more fun from diablo’s lighting engine. This time: treasure chest MRI
Negative Energy has a lot to answer for (or, how to be happy forever)
There is no such thing as a mean person. I firmly believe this, it is one of my only beliefs, and I only believe it when I am being the very best person I can, or at least attempting to be, but on some level beyond cynicism’s reach I do believe it. There is no baby that was born with the desire to harm others. When a baby harms, it does so out of complete lack of understanding, not through malice. As soon as a baby raised in a loving environment becomes aware of the fact that other human beings are aware, and feel just as they do, they of course begin to treat other humans with love and respect. The thing is, the human brain being the wondrous and flighty thing it is, often life wears us down to the point that we forget this, and to deal with whatever transitory and pretty much imaginary (but the imagination is powerful and to the ego is plenty real) we suppress the knowledge that others are as important as ourselves, because life seems scary sometimes and that ancient voice of fear in our brains, the one that also tells us to try and fuck everything we come across and that we really need to eat that much kfc, my enemy and nobody else’s the id.
The id is the fucked up piece of our brain that the years of struggling to survive and being on extinctions door cornered and twisted and tortured until all human life was obsessed with the functions that would guarantee survival - unrestricted consumption in times of plenty, lots of sex to increase offspring sizes. It also leads to the emphasis of power of tranquility of mind. Well, humanity has made it now. Seriously. Only going uphill or utter extinction from here, and it ain’t an extinction that fucking and gorging is going to help save us from, its an extinction that calm, tranquil, loving thought will sustain us through. The only threat to humanity right now is literally itself, and every threat to humanity is the result from the decision of a mind based on fear and not love. The fear that stems from the id, the fear that our survival is constantly on the line, which is of course irrational (unless you count the results of this fear). This fear drives us to countless wars where hurt national pride and a few thousand lives in enough to justify ongoing skyrocketing loss of life and completely senseless violence, to satisfy the fear of the Other that the American public has. Wars like this are a never-ending battle between two hydras, heads constantly bitten off and regrowing. Anyway, if I have to overexplain this then the harder messages contained here are probably not going to sit well either, so I won’t bother lingering. War, Overpolicing, huge companies trying to seize more, War for Profit, and more, and more… A CEO is all id. A good CEO will feel the sting of falling stock like a tribal elder would have the bare larder before a harsh winter. Why? Why does this man twist himself so far out of the reach of the joy that is all around? Who knows. Maybe he was never taught love. Maybe some people are truly beyond help, but the best part of me believes that even a man like that has chance of truly seeing beauty and truth and not wasting our precious, giddy, meaningless time alive. Like it says in the bible (I’ve read it, have you? It read like it was written - a crazy hodgepodge of writings of different times, some utterly barbaric and misguided [unfortunately, the parts that some still quote from] some simplistic and fable-like, but some that is quite philosophically profound) it is as hard as a rich man to enter heaven as it is a camel to walk through the eye of a needle (I’m paraphrasing, but its all translated to who cares?). By “Rich Man” the philosopher Jesus speaks not of a man who happens to have a lot of stuff, but a man who covets this beyond his happiness. Mazlowe’s heirarchy of needs is pretty easily met, but why do you need that nice new porsche? Oh, thats right, you think it’ll be easier to shallowly fuck girls, and you want to fuck girls because your id is telling your brain that the human race is on the edge of extinction. You are a joke. So are the women you are interested in. I tell you not out of scorn, but I feel bad for you, caught in this loop of meaninglessness.
So, then, assuming as I must that you are with me and have not stopped reading (I hope nobody that has stopped reading continues to read, because that might mess up a few laws of spacetime) And therefore the next question is “if evil exists because of the whims of an area of our brain writhing in fear of extinction, what can we do to make the world less evil?” The answer I came up with about 6 months ago when I first consciously, instead of constantly subconsciously, asked myself this question was this - I had to do nothing. I had to merely let go of hate, pain, fear, and take control of my id, recognize it for what it is and accept it be conscious to ignore its worst influence. To live in joy all one must do is decide to live in joy. This is at once a hard and easy thing to do. I’m not talking about living parts of your life in joy or even most of it - I’m talking about loving everything. Every moment. If you have a shitty day, like an actually bad day at work, you should be joyful within this moment if you are doing it right. This is what Jesus was talking about when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven - its not an eternal life in cloudland with a big old man as “God” and giant gates. Heaven in NOT this, and when you die, sucker, you’re out. I believe this to my fibrous core and I don’t care. The fear of death is the stem of all of our problems, our solution cannot be to ignore it with a fantasy (literal) Deus Ex Machina after death, but rather to fully accept it and what it means about our importance in this universe.
There is only one true way I know of to destroy the ego’s grip apon your brain. It isn’t a drug, or a cult, or a ritual or a yoga stretch or anything like that. It is an idea. Or rather, it is the rejection of an idea. That idea is the fact that you matter. At all. In the grand scheme of things. And I don’t just mean having that idea in a transitory way, I mean accepting it down to your very core. Your death, birth, love, hate, mind, soul, everything, is universally so unimportant that it may as well not exist. Or, to put it another way
“Meh” - The universe, on the entirety of your existence and everything you hold dear
This is, perhaps, a seemingly nihilistic approach to true enlightenment and bliss, but appearances aren’t always what they seem. As this idea (if you truly believe it to your core and not just transitorily) washes over your entire existence and obliterates every single worry you could ever have. Bad day at work? Your Boss and yourself are both so colossally unimportant that its hilarious to yourself that someone could be upset at this. The soundwaves of your boss yelling dissipate into the great calm of the universe very quickly. This is applicable to every scale of nuisance or tragedy, but out of respect and not wishing to be seen as a controversionalist I’ll leave it there. Life becomes a combination of an absurdist joke as you watch other people worry their way through life (you should reach out to these people with gentle kindness, but nobody likes a preacher. If they are on the right path, they will find peace. The roads to peace are plentiful, and I think most people reach it in the end.) and an idyllic, relaxed walk through your time in the universe, which truly is a place of great awe and joy when you allow it to be.
Anyway, I digress. The point is that most things people attach happiness to will never make you truly happy, these things only provide temporary relief from the fear. Fear is useless, recognise it as such reject it. Fear will only hold you back. Live in love.
So now we have dealt with all evil in the world.
I imagine some people will see a slight gap between personal tranquility and world peace, but hear me out.
Standing on street corners and yelling your beliefs at each other is supremely a waste of time. Indeed, even though my philosophical beliefs are such… non-beliefs I see this mainly as an excersise to externalize and better define my philosophy rather than attempt to bring anyone around to my way of seeing the world. I now know that, while not futile, this is a delicate art, and it is better after all to let the mountain come to Mohammed. Regardless of whether you’re catching flies with vinegar or honey, why are you so worried about catching flies? One that lives immersed in love cannot preach, he cannot see his brother as lesser than he is. The main reason for this is my original point - there is no such thing as a mean person, just a child that the world has tormented with its illusory fears. If you react to these people with understanding, tranquility and love enough times they will react the same. I have had experiences with negative people and after reacting to hostility with tranquility they eventually formed a mutual respect, even friendship with me. In cases where I reacted to hostility with defensiveness or hostility in return (only human!) it never ended well. At best, awkward tension. Why choose failure and humiliation? Positive people either convert negative people or irritate them so much that they don’t hang around you (however in my experience usually the former is true).
Eventually everyone in your friends group is a little more positive, tranquil, loving and understanding. And that little bit also trickles down to their friends too. It isn’t much… if just one person decides to approach life this way, to become a Pos Vibe Emanator or source of love. But the thing about being a Pos Vibe Emenator, of ACTUALLY being one, of treating people with positivity and rejecting negative attitudes, etc, of course makes one extremely happy - accepting and returning negative energy hurts yourself as much as anyone else. This sort of happiness shows, and eventually you will have maybe one or two close friends ask you how you maintain positivity. And then, because you didn’t try to force your beliefs onto your friends, they will be open to your philosophy because it has had such apparent success for you. And then, through the glory of time and the forces of change, slowly a network of really positive people form. The thing about this idea, “Nothing really matters, be happy, treat others with love” is that it clicks so well for most people - I’ll pick what could probably be pretty well argued to be two of the most important/apparent influences on modern humanity - Jesus and the Beatles. Now, things perpetrated by Christianity in the intervening time are as relevant to the message of Jesus as the Manson family was to the Beatles (not belittling Christianity, actually their crimes. Most Christians quite lovely people, if a little misguided. Heck, I’ve even met one or two that had their finger closer to the pulse of truth and beauty than many miserablist cynic athiest. To be fair, I’ve also met a ton of reasonable, loving athiests and I think there are equal amounts of miserablist cynic believers. There, I think everyone should now be able to get beyond the kneejerk reactions of percieved slights, phew). Jesus and the Beatles both preach some of the most radical (if you think with your ego) or sensible (if you think unburdened by fear) idealogies. In fact, in all the important ways, the Beatles and Jesus preach the same message. Love is preferable to fear. Love begets love, fear begets fear, so love everything and fear nothing. There are an infinite amount of ways to speak this truth, this idea. There are words for it across cultures, words people don’t even remember refer to it - ohm, the tao, the conscilliatory principle, emancipation, God, Love etc etc. But the myriad of labels for this thought do not touch it. Anyway, I’ve written myself deep into a hole, but sometimes passion makes us labour at points.
Do not let the world fool you into thinking you must twist your soul to get by
I feel like
my brain is yin and marijuana is yang, so when I’m high my brain is the universe - creation and destruction, good and evil, whole - the idea of the conciliatory principle in Taoism (when I’m REALLY high, that is.) Creating things is also yang, so not only does weed aid my creativity,. but creating things while sober (especially sitting and meditatively playing guitar) stills my mind in the same way that Cannabis does.
