...as you are me and we are all together

A common form of enlightenment is described as the feeling of transcending the self and experiencing being one with every other living thing. This is, literally: being selfless.

I've always thought of the word "selfless" as meaning the self doing things for others, and in return the self is allowed to feel good for what it has done. But to be truly selfless, or without self, there is no distinction between what is you and what is others. There is no personal feeling of having done good, only the feelings that others have. So you don't need to do things for others only for the return feeling you get for yourself, you do things for others because you can share in the happiness they experience from it. If you truly believe "we're all in this together" (to quote a friend), then having good happen to others can feel good to you and to all.

Also, we don't need to do things for others to be able to share in their feelings. This may seem selfish, but I don't think it is. We should do things for others to uplift their mood and the collective mood, but we shouldn't feel obliged to first "earn" a share in that collective mood. Similarly, we're allowed to feel good about ourselves whenever we want to, without having to first "earn it" through some task or chore, as if one must deal with oneself like a bratty kid who cries until he gets candy.

If you were to simply stop seeing others as competition, and trusted in the idea that any benefit to anyone is a benefit also to you, would you experience that feeling of oneness? Can you simply choose to feel it? Is enlightenment as easy as that?

Michael... you sound like you're on drugs.

- Mom

Jesus lives on in your actions

I got into a conversation today, and am low on material (this blog doesn't really seem to be about anything, like, what the hell), so let me wax metaphysical.

Lately when I hear somebody thanking a god figure or attributing a decision to one, most of the time I have a clear sense that it is their own mind that deserves attribution. Probably it is some part of their brain that we don't have a clear and conscious understanding of, so that thoughts that come from it have a feeling of divine origin.

For example, someone may say, "That I'm with the most beautiful woman in the world is beyond reasoning or luck; I thank Cthulhu for blessing me with this gift." It can be easy to dismiss, with thoughts like "I don't think she's quite that superior, and anyway I don't believe in Cthulhu." For certain I don't think that an external being has chosen one person out of all of us, to bless with this particular gift while excluding all others. I think that such a feeling of being blessed comes from our own minds.

Firstly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps moreso the mind, and so are many things that we may think of as objective. It is my perception that decides for me how beautiful someone is compared to all others. It is colored by how she makes me feel. It is my perception that judges whether something is astoundingly pleasing, or rottenly upsetting. It's my perception and mood that determine if a day was good or bad. Perhaps I feel so good that I believe I have to thank some external entity, but it was probably something in my mind that made me feel this way.

Secondly, it is your judgment and actions that get you into your relationships. Your significant other didn't just arrive in the mail (except for you J.R., you ol' dog!). If you didn't know what you did to get them, you may think it was divine intervention, but your brain made many choices that lead you to where you are.

So I argue, that often what you might think of as a god, is in your mind. In many ways, you are your god. It is you, and inaccessible parts of your mind, that are giving you these things that you can't otherwise explain.

I suggested this in a conversation and was offered the idea that the consciousnesses of god figures don't die or disappear, they live on in a universal consciousness that connects us all, an energy that we can tap into and network with like computers. A thought may be running in your mind, or it may be in that greater oneness, a collective consciousness, the realm of a god we can connect to through thought alone.

Now, I'm a pretty literal guy, driven by logic, science, and pseudo-science. But suddenly the idea that a dead deity could live on within us actually made literal sense. Here's how to do it:

First, we must step back and redefine some ideas about life and identity. What does "me" mean? Is it only this conscious feeling I have, the "I think, therefore I am" in each of us? Or is it more; is it our thoughts and ideas and actions, etc? You can't see my thoughts, but if we were interacting face-to-face you would have a clear sense of the individual that I call "me". It is not my thoughts, nor is it just my physical presence that you see as "me". It is not just my face but the expressions it conveys. It is not just my voice but the ideas and feeling within it. You can clearly sense "me" in all of that. So "me" is more than my conscious or my body. Part of me can be captured in a photograph, written down, expressed through art, etc. And these parts of me exist whether my conscious is currently processing that "me" feeling.

So one's thoughts and ideas can outlive their person for as long as is an idea's lifetime. If you are thinking something or doing something, and that thought or action is based on someone else's ideas, and not created completely from scratch in your head, then that someone else is involved. Their thoughts continue on... Only now, you are the one thinking them. In a small way, this is how we share a collective consciousness. We are machines constantly making little connections with each other, a giant distributed computer. We share ideas and thoughts, and feelings and everything else, and our thoughts merge and blend in each other's mind. From each person I meet, some small part of them joins with "me", and some small part of me joins with each person I meet. Someone with the status of a god has a large part of themselves shared with and stirred in to many individuals. If you are putting their ideas to use, you are preserving their existence.

So, when you thank a god, I will smile and nod, instead of making that surly expression you're so used to. Part of what you have experienced is you, but part of it is divine, and the separation of the two blurs and ceases to matter.


For your health!

Note: The soundtrack for this post is Air - Talkie Walkie. For optimal feelings of bliss, a reading of the final few paragraphs should be sync'd up with Surfing on a Rocket. Namaste!

Chill the serious mood, and do whatcha like

The first step is to realize that everything you do is done by choice. Not all are explicit decisions made by the feeling you would call "you" (IE. conscious choices), and not all will be made by a logical part of your brain. Yet, some part of your brain worked on each decision made. The next step is to realize when you're purposefully making choices you don't want to make. You can do this by just being aware and taking note of when you're not doing what you want to. Such choices are probably made by something neurotic in your brain. We all have miswirings, perhaps some incorrect belief that somehow has been reinforced through years of repeated misperception. Often your undesirable behavior is done to protect some other part of you, something your subconscious is doing without letting you in on. So the next step is to determine why your brain is making those choices. The way to do that is to simply ask it, and the way to axe your subconscious something is through meditation.

Once you understand why you are making the choices you are, the next step is to correct whichever you consider to be wrong. I suppose this requires a bit of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy auto-headshrinking. Your brain should tell you what it's trying to do. So either you have to convince your brain that it's wrong (and repeat as necessary until the right wires are strong enough for you to believe), or accept that your brain is right, and that you must make whatever changes are needed to various aspects of your life to let your mind grow beyond this current roadblock.


When you've done this, you should have now taken full responsibility for your behavior. What about taking responsibility for what happens to you? You can't fix or control what other people do to you, but you can change how you react to them. It is unreasonable to expect anyone to be thinking of your best interests all the time, so if at any time you need someone to be doing what's best for you, it may have to be you who's doing it. The first step is accepting that it is your own choices, and not someone else's, that control how you feel and what actions you take. A divinely enlightened individual might be able to be stabbed in the back by a stranger, and find the silver lining in that dark cloud, but that type of extreme self-control isn't what you're after (not to mention that you may *want* to feel unhappy about being stabbed in the back). What you are after is the feeling that you are making the best decisions in any given situation, and are at least in control of your own behavior. The next step is to find out why you react the way you do to the things that happen or that people have done to you. Again, just axe yourself, through meditation. The next step is to change your behavior. Again, you can train yourself to accept that your reaction was wrong, and let your brain know how you wanted it to react. Or, if your reaction was correct, change the aspects of your life that let you be susceptible to these outside influences.

Be careful, however, not to trick yourself into thinking that changing your behavior will get you exactly what you want. After all, other people still have full control over how they react to you. So, if your thoughts are all working 100%, and your actions are all working 100%, the next thing to tackle is dealing with people in a way that maximizes your chances of a satisfactory response. The first step is to understand how others react to you; the next step is to understand why; and the next is to figure out a better reaction and reverse-engineer an action that you could instead take to perhaps achieve said reaction. This all involves psychology, empathy, the ability to see your actions from another's perspective and simulate or predict not only their reaction, but also their counteraction. You should never expect to be perfect at this, if you are dealing with humans and not robots. Some easy advice is to just do your best and not worry too much about it. You might try meditation to imagine how you would feel in someone else's situation, but I'd recommend against trying to meditate on another person's thoughts (They say that meditating on others puts undue mental stress on them. This may manifest itself in subtle ways, such as you treating the other differently because you're basing your interaction on something you only imagined, etc. It is better to deal with people in person rather than in your imagination). Regardless, being consciously aware of what reactions your actions may induce, will go a long ways toward helping you avoid inducing bad ones.


Finally, there are things that happen to us over which we have no control and which relate not at all to any choices we make. The first step and the best way to handle this is to simply accept it. Learn to find peace with a Buddhist-like acceptance of impermanence. Know that nothing, whether good or bad, is here forever, so let it go gently and without regret. For anything that happens despite your best laid choices, you can believe it's "just the fuckin way she goes."


For your health!

Make it so.

Do you think too much? Do you have trouble taking advice to not think so much? Do you partly believe you ought think less, but feel it is a struggle against your very nature?

If by simply thinking you are directly made unhappy, then yes, stop all that thinking! Either let your brain take on other tasks (suggest letting it drift on detailed ambient music), or change the way you think, towards something more positive.

However, if thinking doesn't directly make you unhappy, ask yourself: Do the results of all my thinking lead me to take the actions I want to take? If you believe you think too much, the answer is probably "no". But the problem is not always the quantity of thought that you produce; it may be a disconnect between thought and action. If through rigorous analytical thought you can figure out any situation, solve any problem, answer any nagging question, but you still avoid taking the actions you want, then fix your failure to act.

• Reconnect thought and action. If the conclusion to a thought is that an action should be taken, do not be satisfied with its completion until the action is taken. Do not let the thought stand on its own, if it only means you're making plans which will never be followed through. Correct behavior involves neither thought nor action exclusively, but both working together.
• Do not replace action with thought. If a situation affords you the time to either think or act but not both, try acting. Train yourself to do this (commit to taking more risks, accept the idea of making decisions on partial information, etc). You can always think about it later. Avoid also treating "thinking about it" as having taken an action. Remind yourself that you won't accept that.

Now you can do more of the things you want to do, without feeling you've "dumbed yourself down"!

For your health!