they are wrong, unless, of course, they are absolutely irrational.

It is simply a fact, given the inescapable truth of context in human thought, that some ideas are less valid than others. And it is also a fact that ideas and philosophies run the human world.

It is ideas and philosophies that dictate and control every aspect of our lives. And given the truth of illusion vs. reality, there are ideas and opinions that are wrong, and those that are right. Of course, one of the things that someone who has the strength to pursue enlightenment realizes is that it is the identification of what is wrong that gets us closer to what is “right,” if such a thing exists. If, as I think, reality is the absence of illusion, then it is possible that, when it comes to human thought, human rationality and logic, there is only wrong, and no “right.”

People who want to say that everyone’s opinion is equally valid are betraying their own fear and weakness, and especially their own ignorance. Again, the basis for what I consider to be right and wrong (not “morally”; it is better to understand these words as “correct” and “incorrect”) is context. The human mind processes (or, at least, understands) information and perceptions in context. That is, I contend, irrefutable. I am not saying that I am talking about Reality (“with a capital R”), but rather the validity of human ideas and opinions, given the context in which they are understood.

The human rational mind does not necessarily process perceptions as how they exist outside of the context of the human mind. So, in this way, I am not speaking about Reality independent of the human mind. The philosophies and ideas that control our lives exist within the context of the human mind, and thus in the realm of the contexts in which the human mind functions. Given context, there are certainly such things as “correct” and “incorrect.”

We do not have any other way of determining whether something is correct or incorrect outside of the realm of context. Am I wrong?

Since it is possible that every idea we have—every concept, opinion, and processed perception—is essentially illusory, this is why I say that it is probable that there is only “wrong” when it comes to human ideas, for illusions are “wrong” in relation to reality, which is “right.” As such, every idea we have is “wrong,” in the sense that it does not speak to reality, but to our ideas and perceptions in a given context, a context which is partially dictated by the physiological makeup of the human brain (see Kant), and partially dictated by our conditioning.

This is, I think, what the Buddhists are talking about when they say that everything is illusion. Many people interpret this as meaning that nothing exists. But I do not think this is what it is saying. Rather, it is more like the Kantian idea of a thing-in-itself vs. how it is perceived by the human mind, and never the twain shall meet. But, I am not convinced that the twain can never meet.

Most people limit human thought to what they consider to be “rationality,” which is based on logic, which is utterly dependent on the contexts of the human mind. But since it is quite obvious that there were things before there were humans, we can say that there is reality outside the context of human thought, though since “we” cannot escape the confines of our minds and the way we think, we cannot know what that reality is not in relation to ourselves. This is, again, because of context. It is also, to me, the brilliance of what Kant pointed out, as well as the Buddhist/Hindu concept of illusion vs. reality.

Many people assume that there is no way for us to escape the confines of the rational human mind, and thus to experience or understand reality as opposed to the matrix of illusions we all live in. I am not so sure I agree with this. The reason I cannot agree with it is the process of enlightenment. While it is the most difficult thing one can do, it is possible to break down the illusions of our conditioned existences. It is possible to see an illusion for what it is, to see that something we really thought was real and true was actually an illusion. That is reality; it is the process of reality. And since this is possible, it is also possible to do it more, and do it better, and that the more one does it, the further away one gets from “the matrix,” and the closer one gets to reality.

Yes, this is a rational, logical train of thought. There is nothing wrong with rationality and logic. What is wrong is to make assumptions about what logic is and what it can and cannot do for us.

I do not think that within the conditioned contexts in which we think we can get to reality. But I do think that we can use logic for what it is—a tool to help us transcend those conditioned contexts.

We do not know logic outside of the context of our conditioned existences. And, as such, we cannot think that we can understand—let alone describe—the merits of logic outside of this conditioned existence. As such, perhaps it is not logic that is the problem, but the conditioning. This is, to me, where Western and Eastern philosophies meet, and where hope lies in getting beyond the impasse at which I think Western philosophy and theology are currently mired.

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From my personal notes, 7/30/00

Did the Buddha say: “Thou Shalt Not Kill”?

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One of the questions I have had when it comes to enlightenment, and the Buddhist philosophy, is in regards to the idea that it is wrong to kill another living being, an idea which strikes me as so similar to the Christian commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

The problem that I have with dogmas, and the idea of commandments, is that they are antithetical to enlightenment, in that they do not encourage/espouse self-control, but rather doing what you’re told.

Such religious, and even secular, commandments are means of controlling a populace that cannot seemingly control itself. The whole idea of enlightenment is self-awareness and actualization, a part of which is the idea that one should not need to be controlled, but should be in control of him/herself. And so the idea of the Buddha making a commandment such as “thou shalt not kill” seems inconsistent with the truth of the teachings of enlightenment.

My understanding of this is that there has been a separation between the/a “Buddha” and “Buddhism”, or put another way, between Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist religion.

Organized religion has always seemed to me to be all about control and manipulation—getting people to do what is “right,” not because it is right, but because of fear and greed. Again, it’s the same way one controls a child—by manipulating him with his own fears and desires.

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From my personal notes, 7/16/00