Language/thought vs reality process

Language/thought vs reality process

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This subject is uncapturable. It's too big and too "real" to be nailed down with concepts.

Hence, this piece will be a whiff only of truth. But that's virtually a definition of the "human condition", i.e., the human condition is limited to whiffs.

The problem, to say it straight out, is that we are hypnotized by language. First we invented it as a species to speed up and sophisticate communication and then we internalized it into thought. Unfortunately, from that point on we equated reality with thought. Reality, for a human being, equals "thought/forms".

"You", to me, are a thought/form. Of course, "I'm" also a thought form to you -- as well as to "myself". In short personal pronouns are NOTHING BUT thought forms. They have no denotative meaning; they're just sounds and ideas.

This isn't a new idea. The orient has been kicking around the notion of "maya" for millennia and (maya) = (consensus reality) = (the world of thought/language). Maya is the thought/form world in which we live and move and have our being.

As opposed to what?

As opposed to (let's call it) reality process. Yes, these too are words and concepts, but they are grounded in intuitions which transcend consensus reality. It's the self communication of intelligence. Its intelligence "condescending" to use language/thought to non dualistically communicate with itself.

Said differently, this is reality itself talking, not some ego/personality a duality away everything thought "thinks about". Indeed, the thinking about point of view IS ego/personality. It's not what the ego/personality is "doing"; it's what the ego/personality IS.

Hence, all this birth and death business is total nonsense. Nothing (no "thing") is born and nothing dies. It's all reality process.

Here's still another way to say this. The already ongoingness of immediacy is 100% reality process. Nothing is happening "over there" while you and I are "over here" conceptualizing about it.

Non dualistic, spontaneous immediacy is all, and it's forever beyond the thought/forms of religion, science, or your designer thought/form institution of choice.

It's so simple. This is It. Nowing is Realitying.

. . . and no ego/personality is writing or reading this.

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W. Christopher Epler (meaningless words)

Fascism is the acting out of delusion

Behind all this chaos and hate is delusion. We human beings just refuse to grow up and the essence of fascism is merely institutionalized fear.

But fear of what?

Fear of truth -- fear of "reality".

Let's take a fun/serious philosophical example. How many of us really take it in that when a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one around, there isn't any sound?

Of course, we have to rephrase it a bit and say that when a tree falls in a forest and there's no "auditory nervous systems" around (human or otherwise), there isn't any sound. However, this self evident answer utterly redefines the human condition! It opens us to realities beyond the consensus scheme of things (i.e., "consensus reality").

Consensus reality is our living our life from place. The only problem is that it's a form of intelligence suicide.

Take the falling tree business. An axiom of consensus reality is that there's a duality between separate selves and the external world. Basically, the alleged external world is what separate selves are separate from (and also from each other).

Sound is supposed to be in the external world and sometimes we hear it and sometimes we don't, but the duality between hearing and sound is absolute.

But this, of course, is total nonsense. Sound IS hearing, just as hearing IS sound. We don't view the view; the view IS the view. All that perceiver, perceiving, and perceived foolishness is a game of the mind. It's projecting language into reality.

The truth of the matter is that there simply AREN'T any "separate selves", any more than there is an abstract "external world". What's real is infinitely (?) more mysterious than this running amok of language.

It would take a book to make all the connections between the above example and the cancer of fascism (implicit or explicit), but the connections are there. If the human mind set is in profound reality denial (and always has been), then it's relatively obvious that this defective take on what's real will manifest accordingly. Hence, fascism is a symptom of reality ignorance.

The tragedy is that none of this is hard to realize and there's countless other ways reality keeps tapping us on the shoulder.

Let's look at one more example. How rarely do we confront the truth that we never think about what we think about before we think about it. Thinking is what you're doing right now -- bang, bang, bang! You never stop and think before any mental activity. Hence, no "thinker" -- any more than there's a "writer" or "reader" of these words.

Which means what? It means we never "one up" ANYTHING. Immediacy ongoingness is reality process and it's the self activity of that which is already the case. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. The ancient Chinese word for nature is tzu-jan, which means (roughly) that which is so of itself. So nowing is the of-itself-soing of that which is so of itself. Only hubris thinks this spontaneous ongoingness is in any way "one upped" or caused by a meaningless separate self.

That name and face on "our" driver's license has no denotative meaning. It's not referring to a kind of entity/thing. It's just a face and a name. So all those "me's" and "we's" and "you's", and "they's", etc., are just white noise in the flow of that which forever transcends language and theory (including scientific and religious theory).

These observations could go on and on, but the relevant intuition is that all this Bush/Republican evil and hatred is DIRECTLY (albeit convolutedly) connected to the consensus delusions of our species.

An encouraging thought is that evolution works in mysterious ways and conceivably Mother Nature is already "dissolving" the chaos and suffering which we will never be able to "solve" with political solutions. And surely it's obvious by now that politics is part of the problem, not the solution.

One thing is certain. Mother Nature always has more tricks up her sleeve than can ever be imagined by delusional separate selves.

Or said differently, however uncomfortable the possibility, the probability is that "we" are not the problem solvers, but the very problem itself.

Thinking otherwise is the soul of fascism.

The Zoom of Abandon

(a rhapsody of personality transcending cognition)

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Spontaneous immediacy is the already ongoingness of being alive. We have no vote in this. Each of us is going with the flow willy nilly. To be alive is to be living and living is nowing and nowing is the zoom of abandon.

But we love to think we're preparing to live and/or that we've somehow dualistically stepped back from life -- even though this is like singing a song in which part of the song is singing about singing the song. There's no stepping back from the song of immediacy. The alleged stepping back is just part of the song.

Immediacy (or better, "immediacying") is the thing in itself of being alive, the This is It of pure living, not some abstract limbo of pre or post living. I can write about these matters and we can discuss them, but nothing is one upped thereby. These realizations are like a mathematical limit and forever beyond the reach of thought. The realness of nowness is the origin of thought and never its object. Tails don't wag dogs.

Relatedly, self-control is one of the core delusions of the human condition. It seems to reassure us to play that game, but it's a game we play with paradoxical abandon. The Pacific Ocean doesn't control itself and neither do we. Reality realities spontaneously. The fullness of the moment is never premeditated. However, this knowing can be deeply unsettling and the un-transcend ability of spontaneous living is perhaps the most deeply repressed truth of our species. We probably fear this truth more than death itself.

But why? Let's find out. Let's say you just suddenly realized (and realized all the way through, not just tinker toy "theoretically") that the already ongoingness of being alive is absolutely beyond the reach of dualistic self-control. When you're in spontaneous free fall it's impossible to separate yourself from the zoom of abandon so as to control or improve yourself ("from the outside in"?). Acting on impulse isn't a variable, it's a constant, and this is it.

But for some of us (practically all of us?), this is virtually a description of psychosis. But why is this the case? Isn't it because the "spontaneity constant" (let's call it that) is mutually exclusive with self-image identity? After all, the self I've been conditioned to identify with is supposed to be able to control itself. But there's no self-control in the abyss of abandon. Identities of separateness can no more live in spontaneous immediacy than moths which fly into flames.

Let's imagine we're participating in an outburst of spontaneous applause at the end of a concert. But, what do we mean by this? It means the applause wasn't planned in advance. We weren't watching the clock to carry out some scheduled behavior; rather we are acting on impulse. OK, then what's "acting on impulse", i.e., the applause is behavior that's emerging from WHAT? Did we "stop and think" and then decide to applaud. We know that's not true. The thought aspect of this is merely a sideshow. The applause is more of a "feeling choice".

Thought may try to play catch-up with the zoom of abandon, but it's always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Any house visited by thought has been long since vacated by spontaneity. But the arrogance of thought is unwilling to acknowledge its limitations and thus from the thinking about point of view (i.e., the identity of separateness), if the applause isn't answering to thought, then it must be a hiccup of randomness or a knee jerk of inevitability. Thought sees itself as the only independent variable in the functioning of our lives.

But spontaneous applause ISN'T the creation of thought! It's more like the proverbial expression of feeling. It's the self-activity of autonomous (and thought form transcending) ISness, and the same thing is true for all living. Taking in this truth, past a certain point, probably triggers the Homo sapien psyche into either fragmentation or "awakening", because these are the blue waters of nuclear transformation. Here, self-image identity is forgotten and the babble of thought is ignored. Life is now looking at itself.

Untheoretical realness is saying, here I am, look at me! We are none of us in control of anything -- least of all our alleged "selves". Dualistic control (including self-control) is a game of the mind. It has nothing to do with anything. Preparing to live is a waking nightmare. Nowing IS living and the nowing of living isn't self-controlling, it's the zoom of abandon, but the zoom of abandon isn't out of control ness or running amuck (the accusations of thought); it's the self-directedness of that which is already the case. The fullness of THIS moment is being ongoingly actualized by dimensions of realness indifferent to thought. Nowing is realitying.

Only life itself can understand itself. Mosquitoes of separateness can never bite the "Iron Bull" of suchness, but these realizations are within the reach of birthright intelligence just because birthright intelligence is the self-activity OF the Iron Bull. Here, contradictions are obliterated, and reality realities self-knowingly. Being and knowing are one.

The zoom of abandon is also the zoom of already occupied-withness. I can't "begin myself away" from what I'm already doing! Of course, thought's perspective on this is that nowing is a mere point on a time line. It's not even a verb, it's more like a thing/instant. A vacuum, at best, of potential. Thought never seems to worry about how these instants of absence can add up to the presence of beingness.

Curiously, thought painted itself into a similar corner after the invention of calculus by Newton and Leibniz. Area under a curve (or between curves) was understood to be the area under a line made up of an infinite number of points. It was further conjectured that the area under a point is zero. You can see where this is heading. If a line is made of an infinite number of points and the area under each of the points is zero, then how can there be any area (which, of course, there is) under the line? Advanced calculus addresses this problem and its solution lies in a rigorous definition of the "limit", e.g., area under a curve is the convergence of a sequence of partial sums (an informal interpretation of a limit is that it's an exact description of a place you'll never get to). It also shows that atomizing a line into an infinite number of points can generate paradoxes of abstraction. The territory, after all, doesn't answer to a map -- it's the map which must answer to the territory.

Occupied-withness is unself-interfere-withable responsibilitying (the very awkwardness of these constructions is perhaps a symptom that we're talking about dimensions of realness inaccessible to conceptual models). This is oddly similar to the realization that the Homo sapien visible world is a function the interval on the electro-magnetic spectrum with which we Homo sapiens evolved in concert and which, in turn, is a function of the relation between this planet and its associated "yellow" sun/star -- a revelation which jars us somewhat, like discovering that there's one more step than we had expected as we descend a staircase.

There's nothing theoretical about occupied-witness. It's the marrow of immediacy. It's not a goal, ideal, or remembrance. It's where we already are. But we don't live like this -- we don't even "think" like this (and acting out what we think is the "human condition"). Indeed, we think occupied-withness is precisely where we're NOT. We’re in the passive "safe house" of separateness, preparing to live and/or doing our theoretical thing. But this is the consensus delusion of our species. This is the thinking about point of view -- the identity of separateness.

Occupied-withness is what it is independently of thought. It's the territorying of the territory. Pre-living and separateness are constructions of delusion. Desiring the better isn't coming from a "desirer". Immediacy is unself-controllable. The intuition that spontaneous immediacying (the zoom of abandon) is the already ongoingness of occupied-withness, is the self-awareness of life itself! This is intelligence freeing itself from time.

However, the tar baby of the world is a masterpiece of fail safes. Identities of separateness are always seeking solutions and answers. That's because where there's no seeking, there's no seeker. We seek IN ORDER to be seekers. There's nothing to seek and there isn't any seeker. Dreamers don't wake up from dreams. Dreamers are awakened from by that which is more real than dreamers! Spiritual goals are delusional fail-safes.

It boggles us to think that Salvation and self-improvement are equally meaningless. Achieving and receiving are strategies, merely, to perpetuate "achievers" and "receivers". The challenge and alchemy is elsewhere. The challenge is where it's always been. The challenge is NOW. The challenge is radical truthfulness. The challenge is to choose truth over safety, intelligence over desire, and time plays no role in this whatsoever. We don't need to "read a few more books", take a trip to Tibet, or find a validating guru. And we certainly don't need acronym advice faucets (PhD’s, MD's, etc.), nor to find some meditation technique that "really works". We don't need two or three more retreats and we don't need to "stop and think". Dear God, the human condition is already virtually NOTHING BUT stopping to think!

What we need is to make eye contact with life -- which is certainly never ceasing to make eye contact with us! We need, simply, to meet the gaze of realness. Language, of course, greatly complicates the saying of this, reinforcing, as it does, the (delusional) "we's" who need to do this or that. So we have various options here. One is succumbing to the language/thought version of life by equating the "thinking about" with the "thought about" (the maya option of choice for our species). Another is mute resignation. Still another is to allow intelligence to liberate itself from the straight jacket of language by "making the best of a bad situation", i.e., to communicate with, and IN SPITE OF, the arbitrary structures of language. Language can be a useful and creative tool, but it doesn't have to be our God. The point isn't to eat the envelopes, but to open them.

So all this "we" talk is the hubris of language. It's not a validation of separateness. The challenge is real, but it's not a challenge to identities of separateness. And notice how difficult it is to deal with these matters without slipping into "What should I do?", or "How do I do it?" questions. But no advice is being given here, no formulas, and no technology. Pursuing such questions is recycling craziness.

We must stay fast on our feet with this though, because the "moral" isn't that we SHOULDN'T ask "What should I do?", or "How do I do it?" questions. That's because there ISN'T any moral and we aren't talking about shoulds or advice. Plus, this isn't a conversation between self-image identities. Something is going on here which has one foot in the world and the other foot radically elsewhere. Three-dimensionality is communicating with n-dimensionality. This writing isn't coming from a "personality", but neither must it be seen as coming from a "meta-personality" that's "channeling" its communications to us. The sun of truth shines with its own light. It doesn't need to be peopled with glorified or Greek God-like projections of personal pronouns.

Personality is now being used in the etymological sense of "the mask we talk through". It's an artifact of time and conditioning and a cartoon only of the mystery of humanness. To identify with personality is to betray the vulnerability of our hearts. Vulnerability is all of a piece with the zoom of abandon. To be vulnerable is to be real. To lack vulnerability is to lack existence. Self-image identities are creatures of memory -- "smiles" (or frowns), at best, of Cheshire Cats of beingness. The spontaneous ongoingness of already occupied-witness, is NECESSARILY the ongoingness of vulnerability, because vulnerability is "unself-controllability" and the (no alternative) ongoingness of being myself living is the This is It reality/universe.

The This s It reality/universe is where we ALREADY ARE and being myself living is what we're ALREADY DOING. We don't have any "unplaced trump cards" of potentiality or separateness. We're reality beings living reality lives in a reality universe (the soul intuition of liberation). And clearly this is equally true for all life forms, from zebras to eagles to extraterrestrials. However, the life form aspect of this can also be misleading, since vulnerability and spontaneity sound depths of voidness beyond the relative morphologies of our species. One wonders if "whales" self-classify themselves -- or classify (self-classified) Homo-sapiens.

To be alive is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to be alive. Vulnerability is hard-wired into beingness. Self-control and separate selfness are merely strategies to avoid vulnerability. Of course, they don't really avoid anything, any more than death denial ever tricks death. The pseudo avoidance of vulnerability is the pseudo avoidance of the zoom of abandon. Living is unconditional committed ness. The mutterings of thought notwithstanding, self-image identity is neither a duality away from totality nor true selfness.

To think of vulnerability as a "limitation" is like thinking nature is limited because it can't be other than what it is. The naturing of nature IS nature. Should we then see nature as limited because it can't abstract itself away from itself so as to control, observe, or escape from itself? These conundrums of thought aren't solved with effort, but "dissolved" with realiazation.

The actualizing context of durational immediacy (it's not a "point"), is the home of true selfness. It's where we all "live and move and have our being". Huang-po, a 7th Century "Zen Master", called it "Absolute Thisness". Now that's a real conversation stopper, similar to Jesus', "Before Abraham was, I am." Or to play with a phrase from the 19th century, we're all in mid existential leap. There are no thought-created hand holds on the mountain of life -- and death is as real as birth.

Clearly implicit in any desire to transcend vulnerability is the judgment that vulnerability is what's rotten in the Denmark of the human condition. But, isn't this just more bad advice from thought which never tires of cooking up alternative realities to reality? Thought's version of vulnerability is that we're vulnerable to the precise degree that we can't be other than what we are. Thus, the ISness of selfness, for thought, is anathema, because the ESSENCE of thought is to "think about". Indeed, the "thinking about point of view" (the perspective of separateness), IS self-image identity and self-image identity is what presumes to puts reality into perspective.

Accordingly, it horrifies thought to think that true selfness is one with itself and therefore unthink-aboutable. But the actualizing context of immediacy is the origin of thought and never it's "object". Nowing is the self-activity of that which is already the case and the unclassifiability of this realness may be a limitation for thought, but not for the realness. This realness transcends classifiability and it's intelligence-accessible precisely BECAUSE of that. What's invisible to thought isn't invisible to itself.

The pet in our house isn't the concept in our mind. And neither are we or our families or neighbors. And neither is ANY (classified) "life-form". These nets of memory may be pragmatic and useful, but they catch only theoretical fish. "Reality fish", however, swim only in oceans of thought/form transcending realness -- in which they're neither fish nor "they's". When all boundaries become insides of outsides and outsides of insides, then all "relata" disappear into relationship. The "world of form" (which is always species specific), is absolutely without independent realness. Figures are figures only IN RELATION TO grounds, and visa versa. Interdependence and polarity is all.

And in this ocean of transcendence, self-nature self-natures with abandon. But why should this trouble us? Religion, science, metaphysics, etc., are at best closed systems of speculation. However, all this can be LEFT by opening to the ISness of transcendence! But can this truly be “done”, and what is the “way” or “path”? It can be done becaue there isn’t any “doer” to do it, and there isn’t any path to where we already are. Nowing isn’t on the way to the desired. Nowing is the heartbeat of God.

Spontaneous Anger

OK, you're mad. What do you do?

Well, you can eat it, be nicy nice, and talk the politically correct talk -- but your stomach knows better. And someone keeps looking back at you from the mirror who you can never take seriously. Someone you've seen, perhaps, most of your life.

Or, you can "express your feelings"! Step right out there and say it like it is (at least for you). But . . . sometimes that has lots of interpersonal consequences, doesn't it?

The thing about anger is that we don't get to plan it. Nobody "counts down" to being upset. It just grabs you, like a hiccup or sneeze. Suddenly, you're seething and only THEN do we do an intervention on ourselves (or not).

"Hey, let this turkey have it. He/she asked for it!"

(or)

"No, play the game -- it's always better in the long run."

And then the second thoughts. We all know about second thoughts, don't we?

"Oh, oh, now why did I say or do that? Perhaps I just should have just kept it to myself after all."

OK, time for yours truly to be pig in the middle:

I recently wrote a piece about election fraud. I actually tried to cancel the piece (second thoughts!) but I sent in the request too late. Was I upset about election fraud? You bet. In fact, probably a hundred times more than it showed in that submission since I love my country and don't want to see our democratic elections stolen from us.

So what's the problem? The problem is that anger is CONFUSING. Probably the most important thing of all about anger is that you don't get to meet in on your terms. Remember John Lennon’s, "Life is what really happens to us while we're making other plans"? That's anger . . . and love and car accidents. But when you get right down to it, isn't that what life is like ALL the time? We love to think we're in control of events (or at least spectators), but that's just a game Homo sapiens play.

Goethe had Faust speak of "Plunging into the flood of fate". But as opposed to what? We love to think most of us are on the bank watching the courageous (or reckless) few in the flood, but isn't the truth that ALL of us are in the flood, but most of us are pretending we're on the bank? The flood of confusion, the flood of NEVER being "one up".

And yes, I'm still furious about election fraud! And yes, I still have second thoughts about writing that piece. Jeez.

Mythology: Fact or Fiction?

Actually neither.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell used to practically stand on street corners warning people not to take mythology “literally”.

Did the Red Sea literally/factually part? Did the virgin birth historically happen? For Campbell, such questions are meaningless, since mythology (Christian, African, Scandinavian, etc.) has nothing to do with a newspaper version of reality.

Then why bother to read such stories? That's easy; it's because some truths can be talked about ONLY mythologically -- something like those things you can see only out of the corner of your eye.

The virgin birth, for example, can be understood as the opening of the heart chakra in the context of Kundalini Yoga, just as the "Promised Land" mythology surly has more to do with deeply personal awakenings than hypocritically coveting Palestinian real estate.

In any case, mythology appeals to our big, BIG picture sense of things and a sense of things which is indifferent to the certainty machines of literalized religion (the Red Sea really did part!) or white cassock science (which unconsciously hops from metaphor to metaphor).

Mythology speaks to our vulnerabilities, our humanness, and our LACK of certainty. But more generally, so do all the fine arts. So isn't it wonderful to escape the hubris of religious pamphlets and scientific monographs and be nourished by music, painting, literature -- and mythology.

The grass isn't greener on the other side of the Veil of Maya.

We are so bewitched by thought and language that it's nearly impossible for our species mind set to realize that This, indeed, is "It".

Said differently, this is as real as it gets.

What's being said here is all of a piece with the perennial appearance and reality distinction -- a distinction embellished both by the Eastern and Western worlds.

However, the distinction is completely meaningless. That's the problem.

The orient's Veil of Maya illustrates this to perfection, because it implies appearance is one side of the veil (the one we're stuck with); whereas "reality" is on the other side. Thus, the grass is always greener on the other side of the Veil of Maya.

This distinction (or duality) is also the origin of the delusional "separate self". Separate from what? Separate from reality, of course. Separate selves on this side and the true nature of things on the other, e.g., Brahman, Plato's Forms, ultra theoretical physics, etc.

But all of this is conceptual rubbish. It's just thought running amuck. Here's an example of how this works.

We Westerners like to think of time and space as metaphorical "containers" of reality, i.e., reality is a function of time, not visa versa. But it IS visa versa. My goodness, "time" is just a human way of thinking about the raw givenness of being alive. Cronos isn't eating anything. Cronos (or time) is just a human way of thinking about beingness or ISness.

Einstein was onto this when he said, "Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live".

How wonderfully said. Thus, what counts are the "conditions in which we live", because that's reality and it ISN'T on the other side of the Veil of Maya or "behind the scenes" of mere appearance.

Mere appearance is a limitation for thought, not for life. From the thinking about point of view this all makes sense since the separate self (same thing as the thinking about point of view) has to be separate from something. It's all a package deal: separate selves, intervening Maya, and reality. But it's as package deal of illusion, dreamed up (literally) by thought.

That's the core problem with thought. It's always thinking "about" something -- hence duality.

Now there's thinking and there's thinking. Really arrogant thinking (e.g., Plato) presumes to know reality directly. The trivial empirical world is knowable by the senses, but that world is mere appearance (the "mere" word again). Plato's "parable of the cave" illustrates this eloquently, but it's just a philosophical fairy tale.

Other thinking modes know the "outside" (so to speak) of reality or substance, e.g., the so called empirical primary and secondary qualities. The "inside" is true reality again, but not knowable directly. Kant dealt with this, distinguishing between thatness and whatness (or phenomenon and noumenon). A piece of genius perhaps, but still dropping the This is It ball. Buddhism's sublime Nagarjuna was in some respects similar to Kant, but more cognizant of the absolute limitations of thought.

To say it straight out, Nowing is Realitying (that probably should be said twice). Human living is not something "happening in" reality; human living is ITSELF reality process. So where's the duality?

Possibly it's a little terrifying for some of us to take in (1.) there isn't any "us", and (2.) immediacy ongoingness is the being myselfing of ultimate realness.

We aren't a duality from the This is It Realty/Universe, since NOTHING is a duality away from totality.

Plus, words like the "This is It Reality/Universe" are simply pointers at thought-transcending mystery. No one can say what reality "is", but only fear keeps us from realizing that raw, spontaneous immediacy is infinitely transcendent to thought.

Lastly, this whole business is well illustrated with mathematical models. Korzybski reminded us not to confuse the map with the territory, but neither should we confuse our mathematical (or more generally, intellectual) models or simulations with the simulated.

It's very seductive for mathematicians to do this, since the model is where are all the form and rigor are found. From the model you can deduce things (maybe even prove theorems), but it is nevertheless an abstract model of that which is NOT abstract.

The map is not the territory, the model is not the modeled, and the theory is never the theorized about. There's a quantum jump distinction here that simply blindsides thought.

But it is self evident to intelligence (which is the self experiencing of what thought thinks about and doesn't think about).

The Everything Game

What would you do if you began to realize you were playing a vast social/worldly game whose number one game rule was that the game wasn't a game at all?

The problem is how would you communicate this to the other game players? After all, wouldn't they be mystified or offended or even threatened if you suggested they were "lost in a game"?

Let's think of this as the "Everything Game", because it would be a game, so to speak, without boundaries. So long as you played the game, you would be defined by the game and you could never, never find any secret, hidden place within the game in which the game wasn't king.

Even if you tried to stop playing the game, that would just be a new variation of the game.

You could take drugs, go to Tibet, pray, meditate, be a scientist, whatever, whatever, but the Everything Game would always have the last laugh. Paying bills, getting into arguments, going to funerals, watching movies, fantasizing about the future, regretting the past, etc., etc. -- all Everything Game.

Now let's imagine that you woke up from this game, like waking up from a nightmare or a waking dream. You just "snapped out of it" and were living and breathing in a non game place or dimension.

In fact, what if the social/worldly game turned out to be "you"?

Then what?

Vulnerability

I once had a dream in which I went around preaching to whomever about vulnerability. This was several years ago, but the dream is still vivid with me.

What's important about the dream is that I wasn't talking to people about heaven or salvation. I was taking about life WITHOUT "answers" or "solutions". And in the dream, this seemed to be what people wanted to hear MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THEIR LIFE.

Strange dream. It still whispers to me, hinting that perhaps "I" am the Emperor with no Clothes. Reminding me that there is, after all, very little in the scheme of things which I confidently "one up".

Take this writing itself. Every word, every comma, has to fight it's way through a blizzard of second thoughts. Who the hell wants to read about my dreams, says some machine thing of contempt. Piss off with your dreams, it says, with your "personalness". The world will wipe it's ass with them.

Perhaps, but I don't care anymore. There's too much sorrow in my life to cut corners with truth telling ALL the time. I admit it, I come and go, I "play the game", I wish I had more money, it'd be nice to be younger, and on and on and on.

Hell, I'm human. There I've said it! I'm a human, finite, mortal, confused something or other. AND SO IS EVERYONE ELSE. Yes, but what does it mean to be a human, finite, mortal, confused something or other?

For openers, it means you don't have any eternal, final answers about bloody anything! This is the insanity (exact word) of most of what passes for religion. People keep acting like they know the bottom line of things. But why does the bottom line of religious fanatics always turn out to be hating and murdering other people "in the name of God"?

Talk about slips twixt the cup and the lip! People like Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc., were apparently walking miracles of humanity, but when the wackos start institutionalizing, civilization always runs for cover.

But this is really a kind of side point. The real point is that religioso types are simply unwilling to deal with vulnerability and admit that they don't know zip about the nature of things. They pretend vulnerability is something they've put behind them. And this isn't restricted to people jumping up and down salivating in tents, it also includes candelabra abracadabra’s, foreheads on the floor, and Gregorian chant.

Look, this isn't complicated. Everyone is ultimately alone with the beating of their heart. So what about God and all that business? Who knows? I don't. And I don't think you do either. But I DO know that any would be religion which passes itself off as having a hotline to ultimate realness is selling snake oil. Surely this is self evident.

And you know what? I think everyone else, in their heart of hearts, knows that too. Otherwise, why would religioso's be so psychotically defensive when you question their absolutes? "Protests too much", don't you think? Hell, why can't we just talk about this? We're all Earthlings, don't we all get a vote? Not if you're talking to someone who's been in-doctrine-ated.

The thing is, this isn't restricted to religion. Far from it! See what happens if you're a tad too disrespectful in the (woo! woo!) land of science. Same thing. More religioso's, it's just that they're "scientific" religioso's -- certainty machines in white cassocks (lab coats).

A certainty machine is someone who thinks they've transcended vulnerability and who thinks they've got truth by the balls. The Greeks knew all about this and called it hubris. La plus ca change, la plus ca la meme chose.

What's missing in all of this? What's missing is truth -- the truth of vulnerability. The truth that nobody has an "answer" to death and that our live are so drenched in sorrow it's amazing the stars don't blink out with sympathy. The truth that you don't get to think about what you think about before you think about it and the truth that one lost, terrified dog turned to jelly in an intersection trivializes the pulpit ravings of a million fundamentalists.

The truth that we're such frail creatures, with our dreams and our hearts and brains, and that we really don't know what the hell is going on here, pontificating string physicists notwithstanding. The truth that no "holy book" means shit when you're physically nauseated and that "artificial intelligence" is just that.

And most recently the truth that science is just a very old wine in a new bottle. There's no laboratory on this planet that's not populated with frustrated life forms eating their sexual hearts out.

So let's factor sexual frustration, death, pitiful animals, road rage, pinhead politicians, cancer, etc., etc., back into the equation of life. Beauty, love, and creativity certainly won't go away (that's our birthright), and think how wonderful it will be to get all these scientific/religious/whatever certainty machines out of our face.

And you know what? I'm still confused.