Tag Archives: happiness

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

Society is a Tool

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A society, a system, based and run on money, will never, can never, work—meaning it cannot function for the well-being of the people. Society is supposed to work for the people, it should be a system set up by the people to serve them and help them lead better lives. The people are not supposed to work for the system, like a servant or something. But this is exactly what happens in a system based and run on money, on “capital,” and an outrageously uneven distribution of wealth.

The solution is not to ‘redistribute’ the wealth, but to grow beyond having wealth as the fuel and motivation for the society and its citizens.

The bottom line is not an argument of economics, but of values. If the primary value and motivation is truth, and real freedom, and real love, then by all means, have money and material things. The point being that if money, and material things, and power-over-others are not the prime motivations (as they surely seem to be in this society), then people will not be controlled by them but will be in control of them.

It is an issue of value, as well as the switch of the people no longer working for the system but the other way around. As long as money and the power of those who have the most of it matter more than life or truth, and as long as those in power are allowed to do whatever they want to in order to keep the present system intact, then there will never be peace/happiness, there will always be undue suffering. If a society is supposed to serve the people and help them grow and evolve, then it is clear that this system does not work and never will as long as it is a system based on wealth and power over others.

To put it succinctly, this is an unenlightened society, which serves to preclude itself from becoming an enlightened society in the interest of job- and ego-security.

In fact, I think one of the problems with this society—and any society or system based and run on wealth, on money, and personal property—is that economics end up determining ethics. There can be no happiness and freedom if ethics and morals are determined by economics, by the ignorant, weak, and unenlightened, as in our society.

It is simply obvious (to me) that society is a tool to nurture and facilitate—not hinder and obstruct—the happiness, freedom, and enlightenment of its citizens. There is nothing wrong with give up certain ‘freedoms,’ such as being able to kill another person for no reason, but this kind of limit is not a limit on real freedom, nor happiness, nor enlightenment. The issue is not that citizens should not have to give up certain kinds of behavior, for they should. In fact, doing so is a part of learning self-control and growing up. The function of the state should be to provide an environment where people can grow and develop in ways that they may not be able to if they spent all of their time procuring and protecting the basic necessities of biological life. As such, the ultimate function of the state is the function of the (illusory) self—to help the person to no longer need it. But sight of this has been lost or repressed by those in power. The self and the state have taken over, and those whom they have taken over don’t even realize they are being controlled by that which they are meant to control.

The problem is that when a system such as ours is put in place, when it is given certain powers, when it does not act enlightened, when the people who run the system are not enlightened, but are rather ignorant, greedy, and small-minded, the system (those who run the system, to be more accurate), being unenlightened and thus inherently self-interested, does not look to help the people, but rather looks only to its own selfish interests, and neglects its true function—it ends up using the people instead of serving them.

This is something I think that Plato and Aristotle saw in their beliefs that the state is the way to enlightenment. It is parallel to the Hindu belief that the self is the path to enlightenment. The point of both is that if used correctly, both are tools to help us get to the point where we no longer need them, for both are, ultimately, illusions. As I have said before, illusions are like training-wheels, or life-jackets—tools to help us ride or swim (i.e., live) until we learn to no longer need them.

Instead, in their ignorance and arrogance, in their inability to control themselves and their selfish instincts and desires, people have allowed the tools to wield them instead of the other way around. In the same way that people misunderstand the Hindu idea mentioned above, thinking that it means that they should figure out what the self likes and have the courage to do that (in essence, serving the self), people have misunderstood the proper function of society and think that the state is primary and its citizens secondary.

The ‘state’ is an illusion. In reality, there are people. People who run the system and those run by it. People have been manipulated and deluded by the state into serving it, into serving the people who run the system, all the while thinking they are free, that they are in control, that they are happy, because they are told and sold what will make them happy, and the few are given a lot of it, and the rest have it dangled in front of them, with the promise that if they work hard enough (in reality, for the people who have the money), they can get it, though most never will, only enough to keep the illusion alive.

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From my personal notes, 8/14/00

Armor

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The reason that ‘the system’ has so much power is that it is predicated on the need for armor, on the need to protect and look out for oneself (one’s self), if one is to survive. It makes it necessary to have armor on. The system protects itself extremely well this way. And since this society is expressly not oriented towards love and enlightenment, people do not know how to love. The ‘love’ that most people feel is not love at all but is something else—desire, lust, loneliness, blind passion, or any number of other things. People do not know how to love because they do not know what love is. They do not know what love is because love is not about ‘me’. And in this society, the self, the I, the ‘me’, is primary, and that which is ‘not me’ is secondary (if it’s thought about at all).

Those who (seem to) put others before themselves might come across, and think about themselves, as if they are selfless, but more likely than not, they are actually being selfish.

The only way to escape from this vicious cycle is to see that this duality on which we base so much of our philosophy, religion, values, and beliefs is quite possibly, if not probably, an illusion. To see the reality of this illusion is so fundamentally subversive to so much of what is today, that it is quite overwhelming. At least it is to me. The only way to understand love is to at least try to understand that real love ‘transcends’ this duality of ‘me’ and (or even more tellingly: ‘vs.’) ‘you’.

I want to try to be clear about this. What is the armor in the analogy above? The best way for me to describe it is that the armor is the ego and all that it spawns, meaning that it also has armor to protect itself not only from the world but—and this is complicated and important—from our true selves. This is why the analogy is not as simple as it might first seem.

I’m not saying we should all be hippies. Most hippies do espouse love, and I’m sure that many believe in the love they espouse, but I do not believe that most of them really know what love is, let alone know how to really love and be loved. Rather, most hippies (and pseudo-hippies) are products of their conditioning, like everyone else, just in a certain way. Underneath their own armor, they are the same as everyone else, with the same neuroses, the same human conditions, that require the right efforts to deal with and understand. As such, the point is not that I am saying that one should take off one’s armor, for that would be flippant. The reason it would be flippant is that to take off one’s armor is to ‘transcend’ one’s ego, and that is, quite complicatedly, the process of enlightenment, the process of self-awareness.

The reason it would be flippant is that while I know that this is the way to take off my armor, I do not really know how to do it. But, I do know that the first step is to understand what the armor is. How else can one possibly take it off?

As such, since the armor is the ego, hippies have just as much armor as anyone else—it’s just that the mask that their egos put on is one of ‘love’. And so the problem is even more complicated than it was before. Because not only do I know that to be happy I need to take off my armor, to live without the armor, and that if I take it off I might get stomped to a pulp, but also I have the problem that I don’t know where the damn straps are.

And that is sort of where I find myself now: fumbling for the straps.

But, I wonder what the point is of working so hard to find and undo the straps when, unless I want to go off and live alone on the top of a mountain, I will probably get pulverized when I do. I feel as if I have already had such a beating that I do not even really understand just how much of a beating I have had, and as such, I am still sort of reeling. I know this because of the sadness I feel, and how much I keep it at bay. Will I recover from this? I really do not know. I really don’t. And I don’t know the point of trying anyway. In the end, I am just a speck of a human organism on a planet out in the dark of space.

I know that part of enlightenment is understanding that I do not matter, but it is so hard to do that in this society when so many people do not understand what that means, and they fight against it because they need to feel that they do matter.

This is why the process of self-awareness can be dangerous, because there is not much support out there; there is, when you get right down to it, pretty much the opposite.

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From my personal notes 8/13/00

I Am a Student of Life

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So, when I say that when I see people I understand them and so can move on [see "I Study People"], it is not that I claim to understand the complexity of who they really are, nor that I understand ‘the human’ and the entire human condition, because I do not, and never claimed to. I would love to deal with, and interact with, and learn from, who people really are; the problem is that most people simply do not live on that level, their true ‘not-selves’ are hidden behind their wall(s).

I love to deal with who people are, but most of the time I only encounter what they are, for they do not express who they are, they do not want to, and often mistake what they are for who they are.

What someone is interests me very little. This is what people do not understand about me. They think I hate people, or that I think I am above them, or better than them or something. But that is not the case. Not even close. I love people. But I don’t like the façade, and most people live their lives with the façade in full swing, and I am over the façade, I get very little out of it except for those surface-level pleasures we can get from it. And I can enjoy such pleasures as much as the next person, but I see them for what they are, and they are certainly only a part of life; but for most people it is their entire lives. Now, again, I’m not saying that people aren’t ‘deep,’ or complex, but rather that they simply don’t tap into that (for lack of a better term) ‘truer’ part of themselves very often, at least around other people (if they’re even able to, that is, which is up for debate).

I simply can’t live most of my life on that essentially superficial level. I don’t want to. Who people are, and ‘whos’ interacting with each other, speaks to what I love about life, the beauty and passion and vitality of life. This is what I want. It’s just hard to find.

Now, a lot of people, some of whom are very smart, get a glimpse of all this, see that ‘the superficial world’ and the so-called pleasures of life are not what it is all about, and they take the other extreme; they deny this part of life, they deny or dismiss the illusory Matrix, and try to focus instead on what they think is not the Matrix. Examples are religious ascetics and philosophers who focus on metaphysics. I think that this is a mistake.

It is important to point out here that I am aware of—and recognize the truth of—the idea, which some ancient Hindus seemed to understand very well, that the path to enlightenment is through the self; in other words, that the ‘divine’ is (‘in’) everything. Or, said another way, that the only way to get to reality is by way of the illusion. To ignore or attempt to side-step the illusion is to ignore reality. To attempt to bypass the illusion, and try to find a positive metaphysics or spirituality, is to completely miss the point, to veer completely off the path. It is, in reality, an exercise in futility.

And so the point is that only by living life can we understand what lies beneath the surface. We can only get to the beauty and reality of truth and life by way of the illusory. This touches on the human truth that only through suffering and hardship comes enlightenment, understanding. And so it is true that we must jump in and live life, we must look to life for the answers. All of the answers, all of reality, is to be found ‘in’ the illusory, is to be found through the illusory.

I’m not the one to say where each person is on their path. But just because someone has an experience does not mean that they will learn from it, really gain from it. Most experiences are wasted experiences. Especially because people focus so much on the immediate, on the visceral, on the pleasure-principle. They mistake pleasure, and the fulfillment of desire, for happiness.

So, again—it is not what you experience but how you experience it that matters. Even people who crave new experiences can be in rut if they are not really moving forward with or because of those experiences.

The stuff of life is our material, it has within it everything we need to learn and grow and move to the ‘next level’ of being. This is why I say I am a student of life. It takes time and effort. There is no getting around this. There are no short cuts, at least that I am aware of. And the person who really gets it would never want a short cut, because he/she would see the ignorance, selfishness, and futility of looking for one.

The effort needs to be put in.

Maybe, like childbirth, it is harder for some, easier for others. This is fine with me. I don’t think this is unfair. It is simply the way it is. But, I think that it is safe to say that it is much harder, and takes much more time and effort, than most people realize. Especially when they do some of that effort and get a little along and then either get tired or sick of it, or realize that they can’t get the things they desire in life while doing it, and they decide that they ‘get it’ and stop. I think this happens often with people who make a little effort. And it is why any time I encounter people who think they get it, who think they have done it, I say that that is the only sign I need that they haven’t.

Anyone who thinks they ‘know’ surely does not. It’s actually quite nice and tidy the way that works. Another example of life being infinitely more simple, and more complex, than most people understand.

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From my personal notes, 8/12/00

The Truth is On My Side

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The beautiful thing about reality and truth is that once a person summons the courage to open his or her mind to reality, and rescind his ego’s all-access pass, and sees desire and self-regard not as the bringer of happiness, but as the exact cause of suffering, then there is absolutely nothing ‘the system’ can do to control him any longer.

The beautiful thing about reality and truth is that once it is accepted and realized, one sees just how weak the system really is, and how the power that comes with being free of the system is limitless.

Most people who live in the system, in ‘the Matrix,’ are controlled by their ignorance, weakness, greed, and most especially, by their fears. They fear reality and freedom more than anything, and that fear pervades all of their beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices. This is the hardest fight of all, for I am fighting for the freedom of those who do not yet want to be free. It is a long road, and I can only be a part of the struggle, but I cannot help but do what I can so that I may contribute what I can to this most worthy of causes. I oppose the system, and I will resist, resist, resist!

The more I learn and understand, the more I realize that truth is on my side. By that I mean that the best, and possibly only, way to help people free themselves is to help them to realize and accept that, deep down, they really do want it. This is tied to the fact that, deep down, we all—every single person who has ever lived—have wanted the same things. We all want happiness and love; we want to be loved for who we really are, and we want to be able to love. While many people may agree with this, the difference between walking a path of true awakening and self-delusion rests on one’s understanding (or misunderstanding) of what love and happiness really are. It’s funny, but while everyone wants to be happy, while everyone wants love, when they are confronted with the fact that they need to ‘fire’ their egos to get there, people resist and protest.

So many people’s happiness and enlightenment hinges on their conditioned and assumed dualistic way of seeing themselves and the world around them.

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From my personal notes, 7/17/00

Time to no longer be afraid

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I was thinking about how hard it is to be the only person that really believes in me, and how much better, and, in many ways, easier, it is when someone you really care about and respect and love believes in you, how wonderful that could be. But I do not have that, and so I feel that I need to find the strength and confidence within myself to do it, because I do not have it coming in from outside.

I think that I realize that while it is great to hear that someone else believes that you have something to contribute, that that is not enough, that I need to believe it in myself, that I need to believe in myself if I am really to do it, and do it well.

And so I need to figure out how to be me. I need to figure out how to be the well-oiled me, because right now, I am like a car engine with years of deposits that are keeping it from running well and smoothly. I need to figure out how I can run smoothly, for only then can the things come out of me that I know are in there waiting to come out when they are ready.

I need to clear my mind, clear the cobwebs from my mind.

A lot is going on with all this: there is fear, and I know that I need to find the confidence to do it; I need to not be terrified of being alone; I need to figure out how to not let feeling un-safe cripple me, or hold me back; and there is the feeling that this is the time, that this is the time for me to really start this, that I have finally begun to figure out who it is that I am, and how I should go about being that, though it is not all clear to me.

It is not something that fits into the machine of this society, and so I need to figure out how to be me in this society, and yet not get caught up in it in a way that will hold me back any longer.

This will not be easy, for most people are still in “the matrix,” and, as the movie said, many people are so much in it that they will fight to defend it; and that is hard, because who I am is all about fighting against the matrix, of freeing myself from it.

This is not easy, and it is something I feel I have been struggling with my entire life.

I need to clear away the shit that is keeping me from being who I really am, from expressing who I really am in the ways that I feel are right for me.

I know that I need to allow myself to be myself, that I need to allow for the things that will come out of me to come out of me, and that the work needs to be directed towards clearing away the shit in order to allow it. I need to clear the way for the coming of me, and what I have to express, create, and contribute. And that involves the courage necessary to face and fight the fear that holds me back.

It is time for me to no longer be afraid, to no longer be afraid to finally step out there, into the world, as me, come what may. Because I know full-well that if I do not, that I am guaranteeing myself a life of aloneness and incompleteness and unhappiness.

I need to not feel responsible for this kind of thing for anyone else, for that is their responsibility, and not only would I be doing myself, and them, a disservice by taking it upon myself, but it is wholly impossible, anyway, for me to deal with or take responsibility for that which is theirs alone. Wow. Only now have I been able to really see this.

The hard thing in all this is to get down to earth, to bring these general, and almost abstract, concepts down to the real world, to my real life, to the specifics of me and my life, and deal with them as opposed to just recognizing them.

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From my personal notes, 7/10/00

Belonging

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I am visited again by the recurring idea that I am living in a conditioned, structured, perhaps or perhaps not arbitrary, or at least particular, reality; and that this reality around me, this particular system of ideas, of the way things are, is not one into which I fit very well.

I do not consider myself to be anachronistic, in that I belong to another, or earlier, time; but, rather, I feel I belong to another system, another structure, another form of circumstances, another set of ideas.

It is hard for me to escape from that pulling I feel, and have yet to yield to, have yet to look at full on with brave eyes—that who I am, who I will be, should be, am meant to be, and do, simply cannot be actualized within the system of the machine that is oft referred to as the ‘real world,’ which, of course, I feel is a deceptive, inaccurate, and dangerous misnomer.

I often wonder if there is a system in this time in which I can be myself.

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From my personal notes, 6/27/00

Jesus and Letting Go

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The thought just occurred to me that this is what the Jesus story is ultimately about: letting go. It is about the “death” of what you are in order to be who you are. It is about a dying of the old, of your old illusory life, in order to be “resurrected” as who you really are. This is why they used death—in this case, crucifixion—in the story, because it is painful, difficult to accept and go through, and something that we are so scared to do, something we fear greatly.

You have to die (to lose everything) before you can be resurrected (be free to do anything).

I think that the crucifixion story, like Fight Club, shows well the pain involved in the process of being true. This is not an easy, beautiful thing to go through. No, it’s dirty, painful, bloody, messy. How could this be portrayed honestly unless he went through that kind of painful and trying ordeal? It’s a metaphor, but a “literal metaphor,” because it is messy and painful, it’s confusing and dirty, and really, really hard. If it’s not, then you’re not really doing it.

Jesus represents all people, in that we all need to go through that “death” in order to be able to be “resurrected.” But we are so scared, we resist it so much, this idea of letting go and being who we really are.

For most people, their egos continually provide them with a smokescreen of things that trick them into mistaking their constructed ego-selves for who they really are. When they get a glimpse through that veneer, they are terrified, and they cling to the diving board even harder.

It is one of the tricks of the alluring ego-world of illusion. We like our comfort, we fear change, we are still so taken with sensual pleasures, wealth, and honor. If Adam is the child, then Jesus is the adult. This is the brilliance of these stories. Too bad that so many people are too ignorant and arrogant to see them for, and as, they really are. They are children who take such brilliant stories and allegories literally, because that is what immature child-like minds do, because they are not ready to see—let alone live—the truth.

I feel that I am at the point in my path where I am seeing the truth, and I am scared of it, and I am resisting it. And yet, like Jesus, can I really escape who I am? I can run as much as I want to, I can bury my face in the sand of material and sensual pleasures, but who I am is who I am, and I cannot really run away from that, nor escape it, no matter how much I run and hide.

I’m almost a little pissed and disappointed that I am at this transitional place, because I want to have more fun! I feel that I haven’t yet been able to have real fun. But, again, I need to be careful not to go to the extreme of denial, of living an ascetic life, because that is not the answer. It is not what we do but how and why we do it that matters. I can—and a part of me thinks that I need to—have some real fun, that it is part of me being who I am, of doing without fear, of being myself. I do not think that this is a process for another world, or for some other, dualistic “heaven.” Why? For the very simple and obvious reason that I am here, in this existence, on this earth, in this place. I am supposed to do this here, with this life, with this body, etc. This is a mistake that I think many Christians make. They think that “redemption,” or “the resurrection,” is for another world, when it is rather for this world; otherwise, we would not be able to “see” it, as humans in this world.

This phase, this “resurrection” is meant for this world, for this existence. And it is implicit in the Jesus story, which has been so misunderstood. We need to let reality, what “is,” be more of our teacher, our guide. This is what Spinoza saw. This is what the Buddha saw.
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From my personal notes, 6/15/00