The Kaleidoscope

If you think about the average person, all they know is only what they have learned. So everything that goes on inside them, all their thoughts, feelings, and actions center completely around their life long conditioning. What is conditioning exactly? From what I have gathered, conditioning is not only everything you have learned about the world, how it works and such, but what really drives it is how you feel about what you know about it and that’s really the biggest problem for almost everyone.

If you think about how everyone you know grew up, they basically started out as this little person who was dependent upon all the bigger persons around them for everything. In the beginning before they learned differently, they were basically carefree. It wasn’t courage that allowed them to act however they did, throwing fits when the impulse arose, demanding things again and again maybe, going into their environment and trying to explore or touch everything that was there to be found, maybe wandering off down the street, crawling through the kitchen and out the backdoor and into the garden if it was left open and no one noticed, a little person was only really constrained by the obstacles that someone else intentionally placed around them to contain them. Under the disguise and premise of safety, these spaces became smaller and more isolating. Children were kept separate from certain aspects of life more and more. Back in the day, only about a hundred years or so, a baby would sleep in bed with its mother and father and usually other siblings. It was only later that cribs were invented and became a popular item. At one point in history, some parents actually had a metal cage that was fitted to sit outside a window all because some esteemed guy said babies needed a lot of fresh air to thrive or grow strong. A baby was literally suspended in the air sometimes many stories high in this contraption until maybe too many actually fell to their deaths by faulty installations or a bad wind. Given all this, I would say it’s fairly obvious to me that humans have always been a rather confused lot and if something, anything was introduced to them as being beneficial they were apt to try it. The most alluring gadgets were usually introduced and promoted as a sign of privilege and status which just tells me this. Humans in general seek to be elevated, no matter how ridiculously evident it is that what they are doing to experience a sense of heightened personal importance is stupid, their need is greater.

You might really say that humans have or had no sense. Sense and sensibilities needed to be installed. It was no good to just use what you came with, since you probably didn’t come with much. Maybe I sometimes think, there’s really no sense in figuring this all out. There’s literally no conclusion or solution to human nature that you can ever come to. It’s nice to think that whatever you do or did in your life was better than some other ways, but I don’t think we can ever know it. Much of life is then spent searching endlessly for the right situation or condition which never comes. This issue has been thought about by the most illustrious and persistent thinkers all to no avail. Even now, I mean just look around, have we really improved anything besides sanitation, nifty indoor plumbing and toilets? Or does human suffering just persist along all walks of life no matter how much we think of solving it?

There is a practice I’ve been doing lately. It takes all of five minutes. You can do it once a day or ten times a day, for one doesn’t actually even notice five minutes going by at all unless you stop to enter them. Basically if you want to get fancy you can throw a rope or an old internet cable on the ground and follow the lines of the rope around. You can maybe start at one end and since it’s a bit tangled try to follow how it goes. You wouldn’t think it but this actually stops thinking. For me usually a true sense of peace and well being instantly well up inside me, so it’s a pleasant activity, like taking a break from your own inner world. Supposedly this type of silence is never wasted. You may think, oh that’s like doing nothing, what could come of that, but you’d be surprised. If this inner silence is able to accumulate at all, you might be in for a surprise of sorts though I can’t tell you what that will be. Your mind is as different from the one I inhabit as a mountain is from the sea.

I think part of the human issue is the sentiment that we are all the same or start the same but I don’t think so. I think each imagination is so totally different that no one alive could possibly know what’s best for you other than that which is causing you to be here and alive to begin with. I wouldn’t call it God per se, more like an intelligent dynamism, which somehow doesn’t actually require human thoughts or ideas to produce effects inside us or in our perceptual environment. I could never prove it but of all my human issues, I know I’ve dreamt them all up myself by believing in ideas about the world and myself that just weren’t true. It’s actually astonishing to me how real a thought can make any situation seem dire or unpleasant. As a species, we maybe shouldn’t think better, but not at all.

Of course, now with technology around, we really just think more than we ever did. We are able to analyze just about anything from a hundred or more different directions. We think now that we can say things with certainty but I don’t think so, not anymore. I watched a video on how AI was here to create a surveillance state so that we all play nice games from now on and don’t get out of line. I’m not even opposed to such an idea. I figure there is nothing I’d ever want to do in my life now that wouldn’t be completely socially acceptable anyway. You know maybe I want to eat a bowl of soup? Anybody watching this want to object? How about a nap? Vacuuming? Doing the dishes or laundry, maybe picking up a bit? The most bizarre thing I think I do for myself is sit in silence, just perceiving, and writing down my thoughts as they come to me.

On some level, I know I do think that people should be nice to each other. They shouldn’t steal or harm others or even themselves but definitely not others. What you do to yourself should maybe be up to you but sometimes you do have to stop stupid people. The real issue is the way we live really robs people of not only their inner sanctum but a way to fulfill this need to pursue their own creative impulses however they might do this. Few opportunities are visible in the collective environment. As it is now in this country, most people have one thing on their mind, money and survival. Food prices have literally doubled around here since Covid and I’m not sure but that figure might be higher. Am I just imagining this? Is my own financial situation only imaginary, something I learned to accept as my own reality? I’m not rich by any means, no I have to work a job. It just so happens that I don’t mind or suffer to do it. I don’t go there thinking it’s beneath me or I should have something better. Obviously if you have to work only for survival and no other purpose is involved there’s a degree of hope that is bound to surface for something better or at least easier. I think of myself now as so resilient I don’t even register tiredness no matter how many hours I work. I seem to have more energy now at 60 than I did at thirty or even twenty. Perhaps age isn’t a number but a thought that tells you what is supposed to be happening and so it does. In my case, it doesn’t. It may be that I just don’t bleed energy anymore.

How do we bleed our own life-force? Is it only with thought and the emotions these thoughts conjure up? If you go and walk around a group of people you can basically sense that most of them don’t feel good. They may be trying to but they just can’t seem to get there. They don’t look too excited or animated. Of course, a lot of them are overweight, carrying around years of memory that has solidified into some sort of flesh baggings. It’s a bizarre situation to be sure. I think what happens is that after a certain length of living, all the energy just comes to a head so to speak. Basically maybe a war is really an emotional cloud that has collected all the petty hatreds of millions upon millions of people. Every ugly thought probably gets stored in an energy field and as people come in contact with it through their own fears, it starts exploding lives all over the place. It looks like war to us, explosions, bombs, men in military gear but that may be a mirage your mind is imagining. If you looked down at the ground, like really looked, you might see just a flower instead. If you didn’t already know and believe that you were in a war zone, you’d just be nowhere, but you do, so the next thing you know is you hear a pop. You’ve been shot by the enemy and away you go back to wherever it is you came from.

Is it all just dreams then? Is the water fine, unpolluted? Is it polluted only because we believe it is? Do certain features rely on a percentage of consciousness to remain sitting there looking real to anyone who passes by? One person? What can they do? Nothing right? No, you just live your life as if life is how the ones around you say it is. There’s too many of them saying it is like this so you don’t stand a chance. You’ll be subject to high food and gas prices just like everyone else. Even if reality is unreal, it stays persistent. Humans always think they are going to find and spread some sublime living temperament far and wide but it’s never happened. Every system of control has failed and I’m sure AI will be no different. I don’t oppose it since I know it has to run it’s course. There’s no stopping anything around here. The idea that anyone has ever stopped anything is shear fantasy. No one knows whether or not they cured or made anything go away or change, after all, how do you know it wasn’t always going to do this anyway? The answer is you don’t. You don’t know what anything will do and thinking you do just makes it appear that much harder to manage. In the end, what you really see is no one is managing anything. You’ve been bred and dropped off to die in a strange kaleidoscope of images that are designed to confuse you. Most people even spiritual teachers get rich off of telling you lies and just because they believe in them doesn’t mean they are true. I don’t think most of them are. The news station do the same, that’s no secret. Pretty stories sell, those that say, look around and find out for yourself what is going on don’t.

Does anyone even care? What part of caring is real? Is it caring or self interest and what’s the difference? Why care so much anyway? That’s a pertinent question. Why care what happens next? You see, I don’t and you know why? Because there’s nothing to do about any of it. The guys you see on TV who look like they are pulling some kind of strings around here, guess what? Not really happening. You only see it because you believe it’s true otherwise you’re off on some hiking trail and nothing looks any different than it did the other day, just trees and birds and squirrels. If there’s something else out here, you hope it stays hidden.

Maybe you shouldn’t be reading this. I’m in a bad mood today because that’s what showed up and I have no reason to argue with it. If you like peppy writing, maybe piss off and go read somewhere else. There’s a reason optimism is promoted so recklessly and thoroughly, but it’s not to help you make sense of your life. What it actually does is submerge the fantasy of the mind even deeper into a false and flimsy illusion by suggesting you can get whatever you want. Let me tell you straight up: what you think you want and what you’re actually searching for are two totally different things and optimizations take you away from your true search for fulfillment and not closer to it. Most optimization is sophisticated avoidance. I mean seriously just look around and ask yourself: Is positivity working? Or does it lead to even more misery? If you didn’t want anything, how would you feel right now? You’d be fine right? I’m not saying don’t try it, actually do try it, try it all the time, wish and work for shit all day long but actually watch closely at what happens because eventually you’ll crash and burn. The bullshit factor will take over and if you have any wits about you at all, you’ll ask yourself what the hell am I really doing here and probably stop. Then maybe you can let everything calm down, but until then, you won’t understand a word of what I’m saying here which is obviously not my problem. You see I don’t care what you do, only you can do that. If you don’t see the actual momentum of human folly, which is all around you, how do you expect to transcend it? You won’t. That’s like running along a path of boulders and just running straight into them instead of seeing their size and going around them, usually impact hurts, but it does a lot more than that, it knocks you out and instead of waking up and trying something else, you get up, and run right into the next one. That’s most people, they never learn anything, they just think they do.