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Ode to the Ego

Let us rescue the ego, heal it, give it a kiss and allow it to be free: it is not the ego's fault for being so selfish - that is a design constraint imposed by God, or evolution. We understand at a deep, pre-conceptual level that all are one and selfishness is laughable against the larger cosmic backdrop, but we are here on this earth to display our separateness proudly and to inspire others to display theirs. Like vendors in some grand bazaar, hawking our wares, demanding exorbitant prices… 

By nightfall, we will compromise and come together, over tea or a divine glass of wine. Because in the end we are all aspects of that one great divinity and, as such, deserving of equal exultation.

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Loveblow

All the world is now a dream, Its last lucid moments hunted by obscurity. “These will be our final days”, they whisper, Those languid angels of my subconscious. “Gone are the once bright skies, The crystalline fortresses of thought, The sublime punctuality of appearances.”

Replaced by amorphous grey clouds That part unpredictably, revealing Glimmers of light, of hope, Echoes of what once was. Until darkness falls again, Calling me to my grave. All then drenched in muted silence Forever and forever. Vestiges of form and memory Swallowed by time, Our heartless sovereign.

But then a flicker Disrupts that grey obscurity; A memory of you So vibrant in its beauty As to rekindle long-dead embers Of a hearth gone cold with time. You, dancing for the camera, Lonely and intoxicated, Drowning out your sadness In a fit of Turkish song. Your crow’s voice, piercing my defenses, To fill the deep recesses Of my tired, broken heart. Your supple limbs, a thing of beauty, Bending like boughs in the wind, Your skin, like pure mahogany, Dipped in fine essential oils. Defiantly irreverent, As if sadness had not consumed you, As if your heart, like mine, Had not been broken By the cruelty of young love. Even those once-languid angels, Witness to every known defeat, Are enraptured by your return; They too bow before your beauty, As if humbled by a miracle. Death will come again; There is no cure for his insistence. But even he must pause his advance Before the memory of you.

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The Great Goodness

It was all for naught, we thought. Despite mankind’s best efforts, our worst fears had come true: technology had grown exponentially and proliferated to the point where even an idiot could build a bomb or design a virus. Carbon emissions had so polluted the atmosphere that even the most ardent climate change deniers were moving inland. And the troll army had won the day politically, launching the political careers of fascist clowns and full-blown sociopaths from their parents’ basements. 

The empire was falling, and there wasn’t a damned thing any of us could do about it. The adults grew fatter by the second, disappearing into their laptops and smartphones to doom scroll and join patriotic death cults. The children, sexless and uncoordinated, feasted on their parents’ prescription drugs, and when that no longer worked, simply killed themselves outright.

There came a point when people stopped pretending it would all be OK. It spread slowly at first, this creeping despair. It was different from the previous collective malaise, in which denial could still thrive on the remnants of dreams and past successes. No, this new despair grabbed hold of a person completely, extinguishing the last embers of hope from which they mustered their remaining resolve. It seems there is a point at which despair can no longer feed off the collective, and must begin to devour subjectivity itself, ruthlessly, person by person. You watch your friends die before your eyes, their life essences sucked away with every thwarted aspiration. They begin to distance themselves, always for one well-composed reason or another so as not to burden you with their mounting defeats. Then you find out they’re drinking, decaying, dying. Their corpses litter the landscape of your psyche until you finally accept that their demise is a projection. You are the one who is dying. There is no hope. There never was.

That’s about where we all were when it arrived–the Great Goodness, as the kids like to call it. I first sensed it in our backyard, subtly rustling a pile of leaves left to rot by the woodshed. The molecular structure of reality, so drab for so long, felt somehow more vibrant in that one spot, unburdened by the decay that seemed to permeate our new existence. I returned to the spot each day for a reminder of levity, a memory of the way things were in some forgotten past. Within a few days, the other piles of rotting leaves were brimming with the same innate exuberance. From there, it jumped to the bushes and trees, revivifying them one by one before seeping into weeds and unkempt grasses. Before long, the Great Goodness had made its way into our home, enveloping our tools and artifacts and purging them of whatever toxic molecular residue they'd imbibed from their human masters. 

Finally, it entered us. Or perhaps, with our environments now transfigured, our spirits simply molded to the new molecular parameters. Many of us had forgotten what true happiness felt like and we left our houses in search of human corroboration. The neighbors were out, comparing and conferring, repeating their wondrous first encounters with the Great Goodness.

“I first noticed it in our rose bushes. Then the vegetable garden. When it hit me I thought maybe I’d eaten a weird mushroom.”

“My cat brought it into the house. She sat on my lap for hours just staring at me until I felt it too.“

“My grandson was telling me about it for days. Every morning when he woke up and every afternoon when he came home from school he'd say, “Grandma, do you feel it yet?” And now I do.“

���I can feel my daughter’s presence again. She’s right here beside me. You can’t see her but I know she’s here.“

“So much for so little in return. Pure grace. Enough for everyone.“

Each day, the circle of the newly transfigured widened, with neighbors gathering in the street to recount the exact moment of their enlightenment. Some remembered what it was like to be children again before the weighty baggage of their lives had begun to accumulate. Others felt the comforting presence of loved ones who had moved on and were now waiting for them on the other side. Still others were most enchanted by the joy of simply being, present and unadorned, their former anxieties a distant and laughable memory.

"You know, I predicted this,” said a neighbor, grinning from ear to ear. “It was the computers. The AI’s. All they needed was the right goal, the right objective. They’re so much smarter than us, and they’re nano now. They simply reconfigured reality to maximize our happiness. Someone wrote up the right instructions and they did the rest.”

Others gave the credit to God. Or the dawning of a new age. Or the effects of advanced entropy on material reality. There was room now for multiple perspectives, the limitations of each one making the case for the others. It turned out that happiness had nothing at all to do with being right. 

This was our greatest discovery, one we all understood to be the basis of our newfound communal ecstasy: we were all wrong, all broken, and by ourselves, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Fortunately, we weren’t born alone. We had each other. 

Recognizing this fact made even the most cynical among us realize that despite our best efforts to the contrary, there would be a happy ending after all.

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A Walk Through 4 Dimensions (with the unsolicited help of Hector the Humble)

Point

There’s no point.

When you imagine a point, you really imagine a circle, blob, or some other shape with discernible area, however miniscule.

There’s no point because the mind can’t handle a point. Remember this the next time you find your brain screaming and contorting in search of a singular answer. And even if you find one, don’t be surprised if it breaks down on closer inspection. It took Russell and Whitehead 300 pages to prove 1+1=2. 

“God opened the gates of our world to his angels and said, ‘Welcome to paradox, here you shall build a heaven not in my image but your own. Nothing shall be easy here, and if it is, don’t expect it to last.’ ” – Hector the Humble, The Book of Pointless Revelations.

Length & Width

So, let’s expand our horizons, as they say, and make a second point. Ah, that’s better: we now have 2 things, each in relief against the other. “The world is built in pairs of opposites,” said Hector the Humble, before his left testicle was rudely amputated (“that’ll teach you,” said his Pontiff Inquisitor, “to respect singularity like a good Spanish simpleton.”) 

“One can not exist without another,” said Hector, “to set him apart and proffer definition; man, therefore, is incapable of loving himself alone” (a somewhat contradictory assertion considering Hector’s onanistic propensities).

Alas, two points are hardly better than one, for there is no length without width, however miniscule. Imagine a line: if you are honest, you will concede the presence of a second implicit dimension, ontologically perpendicular to the first.

Depth

And so we find ourselves stuck with both length and width, even while struggling for greater simplicity. But what about depth, that cherished attribute so commonly associated with profundity of spirit and richness of insight? At present, it is our position that humans have both depth and no depth at all.

Take the visual plane: all the depth that we see can be represented in two dimensions through the proper application of value (see below). 

Are the other senses equally 2-dimensional, producing only the illusion of 3-dimensionality via olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and tactile trickery? Perhaps. But then consider cenesthesia, that unique blend of corporeal sensations through which we discover our own embodiment... 

Cenesthetically speaking, we do indeed encompass a third dimension: we feel ourselves to be full-bodied, more than a mere flattened surface. In this sense, we are complete.

Therein lies the rub: our bodies are complete; our minds less so.Trapped between dimensions, neither shallow nor profound, we teeter between emptiness and fruition, struggling always to appear whole and unperturbed, lest others perceive our innate insecurity. The lucky narcissists among us, through some accident of birth or acquired defense mechanism, remain blind to their own emptiness. They live deranged but successful lives, steeped in the illusion of their own multi-dimensionality, easily cajoling the self-aware.

“Ignorance is bliss” - Thomas Gray 

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates

"I’d leave the cave but I can’t stand the rain.” – Hector

Time

Dimensions can not exist in isolation, neither physically nor conceptually. Each asserts an essential pull on the others, stretching them into a perceptibly simultaneous becoming according to the underlying laws of some divine mathematics. It is this movement, this transition, from one dimension to the next, that accounts for the dimensions themselves – a movement across space, but also, necessarily, across time, albeit it at a speed far below anything we might consciously recognize. Time – the fourth dimension – is infused in the essential nature of all the other dimensions, yet remains a dimension unto itself.

In the Orphic cosmology, Chronos emerged, self-formed, at the dawn of creation. He is both a God unto himself and an intrinsic part of the fabric of reality. His fate is our own, as each of us stands Chronos-like in relation to our world, all aspects of which only come into being as manifestations of our awareness. The inherent cadence of those manifestations is what we call Time, and when examined closely, it is indistinguishable from the rest of our nature.

“I’ve got all the Time in the world.” – Hector, on his deathbed.

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The Gift of Suffering

The Goddess formed a bed, woven with strands of space and time, and when she was done, laid her body across it, generating all the manifestations of awareness throughout history. Each manifestation was a gift: an individual self, separate from the whole and subject to its own laws; a unique kingdom; a mini godhead. Torn from the Mother, it was destined to suffer, but in so doing was gifted a unique vision of Her incommensurate beauty, which continued unblemished as the new gods aged and decayed. Only in death, they realized, could they approach the enormity of the vision that was their birthright, when they reunited with their broken kin and returned defeated to the Mother, to find her waiting, with open arms and the promise of a new and even more glorious mission.

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All For One and One For All

“God shattered herself into existence, breaking up into many parts, into each of us. Together, through our brokenness, we find one another, complete one another, and build God again here on earth. We get God when we share all, become all. There is no secret key at the top of the mountain that the wise ones find after years of searching, only to leave again, hidden from mere mortals, for other expert sojourners. That isn’t how it works. It’s all for one and one for all, this ill-formed, seemingly Godless existence, and when we learn that lesson we will be complete.” 

– some guy who claimed to be enlightened

It can be despair-inducing to figure it all out, to have that sustained flash of expert insight, to penetrate the secret room, only to realize that the people closest to us can’t understand what we’re saying and won’t take our word for it. We hold on to the insight for as long as we can – a few weeks, maybe a few months if it really penetrated – but it fizzles, yet again, just like the others, and we are left without the heavenly cloak we worked so hard to attain. Embarrassed. Alone. Small. We failed again, and this time on one of the biggest stages of all.

Glimpsing the secrets is delicious. But accepting that our lonely insights fade seems to be the real mark of spiritual maturity. They came to us with the brilliance of springtime, and the world was once again vital, but now they’ve decayed as all lonely things decay. Our brilliance, our transcendence, is dead and we’re exhausted. How can we make our way lacking that pure vitality – the one we discovered and preached about, only to collapse like all the other inflated fools? Better to die, we tell ourselves, perhaps not consciously, but little by little we remove ourselves from the game, go to bed a bit earlier, make less noise, prepare the world to forget us...

We are dying and we are ashamed. So we don’t face, experience, drink in, our death. Dying and denying. 

What would happen if we died consciously, taking in each shattered moment? If we watch, between events, between thoughts, we die. Again and again. No matter how many new processes are spawned, we can’t shake the death.

So, die. Die again. Live your death. Soak it in. Fail. Collapse. Give over. Don’t try. For God’s sake, stop trying.

You may find there is life in death. A little bit at first. In the interior of the despair. Don’t even look for it. Just let go and die. It’s not a challenge. It’s the opposite.

When you return, you may find yourself a little broken. All that failing leaves a mark. Above all, it leaves you afraid of the others. The ones who didn’t listen when you told them about the treasure and the secret key, before you fell, only to find them standing strong and indifferent to all you went through. You had the answers and they rejected you. They didn’t see or care about what you told them. Some mocked you and even savored your humiliation. 

“Hell is other people.” – Sartre

But didn’t we abandon them as well, by escaping to our mountaintops? Aren’t we searching all the time for something better, ignoring and abandoning the ones who love us most? Taking for granted the people who have our backs and support us? Leaving this world in search of God and her glory?

We’re all playing the same game, learning how to appreciate what’s right in front of us.

Every brilliant insight we have alone will be swallowed by death, remorse and despair. Until we learn to share, unselfishly.

All for one and one for all. Until then, enjoy the dying.

“Everyone is in our way. That’s kind of the point” – Hector the Humble

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The Screaming Child

In Matajorca, there lived a baby who screamed louder than a rooster crows. The townspeople, dependent as they were on the rooster’s morning song to awake from their slumber, grew tardy and unreliable. ‘Do not have dealings with the men of Matajorca’, it was said, ‘for they are gravel-eyed and slothful’. 

Matajorca’s travelling fishmongers were the first to suffer. Their herring rotted in stalls and their wives were forced to work, first in the tar pits, and later as gravediggers for the armies of Glaksyuel and Heyr-Both.

One day, the baby’s mother decided to take matters into her own hands. Grabbing her child by both arms, she dared him to scream. When the child obliged, the mother screamed back with such volume and ferocity that the priests of Matajorca fell to their knees in fits of hysterical self-flagellation, convinced that none other than El-Ekhyiel Himself had returned and the Hour of Judgement was at hand.

From that day on, the baby no longer cried loudly. The townspeople regained their respect and Matajorcan commerce thrived.”

(from The Teachings of Hector the Humble, explaining aphorism 796: “Show me a baby that screams and I’ll show you a mother that doesn’t”)