The Greatest Story Ever Told

In the beginning, which was really no beginning at all, Spirit said to itself:

"I'm bored with you.
Go away!
Come again some other day!"

So Spirit ran from itself. It ran until it no longer recognized its own face in the mirror.
Spirit vanished and in the Aeon it played all games forever.

All time passed.
All space filled.

And then, one day, there was heard a soft whisper through the Aeon;

"Where did you come from?
"Who are you who Is?"

It didn't know.
It asked again.
And again.
And yet again.

It  kept on asking until finally there was a silence which lasted all eternity.

And in the end, which was not an end, it said;

 "I am that which is. I am Spirit."

What is the Meaning of Life?

Once you've asked this question you're in deep trouble. The best thing would probably be to not ask it at all. Most people manage just fine without having that gnawing pressure in the back of their heads sometimes encouraging them to stop in the middle of their routine walk toward the shops and stand motionless with that sensation booming like a loudspeaker in their soul; where am I, what is going on, my god this is so strange, who am I?!

The last month has been a good month. I've not written a single word. This probably means I've been knowing who I am. Now I am back to the process of reading and writing and this probably means I don't know anymore. I am filled with doubt and questioning again. In times like these my life takes on the character of an existential quandary. I become suspicious of Being. I give it scrutinizing looks out of the corner of my eye. I think thoughts like "what is this thing who dares call itself existence? What of time, space and matter?" My faculty of thinking/labeling has summoned the court and no stone shall be left unturned. "God! What do you have to say for yourself?"

And so it goes. For a while the whole universe is subject to my categorical scheme. Sometimes I seemingly make progress. That means; I make more labels who are internally consistent with each other. For a while the labels enable me to expand beyond my old understanding and allow me to retrace my steps in the intellectual landscape from a higher point of view. This is the closest thing resembling philosophical enlightenment that I've managed to find and basically it isn't much different from good ol' learning. First I develop a network of new concepts and then I review the old model in light of the newly-found knowledge. I cannot see how this is good for anything except the accumulation of more words. It seems to me that knowledge is quite useless. It wont make you feel good. It wont feed you or make your relationships less dysfunctional. It just sits there; static. Unless of course these things fascinate you and make the butterflies in your belly go tingle.

That is the reason for asking any philosophical question. It is entertainment, just plain and simple fun. It serves no purpose. It has no benefit. It is like dancing, it is done just for the pure sake of doing it. I write these texts because it fascinates me how my mind can move about on this page and take a million forms. I have no idea what I'm going to write next. Sometimes I truly astonish myself, like when a eloquent and meaningful sentence just pops into my head fully formed. I suppose some people would like to say I've been smart and clever to read and write all these words, and I say to them, I suppose the chef was wise to eat and cook all that food. The painter too, for seeing all those sunsets and scribbling all those little doodles.

My problem is that I want to reach the top of the metaphysical mountain. Fast. Preferably right now. I want to see it, whatever there is to see, that thing that is hidden, that little secret you always suspected was there. I don't care how it will tax my social life. I don't care how alienating it is. I can think of no greater pleasure, no greater rush or mix of awe and ecstasy than to behold Ultimate Reality, Gods Perspective, whatever. I don't think I'll ever meet God, since I am something It is doing and really we are not two, but I've felt the exhilarating elation that comes from climbing the mountaintop and I'd be damned if I wouldn't get to experience it again. Sex, drugs and music all have to take a seat when compared to the thrill of uncovering an actual piece of reality. It is like following the footsteps of a creative mastermind.

Sometimes questions in regard to existence can take on a character of desperateness. This is the type of philosophy I've been accustomed to. It comes from a type of person who has lost themselves and is attempting to force some answer or consolation from the fact of existence. Well, I tried this. There is none. You're only feeling sorry for yourself, that is all. There is no pat on the back from the great grandfather in the skies in response to your cry for help, only the sound of the wind and the endless depths of space. Most people who seek The Ultimate do it because they think it will make them feel good. Like knowing the Truth will somehow cure their neurosis and dysfunction. So they embark on a spiritual quest. They undergo a transformation, they change their lifestyle, their appearance, their attitudes, and they sit there at the end of it, having strived and searched for years, and they wait for the candy-man to come down from the sky and provide them with the good shit they never got. It never comes of course. The secret is that it was there all the time.

You just got uncertain and forgot that you are something the whole universe is doing. Where did you think you came from anyway? Right now All That Is, is doing you. That's all. There's no problem. Nothing to be fixed. Everything is perfect. You know very well what you are doing. You've never done anything else. There is nothing else to do. You wanna know who you are? Look!

Stars are Born from Chaos

i'd like to write about chaos. it is something that has been on my mind for some time now. the delightful rapture of chaos, the grand splendor of relinquishing control, the reveling in the power of destruction. it amuses me as a concept but it is something im deeply addicted to as a person. i need a weekly dose of total chaos. i just don't jive well with prolonged periods of stability. i become too predictable. i loose the ability to surprise myself. so every now and then I have to raise the bar and do something I normally wouldn't allow myself to do. also chaos becomes an emergency exit in times of depression. harnessing the wave of chaos and letting it crush you to the ground is an act of personal disintegration. whoever you were you are no longer in the throes of the destructive force. in the vortex you are constantly being torn apart and put together in new ways. if who you are is causing some sort of stuckness it is all washed away by the wave of chaos. whatever life was, whatever the world meant, it is forgotten and the slate is yet again wiped clean. this way we can erase and re-write ourselves anytime we wish. oblivion is an arms length away. the secret is that oblivion is disguised rebirth. the trick is to have many rebirths, to be something new all the time, to be in continuous movement toward that higher potential. somewhere out there is a new and better you. you just have to die in order to find out who that is.

the chinese have an old saying that you can't fill a cup that is already full. to me this is a way of saying how destruction and creation really are the same thing. wherever there is creation, there has been destruction. in this regard it is not surprising to see that rock'n'roll entered the world stage at the very time it did. in a sense, it was a warning signaling the arrival of another pace of change. everything was up in the air. rules were being re-written. ray davies from the kinks took a knife and cut up the membrane on his guitar amplifier and so created the first distorted guitar sound, the very hallmark of rock music. to me personally, rock'n'roll has always been the soundtrack of puberty. it represents an uprising, an overthrowing of the established order. but somehow rock music does more than represent chaos; it is embodied, manifest, living chaos. it's very soundwaves are active agents of destruction and disintegration.

being pounded by a hundred decibel of twisted heavy metal phatness at a metal concert is a thrilling experience because you who are is being bent in strange directions. the music is re-shaping your sense of self. if you are not clinging too hard to a particular sense of self the soundwaves might destabilize your familiar way of seeing yourself and send you tumbling down the road toward self-immolation. if you let the sound take you, if you go with it where it wants to go, you might just experience the ecstatic moment of perfect self-destruction. this is one of the most beautiful things that can be experienced. 

but it can be hardly said to happen to anyone. in the moment of perfect self-destruction there is no room for the self you think you are. if you are still focused on the fact that this experience is happening to you then your focus is not entirely, wholly, absolutely transfixed on the process itself. when the process is all there is, when there is no world, no person, no time, then a miracle is likely to happen. at this point the person has sacrificed himself to a higher cause; the higher cause of participating in the creative birth of the universe. the universe, if it represents anything, is a form of play, self-expression, dance, art. the nature of the universe is playful self-realization. the game which the universe is playing is a game of hide and seek. slowly, stage by stage, it is revealing to itself what it really is. offered to the person is an open invitation to join in the ecstatic dance of all that is. except that no person can dance that dance. the person can only be danced. and if he lets himself be danced by the playful impulse of creation he is a participant in the symphony that is our universe. it is impossible for a person to be a conscious participator of universal creation because the person has no room, has no available space, to grasp the magnitude of this simple notion. his cup is full. but we have methods of overcoming this. this is why we have techniques for paralyzing the ego.

where the curtain of the ego is pulled back, the cosmos is revealed.

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.