a psychopath walks among the crowd, charming and friendly, polite and respectful
is taken inside into people's life due to his ability to turn off the trust alarm
However, once he is inside, that's when he turn on his distress signals and create chaos.
We all have two faces, the public and private face
We somehow forget about the private face and only believe the public face
The discrapancy between our public persona and private behaviors creates a knot
we con ourselves and others into believing that we are this nice good person
and claim our real selves as WEAKNESS/FLAW.
We let ourselves being controlled by others into playing this puppet just like we are controlling others
Our egotism expect others to be compliant or socially desirable that we don't expect from ourselves
We only accept others' public face and deny their private face like we do our own
This is how we maintain this drama, because people wants to push our button or pull leverage
The greatest tragedy in human life is denial of human nature
and get caught in the lies that we are better than others
and seeing our real selves as ugly and its ugly face keeps showing up
That's when we control others to do what we can't do
We stop people of doing what we want to do
We expect others to follow rules that we can't follow
why, because it takes one to know one, but since one deny itself, we control self by controlling others and we let ourselves being controlled by others.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Meaning
We create the world in our mind, we create theory about the world in our mind, we create experience in our mind, abstract or concrete
but there is no abstract or concrete ideas, no world, no theory, no experience without meaning
We connect to them through meanings
we are dreaming or awake depends on meaning
another name for meaning is belief
abstract or concrete depends on meaning
existent or fantasy depends on meaning
the truth depends on meaning
the vividness or realness of the images depend on meanings
the perceptual world, linguistic sentence, written or oral are things we can see
identity, experience are things we can't see
they all stand on their own
we connect to them through the meaning for us
the value of truth, reality, and morality.
WE LEARN MEANING OF OBJECTS BY INTENTIONAL MEANING
THE MEANING OF WORDS ARE EXTENTIONAL (THE OBJECTS)
THE WORLD, EXPERIENCE, THEORY IS THE INTENTIONAL MEANING OF WHAT WE PERCEIVE, FOR WE CAN'T REALLY DESCRIBE WHAT WE PERCEIVE.
but there is no abstract or concrete ideas, no world, no theory, no experience without meaning
We connect to them through meanings
we are dreaming or awake depends on meaning
another name for meaning is belief
abstract or concrete depends on meaning
existent or fantasy depends on meaning
the truth depends on meaning
the vividness or realness of the images depend on meanings
the perceptual world, linguistic sentence, written or oral are things we can see
identity, experience are things we can't see
they all stand on their own
we connect to them through the meaning for us
the value of truth, reality, and morality.
WE LEARN MEANING OF OBJECTS BY INTENTIONAL MEANING
THE MEANING OF WORDS ARE EXTENTIONAL (THE OBJECTS)
THE WORLD, EXPERIENCE, THEORY IS THE INTENTIONAL MEANING OF WHAT WE PERCEIVE, FOR WE CAN'T REALLY DESCRIBE WHAT WE PERCEIVE.
Friday, January 27, 2012
nothing to lose
living with nothing to lose leaves no button to push, no leverage to pull, no string attached, no punches thrown.
Waking life / WAKING FROM LIFE
S-E-E. See with your eyes. This is like my little window to the world, and every minute it's a different show. You want to keep things on an even keel I guess is what I'm saying. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. Saves on introductions and good-byes. The ride does not require an explanation. Just occupants. That's where you guys come in. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now, you may get the 8-pack, you may get the 16-pack. But it's all in what you do with the crayons, the colors that you're given. And don't worry about drawing within the lines or coloring outside the lines. I say color outside the lines. You know what I mean? Color right off the page. Don't box me in. We're in motion to the ocean. We are not landlocked, I'll tell ya that. So where do you want out?
A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. Hey, you got a match? And they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left? I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.
you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die.
I'm looking back on my life. Like my waking life is her memories.
I heard that Tim Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment when his body was dead but his brain was still alive. You know they say that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain activity after everything else is shutdown. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that's infinitely longer than a waking second.
I wake up and it is 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and I have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's ... 10:13.
So then six to twelve minutes of brain activity, I mean, that could be your whole life. I mean, you are that woman looking back over everything.
I believe reincarnation is just a - a poetic expression of what collective memory really is. There was this article by this biochemist that I read not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where we inherit our instincts.
In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
You can't fight city hall, death and taxes. Don't talk about politics or religion. This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, G.I. Lay down, G.I." We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now in the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize that we should not allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not submit to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control, those that control my life and those that seek to control it even more! I want freedom! That's what I want! And that's what you should want!
It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose and show them the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities because that is the central mode of control - make us feel pathetic, small so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have got to realize that we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century is going to be a new century, not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance and classism and statism and all the rest of the modes of control! It's going to be the age of humankind standing up for something pure and something right!
What a bunch of garbage - liberal Democrat, conservative Republican. It's all there to control you. Two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control! The C.E.O. job of Slavery, Incorporated! The truth is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it, and I'm not going to take a bite out of it! Do you got me? Resistance is not futile. We're gonna win this thing. Humankind is too good! We're not a bunch of underachievers! We're gonna stand up and we're gonna be human beings! We're gonna get fired up about the real things, the things that matter: creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit! Well that's it! That's all I got to say! It's in your court.
The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence.
The main character is what I call "the mind". Its mastery, its capacity to represent. Throughout history, attempts have been made to contain those experiences which happen at the end of the limit where the mind is vulnerable. But I think we are in a very significant moment in history. Those moments, those what you might call liminal, limit, frontier, edge zone experiences are actually now becoming the norm. These multiplicities and distinctions and differences that have given great difficulty to the old mind are actually through entering into their very essence, tasting and feeling their uniqueness. One might make a breakthrough to that common something that holds them together.
And so the main character is, to this new mind, greater, greater mind. A mind that yet is to be. And when we are obviously entered into that mode, you can see a radical subjectivity, radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is, opens itself to a vast objectivity. So the story is the story of the cosmos now. The moment is not just a passing empty nothing, yet - and this is the way in which these secret passages happen - yes, it's empty with such fullness that the great moment, the great life of the universe, is pulsating in it. And each one, each object, each place, each act leaves a mark. And that story is singular. But, in fact, it's story after story.
Time just dissolves into quick-moving particles that are swirling away. Either I'm moving fast or time is. Never both simultaneously.
It's such a strange paradox. I mean, while, technically, I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. When I was younger, there was a desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path, and I had to get there.
I know what you mean, because I can remember thinking, "Oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe, everything's going to just somehow gel and settle, just end." It was like there was this plateau, and it was waiting for me, and I was climbing up it, and when I got to the top, all growth and change would stop. Even exhilaration. But that hasn't happened like that, thank goodness. I think that what we don't take into account when we're young is our endless curiosity. That's what's so great about being human.
Yeah, yeah. Well do you know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity?
No.
Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity.
And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.
here are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I've always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.
Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?
You know, they say that dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life? See, there's a lot of us that are out there that are mapping the mind-body relationship, of dreams. We're called the oneironauts. We're the explorers of the dream-world. Really, it's just about the two opposing states of consciousness which don't really oppose, at all. See, in the waking world, the neural system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories. And this makes evolutionary sense. See you'd be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator to be mistaken for the memory of one, and vice-versa. If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we would be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic neurons that inhibit hallucinations that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep. See this allows dreams to appear real, while preventing competition from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality. To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and actually the waking perception and action. I had a friend once who told me that the worst mistake that you can make is to think you are alive, when you're really asleep in life's waiting room. The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. 'Cause if you can do that you can do anything. Did you ever have a job that you hated? Worked really hard at? A long, hard day at work, finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes, and immediately you wake up and realize that the whole day at work had been a dream? It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for ... for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.
I fancy myself the social lubricator of the dream world, helping people become lucid a little easier. You know, cut all that fear and anxiety stuff and just rock and roll.
By becoming lucid you mean just knowing that you're dreaming, right?
Yeah. And then you can control it. They're more realistic and less bizarre than non-lucid dreams.
You know, I just woke from a dream. It wasn't a typical dream. It seemed more like I'd walked into an alternate universe or something.
Yup, it's real. I mean, technically it's a phenomenon of sleep, but you can have so much damn fun in your dreams. And of course everyone knows fun rules.
Yeah.
So what was going on in your dream?
Oh, a lot of people, a lot of talking. You know, some of it was kind of absurdist, like from a strange movie or something. Mostly it was just people going off about whatever, really intensely. I woke up wondering where did all this stuff come from?
You can control that you know.
Do you have these dreams all the time?
Hell, yeah. I'm always going to make the best of it. But the trick is, you got to realize that you're dreaming in the first place. You got to be able to recognize it. You got to be able to ask yourself, "Hey man, is this a dream?" See, most people never ask themselves that when they're awake, or especially when they're asleep. Seems like everyone's sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams. Either way, they're not going to get much out of it.
The thing that snapped me into realizing I was dreaming was, uh, was my digital clock. I couldn't really read it. It was like the circuitry was all screwed up or something.
Yeah, that's real common. And small printed material is pretty tough too. Very unstable. Another good tip-off is trying to adjust light levels. You can't really do that. If you see a light switch nearby, turn it on and off and see if it works. That's one of the few things you can't do in a lucid dream. What the hell. I can fly around, have an interesting conversation with Albert Schweitzer. I can explore all these new dimensions of reality, not to mention I can have any kind of sex I want, which is way cool. So I can't adjust light levels. So what?
But that's like one of the things that you do to test if you're dreaming or not, right?
Yeah, like I said, you can totally train yourself to recognize it. I mean just hit a light switch every now and then. If the lights are on, and you can't turn them off, then most likely you're dreaming. And then you can get down to business. And believe me, it's unlimited. Hey, you know what I've been working on lately?
What's that?
Oh man, it's way ambitious, but I'm getting better at it. You're going to dig this. Three-sixty vision, man. I can see in all directions. Pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, man. Well, I got to go man.
Okay, later man. Super profundo on the early eve of your day.
What's that mean?
Well, you know, I've never figured it out. Maybe you can. This guy always whispers it in my ear. Louis. He's a reoccurring dream character.
Cinema, in its essence, is, well it's about an introduction to reality, which is that, like, reality is actually reproduced. And for him, it might sound like a storytelling medium, really. And he feels like, um ... like ... like ... like literature is better for telling a story. You know, and if you tell a story or even like a joke, like you know "This guy walks into a bar and, you know, he sees a dwarf." That works really well because you're imagining this guy and this dwarf in the bar and there's this kind of imaginative aspect to it. But in film, you don't have that because you actually are filming a specific guy, in a specific bar, with a specific dwarf, of a specific height, who looks a certain way, right?
So like, um, for Bazin, what the ontology of film has to do is it has to deal with, you know, with what photography also has an ontology of, except that it adds this dimension of time to it, and this greater realism. And so, like, it's about that guy, at that moment, in that space. And, you know, Bazin is like a Christian, so he, like, believes that, you know, God obviously ended up like, everything ... he believes, for him reality and God are the same. You know, like ... and so what film is actually capturing is like God incarnate, creating. And this very moment, God is manifesting as this. And what the film would capture if it was filming us right now would be like God as this table, and God as you, and God as me, and God looking the way we look right now, and saying and thinking what we're thinking right now, because we are all God manifest in that sense. So film is actually like a record of God, or of the face of God, or of the ever-changing face of God. You have a mosquito. Do you want me to get it for you? You got it.
I got it?
Yeah, you got it.
And like the whole Hollywood thing is just taking film and trying to make it like the storytelling medium where you take these books or stories, and then you like, you know, and then you have the script, and you try to find a person who sort of fits the thing. But it's ridiculous, because it's not, it shouldn't be based on the script. It should be based on the person, you know, or the thing. And in that sense, they are almost right to have this whole star system, because then it's about that person, you know, instead of, like, the story.
Truffaut always said the best films aren't made ... the films ... The best scripts don't make the best films, because they have that kind of literary narrative thing that you're sort of a slave to. The best films are the ones that aren't tied to that slavishly. So I don't know. The whole narrative thing seems to me like, um ... Obviously, there's narrativity to cinema 'cause it's in time, just the way there's narrativity to music. But, you know, you don't first think of the story of the song, and then make the song. It has to come out of that moment. And that's what film has. It's just that moment, which is holy. You know, like this moment, it's holy. But we walk around like it's not holy. We walk around like there's some holy moments and there are all the other moments that are not holy, right, but this moment is holy, right? And if film can let us see that, like frame it so that we see, like, "Ah, this moment. Holy." And it's like "Holy, holy, holy" moment by moment. But, like, who can live that way? Who can go, like, "Wow, holy"? Because if I were to look at you and just really let you be holy, I don't know, I would, like, stop talking.
Well, you'd be in the moment, I mean ....
Yeah
The moment is holy.
Yeah, but I'd be open. And then I'd look in your eyes, and I'd cry, and I'd like feel all this stuff and that's like not polite. I mean it would make you feel uncomfortable.
Well you could laugh too. I mean, why would you cry?
Well, 'cause ... I don't know. For me, I tend to cry.
Uh-huh. Well ... Is, is full ...
Well, let's do it right now. Let's have a holy moment.
Okay.
(Long moments pass with them staring at each other)
Everything is layers, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, there's the holy moment and then there's the awareness of trying to have the holy moment, in the same way that the film is the actual moment really happening, but then the character pretending to be in a different reality. And it's all these layers. And, uh, I was in and out of the holy moment looking at you. Can't be in a holy ... You're unique that way, Caveh. That's one of the reasons I enjoy you. You can ... bring me into that.
If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.
On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path of what we desire.
The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market.
A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.
We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass We'll devalue society's currency.
To confront the familiar.
Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.
Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline.
To interrupt the continuum of everyday experience and all the normal expectations that go with it.
To live as if something actually depended on one's actions.
To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward.
To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.
To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen.
There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life to exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.
An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.
No worse than us. He's all action and no theory. We're all theory and no action.
***
(The same four guys see an old man sitting at a bench)
Why so glum, Mr. Debord?
What was missing was felt irretrievable. The extreme uncertainties of subsisting without working made excesses necessary and breaks definitive. To quote Stevenson: "Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest."
Haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming's dead, that no one does it anymore. It's not dead, it's just been forgotten. Removed from our language. No one teaches it so no one knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced. Ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
***
(Main character is walking with a thin looking boy, who gradually turns into something else as he talks.)
A thousand years is but an instant. There's nothing new, nothing different. The same pattern over and over. The same clouds, the same music, the same insight I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There's nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember. This happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult, the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible, knowing it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from and how I became a human, why I hung around, and now my final departure is scheduled. This way out. Escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but infinity.
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
Then it's like we have met.
(They shake hands)
***
(Same two people talking in a room.)
So I'm doing this project, and I'm hoping that you'll be interested in doing it. It's a soap opera, and, so, the characters are the fantasy lives or the alter egos, of the performers who are in it. So, pretty much just figure out something that you've always wanted to do, or a life you've always wanted to lead, or occupation or something like that. And we write that in, and then we also have your life intersect with other people's in the soap opera in some typical soap opera fashion. And then I also want to show it in a live venue and have the actors present so that once the episode is screened, then the audience can direct the actors for subsequent episodes with menus or something. So it has a lot to do with choices and honoring people's ability to say what it is that they wanna see, and also consumerism and art and commodity, and if you don't like what you got, then you can send it back, or you get what you pay for, or just participating, just really making choices. So, you wanna do it?
Uh, yeah, yeah, that sounds really cool. I'd love to be in it, but, um ... Uh, I kind of gotta ask you a question first though. I don't really know how to say it, but, um, uh, what's it like to be a character in a dream? 'Cause, uh, I'm not awake right now. And I haven't even worn a watch since, like, fourth grade. I think this is the same watch too. Um, uh, yeah, I don't even know if you're able to answer that question, but I'm just trying to get like a sense of where I am and what's going on.
So what about you? What's your name? What's your address? What are you doing?
[Laugh] I, I, you know, I can't really remember right now. I can't really, I can't really recall that. But that's beside the point, whether or not I can dredge up this information about, you know, my address, or, you know, my mom's maiden name, or whatnot. I've got the benefit in this reality, if you wanna call that, of a consistent perspective.
What is your consistent perspective?
It's mostly just me dealing with a lot of people who are exposing me to information and ideas that seem vaguely familiar, but, at the same time, it's all very alien to me. I'm not in an objective, rational world. Like I've been flying around. Uh ... I don't know. It's weird too because it's not like a fixed state, it's more like this whole spectrum of awareness. Like the lucidity wavers. Like, right now, I know that I'm dreaming, right? We're, like, even talking about it. This is the most in myself and in my thoughts that I've been so far. I'm talking about being in a dream. But, I'm beginning to think that it's something that I don't really have any precedent for. It's, it's totally unique. The, the quality of, of the environment and the information that I'm receiving. Like your soap opera for example. That's a really cool idea. I didn't come up with that. It's like something outside of myself, like something transmitted to me externally. I don't know what this is.
We seem to think we're so limited by the world and the confines, but we're really just creating them. You keep trying to figure it out, but it seems like now that you know that what you're doing is dreaming, you can do whatever you want to. You're dreaming, but you're awake. You have, um, so many options, and that's what life is about.
Well, I understand what you're saying. It's up to me. I'm the dreamer. It's weird, like, so much of the information that these people have been like imparting to me. I don't know. It's got this, like, really heavy connotation to it.
Well, how do you feel?
Well, well, sometimes I feel kind of isolated, but most of the time I feel really connected, really, like, engaged in this active process. Which is kind of weird because most of the time I've just been really passive and not really responding, except for now, I guess. I'm just kind of letting the information wash over me.
It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally. We're communicating on, on so many levels simultaneously. Perhaps you're, you're perceiving directly.
Most of the people that I've been encountering, and most of the things that I would want to say, it's like they kind of say it for me, and almost like at my cue. It's, it's like complete unto itself. It's not like I'm having a bad dream, it's a great dream. But ... it's so unlike any other dream I've ever had before. It's like the dream. It's like I'm being prepared for something.
"On this bridge," Lorca warns, "life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware." And so many think because Then happened, Now isn't. But didn't I mention the ongoing "wow" is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, that is self awareness.
You haven't met yourself yet. But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself. Examine the nature of everything you observe. For instance, you might find yourself walking through a dream parking lot. And yes, those are dream feet inside of your dream shoes. Part of your dream self. And so, the person that you appear to be in the dream cannot be who you really are. This is an image, a mental model.
In hell, you sink to the level of your lack of love. In heaven you rise to the level of your fullness of love. You see ...
Hurry up! Come on! Get in the car! Let's go.
Allegedly, the story goes like this. Billy Wilder runs into Louis Malle, this is in the late 50's, early 60's. And Louis Malle had just made his most expensive film, which has cost 2 1/2 million dollars. And Billy Wilder asks him what the film is about. And Louis Malle says "Well, it's sort of a dream within a dream." And Billy Wilder says "You just lost 2 1/2 million dollars."
... I feel a little more apprehensive about this one than I did about ...
(Gobbledygook.)
Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death too would be wrapped in dream? That after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called a dream body? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, Never again return to your physical body.
***
(Main character is walking into a convenience store. A man is walking out.)
As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.
***
(Main character goes into the convenience store. The clerk is the same guy who drove the boat car)
What's the word, turd?
Hey, do you also drive a, a, boat car?
A what?
Like, you gave me a ride in a car that was also a boat.
No, man, I don't have a "boat car". I don't know what you're talking about. Man, this must be like parallel universe night. You know that cat that was just in here, who just ran out the door? Well, he comes up to the counter, you know, and I say, "What's the word, turd?" and he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me, and then he says, "I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death. I am rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life. I've been to the brink of total oblivion. I remember and ferment a desire to remember everything."
So, what'd you say to that?
Well, I mean, what could I say? I said "If you're going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode, and I'm tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me? 'Cause the jalapenos dry up. They're like little wheels.
***
(Main character sitting in a restaurant with an older lady.)
When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is, is, just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me, and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses. That's what I love the most -- connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.
Weren't you in a boat car? You know, the guy, the guy with the hat? He gave me a ride in his car, or boat thing, and you were in the back seat with me?
I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about.
No, you see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot that you gave him directions to let me off at, I get out, and end up getting hit by a car, but then, I just woke up because I was dreaming, and later than that, I found out that I was still dreaming, dreaming that I'd woken up.
Oh yeah, those are called false awakenings. I used to have those all the time.
Yeah, but I'm still in it now. I, I can't get out of it. It's been going on forever, I keep waking up, but, but I'm just waking up into another dream. I'm starting to get creeped out, too. Like I'm talking to dead people. This woman on TV's telling me about how death is this dreamtime that exists outside of life. I mean, (desperate sigh) I'm starting to think that I'm dead.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that's, when someone says that, then usually you're in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be, but it sounds like, you know, what else are you going to do, right? Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream. It was the preamble to the dream. It was about that book, um Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. You know that one?
Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.
Right, right. That's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it, or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book. And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she's telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she's saying is right out of his book. So that's totally freaking him out, but, what can he do?
And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, um, you know, dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he just walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah. I, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy, you know, he can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car, he goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, "Hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy. Everything."
So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling it to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he, you know, goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.
And he was really into Gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge, or demon, had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this kind of continuous, you know, daydream, or distraction.
And so I read that, and I was like, well that's weird. And than that night I had a dream and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, you know, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating, up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, "Okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down please." And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory.
Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this, you know, Irish person. And though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So we're walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?
Right.
So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me. And so I'm petting him, really happy to see him, you know, he's been dead for years. So I'm petting him and I realize there's this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach. And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs. She's like [cough] [cough] "Oh, excuse me." And there's vomit, like dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad. And I think, "Well, wait a second, that's not just the smell of vomit," which is, doesn't smell very good, "that's the smell of like dead person vomit." You know, so it's like doubly foul. And then I realize I'm actually in the land of the dead, and everyone around me is dead. My dog had been dead for over ten years, Lady Gregory had been dead a lot longer than that. When I finally woke up, I was like, whoa, that wasn't a dream, that was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead.
So what happened? I mean how did you finally get out of it?
Oh man. It was just like one of those like life altering experiences. I mean I could never really look at the world the same way again, after that.
Yeah, but I mean like how did you, how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that's my problem. I'm like trapped. I keep, I keep thinking that I'm waking up, but I'm still in a dream. It seems like it's going on forever. I can't get out of it, and I want to wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
I don't know, I don't know. I'm not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that's what you're thinking, I mean you, you probably should. I mean, you know if you can wake up, you should, because you know someday, you know, you won't be able to. So just, um ... But it's easy. You know. Just, just wake up.
The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are. Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.
If we're looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you're looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological -- development of the cities -- and cultural, which is human expression.
Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here -- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it -- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. Uou're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.
The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external.
And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human? human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.
And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It's sterile. It's efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.
A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. Hey, you got a match? And they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left? I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.
you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die.
I'm looking back on my life. Like my waking life is her memories.
I heard that Tim Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment when his body was dead but his brain was still alive. You know they say that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain activity after everything else is shutdown. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that's infinitely longer than a waking second.
I wake up and it is 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and I have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's ... 10:13.
So then six to twelve minutes of brain activity, I mean, that could be your whole life. I mean, you are that woman looking back over everything.
I believe reincarnation is just a - a poetic expression of what collective memory really is. There was this article by this biochemist that I read not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where we inherit our instincts.
In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
You can't fight city hall, death and taxes. Don't talk about politics or religion. This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, G.I. Lay down, G.I." We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now in the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize that we should not allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not submit to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control, those that control my life and those that seek to control it even more! I want freedom! That's what I want! And that's what you should want!
It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose and show them the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities because that is the central mode of control - make us feel pathetic, small so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have got to realize that we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century is going to be a new century, not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance and classism and statism and all the rest of the modes of control! It's going to be the age of humankind standing up for something pure and something right!
What a bunch of garbage - liberal Democrat, conservative Republican. It's all there to control you. Two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control! The C.E.O. job of Slavery, Incorporated! The truth is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it, and I'm not going to take a bite out of it! Do you got me? Resistance is not futile. We're gonna win this thing. Humankind is too good! We're not a bunch of underachievers! We're gonna stand up and we're gonna be human beings! We're gonna get fired up about the real things, the things that matter: creativity and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit! Well that's it! That's all I got to say! It's in your court.
The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence.
The main character is what I call "the mind". Its mastery, its capacity to represent. Throughout history, attempts have been made to contain those experiences which happen at the end of the limit where the mind is vulnerable. But I think we are in a very significant moment in history. Those moments, those what you might call liminal, limit, frontier, edge zone experiences are actually now becoming the norm. These multiplicities and distinctions and differences that have given great difficulty to the old mind are actually through entering into their very essence, tasting and feeling their uniqueness. One might make a breakthrough to that common something that holds them together.
And so the main character is, to this new mind, greater, greater mind. A mind that yet is to be. And when we are obviously entered into that mode, you can see a radical subjectivity, radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is, opens itself to a vast objectivity. So the story is the story of the cosmos now. The moment is not just a passing empty nothing, yet - and this is the way in which these secret passages happen - yes, it's empty with such fullness that the great moment, the great life of the universe, is pulsating in it. And each one, each object, each place, each act leaves a mark. And that story is singular. But, in fact, it's story after story.
Time just dissolves into quick-moving particles that are swirling away. Either I'm moving fast or time is. Never both simultaneously.
It's such a strange paradox. I mean, while, technically, I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. When I was younger, there was a desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path, and I had to get there.
I know what you mean, because I can remember thinking, "Oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe, everything's going to just somehow gel and settle, just end." It was like there was this plateau, and it was waiting for me, and I was climbing up it, and when I got to the top, all growth and change would stop. Even exhilaration. But that hasn't happened like that, thank goodness. I think that what we don't take into account when we're young is our endless curiosity. That's what's so great about being human.
Yeah, yeah. Well do you know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity?
No.
Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity.
And the funny thing is, our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remain quintessentially ourselves.
here are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I've always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.
Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes. No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic - fear or laziness?
You know, they say that dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life? See, there's a lot of us that are out there that are mapping the mind-body relationship, of dreams. We're called the oneironauts. We're the explorers of the dream-world. Really, it's just about the two opposing states of consciousness which don't really oppose, at all. See, in the waking world, the neural system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories. And this makes evolutionary sense. See you'd be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator to be mistaken for the memory of one, and vice-versa. If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we would be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic neurons that inhibit hallucinations that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep. See this allows dreams to appear real, while preventing competition from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality. To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and actually the waking perception and action. I had a friend once who told me that the worst mistake that you can make is to think you are alive, when you're really asleep in life's waiting room. The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. 'Cause if you can do that you can do anything. Did you ever have a job that you hated? Worked really hard at? A long, hard day at work, finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes, and immediately you wake up and realize that the whole day at work had been a dream? It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for ... for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.
I fancy myself the social lubricator of the dream world, helping people become lucid a little easier. You know, cut all that fear and anxiety stuff and just rock and roll.
By becoming lucid you mean just knowing that you're dreaming, right?
Yeah. And then you can control it. They're more realistic and less bizarre than non-lucid dreams.
You know, I just woke from a dream. It wasn't a typical dream. It seemed more like I'd walked into an alternate universe or something.
Yup, it's real. I mean, technically it's a phenomenon of sleep, but you can have so much damn fun in your dreams. And of course everyone knows fun rules.
Yeah.
So what was going on in your dream?
Oh, a lot of people, a lot of talking. You know, some of it was kind of absurdist, like from a strange movie or something. Mostly it was just people going off about whatever, really intensely. I woke up wondering where did all this stuff come from?
You can control that you know.
Do you have these dreams all the time?
Hell, yeah. I'm always going to make the best of it. But the trick is, you got to realize that you're dreaming in the first place. You got to be able to recognize it. You got to be able to ask yourself, "Hey man, is this a dream?" See, most people never ask themselves that when they're awake, or especially when they're asleep. Seems like everyone's sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams. Either way, they're not going to get much out of it.
The thing that snapped me into realizing I was dreaming was, uh, was my digital clock. I couldn't really read it. It was like the circuitry was all screwed up or something.
Yeah, that's real common. And small printed material is pretty tough too. Very unstable. Another good tip-off is trying to adjust light levels. You can't really do that. If you see a light switch nearby, turn it on and off and see if it works. That's one of the few things you can't do in a lucid dream. What the hell. I can fly around, have an interesting conversation with Albert Schweitzer. I can explore all these new dimensions of reality, not to mention I can have any kind of sex I want, which is way cool. So I can't adjust light levels. So what?
But that's like one of the things that you do to test if you're dreaming or not, right?
Yeah, like I said, you can totally train yourself to recognize it. I mean just hit a light switch every now and then. If the lights are on, and you can't turn them off, then most likely you're dreaming. And then you can get down to business. And believe me, it's unlimited. Hey, you know what I've been working on lately?
What's that?
Oh man, it's way ambitious, but I'm getting better at it. You're going to dig this. Three-sixty vision, man. I can see in all directions. Pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, man. Well, I got to go man.
Okay, later man. Super profundo on the early eve of your day.
What's that mean?
Well, you know, I've never figured it out. Maybe you can. This guy always whispers it in my ear. Louis. He's a reoccurring dream character.
Cinema, in its essence, is, well it's about an introduction to reality, which is that, like, reality is actually reproduced. And for him, it might sound like a storytelling medium, really. And he feels like, um ... like ... like ... like literature is better for telling a story. You know, and if you tell a story or even like a joke, like you know "This guy walks into a bar and, you know, he sees a dwarf." That works really well because you're imagining this guy and this dwarf in the bar and there's this kind of imaginative aspect to it. But in film, you don't have that because you actually are filming a specific guy, in a specific bar, with a specific dwarf, of a specific height, who looks a certain way, right?
So like, um, for Bazin, what the ontology of film has to do is it has to deal with, you know, with what photography also has an ontology of, except that it adds this dimension of time to it, and this greater realism. And so, like, it's about that guy, at that moment, in that space. And, you know, Bazin is like a Christian, so he, like, believes that, you know, God obviously ended up like, everything ... he believes, for him reality and God are the same. You know, like ... and so what film is actually capturing is like God incarnate, creating. And this very moment, God is manifesting as this. And what the film would capture if it was filming us right now would be like God as this table, and God as you, and God as me, and God looking the way we look right now, and saying and thinking what we're thinking right now, because we are all God manifest in that sense. So film is actually like a record of God, or of the face of God, or of the ever-changing face of God. You have a mosquito. Do you want me to get it for you? You got it.
I got it?
Yeah, you got it.
And like the whole Hollywood thing is just taking film and trying to make it like the storytelling medium where you take these books or stories, and then you like, you know, and then you have the script, and you try to find a person who sort of fits the thing. But it's ridiculous, because it's not, it shouldn't be based on the script. It should be based on the person, you know, or the thing. And in that sense, they are almost right to have this whole star system, because then it's about that person, you know, instead of, like, the story.
Truffaut always said the best films aren't made ... the films ... The best scripts don't make the best films, because they have that kind of literary narrative thing that you're sort of a slave to. The best films are the ones that aren't tied to that slavishly. So I don't know. The whole narrative thing seems to me like, um ... Obviously, there's narrativity to cinema 'cause it's in time, just the way there's narrativity to music. But, you know, you don't first think of the story of the song, and then make the song. It has to come out of that moment. And that's what film has. It's just that moment, which is holy. You know, like this moment, it's holy. But we walk around like it's not holy. We walk around like there's some holy moments and there are all the other moments that are not holy, right, but this moment is holy, right? And if film can let us see that, like frame it so that we see, like, "Ah, this moment. Holy." And it's like "Holy, holy, holy" moment by moment. But, like, who can live that way? Who can go, like, "Wow, holy"? Because if I were to look at you and just really let you be holy, I don't know, I would, like, stop talking.
Well, you'd be in the moment, I mean ....
Yeah
The moment is holy.
Yeah, but I'd be open. And then I'd look in your eyes, and I'd cry, and I'd like feel all this stuff and that's like not polite. I mean it would make you feel uncomfortable.
Well you could laugh too. I mean, why would you cry?
Well, 'cause ... I don't know. For me, I tend to cry.
Uh-huh. Well ... Is, is full ...
Well, let's do it right now. Let's have a holy moment.
Okay.
(Long moments pass with them staring at each other)
Everything is layers, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, there's the holy moment and then there's the awareness of trying to have the holy moment, in the same way that the film is the actual moment really happening, but then the character pretending to be in a different reality. And it's all these layers. And, uh, I was in and out of the holy moment looking at you. Can't be in a holy ... You're unique that way, Caveh. That's one of the reasons I enjoy you. You can ... bring me into that.
If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.
On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path of what we desire.
The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market.
A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.
We'll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We'll yank the social symbols through the looking glass We'll devalue society's currency.
To confront the familiar.
Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.
Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline.
To interrupt the continuum of everyday experience and all the normal expectations that go with it.
To live as if something actually depended on one's actions.
To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward.
To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.
To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we're making it happen.
There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life to exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.
An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.
No worse than us. He's all action and no theory. We're all theory and no action.
***
(The same four guys see an old man sitting at a bench)
Why so glum, Mr. Debord?
What was missing was felt irretrievable. The extreme uncertainties of subsisting without working made excesses necessary and breaks definitive. To quote Stevenson: "Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest."
Haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming's dead, that no one does it anymore. It's not dead, it's just been forgotten. Removed from our language. No one teaches it so no one knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced. Ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
***
(Main character is walking with a thin looking boy, who gradually turns into something else as he talks.)
A thousand years is but an instant. There's nothing new, nothing different. The same pattern over and over. The same clouds, the same music, the same insight I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There's nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember. This happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult, the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible, knowing it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from and how I became a human, why I hung around, and now my final departure is scheduled. This way out. Escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but infinity.
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
Then it's like we have met.
(They shake hands)
***
(Same two people talking in a room.)
So I'm doing this project, and I'm hoping that you'll be interested in doing it. It's a soap opera, and, so, the characters are the fantasy lives or the alter egos, of the performers who are in it. So, pretty much just figure out something that you've always wanted to do, or a life you've always wanted to lead, or occupation or something like that. And we write that in, and then we also have your life intersect with other people's in the soap opera in some typical soap opera fashion. And then I also want to show it in a live venue and have the actors present so that once the episode is screened, then the audience can direct the actors for subsequent episodes with menus or something. So it has a lot to do with choices and honoring people's ability to say what it is that they wanna see, and also consumerism and art and commodity, and if you don't like what you got, then you can send it back, or you get what you pay for, or just participating, just really making choices. So, you wanna do it?
Uh, yeah, yeah, that sounds really cool. I'd love to be in it, but, um ... Uh, I kind of gotta ask you a question first though. I don't really know how to say it, but, um, uh, what's it like to be a character in a dream? 'Cause, uh, I'm not awake right now. And I haven't even worn a watch since, like, fourth grade. I think this is the same watch too. Um, uh, yeah, I don't even know if you're able to answer that question, but I'm just trying to get like a sense of where I am and what's going on.
So what about you? What's your name? What's your address? What are you doing?
[Laugh] I, I, you know, I can't really remember right now. I can't really, I can't really recall that. But that's beside the point, whether or not I can dredge up this information about, you know, my address, or, you know, my mom's maiden name, or whatnot. I've got the benefit in this reality, if you wanna call that, of a consistent perspective.
What is your consistent perspective?
It's mostly just me dealing with a lot of people who are exposing me to information and ideas that seem vaguely familiar, but, at the same time, it's all very alien to me. I'm not in an objective, rational world. Like I've been flying around. Uh ... I don't know. It's weird too because it's not like a fixed state, it's more like this whole spectrum of awareness. Like the lucidity wavers. Like, right now, I know that I'm dreaming, right? We're, like, even talking about it. This is the most in myself and in my thoughts that I've been so far. I'm talking about being in a dream. But, I'm beginning to think that it's something that I don't really have any precedent for. It's, it's totally unique. The, the quality of, of the environment and the information that I'm receiving. Like your soap opera for example. That's a really cool idea. I didn't come up with that. It's like something outside of myself, like something transmitted to me externally. I don't know what this is.
We seem to think we're so limited by the world and the confines, but we're really just creating them. You keep trying to figure it out, but it seems like now that you know that what you're doing is dreaming, you can do whatever you want to. You're dreaming, but you're awake. You have, um, so many options, and that's what life is about.
Well, I understand what you're saying. It's up to me. I'm the dreamer. It's weird, like, so much of the information that these people have been like imparting to me. I don't know. It's got this, like, really heavy connotation to it.
Well, how do you feel?
Well, well, sometimes I feel kind of isolated, but most of the time I feel really connected, really, like, engaged in this active process. Which is kind of weird because most of the time I've just been really passive and not really responding, except for now, I guess. I'm just kind of letting the information wash over me.
It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally. We're communicating on, on so many levels simultaneously. Perhaps you're, you're perceiving directly.
Most of the people that I've been encountering, and most of the things that I would want to say, it's like they kind of say it for me, and almost like at my cue. It's, it's like complete unto itself. It's not like I'm having a bad dream, it's a great dream. But ... it's so unlike any other dream I've ever had before. It's like the dream. It's like I'm being prepared for something.
"On this bridge," Lorca warns, "life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware." And so many think because Then happened, Now isn't. But didn't I mention the ongoing "wow" is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we're involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other's presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don't forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, that is self awareness.
You haven't met yourself yet. But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself. Examine the nature of everything you observe. For instance, you might find yourself walking through a dream parking lot. And yes, those are dream feet inside of your dream shoes. Part of your dream self. And so, the person that you appear to be in the dream cannot be who you really are. This is an image, a mental model.
In hell, you sink to the level of your lack of love. In heaven you rise to the level of your fullness of love. You see ...
Hurry up! Come on! Get in the car! Let's go.
Allegedly, the story goes like this. Billy Wilder runs into Louis Malle, this is in the late 50's, early 60's. And Louis Malle had just made his most expensive film, which has cost 2 1/2 million dollars. And Billy Wilder asks him what the film is about. And Louis Malle says "Well, it's sort of a dream within a dream." And Billy Wilder says "You just lost 2 1/2 million dollars."
... I feel a little more apprehensive about this one than I did about ...
(Gobbledygook.)
Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death too would be wrapped in dream? That after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called a dream body? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, Never again return to your physical body.
***
(Main character is walking into a convenience store. A man is walking out.)
As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.
***
(Main character goes into the convenience store. The clerk is the same guy who drove the boat car)
What's the word, turd?
Hey, do you also drive a, a, boat car?
A what?
Like, you gave me a ride in a car that was also a boat.
No, man, I don't have a "boat car". I don't know what you're talking about. Man, this must be like parallel universe night. You know that cat that was just in here, who just ran out the door? Well, he comes up to the counter, you know, and I say, "What's the word, turd?" and he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me, and then he says, "I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death. I am rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life. I've been to the brink of total oblivion. I remember and ferment a desire to remember everything."
So, what'd you say to that?
Well, I mean, what could I say? I said "If you're going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode, and I'm tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me? 'Cause the jalapenos dry up. They're like little wheels.
***
(Main character sitting in a restaurant with an older lady.)
When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is, is, just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me, and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses. That's what I love the most -- connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.
Weren't you in a boat car? You know, the guy, the guy with the hat? He gave me a ride in his car, or boat thing, and you were in the back seat with me?
I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about.
No, you see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot that you gave him directions to let me off at, I get out, and end up getting hit by a car, but then, I just woke up because I was dreaming, and later than that, I found out that I was still dreaming, dreaming that I'd woken up.
Oh yeah, those are called false awakenings. I used to have those all the time.
Yeah, but I'm still in it now. I, I can't get out of it. It's been going on forever, I keep waking up, but, but I'm just waking up into another dream. I'm starting to get creeped out, too. Like I'm talking to dead people. This woman on TV's telling me about how death is this dreamtime that exists outside of life. I mean, (desperate sigh) I'm starting to think that I'm dead.
I'm gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that's, when someone says that, then usually you're in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be, but it sounds like, you know, what else are you going to do, right? Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream. It was the preamble to the dream. It was about that book, um Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. You know that one?
Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.
Right, right. That's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it, or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book. And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she's telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she's saying is right out of his book. So that's totally freaking him out, but, what can he do?
And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, um, you know, dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he just walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah. I, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy, you know, he can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car, he goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, "Hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy. Everything."
So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling it to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he, you know, goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.
And he was really into Gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge, or demon, had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this kind of continuous, you know, daydream, or distraction.
And so I read that, and I was like, well that's weird. And than that night I had a dream and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, you know, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating, up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, "Okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down please." And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory.
Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this, you know, Irish person. And though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So we're walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?
Right.
So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me. And so I'm petting him, really happy to see him, you know, he's been dead for years. So I'm petting him and I realize there's this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach. And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs. She's like [cough] [cough] "Oh, excuse me." And there's vomit, like dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad. And I think, "Well, wait a second, that's not just the smell of vomit," which is, doesn't smell very good, "that's the smell of like dead person vomit." You know, so it's like doubly foul. And then I realize I'm actually in the land of the dead, and everyone around me is dead. My dog had been dead for over ten years, Lady Gregory had been dead a lot longer than that. When I finally woke up, I was like, whoa, that wasn't a dream, that was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead.
So what happened? I mean how did you finally get out of it?
Oh man. It was just like one of those like life altering experiences. I mean I could never really look at the world the same way again, after that.
Yeah, but I mean like how did you, how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that's my problem. I'm like trapped. I keep, I keep thinking that I'm waking up, but I'm still in a dream. It seems like it's going on forever. I can't get out of it, and I want to wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
I don't know, I don't know. I'm not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that's what you're thinking, I mean you, you probably should. I mean, you know if you can wake up, you should, because you know someday, you know, you won't be able to. So just, um ... But it's easy. You know. Just, just wake up.
The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are. Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.
If we're looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you're looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological -- development of the cities -- and cultural, which is human expression.
Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here -- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it -- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. Uou're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.
The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external.
And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human? human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.
And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It's sterile. It's efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
map
Animals react to environment, human react to information about environment
Human don't experience physical environment directly, we don't eat raw food, fresh water, we don't live on trees, we don't wear leaves for clothes, we don' t walk on natural soil, we don't even walk or run, we drive, we don't sleep on rock or soil, we don't even use natural light.
We use technology, man made artifacts even our roads and parks are designed
Land and water is privatized and territorized now. Air is still the only thing that is free. Pretty soon they will start selling clean air too. Outer space is still free too.
So, human has to deal with processed objects, especially another human being, a being who has the same ability.
Human being developed consciousness, the ability to use symbols, to deal with the processed information
With language and advance nervous circuitry, we create a world in our mind
This is the world that we react to
Animals can freeze ONLY in the presence of threat, we can freeze with a thought of threat.
we identify with these ideas/symbols.
PERCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE CAN'T BE DESCRIBED
WE CAN ONLY CREATE STORY.
WE DREAM A LIFETIME IN 15 MINUTES OF SLEEP, ALSO IN 15 MINUTES WE CAN THINK ABOUT OUR PAST AND FUTURE.
Nature care about the survival of species as a group, not of an individual.
PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL LAWS MUTATE AND CONVERSE.
VIVID IMAGE - IMAGE - PERCEPTION
IN DREAM, IMAGE IS VIVID BECAUSE THERE IS NO PERCEPTION
IN WAKEFULNESS, IMAGE IS VIVID BECAUSE THERE IS PROJECTION TO PERCEPTIVE OBJECTS
BODIES CHANGE ALL THE TIME, BUT WE RECOGNIZE CONTINUATION OF OUR SELVES.
ABSTRACT MEANING AND CONCRETE MEANING
WORDS ARE NOT ABSTRACT OR CONCRETE, BUT THE MEANINGS ARE
there is no existent or non existent things, there is existent or non existent meanings
there is no dream or real, there is dream or real meaning
animals react to environment, human react to information about environment
processed environment.
what I think I am is what I want, not what I am
my image
Human don't experience physical environment directly, we don't eat raw food, fresh water, we don't live on trees, we don't wear leaves for clothes, we don' t walk on natural soil, we don't even walk or run, we drive, we don't sleep on rock or soil, we don't even use natural light.
We use technology, man made artifacts even our roads and parks are designed
Land and water is privatized and territorized now. Air is still the only thing that is free. Pretty soon they will start selling clean air too. Outer space is still free too.
So, human has to deal with processed objects, especially another human being, a being who has the same ability.
Human being developed consciousness, the ability to use symbols, to deal with the processed information
With language and advance nervous circuitry, we create a world in our mind
This is the world that we react to
Animals can freeze ONLY in the presence of threat, we can freeze with a thought of threat.
we identify with these ideas/symbols.
PERCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE CAN'T BE DESCRIBED
WE CAN ONLY CREATE STORY.
WE DREAM A LIFETIME IN 15 MINUTES OF SLEEP, ALSO IN 15 MINUTES WE CAN THINK ABOUT OUR PAST AND FUTURE.
Nature care about the survival of species as a group, not of an individual.
PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL LAWS MUTATE AND CONVERSE.
VIVID IMAGE - IMAGE - PERCEPTION
IN DREAM, IMAGE IS VIVID BECAUSE THERE IS NO PERCEPTION
IN WAKEFULNESS, IMAGE IS VIVID BECAUSE THERE IS PROJECTION TO PERCEPTIVE OBJECTS
BODIES CHANGE ALL THE TIME, BUT WE RECOGNIZE CONTINUATION OF OUR SELVES.
ABSTRACT MEANING AND CONCRETE MEANING
WORDS ARE NOT ABSTRACT OR CONCRETE, BUT THE MEANINGS ARE
there is no existent or non existent things, there is existent or non existent meanings
there is no dream or real, there is dream or real meaning
animals react to environment, human react to information about environment
processed environment.
what I think I am is what I want, not what I am
my image
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Freedom
A sense of freedom is an illusion
like happiness, being confused with comfort
Just like money can buy "happiness" or "freedom" or even leisure
What it actually buy is comfort
not the actual freedom itself
A person who is really free doesn't know that he is free
A person who thinks that he is free is actually not free
This false sense of freedom is not free
wealth, health claimed to be able to give this kind of freedom
But, this is not freedom, this is addiction, intoxication.
A free person is free not when he has everything.
He is free when he has nothing
Just like a happy person is not only happy when everything is going well
Everybody can do that
But, a happy person is happy when he is down.
That's when we can tell about a person.
like happiness, being confused with comfort
Just like money can buy "happiness" or "freedom" or even leisure
What it actually buy is comfort
not the actual freedom itself
A person who is really free doesn't know that he is free
A person who thinks that he is free is actually not free
This false sense of freedom is not free
wealth, health claimed to be able to give this kind of freedom
But, this is not freedom, this is addiction, intoxication.
A free person is free not when he has everything.
He is free when he has nothing
Just like a happy person is not only happy when everything is going well
Everybody can do that
But, a happy person is happy when he is down.
That's when we can tell about a person.
Public Relations and damage control
When we do public relations and damage control
we are advertising a product to have a good name and to maintain a good name
The name of the product has nothing to do with the product
because the name of the product becomes the product in our mind and has a life of its own
we are manipulating the linguistic environment in the product's favor to sell the product
We do the same thing in our mind where we sell our product, our self
The price is to earn others' acceptance, attention, and admiration
What we are selling is the name, maintaining the good name, reputation
This name symbolize qualities that we are selling through our behaviors, being nice.
Kindness is very difficult actually, even love is very difficult
Since people are ignorant and they get stuck with words, they can get fooled easily
they confused the words uttered as the quality of the object itself
SO, unknowingly, due to our image of self inferiority, we are busy doing PR and DC in our mind
We try to protect our products
To compete with other products, we destroy others' products or we promise the best from our products
we say that our products are the best
The problem is we actually knows better because even though we can lie, but human nature can't lie
We know what we really think about ourselves, eventhough it's not real either
we eventually forget that the image of the product that we create is not what we believe what we really are
so, we spend our lives marketing and trying to sell our selves
doing public relations and damage control all day and night long
But, when the inferiority is faced, it will get neutralized
because we don't have to market and sell ourselves in order to live
we confuse kindness with nice, love with "love", real with image.
we are advertising a product to have a good name and to maintain a good name
The name of the product has nothing to do with the product
because the name of the product becomes the product in our mind and has a life of its own
we are manipulating the linguistic environment in the product's favor to sell the product
We do the same thing in our mind where we sell our product, our self
The price is to earn others' acceptance, attention, and admiration
What we are selling is the name, maintaining the good name, reputation
This name symbolize qualities that we are selling through our behaviors, being nice.
Kindness is very difficult actually, even love is very difficult
Since people are ignorant and they get stuck with words, they can get fooled easily
they confused the words uttered as the quality of the object itself
SO, unknowingly, due to our image of self inferiority, we are busy doing PR and DC in our mind
We try to protect our products
To compete with other products, we destroy others' products or we promise the best from our products
we say that our products are the best
The problem is we actually knows better because even though we can lie, but human nature can't lie
We know what we really think about ourselves, eventhough it's not real either
we eventually forget that the image of the product that we create is not what we believe what we really are
so, we spend our lives marketing and trying to sell our selves
doing public relations and damage control all day and night long
But, when the inferiority is faced, it will get neutralized
because we don't have to market and sell ourselves in order to live
we confuse kindness with nice, love with "love", real with image.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
phenomena
"seeing don't perceive itself, how does it perceive others?"
We don't get attached to memory, we just get attached to ideas
we don't see the real mind body process (being human), we only think we do
we have never seen this real mind body process and we don't see others' mind body process either
we don't see our own behaviors, such as smoking
we react to nightmare and suffer and our body react by what has been conditioned to sooth self
our body becomes a slave to this self
whether your life is good or bad, it's just ideas, a good dream or nightmare
pain and pleasure occurs in the realm of the self, happiness and suffering occurs in the realm of reality
everything is phenomena, pain, pleasure is feeling, how we experience the sensation
ALL EXPERIENCE IS PHENOMENAL.... Thus, it is not what it is and is abstracted from it.
A SHOOTER WHO THINKS ABOUT THINGS OTHER THAN THE OBJECTS DISTRACT HIMSELF. WHEN WE THINK ABOUT GOALS, CONSEQUENCES, AND REWARDS, WE DISTRACT OURSELVES.
We don't get attached to memory, we just get attached to ideas
we don't see the real mind body process (being human), we only think we do
we have never seen this real mind body process and we don't see others' mind body process either
we don't see our own behaviors, such as smoking
we react to nightmare and suffer and our body react by what has been conditioned to sooth self
our body becomes a slave to this self
whether your life is good or bad, it's just ideas, a good dream or nightmare
pain and pleasure occurs in the realm of the self, happiness and suffering occurs in the realm of reality
everything is phenomena, pain, pleasure is feeling, how we experience the sensation
ALL EXPERIENCE IS PHENOMENAL.... Thus, it is not what it is and is abstracted from it.
A SHOOTER WHO THINKS ABOUT THINGS OTHER THAN THE OBJECTS DISTRACT HIMSELF. WHEN WE THINK ABOUT GOALS, CONSEQUENCES, AND REWARDS, WE DISTRACT OURSELVES.
Monday, January 23, 2012
shadow
If we want to measure quality of a person, see him in time of crisis or trauma, see him how he handles mistakes, problems.
When everything goes well, it's easy to smile and put mask
The great person is great under pressure, dealing with the evil of the world
shadow doesn't know what it does
it has separate rules for self and others
When everything goes well, it's easy to smile and put mask
The great person is great under pressure, dealing with the evil of the world
shadow doesn't know what it does
it has separate rules for self and others
Hiding self
When people lied, they create a secret world and live by himself
insulated by their surrounding
they either will go either to high abstract or low abstract world
high abstract world is fulled of abstract ideas and low abstract world is fulled of infantile ideas
people hide or run away to protect in hostile environment
like listening to loud music or entertainment
but we can forget and get attached to this world
and get stuck either in high or low abstract worlds
in the meantime, ignoring the self and go deeper and deeper in illusion
insulated by their surrounding
they either will go either to high abstract or low abstract world
high abstract world is fulled of abstract ideas and low abstract world is fulled of infantile ideas
people hide or run away to protect in hostile environment
like listening to loud music or entertainment
but we can forget and get attached to this world
and get stuck either in high or low abstract worlds
in the meantime, ignoring the self and go deeper and deeper in illusion
images or impressions
we remember impression, because we record by im-press-ing it on our mind
by strong emotional reactions
no wonder why people busy creating images or impression
to fool or con others, because we all know that it works
that people are fooled by the images or impressions
capital and small letters are the same, as signals of sentence
either to begin a new sentence or name
what is our experience that is not impression
even what we can present or future is nothing but past impressions?
isn't our past memory is collection of objects strung together?
Still, the most tricky impression is the self that we get attached to
the overcompensation entity that we create to neutralize inferiority
it froze like an iron cast like cold ice that we can't melt or flow
due to the inferiority remains inside this machine, it is also hot in trying to fix itself
we hide our real selves and lied about ideal self and are afraid to get caught.
at the same time we have to work hard maintaining public relationship and damage control
If we think about rewards or goals, we get distracted
like thinking only about destination and not the trip
a task can turn sweet or sour depends on the rewards
when we don't think about the rewards, the job itself is the reward
by strong emotional reactions
no wonder why people busy creating images or impression
to fool or con others, because we all know that it works
that people are fooled by the images or impressions
capital and small letters are the same, as signals of sentence
either to begin a new sentence or name
what is our experience that is not impression
even what we can present or future is nothing but past impressions?
isn't our past memory is collection of objects strung together?
Still, the most tricky impression is the self that we get attached to
the overcompensation entity that we create to neutralize inferiority
it froze like an iron cast like cold ice that we can't melt or flow
due to the inferiority remains inside this machine, it is also hot in trying to fix itself
we hide our real selves and lied about ideal self and are afraid to get caught.
at the same time we have to work hard maintaining public relationship and damage control
If we think about rewards or goals, we get distracted
like thinking only about destination and not the trip
a task can turn sweet or sour depends on the rewards
when we don't think about the rewards, the job itself is the reward
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Evil
Why are people evil? What is the purpose of the evilness?
We can see examples everyday in the news or relationships
When people put down their masks, they hurt, abuse or neglect others
Is it because of mis-education? desire?
We put a smile on our faces and con others into believing that we are nice people
not the selfish persons we really are
we minimize problems, negative emotions and quality in front of others
we justify our actions and make excuses to be forgiven, to maintain our good status
we do public relations and damage control to manipulate others
but deep down inside, we are all selfish who would step on others to meet our needs
but, we keep it secret and private while in public we play nice music and entertain
meet our own evil and be it. Evil is the cross, the cross is evil, emptiness if form, form is emptiness.
We can see examples everyday in the news or relationships
When people put down their masks, they hurt, abuse or neglect others
Is it because of mis-education? desire?
We put a smile on our faces and con others into believing that we are nice people
not the selfish persons we really are
we minimize problems, negative emotions and quality in front of others
we justify our actions and make excuses to be forgiven, to maintain our good status
we do public relations and damage control to manipulate others
but deep down inside, we are all selfish who would step on others to meet our needs
but, we keep it secret and private while in public we play nice music and entertain
meet our own evil and be it. Evil is the cross, the cross is evil, emptiness if form, form is emptiness.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Mask
Even though I can see the emptiness, I think that I still have long ways to go.
I have developed a cloak of superiority to compensate my inferiority (the small emptiness)
This sense of superiority is my security blanket, defense mechanism that I am still not willing to let go.
This pride put myself on pedestal, feeling better than others and cold and lack of humility.
This rigid frozen self is what's left from the earlier trauma
I have developed a cloak of superiority to compensate my inferiority (the small emptiness)
This sense of superiority is my security blanket, defense mechanism that I am still not willing to let go.
This pride put myself on pedestal, feeling better than others and cold and lack of humility.
This rigid frozen self is what's left from the earlier trauma
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Journey Home to Emptiness
Small emptiness can start a journey that lead to big emptiness
I left home a broken man, full of suffering, angry, sad, misunderstood, afraid, and hate myself
In the journey at the new and faraway place, I tried to create a new self
at the same time still feeling inadequate and incompetent.
I live a superficial life trying to be special and attractive
I became a counselor and learned knowledge to separate me from others
But, at the same time the truth and love made their appearance and made me suffer
I have to learn the hard way about love, family, and friendship.
Learned about developing trust and opening myself up
We have to step away from the forest to see the forest
We take advantage of what we have and we appreciate what we don't have
"we don't know what we have until it's gone"
To be away from the family and parents, I learn the meaning of love, family, and friendship
that I am nothing without my family.
Boundaries get tested and trust was deepened.
My parents are ordinary people doing extraordinary things
The best things in life is simple and ordinary
We already have the love and happiness
if we are not blinded by our illusion of fear and greed.
I have been chasing a ghost that doesn't exist
I can't see my goals and destiny because it's in front of my eyes this whole time and I refuse to see it
The one I have been running away from (the small emptiness)
To be ordinary and regular, empty of being special or unique.
To be original, it's always good
The biggest illusion is seeing this original self as flawed and develop an overcompensating self that lead to all kind of troubles.
To be original and ordinary and let the games come to me...
I left home a broken man, full of suffering, angry, sad, misunderstood, afraid, and hate myself
In the journey at the new and faraway place, I tried to create a new self
at the same time still feeling inadequate and incompetent.
I live a superficial life trying to be special and attractive
I became a counselor and learned knowledge to separate me from others
But, at the same time the truth and love made their appearance and made me suffer
I have to learn the hard way about love, family, and friendship.
Learned about developing trust and opening myself up
We have to step away from the forest to see the forest
We take advantage of what we have and we appreciate what we don't have
"we don't know what we have until it's gone"
To be away from the family and parents, I learn the meaning of love, family, and friendship
that I am nothing without my family.
Boundaries get tested and trust was deepened.
My parents are ordinary people doing extraordinary things
The best things in life is simple and ordinary
We already have the love and happiness
if we are not blinded by our illusion of fear and greed.
I have been chasing a ghost that doesn't exist
I can't see my goals and destiny because it's in front of my eyes this whole time and I refuse to see it
The one I have been running away from (the small emptiness)
To be ordinary and regular, empty of being special or unique.
To be original, it's always good
The biggest illusion is seeing this original self as flawed and develop an overcompensating self that lead to all kind of troubles.
To be original and ordinary and let the games come to me...
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
LOVE
Love has many names
The most popular kind of love is "falling in love", the infatuation, the physical attraction
songs, poem, pictures, drama, statue were created for it
Beyond this attraction, it goes deeper to intimacy
where the love is based on intimacy and trust
Parents who love their children, spouse, best friends
However, this kind of love is attachment based
People who sacrifice themselves and do crazy things for the people they they love
The second kind of love is the detachment kind of love
This is the kind of love that was talked about in spiritual tradition
We can't love somebody that we are attached to
we can't love if we are not free
This is the kind of love that is free and patient in the Bible
This love is freely given and received
This love is given from happiness from being free
This love is based on compassion that everybody wants to be happy and wants to avoid suffering
This is the love understood by the mystics.
The most popular kind of love is "falling in love", the infatuation, the physical attraction
songs, poem, pictures, drama, statue were created for it
Beyond this attraction, it goes deeper to intimacy
where the love is based on intimacy and trust
Parents who love their children, spouse, best friends
However, this kind of love is attachment based
People who sacrifice themselves and do crazy things for the people they they love
The second kind of love is the detachment kind of love
This is the kind of love that was talked about in spiritual tradition
We can't love somebody that we are attached to
we can't love if we are not free
This is the kind of love that is free and patient in the Bible
This love is freely given and received
This love is given from happiness from being free
This love is based on compassion that everybody wants to be happy and wants to avoid suffering
This is the love understood by the mystics.
Time
"Learn from the past, live in the present, and plan for the future"
How easy it is but how difficult it is. We mostly live either in the past or future and forget the present. We "take advantage" or "forgetting to smell the flower".
we live in the past solving "unfinished business" and we plan our future life and hoping our future to complete them
However, past, present, and future is temporal characteristics.
Self fulfilling prophecy, we create the future with our mind
.
What happened if there is a bank who deposit $86,400 a day to your account? The catch is that you have to use it that day and you can not save it to the next day. However, you will receive the same amount tomorrow morning and the following morning. We do have the bank and it's called Time Bank.
Like the bank analogy, our time is borrowed from the bank. We are on borrowed time. We are on borrowed space, all things that we have are borrowed, the life itself is borrowed. Because we can't take any of them when we die. It exist before we are born, it will exist after we are born. It 's not ours to begin with and it is not and will not be ours.
How easy it is but how difficult it is. We mostly live either in the past or future and forget the present. We "take advantage" or "forgetting to smell the flower".
we live in the past solving "unfinished business" and we plan our future life and hoping our future to complete them
However, past, present, and future is temporal characteristics.
Self fulfilling prophecy, we create the future with our mind
.
What happened if there is a bank who deposit $86,400 a day to your account? The catch is that you have to use it that day and you can not save it to the next day. However, you will receive the same amount tomorrow morning and the following morning. We do have the bank and it's called Time Bank.
Like the bank analogy, our time is borrowed from the bank. We are on borrowed time. We are on borrowed space, all things that we have are borrowed, the life itself is borrowed. Because we can't take any of them when we die. It exist before we are born, it will exist after we are born. It 's not ours to begin with and it is not and will not be ours.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Name and pronoun
We were given names when we were born, most of us also have family names
When did the name become pronouns such as I, you, and he/she or even plural we, you, and they?
What happened during the switch or how did we learn to pronouns?
Infants and little children use their or others' name to identify self such as "jack wants cookie" or "mommy went to the store". They don't understand the concepts of I, you and he/she.
I guess we learned in school that "I am jack" and jack become I.
To have pronouns, it requires 3 different positions in mind, first person, second person, and third person. This organization should occur at higher abstract level because the persons have to be able to interchange, like I can change the first person (real, ideal, etc), change the second person, and change the third person. Like a concept house can be applied to different houses, or a car can be applied to different cars.
Pronouns are a very high level of abstraction, a prototype
it has a very high level of generalization and it's the way our mind work
we regulate prototype or apply rules to prototype and develop attitude about them
how to treat the first person, second person, third person.
how to invest emotion in first person, second person, third person
subjects, objects, phenomenon, real are all type of high abstract prototype
We usually treat natural objects as IT, third person objects
We usually treat passive sentient being, like plant or passive animals as IT or in some cases you/she
We usually use the first person and second person with objects who can give back, like people
So, what looks like stabile maturity or adulthood is created by having this high level of abstraction
subjects, objects, and the theory about them. The more abstract the theory the more it covers but the less specific.
"Areas of infantilism" - we are at the mercy of ingrained, inappropriate semantic reactions.
Blinded by prejudice, hijacked by trauma inside their heads.
The picture of reality created inside our heads by the lack of consciousness of abstracting process is a delusional world, a never-never land, full of prejudice. (Language in Thought and Action)
So, we must be aware of the process of abstraction, but we also must be aware of our attitude toward the prototype. Some suggest to see things from 3rd person view like the way children see. The reasons are that there is objectivity and less subjective hijack and prejudice blindness.
we identify with with the name of pronouns "I" or when other people talk about "you" or some third party talk about "he", anytime we recognize that they are talking about ME. Imagine you hear someone talk about somebody and you may join the conversation talking about him. Let's assume that you hear people talk about you, it is the same you that you react to in your mind. We identify with that person, could be I, you, he, or our name. Let's imagine people are praising somebody and it's you, you may recognize it and feel good about it. Let's imagine people are talking bad about you, you may recognize that person and feel bad because I AM THAT PERSON. WE IDENTIFY WHEN WE MAKE BELIEVE THEM TO COME TRUE.
When did the name become pronouns such as I, you, and he/she or even plural we, you, and they?
What happened during the switch or how did we learn to pronouns?
Infants and little children use their or others' name to identify self such as "jack wants cookie" or "mommy went to the store". They don't understand the concepts of I, you and he/she.
I guess we learned in school that "I am jack" and jack become I.
To have pronouns, it requires 3 different positions in mind, first person, second person, and third person. This organization should occur at higher abstract level because the persons have to be able to interchange, like I can change the first person (real, ideal, etc), change the second person, and change the third person. Like a concept house can be applied to different houses, or a car can be applied to different cars.
Pronouns are a very high level of abstraction, a prototype
it has a very high level of generalization and it's the way our mind work
we regulate prototype or apply rules to prototype and develop attitude about them
how to treat the first person, second person, third person.
how to invest emotion in first person, second person, third person
subjects, objects, phenomenon, real are all type of high abstract prototype
We usually treat natural objects as IT, third person objects
We usually treat passive sentient being, like plant or passive animals as IT or in some cases you/she
We usually use the first person and second person with objects who can give back, like people
So, what looks like stabile maturity or adulthood is created by having this high level of abstraction
subjects, objects, and the theory about them. The more abstract the theory the more it covers but the less specific.
"Areas of infantilism" - we are at the mercy of ingrained, inappropriate semantic reactions.
Blinded by prejudice, hijacked by trauma inside their heads.
The picture of reality created inside our heads by the lack of consciousness of abstracting process is a delusional world, a never-never land, full of prejudice. (Language in Thought and Action)
So, we must be aware of the process of abstraction, but we also must be aware of our attitude toward the prototype. Some suggest to see things from 3rd person view like the way children see. The reasons are that there is objectivity and less subjective hijack and prejudice blindness.
we identify with with the name of pronouns "I" or when other people talk about "you" or some third party talk about "he", anytime we recognize that they are talking about ME. Imagine you hear someone talk about somebody and you may join the conversation talking about him. Let's assume that you hear people talk about you, it is the same you that you react to in your mind. We identify with that person, could be I, you, he, or our name. Let's imagine people are praising somebody and it's you, you may recognize it and feel good about it. Let's imagine people are talking bad about you, you may recognize that person and feel bad because I AM THAT PERSON. WE IDENTIFY WHEN WE MAKE BELIEVE THEM TO COME TRUE.
Human Condition
What's the difference between human being and being human?
Are we human being or being human?
Human being assume that there is a being other than the human
Being human is more grammatically correct, because there is only one form, the human
Another name for being human is human condition.
Being human involve change and impermanence
A cake depends on the ingredients and the combination of the ingredients
A cake is not only the result. A cake being a cake from before it becomes a cake
We just don't call it a cake before it becomes a cake.
Michaelangelo can see a statue in a bulk of rock
and all he has to do is to chisel what is not part of the statue
After the cake is handled, cut, eaten, it is still being a cake
It may look different than the original cake, but it is still being a cake
Human depends on the ingredients and the combination of the ingredients
the ingredients involved biochemical changes between internal and external space and the emotional mental and social changes we call experiences.
we all are being human and we can't not being human
We can't stop, disrupt, manipulate, choose this process
Chemical reaction do not disappear, they converse from one form to others
Don't we make what we thought the best decision with the resource that we have at any moment of time?
It's only when we look back, we judge mistakes after we analyze using morality and social standards.
Freud recognize this conflict between human condition and social standard (ideal human) as ID and ego/superego and he was condemned for it.
Everything is unfolding exactly as its best at any single moment
If only we don't have preference, if only we don't have self identification
From self identification, come self defense, damage control, self protection, self infatuation, and self gratification, self violation, and self frustration.
suffering and enlightenment is part of human conditions. they depend on the ingredients.
Are we human being or being human?
Human being assume that there is a being other than the human
Being human is more grammatically correct, because there is only one form, the human
Another name for being human is human condition.
Being human involve change and impermanence
A cake depends on the ingredients and the combination of the ingredients
A cake is not only the result. A cake being a cake from before it becomes a cake
We just don't call it a cake before it becomes a cake.
Michaelangelo can see a statue in a bulk of rock
and all he has to do is to chisel what is not part of the statue
After the cake is handled, cut, eaten, it is still being a cake
It may look different than the original cake, but it is still being a cake
Human depends on the ingredients and the combination of the ingredients
the ingredients involved biochemical changes between internal and external space and the emotional mental and social changes we call experiences.
we all are being human and we can't not being human
We can't stop, disrupt, manipulate, choose this process
Chemical reaction do not disappear, they converse from one form to others
Don't we make what we thought the best decision with the resource that we have at any moment of time?
It's only when we look back, we judge mistakes after we analyze using morality and social standards.
Freud recognize this conflict between human condition and social standard (ideal human) as ID and ego/superego and he was condemned for it.
Everything is unfolding exactly as its best at any single moment
If only we don't have preference, if only we don't have self identification
From self identification, come self defense, damage control, self protection, self infatuation, and self gratification, self violation, and self frustration.
suffering and enlightenment is part of human conditions. they depend on the ingredients.
Journey Home
"Home is where the heart is" like a card say
Home and away is a designate icons in our mind
To be away from home is like to walk away from the center
building a small home in a faraway land
but the small home never feel homey like the big home
To play by someone elses rules and languages
to be visitors and not even as a non-immigrant alien
learning about things that is not available at home
and to bring it home
To learn about self, friendship, love, and life itself
from mistakes and isolation of the comfort of home
To test boundaries as never been tested if i never leave the cage
Never learn to fly and fall.
Home and away is a designate icons in our mind
To be away from home is like to walk away from the center
building a small home in a faraway land
but the small home never feel homey like the big home
To play by someone elses rules and languages
to be visitors and not even as a non-immigrant alien
learning about things that is not available at home
and to bring it home
To learn about self, friendship, love, and life itself
from mistakes and isolation of the comfort of home
To test boundaries as never been tested if i never leave the cage
Never learn to fly and fall.
stroryteller
We were born more helpless and dependent than animals
Animals stays longer inside and came out more ready to survive
We came out earlier and has to sacrifice our development to pass through the cervix of the mother
But, in the first years of our life, we made tremendous development
Especially, our nervous system development.
During the first years, we cry, scream, yawn like animals do
The world most likely a buzzing experience
But soon, we develop "emergent world" with development of language
Where we started learning name and creating story
At this point, the child has not identified with the story
Life is still a biophysical experience with Names
They call each other by names "Tommy wants to go to school", "Mommy is cooking"
Soon, we start to identify or pronouns our experience with "I", "You", and "He/she"
first, second, and third person.
AT THIS POINT, WE RIDE AND "OWN THE SELF" and call it "I", WE ACT OUT THE "SELF" LIKE A HAND PUPPET. We merged intentional and extentional, we merge the biophysical and mental. We especially attached to I.
Some linguistic called this "Intentional/verbal world" where the outside world as "extentional world"
Where we "intent" in our verbal world or "extent" our hand to the real world
Magically, we continue living in this world, dream-like world
As evidence, we can still see this world with our eyes closed
The visually abled see the same world as the visually impaired
Magically, we project this world to the extentional world
We merge the intentional and the extentional world
Not knowing that we create the story from our knowledge and experience based on what we see
We confuse reports and inference and especially, judgement
We confuse opinion and facts, thoughts and facts
Scientists said that our nervous system create our sensory experience
Our nervous system also create our the story or the world
And we identify with objects in this world, especially that is Mine
Everything is phenomenal, is different than Noumeanal
When we create story, we dispose or set up phenomenal objects
WHen we watch TV shows, we create a story based on the actor's acting skills, lighting, and sound
A good actor are actors that can play the part that is believable to be in our story, that doesn't disrupt our story
Magic show also work the same way, manipulating our logic and the way we think.
So, what's the problem? THe problem is that the real world does not function like our story
It will lead to dissapointment and frustration
It's even probably true that everybody live in their head.
We identify when we MAKE THEM COME TRUE OR MAKE BELIEVE THEM TO BE TRUE.
Animals stays longer inside and came out more ready to survive
We came out earlier and has to sacrifice our development to pass through the cervix of the mother
But, in the first years of our life, we made tremendous development
Especially, our nervous system development.
During the first years, we cry, scream, yawn like animals do
The world most likely a buzzing experience
But soon, we develop "emergent world" with development of language
Where we started learning name and creating story
At this point, the child has not identified with the story
Life is still a biophysical experience with Names
They call each other by names "Tommy wants to go to school", "Mommy is cooking"
Soon, we start to identify or pronouns our experience with "I", "You", and "He/she"
first, second, and third person.
AT THIS POINT, WE RIDE AND "OWN THE SELF" and call it "I", WE ACT OUT THE "SELF" LIKE A HAND PUPPET. We merged intentional and extentional, we merge the biophysical and mental. We especially attached to I.
Some linguistic called this "Intentional/verbal world" where the outside world as "extentional world"
Where we "intent" in our verbal world or "extent" our hand to the real world
Magically, we continue living in this world, dream-like world
As evidence, we can still see this world with our eyes closed
The visually abled see the same world as the visually impaired
Magically, we project this world to the extentional world
We merge the intentional and the extentional world
Not knowing that we create the story from our knowledge and experience based on what we see
We confuse reports and inference and especially, judgement
We confuse opinion and facts, thoughts and facts
Scientists said that our nervous system create our sensory experience
Our nervous system also create our the story or the world
And we identify with objects in this world, especially that is Mine
Everything is phenomenal, is different than Noumeanal
When we create story, we dispose or set up phenomenal objects
WHen we watch TV shows, we create a story based on the actor's acting skills, lighting, and sound
A good actor are actors that can play the part that is believable to be in our story, that doesn't disrupt our story
Magic show also work the same way, manipulating our logic and the way we think.
So, what's the problem? THe problem is that the real world does not function like our story
It will lead to dissapointment and frustration
It's even probably true that everybody live in their head.
We identify when we MAKE THEM COME TRUE OR MAKE BELIEVE THEM TO BE TRUE.
knowledge
There is a difference between knowing something and thinking I know something
Like knowing how to drive is different than thinking that I know how to drive
Like there is a difference between being happy and thinking that he is happy
usually, an unhappy person think and wants to be happy
knowing something is like unconscious competence, knowing without knowing
thinking that I know something is conscious competence
habit, competent skills.
Is suffering only problems of knowledge? Having false knowledge? not seeing illusion? thinking of appearance as real? getting lost following the wrong map?
To know something is to recognize form and name
however, there is a difference between recognizing (familiar) and knowing
Dejavu is recognizing (familiar) without knowing
the opposite, jamais vu, is knowing but not recognizing
preque vu is almost remembered something, the tip of the tongue
To rephrase, to know something is to have an idea of appearance of a form (photographic) and name
We also create names of qualities to describe the objects, relationship between objects
Like knowing how to drive is different than thinking that I know how to drive
Like there is a difference between being happy and thinking that he is happy
usually, an unhappy person think and wants to be happy
knowing something is like unconscious competence, knowing without knowing
thinking that I know something is conscious competence
habit, competent skills.
Is suffering only problems of knowledge? Having false knowledge? not seeing illusion? thinking of appearance as real? getting lost following the wrong map?
To know something is to recognize form and name
however, there is a difference between recognizing (familiar) and knowing
Dejavu is recognizing (familiar) without knowing
the opposite, jamais vu, is knowing but not recognizing
preque vu is almost remembered something, the tip of the tongue
To rephrase, to know something is to have an idea of appearance of a form (photographic) and name
We also create names of qualities to describe the objects, relationship between objects
blindness
People are blind, they do not know what they do, they are asleep to their nature
It is more like selective thinking without knowing it
In the movie Inception, the main actor said that when encountering his own defense mechanism in his dream, if we need to sabotage them, he can not know the strategy, because if he knows, his defense mechanism will know
In the movie Beautiful Mind, Dr. Nash and his psychiatrist had an argument where Dr Nash said that "I can fix this problem mathematically." His psychiatrist said that "You can't fix this problem with your mind, because your mind is the problem"
A visually-abled person is not physically blind because he can perceive colors and has visual perception
So, the idea of blindness is more than physical blindness although it may apply to physical blindness
like a person who is busy with many things in his mind may not see what's in front of him
The idea of blindness is like this. If I hypnotize you to believe that a page of newspaper is a check of one million dollars. As long as you are under hypnosis, you don't see a newspaper page.
Because people don't know that they don;t know, they think they know
Because people believe their illusion, they don't know what they do
Because they are hijacked by their story that is only partial to the whole story, they are blind to the rest of the story
Because they only see what they want to see, they are blind to what they don't see or they don't want to see
This shadow usually become monster because they are not under control
unfortunately, we usually see others' shadow or even bear the brunt of his tantrum
while they are busy trying to present a nice mask to others when they can
vice versa, we only see our ideal self and don't see what we don't like
so, we live in this dream, less good dream and more nightmare,
hopefully, when we see enough nightmare, we wake up.
Buddha learn about 3 sights, sickness, old age, and death.
What he learn about suffering is not that we get sick, old, and die.
What suffering is to have this dream about life that lead to suffering when we get sick, old, and die.
They usually deny the shadow
It is more like selective thinking without knowing it
In the movie Inception, the main actor said that when encountering his own defense mechanism in his dream, if we need to sabotage them, he can not know the strategy, because if he knows, his defense mechanism will know
In the movie Beautiful Mind, Dr. Nash and his psychiatrist had an argument where Dr Nash said that "I can fix this problem mathematically." His psychiatrist said that "You can't fix this problem with your mind, because your mind is the problem"
A visually-abled person is not physically blind because he can perceive colors and has visual perception
So, the idea of blindness is more than physical blindness although it may apply to physical blindness
like a person who is busy with many things in his mind may not see what's in front of him
The idea of blindness is like this. If I hypnotize you to believe that a page of newspaper is a check of one million dollars. As long as you are under hypnosis, you don't see a newspaper page.
Because people don't know that they don;t know, they think they know
Because people believe their illusion, they don't know what they do
Because they are hijacked by their story that is only partial to the whole story, they are blind to the rest of the story
Because they only see what they want to see, they are blind to what they don't see or they don't want to see
This shadow usually become monster because they are not under control
unfortunately, we usually see others' shadow or even bear the brunt of his tantrum
while they are busy trying to present a nice mask to others when they can
vice versa, we only see our ideal self and don't see what we don't like
so, we live in this dream, less good dream and more nightmare,
hopefully, when we see enough nightmare, we wake up.
Buddha learn about 3 sights, sickness, old age, and death.
What he learn about suffering is not that we get sick, old, and die.
What suffering is to have this dream about life that lead to suffering when we get sick, old, and die.
They usually deny the shadow
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Childlike
Why are we not happy? When I have to be somebody I am not, when I can not do, think, feel what I want. I don't have pleasure if I have to please others but me. If I have to make others happy, worry about others' dissapointment, worry, sadness, or angers.
Growing up, we learn to please others/group as part of learning how to live.
Unfortunately, we end up sacrificing ourselves to be puppet of others.
It is absurd to sacrifice self to make others' happy
we have to sacrifice our self for their selfishness.
The biggest suffering come from being co dependent on others
I make you happy and you make me happy
it means that I control you and you control me
The less suffering comes from being dependent
Like children to parents or employee to employer
because we don't have control of our life
Less than that, it is being in independent relationship
Even though it looks healthy but we can't live without others
The least suffering comes from interdependent relationship
where each meets each own need but working together with others.
When we can do, think, and feel freely, when we can do what we enjoy, regardless what others say or thinks, that's when we are free.
No matter how stupid it looks, each person has something that they like to do.
It may not produce income or bring fame or fortune, but it is his passion
When we stop doing public relations or damage control or trying to impress others or get others to like or approve what we do, that's freedom.
Life is an art or game where we express or create ourselves through our relationship, job, or journey. There is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad, there is no better or worse. Everything is different, change, and new.
Children may look like wasting their time playing pretend games or having imaginary friends, some people like to think and ponder, some people like to listen to music or watch tv, some people like to socialize, some people like to play with computer. Stop comparing our skills to socially/culturally/employment desirable expectation, because that's the fastest way to kill our passion. When we can accept ourselves and like ourselves, we can accept and like others too.
People judge you all the time and give you advice what's good for you. But the best advice they can give is only what's best for them, we are the only one that know what s good for us. They judge you based on their standard and list in their mind about their own expectation. People will express their disapointment in you or disagreement in you, but that's not accurate. They are dissapointed not at you, they are dissapointed near you. They are dissapointed in themselves. Because, people who see the best in themselves, see the best in you. But still, the best judge about your life is yourself. In the big picture, nothing matters. We can't take anything when we die. They say that we leave names when we die, but what good does it do to have a good name when your body is lifeless under ground. So, if nothing matters, we have nothing to lose, no expectation. Treat life like playing a board game without money where the goal is the game not the results.
Events, activities are surface expression of life. There is deeper theme of life underneath our job, relationship, and life itself, such as struggle, suffering, happiness, hero, life/death, the mythical themes. THese archetypes exists consistently in our mind and we express them through our activities.
We and other people create a world in our own mind where we play a game of life in our mind, but we don't know that it is only imagination and we think that those actors we see in our mind are people that we hang around with. So, when we control our game in our mind, we are controlling other people in our life. And, of course, the real people will not act like the people in our mind, and we get dissapointed. That's what people do to us when they project their guilt, blame, dissapointment, anger, and anxiety on us and say "you make me feel this way. you dissapoint me, you make me upset, etc" DON'T BELIEVE THEM. If we understand ourselves, we can be compasionate to those people and understand that they do not know what they do. But, we can free ourselves from this social hypnosis that i have to be what they want me to be. We have mind to think and decide what's best for us. Life is big trial and error, we hurt self and others, have addiction to drugs, or other activities we do in private, that was judged unhealthy or wrong by society. However, when we are free, we can decide what is good and bad for us. Like children who try throwing tantrum as a way to get something, when she learn that it is not working or she does not need to , she will eventually stop. It is more acceptable for children to make mistakes and do trial and error, because they are learning and experimenting. But we expect adults to make no mistakes and know what to do. What a myth. Isn't adults big children that still don't know what is life itself. Aren't we still making mistakes and learn by trial and error? Aren't we still experimenting???
Growing up, we learn to please others/group as part of learning how to live.
Unfortunately, we end up sacrificing ourselves to be puppet of others.
It is absurd to sacrifice self to make others' happy
we have to sacrifice our self for their selfishness.
The biggest suffering come from being co dependent on others
I make you happy and you make me happy
it means that I control you and you control me
The less suffering comes from being dependent
Like children to parents or employee to employer
because we don't have control of our life
Less than that, it is being in independent relationship
Even though it looks healthy but we can't live without others
The least suffering comes from interdependent relationship
where each meets each own need but working together with others.
When we can do, think, and feel freely, when we can do what we enjoy, regardless what others say or thinks, that's when we are free.
No matter how stupid it looks, each person has something that they like to do.
It may not produce income or bring fame or fortune, but it is his passion
When we stop doing public relations or damage control or trying to impress others or get others to like or approve what we do, that's freedom.
Life is an art or game where we express or create ourselves through our relationship, job, or journey. There is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad, there is no better or worse. Everything is different, change, and new.
Children may look like wasting their time playing pretend games or having imaginary friends, some people like to think and ponder, some people like to listen to music or watch tv, some people like to socialize, some people like to play with computer. Stop comparing our skills to socially/culturally/employment desirable expectation, because that's the fastest way to kill our passion. When we can accept ourselves and like ourselves, we can accept and like others too.
People judge you all the time and give you advice what's good for you. But the best advice they can give is only what's best for them, we are the only one that know what s good for us. They judge you based on their standard and list in their mind about their own expectation. People will express their disapointment in you or disagreement in you, but that's not accurate. They are dissapointed not at you, they are dissapointed near you. They are dissapointed in themselves. Because, people who see the best in themselves, see the best in you. But still, the best judge about your life is yourself. In the big picture, nothing matters. We can't take anything when we die. They say that we leave names when we die, but what good does it do to have a good name when your body is lifeless under ground. So, if nothing matters, we have nothing to lose, no expectation. Treat life like playing a board game without money where the goal is the game not the results.
Events, activities are surface expression of life. There is deeper theme of life underneath our job, relationship, and life itself, such as struggle, suffering, happiness, hero, life/death, the mythical themes. THese archetypes exists consistently in our mind and we express them through our activities.
We and other people create a world in our own mind where we play a game of life in our mind, but we don't know that it is only imagination and we think that those actors we see in our mind are people that we hang around with. So, when we control our game in our mind, we are controlling other people in our life. And, of course, the real people will not act like the people in our mind, and we get dissapointed. That's what people do to us when they project their guilt, blame, dissapointment, anger, and anxiety on us and say "you make me feel this way. you dissapoint me, you make me upset, etc" DON'T BELIEVE THEM. If we understand ourselves, we can be compasionate to those people and understand that they do not know what they do. But, we can free ourselves from this social hypnosis that i have to be what they want me to be. We have mind to think and decide what's best for us. Life is big trial and error, we hurt self and others, have addiction to drugs, or other activities we do in private, that was judged unhealthy or wrong by society. However, when we are free, we can decide what is good and bad for us. Like children who try throwing tantrum as a way to get something, when she learn that it is not working or she does not need to , she will eventually stop. It is more acceptable for children to make mistakes and do trial and error, because they are learning and experimenting. But we expect adults to make no mistakes and know what to do. What a myth. Isn't adults big children that still don't know what is life itself. Aren't we still making mistakes and learn by trial and error? Aren't we still experimenting???
Friday, January 13, 2012
A little Zen
He who laughs last thinks slowest
Remember half the people you know are below average.
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
A day without sunshine is like, night.
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
42.7 % of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
Clones are people two.
I feel like I’m diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
Honk if you love peace and quiet
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
Support bacteria. They’re the only culture some people have.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your week.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Get a new car for your spouse. It’ll be a great trade.
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
Always try to be modest, and be proud of it!
If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand…
OK, so what is the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you are out of invisible ink?
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
Free Will
Scientists said that human's main characteristic is his freedom of choice or free will, the ability to manually control our life. I don't think so.
Let's start with an argument for free will. I can choose to turn left or right, I can choose to eat McDonald or Chinese food, I can select my major, I can choose what time to sleep, I can choose my mate, and so on and so on.
If we have free will, why do we make mistakes? why do we suffer? why do we hurt self or others? why do we get sick? Why do people have physical or mental health problems?
When we make choices, like between type of food or mates or type of anything, don't they have to be in our preference? We can't choose about something that we don't know. What we choose is choice of idea. There is a saying that "we can choose what to eat but not the appetite, we can choose when to sleep but not our drowsiness, we can choose what to drink but not our thirst"
Our ability to choose right now is predetermined by our previous experiences. Some people like Chinese food and some people don't. Some people like classical music and some people don't. There is a basketball coach who said after winning the final "we didn't win this game because of what we did in the past 40 minutes of the game. We won this game a long time ago when we recruited this players, when the players worked hard on their conditioning last summer, when we worked all year long to get better. We actually won this game because we scored 1 or more points than the opponent" A very wise coach.
Suffering, sickness, death is the strongest argument that we don't have much manual control of our life as we think we do. Freud had the right idea about predetermination and was condemned by western psychologists. Yes, it is not convenient to think that we don't have control over our life, especially in western industrial culture. However, having illusion about control about something we have no control about can bring all sorts of problems.
When we do something that we are competent, like driving, we usually go on autopilot and rely on our habit/skills to perform the skills for us. We can drive by not driving. Instead, we listen to music, think about something, or talk on the phone. When we do something that we are not competent or we are in a traumatic experience, we are also hijacked by our emotions and is not within our control. Other than those two, what other situation can we be? In both cases, we rely on our long term memory or emotions to perform our tasks.
However, it doesn't mean that we are 100% predetermined like what some people accused Freud. Otherwise, there is no accountability that we can hurt anybody and no one is accountable. We have the ability to be accountable and we are expected by society to be accountable for our behaviors. But we are not that enlightened to be able to choose what we want.
Let's start with an argument for free will. I can choose to turn left or right, I can choose to eat McDonald or Chinese food, I can select my major, I can choose what time to sleep, I can choose my mate, and so on and so on.
If we have free will, why do we make mistakes? why do we suffer? why do we hurt self or others? why do we get sick? Why do people have physical or mental health problems?
When we make choices, like between type of food or mates or type of anything, don't they have to be in our preference? We can't choose about something that we don't know. What we choose is choice of idea. There is a saying that "we can choose what to eat but not the appetite, we can choose when to sleep but not our drowsiness, we can choose what to drink but not our thirst"
Our ability to choose right now is predetermined by our previous experiences. Some people like Chinese food and some people don't. Some people like classical music and some people don't. There is a basketball coach who said after winning the final "we didn't win this game because of what we did in the past 40 minutes of the game. We won this game a long time ago when we recruited this players, when the players worked hard on their conditioning last summer, when we worked all year long to get better. We actually won this game because we scored 1 or more points than the opponent" A very wise coach.
Suffering, sickness, death is the strongest argument that we don't have much manual control of our life as we think we do. Freud had the right idea about predetermination and was condemned by western psychologists. Yes, it is not convenient to think that we don't have control over our life, especially in western industrial culture. However, having illusion about control about something we have no control about can bring all sorts of problems.
When we do something that we are competent, like driving, we usually go on autopilot and rely on our habit/skills to perform the skills for us. We can drive by not driving. Instead, we listen to music, think about something, or talk on the phone. When we do something that we are not competent or we are in a traumatic experience, we are also hijacked by our emotions and is not within our control. Other than those two, what other situation can we be? In both cases, we rely on our long term memory or emotions to perform our tasks.
However, it doesn't mean that we are 100% predetermined like what some people accused Freud. Otherwise, there is no accountability that we can hurt anybody and no one is accountable. We have the ability to be accountable and we are expected by society to be accountable for our behaviors. But we are not that enlightened to be able to choose what we want.
Action and Distraction
When making plan for actions always make plan for distractions
Distraction has many names Murphy Law, God's plan, voice from nature, etc
What distractions is something that gets in the way of our plan of action
in other words, to follow agenda's other than our own.
However, we didn't plan coming into this world and we don't plan leaving this world
We don't plan getting sick or getting old, we don't plan losing our job, we don't plan feeling anxiety, stress, depressed, sad, etc.
We don't plan getting into accidents and obviously, we don't plan making mistakes.
We don't plan to hurt ourselves or others.
We don't plan getting sleepy when we have to work, we don't plan getting lazy, tired, angry, etc.
Those made up 90% of our waking moments, maybe, we should consider what I actually plan in this life.
Distraction has many names Murphy Law, God's plan, voice from nature, etc
What distractions is something that gets in the way of our plan of action
in other words, to follow agenda's other than our own.
However, we didn't plan coming into this world and we don't plan leaving this world
We don't plan getting sick or getting old, we don't plan losing our job, we don't plan feeling anxiety, stress, depressed, sad, etc.
We don't plan getting into accidents and obviously, we don't plan making mistakes.
We don't plan to hurt ourselves or others.
We don't plan getting sleepy when we have to work, we don't plan getting lazy, tired, angry, etc.
Those made up 90% of our waking moments, maybe, we should consider what I actually plan in this life.
Truth and Meaning
Sticks and stones can hurt my bone but words can't never hurt me.
We sometimes have to make this affirmation to remind ourselves. Why?
Because we get magically hurts by words. We get hurts with concepts/thoughts in our mind.
It is absurd to get hurt with something that is not a thing, something that we can't touch.
Something that is not physical, chemical, or biological. It is best can be thought of as mental.
Ment-al can best be described as Mind.
Mental is part of 6 dimensions of experience: Physical, Chemical, Biological, Emotional, Mental, Social, Spiritual.
Physical. chemical, and biological dimensions consists of tangible objects.
However, emotional and mental dimension is a regulating system of an individual and does not have tangible forms
Social and spiritual dimension is a group regulating system.
The higher the dimension, the more abstract the language being used
such as, parable and puzzle used in the spiritual dimension
Each dimensions are created out of necessity following principles of nature, principles of cooperation and competition.
Objects in each dimension started cooperating and eventually competing with each other.
Think about a human being who only has emotion and has no consciousness(Mental)
Now, think about a person who has emotion and intelligence and has no conscience (social)
This is the most dangerous person in the world. (the planet of the apes gives us this scenario of this nightmare)
Like stated earlier, social and spiritual dimension is a group dimension
The social dimension is created to regulate persons who not only has emotion but also has intelligence
However, people now cooperate with another and create a group/society.
This group has more power than an individual.
Imagine if this group who not only has emotion and intelligence, but now has resources has no morality
We can see this in action with how countries govern itself.
That's when spirituality/religion is created.
Religion is actually to regulate or govern societies from killing each other.
That's why religions are more universal.
However, religions can also be used for competition as we can see in our world today with the conflict between religions.
The movie The Book of ELi used this theme that a person who can own this Book can control the world.
This is when the dimension is spiraling up again, to what some people call mysticism
Mysticism is a higher dimension above religions. The language is more abstract, even to the point of empty.
The idea of mysticism is going back to the physical chemical biological dimension and getting beyond the emotional mental social and even spiritual dimension.
The mystical dimension say that the physicchemicalbio dimension is good. The problem is the system (emotional mental social spiritual).
There is pain in the biophysical dimension. But there is suffering in the systematical dimensions.
So, in the mystical dimension, a person has to re learn to live back with nature that we forget how to do. Isn't it absurd that we have to pay money to enjoy nature. at the same time, we are asked to analyze our systematical experience because it's problematic. it s full of illusions. It creates suffering. it is created from our own dispositions and phenomena. This the highest dimension at our current time. A person who make it to this level is more actualized than others. However, this dimension of course can be abused and hijacked by greed, such as people who used their gifts for show or gain profit. This dimension also can be bought, sold, at least that's what's being promised. Look at books and workshops of promising people of shortcut to happiness. Like there is no shortcut to wealth, there is no shortcut to happiness.
So, mental is another name for mind.
Mental is created to regulate emotional dimension, it's more than that actually
Mental is created to regulate all the biophysical emotional dimension.
Emotional dimension is to regulate biophysical dimensions.
Think of emotion as ancient speedometer, mental as digital speedometer
Imagine an old car that only has a stick that goes between 0 and 100 mph on your speedometer
you know roughly how fast you are going but not specifically
Imagine a new car that has a digital speedometer that gives you specific numbers of your speed
That's mental dimension.
It's like a map to a territory, like a menu to food, like a word to point to an object
However, when we deal with concepts in mind, we may have concepts that has no objects, in fact we have so many of them. if we are not careful, these concepts will act like an objects and make it more powerful, like relation-ship, friend-ship. Notice the ending -ship at the end, it's a metaphor. In fact, 99% of language in psychology or social science is objectless concepts. It's scary that people don't know this and use these words as objects.
There is truth beyond true and false. The truth can't be seen or thought of or conceptualized
All phenomena or concepts or disposition must be true or false, they are not the truth
Like happiness and Goodness, it is beyond conception and duality
We create meaning when we put together phenomena in our mind.
We create memory by putting together different object together.
We sometimes have to make this affirmation to remind ourselves. Why?
Because we get magically hurts by words. We get hurts with concepts/thoughts in our mind.
It is absurd to get hurt with something that is not a thing, something that we can't touch.
Something that is not physical, chemical, or biological. It is best can be thought of as mental.
Ment-al can best be described as Mind.
Mental is part of 6 dimensions of experience: Physical, Chemical, Biological, Emotional, Mental, Social, Spiritual.
Physical. chemical, and biological dimensions consists of tangible objects.
However, emotional and mental dimension is a regulating system of an individual and does not have tangible forms
Social and spiritual dimension is a group regulating system.
The higher the dimension, the more abstract the language being used
such as, parable and puzzle used in the spiritual dimension
Each dimensions are created out of necessity following principles of nature, principles of cooperation and competition.
Objects in each dimension started cooperating and eventually competing with each other.
Think about a human being who only has emotion and has no consciousness(Mental)
Now, think about a person who has emotion and intelligence and has no conscience (social)
This is the most dangerous person in the world. (the planet of the apes gives us this scenario of this nightmare)
Like stated earlier, social and spiritual dimension is a group dimension
The social dimension is created to regulate persons who not only has emotion but also has intelligence
However, people now cooperate with another and create a group/society.
This group has more power than an individual.
Imagine if this group who not only has emotion and intelligence, but now has resources has no morality
We can see this in action with how countries govern itself.
That's when spirituality/religion is created.
Religion is actually to regulate or govern societies from killing each other.
That's why religions are more universal.
However, religions can also be used for competition as we can see in our world today with the conflict between religions.
The movie The Book of ELi used this theme that a person who can own this Book can control the world.
This is when the dimension is spiraling up again, to what some people call mysticism
Mysticism is a higher dimension above religions. The language is more abstract, even to the point of empty.
The idea of mysticism is going back to the physical chemical biological dimension and getting beyond the emotional mental social and even spiritual dimension.
The mystical dimension say that the physicchemicalbio dimension is good. The problem is the system (emotional mental social spiritual).
There is pain in the biophysical dimension. But there is suffering in the systematical dimensions.
So, in the mystical dimension, a person has to re learn to live back with nature that we forget how to do. Isn't it absurd that we have to pay money to enjoy nature. at the same time, we are asked to analyze our systematical experience because it's problematic. it s full of illusions. It creates suffering. it is created from our own dispositions and phenomena. This the highest dimension at our current time. A person who make it to this level is more actualized than others. However, this dimension of course can be abused and hijacked by greed, such as people who used their gifts for show or gain profit. This dimension also can be bought, sold, at least that's what's being promised. Look at books and workshops of promising people of shortcut to happiness. Like there is no shortcut to wealth, there is no shortcut to happiness.
So, mental is another name for mind.
Mental is created to regulate emotional dimension, it's more than that actually
Mental is created to regulate all the biophysical emotional dimension.
Emotional dimension is to regulate biophysical dimensions.
Think of emotion as ancient speedometer, mental as digital speedometer
Imagine an old car that only has a stick that goes between 0 and 100 mph on your speedometer
you know roughly how fast you are going but not specifically
Imagine a new car that has a digital speedometer that gives you specific numbers of your speed
That's mental dimension.
It's like a map to a territory, like a menu to food, like a word to point to an object
However, when we deal with concepts in mind, we may have concepts that has no objects, in fact we have so many of them. if we are not careful, these concepts will act like an objects and make it more powerful, like relation-ship, friend-ship. Notice the ending -ship at the end, it's a metaphor. In fact, 99% of language in psychology or social science is objectless concepts. It's scary that people don't know this and use these words as objects.
There is truth beyond true and false. The truth can't be seen or thought of or conceptualized
All phenomena or concepts or disposition must be true or false, they are not the truth
Like happiness and Goodness, it is beyond conception and duality
We create meaning when we put together phenomena in our mind.
We create memory by putting together different object together.
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