Desert of the Real

it occurs to me that, contrary to what i've believed the previous years, i'm not on a mission to further the development of human understanding. on a crusade of some sorts, yes, but not with the intention of bettering humanity. my endless tirades on all the downsides of some of our current paradigms of understanding is simply just me grinding my axe in my state of dysfunctionality. this world suits me rather poorly and i'll have you know it thank you very much. really i think its just a matter of battling feelings of smallness. i was born into a template and the template fit in some places and in others areas it didnt and these poorer fitting areas are even today like large open wounds. but somehow its more important to me not to conform than to elude the pain that comes from alienation and dysfunction. i refuse to change and at the same time i insist upon my suffering. in my stubbornness i've become Atlas. i reject the world and shudder with fear as it draws further into the distance. but something interesting happens when i push the world away. as everything disappears into the dim horizon a myriad of images leap out of the woodwork to keep me company. just as when night descends and the dreamworld comes to life so it is when reality is suppressed and all the animals of the imagination come out to play. unlike the real world whose parameters are finite and limited, the unreal world has none and is infinite and limitless. the beings who live in the imagination are magic beings. they do the undoable. just because they are not real doesn't make them any less fantastic.

so i visit my fantasies often. if the world shall refuse them, i shall refuse the world. i think all the best of my little imaginary animals, they mean the world to me. i nurture them because they add something to my life. they are the mystery, the x-factor. i'll even go out of my way to meet other peoples imaginary animals. they are well hid in most circumstances. we say we stick to the real stuff in the real world. "best not let your real get mixed up with your unreal". you wouldn't want your imaginary friends wandering around in other peoples backyards. it might cause a commotion.

Someday Everything will be Different

without the chase for happiness where do we turn? if there is no hope of a better future why shall we even bother with the future? there is no reason to work long hours improving society if improvement itself is not a guaranteed outcome. why should anyone invest their energy in something that does not yield results? it would be pointless, we say, or at least so goes the current dogma of values currently immersing us. it seems survival in and of itself is not rewarding enough. mere subsistence is a lesser life, unlived, unfulfilled, tainted by boredom. the challenge of being alive is to keep oneself entertained. if one is not constantly amused, pleasured or made content there is something wrong. it is a failure to reach one's highest potential. the highest ideal is to maintain a lasting feeling of satisfaction. whoever has achieved this has mastered life. life in this perspective is a candy store. you open the door and see all the varieties of sweets spread out before you. all you have to do is simply reach out and grab what you want.

there is one problem however. though the metaphor of the candy store is apt and delightfully true, the visitors to the candy store become addictive, neurotic, dysfunctional people. they soon grow tired of the selection and demand greater variety and more intense pleasure. the candy-man can't keep up. any amount of candy-improvement won't do the trick. all his customers expect the new high to be even higher than the old one. and so it goes. the customers all settle into a constant opportunistic pleasure-hunt. their lives become monotonous and the candy looses more and more of its original sweetness.

i think what our current value-system is missing is a balanced appreciation for the negative aspects of life. loneliness, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, worthlessness, inadequacy and spiritual emptiness all build character. they harden and strengthen the soul. they polish the self with a protective layer shielding it from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". what happens when we chase the positive to hard is that we loose the opposite pole, the negative, and become unstable Selves. a Self that is comfortable with suffering is a core so dense it can withstand the inevitable pains of being alive. the Self that is whole is also dual, two-fold. it is good and evil, pleasure and pain, love and fear. it integrates the aspects the unwhole Self disavows and brings unity where there once was fragmentation. the unwhole Self is full of orphaned children. all the parts of itself that it feared or disliked it banished to oblivion.  just like the modern Self has done with boredom and emptiness. they are not allowed in the perfect realm of the mind ruled by the biased Self. the biased Self does not see its own shortcomings or its lack of wholeness. it is like a drunkard refusing to accept there is no alcohol left. the biased Self only wants to soar higher and higher, surfing on the eternal rising wave of increased self-confidence, self-image, social influence and personal charisma. its on a power-trip headed for eternity and of course it inevitably crashes, and when it does, it crashes hard.

the positive and negative never go anywhere without each other. if we only embrace the positive soon enough the negative will make an unexpected appearance. the negative hates being abandoned and this time it shows up with more force and power than ever. we may at this point choose to close our eyes and go deeper into hiding but the more we flee the more power we grant the monster.

perhaps there are no monsters. maybe there is no darkness. maybe there are just places we are reluctant to explore.

A Metaphysics Of Art

"The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim."

                                                                                                               - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

e·ter·nal  

adj.

1. Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time

tem·po·ral 

adj.

1. Of, relating to, or limited by time

the goal of the artist is to become art.

art-consumption is escapism. art-making even more so.

art dissolves ordinary reality.

art substitutes reality with a virtual reality.

no art is observed in space and time.

the observer is located in space and time but the experience of the artwork is itself timeless, spaceless.

the yearning for the experience of art is eternity's yearning for itself.

the experience of art is essence recollecting itself.

in life, where essence hides itself, art is necessary to serve as a signpost.

art is a beacon of clarity in a state of sensory chaos.

when the artist is creating art he is not present as he is usually present. because he is so absorbed in his creation that he disappears for a little while, he is able to touch upon the essence of life itself. he is no longer flung about by the many impersonal forces of the universe, he is the calm creative center in which the whole universe is dreamed up. he is the fixed keyhole through which the creative impulse flows. he is not the person anymore, but the force of creation manifesting itself through a physical body. because he dies unto the temporal world he gives birth to the eternal and therefore, if he has lost himself thoroughly in his art, he will be a bridge between the worlds. it is not possible to bring any elements from the temporal into the eternal. only the eternal survives in eternity. only the non-personal can flourish in a domain where there are no persons. therefore art does not concern the person, it is not for the person or by the person; it is the eternal recollecting the eternal. it is the beloved couple locked in a timeless ecstatic fascination for each other. though the eternal can never reveal itself as-it-is in the temporal world, it can reveal itself through it's lower cousin, the essence of eternity, essence for short. from this highest principle we derive beauty, goodness and truth; all of which are inherent in any creative act.

but the subject is really not the creator of art. the subject is more a kind of mediator of aesthetics. the artist decides when and where beauty is going to happen but he can't define beauty himself. beauty existed before he existed. he may choose to give beauty a particular expression and he may vary the expressions but his theme is timeless and universal. really to say that he controls when and where beauty is going to happen is an overstatement. beauty really just happens to anyone. it cant be forced or provoked. it just is or it just isn't. no object is in itself beautiful. beauty can't be pointed at. the artist can be in a state of mind that is itself beauty and so use his transparance to be a window for the audience but if the audience are not themselves in a state of mind that is itself beauty it makes no difference what they watch. all the artist can hope for is that he transcends his ordinary state of mind in order to reach "the other side" and serve as a reminder in space and time of the eternal theme.

the presence and function of art and artists is really a sign of the state of beauty. it is the ill fate of the temporal to forget the eternal theme and so reminders are required. beauty is not continous, not ever-present like in the eternal , so it must be re-iterated, repeated, remembered.  this is the role of the artist. he reminds people of a state of mind. he introduces them to a mystery they can if they wish choose to explore themselves, but the mystery was there all along, way before any of them existed. the people in the audience may continue to consume beauty from time to time, drawing it in one tiny piece at a time, or they may find a way to maintain the experience by reprogramming their minds and attaining a viewpoint of the world which is grounded in the feeling of beauty. the artist, having been trained by himself and by other artists, is well versed in seeking the viewpoint from which the world appears magical and transparant with luminosity. it is his skill, his work, to inhabit a certain perspective or worldview and to stay there unperturbed by the chaotic stirrings of the world ruled by conventions. his task is to forget the temporal and remember the eternal. getting caught up in the temporal usually leads to forgetting the eternal and so the artist must be aware of his forgetfulness. whenever he forgets he becomes more a person and less a window. he starts immersing himself more in the outer circumstance of his life, he starts caring more about his personal fate and he looses touch with the non-personal. the more he cares about his life, the less he remembers of eternity.  the less he cares about his life, the more he becomes pure beauty.

if he whishes he can go all the way into pure beauty entirely destroying the furnishings of his personhood and there may be in his wake a beautiful explosion of art echoing through time eternally.

Things Observed Outside the Library Window

as we all await the great transformation of humanity that will lift us out of the darkness and cast off the load that tethers us to the ground, i rest easy in the library, gazing detached out the window, sitting in a state of amusement writing imaginative assessments of the future. other people pass outside the window with shopping bags in their hands, further back some builders on a construction-site stand around smoking cigarettes. i wonder if these people im seeing ever think about the future of our world and if they sometimes imagine how the world could be if it could be changed. judging by their walking pace i assume they are thinking of other things. school has just finished and the streets are crowded with teenagers. all the sudden a girl texting on her phone stops in the middle of the road. she lifts her eyes up from the phone and looks directly at me. wow. she is dazzling. i wonder if she feels lost like me. she turns around and starts walking the other way. further down the road a man is dragging a reluctant dog. two acquaintances pass and nod lazily to each other. faint smiles.

finally a man walking slowly creeps past the window. the slow walkers always make me happy. the man stops to observe the builders and their equipment. yes, at last, here is a man of the Dao i think to myself, floating downstream with the passing of time, savoring each moment as it grows and expires. these other people, especially some of the young ones, walk fast with their backs slightly hunched forward, as if they were leaning toward that goal they can't get to fast enough. but this man is not capable of lacking time. he can't possibly run out of time - he is time itself. every movement he makes is so slow and patient. he stops the world when he moves. apparently he is amused by the things going on at the construction site and he pauses for a while to let the whole scene sink in. it's lovely to see someone who obviously appreciates the act of seeing. this man is clearly fascinated and usually you only find that in the children. he disappears and two elderly women stroll carelessly down the road at an awkward and low pace, seemingly without purpose or destination, smoking cigarettes as if to lament their indifference.

i see a well-dressed man with a tense face and am reminded that one of the great signs of psychic tension is a strained brow. today the only people with strained brows have been men. they also walk fastest. some of the women look distracted also, but not as intensely as the men. its strange how their eyes flicker around and bounce off the scenery without settling anywhere. they are constantly looking up ahead and down at the ground again. back and forth. they see the building site - look up - then down again, then back at the building site, kind of disinterested and apathetic. the couples and the young mothers seem like the happiest. they are the ones who smile just because. and their stature isn't dense and stiff like the others. again i catch myself wondering if these people, like me, feel like their life is just random fumbling around in a place where everything is pitch dark. do they sometimes wonder why all this is happening? have they seen as i have how life leaves you dumber and dumber as each day goes by?

surely the freshly-baked parents and the couples in love do not succumb to such existential despair and the teenagers are probably too immature to even know what to call these feelings. but i dare say that in the most fundamental sense possible we are truly lost. no one knows the way forward anymore. the situation we have now is one of total confusion and utter alienation. and i think this is why im sitting here performing this half-assed attempt at psychoanalysis on strangers in my field of vision. actually they are stereotypes inside my mind but that's besides the point. im analyzing them because i sense that the modern person really has no anchor or foothold in existence. he drifts from day to day, from stimulant to stimulant, without a point of reference to ground him. he knows no familiarity except constant change. he travels and travels and never comes home. this is why my extended family out there in the world of money and jobs, which i have no part in, all look so discontent and dispirited. this is why they walk fast and endlessly scan their surroundings. they truly have no place to rest their mind and soul. so they walk endlessly from place to place never really stopping anywhere, never really resting. they're always aimed toward that next thing up ahead, always preoccupied by things in the future.

if you were to take any average person in western society and bereave them of all their worldly goods and lock them up in a dark room for a very long time they would probably have a nervous breakdown. you would have taken from them all that prevented the realization of their own emptiness. no longer kept distracted by the endless turmoil of modern life they would with great reluctance and denial gradually come to see themselves as the empty shells they were. no phone or computer to provide artificial communication. no tv to provide artificial ideas and situations. no people to provide an artificial sense of identity. indeed, the whole person is artificially created and maintained by stimulation through social norms and mass media. all the layers are provided so that one gets the illusion of being a person, of having values, interests, tastes and preferences, without actually going to the trouble of acquiring them through actual experience or reflection. in the business of life we forget that ones identity, both within and without, must be earned trough effort and determination. if you wish a change of personality, a change of character, you are required to do massive amounts of internal self-discernment. there is no other way than to sit down, literally with yourself and only yourself, and get to work.  

instead we are told what to wear, what to say, what to do, what to like, what to believe, what to feel. all these things that define us are chosen on our behalf so that this whole process of individuation becomes cramped and what we get as an end-result is a bunch of would-be angels with their wings clipped by propaganda and expectation.  its scary to think that probably half the world is running on auto-pilot half the time. and mass media and consumer-culture create this sort of hive-mind where you have half the country watching the same station every night, seeing the same things, hearing the same songs and, in sense, being the same person. it is deeply screwed up, i tell ya. but what i think is happening here is that mass media, in their ever-expanding mission to reign the earth, have fashioned a template for individuality. this, when confronted by us, the tired wanderers who have always been wondering who and what they are, seems like an excellent opportunity to get a break from the harsh reality of searching and unknowing. the endless grinding of forces which is required in the process of individuation can finally come to a halt. no tension - no problem - no progress. this is mildly put a huge issue in the world today because when people don't blossom into the independent strong-headed learning-able beings they have the potential to become, they regress into this hive-mind, the collective mind, which is this template of personality we all more or less copy in the attempt of being a person.

so if you have the collective mind informing fifty percent of your behavior and beliefs you are half zombie, half human. to the degree one is instructed by the hive-mind and follows this instruction one will be what the hive-mind is. and let me say that this concept, "the collective/hive mind", is not something that just exists out-there, like a mountain or an ocean. it is to a large extent maintained and influenced by day-to-day human activity. saying it is the sum of all human behavior comes about as close to the mark as i can get at the moment with my understanding. this sum may when added together become a ruling pattern of behavior.  what most people did last year is what most people are likely to do next year. this is the way the hive-mind could work. the more minds that follow the same rules, think in the same way, watch the same entertainment, talk about the same things, the bigger the hive-mind may become.

anyway, to round this long rant off, a lot more people than usual are more confused than ever about what the hell is going on. shit is happening and its becoming more evident as time passes that big changes are about to occur.  so if my theory is correct more and more people will cease their efforts to grow as individuals as a consequence of general confusion, and regress into the hive-state, which in turn should cause more people to display similar behavior which again increases the influence of the collective mind.  in effect this means that we are headed toward a very rough time for the individual. seeing as the 21st century is likely to the be the era of the individual, this makes little sense at first glance. i think that what we are experiencing is the last feverish death-cramps of a colossal power, maybe the old hive mind, that reigned the earth for millions of years. and so like an animal rids itself of anxiety by shaking itself violently, this is is the earth gathering strength for a giant shake which will probably last many decades. but before it does this, the earth, ourselves, Gaia, God, whatever, will probably concentrate and intensify all its bad aspects, like poverty, war, the old controlling hive-mind, until it reaches a climax of suffering and general shittyness that is so bad that we have no possible alternative than to create a better world. its like flushing out bad energy. you gather it all together in the most concentrated way possible and then you release it all at the same time. i have no idea if any of what i have said might be true but it is one of the few explanations of our worsening situation that has made any sense in light of the fact that we are evolving while simultanously getting worse. evolving but getting worse seems to be an incompatible statement but if my theory if plausible, its likely that this is how the earth does it. it evolves for millions of years, then goes haywire for a hundred while all the organisms go through trials and hardships and get rid of all their shortcomings, then its back to business as usual.

so yeah. i expect weird times.

All the Madmen

"Cause I'd rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sadmen
Roaming free
And I'd rather play here
With all the madmen
For I'm quite content
They're all as sane as me"

David Bowie, All The Madmen



i spent this day reading biographies of poets and artists trying to figure out why so many people with the same outlook on reality as me ended up in asylums and coffins. so i wrote this.

how does one ever get involved in the mess of questioning reality?

why does anyone choose to voluntarily take a step back from life and try to see the hidden forces at work beneath the threshold of our awareness?

is it possible to explain why some people seem to detach from the ordinary experience of being a human-being and start to drift off in strange directions claiming to see mystical apparitions in the distance?

is there a reason for why so many philosophers, prophets, mystics, saints, gurus and holy men have gradually excluded themselves from society and begun to talk of distant and alien realms of existence?

how can it be that for thousands of years certain individuals in all cultures have taken a u-turn in regards to their worldly aspirations and charged head-on into the riddle of eternity only to be seen at a later time to be rambling on about magic visions and cosmic illusions?

throughout civilized history countless individuals have designated their minds to the task of piercing through the outer layer of illusion and falsehood that so pervades all we have come to know.  it is a consistent trait of humanity that a small portion of human-beings approach existence with great doubt and skepticism, as if they required a higher sense of validation than was provided.  so i ask you; why do humans display this behavior? and what happens to those that do?

well, to tell you the truth i dont know and i am one of these people. im asking these questions because i am stuck in this completely insane and manic attempt to make sense of these matters and it seems the only way forward in this riddle is to probe the works of those who have made the journey before. it becomes apparent once one decides to delve into the twilight-zones of human knowledge known as philosophy, religion and mysticism that for thousands of years humanity has been working on a collective project, a cooperation stretching across time and space, where the shared goal has been the liberation and evolution of the human soul. the soul was not something latently waiting all the while to appear eventually on the scene of humanity. the soul is a end-result of countless sane minds banging their heads against the wall of being trying to squeeze from it a single drop of significance. it is the fruit of thousands of madhatters pondering the abyss in the long hours attempting to convey the things they saw there. it is the riches of Zarathustras solitary life on the mountain. but neither the wall of being, the abyss or the mountain is a forgiving place. it cares not for the living. it cares not for the ways of the living. those so inclined to seek these places don't come back in any ordinary sense of the word. they return changed. what they learned isolates them. what they see when when they peek over the edge leaves them empty, unappeased with the activities of the world. in a sense, what they peer between the cracks is beyond the world and makes the world seems false, illusory, game-like. Zarathustra grows weary of wisdom and comes down from the mountain but the people in the village are not ready to listen to his words. they are still caught in the web of life, still too complacent in their blanket of illusion.

i guess what im trying to say between these lines is that the search is a lonely and unrewarding process. the further you progress, the more you distance yourself from others.  whatever is to be found "out there", whatever mystery is there to see, it rather puts our whole enterprise on earth in a new light. conveying this vision becomes problematic as less and less people share the understanding and experience of your message. the more you find out, the less you can say about it. what has driven so many painters, poets, philosophers and prophets mad over the years is not the content of the mystic vision itself but the lack of reception upon the return to the ordinary world.  upon returning having gained the new insight the world is a worn-out theme-park. the rides have have all been tested, the shops checked and the food tasted. the wiseperson brings promises of new and better rides but the people are all content with the old ones. they see no reason to change the ride. it still brings amusement to their hearts. so the wiseperson either starts shouting or he lowers his voice and disappears into the background. he may choose to join the despairing crowds of people roaming the surface of the earth as ghosts in time living in a sort of limbo between the world and the abyss. i call these the nobodies. the nobodies are a strange kind; wherever they go, they are not. they exist in the twilight-zone between insanity and sanity. they are the weird, the off-beat, the loners and outcasts. these marginal characters living a marginal existence in a different dimension than ours are invisible to most people. they walk among the living but in reality they are not related to the living by any conventional means. they depend on the living, they subsist off their scraps and the crumbs from their labor, they sometimes stop to have brief conversations, but their relations and affections are with their own. the people of the world, the sane crowds whose existence is governed by rules and commandments, are a different species. they do not exist by the same principle of non-participation.

 non-participants are strange characters in the world-drama. they float through the cities like drifters. they observe the activities of society with detached amusement. no longer tied to the ideal of well-adjustment and held in place by the opinions of the Others, the nobodies view the establishment from a vantage point way outside of the establishment itself, from a self-created no-land, a self-elected valueless no-space. they are not of the world nor in they world; they confront the world, they observe and perceive the world but want no part in creating or shaping it. they are only traveling through. to them it's all a passing show. they are not amused by the games played by the living. they either find new games to play or find ways to avoid game playing all together. some nobodies find pleasure in playing the world-game now that they know its really a game but they are quick to disappear when some real commitment to the game is required. they must stay uncommitted to the game because they must live alone. they can not by their nature be understood. each vision of Heaven is unique and cannot be put into words, so their vision is their own and they must tend to it as long as they live, privately. it is an ever-occurring realization that is muted by the utter inability to put it into words. and because it doesn't stop one is doomed to an eternal silence. to put it this way; truth is an experience lasting indefinitely which can never be referred to or explained. thus it can never be shared unless two people have actually gone through the steps, been to all the places and reached the same level of understanding. realizing truth isn't even hard its just that so many people are frightened of it. the old ride is still the safe ride. it will be safe tomorrow to. but the future belongs to those courageous enough to believe in their visions and dreams.

people say dreamers are escapists.
we're not escapists.
we're trailblazers.