We live in a time of great disconnect. Indeed, we are connected to the outside world as never before, but most people have little to no connection to the far more compelling story that is being told to 'I' by 'I' right now and always.
In a sense we are all reactionaries, or are rendered so by the material world, because the story we continually tell ourselves is one of reaction and response. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, 'I' am engaged with something else: another person, a problem I need to solve, a task I must perform, and in lieu of any of that, some form of entertainment to engage me.
It's like our energy is on full blast all the time. Extending out from us and into our world.
We call this normal, and take it for granted.
Many who are religious know that this is not the best way to live, but because they have identified 'god' as something outside of themselves, they still find themselves engaging WITH, once again directing their attention outward to learn from and gain happiness from a deity greater than themselves.
This is a time of intensity, even insanity. The world appears to be breaking apart in so many ways. Spending all our time and energy reacting to and responding to an intense and insane world is certainly going to affect us profoundly, and subsequently it is no surprise that stress and discontent are so prevalent.
If we had another option beyond just taking a vacation, we might benefit greatly from it. If a large number of us exercise this same option then the world itself would benefit. The crazy would subside, even a little. The intensity would abate.
It is time to meet the Higher Self.

I'll just come right out and say it: the Higher Self is possibly the most neglected vital thing in the world today. Because the mass of humanity fails to connect to the Higher Self, it becomes easier for us all to engage in lower activities that debase and exhaust us, conflict being the most harmful (and also the most obvious).
So, why do people neglect their Higher Self? Well, because it is something that very few people spend any time thinking about, it is perhaps unsurprising that Higher Self is widely misunderstood. Even those who do consider it important generally have an incomplete conception of it. Thus, its value is not fully appreciated.
Perhaps greater understanding OF it would yield greater interest IN it, so I will attempt to explain Higher Self to the best of my abilities.
Is it our conscience? The 'little voice within' that nudges us in the right direction and guides us to wiser choices?
Not really.
Christopher Hitchens, in one of his many public debates with Christians, indicated that he thinks that's what it is, and that's all it is. Always scholarly, he referenced Socrates' 'daemon' and Adam Smith's 'inner guidance'. Both men were referring to a higher wisdom within us we can seek which can sort between right and wrong actions.
Of course, as is well known, Hitchens was committed to a materialist worldview, which presumably means that he would account for this 'daemon' as having arisen through evolutionary processes which formed the human brain.
Certainly, this 'daemon' is a good thing to have. It's also an extremely good thing for OTHER people to have when they are engaged in some form of relationship with you!
But it is not the Higher Self. Is there a connection? Indeed. But is it the sum total of the Higher Self? Not even close.
So if the materialists are falling short of the mark, how are our religious brethren doing? Actually, not so good. From the Christian perspective, you had better attribute any inner voice of wisdom to Jesus or God, lest you be tricked by Satan! It seems absurd, but even if your Higher Self guides you to make wise and loving choices for decades, but you claim that it comes from within you and not via Christ talking to you, any Christian pastor would caution you. Satan is quite the trickster, they will tell you, and no matter how good his advice might seem to be, he is after only one thing: your eternal soul. Seek spiritual guidance to get back on track, they would advise.
It should be noted that Alcoholics Anonymous has adopted this concept for their own purposes. They refer to a 'Higher Power' that can guide us, once we admit our powerlessness and need of outside assistance to achieve sobriety and the life we dream of.
In both cases, we are cautioned against trusting 'wisdom' that arises from within and is integral to us.
As forHindus, they maintain that the concept of an 'inner guru' is dangerous and fraudulent unless and until one has achieved a high level of enlightenment under the tutelage of flesh and blood gurus who have completed the process themselves. It is not Satan, but 'the ego' that tricks those who do not receive the approved training and instead listen to teachings and insights that come from WITHIN, NOT through masters who have expunged their own egos to the point where they can properly guide you.
So we're not getting a lot of help either from materialists or 'that old time religion', are we?
We must remember that we are talking about 'Self' here, so that means NOT Jesus and NOT a guru, but an actual and accessible higher aspect of OURSELVES that can uplift and enlighten us.
Does it exist? YES, emphatically!
So let's figure out what it is and start working with it.
The Higher Self is exactly what the name implies, a higher version of yourself. Mentally, morally, imaginatively and creatively, yes. But also physically, and this is the part that is easiest to miss.
Hitchens referred to Socrates and his daemon, so I will fast forward a tad and say that Plato is possibly our best guide to understanding the Higher Self, with his concepts of 'real' and 'ideal'.
According to Plato, anything that exists in expressed, manifest form derives from a formless ideal, a template if you will.
The Higher Self is this template from which you derive, both in terms of mind and in terms of body.

Most people, when considering the Higher Self, think in terms of a Higher Mind, but not a Higher Body.
This was me for thirty years. For three decades I have experienced connection with my Higher Mind (on and off I should say; during this period there were moments when I could not feel the connection strongly, or even at all - my 'Father, father, why hast thou abandoned me? moments).
Only recently have I come to realize that Higher BODY exists on the same plane of ideals (to use Plato's terminology) as Higher Mind, and thus I make it a daily practice to focus on aligning my physical form with this Higher Body just as my mind has become aligned (not completely, of course) with my Higher Mind. Higher Mind is thus an aspect of Higher Self, not the totality of it.
We can see that it is like peeling back layers of an onion to come to a fuller understanding of what Higher Self is, and the more important understanding of how we can benefit by connecting to it. Since most people consider the Higher Self purely in terms of Higher Mind, let's start there.
By tendency, I rarely include personal episodes in my essays, however in this instance I feel I may be doing the topic a disservice were I to avoid relating it to my own experiences.
I first encountered my Higher Mind in 1991, during a very dangerous and dramatic situation. I had to escape from the Oakland Hills Fire of that year, which devastated a large swath of terrain just behind the UC Berkeley campus. The apartment I was renting at the time was one of the casualties of the flames, and I easily could have been another.
There was a point when I made my way in haste down the road toward the Bay when I nearly froze up. Imagine the situation. Behind me were hundred foot flames, and on both sides of the road were flames from the burning forest all around, licking at the asphalt. Suddenly, there was nothing in front of me but pitch black. It looked like nothing a sane person would ever choose to drive into, but with flames on every other side of me, what else was there to do? Still, I nearly froze and put on the brakes, which would have meant certain death, but the fear of driving straight into That Blackness nearly overwhelmed me. I was terrified that I was heading straight into the firestorm, which was where the black smoke was most likely coming from.
Then, I heard a voice. It was as clear a voice as one might hear from someone with whom they are conversing. No one else in the car heard it, of course, but it was more than just a thought in my head. At least to me, it was clearly audible, and it said, 'everything is going to be all right'.
'Confidence' is not the right word to use here, but this voice was of no doubt about what it was saying. It wasn't cheering me on, trying to boost my confidence, and such. It was basically reporting the future to me from a place of knowing. There was no trace of doubt in it, as one might hear from another person in a similar situation. It knew, and it wanted me to know.
I received this information differently from how one generally does. The moment I heard this voice telling me everything would be all right, all fear evaporated because I, too, knew that it would. The best way to describe it would be that I downloaded the information, and it became MY certainty as well as the voice's.
And, as it turned out, everything WAS all right. After a few seconds of driving through pitch black, the smoke began to dissipate. From black to gray, from opaque to vapory, and finally to a clear view of the city of Oakland below. I and my passengers were safe. Hardships would follow (we had lost our homes after all) but we would survive.
One other element of this episode has always stayed with me. Before leaving the apartment complex, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a woman who looked very panicky as she stood by the firefighters who had just arrived. I was part of a queue of cars making our way to the exit gate, but in a matter of seconds I made eye contact with her, stopped briefly to open the door, let her in, and chauffeured her to safety down the hill.
This was, I believe, an initiation ritual. If I hadn't stopped to let her in, I think I would not have 'met' my Higher Mind a few moments later. Perhaps my entire life would have unfolded very differently. I suppose it is possible that I would not even have survived that very day. But I 'proved' myself with that simple act, and Higher Mind responded.
That episode in the Oakland Hills marks my first awareness of Higher Self, though I would not call it such for quite some time afterwards. I had been agnostic with atheistic leanings for a good 15 years prior to that experience, so my transition came about slowly, but steadily.
Thus, I did not consider this voice of wisdom and assuredness (and it must be said, a terrific sense of humor as well) my Higher Self at first, and I as I wrote earlier, I no longer do either. In the beginning, I called it 'the conversation', as it was something I could tune into whenever I wanted, and doing so yielded great insights over time.
As for now, I recognize that Higher Self includes both Higher Mind and Higher Body, meaning Higher Mind (that which I have been aligning with for three decades) alone is not Higher Self. There is a 'template' for a more perfect version of our physical expression, just as there is one for our mind.
Ultimately, Higher Mind - and indeed Higher Self - is as temporary an expression as the physical mind and body are. All are mere temporary expressions of formless Consciousness, the Aware Existence from which all matter arises and throuh which dissolves.
The purpose of Higher Mind is to make itself obsolete. Once our 'everyday' consciousness has fully merged with Higher Mind and experiences no separation from it, recognizing higher/lower are merely different aspects of the same thing, its role as a teacher and guide will have been completed.
This will be a shining moment that we all will eventually experience. As more and more of us do, the discord and conflict and sorrow that characterizes life on Earth will attenuate gradually, as fewer and fewer will gather at that trough.


To summarize, the Higher Self is a higher version of you in every imaginable aspect. It exists to bring you into alignment with your Truth, which is that you are Aware Existence and Eternal Source.
If YOU didn't exist, neither would Higher Self. Higher Self has no purpose unto its own; it is your guide in all manners and all respects.
This is not to diminish it in any way. It is indescribably wonderful, beautiful and awesome. But as I wrote earlier, its purpose is to render itself obsolete.
The Brooklyn Bridge is an extraordinarily beautiful work of art, but if there were no span for it to bridge, no gap between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, it would not exist. Think of the Higher Self this way, then. An extraordinarily beautiful bridge between all that you think you are and all that you TRULY are.
It is impossible that you will not at some point come to align yourself with your Higher Self so that it can serve this function for you. The only question is how long do you want to wait?
It is high time humanity moves forward. We have spent precious time indulging ourselves in the illusion of materialism and 'the cosmos is all there is or will ever be', and look where it has gotten us.
One word to describe the materialistic age: recklessness. We have been reckless with human lives, reckless with the future, reckless with our relationships to our fellow creatures, reckless with our treatment of arable land, reckless in our use of resources, reckless in our pursuit of wealth, and reckless in our choice of leaders.
Reckless, as well, in our concept of ourselves. We are NOT thinking mud, we are beings of Consciousness! Why is it so appealing to so many to feel that they have grokked it all, read their scientific papers and concluded that we are thinking mud?
I will never understand this.
What I will say is that our future hinges on whether enough of us can let that vulgar illusion go for good and reclaim our true value as Immortal Consciousness expressing as and through matter, but in no way limited to that particular expression.
This is where the Higher Self comes in. If you are willing to consider the possibility that it exists, it will take that opening and make something of it, as it has done for me.
You have to be willing to question the premises of materialism, but how is that a bad thing? There is nothing better that can happen to a human being in this or any lifetime than meeting the Higher Self and beginning to align with it.
It is the 'seek thee first' that has been taught about, but misunderstood.
But now is a time for understanding.
You are glorious and wonderful. Love beyond compare and creativity such as you have never known is waiting to introduce itself to you.
May you meet your Higher Self in THIS life, not the next.

lsraeI shows us what we are, and exposes in a harsh light what we are not.

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published his it-made-sense-when-I-was-stoned NYT bestseller, 'The End of History' in which he argued that history itself had essentially come to an end with the fall of the Soviet Union. He argued that 'western values' had prevailed and would surely go on to encompass the entire world; a triumphant victory not only for 'the West' but for all mankind which would from that point forward concede that these 'western values' of democracy, capitalism and technological supremacy were better than any other form of society that had ever been tried, such as monarchy, papacy, communism, Maoism, Islamism, etc. The long march of history had led inevitably and inexorably to these 'western values' for which we had Socrates, Aristotle, and, grudgingly, Plato to thank.
Ah, Fukuyama, what a pompous dope.
The truth is that his notion of the superiority of 'western values' has always been a hard sell. Witch burnings, the slave trade, France's Reign of Terror were signs enough that something was off with Fukuyama's views, but Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Mai Lai and Bhopal should have knocked the notion out of his noggin for good. Yet, people love myths which paint them as the good guy, and so the idea of 'triumphant western values' continued to have some currency.

Until Israel. Until a genocidal maniac received a standing ovation from both Democrats and Republicans in the US Capitol. Until pathetic clowns purporting to lead the US, Germany, the UK and France all rushed to condemn Iran for committing the crime of being attacked by lsraeI. 'lsraeI is facing an existential threat!' they parrot, excusing an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, while ignoring the fact that it is indeed the Palestinian people who truly face an existential threat, FROM lsraeI. The truth is plain to see. These 'western values' are.... valueless.

Not worth the paper they are printed on.

The reality that power - specifically the power to impose one’s will on others - was not merely incidental to the 'triumph' of the West but was in fact its sin qua non, has always been a rather imposing elephant in the room.
Secularists could argue that it was the precise and impeccably organized thinking of the ancient Athenian philosophers that stood as the bedrock of the West, while religious folk could argue that it was Christ (who became blue eyed and Western) and latter Christian scholars like Thomas Aquinas who added a revolutionary morality that combined with Athenian philosophy to make it an unstoppable force.
But now, how hollow that all seems. It was the ships. It was the guns. It was the technological superiority of the West, not its philosophical or moral superiority - or its 'democratic ideals' - that enabled it to prevail over rivals.
The precision of Aristotlean thinking, combined with the the Christianization of the world's most powerful empire, led to the development of Gutenberg's printing press (first used as a Bible press), which led to the European Enlightenment. It all seems to be about the triumph of ideas, does it not? Well, no. This precise thinking and information access yielded the physical and tangible aspects of Western power that account for its 'triumph': steam power, TNT, the internal combustion engine, flight, jet fuel, the unlocking of the atom, and so on.
The West did not persuade, it imposed. This is the brute reality that Western triumphalists either choose to ignore or embrace with a sick child's glee.

And this brings us to lsraeI. What the Zionist state is doing today is not different from what Western powers have done for centuries. From the Age of Exploration onwards, it has always been Western military might, brought about by its technology - NOT the courage of its soldiers or the advanced thinking of its generals - that resulted in the vast empires of Spain, Portugal, England and Holland; France, Belgium and Italy in Africa, the United States in its conquest of the indigenous tribes, and so on.
It was collusion of many of these same Western powers that produced the state of lsrael, a colonialist enterprise that followed a playbook dating back at least as far as the conquistadors. Where is the so-called superiority of Western 'values' in this? European nations treated European Jews so badly that they finally decided to give them a 'homeland' that just so happened to be somebody else's home. What did England, France and the United States care about that little detail? They had made careers out of invading other peoples' homes and slaughtering them. Is it any wonder that should be their game plan with the Zionist project?
There was no chance that the morals they had supposedly picked up from Aristotle and Jesus were going to impel them to make a reconciliation with their Jews in good faith and in the spirit of repentance. It is to laugh.
No, these colonial monstrosities did the only thing they really know how to do well; they created yet another oppressive colonialist state (a proxy governorship, if we're being honest) in the heart of that troublesome land of Arabia, that decidedly un-Western realm whose people they had warred with for centuries. lsraeI was the West's way of preventing a pan-Arab nation that hated the West while possessing massive amounts of the West's new gold - petroleum - from becoming a rival that could possibly challenge their hegemony. From its inception, lsraeI was every bit as much about keeping the Arabs down as it was about uplifting Jews.

And so we can finally bury the idea of the 'triumph' of Western values, morals, philosophy yada yada, in the most unceremonious way at our disposal. It would all be hysterical - a Monty Python skit brought to life - if it weren't so heartbreakingly tragic. In the 20th century European colonialists made a deal with their ancient victims - European Jews - to victimize non-European people (the Palestinians) by brutally stealing land from them that supposedly had been 'promised' to the Jews - by a SKY GOD no less - centuries before Socrates and Aristotle had ever breathed air. Hardly 'the West' as it likes to see itself.


It's all as phony as the blue eyed Jesus.


Truly a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.


The End

"Ain't it funny how they're all Cleopatra when you gaze into their past? When you ask about their birth signs, you realize there was no need to have asked"
~ The Who, In a Hand or a Face

Ah, reincarnation. Typically a mere punchline in our 'enlightened' western culture, it is an important and fundamental element of many Asian cultures, although it is hardly limited to Asian religions. It was nearly expunged from the Bible (beyond a few references to Jesus and/or John the Baptist being reincarnations of Elijah) because church elders bent on control felt that telling people they had more than one shot at getting it right made it harder to terrify them into submission and obedience (Hell does a much better job of that), but clearly people of the Mediterranean regions from which our western culture derives were as open to the idea as were those of the Indian subcontinent at one point.
It is certainly a head scratcher. If there are eight billion people on the planet today and there were only two billion a hundred and fifty or so years ago, then the mathematics of reincarnation becomes a bit...problematic, does it not? Reincarnation is curious and paradoxical, somewhat like what Richard Feyman had to say about quantum physics - if you think you understand it, you don't.
What is reincarnation, exactly? Is it even worth considering? Is it a useful concept to aid us in our growth as individuals?
Yes, no, maybe.... get out your crystal ball, because we are diving in!
Reincarnation is a paradox. Even the question, 'do you believe in reincarnation'? is somewhat absurd. Let's say you DON'T believe in reincarnation, but it is real. That means that you in THIS life have a belief about your very own self that fails to include all the other 'selves' you have been until now. It's like the caboose saying it doesn't believe in the train that pulls it.
Or, let's say that you DO believe in reincarnation and it ISN'T real. Then you are creating a false sense of identity populated with former 'selves' which the one self that DOES exist tries to place on itself like articles of clothing. You're still YOU no matter how many 'yous' you have been in the past. It's this life, not those, where your attention needs to be. Imagine a guy on a date trying to impress a lady by saying, 'I may not make much now, but in a former life I was a multimillionaire!' and see how far that goes!
That's why reincarnation so easily becomes a punchline in our secular, 'logical' society. It sort of seems like one big absurdity begging to be parodied.
If it IS real, it is doubtful all those former versions of yourself are shaking their fists at you for not belieiving in it, and cursing you for not including them in what you call yourself. They had their own concerns that they took to the grave with them.
If it ISN'T real, then believing in it is just storytelling. If it's anything more than a hobby to you, then perhaps you'd be better off using your time and energy seeing to the goals, mission, responsibilities, etc. of THIS life. Even if you were an accountant in a former life, he or she is not going to help you prepare your taxes.
But still, the question remains; is it something that really happens? We can't dismiss the concept of reincarnation (or rebirth) altogether, largely for two reasons. The first is the more compelling. There ARE cases of people, typically children, who have given accounts of former lives, ranging from the description of places (which turn out to exist) to clear memories of themselves as former people, with jobs and families. Some even include familiarity with other languages the child has never been exposed to.
Are there a lot of these? No, not in general population terms. Do some of them fall apart under critical examination? Of course. Do ALL of them? No. If even two or three cases involve a person being able to give an informed account of pre-birth experiences, including some familiarity with a former mother tongue - with no possibility of having come into this knowledge in any other way - then the book on the subject is clearly open.
The other is hardly a slam dunk, but I find it interesting. It has to do with prodigies. There are cases of children, even very young ones, displaying extraordinary talents, such as in the arts. As with the reason given above, there are most certainly examples of this which invite curiosity. Children who, for example, pick up a paintbrush for the first time at six and produce truly extraordinary artwork. Where did the talent come from? By any measure, prodigies are an interesting subject of inquiry into the ways of the human mind, whether or not one wishes to admit the possibility of former lives. Personally, I feel that some of these cases give every indication of a child carrying over talents acquired through former lives’ experiences. This is an opinion, nothing more. Either way, reincarnation, and the evidence as such for its existence, is not something that interests me greatly.
What DOES interest me is the question of how these past ‘yous' - if indeed they do exist - figure into a cosmos based on the principle of All being One? If, as I maintain and often declare, everything including the personality and all our thoughts and experiences, are nothing more than mere temporary expressions of Self/Source and have no 'reality' other than as such, then how might we come to look at the incarnational sojourn?
If all are One, what is the point of reincarnation/rebirth? You are EVERYTHING; you are every human who has ever lived. Heck, you are every Neanderthal who ever once lived. You are every speckle of color on every butterfly's wing. ALL of it emanates from a single Source, and that Source is what YOU are. Therefore, why even bother with multiple lifetimes as one individualized consciousness?
Think of it this way. Let's suppose that you come across a painting that strikes you. It's by an artist you have never heard of, but for the sake of clarification, let's make this artist famous. So you see a brilliant painting by Gustav Klimt, and you've never seen his work before. You are spellbound! You want to see more works by this wonderful artist. Lucky you, because it just so happens that there is a retrospective of Klimt's work at your city's museum. You go and are enchanted.
The first painting gave you some information about the artist, Gustav Klimt. His unique vision was shared with you, but only very partially. The retrospective changed that. After viewing it, you now have a more complete vision of his genius. The one painting you first saw could not possibly have conveyed as much of the artistic genius of Gustav Klimt as the retrospective exhibition did. All those works together do a much better job of revealing him to you.
Reincarnation can be likened to this. You are like one painting, and your (re)incarnating lineage is like the total oeuvre of an artist. Your many lives taken together are like a retrospective exhibition of a soul's journey.
Now, obviously, that retrospective of Klimt's work, as comprehensive and revealing as it was, still left out most of the entire picture of Klimt. His thoughts, his relationships, his meals and sexual encounters, religious beliefs, vacations, etc. Very little of the totality of the man can be understood or engaged with simply by looking at what he did with paint, brushes and canvases.
Thus, as a painting represents one small aspect of an artist, and a retrospective exhibition of his/her works represents a much larger aspect of him/her while still only representing one small aspect of the total person, similarly does the incarnational sojourn come into clarity. Klimt represents Source/Self, the retrospective exhibition represents one particular expression of Source/Self played out across lifetimes, and one painting by Klimt (the one you fell in love with) represents You! We could take it even further, of course. You could be one single brushstroke on that one painting in that one oeuvre of that one artist who was oh so much more than just his/her artistic output.
The Source expresses, as is Its nature. 'You' may have lived as an Egyptian slave working on the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and as a can can dancer in fin de siecle France, and so on, and those former lives will have influenced the person you are today. But all that is still a mere particle of your TRUE self, which is Everything and All Eternally.

Personalities can be fun and delightful. If you look back on all the happiest moments of your life you will find that your personality was deeply and powerfully engaged in those moments. You had fun because it was so fun to be you in those moments! And the brightest portions of your personality were able to shine. You were witty, sexy, warm, talented, strong, etc. Your personality played nice with the other personalities around you. Smiles, laughs and other forms of delight were shared.
But we all know that our personalities are not always like that. They can take us down. We can be petty, frazzled, freaked out, irritated and irritable. The personalities of others can enrage us. The world of conflict is a world of clashing personalities when all boiled down.
Our happiest AND unhappiest moments all play out on the Plane of Personalities. My 'I', your 'I', meshing or clashing, finding something interesting and enjoyable to share or something irritating and infuriating to start a fight about. Or a war.
If we were nothing other than our personalities then I suppose that little could be done about this. Insofar as I identify exclusively with my personality, then I sink or swim alongside it. And this collective plane of personalities we all inhabit would be the only game in town.
However, we are not limited to our personalities, and recognizing this holds great promise for us both individually and societally. Our personalities are merely our expressions, emanations from a higher source of consciousness. Learning to engage with your personality on YOUR terms rather than its has great benefits. If everyone learned how to do this, we'd be expressing societally at a much higher level.
I should explain how I am defining personality. I just pulled this up from Oxford: "the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.” I think that is pretty clear, but I am also using it to define your sense of 'I/myself'. Basically the person that you identify as, the one who chooses what to buy, what to read, whom to vote for, where to go on vacation and what to do on the weekend. When and how to ask for a raise, etc. ALL of that is your personality, as I define it. Your body as well. At least in terms of how you relate to it and think about it. If you are critical of your body, it is your personality criticizing the apparatus it inhabits. If you are proud of it, your personality is what enjoys what looks back at in in the mirror. If you are uncomfortable due to maladies and ailments, it is your personality that feels the way you feel about all of that. Body ailments can make us depressed, for example, and it is the personality that experiences the depression.
All of this can be summarized as 'self sense' or 'my sense of I'. Your personality is reading this right now and forming thoughts around what you read, perhaps agreeing in part and disagreeing in part. Choosing to continue reading or not. Hopefully that is clear. Now, the wrench I throw into the works at this point is my insistence that this 'self sense' is FAR from what you actually are. You are no more your personality than your hand is your body. It is by missing out on the larger identity that we come to feel exclusively identified with our personalities and therefore more or less trapped within them. We misidentify as personalities, in other words.
The Plane of Personality IS the human experience. It is every artist's urge to create art and every tyrant's desire to claim power. It is every twisted individual's enjoyment of cruelty and every kind person's generosity of spirit. Personality identifying as self, and personality interacting with other personalities. And every goddam war in between.
People typically consider the personality to be that which one invests nearly all of one’s time and energy into, from anywhere up to 100 years, and then not at all. Life goes on for others, while one’s own personality is simply culled from the machinery of life. We obsess over ourselves, our concerns and our ambitions until our bodies can no longer sustain us, and then all is darkness.
How pointless it all seems, doesn't it? Given this concept, does it not seem that the whole point of the personality is to merely busy itself for a tiny sliver of time and then disappear along with all its obsessions, fascinations, met and unmet goals, acts and musings? And all those wars, WHAT were they for? Merely so some temporary personalities could vent their anger at other personalities they felt wronged by, when all becomes erased by time anyway? The passions that Israelis and Palestinians feel today are the same passions the Egyptians and the Hittites felt in a war that nobody ever thinks about anymore that took place 4000 years ago. Meaningless hatred, meaningless slaughter, erased by time and replaced by a fresh batch of personalities. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
Is there anything beyond this, and much more importantly, is there a way OUT of this?

I say there is.

We live in a time of great social turmoil, and personalities are agitated. I hardly need to go through the litany of global calamities one by one to call them to mind. Yet, calling them 'global' can itself be misleading, because each of them are comprehended and considered at the level of personality. What does climate change mean to YOU? What does the Palestinian genocide mean to ME? What do Trump's economic fiascos mean to someone else? What does that whole mix of uncertainties and tragedies do to one's personality? How does the personality cope, or does/can it cope? All played out on the level of individuals, billions of them. The Plane of Personalities. We experience our own fears, our own worries; no one else's. The fears are collective, but experienced person by person.
And yet, consider: if you are reading this, it is likely that your personality's journey has already moved through decades of time. If you're anywhere close to my age, then the lifespan of your body has less time in front of it than behind it. Mere decades from now, you don't expect to be here, and once that candle goes out, every thought goes with it. The personality that feared and fretted will fear and fret no more. This very day's concerns will soon be as if they never existed at all, vanished the instant your body breathes its last breath. It all seems meaningless, does it not?

We need a new perspective in order to see the human experience as anything other than meaningless. We need to recognize that which sages have taught for thousands of years and scant few have paid attention to. They have framed it in different ways but on the core message they have been resolute: we are NOT our personalities and we are so much more than them. We are not the personalities that worry and plan and second guess, day after day, thought after thought, until that 85th or 90th year comes around and then POOF! all that worrying and planning and second guessing and thinking stops and may as well have never been.
If we are not our personalities, then what are they and what are we? The personality is something that you as a higher consciousness are currently expressing as and through. If you are a singer, you might think of it as a song. If you are a painter, you might think of it as the canvas you are currently working on. It has great value. The singer needs the song to express her soul and communicate to others, to touch listeners. The painter needs the painting to express his visions and share them. He relates to the painting almost as a lover. This is also true of you. You love this personality that you are currently expressing as and through, and you value it highly. If not, it would not exist.
Some see esoteric practices as attempts to become liberated from the illusion of personality, but that in itself is also an illusion. Though your personality may do things casually and later come to regret them, this is not so of your true Self. The fact that you are expressing as a personality in this moment means that your Self is fully intending to be expressing in such manner, just as a painter knows what painting he is working on, why, and what he hopes to achieve by painting it. If a painter decides to abandon a painting, he abandons the painting. He doesn't continually work on it while wishing he could be free of it! Exactly the same with your personality. That which you TRULY are is expressing as and through the personality because that is as You will it to be.
A singer can only sing one song at a time, but that is not so of You. Indeed, You are expressing as every other personality while also expressing as and through your own personality. There is one Source, and there is one Self. Since there is only one, there is nothing else for you to be. This is what sages have taught through the ages: You Are It. The Cosmic Consciousness, the Cosmic Love Source. Ever and eternal. You have created this individual personality in order to make full use of it. If You were aware of all the other 8 billion personalities that you are ALSO expressing as and through simultaneously, you wouldn't be giving THIS one the attention it deserves. Your personality would fade into nothingness; just another tiny star in the vastness of the Milky Way. It is perfectly wonderful that You are able to localize Your personality in this way and give it the attention it deserves, in order to maximize its value to You.
What is less wonderful is the illusion of this personality being your totality. The localized identification has a great purpose; however, the EXCLUSIVE identification creates disharmony up and down society as it has done for century upon century, long before the Hittites and Egyptians were taught to despise each other and kill or be killed.
Evolving beyond this disharmony is the key. Moving away from exclusive identification with the personality while continuing to value temporary localized identification with it turns that key. This is important enough to repeat: What will best serve us in our lives is that we move away from exclusive identification with our personality while continuing to find value in temporary localized identification with it.
Truth seeks to be known; thus deviation from truth is experienced as discomfort. As the personality is not your truth, agitation experienced at the plane of personalities is inevitable. It is your nature to experience yourself as you are, not exclusively identified with your personality. Imagine that your hand suddenly came to identify exclusively with itself, and no longer was able to recognize itself as part of your body. It would fixate on this illusion. Something as mild as a paper cut may be seen as an existential crisis. It may adorn every finger with gold and diamond rings in an attempt to create a sense of importance. It may view the other hand as a fierce rival, and feel deeply suspicious even when the two come together to pick up a basket of laundry. "What do you want from me?" "What are you hiding from me?” Happiness would be impossible for the misidentifying hand.
 The Plane of Personality plays out the same way. We are agitated because we are not living our truths. We try to create a false sense of identity in order to decrease our agitation. But it never works.
It can't, because just as the hand will always be deluded in thinking itself complete unto itself, the personality will always be agitated, by Truth, to end its delusion. This is basic, and inevitable. Because your localized personality is merely expression, you will eventually move past your exclusive identification with it. At that point, you can begin refining your relationship to it. It is your song, your painting; your temporary and beautiful instrument through which exquisite features of your Divine Self can be expressed and shared. You have already experienced this many times, in the happiest moments of your life. But you have also experienced the opposite. Your personality has trapped you in a cage of insecurity and suspicion. Not because the personality is bad, but because falsehood, by its very nature, is uncomfortable.
When a society is filled with people who are all exclusively identifying as personalities, the Plane of Personality is like a row of discount bins at the opening hours of a Black Friday sale. Everyone is out for themselves, pushing and shoving, desperately trying to take something before somebody else grabs it. Not even really needing the item or even desiring it, particularly, most of the time. Just engaged in the fight to get it before somebody else does.
This dynamic plays out in families and companies just as it does when countries make war on other countries. Large or small, the problem is the same: exclusive identification causing the personality to be the sin qua non, the be-all-and-end-all, the fortress on the hill to be defended at all costs. It is not a pretty picture, to say the least.
So, what can society become when the Plane of Personalities is correctly understood by all - or most - of its members? What happens when people see their personalities as localized - but not exclusive - modes of expression? Well, then the Black Friday sale becomes a Jazz improv session! A festival even! Think of a festival market where some folk are playing instruments together, children are making up games, other people are selling handmade clothing or pieces of jewelry. An impromptu Shakespeare play is happening on a temporary stage high on a hill. The aroma of food, the beat of drums, the blend of laughter and songs, all dappled in sunshine ~ THIS is how we can live when we understand what are personalities ARE, and what they are NOT! And, my friends, this is possible. Each one of us deserves this and each one of us intuits at some level that this is where we belong.
Transcending the Plane of Personality doesn't mean escaping from it or causing it to no longer exist. It does not mean liberating oneself from the wheel of reincarnation if that is where one's beliefs lie.
It means recognizing that the Plane of Personality is a mere temporary expression of something far greater that is neither temporary nor itself an expression. The Plane of Personality is being expressed as one avenue of self expression of the Source/Self. Each of us in each moment can trace ourselves back to that Source/Self without the aid of gurus or Ascended Masters or the samsara of multiple lifetimes.
It is as simple as knowing, 'I am the painter, not the painting' or 'I am the whole body, not merely the hand'. Your personality is not the totality of you, because that would be impossible. You are Source/Self and you are without beginning and without end. It is simply that you have LOCALIZED your awareness into the personality that you identify with, the 'mind/body having experiences' that you think of as yourself but ISN'T yourself. Is it possible to know this? Yes; I know it. Is it possible to know this without being 'enlightened'? Yes; again, I know it and I am hardly some miracle-manifesting holy man. If you begin by simply accepting the possibility that what I am saying is true, you can change your perception and see the world differently. Not always easy, but always available to you.
Recognizing that your personality is not your truth but is merely your temporary localized expression, you can use it very differently. It becomes less 'important' while becoming even MORE valuable. It is a work of art - a masterpiece, even - and you are the artist producing it. Same with everyone else. They are also mere temporary localized expressions of Source /Self. The very same Source/Self that YOU are! Thus the sacred teaching that 'We are all One'. This is neither a concept nor a philosophy; nor is it a mantra. It's a plain fact. And with this fact settling into our consciousness, the Plane of Personality transforms. Source/Self is being all beings in all times and all places. That is You. Source/Self is localizing the experience of all beings in all times and all places in order to receive full benefit of each and every temporary expression It (You, in other words) chooses to express as and through. The Plane of Personality is a curious and marvelous forum for expression, nothing more. It has no actual power over you, as YOU are expressing IT, not the other way around.
It has been said of money that it makes a good servant but a terrible master. If anything, this is even more true about the personality than it is about money. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the phrase had been originally coined in reference to the personality by a wise person long, long before money had even been invented! Individually, the personality traps us in insecurities, flitting seductions and feelings of rivalry and possessiveness toward others. Collectively, the Plane of Personality as it currently expresses is a tyrant, trapping humanity in an endless cycle of wars, scarcity, divisiveness and misery.
Now, esoterically it must be said that there are two minds about this. Some feel that this Plane of Personality on dear old Planet Earth is as it should be; a sort of kindergarten where immature souls with little experience work out their issues, with concomitant growing pains. Happier worlds, by this conception, await us all when we have sufficiently mastered our lessons here. If we were to elevate our Plane of Personality to one of harmony, then another benighted realm would simply take its place. Thus, accepting this Plane for what it is and not asking more of it is our task. This path of Acceptance may be thought of as a 'Buddhist' approach.
On the other hand, what we might call the 'Christ' approach is to hold that it very much is our destiny and mission to elevate this Plane of Personality. Take it from the Black Friday bargain bins of conflict and anguish and transform it into the arts festival of harmony and creativity. Since each of us is an expression of Self/Source, this should be attainable if enough people come to recognize the truth about themselves.
On this matter, I find myself agreeing with F. Scott Fitzgerald that it is a mark of intelligence to accept that sometimes two opposing ideas can both be true. Although I would like to see a New Earth emerge, and have written quite a lot about this notion, at the same time I sense that the benefits of this New Earth may wait for us in another realm, not here. On Earth, throughout history we have seen that very few people seek enlightenment, many are completely uninterested in it and recently many others see it as unscientific fantasy and hogwash. Perhaps this may never change. It doesn't really matter one way or the other, however. Truth, as I pointed out earlier, continually seeks itself, moving falsehood aside as it does so. Since you ARE Self/Source expressing, and your personality IS merely a temporary and by no means exclusive aspect of your identity, YOU can come to know this without the rest of the Plane of Personality waking up.
I write about these matters a lot, because an aspect of MY personality feels a calling to assist, in such ways as I can, in the awakening of humanity in order to reach that more harmonious Plane. A 'Christ calling', if you will. On the other hand, I am well aware that few people read what I write and fewer still are actually moved by it, and so the 'Buddhist' path of acceptance is another aspect of my personality I find it fruitful to develop.
The point is that I am the one in charge. I am steering my personality; it is not steering me. I am not ruled by it nor am I fooled by it. It is my servant, not my master. My canvas. This is how I want to be, and this is how I choose to make use of my personality.

Why There Will (Can) Never Be An Atheist Utopia

'Imagine there's no heaven....and no religions too'. The idea of a utopian society that has done away with all the superstition, blind obedience to authority and sectarianism that are hallmarks of organized religion goes back well before John Lennon's song, of course.
Throughout the centuries there have been men and women who, recognizing how damaging religion was, pondered how much happier people would be, how much more harmoniously they would interact with others, without it.
The Enlightenment saw great thinkers and philosophers conceptualizing non-religious societies, with quotes such as 'religion is the opiate of the people' from Marx and 'God is dead' from Nietzsche putting a fine point on the idea. B.F. Skinner's novel 'Walden Two' (1948) envisioned a utopian (if somewhat bland) society freed from the shackles of ancient myths.
The problem for atheist utopian societies, which dooms them from the start, is that they fail to incorporate humanity's fundamental truth. Any society that is not attuned to that which is most fundamentally true about its inhabitants is doomed at the outset not to provide them with fulfillment, joy and the peace of mind that minimizes conflict.
The religions that have ruled the minds of people for thousands of years and continue to do so today for billions of people, as the saying goes, 'couldn't be further from the truth.’ They tell of a god who rules through kings and speaks through priests. This is the sky god myth: the elevated, celestial god who brings the two most important things to agrarian people (even today): namely rain and sun. These are the two essentials without which crop cultivation is impossible. So essential, in fact, that ancient people imagined that god must be up there where all the good stuff comes from (or failed to come, or came too much, etc. if he were angered). The sky god didn’t/doesn’t exist, but that didn't stop the priests and kings (and priest kings) from milking the myth for all it was worth. This untruth at the core of religious societies even today guarantees a plethora of miseries where the masses are deluded and the privileged become corrupted by their own lies.
Thus, the idea of an atheist utopia presents itself as an appealing antidote. However, the idea about humans that an atheist utopia would be built on ALSO 'couldn't be further from the truth' - as it presents man as an accident.
This idea has permeated secular society and has so inserted itself into the minds of many that it is appears to them to be beyond doubt. Homo sapiens is an accidental species who arose through natural selection, nearly went extinct several times, and will do so again, because the universe it inhabits, and its home planet's life giving properties are also accidents. Accidental universe burping out an accidental species called homo sapiens. That's you! Now, learn how to play nice.
However, the distance between this idea and the truth is such that a play-nice society will not and cannot result. It's not that it's immoral and sinful to think one is an accident; it's just that it's not true. And for a beautiful and wholesome society to come about - one where love prevails and relationships are overall harmonious - truth is a necessity. Lack of truth will always gnaw on the social body like untreated tooth decay. Truth will be missing, and its absence will be felt as unease and longing, making utopia as impossible for an atheist society as for one which worships a sky god.
Are dreams 'accidents'? I think very few people would argue that they are. Clearly, dreams appear to be random. We might be flying over Hong Kong one minute and the next be back in our childhood bedroom. Someone long deceased we hadn’t thought about in years may merge with someone in our present life such that the two are one and the same, and they may remain that way throughout the dream or split apart at some point.
All, at least from the perspective of our waking mind, very random. But that doesn't mean there is no reason for the dream playing out as it does; doesn't mean that it is a mere accident that has no meaning and no reason for existing. Random and accidental are not the same thing.
So, yes, it is clear that our biological forms are, at least to a large extent, the result of natural selection shaping random mutations into functional adaptations. That by no means establishes as fact that we are, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "throwaway survival machines" nor that "the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." Yet THIS is exactly the assumption that would necessarily be at the core of an Atheist Utopia. Meaningless. Accidental. Throwaway.
And, none of that is true. While it IS true that our current physical expression is random, just as the characters and occurences in our dreams are random, that doesn't make them accidental, and certainly not meaningless or throwaway.
What we ARE is expressions of Consciousness. We are not accidentally emergent but rather creatively expressed.
If you base a society on the idea that humans are accidentally emergent then your society will have a fundamental untruth at its core, because humans are creatively expressed, NOT accidentally emergent. And this untruth will be untenable. It will naturally result in discord in the social body as the social body naturally moves toward truth, and away from falsehood. A 'good' society cannot be built upon a lie.
This may cause one to doubt the possibility of there ever being any kind of utopia, since neither religious societies nor atheistic societies can deliver one.
I'm not optimistic, but neither do I rule such a possibility out. A society is what its members are; if the people living in a society are under either the delusion of having been molded by an omnipotent and judgmental sky god (or similar deity) OR the delusion of existing merely by accident, then society will reflect that by holding falsehood in place of truth at its core.
What this means is that an enlightened society - a utopia, if you will - would necessarily be populated by people who are truth-based, as truth is the basis for harmony. It would - must - be a society of people who are a.) aware that they are creative expressions of Consciousness, b.) on their way to becoming aware, or c.) who are open to the idea and are willing to get started on their journey of becoming aware. And throughout history that has never been the case. As Gurdjieff said, "the crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear.” Religion followers condemn as heretics those who have become aware of their true nature, and atheists dismiss them as deluded, their ideas beneath consideration. At least until the present, seekers after truth, and those who discover it, have been a tiny minority that has not led a revolution in consciousness that brings all, or at least most, of its members to truth.
The path to knowledge is a very personal one, and as such it simply may not be suitable to stand as the foundation of society, which is interpersonal by nature. It is possible to teach ones children to believe in the sky god, and it is possible to teach ones children to be an atheist. These are relatively simple ideas that pass rather easily from parent to child with a great deal of acceptance (at least in the early stages of childhood before the challenging/questioning phase of adolescence).
But as far as I can tell, there is no practical way to inculcate a child with the knowledge that they are creative expression, because that isn't something that is learned through impressing a concept on a child, or anyone. It may begin that way; it may begin as consideration of that premise. But for the knowledge to take root in the soul it must at some crucial point become experiential. One must feel it head to toe, throughout ones molecules, ones chakras, ones mental/emotional/physical bodies, and so on. Thus, the image of the lotus. The realization that “I am creative expression” mustney61.ncb.bf7 awaken petal upon petal, and can't really - as best I can see - be taught. The Christian saying 'God has no grandchildren' applies here. Each awakening is personal.
So, where does that leave us? Possibly, ever inhabiting an imperfect human society, whether religious or atheist. Decidedly un-utopian either way. On the other hand, it may just be that there is some point in store for us where a collective awakening DOES occur. Just as Pandora left hope inside the box, that hope of that resides in me, faintly glimmering rather than shining brightly.

英語勉強法系 YouTubeチャンネル 'Haru English'さんの 動画 「英語学習の秀才が選ぶベストバイ教材13冊」で、アンディ・バーガーの英語書籍３冊『英語で話す力』、『英語で読む力』、『英語で書く力』も紹介・説明されています。動画開始から10分後くらいから始まっています。

ご紹介いただき嬉しいです。ぜひご覧ください！

For nearly all of human recorded history, mankind's relationship with the planet was simply extractive. Take what you need, where you can find it, use it up, and take more. Run out of timber to burn? Burn coal. Run out of land? Conquer someone else's land. Run out of resources in your own territory? Build an empire; travel the oceans to take resources (including slaves) from far off lands.
This cut it down/burn it up/get some more methodology changed with Newcomen's invention of the steam engine. A new way of exploiting the world was invented; what seemed to be a superior one. It suggested mankind could not merely extract from the world, but could actually master it.
And so the engine became the metaphor we built our society around. This concept of a mechanical engine that could run almost indefinitely expanded in the minds of Henry Ford and others into a vision of a societal engine: an economy fueled by the middle class. By cultivating a sturdy middle class through plentiful factory jobs, competitive salaries, affordably priced commodities, goods and services, etc., society could be 'engineered' to run as smoothly as an Oldsmobile.
Even more powerful than capitalism (this engine can theoretically be applied via Marxism as well), this concept of a socioeconomic engine running smoothly and efficiently for the good of all has become the core principle our society is based on.
And...... it's not working anymore. The pistons have worn down.


It's rarely a good idea to throw something out that still has utility, so it's important to confirm our suspicions before doing anything foolhardy. Thus, HAS the engine metaphor overstayed its welcome, or is it just in need of some tinkering?
Let's look at its performance. To start off, how well has it performed as an improvement over mere extraction based economics? Clearly, not well. Rather than replacing extraction to provide a more sustainable mechanism for prosperity, it has done the opposite. It has placed extraction on a mega-dosage steroids regime! Before the steam engine (as well as other inventions such as dynamite and eventually the internal combustion engine), mankind's ability to extract was curtailed by physical limitations. NOT by moral, ethical, spiritual, philosophical or even commonsensical constraints, mind you. Simply by the fact that before the Industrial Revolution, it was not easy to cut down a whole forest in mere hours, to bore gigantic holes into mountains, to gauge and claw at the Earth (and deep into the oceans) to our heart's content, and so on in our gluttony for its resources.
Sadly, the engine took extraction to new levels, with the disastrous result being that we have now nearly picked the Earth dry, down to the bones, with little signs of us stopping until there is nothing left to pick at. Far from 'mastering' the Earth and Her offerings, the engine has merely increased our capacity to continue extracting from Her until nothing remains.
It is with the second aspect of the engine metaphor, that of a wealth yielding engine that utilizes both the hard work and the desires and aspirations of a robust middle class in order to perpetually (and smoothly and efficiently) hum along, where things get interesting.
First, credit where credit is due. We HAVE in fact benefitted by adopting this metaphor, utilitarian and perhaps even vulgar as it may be.
We have, let's be honest, Henry Ford to thank for this. Perhaps no person in history has so successfully imprinted his own vision upon society. Gutenberg, after all, just wanted to sell a lot of bibles. He wasn't out to change the world. But Henry Ford WAS. And it is truly astonishing just how well he succeeded in doing so.
Let's take a succinct look at his vision and give him a scorecard:
He wanted to create a vehicle for the masses. Check. He wanted to bring the city and the countryside closer together. Check. He wanted to make mass production on assembly lines the standard way that goods were (and still are) produced. Check. He wanted to utilize supply chains so that businesses could succeed at all levels, small to large, and focus on what they were best at. Check. He wanted there to be a door-to-door avenue for large goods to flow, so that people could furnish their homes with washing machines, refrigerators, televisions and so on; thus creating an array of factory jobs for his envisioned middle class workers to fill. Check.
His vision went well beyond this. He wanted all those workers to have enough money in their pockets come payday that they, and not kings and nobility, would 'make the world go round', satisfying their desires via jobs that didn't force them to live paycheck to paycheck and becoming as a result the economic bedrock of society. Check.
The cranky ol' engineer hit it out of the park, he did!
Now, it has to be said that Henry Ford was a flawed person; a rabid antisemite and conspiracy theory peddler. A Nazi sympathizer. Yes, yes and yes. If you hate him, you have reason to. But, like it or not, you live in his world.
The gains we received from this Ford-ian engineering of society are not to be dismissed. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, education has become available to the majority of the world's population, infant mortality has declined precipitously, and so on. Basically all the arguments that proponents of capitalism and industrialism espouse are true. Furthermore, the -at least temporary - extinction of the lords/serfs paradigm of society is something that all of us who are reading this (assuming we are all middle class and benefitted from a decent education) can be grateful for.
But the problems are very real. Not only do they appear in terms of our treatment of the planet and its resources, which go beyond egregious. They also manifest in terms of how the human being, and the very purpose of life, has come to be defined. We live in a society that is deeply, pathologically materialistic to its very core, and it appears to be getting worse.
This is hardly coincidental. When the middle class becomes the 'fuel' by which the engine of Utopia runs, the human being is essentially reduced to an automaton with but two functions to perform: production and consumption. It is the unspoken rule that guides how we teach, raise, entertain and stimulate our children from a very early age. “You are here, biological specimen, to feed the maw. You do this in two ways. First, your labor will be placed into the mechanism of production of goods and services that can they be sold, to others like you. Your friends, family members, coworkers, fellow global citizens, etc. will pay to own the things that you, and millions like you, bring into existence. Second, you will be trained to desire the many things that you and your fellow producers create. You will want the convenient appliances, the vehicles, the educational pedigrees, the vacations, the sports goods, etc. that the production end of the machine cranks out.
Producer and consumer, human. That's what you are. That's the only way you matter to the machine. Everything else is an externality. Even if, perhaps, you wish to cultivate a spiritual dimension to your life, you will find the Machine's encroachment in the form of mega-churches, 'The Secret' and 'The Law of Attraction'. You can't really escape it. In Ford's Utopia, you ARE what you produce and you consume. And failure to do either sufficiently makes you an outcast; a ‘loser'."
To see how this plays out, just think of the conversations you generally hear at places of social interaction, such as a bar or a family gathering: "Johnny's preparing for his law exams" HE HAS BOUGHT INTO THE SYSTEM AND DESIRES TO PRODUCE AT A HIGH LEVEL. "Jenny just bought a Lexus!" SHE HAS CONSUMED WELL. "Bev and Bill took the family to Disneyland!" THEY CONSUMED. "Tom was promoted to Vice President." HE HAS PRODUCED WELL.
"How many of the Oscar nominees have you seen?" WHAT ARE YOU CONSUMING? and on and on it goes. Just think how much conversation essentially boils down to keeping up with each others' production/consumption activities. It is hypnotic.
The great irony of the scene where Neo awakens to the reality of the Matrix and is shocked and appalled by what he sees is that the reality he thought he knew was in fact a Matrix itself. What was he so upset about?
Reducing humans to the utilitarian dual roles of producer/consumer has been an utter disaster on the large scale, as well as leading to specific instances of utter depravity and horror, with The Holocaust, the atomic bombings, Unit 731, Stalin's murderous reign and so on at the absolute nadir of this Hall of Shame (some may wish to add Bhopal in there as well, and I certainly wouldn't object). It has deeply trivialized and utterly dehumanized the way we look at ourselves, and others.
The result: a fixation on materialism and the elevation of money to the world's most powerful religion. Neither of these things had to happen because The European Enlightenment happened. It was one possible path but not the only one. No; it was the adoption of The Engine Metaphor that locked us into the situation we must now extricate ourselves from in order to have any future worth having.
It is time to let go of The Engine Metaphor. Its utility has reached its end. It has become an albatross around our collective necks, and a poison pill inserted into the future. It's The Engine Metaphor or us, in other words. This planet ain't resilient enough for both.
How do we go about this? First, we must develop awareness of its presence in our lives, its infiltration into our language, our politics, our education, our entertainment, and so on. We must challenge its preeminence. When we hear it in the mouths of politicians and business and cultural leaders, we must take issue with it. We have a duty to disagree. They are espousing a worldview that dooms the planet, dooms the human race.
We must make an effort not to support those leaders who are in thrall to this worldview, AND we must make an effort to raise the voices and profiles of those leaders who offer alternatives.
Sadly, among political leaders, these are rare and hard to to find. In the current moment, they are to be found mostly among authors, educators, philosophers, bloggers/podcasters, artists, as well as a minority of scientists (sadly, current science education has been largely coopted by the metaphor, so the majority of working scientists and nearly all engineers and programmers today are engaged in activities that bolster the metaphor; but not all) WHEREVER you find them.
We must continually remind ourselves that we are NOT what we produce and consume. We are as lovable as our dogs and our babies, as beautiful as the flowers in our gardens, NONE of whom we think of primarily in terms of production/consumption. It is amusing to return to the earlier scenes I portrayed of conversations at social interactions. All of our 'What's Tom doing these days?' 'Who is Anne working for?' 'Has Shel found a job yet?' 'How does Samantha like her new car?' yada yada nonsense doesn't apply to them, but what if it did? 'What has Fido produced recently?' 'Has Rover moved into his new house yet?' If we can yank our pets, babies and flowers out of the matrix, we can yank ourselves out of it as well.
Given that we don't think of our dogs, babies etc. in terms of production/consumption, how MIGHT we describe them? As 'beings of love?' Does that sound corny? In fact, isn't that fairly accurate? We have these beings in our lives in order to express love, share love, experience our own best qualities. Why not try to widen this way of looking at the world to include grown adult human beings? We don't necessarily have to love everyone, but it's better than thinking of them as mere cogs in a machine.
Materialism is the prevailing philosophy and money the universal religion of our day. Materialism in the bland, supposedly intellectual belief that 'hey, when you're dead, you're dead; anyone who thinks otherwise is a deluded nutter' attitude and materialism in the belief that having things brings happiness and getting as much as you can for yourself is a worthy life pursuit. It is the stigmata of our culture and it runs on the Metaphor of the Engine.
What are we, really? That is what I think all of us yearn to know, and I further think that is why so many of us find The Engine Metaphor so deeply unfulfilling, because we sense it is hiding that from us.
How shall I put it? Above, I suggested 'being of love', but that was mainly to point out how we subconsciously think of our pets, our small children, and other elements of life that are external to the Engine but give us opportunities to express love.
More accurately, I would describe us thus: we are holistic participants in the theater of life. Holistic, meaning we are ALWAYS participating and every PART of us is participating; NOT just when we are working and being ‘productive', and NOT just our thinking minds.
Is a gorilla less a gorilla when it sleeps? Would not that very concept seem absurd to it? Does it stop mattering then? Does a panther see its identity diminish when it is dreaming and not hunting? Is there anything more panther-esque about the latter than the former? Of course not.
Panthers are ALWAYS panthering and you are always humaning. The difference is that no panther has ever been made to feel guilty for taking a midday nap, and you undoubtedly have, perhaps more times than you can count. What purpose does the guilt serve? Why, to lock you into the Engine Metaphor, of course! Better get busy producing or consuming something, bucko; that's where your value lies!
Holistic Participants in the Theater of Life; is that not it? Life is not an engine and you are not its fuel. Life is an ongoing play, unfolding organically, spontaneously, orgasmically even. And you? You are a fortunate participant in this play. You move with it, dance with it, experiment with it, and most of all play with it (it IS a 'play', after all).
You get to be here watching it unfold and contributing to its unfoldment. How would you like it to be? You get your chance to make it that way, even if only slightly. And not just via your mind. Your limbs, your hair, your breathing, your health and even your illness make you what you are, and add to the spice of the play.
This is not the way that ol' Henry Ford thought of you, or that fuddy duddy Ayn Rand thought of you. It's not how your presidents, prime ministers, mayors and governors think of you. It's not how Dawkins and his merry band of smug atheists think of you. But who cares what they think? First and foremost because they are wrong, and furthermore because why should you give up the opportunity to live life more fully and richly because the 'experts' think they know you better than you know yourself?
So, will we ditch The Engine Metaphor or will it, metaphorically, leave us in the ditch? I can't say I am optimistic. This is a very well entrenched, deeply embedded metaphor that has the added strength of being always able to extol its triumphs as if they were trump cards that inoculate it against any criticism. Did we NOT increase longevity, and radically reduce infant mortality rates? Did we NOT see GDP rise all over the world, freeing billions from crushing poverty? Did we NOT provide education for billions of people for whom, in any other time, illiteracy and indentured servitude would have been their inevitable lots? Right? So how could anyone think to complain about a metaphor that has served us so well? The problem is clearly with THEM and not the metaphor.
What this assessment overlooks is the price that was paid. Essentially, mankind bought a century and change worth of prosperity at the expense of the future prospects of every living creature on Earth. That's quite a price, that is. And it looks steeper when we acknowledge how many hundreds of millions of people suffered throughout this temporary Golden Age, victims of two world wars and countless other conflicts that have raged unceasingly during The Engine Metaphor's primacy. And not by accident: reducing people to utilitarian producer/consumer caricatures makes it easier to dehumanize them and thus justify cruelties inflicted upon them.
So yeah..., although The Engine Metaphor may appear to be a boon to mankind, it is more like a Potemkin village that is beginning to collapse. Which it SHOULD; as I wrote earlier, this Earth isn't big enough, or resilient enough, to sustain both the human race AND the metaphor - but that doesn't mean it WILL. Sadly, there are very few signs that we will ditch the metaphor in time to save ourselves and right our course.
But I am hopeful, because the alternative is disgust and depression, which I reject. Hopeful that more and more people will wake up from the slumber of materialism, pull back their fealty to the god of money, define themselves beyond the societal roles of producer/consumer and re-envision themselves, their lives, the people around them and society itself.
We are Holistic Participants in the Theater of Life. Our ability to love - anything - is our greatest strength, and being given a role in the Play is our greatest gift.
Working and buying are fine, but they are not better than dreaming, laughing, stretching, chatting, making stuff, fascinatedly watching children play or a caterpillar move along a branch, and on and on. Such things are no more externalities than jobs or shopping trips. It's all one thing. And it can be so much better and so much more.
Let's give that to ourselves and to the future, and most definitely, let's give that to Earth. She, who has given us so much.