The one thing that all false religions seem to have in common is organization. I adhere to the belief that one's spirituality and relationship to God is nothing more than personal. When you start introducing systems of patriarchy and tithing then what should merely be a means of finding happiness become an enterprise of becoming wealthy and powerful simply because a lot of people believe there is some divine channel hooked up to their respective faiths.
If you want a channel to the divine, look no further than yourself. Merely experiencing love and compassion will bring you far closer to God then saying some Hail Marys or firebombing an abortion clinic. People just need to meditate on their lives and on the people of immediate importance to them, the people they love; we all need to realize that the meaning of life is to be meaningful to each other, to act in ways that foster and sustain good relationships with all of the people we are exposed to. Human nature being what it is (quite animal), the only way for us to achieve this kind of universal love is for everybody to find God within themselves, to discover the happiness and contentment that exists simply in caring for each other.
But the question is, where do we begin?
Al Ghazali wrote an "Alchemy of Happiness" a very long time ago.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/tah/index.htm
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Working Title
“I just can’t get enough of this shit.”
I looked up at Raymond as he muttered this to himself. He was prone to fits of sarcasm, and this was one of those incidents. It got on my nerves, really, but I was willing to put up with a certain amount of Raymond’s bullshit. “What shit?”
He set down the paper he had been reading. “Nothing, just…” he made a strange gesture, more with his wrist than his limp hand, which he circulated lazily as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Some notice of a new government program. It’s garbage.” The paper had been set face down, and Raymond, lifting his beer and pulling from it long, set it down on top of the leaflet with a sneer. I noticed a distant look in his eyes as he watched the condensation gather on his glass and run down, soaking into the paper, warping it. Cheap ink began to bleed through.
“What’s the program?”
Ray glanced around the bar, noting the other patrons in the dimly lit establishment. He picked his beer back up and just before sipping it he muttered, “Tell you later.”
My brother could also be prone to fits of paranoia. In recent years, I had noticed him acting increasingly frustrated, agitated and angry at nothing at all. His posture had begun to slump, as though he had been struggling against something and was losing, the slow realization of defeat gradually creeping its way into his eyes. I wished that I could know what tortured him; all I wanted to do was help him come to terms with… whatever.
Which was why I accompanied him to the bar and drank with him. At first I thought it might be a way to get him to talk to me about what was bothering him, but we started coming to the bar more and more and he was talking less and less. He would bring newspapers and other leaflets along with him, sipping beer or whiskey and reading in silence. And I would sit with him quietly, drinking what he drank and probing, waiting to hear from him.
We used to be so close, as boys. He was my older brother, though only by two years. Often it felt more like I was the older one, the way I would look after Ray. He tended to get preoccupied. Sometimes I think he might see the whole damn world as a distraction from whatever it is that goes on in his head. I worry about my brother.
He had brought no newspaper this time, so when he broke his stare away from the leaflet he had nowhere to look but at me. He took a deep breath and held it, eyes closed, he held the breath so tightly I though his chest might burst open. Then he opened his eyes, let the breath out slow, and squarely met my gaze. “I’m frightened, Eli.”
And I became frightened, too, though of what I wasn’t sure yet. I could just see the abject fear on his face, the wet trembling in his eyes as his teeth sought out that small spot on his lip that had been scarred from years of anxious chewing. I prodded him, asked him to tell me more, begged him to tell me why it was he was so scared, but he would speak no more of it. We drank in silence until I blacked out, and the next morning he would speak no more of it.
It was another seven months, when I had almost given up, before I heard another word about it from him.
I looked up at Raymond as he muttered this to himself. He was prone to fits of sarcasm, and this was one of those incidents. It got on my nerves, really, but I was willing to put up with a certain amount of Raymond’s bullshit. “What shit?”
He set down the paper he had been reading. “Nothing, just…” he made a strange gesture, more with his wrist than his limp hand, which he circulated lazily as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Some notice of a new government program. It’s garbage.” The paper had been set face down, and Raymond, lifting his beer and pulling from it long, set it down on top of the leaflet with a sneer. I noticed a distant look in his eyes as he watched the condensation gather on his glass and run down, soaking into the paper, warping it. Cheap ink began to bleed through.
“What’s the program?”
Ray glanced around the bar, noting the other patrons in the dimly lit establishment. He picked his beer back up and just before sipping it he muttered, “Tell you later.”
My brother could also be prone to fits of paranoia. In recent years, I had noticed him acting increasingly frustrated, agitated and angry at nothing at all. His posture had begun to slump, as though he had been struggling against something and was losing, the slow realization of defeat gradually creeping its way into his eyes. I wished that I could know what tortured him; all I wanted to do was help him come to terms with… whatever.
Which was why I accompanied him to the bar and drank with him. At first I thought it might be a way to get him to talk to me about what was bothering him, but we started coming to the bar more and more and he was talking less and less. He would bring newspapers and other leaflets along with him, sipping beer or whiskey and reading in silence. And I would sit with him quietly, drinking what he drank and probing, waiting to hear from him.
We used to be so close, as boys. He was my older brother, though only by two years. Often it felt more like I was the older one, the way I would look after Ray. He tended to get preoccupied. Sometimes I think he might see the whole damn world as a distraction from whatever it is that goes on in his head. I worry about my brother.
He had brought no newspaper this time, so when he broke his stare away from the leaflet he had nowhere to look but at me. He took a deep breath and held it, eyes closed, he held the breath so tightly I though his chest might burst open. Then he opened his eyes, let the breath out slow, and squarely met my gaze. “I’m frightened, Eli.”
And I became frightened, too, though of what I wasn’t sure yet. I could just see the abject fear on his face, the wet trembling in his eyes as his teeth sought out that small spot on his lip that had been scarred from years of anxious chewing. I prodded him, asked him to tell me more, begged him to tell me why it was he was so scared, but he would speak no more of it. We drank in silence until I blacked out, and the next morning he would speak no more of it.
It was another seven months, when I had almost given up, before I heard another word about it from him.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Curiouser and curiouser.
I'm constantly amazed at just how long life is. The amount of time it takes me to write this sentence is so minuscule, so fucking irrelevant. Two seconds, the breadth of time in which so little can be accomplished, but so much can be destroyed. An object can fall twenty meters, a heart could break, a bone could snap or a library catch fire. So much can be lost so quickly.
Imagine how much you can lose in five years. If life steadily declines, without improvement, for that long, then what does that mean? There is an old saying, which makes fun of an even older saying, and it goes: "Quitters never win, and winners never quit. But those who never win, AND never quit, are idiots."
I've been called a lot of things, but no one ever thought I was an idiot, not even when I did incredibly stupid things. But I've done enough of them now that I'm starting to wonder whether I have sort of unclassifiable handicap, some inexplicable form of brain damage that makes me seem perfectly intelligent and suited for real life but really leaves me bereft of any ability to function on a normal level. I'm like the opposite of Rain Man. Instead of seeming useless and being brilliant I seem quite capable but really can't fucking do anything.
How many lives were led in mediocrity that began with great ambition?
Is normal life the best I have to look forward to? Is that bad? Is there even such a thing as normal life?
I have a close friend, a true artist and classic ascetic. He renounced material society years ago, gave away all of his possessions, and has been hitchhiking across the country ever since. He eats enough to survive, sleeps enough to keep going, and makes art wherever he goes. The large part of his work will never gain recognition, because the bridges and abandoned warehouses that he uses as canvas will eventually be painted over or knocked down, but he paints anyway because he doesn't care who sees or doesn't see it, or whether it will still be there the next day. He certainly doesn't care if any of his real canvases ever sells because he has no use for the money.
I could never live like that, or so I thought. I want to have a bed, and a house to keep it in. I want to have an iPod, or an iPhone, and a Cadillac, and a yacht, and a mansion, and a football team, and a TV station and a publishing company and a record label and fucking everything else that there is for a person to have in this world. But I don't have any of these things. I'm practically homeless, broke, with no marketable skills and (obviously) a downward spiral of negative thinking. All I know is that I need to get back to writing more often, and so here I am. There is no need to hesitate at posting such ersonal thoughts here, as I don't use my real name and nobody reads this blog anyway.
I mean, shit, it never updates, now does it?
Imagine how much you can lose in five years. If life steadily declines, without improvement, for that long, then what does that mean? There is an old saying, which makes fun of an even older saying, and it goes: "Quitters never win, and winners never quit. But those who never win, AND never quit, are idiots."
I've been called a lot of things, but no one ever thought I was an idiot, not even when I did incredibly stupid things. But I've done enough of them now that I'm starting to wonder whether I have sort of unclassifiable handicap, some inexplicable form of brain damage that makes me seem perfectly intelligent and suited for real life but really leaves me bereft of any ability to function on a normal level. I'm like the opposite of Rain Man. Instead of seeming useless and being brilliant I seem quite capable but really can't fucking do anything.
How many lives were led in mediocrity that began with great ambition?
Is normal life the best I have to look forward to? Is that bad? Is there even such a thing as normal life?
I have a close friend, a true artist and classic ascetic. He renounced material society years ago, gave away all of his possessions, and has been hitchhiking across the country ever since. He eats enough to survive, sleeps enough to keep going, and makes art wherever he goes. The large part of his work will never gain recognition, because the bridges and abandoned warehouses that he uses as canvas will eventually be painted over or knocked down, but he paints anyway because he doesn't care who sees or doesn't see it, or whether it will still be there the next day. He certainly doesn't care if any of his real canvases ever sells because he has no use for the money.
I could never live like that, or so I thought. I want to have a bed, and a house to keep it in. I want to have an iPod, or an iPhone, and a Cadillac, and a yacht, and a mansion, and a football team, and a TV station and a publishing company and a record label and fucking everything else that there is for a person to have in this world. But I don't have any of these things. I'm practically homeless, broke, with no marketable skills and (obviously) a downward spiral of negative thinking. All I know is that I need to get back to writing more often, and so here I am. There is no need to hesitate at posting such ersonal thoughts here, as I don't use my real name and nobody reads this blog anyway.
I mean, shit, it never updates, now does it?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
ओपन यौर माउथ एंड आईटी शाल बे फिल्लेद
Open your mouth, and it shall be filled
Expectations, large and small, are so much a part of our lives. What we expect from each other, and from ourselves. Expectations are so rarely met to complete satisfaction ere my situation in which every expectation I have ever had for myself is currently unfulfilled. At this juncture of my life I have to admit to being a great and tragic failure. I meander through life, allowing unpaid bills, friends, legal indictments to blow past me all caught in some metaphysical breeze which blows away everything that should matter to a person. So this metaphysical aura I carry around me that keeps me from feeling humanly in love, keeps me from sincerely expressing interest in the wellbeing of other people, this follows me everywhere I go and makes it possible for me to ignore all of the everythings that I should be doing, this aura that lies to me in saying there is nothing to life but the day to day, the waking up and working, the saying empty hellos, the tasteless meals eaten more out of necessity than to indulge a passion for flavors, and at the end of it the dreamless sleep, the perfect prelude to another day performed exactly the same way as the day before. I daresay Satan himself, if such a being exists , was the architect of this mind-numbing monotony. The human body is an amazing tool with great capabilities. Several schools of yoga and martial arts have devoted decades or even centuries to maximizing the potentials of the human body, clearly one of the more aesthetically magnificent gifts that God graced us with.
But the mind, in its complexity and potential, has something very special, though not as tangible as opposable thumbs. It is a flowering mystery capable of great things that mere science can not begin to explain, Even the greatest pretenders in philosophy are ultimately baffled by it’s magnificence, its power. The combustion engine, particle accelerators, all this the mind conceived and the hands brought to be but the mind saw it first, comprehended it. Some might call it invention but it is merely learning to manipulate the apparent laws of physics into achieving a desired end.
But must the mind only be the blueprint stage for this process? What if I plan nothing mechanical, nothing tangible, but a re-wiring of my brain itself. There are ways, chemical ways, to shatter ones personality for a short period of time, giving him time to re-allocate certain things, change priorities radically and forever escape the paradigm.
You know of the paradigm, Even if you don’t think you do, you know the paradigm better than anyone. It’s there, telling you that this has to be madness all of this writing and so little said, why, it’s practically gibberish and yet, when you re-read it you might feel something…tug for a moment because I think we all have kind of a feeling, kind of a deep-seated itching feeling that all is not right with this world and that whatever you call dharma or providence or coincidence or that’s-just-the-way-it-is that’s all bullshit. We are not the victims of our environment we are its masters, we are the hands and angels of God but only insofar as we can find her in ourselves. And this is the part where I sound crazy, but if there is a voice the back of your mind, then listen to it, Some call it conscience but it can be so much more than that, some say that it’s the holy spirit or the voice of god and that may be close too… But what that voice is is you, a happier, better you, so talk to it and see what it has to say.
Expectations, large and small, are so much a part of our lives. What we expect from each other, and from ourselves. Expectations are so rarely met to complete satisfaction ere my situation in which every expectation I have ever had for myself is currently unfulfilled. At this juncture of my life I have to admit to being a great and tragic failure. I meander through life, allowing unpaid bills, friends, legal indictments to blow past me all caught in some metaphysical breeze which blows away everything that should matter to a person. So this metaphysical aura I carry around me that keeps me from feeling humanly in love, keeps me from sincerely expressing interest in the wellbeing of other people, this follows me everywhere I go and makes it possible for me to ignore all of the everythings that I should be doing, this aura that lies to me in saying there is nothing to life but the day to day, the waking up and working, the saying empty hellos, the tasteless meals eaten more out of necessity than to indulge a passion for flavors, and at the end of it the dreamless sleep, the perfect prelude to another day performed exactly the same way as the day before. I daresay Satan himself, if such a being exists , was the architect of this mind-numbing monotony. The human body is an amazing tool with great capabilities. Several schools of yoga and martial arts have devoted decades or even centuries to maximizing the potentials of the human body, clearly one of the more aesthetically magnificent gifts that God graced us with.
But the mind, in its complexity and potential, has something very special, though not as tangible as opposable thumbs. It is a flowering mystery capable of great things that mere science can not begin to explain, Even the greatest pretenders in philosophy are ultimately baffled by it’s magnificence, its power. The combustion engine, particle accelerators, all this the mind conceived and the hands brought to be but the mind saw it first, comprehended it. Some might call it invention but it is merely learning to manipulate the apparent laws of physics into achieving a desired end.
But must the mind only be the blueprint stage for this process? What if I plan nothing mechanical, nothing tangible, but a re-wiring of my brain itself. There are ways, chemical ways, to shatter ones personality for a short period of time, giving him time to re-allocate certain things, change priorities radically and forever escape the paradigm.
You know of the paradigm, Even if you don’t think you do, you know the paradigm better than anyone. It’s there, telling you that this has to be madness all of this writing and so little said, why, it’s practically gibberish and yet, when you re-read it you might feel something…tug for a moment because I think we all have kind of a feeling, kind of a deep-seated itching feeling that all is not right with this world and that whatever you call dharma or providence or coincidence or that’s-just-the-way-it-is that’s all bullshit. We are not the victims of our environment we are its masters, we are the hands and angels of God but only insofar as we can find her in ourselves. And this is the part where I sound crazy, but if there is a voice the back of your mind, then listen to it, Some call it conscience but it can be so much more than that, some say that it’s the holy spirit or the voice of god and that may be close too… But what that voice is is you, a happier, better you, so talk to it and see what it has to say.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
gandhi?
They say that you can pick your battles, and I have come to understand that we are defined by the adversity that we face, and choose to face. If life had been easy for Gandhi, none of us would ever have heard of him; he was confronted by certain challenges and injustices that he decided to throw himself against. It is not that he was the only man witnessing these things, merely that he was the only one willing to take issue with it at first. He picked his battle, and paid the ultimate price of assassination for it. We are picking our battles as well, but are finding ourselves left in the ever-growing ocean of mediocre and ineffective individuals because we fight the little battles, the personal ones for sustenance and income. Who is fighting the big battles today? Who is our Gandhi?
Does anyone really believe that there is less injustice and oppression in the world now than before? Because there certainly seems to be less protest over it. What we are participating in is not a culture of action, but a culture of distraction. If Gandhi had been able to watch The Sopranos on a semi-regular basis, it’s possible that the thought of activism might never have occurred to him.
I discuss all of this because I feel an overwhelming lack of contentment. Whatever part of the system I am participating in, whatever role I have in the American Dream, is not working for me. It seems to me as though life ought to be worth living for its own sake, but more and more trends are emerging making it seem as though life needs medication to be worth living, as the pharmaceutical industry is exploding. What are we compensating for, in needing all of the Xanax and Ritalin? Is it truly a case-by-case problem, as doctors seem to think, when individuals find it difficult to cope and function in normal society? That would be a logical conclusion decades ago when there appeared to be less people “needing” medication to function. However, it is seeming more and more like everybody is developing a mild case of ADD or clinical depression or anxiety for which they require some narcotic solution. The logical conclusion now, having observed this, is that most of us feel we can’t quite function in society!
So is that our fault? Is the flaw inherently ours for not fitting into this system? If it were just me, I’d probably say yes. But there are so many of us feeling this way that I can only think that the system is the problem, that society is somehow making us feel oppressed. I know that I’m starting to sound like some raving hippie, but I’m not an anarchist (yet) nor do I advocate that we all renounce society and become an army of Alexander Supertramps, refusing to participate in the public. These would be selfish acts of disdain towards our fellow men. I just think we need more activists in this country, more charity, more whistle-blowing, and more scrutiny directed towards our politicians.
At the risk of sounding like an extremist, the entire political-legal system is fucked. Anyone operating under the assumption that the Constitution is like some perfect, divine document is an idiot. It’s got more loopholes than an afghan blanket, and when people find these loopholes, they don’t correct them: They exploit them! Lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists can make entire careers out of this, reaping the benefits of their taxpayers’ ignorance. This is the upshot of our selfish, individual-oriented capitalist system, and so we even come to admire these people because their lack of moral fiber makes them wealthy and successful: So it is we see flawed people prevailing in a flawed system, while virtuous, hardworking men scrape by on minimum wage and are fooled into believing it’s sufficient, even deserved to live as they do.
So where is our Gandhi? Happily watching American Idol?
Does anyone really believe that there is less injustice and oppression in the world now than before? Because there certainly seems to be less protest over it. What we are participating in is not a culture of action, but a culture of distraction. If Gandhi had been able to watch The Sopranos on a semi-regular basis, it’s possible that the thought of activism might never have occurred to him.
I discuss all of this because I feel an overwhelming lack of contentment. Whatever part of the system I am participating in, whatever role I have in the American Dream, is not working for me. It seems to me as though life ought to be worth living for its own sake, but more and more trends are emerging making it seem as though life needs medication to be worth living, as the pharmaceutical industry is exploding. What are we compensating for, in needing all of the Xanax and Ritalin? Is it truly a case-by-case problem, as doctors seem to think, when individuals find it difficult to cope and function in normal society? That would be a logical conclusion decades ago when there appeared to be less people “needing” medication to function. However, it is seeming more and more like everybody is developing a mild case of ADD or clinical depression or anxiety for which they require some narcotic solution. The logical conclusion now, having observed this, is that most of us feel we can’t quite function in society!
So is that our fault? Is the flaw inherently ours for not fitting into this system? If it were just me, I’d probably say yes. But there are so many of us feeling this way that I can only think that the system is the problem, that society is somehow making us feel oppressed. I know that I’m starting to sound like some raving hippie, but I’m not an anarchist (yet) nor do I advocate that we all renounce society and become an army of Alexander Supertramps, refusing to participate in the public. These would be selfish acts of disdain towards our fellow men. I just think we need more activists in this country, more charity, more whistle-blowing, and more scrutiny directed towards our politicians.
At the risk of sounding like an extremist, the entire political-legal system is fucked. Anyone operating under the assumption that the Constitution is like some perfect, divine document is an idiot. It’s got more loopholes than an afghan blanket, and when people find these loopholes, they don’t correct them: They exploit them! Lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists can make entire careers out of this, reaping the benefits of their taxpayers’ ignorance. This is the upshot of our selfish, individual-oriented capitalist system, and so we even come to admire these people because their lack of moral fiber makes them wealthy and successful: So it is we see flawed people prevailing in a flawed system, while virtuous, hardworking men scrape by on minimum wage and are fooled into believing it’s sufficient, even deserved to live as they do.
So where is our Gandhi? Happily watching American Idol?
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Brief but to the Point?
The problem with trying to be a writer is that it’s not all book signings and admiring readers. It turns out that I actually have to write something first, which, it turns out, is actually really hard. Especially when one is as fried and addicted as I am to a chemical which has no particularly necessary side effects, just an empty sense of contentment and enduring exhausted laziness. Don’t get me wrong, I love weed, and I love everything that weed has done to broaden my perspective and update my worldview, but it just may be that, at this juncture in my life, I have already enjoyed all of the benefits of marijuana that I possibly can, and that continual use of the substance is not needed to enjoy these effects for the rest of my life.
As it stands currently, I’m lucky to be able to form sentences for all the damage I’ve done to my short-term memory and basic mental functioning. Although cannabis has a tendency to make people think more deeply through long-term potentiation and an increase in retrograde signaling between synapses, it is also notorious for making them think more slowly due to getting them high and letting less oxygen reach their brains. Yes, this is all true, but no, I won’t link to any studies or sources because this isn’t a science paper and I’m frankly tired of all the pomp and circumstance that comes with doing anything academic in today’s world where ink on a degree is worth more to an employer than all the knowledge in the world. But that’s another matter, really. What I am discussing now is my inability to write, to structure, to plan what I am going to write and then execute it with no tangential ranting.
I must say that’s probably the only thing I am conveying effectively.
As it stands currently, I’m lucky to be able to form sentences for all the damage I’ve done to my short-term memory and basic mental functioning. Although cannabis has a tendency to make people think more deeply through long-term potentiation and an increase in retrograde signaling between synapses, it is also notorious for making them think more slowly due to getting them high and letting less oxygen reach their brains. Yes, this is all true, but no, I won’t link to any studies or sources because this isn’t a science paper and I’m frankly tired of all the pomp and circumstance that comes with doing anything academic in today’s world where ink on a degree is worth more to an employer than all the knowledge in the world. But that’s another matter, really. What I am discussing now is my inability to write, to structure, to plan what I am going to write and then execute it with no tangential ranting.
I must say that’s probably the only thing I am conveying effectively.
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