Hiatus

I've taken a hiatus from writing for at least two years. The reasoning behind that eludes me but there is a very clear sense of longing for the clarity that writing once brought me, but not just clarity - a real sense of understanding of myself. This understanding, which was captured through writing, promoted itself through a confidence in being alive - it was through the contemplation of thought itself that brought me to a level of comfort and contentedness with simply being that is unmistakably beautiful and serene its benefits.

I suppose the major reason was my occupation, coupled with a harsh breakup, simply shifted my focus and priorities to the external, rather than untangling the mess of wires on the internal side.

If there is one thing that I have learned since that my old writing, it is that a stubbornness in patience resolves nearly every problem. My immediate fear when I first contemplated this when I was much younger - the idea that 'time cures all ails' - was that it was a lie, that time only cures all ails because

1. You simply forget what your original problem actually meant
2. You patch up the problems with layers of false hopes, and meaningless mumbles

and while these may be partially true in some sense, the reason that time cures all ails is because all ails are only temporary, and that fear truly is the only effector of our mental state.

Thus, me being an impatient person, have turned out to be one of the most patient people when addressing existential crises, anxieties, and fears, for it really is only my ability to continually and constantly pass fears to the side no matter how prevalent, constant, and testing of my patience.

My new hurdle in life is deciding if new desires trump the old, seemingly native ones. Those ideas that used to define me for being me, what I deemed 'native'. In 1st grade my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. We had to draw a relevant picture and write a paragraph. Essentially what I drew was a glass dome in space, with some trees, and of course me. My desire when I was young was to get in a biosphere, blast off into space forever.

As I grew up I realized I loved people, and I loved Earth, changing my desire from exploring space (at admittedly an unthinkably slow pace), to surrounding myself with plants in an Earth-bounded greenhouse, and trying to stay relatively self-sustainable there.

Now, however, I have become infatuated with science and learning. I want to understand how people think in different realms of thought across academic and professional fields. I find the idea of human-constructed regulations and rules and genuine human thought incredibly engaging. I am simply interested in human thought, and part of me wants to become good at it. This is in stark contrast to my 'native' thoughts - I generally thought humans were foolish, stupid, and really just not worth learning about. However, perhaps this was an ail, or perhaps just simply a stubborn outlook on life.

My life is still split, however, in trying to identify some true calling that I have been raised to believe is somehow in my DNA, or my spirit, versus that which seems external to me yet compelling. Do I listen to the body, or do I listen to the pull? Is the external world's pull just a reflection of my own internal, yet separated, desires? Or is the external pull similar to that of wanting sugary foods, or lots of money - something that is destined for long term damage, while providing short term relief?

To be completely honest, I wish I could do both simultaneously. Just as many wish at times that they had an extra pair of arms, I wish I had an extra parallel life. There is so much to experience on Earth, and my notion that I'd like to experience it all is near-sighted, at best, but most certainly naive.

At any rate, writing in this blog space was oddly brought up by someone I recently met, and I thought that putting some words down again would be useful and beneficial. I know they are, but are they a priority?

Another interesting thing happened. In order to write here, I had to log into my old email account tied to this blog. I had two emails, (one nearly a year old), that addressed extremely old writings. The two emails were thank you letters for helping one person with what they describe as insanity, and another person just a thank you and appreciation letter for writing. These were interesting finds, for sure, and those alone were worth the logging back in.

The Most Terrible Fear

I have an ongoing fear of insanity. Serious insanity, but it’s not that I’ll lose grip on reality – it’s that reality itself is the insanity. I don’t believe there is such thing as insanity, the way our medical texts describe it. Rather, insanity is the warping of our own reality before us into something which makes us feel negative, a fearful state, a state of suffering and pain. That is insanity, and in most religions, it is equated with hell. Thus, I find little difference between the diagnosis of insanity, and the religious ideology of hell.

My fear is not simple, and is accompanied by a very heavy weight. One in which I find difficult to bear at it’s most potent times.

It began on a night when I began to, not necessarily hallucinate, but my perspective of humans started to warp. Their faces became caricatures, that which I had seen in them before, now became blindingly obvious. Those that desired sex became sex-craved. Those that desired drugs, became drug-craved. Their subtle features pronounced themselves violently in my vision, both physically and mentally. No longer was that which I called a friend simply a friend in which I empathized with. Now, the human was foreign to me, as if the soul and character had been removed, and this devilish caricature had been replaced. Almost as if to mock my own perspectives of this person, almost as if to punish me for judging their behavior.

This escalated into sober life, suddenly going to the store became a struggle with my grip for reality. People seemed like animals, behaving as if directionless and empty, as if the consciousness had been sucked out of them. In a way, it really make me value the beauty of consciousness, in this moment. But these were hard times, the fear crept it’s tentacles in every crevice of my being – no meditation or activity seemed to distract me from the elephant in the universe – that something was deeply arigh with reality, or at least my perspective of it.

I developed a fear of eye contact. An entire year went by where I had to avoid it, or face the emptiness with which I had created in other’s. A blank stare, a soul-less automaton staring back at me. It became all encompassing, that even suicide was not an option, for the fear presented itself after death as well – it was all of reality, not simply this Earth. All of existence had dropped from meaning, and left me alone and isolated from consciousness, the interconnectedness of all.

The fear grew even more irrational, shaping itself into a cosmic truman show, that this was intentionally done to me, to watch me suffer. That the entire universe itself was watching my fear grow and distort, almost for its own enjoyment, it’s own purpose that was far, far secluded from my grasp, so that not even the meaning of my suffering could be known to me.

I walked upon Earth with a kind of existential crisis the size of the solar system, acting engaged in the cosmic play before me, attempting to ‘reground’ myself in the nostalgia of once believing people were conscious, loving beings. What could I do otherwise? I had no choice but to play the game. I was confronted with the fear that claiming insanity, that attempting suicide, that removing all care for repercussions would make the fear more palatable, more present, more gripping. The fear was inescapable, and the only option was to reintegrate into the past. What I had ‘seen’ needed to be forgotten, I was assured.

This ‘assurance’ came in many different forms, most often it was in the form of some sort of communication through psychedelic experiences. I would see this ‘part’ of the universe I suppose I was not meant to see, a horrifying, deathly place, cold, expansive, and conscious-less. I had visited it and revisited it, hoping that this wasn’t all there was to see on “the other side” – that one of these days, one of these trips, or at the very least, one of these meditations, would free me from this perspective, and show me the ‘all encompassing’ love I’d read so much about.

The more I tried, the more psychotic I felt, the more distant and chaotic the world seemed, and ultimately, my will to thrive was diminished. I had become stuck between the largest rock, and the hardest place. Life was unbearable and death was no escape. I was to simply ride out an eternity of false ideologies, beliefs that what I was doing made sense and meant something, however, with a cringing nagging negative feeling, like a dagger dripping of tar, shanked into my side, as I was reminded relentlessly that I was separate, that the universe was just watching me, like a frightened pup, and showed no remorse.

This fear still hangs over my head, and is the largest most pervasive thought I have. I have spent the majority of my waking hours, ever since I was 16, devoted to over coming it, understanding it, and prospectively, dominating it. That day has not yet come, but it has shown me lessons in life that are so far beyond what anything else can teach me. I feel so far removed from worldly issues at times, that I sometimes seem to be unable to relate for the opposite reason; not that the universe is cold and dark, but that reality is not to be taken so seriously. Even this life on Earth seems to be a minor blip in what my spirit body, or soul, or mind, or consciousness, what have you, is destined for. And I’ve seen hints of massive, positive, omnipotent love as well.

It took me years to first see any glimmer of hope – any light at the end of a long, dismal tunnel, and the only thing I really had to do, was ask. And I had to ask honestly. I asked myself, my higher, true self, to see love and feel love. I wanted to feel the opposite end of the spectrum, and stop attempting to see “above” this dismal haze, but rather simply flip the spectrum. I had been going downwards, with the hopes that the farther down I went in the abyss of nothingness, that eventually I would reach some logic, some master-working that would tell me that this negativity I feel is nothing more than a figment. But the farther I went, the more engulfing it became. I reset to ground zero, and looked up. I asked to see the other side, to understand goodness.

In many of these scenarios, I was aided fully by substances like DMT, psilocybin, or LSD. This particular event – the first of any experience in which I felt a positive outcome – I was showered with love. A feeling of total euphoria rushed over me and became me. I felt as if I was being cradled by my mother, and that mother was the universe itself, that love was the universe itself. I began to weep uncontrollably. As I came down to sobriety, I was yanked back down to the abyss, almost as if I was showing myself that these two exist simultaneously, but that I had become more accustomed to the dimness of what was below – almost as if I felt safer there, because I understood it.

I am here today with a great intent to overcome this fear to a rational point – a point where I understand it’s existence, and that I can acknowledge its power – but that it no longer interferes with the majority of my days, that it no longer interferes with my waking life more so than my experience in this body and interactions with these people on this lovely planet. I’d like to thank all of you in this community for a place to speak, to sort through myself, and hear myself. The world is a beautiful, magnificent place when you can see the consciousness in others, the twinkle of your own essence in another – that connectedness of life and the mind.

One day I will understand enough to move on, so to speak. A place where contentedness out-weighs the unease of the unknown. That my understanding of the balance – the ying and yang – of the universe is enough to place me in the middle, and not run me askew.

I know there are many out there that have similar experiences - similar sufferings, similar fears - and we're here to understand these fears, face them, not run from them. 

Life is an incredible journey, a most chaotic experience, something so beyond our wildest imaginations, yet we get to experience all of it, raw, here, now. It's terrifyingly beautiful, and beautifully terrifying. There is peace, love, and there is fear, pain. Take it all in. Experience it all.

Normalization & Drugs - Why drugs are awesome

Normalization & Drugs

     The brain is fan-fucking-tastic with its ability to normalize things. You can imagine the brain as a blank slate, with a few evolutionary rules plugged in: swimming movement, breathing, blood pumping, hunger, tiredness, thirst, etc. The rest of it is all a spongy mass, just waiting to normalize the incredibleness of the world. When a baby pops out of the womb, they are highly apt to cry, the world is brand new, and nothing is “normal” – and everything is important. That is why any of the littlest disturbances in their state of awareness can make them cry – because the feeling is important.

     As they grow, and reach adolescents, they are much less likely to cry if they are hungry, instead they may whine, or pout, or pull on your shirt and ask for food. As the years go by, hunger is not even that great of a discomfort. This is the power of our mind’s normalization – but it does not only apply to our instinctual responses such as hunger, thirst and sleep. It applies to all experience.

     When we are young, we can play with an ant hill for an hour. We can climb trees for the majority of a day. A new flower, or plant, can hold an awesomeness for some of us. Our child selves can become immersed in what an adult would ignore, or even find rather boring. This is not a matter of becoming more intelligent, which often people seem to imply with the term “Grow up”, but rather it is an increasing normalization of our world. It is a sign of our brains filtering out more of the world as we stop to place importance on objects and ideas in our everyday world.

     The first day your rode a bike, the first day you drove a car – those are likely to be magical times. You may even remember the feeling of awe-someness that arose in you, that feeling of “This is important!” As we age, however, we begin to dread car rides, and bike rides to and from work – because we have lost the importance of them, we have transmuted them into the mundane, the ordinary, the normal.

     Do you ever go to a concert or a theme park, or a vacation, and wonder why you’re not enthralled by the scenery, the music, or the setting? It’s that normalization. Your brain has been working against you for the entirety of your life, threading ideas, scenes, architecture, personalities together, to make as much of the world as normal as possible. After all, if everything is normal, what do you have to worry about? That is a goal of the mind – store as little information as possible for survival, and filter everything else out. If it isn’t helping or hurting your chance to reproduction and survival, it’s no longer important. Yet the child in you, that nascent level of curiosity and awe can beg to differ.

     DRUGS! This is where drugs come in. This is why LSD, Psilocybin, DMT, Ayahuasca, and others can radically change your perspective on life. That filter that you’ve built up over the years is lifted when partaking in these substances. That normal everyday drive now stimulates you to the core – no longer is traffic a trivial mass of cars, but rather a collection of human beings, in metal boxes, with wheels, attempting to perform duties, in trade for currency – and they’re stuck on tar. The “normal-ness” of our lives drops out from beneath us, and suddenly all things become important once again.

     The duality of this is the perspective that nothing matters, or everything matters. The prior is called a bad trip, while the latter is an experience of one-ness: That all things are inter-related and genuinely important.

     When in an entheogenic state on any of these substances, the grass is no longer something to be mowed, but a large, diverse organism, which is pleasing to the eyes. A flower is no longer an abstract beauty, but raw magnificence of life, attempting to attract your attention – and the bees. Your house is no longer an object to be bought and sold, but a dwelling of your life, a place you inhabit and connect with. All things suddenly become paramount to your existence, and reality itself.

     But this normalization is only partly subconscious. You can actively seek out new meaning and purpose to all things in your life. Tripping every day is not an option, but realizing the vastness of our reality is. One method I’ve discovered to remove the normalness of my day is to imagine I am a visiting scholar on my way to work. To tap into the mind and tell myself that this is a fleeting experience – my work – and that the setting and people I meet are new, important, and meaningful.

     Make an attempt to be a child, and see the flower in the yard as a magnificent structure of biology, something to stare at, and embrace. Realize traffic is not something to resist, but something to see on a grand scale of Human’s folly, (and try to laugh at it…). See restaurants not as logos and chains, but rather individual houses, with people’s dreams held inside – to sustain their life by feeding people. Strip away the normalness – and paint the world with importance.

The Placebo .... Again

The Placebo

            The placebo is often talked about in medicine – that people are able to feel some sort of effect from taking a sugar pill - Whether it be symptoms being removed, pain killing properties, or even a full cure of a disease or disorder, all from a pill that is supposed to do nothing. Although this sounds miraculous, even magical, we tend to think of it negatively.

            I remember the first day me and my friends discovered alcohol. There were 4 of us in the kitchen, messing with the alcohol, and 1 was sitting in the living room, appropriately nervous. While the 4 of us were taking shots of disgusting things, we decided to pour a glass full of grenadine for our friend in the other room. Grenadine, as many know, is non-alcoholic. We watched him drink the full glass of grenadine, and what followed was fairly interesting to me, and hilarious to the others: he was drunk. Of course he wasn’t actually intoxicated from alcohol, that would be impossible, but his actions were certainly drunk.

            This happens all the time at parties – you see it - people take a shot of alcohol and suddenly act as if they've been drinking all day. The oddest part of this is the social aspect – we think negatively, or condescending to people who do this. It’s embarrassing to be a ‘victim’ of the placebo in our culture, which I’d like you to think about. Why would it be embarrassing to act drunk off one drink? For one it makes you a cheap date(!!), but two, it shows that you have an interesting ability to trick yourself into things. In the cases I just talked about, the benefit of this placebo is social lubricant, one drink is going to do little physiologically, by psychologically if it removes your inhibitions – that could be beneficial to making friends and forming fun memories.

            On a more serious note, however, the placebo extends far deeper than social lubricant – it is deeply entwined in healing, therapy, and curing ailments; and it is not something to be embarrassed about at all. In fact, I would say it should be praised. I am not easily given in to placebo, and this is unfortunate – I cannot be hypnotized, and I analyze any prescriptions, drugs, or foods I take very carefully to avoid the placebo in the name of hard science. However, often I wish I had never learned to go this route, for the placebo is a mastery of the mind in a way we often disguise as stupidity. We believe that it is simply tricking one’s self, and you must be a fool to trick yourself.

            Yet, digging deeper you will find that meditation, trance-states, astral projection, and other forms of self-hypnosis are actually the placebo effect, manifesting in various areas of our perception.

Meditation is a placebo for the idea that nothing is happening.

Trance-states are a placebo for the idea that you are feeling something more!

Astral projection is a placebo for the idea you are asleep!

            We can trick our minds into certain states of being, and the greater your ability to do these things, the more relaxed, healthy, and able you are going to be in numerous situations. To believe you are being healed by a sugar pill and to have done so, is a far greater accomplishment in my eyes than to know that you’ve gotten a placebo, since you feel nothing.

            This trickery of ourselves is a controlled loss-of-control, if that makes any sense, and I would argue it was highly necessary to our survival. All shamanism, and medicine men and women were able to not only access their placebo and enter altered states of consciousness to seek truth and understanding, but they were masters of bringing out the placebo in others. 
            We know that eating ginseng every day will probably not cure you of a serious disease. At the same time we also have heard of people being completely cured of serious ailments with one treatment of ginseng (or any other medicinal herb). Western culture identified only the ginseng as the medicine. Eastern, and ancestral knowledge knew that ginseng is just a carrier of the placebo, a carrier of the ritual, a carrier of an altered state of mind – one of healing, hope, and comfort.

            We have left the idea that rituals are required in medicine, and instead only kept the physical compounds which seemed to be “active”. But activity is often only half the picture. One’s state of mind is absolutely essential to the activity of any molecules in the body – and that goes with my previous video that the mind and body are one.

            Just remember next time someone “acts” more intoxicated, happy, or cured than you would expect – they aren’t fools, they have tapped into their controlled loss of control. They have accessed a state of mind that many of us have thrown in the garbage – the ability to believe, and the ability to cure ourselves from within.

The Mind And Body Are One

The Mind and Body are One      

                We’ve all heard this phrase – and whatever image it conjures in your head, I want to replace. This one sentence is an incredibly important insight into what we are as human beings, as living things.

Often, in science, things are reduced to their parts, and then each part is analyzed separately and independently. Want to learn how a car works? Take out the motor, understand the motor first, then connect it to the axle, and so on. We tend to think of cars, computers, electronics and technology as parts – because we build them that way. An unfortunate repercussion of this is that we have applied the same reductionist logic to biological systems – including our own body.

                We like to believe that the brain is the brain is the brain. That if you were to remove the brain from the body and keep it in a jar of nutrient and oxygen, we could preserve who we are (Thanks, Futurama)– but that is pure fiction, for the brain is connected in an infinite many ways to the body through our nerves, which are connected to blood vessels, tendons, muscles, and all of our organs. These nerves read signs from every millimeter of our body, outside and in, and can tell us how we’re doing. If we were to remove the brain from the body, we would feel not only odd, but likely downright horrible.

                The brain is important, and so is the body. Learning and keeping the brain active keeps it growing, and keeps the neurons occupied. This contributes to our overall happiness. We also know that exercise does the same thing – but when you think of this is reductionist logic why on Earth would exercise make you happy? It shouldn’t – since the body isn’t the brain, it doesn’t have neurons*, it doesn’t sense depression or happiness.

                One of the greatest and most simple examples of how the mind and body are one is smiling. When you feel fairly bland, a simple forced smile will cause your brain to release endorphins, making you feel happy. A similar example is the spreading open of the arms – when you hold arms close to you, and shrink your body area, the brain closes off endorphin release and tends to create stress – however, if you open up your arms as if ready to give a big hug, and spread your legs out wider than usual, the brain senses calmness and ambition – again, making you feel good. One other useful example is chewing gum removes stress and anxiety – why? Because the brain more or less tells itself “If I were really in danger, I wouldn’t be eating right now” – so chew gum before an anxious or stressful event.

                But what does this really tell us? Is there such a thing as “real” and “fake” happiness? Nope; not at all. What this tells us is that happiness is a muscle, an action that we take, and just like muscles they can be activated involuntarily (like your arm muscles contracting when the hand contacts fire) or they can be used on command and strengthened. It also tells us that the brain shouldn’t be considered separate from the lips, the arms, the mouth, or any other part of the body. The brain is the body, and the body is the brain. You have more receptors for serotonin in your gut than in your brain!

                What you should remember is

1.       Logically, the brain and body are one. That they are inseparable and taking care of one is going to help in caring for the other.

2.       You can achieve happiness voluntarily. Sometimes it will be harder than normal, and sometimes it just won’t be worth the effort (imagine lifting weights after a marathon).

3.       Train it! Just like the muscles of your arms, the brain will grow in response to how it is used. The happier you attempt to make your day, the happier your following days will be.

*The body does have neurons but not the same as the brain.

How To Meditate

Its almost becoming a fad- meditation. Yoga has already surpassed that status, its quite popular. Partly for the image that comes with it - someone who 'has their shit together' does Yoga and meditates, right? So we all want to have our shit together, and many of us look for that in Yoga and Meditation.

Let me say something that is, to some, confusing and stupid, but to others, a bit more Taoist; You cannot try to meditate. You cannot concentrate on meditation, for concentration implies doing something that is inherently boring or hard to do.

After many ups and downs with meditation, let me give you my hints, since I find I'm with the majority of people in that meditation seems a bit confusing to me at first.

The Happy Meditation;

Ever feel bland, sad, or just not right and want to feel good? This is the meditation practice to get there. Sit down in your meditation position of choice, close your eyes, and slow your breath. Now, imagine black, nothing, space. Once you've done that imagine your brain resetting. The past is the past, the now is now, forget all the feelings attributed to the past - restart.

Now, breath in and out, focus on this for a minute or two, and then bring in a happy memory from the past. Something that really absolutely makes you happy - a picnic with friends, a great time with the family, a wonderful moment - a life changing one, a sirene kiss. It doesn't matter what it is, it matters that it made you happy then, and you can focus on it now. 

Bring it to the forefront of your thoughts. Immerse yourself in that memory. Remember every detail of the setting - the sky, the looks on peoples faces, the feeling of not caring, the feeling of freedom, of happiness, of love and joy. With each breath take in more happiness. Feel the happiness hit the bottom of your lungs like a tingling release of energy. Each breath getting happier and happier.

If done correctly and with a sincere intent, you will find yourself embracing a pillow, or rolling on the floor with utter amazement of how blissful you have become. Practice makes perfect.

The 'I Need To Change' Meditation;

This meditation is when you've realized that you're doing something you don't want to be doing, either to yourself or to others. Be it gossiping, being arrogant, lying, stealing, or being down-right mean. Here is how to get out of that.

Meditation pose. Sit. Breath. Think of nothing. Reset the mind. Ok.

Now, with each breath in, imagine something good in the world. Remember a point where someone made you happy for something they did. Remember how that made you feel, in all seriousness. For instance, I was walking home one night, and a man I never really talked to, but had seen before, was approaching. I looked at him and made eye contact and nodded my head, and he looked at me, and said 'Have a good night'. But there was something far more grand than just those words that was spoken to me - inside me. He truly meant that, and he meant it in the nicest way possible. 

When I feel as if I'm becoming a jerk, or acting foolish, I will meditate on those words. Each breath in I imagine a person doing something similar in the world, and with each breath out, I make the realization (and mantra) 'Everyone deserves my love.' This sets me straight as an arrow every time. You will come out of it speaking truths, removing the veil of our culture, and acting how you truly want to be. - Remember, everyone deserves your love.

The 'Real' Meditation

This is to clear your mind, to reset everything, and to make the future a breeze, no matter the forces at play.

Sit. Relax. Reset. 

Now nothing. Don't TRY to remove thoughts, don't try to do anything. The only thing you will try to do is realize your thoughts. When a thought train comes along, just sit and remember you are not here to partake in the internal conversation. Just realize the thoughts, acknowledge them, but give them no weight or meaning. Like an angry driver coming by, acknowledge it, accept it is there, and forget about it. Continue this.

For me, as soon as I acknowledge a thought and realize I don't have to partake in it's conversation it immediately dies, and I find myself empty. Doing this for longer periods of time, and doing it habitually releases your internal anxiety. You become fearless of the future, and loving of the present.

Hope this helps someone out there. 

You all deserve my love.

Lost in the confusion.

You're you, and you're always gonna be you.
You were born and you're always gonna have that fact.
So now you have this 4 Billion people running around frantically trying to find out who they are, and here you & I are, sitting watching, and occasionally getting up and flailing around with them. Yelling, screaming, in the metaphorical street.
All these buildings and houses, and homes and stays - all built for us to feel more comfortable. Move from one to the next trying to get this and remove that, say this and forget that. Climbing this imaginary ladders built on 'shoulds' and 'goods', getting to the top to find nothing really special at all.
There are a few on lookers, a bit of booze in the belly, laughing at the brigade of confused and frantics - driving their cars and trucks and big ole jeeps to here and far.
There are a few who cast a blind eye to it all, finding the frantic flailing stressful and stupid, almost loathsome in a way, and they retire to a comfort of less confused animals and plant life.
But again, here you and I are. Sitting, occasionally staring in confusion, and partaking in confusion ourselves. Thinking of bliss and love, pain and meaning. What should I do with it all, and why?
Well, I don't know, honestly. I will never know if I'm right or wrong, or if there is right or wrong to begin with! But, what I consider my own opinion is that this world is so vastly confusing, so incredibly complex and dynamic, that I cannot help but to become mystified on a daily basis. So, what I ask of all people on Earth, is that you never stop realizing. Never stop having moments of inspiration, ambition, motivation, and awe.
Our universe is vast, and our Earth reflects that. All ideas, subjects, and objects in our world are incredibly interesting. There is no subject matter to be discussed that cannot be transformed in a most incredible descriptive manner. From a tree to a string - from a whale to a word, all things have depth and structure. All things could be discussed at length.
Find your motivation, in all this confusion. In fact, one of my motivational ideas is the incredible amount of confusion and panic that exists in our world.
Find it, encapsulate it, train it, and release it - Find it, learn all about it, practice expressing it and explaining it, and then do it.

We're All Story Tellers

We're all story tellers, now.

Its been exactly 1 month since my last post. Its not so much I haven't been thinking, or been too busy, I've just wondered if its worth it to put my thoughts here. I suppose it is, though. At least they are somewhere.

I was camping the past 3 days when I began to think. I began to think about my thinking and I realized all my thoughts and nearly everything interesting that I was experiencing on the trip, quickly was being transformed into little 3 sentence segments that I could easily tell other people.

Suddenly I had realized that all my thoughts were being transcribed in the equivalent of a News Broadcast's sound bites - I was preparing my thoughts for the digital and social world.

For instance, I had just seen the most miraculous cloud formations I have ever seen before with an oncoming rain storm. I was so awe struck I stood, mouth agape, fascinated at what was unraveling before me. Yet more than half of my thoughts were "How will I tell someone about this?" and sadly enough, "How can I make a facebook status update about this?"

It felt disgusting, really. It felt like my mind was more occupied with how to create a simple 3-sentence story rather than actually involving myself in the experience itself! Oh the irony!

Immediately I attempted to stop myself, but realized this was heavily engrained inside of me. That all of my experiences for the past 10 or so years had been mostly contemplations of transcribing my experience to words and sounds. I wasn't actually in the moment, I was in the future, reaping the 'likes' and 'cool story bro'-like dialogue that would ensue my story being told.

I have no idea, of course, but I must assume that we all have begun to do this. Our thoughts are quickly becoming consumed with quantity of people we can get to enjoy our story. How many likes can I get from taking a photo of this weird guy, this car accident, this funny cat.

No longer is much of anything for personal mementos - a majority of it is for transmutation to the digital world.

So I thought deeper - what would it be like to be the opposite? How long have we been story tellers?

Of course since the advent of social & digital media, its boomed - now everyone needs to be able to tell good stories, but a century ago, I wonder. Was it the same? At the ball room party, was it the story teller that got the laughs, or was it the suave philosopher?

A thousand years ago, were people tilling the dirt of their fields, sweeping the steps of their castles, and sailing the trade winds - all the while thinking about how to tell others of their adventures? I'm sure there were many, many great storytellers of those times, but I highly doubt everyone was doing it.

It was just an interesting thought. A thought I hope to get a lot of likes and comments from. A thought that I hope keeps me from being absorbed in the future. The story can be pieced together after the experience. The experience itself is priceless, however.

Life is Strange

Life is strange. It's weird. It's up and down and all around.

Try to escape and you run in circles.
Try to understand it and it evades your grasp.
Try to ignore it and it consumes.

Paths we weave, paths we blaze, future and past - we live our lives. We intermingle with other paths, sometimes crossing, sometimes parallel, sometimes we join up.

But its so dynamic, it is always changing, and what we once think we understood changes on its head, our paths zig zag and loop-de-loop and pull!

When we think we've finally settled, and things are 'normal' at last, a stare into the night sky and a tear down the cheek brings it all back. The sheer meaning, purpose, and existence of anything at all - anything at all. It boggles and contorts our minds.

Some of us brush it under. Some of us hold it high. Some of us battle and fight it, confused as to where to put it.

It just is, and all that is, just is. And we make it and weave it, and are force-fed it and stung by it. It's strange, it's weird, it's odd and even. We can never really get it and we'll never totally be in the dark. It's a place of mystery and wonder.

But if and when you forget, remember, that Life is Strange.

"Too smart to be happy?"

When we are born we are dumb.
We grow, and get shown the world by other people, their perspective.

We take strength in what we're told and what we're shown.

But when we start to read and question and think about whats been handed to us - we find most of it is wrong. Its construed, its backwards, its meaningless.

This makes us sad, for our whole lives seem based on false ideologies and paradigms. 

We begin to question everything. Everyone. Is anyone right? Is there even a 'right' at all?

Once we’ve been tricked and are forced to learn on our own, life seems a bit less happy than what we were told. We have to start over, erase all the falsehoods and fairy tales.

We grow, thinking this place is foolish, filled with fools and stupid people. We alienate and think ourselves different.

We start wondering why other people are happy at all – "ignorance is bliss", we suppose.

But then we come across these genius minds, and they are also happy.

We struggle to understand - maybe they're only smart in one thing, but they are stupid in others?

Maybe they 'just don't get it.' even with all that smart, and all that intelligence, they still just don't get it.

Maybe they have some cognitive dissonance?

We try to talk to them, follow them, or understand and make sure we’re missing something.
But we’re not. 

These are genuinely intelligent people, who know all we know and more.

But they're happy.
How do they do that? How can they get it but still be happy?

And so we grow again, into the next stage. 

Finding that happiness isn't this "ignorant-only" thing.

It may take a smart man to realize flaws in happiness.
But it takes an even greater mind to create it.

Series of Responses to the "Depressed" - What should I do about depression (The real 'cure')

Today someone posted on a website that they were depressed. The phrase "End it all" appeared, and, although I wasn't worried (the one's who write this are the lucky ones), I responded. I'm deciding to put my response here because I think its worthy of some space in "the cloud". 

The thing that immediately clicks in my mind when someone makes a post like this is they are not suicidal, they only think they are. They have come to the conclusion that happiness is something they will never have and fear and depression will be in their future forever. What is the one thing that causes you to get scared/depressed the most?

The future, right? You think
“Oh my god, what if this keeps happening forever?”
“What if when I’m 50 it comes back and its even worse?”
“What if I’m like my mom when she’s 50?”

You know what this is? This is just existentialism, through one lens. You are going through your life contemplating one possibility and one possibility only. When you feel down, you cast that veil upon your future, diminishing ALL your possibilities, all your greatness, all your motivation, inspiration and beauty come to a halt and you FOCUS on this bullshit depression filled paradigm that you are consumed with in that moment.

LIFE is not about the future. Life is about NOW and when you cast yourself in the abyssal slums of depression in the NOW you should keep it there, and dwell within it, and learn from it, so the next time it comes you say “Oh fuck. Here goes another day of shit. I’ll try and make tomorrow better.”

Our minds are cycles, and our lives are not our own. We weave these stories of who we are and what we are from past and present. It is foolish of us to place this into the future. YOU, HEEDTHEM, need to realize this. You need to realize that you will have bad days and you will have good days, but the only way to remove the bad days from the future are to keep them in the now. Your post is plastered with references to the future, and its obvious that this is where your depression is coming from.

Take the negative, depressive, empty feelings and sit in them. Say to yourself ‘I understand this is going to last some time, but I will recover and I can move on.’

If, however, you refrain from this and continue along the lines of “What if I never get better? What if I’m like this when I’m my mom’s age? What if I’m depressed when I have kids” You will continue writing these posts, you will continue looking for escapes, and you will continue to push others away.

Which brings up another point. In order to bring good into your life – you have to GIVE. You need to give the love that you have. You need to hug to be hugged and you need to kiss to be kissed.

Be done with this b.s. fear-shit. Be done with the grim future. Be done with the “what ifs” and the doubts. Start giving, and receiving. Start loving. Start remembering the now, and keeping the future for another day.

There was a year in my life where I contemplated buying a gun. Every day seemed to be exactly the same. I would wake up and my FIRST thought would be “Fuck this. I feel like shit again. Why am I even here.” Every day for 3 months. Every day.

I lost all emotional ties to my parents. My friends became manikins that I rode around with, life was useless. The future was meaningless. I was just existing out of pure apathy of not wanting to go through the hassle of buying a weapon to end my life quickly. I just rode the waves of depression.

But I realized, as I stated above, that all that shit, all the negativity was from condemning my own future. OF casting that pitch-black veil on my later years. I was destroying any chance I had before I even had it. I was killing myself in the days to come. I was the culprit, nothing else, and there can be no other reason for depression except yourself.

Its bullshit to call ‘imbalances’ or ‘genetics’ as well, and I don’t even want to / or have the time to go into this, but its total BS. Those millions of people with depression? Self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t have genes to make us depressed, thats just silly. We are ACTIVELY turning on those genes, and the more they tell us its ‘just how we are’ the more we accept it, the more those genes get comfortable with being on.

So fuck ALL that shit. Fuck all the crap they tell you, and realize that you, and I, and all of us, are really beautiful people. We can give so much to everyone, and our futures can be brighter than we can possibly imagine. Take THIS kind of talk and plaster it on your kid’s future. Take this motivational, inspirational wonderful stuff and paint your future with it. Rip down the bleak meaninglessness and begin filling the future with bright clarity and understanding.

In response to feeling dissociated, and that the above "doesn't work for me."

First – the dissociation feeling is a by-product of being ‘depressed’. Dissociation is what happens to you after you’ve been in depression repeatedly or for any serious duration. Its your brain’s way of saying “holy fuck I need to cut some ties” so it starts diluting everything its taking in. Dissociation goes away when depression goes away. At one point I was so dissociated, I remember on multiple occasions (possibly a dozen) where I couldn’t remember if what had happened during the day was reality or a dream. I had conversations with my parents where I couldn’t remember if we had actually talked or if I was imagining things into existence. I would wake up some days and completely forget the previous day. It was an odd experience in my life.

Second, the reason that you aren’t getting from “What if?” to “Fuck yeah” is because you don’t believe its possible. This is the biggest misconception about human consciousness I know of. Happiness is a choice, and we actually don’t want to accept this. It seems fake if it were such an easy thing, right? I mean real happiness has substance – I have to be a happy person to feel happiness.

But its quite the inverse. In order to be a happy person, you need to create happiness. And sometimes the best way to do that is to literally make it out of thin air. Make happiness from nothing. You may want to repeat my happiness trials from my dead blog some time ago.

I was long since passed my depression when I wrote it, but I wanted to experiment. I was having a very ‘bleak’, that is, very neutral gray attitude towards everything. Stuff was just happening. Not really happy not really sad, just chilling. So I decided fuck me, why not try to be happy? Why not ‘fake it till I make it’?

I woke up everyday, and I smiled. I faked it but really tried to make it real (you can feel these waves of forcing it and then actual happiness happen – its rather interesting). I would drive to work, very tired, but smiling. I would smile at shitty drivers, I would smile at the cloudy sky. I would smile at the thought of sitting at my desk all day. Most of the time it was like “No, Jon… not gonna happen.” But about 10% of the time when I started I would actually feel happy. I would feel like it was a summer day, bright and sunny, cool breeze. I would imagine myself in my favorite spot.

Now I do the same exercise and within a minute I become ecstatic. Its ridiculous. At times I feel like a mad man, as I sit in my back yard laughing hysterically at NOTHING. I’ve conjured happiness from thin air.

You don’t have to try this, and actually – it may be healthier with your neighbor-relations if you don’t (they probably think I’m nuts now). But what I’m saying is there is this misconception that happiness happens to us. And although this can be true, we also have the ability to create happiness.

Anyway, you’re future is bright. I know this and I think deep down you might as well. If you keep on this track, and quit with the pre-determining of your future as some bleak blob, you’ll catch wind in your sail and be who you want to be. I hope I’ve demonstrated that “I’ve been there” and that I got the fuck out.

When asked "Where to experience?"

I was asked where is the best place to 'experience' - that is, partake in any type of spiritual or religious journey. My response is as follows;

My favorite spot is about 100 miles from any decently sized city.
I don't hear cars, I don't hear people, rarely do I even hear the prop of a plane.
I canoe around, and wander in the trees. I reflect my thoughts on the blue sky and white clouds while streaming in the sun's blessings. The world speaks to me here, it condemns and condones all parts of my life. The trees become my father, mother, brother and sister. The birds become aware of me, and I of them.
I cannot ignore my surrounding's most meaningful advice here. All things come at face value and with the weight of the Earth. I often leaved riddle, confused, yet relieved and relaxed. As if my journey has both ended and began.
Trying to experience such epiphanies or attempting introspection in a city, or a park leaves me distant and dilute. I feel as if nature is no longer there, but rather covered up and muffled. I can't communicate and I learn little, and fear much.
I do not enjoy 'experience' with concrete in sight.

The Transmuter

Transmute:

v. trans·mut·ed, trans·mut·ing, trans·mutes

v.tr.

To change from one form, nature, substance, or state into another; transform: Alchemists tried to transmute lead into gold. See Synonyms at convert.

Transmutation is synonymous with alchemy; it is the changing of one form to another. It is often used in biology as well, for often we see transmutations in energy. For instance, the sun's energy is transmuted in plants into sugars and starches, which later we can ingest and gain that energy from.

But today I want to talk about emotional transmutation. This is the key to becoming a successful, level headed, likeable person. The ability to take any emotion and turn it into something productive. For instance, there has been a great deal of internet hype around transmuting sexual energy into being productive. In other words, when you're horny as a goat, if you master a certain technique, you can use that 'energy' to write, paint, or get something done for your work or school.

In my post "I Think I've Hit Rock Bottom" I talked about transmuting the lowest of the low in our emotions - where we're depressed, feel useless, and have lack of energy - into a point where we start to change.

I'd like to go over how to do that. How to transmute, and how to be an 'alchemist' of emotions. My example will be you just got fired from your job.

1. Focus on what is bothering you or engulfing you. Take a deep breath and just dive into it. Consume yourself with how you just got fired - that feeling of betrayal, denial, discomfort, and loss.

2. Imagine the worst possible scenario. You lose your house, your car, you become homeless and have to beg for money. You lose all your friends.

3. Realize that this situation is incredibly slim, and that even this worst scenario has possibilities. You will undoubtedly meet new people and explore new places. You may have the chance to finally sleep on the beach. Hell, you might even enjoy not paying bills or having deadlines, there are a lot of people that choose to be homeless.

4. Remove blame - The universe unfolds as it does. All things happen - there are no evil people or evil intentions, there are only ideas of evil that harbor themselves in people's minds.

5. Transmute that negative energy into movement and action. Take what you wish would have happened and make it a reality. This is the leverage point from which you can explode into new possibilities. Einstein was told he was stupid. Lance Armstrong never won a race before diagnosed with cancer. Steve Jobs (although I don't like the example) had a bleak outlook of Apple at one point, before becoming the giant it is today.

Success from failure is not a coincidence, it's a recipe. Heroin addicts recover the best when they can't get any lower. In the world of business, it is often the most successful people have the longest history of failure.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
      - Albert Einstein -

And I will end on that note.

The Most Important Book

It is a subjective phrase, of course other books may be more important in other contexts, but this book is able to grip a being at their core, and shake them straight as a nail, if understood.

The book - Sacred Speech: The Way of Truth Speak by Tamarack Song

Of its premise is that we are fundamentally set up to lie, fib, and smudge the truth. We do it to avoid hurting others, and we do it to keep ourselves out of danger. Ironically, these two reasons of doing it are actually the end product of our interactions when we do not speak truth.

In short - truth speaking is that way of speaking, that voice and language, that vocabulary, that feel in words that provokes seriousness, and makes us focus on what is being said. We become one with the speaker and take what is said and understand it on a level far beyond that of just diction. We have communicated to each other in the fullest way possible.

I urge all that see this post to read this book. It can be downloaded for free, or purchased:

Free version:
http://teachingdrum.org/truthspeakingsample.pdf

Donations:
http://teachingdrum.org/writingsoftamaracksong.html?page=sacredspeech

Happiness Trials - A Review

About a year and month ago today I started the Happiness Trials on a now dead blog, and I followed it for 1 week.

What I did was - woke up, smiled as soon as I got out of bed. Brushed my teeth and smiled while looking in the mirror. Drove to work and smiled at the sky and at the road.

About 75% of the time it felt forced, and just felt like the muscles in my face were mimicking a smile. But about 25% of the time, the feel of happiness and actually smiling would cover my body. After the first few days I started getting explosions of bliss. I remember at one point I was 10 minutes from work and I couldn't stop smiling. It was taking over. I started laughing, almost hysterically in my car. No radio, no music, no friends, totally alone - laughing completely full of glee.

I would arrive at work every day in a completely different mood than others. I would feel approachable and I would feel as if I could approach anyone.

Now, over a year later, every day to work, I laugh a little to myself as I look into the sky. The clouds laugh with me, and the trees are bright with smiles. Its transformed my daily mood.. Just thought I would share.

"Mounds abound in peaceful glare,
The soggy ground with new green flare,
Life once silent now full of glee,
All this happens inside of me."
From my pen & ink drawing "Tree of Life":
https://www.etsy.com/listing/113944560/tree-of-life-abstract-surreal-natural?

The Gift Economy

The world has changed since I was a kid. I know things that are happening with my friends and acquaintances around the globe, all the time. I can check up on anyone, and I can browse a countless number of fashion, art, news, shops at the click of a button.

Nearly all of these websites and organizations are built off of money, and need money to survive, however. We are all deeply rooted in capitalism, whether you choose to be or not. It is a rare person to live without money, anywhere on the globe now.

But, with all the negativity of money, can there spring positivity. Capitalism is simple at it’s theory, at its very core – the companies or organizations that get money, survive, and those that don’t die. It is the sum of all the people’s decisions dealing with money that influences these outcomes, and it is ultimately money that controls the existence of some organizations, businesses, and even ideas.

In a gift economy, people give to give. They give to support, and they give to say something. They give objects or the give money, sometimes the prior being too cumbersome or too complicated to do, while money is simple, effective, and easily transmutable.

It is with money that you can support art, ideas, technology, and people. It is with money that you can voice your opinions across the globe.

It is the feeble mind that finds itself wondering if it can actually support another. It is the weakened and fearful that believe a small donation may wreak havoc on their lively hood. I made a realization at one point after finding 20$ in my pocket that I had forgotten about, that 20$ is really nothing. I forgot I had it, for god’s sake. I could have burned it in the fire and nobody would have known. Yet far too often do I see people bickering in their heads on whether to support someone for half that amount. As if it puts their life in jeopardy.

I ask you all to support what you love. Don’t save and horde your money. This is a time to transition from the belief that you need to save money in order to thrive. It is absolutely the other way around. Give gifts, spend money (conscientiously, of course) and be supporting.

Support! Gift! Be generous!

For those of you who buy coffee at starbucks [or insert any other shit like that here] a couple times a week – make it at home and spend it on something you actually care about.

Gun Regulations... Shut the fuck up already!

[Deep, long, almost pass-out breath]

This subject is getting so muddied and so disgusting I really would rather not write about it, but I've read enough and I need to put my opinion down on paper/webz before I explode.

After countless incidents with guns harming people, it became a huge deal that maybe the government was going to ban guns. Nobody in the white house has really made that claim, but it became a prevalent fear that seemed to spread country wide in a matter of days. The conversation changed from "I am so sorry for those lost" to "Don't take my guns!"

So many posts on facebook and around the web have been pulling up so many different perspectives and facts. And in the end, none of them matter.

The fact is, is that since guns exist at all, the problem will persist. Making them illegal or legal will prevent someone like me from getting them, but if you truly want a weapon, you can find one. That being said, a high-functioning psychotic isn't going to be going into the ghetto to find an uzi and smoke grenades, like the Batman murder guy. He probably would have been  prevented from obtaining them, since he had to get them legally, and I doubt he had many connections in the black market of guns. He was a college student from a relatively good family, and I highly doubt he had ever come into contact with weapons before owning them himself (legally).

THAT BEING SAID the man rigged his apartment to explode with gasoline, which means if he hadn't done it with guns, he would have done it with something else. Making an explosion is not a hard task, and thanks to the freedom of the internet, it's pretty damn easy to get a recipe book for bombs.

I think this whole debate about the freedom of owning guns is irrelevant for a number of reasons, some of which I've already stated;
1) Making them illegal is like putting the cookie jar on top of the fridge. It might hinder the well behaved adolescent-minded people, but those determined to get it will find a way.
2) "Freedom" is not so simply defined, and having the freedom to own a deadly weapon, often implies that you need it to end another's freedom - a tricky subject, with no logical end.
3) We should be focusing on being better people and admiring each other's good sides, rather than prepping in weapon-mongering and 'fuck you' mind-set.

If we start having impatience  coupled with a want for guns, I don't think this is a good combination. We need to be better people to each other to remove the hate, the anger, and the sadness. These emotions are the only real reason anyone dies, right? So if we work on removing the source of the problem, rather than the symptoms, we're bound to get farther.

Capitalism without Regulation [W/O Government]

Due to all the Ron Paul Supporters that I seem to come in contact with it came to my attention how complicated this issue is. I want to use Ron Paul as an example, but this is not about Ron Paul, this is about all regulation, but Ron Paul is a good lead in.

A purely capitalist society would have no regulation - trade would be unregulated and no restrictions would apply, and thus the economy would decide basically everything. In Ron Paul's perspective, in his ideal he would remove the FDA and the EPA. I have debated this heavily and sometimes I get some people who understand, but many do not want to see it from another way. I urge you to read this with an open mind, and realize the importance of regulation in a capitalistic system!

No FDA?
No where in this post am I going to claim the FDA is a god send, nor is it without its problems. To say the FDA is bad is an understatement, but its negative issues do not outweigh what it does.

First lets make sure we all know what the FDA does. The FDA makes food 'safe' for consumption by investigating factories and production plants, making sure contamination in organic food is minimal. It also regulates anything that has proven effects on people (i.e. drugs). There was a controversy some time ago that the FDA would have to regulate cheerios because cheerios were proven to reduce cholesterol. I didn't follow it, but Cheerios can still be bought at the store. The purpose of this is so that medicines that PROVE to be useful to health, MUST fit the bill, and must be watched by an entity. That is, the FDA wants to make sure the drug you're getting is actually the drug you're getting and not a watered down placebo.

However, the bads that come with the FDA (and EPA) is that often the 'most qualified' people to run the FDA (and EPA) come from big business. After all, if you were the government, wouldn't you want someone running a huge foundation such as these, to have a great deal of experience at a similar level? Where would you get that... Big business. Its a bad thing, and it should be mended. I am opposed to how this works.

However without regulation, and in Ron Paul's ideal (RPI for short lol) there would be no regulation, and more catastrophically, there would be no ingredients labels, no nutritional value labels, no information would be absolutely mandatory by law. However, in theory, the economy could choose for the products that have labels.

But who is going to verify the labels? Do you have a Mass Spectrometer in your lab? Or a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machine? Didn't think so. Are you going to dish out the 100$+ per sample of food you want tested? Probably not. The FDA does this, and makes sure what is SAID is in your food is actually in your food. 

In RPI, this would be enforced by the individual suing the company for lying or so forth. Of course this could work, but would it always? Take for example, if a company starts dishing out a protein shake that is actually contaminated with heavy metals from the water it uses to grow its Yeast or Algae? You aren't going to know until it is too late, and suing someone from your death bed just doesn't ring 'freedom' to me. Again, you could easily run the samples yourself by sending it to a company, but do you want to dish out >$100 dollars for every new protein shake you try?

How about going to the Doctors and getting some medicine. How do you really know what is in there. The label no longer is regulated.

No EPA?
The EPA is what is saving the U.S's air from looking similar to Mexico City or Beijing. Introducing pollutant control is saving a couple years on your life, arguably. You have to pay taxes for it, but the alternative is pretty nasty.

In RPI it would be now in your hands to go and find which factories are producing the most smog, and then making the economic choice to buy from them. If you live in Southern California, and live next to a nasty smog producing plant, that sucks, even though you may not support them economically, people in Minnesota aren't going to give a shit about you. In RPI, you would supposedly be able to sue said company for dirtying your air, but without regulation, who's going to say what limit of smog is too much? How are you even going to prove that they produce the most smog. You'll have to run thousand dollar tests to compare different companies.

Water polluted? In RPI you better do some intense research, because it is in your hands and your hands alone to take on this problem. How are you going to find where the pollutants came from, and what if you can't prove it?

Do you like National Parks?
Well, too bad in RPI.

That is all.

The Thought Tree

The Thought Tree vrs Thought Web

When we're asked to visualize the brain's neurons and their connections, we often visualize an intricate 3-dimensional web of axons branching out all over the place. We kind of extrapolate that further in our own imaginings of our mind, as a giant web of ideas. Each idea connected to another, such as piano keys are tied to pianos which are tied to music, and music sheets, and so forth.

However, I want to change that view. I want to give this a bit more structure, and perhaps a small paradigm shift, if you will, on how we imagine our minds.

I want to make the claim that our minds are better perceived as trees. They have a very strong base, in which all other thoughts are structured from and therefore those "trunk" thoughts, or roots, even, are what branch out into all other thoughts.

Why would I think this, you may ask, or even what is the difference?

After having thought about my thoughts (A highly difficult, tedious, and basically impossible thing to do with any real clarity) I have found that although my thoughts seem sporadic when I am perhaps walking to a destination, or going about my "auto-pilot" tasks - I have always found that my thoughts are stemming from the same subject.

For example: On a given day in the past, I may have been thinking about gas prices. A few hours later I would be empathizing with racing a car, perhaps a few hours later, I would be thinking about the perhaps buying a car. At first glance, I realized these were all very easily related. It takes no genius to see that I am thinking about cars. But interesting - none of them were connected. I had noticed that they had all come up on independent thoughts, independent scenarios, yet they were weighed as important in my brain (enough, at least, for me to remember them later while pondering this).

At first this seemed not very important at all to me. So I started thinking about cars three times, independently within a day - who cares? We live in a car culture, it should be obvious that this may happen. However, I found it this type of correlated thinking continually popping up. It didn't get interesting until one day I was in the car (coincidence? I think not!) driving by myself, with an hour to just think on an open road.

As my thoughts wandered, I tried to trace them, without influencing them - a kind of meditation. Seeing what I was thinking about, without diverging it too far off what I would normally think about, but being completely aware. At some point I became extremely anxious. I had no idea why, and I tried to understand:

1. Was I anxious because of my driving alone for an hour, somewhat. But why?
2. Was I anxious because I was alone in general or in the car? In general (not a car accident) - but why?
3. Was I anxious because of the feeling of being alone, or something else? It was the feeling, but deeper.
4. Was the deeper feeling of anxiety coming from the future or the past? The future.
5. I was fearing that my alone time now, was going to last forever.

The whole thought process was extremely sporadic and irrational, however I realized something important. Although at first glance I thought I was anxious that I was going to get in a car accident, I realized that wasn't it - it was further, deeper inside me. I was fearing being alone forever, from a measly car ride!

So this would advocate for a thought web, not necessarily a thought tree.

However, I found something interesting later on. I was hiking alone in the woods and it started to get dark and the same feeling came over me. The negativity and anxiety at first seemed stunning and odd - I asked myself why. At first (and previous, similar scenarios) I thought perhaps I was fearing the cold, my father or mother being mad I was late, or me missing something at home (friends calling or something).

It wasn't that, as I walked home I realized it stemmed from the same fear - of being alone forever.

So at this point, I realized all my anxiety was stemming from being alone (or later, I found, a painful death) which wasn't necessarily a relief, but made it much easier to handle.

But this isn't what this post is about (stay with me!). What developed after this insight was very profound. Over the course of a year, it became apparent that all my thoughts were structured this way. All my happiness, all my sadness, all my worries, all my stress, all of my random thoughts were all grown from a handful of ideas.

Stress, sadness, and worries all stemmed from dying painfully or alone (a normal fear, I suppose).

But all my daily thoughts were bound by major anchor ideas - the base of the tree.

During the end of my 4th year of college, I was thinking often about my hobbies - I started drawing more, I started painting more, planting more, all of my hobbies were accelerating and amplifying. It was because, way way in the back of my mind I was thinking of moving and what I wanted to do (what I loved, of course). I was trying to get a feel for all my hobbies, I was basically being driven by a force I didn't even know was there. 

But even these thoughts were anchored deeper, into growing old and having no regrets over my life. In another perspective;
Starting idea: School is stressful - is this what I want to do?
To: Do I like drawing, painting, or planting more?
To: I want to be happy with what I'm doing during my next years
To:When I get old I don't want regrets of these years.

So a simple thing as drawing a picture was intimately related (albeit very deeply) to how I wanted to view my achievements when I got to an age of reminiscing.

My happiest days are also tied the same way:
Starting idea: Wow this sky is beautiful
To: I really enjoy the colors, the feeling of the sun
To: This is how life should be
To: This is the natural state of the planet
To: This is "right" for who and what I am

No thoughts seem to be simple anymore, not even the buying of a cup of coffee, or the watching of a TV show, or the words in a sentence. All things seem to be tied to deeply who I am, much deeper than we are trained to believe.

Not only is this stunning to me, how we seem to be the products of only a few strong ideas and perspectives, but it also explains how such similar people can grow to be so dissimilar. If you change the direction of a tree's trunk, you essentially change the tree. 

It also explains why we don't change our core-beliefs so readily, we are not just a web of thoughts, each being equal in strength and importance, but rather, we have these "base" or "trunk" ideas which hold our entire paradigm of reality up, aloft. They are what mediate our live's decisions. Our political beliefs are tied to our fears of death, and loves of life, far deeper than a fiscal or financial number can ever explain. Thus, changing a person's political identity, would most likely restructure the entire tree of their thoughts - not a simple task at all. (I only use political beliefs as an example).

Thanks for bearing with me.

Suburbia

How the $#!% did we get here?

This is going to be a history detour -  past all the presidents, past all the wars, behind the scenes of what was happening abroad and in the media. Its a story of the subtle changes that got us to our current paradigm that some of us are desperately trying to get out of, while others are desperately trying to fall into. That of the oil-driven, consumerist society of capitalism.

In the early 1900's we're familiar that the automobile started to develop. It wasn't until the '20's that their popularity became wide spread, with the price reduction that followed Ford's invention of the Model T. But that isn't the whole story, certainly not. While Ford was pushing for lowering prices enough for most working families to afford his Model T, public transportation, which brought most people to work, were slowly losing business.

It quickly dawned on both the government and the automotive industry that this market of private transportation was untapped. Given the expense of a private vehicle, the constant upkeep, and fuel consumption it was apparent that a huge sum of money was about to be made, if only public infrastructure would support it.

During the '20s and ;30s something happened between private business and public government. The paper industry destroyed hemp, the chemical industry took hold of all publicly endorsed medicine, and most relevantly the "GM Streetcar Conspiracy" came to fruition. For reasons unknown to me, these all took place nearly simulataneously in a large change of power from government enforcing laws and regulation to taking an enormous part in private business, and ultimately, the structuring of American life.

By the 50's the street car was dead, and public transportation was for the down-trotted and poorer labor workers of America. Personal transportation was nearly synonymous with nationalism and endorsement of pride in the growing economy (and recovering from the depression). The personal automobile became a requirement for the american dream, and thus changed the identity of the population.

But this wasn't enough. There was still untapped potential for capitalism. The perfect picture of capitalism is for every single person to own all of their own stuff - their own house, their own car, and everything that fills those spaces and places. However, much of the working class lived where they worked. This necessarily meant they lived in cities, and in turn, compact buildings such as apartments and compact housing.

Drawing upon the idea of the antiquated royal elite living far out of the city, the real estate industry started an ingenious (in the context of capitalism) idea. They started using the tension of race to destroy neighborhoods and use class structure to drive forward a paradigm that would change America that still prevails to this day. The idea was ideal, it was suburbia - the idea of living far away from where you work. In newly deforested land, cheaply to build on, but until recently, untouched.

The freeway and interstate systems allowed this to be possible. Surprisingly (not!) it was the exact same time that the streetcar conspiracy had reached its end, in the mid 50's. It was because of this interstate system, the end of WWII, the increase of the middle class, and the racial tensions being played out in the media that allowed the next step to be possible.

What happened was neighborhoods that generally held white people were broken apart intentionally by the real estate industry via lowering the buy-in rate and overall the value of the houses in these neighborhoods and offering loans to African Americans at reduced rates. The process was called "Block Busting"; The intentional movement of minorities into these same neighborhoods, thus "breaking them apart". The social and racial tensions at the time caused enough discomfort which would only be remedied (in the eyes of the white, american public) by moving out. In fact, this is the very event that coined the term "there goes the neighborhood" - in reference to a black family moving in, thus "forcing" the neighborhood to a future of white emigration...

Suburbia was born. Deforestation of previously untouched land, or the conversion of inadequate farmland to newly built houses sometimes nearly an hour away from down-town became the normal interest of family housing. After all, who would want to live next to black people in the 50's... (sarcasm, please). As interest grew in the creation of suburban neighborhoods, it became almost a religious calling to move to a suburb. They were portrayed as heavenly, always green, and no crime. The children were happy, and the idea of our current "American Dream" was born.

There was one last cavity that the Capitalist movement had to occupy - exactly what would occupy all these newly built houses? Here enters the story of blatant consumerism, let me explain it in slightly a poetic way:

The man of the house takes his car to work.
A car built and devised on monopoly.
The roads built via a government shaking hands
With the conspiracy of suburbia
As the wife sits at home and tends the empty house,
The door-to-door salesmen rears his head
"Would you like a vacuum?"
"A sponge? A teapot? A turkey baster?"
And so the house gets filled with nicks and knacks
And the "growth" in the economy is born

The consequences of this branch out far beyond what any one person can imagine. The absolute necessity in suburbia is oil and gas. Gas was the downfall of the electric street car inevitably, and inevitably the realization of the interstate system. Soon the houses are filled with the useful byproducts - plastics, paints, and so forth. So begins the legacy of America, fast forward 60 years and here we are.

Yeah... Thats America.