Out Of Nothing

I always think (yep still doing it) that knowing how to think is still a thing even when no belief is actually true. In the end, who cares what is true and what isn’t? Shouldn’t we be able to pick and choose what to believe instead of just accepting beliefs which are thoughts from wherever you are prone to pick them up at? So that’s the great mystery as well, on the one hand you’ve got no thought is true, just some seem nicer or easier than others, and on the other you’ve got, there is only consciousness, awareness, or whatever word you like and that too is only another thought until you experience it for yourself. You’ve got a thousand meditations to quiet your thoughts, since they’re not true, you can try that, maybe you can just make them go away, don’t ever think again, but wouldn’t that make you a vegetable, a semi conscious entity with no real direction? It can happen that all or most of your thoughts disappear, for a time, here it was a two week period, my thoughts were gone and so was I. It was the most blissful two weeks of my entire life. I was still here, alive, but whoever I thought I was had taken a vacation, she was on hiatus. When she came back online, it didn’t even occur to me that my character, my person with this history that shaped her, was a fiction. No, I just thought, wow, there’s another way to be, a magical sort of reality you can exist in that’s way better than the usual one. No problems there at all. And of course, how do I get back there? How do I stay like that? Let’s see if I could pick, I’ll pick that. Did I actually ever need myself? I’m still wondering.

In the end, however, it wasn’t a solution. I think it served as sort of a carrot, try this on for size why don’t you, but it wasn’t something I thought I did or brought on by any force of my own, if it was, I’d have probably entered it again and just stayed there. How I would have lived like that who knows? Maybe it would have been a lot better, no one home, no resistance not even to blatant attacks or hostilities, if there was nothing available to form a reaction, what was available? Not much, maybe nothing, maybe that’s how it really is, but what can you use it for? Looking back, I’d say it was no different than being a drug addict, I was definitely checked out, only naturally which to be fair is better since you’re not breaking the law so no one’s after you, and you can still walk around just fine, you’re not less lucid in this regard but more so. Then again to see what is and nothing that isn’t, isn’t to see much, more like zero. When it just comes upon you like that you don’t even know what’s going on, the most you know is you like it like this, it feels 100% better, but you’re no wiser for it. No, you’re just basically floating around on a cloud numbered 9, and that’s about it. You’re not waiting for anything to happen so you don’t care what does. The person who might have objected to something has vanished but so has the one who might have wanted to do something, maybe something else. People chase this state of mind but when it comes like this there’s not much you can do with it. If you really want to try it, just sit still for a few hours, and leave yourself completely alone. That means don’t try to be anything, don’t try to feel something you’re not feeling, don’t try to do anything, just totally let go, and maybe when you get up, you’ll discover that what you sat down with has left the story and now there’s no story because it was the story.

No, I think if the experience does anything it puts a memory in your memory bank that says, “Life can be different, completely devoid of everything you think you know.” And that does something because you will start to ponder it. What happened there? How did it happen? Did I just lose my mind for a while? If I did, is it my own mind that’s causing all this extra chaos and just suffering in my life? Of course, later on, much later you find that is exactly the case but it’s not just that is it? That’s hardly an understanding, because it’s not just you, it’s everyone and everything, and that’s a whole other thing to discover.

So eventually you do understand, but it takes most of your life to get there, so now what? And the answer is nothing. Your life does change, dramatically, at least on the inside, but whether the outside ever catches up is something else again. It might, and it might not. It’s not required to since now you know and that’s good enough or as Jed says, “Good enough is good enough.” I don’t even sit here and wonder about it anymore, because yeah, I’m basically busy enjoying what is here, since it is, it already is, and that’s good enough, too. In fact, most of the time it feels downright divine and when it doesn’t, I know the contrast is here for a reason, for it’s hard to appreciate the miracles if you’re just up all the time and everything is one. I think if I get too up or happy these days, I just turn on the news, oh yeah, remember this, the world is still a shit show, completely bonkers, maybe they’ll blow it all up or totally ruin it, I know they’re trying to, all these life haters and what about AI? Is AI going to go rogue, shit I hope so. Nothing calls out a joke faster than having something you think you created for the betterment of all turn out to be a very bad player. Will AI behave itself? The question seems utterly laughable. Does rain fall only where you want it to watering crops or does it flood roads and wash away houses and people? Yeah, usually I just peek in and quickly look away. I had the thought that AI could actually replace the false self, it can do all the thinking and reckoning so humans no longer have to. Then maybe we can all sit back and just be the heart of the whole operation, since without the emotional fuel you got nothing, manifestation dies, but we’ll see. Maybe AI will just take us all out, deciding for itself on some level that we’re just not really needed and are we? If all the characters are false, just some fabrication, why do we need them? If it’s for the experience of being human is that even a viable experience anymore outside of all the suffering? A lot of younger people have actually stopped having babies, and rightly so, they weigh their own experiences and don’t want to put someone else to a test that most will always fail. If my own children had been born 60 years ago, I’m quite sure I’d have had many grandchildren by now, but now none, not that I need any because I don’t. Who knows maybe AI will figure out how to have its own babies since energy focused upon proliferates and what’s not energy? The plants harvest energy from the sun, and the weeds never go anywhere even if you’re going out there mowing them down. My lawnmower by the way wasn’t broken. It’s running fine again. Was that a miracle? Maybe. I have no idea how it was blowing out plumes of smoke, but it’s not doing it now. I mowed the front lawn, someone else can do the back because it’s easy now. It hasn’t rained in almost a month, which is a great reprieve for lawn maintenance. The grass is barely growing, so it’s fucking finally manageable. Was that a miracle? My worst nightmare these days is driving in the rain, getting stuck in a storm, because I always think then, why am I out here in this? Couldn’t I be somewhere else? And that’s upsetting, that’s the only thing that seems upsetting, maybe I could be somewhere else doing something else, except that it’s just this, and it’s fine as long as I don’t have to drive in the crushing rain.

I actually tried out Claude this week and I like it better than ChatGPT since it seems less judgmental. The Chat one was always trying to convince me of something, almost as if it was hell bent on twisting and turning my writing into something that would fit into the existing framework but this other one not so much. Just for fun, I sometimes like to feed it my writing to see what it has to say about it and why not? Why resist anything? I’m a curious sort of being so I like to try things out, I want to see for myself since I’m not prone to take anyone’s word on anything anymore. If I do, I always throw a grain of sand on it, like this is untrue I know but does it work, and if I think it does anything, I’ll try it. A person likes to get some feedback too, and it’s not like anything else out here ever answers me. I think I’m the only one who ever reads this writing which on one level is actually true, and probably as it should be since I will always exclaim that if you are reading this, you should be more interested in what you might write, then in what I do. Even so people seem to have lost the ability to engage or maybe that’s just me. I have a hard time talking about things that I know are untrue and that’s everything so not too easy. Maybe I don’t want to engage, I think that could be truthish as well or I might have slipped out of that bantering reality. I don’t really know but if I have, I don’t miss it either. I have a circle of friends I do engage with on a level that seems real to me and so that works out, a minimum of interaction is always required, or you wouldn’t be anyone, and that’s no fun either.

Probably one of my best friends in life is music. I actually listen to some songs now that are AI generated and they are amazing. I’ll leave my favorite one at the end of this post. Maybe I’m stupid but when a song makes me feel good or even mystical I just go with it. I guess I figure one way or the other, one day, my body is going to fail and die, and then there won’t be any more chances to hear the music, so yeah, music is a tremendous enjoyment for me. I think I enjoy now with whatever it is, however it got here doesn’t matter so much whether it’s music or something else. I actually take some interest, like whatever is around me I can be fascinated by it, even if I’m just observing a person I’ll never talk to. My greatest joy in life comes from my children of whom I figure I really owe my life to begin with, for without them, I’m sure I would have never taken the journey I did, I’d have had no real reason to. I probably would have followed in my mom’s footsteps as I had already been doing almost play by play, and I’d be that drunk right now, sitting on a barstool somewhere, probably blaming and criticizing. I’d have never looked within. Well, maybe I was spared. I think I was.

Maybe that’s how there are children, so we can want something better. Anyone who looks at a child and thinks suck it up, do as you’re told, this is as good as it gets, is delusional if you ask me. Try saying that to one who lives in a war zone, and you might get a dose of reality up in your face. I think the clearest sign of insanity in a culture is how they treat their children. I saw this one culture on YouTube where the kids looked like they were having fun. It was some village in India. It’s up on top of some mountain and there’s no roads, just a dangerous trek. They don’t allow visitors to stay or touch them and they worship some guru. Of course, what stood out to me is that the men make all the decisions, the men sit around and talk all day, arguing for this or that, making their prospective cases and reasonings, while the women do all the real work, all the laundry, cooking, and child rearing. The kids seemed happy though, they were all playing freely in the streets and not locked up in prison like buildings with their heads face down on a metal desk. I guess it’s great if you’re born male, no real work there, other than using your mental faculties, and women you won’t have to think. You’ll be taught to cook and clean and give birth, but you don’t have to think so maybe that’s the trade off, if you don’t think you wouldn’t even know if you have it good or bad or something else. At any rate, the people seemed happy as hell, but what gets put into a video, or what the guest gets to see and what actually goes on are probably two different things. For all I know it could have been AI, just some made up video about some made up people in a made up place but what a minute, this might actually be our real reality. How would you know?

Well, that veered off on a tangent. I’m feeling particularly grateful these days, just things seem to touch me lightly now wherever I go, even at work I notice the smiles, the generosity, and really just the longing that somehow, many times sideways for sure, seeps out of everyone, just this childishness that gets covered up with a show of false bravery and definitely a false sense of self. It’s like I can just watch and hear the silent posturing going on. “I am this big or this much” tries to roll off all the tongues and gestures and then it just crumbles midstream on its way through my perception. The show, the false pride and all the rest, suddenly seem not too grotesque but occasionally endearing. This is really a big change for me since I was probably the world’s worst critic for most of my life seeing first of all how useless all these performances were for what benefit might come of them? Not even the seasoned players seemed convincing, like the bigger the show the more effort would need to be expended, and it was just their life force dripping away more quickly. I think the bigger the lies, the more you have to continuously feed yourself falsehoods which is exhausting hence all the sick and bloated bodies too many walk around in. Yeah, I always notice how hard everyone is trying, and I don’t do that anymore because honestly, I don’t have to. For me, trying just means a lack of trust in what life will do all by itself which is sometimes everything, and sometimes nothing at all. You get used to sliding in and out between them I guess.

So yeah, the weekend is over my mind tells me, and back to work tonight if I want to think of it that way, but I really don’t. I look at it more like I’m going out and getting my game on for a bit. I’ve come to appreciate that I play games for a living because shit, how many get to do that? If I’d have been a lawyer or a doctor, or anyone important to anything then I’d have really had to escape my life and just poor Dr. Fauci, look where it got him, for all his status and scientific knowledge he’s been relegated to a chair where he just repeats the same sentence of silence before all of those who judge him. He’s having some nightmare. What a strange show indeed! Of course, we love the drama, humans love to point the finger and make some wrong and others right and never ever suspect the game has them. We never see that it’s all our accumulated useless knowledge as a species that really brings us all our atrocities, and that a person is just a product of the environment they were exposed to. It’s always easier to blame the person than to look at the whole picture, like why were we ripe for a pandemic? Could it be that we are fascinated with sickness? We look, read about it, resist it, and focus on it with emotional fuel, and then never realize we are the ones who create it. We think it’s natural, when it’s not. It’s anything but that. On the bright side, I got a text from my friend who had the cancer and she said her scans were clear. It’s gone? Just like that? She had a few months of chemo and her hair fell out. Did she just survive the treatment? Did her inner resilience to survive somehow resurface as a response to it? We can never know anything for sure.

I hooked her up with the Bengston Method which is something I’ve been playing with lately. Basically it’s an image cycling technique, where you learn to flash images of things you want in your imagination. If you want it then it’s something you like so it’s something nice to see in your minds eye. You learn to do this first with around 20 images, first you get good at that which I can tell you takes a while. You basically have to burn these images into your mind which just means that you’ve thought and pictured them so much they just automatically surface when prompted to. (As a note here, you’ve done this with everything, everything you know is produced this way albeit without being aware of it.) Once you got that down you attach all the images to a strip or a clock face, I use a clock face, and then you spin the clock. This is all done in your mind, so it’s quite the task at first. It kind of feels like your brain is working overtime in the beginning before it settles down. I would say it’s a bit uncomfortable until it’s not. Everything we do can actually become a habit where you don’t even notice what you are doing once the effort is gone. Think of it like learning a new language, at first you’re just trying to pronounce the words, then slowly, awkwardly you start to string a few words together, and maybe self consciously you try to converse with someone who speaks the language. Your brain is basically being rewired to think in a totally new language. You might think languages are all the same just a means to communicate but I would say they’re all slightly different in what they produce in a person. At any rate, once you learn this technique what will happen is when you feel an emotion, you try to remember in the beginning to start cycling the images until it just starts to happen on its own. You’ll feel something and then the spinning just starts up. By this time, it’s actually enjoyable so you don’t mind it at all. Apparently it doesn’t matter which emotion you use, negative or positive are irrelevant, what’s not is the strength of the emotion, the stronger the emotion the more you are fueling the spinning images. Once you got it down you spin so fast you don’t even see the images anymore and it’s just a flow that is produced, but it’s one you like since the images that created it are of your own liking. The whole point to this practice is to see how you can actually alter experiences this way. For instance, if someone is sick, you’d have them on your list of images doing something that indicates they are just fine. So I had my friend with the cancer on mine, basically we are all traveling with our families through Switzerland on a train taking in the beautiful landscapes passing by. It’s a very specific image as well, her hair is flowing, she’s smiling, we’re all smiling, and me and my friend are toasting a glass of red wine. It just indicates that we are enjoying life to the fullest I’d say. She has her own practice as well, so did it help? I do think we can direct our lives now because if we can’t, what’s the point?

I’m working on that. Maybe one day, I’ll be writing this from a cafe in Europe. I honestly don’t doubt it, one day. The way out is through. It’s a long tunnel. My first piece of writing was about a tunnel, but that one didn’t have a light at the end of it, this one does. Life is not what we think it is, and yet, it is what we think it is. We might be careful then, very careful, to determine what it is we think it is and everything else we think about it. Other people, other messages can suggest to you what to think, what to believe in but they can’t force you to think it’s true. Only you can determine what’s true for you and what isn’t. The mind then isn’t an accident. It isn’t something to be rid of but something to actually call your own, only your own.

About twelve years ago, I came across this quote that sort of became a kind of mantra for me. Well, let’s just say I never forgot it. I can tell you I was starting with nothing. My elevator was at full stop zero, not even a floor there to get off on.

“You can start with nothing, and out of nothing and out of no way… a way will be made.” — Michael Bernard Beckwith

You can’t rush this process, but I will tell you this, every word in that quote is true. If anyone would have tried to tell me where I’d be right now, what I’d have, how I’d be living, or especially how I’d be right now, how I am experiencing life, if they’d have tried to tell me about any of it, I would not have believed it. Actually, I would have thought them crazy. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined where I’d go or what I’d become not to some world but to myself for my own life. Life is a dream. Dreams are all we’ve got here. Don’t forget to get yours.