Growing Up Half Asleep

by SIMON P MURPHY

I was raised in a Christian denomination called Roman Catholicism. Despite this influence, I had no understanding of what a religious outlook meant. Frankly, I had no idea I was participating in a religion, nor did I have any idea that I was ensconced in a denomination within that religion. It was just the world around me, like the sky, the grass, and neighbourhood cats.

I did suspect that there was probably something very deep and meaningful behind all of the imagery present in church. There was something inscrutably mysterious about Jesus hanging on the crucifix up behind the altar, his smooth white limbs pinned to beams of wood, his gaze directed steadily toward the sky.

Since I was an attendant of a Catholic church as well as the attached school, I had no formal exposure to other religious or spiritual systems. In a world predating the Internet, my education was limited to the school library. My world was fairly closed in that regard. There was no competition for explanations of the world.

I have no doubt that you would find this kind of cloistered childhood environment, accidental or premeditated, represented in nearly every religious tradition of the world. The closed nature of this education was not unique to any form of Christianity. From the earliest age, I felt a calling to deeper understanding that I find difficult to express in words.

That a faith should outgrow its parent religion now seems to me as natural as that love should outgrow the bonds of its limitations. This is why Buddhism has an image of using a raft (symbolizing methods, techniques, and religious instruction) to cross to the other shore, only to let the raft go once it has served its purpose.

There was a hymn that resonated with me in childhood. It presented the imagery of leaving one’s boats behind on familiar shores, and setting the heart across the deep. This metaphorical imagery was profound to me in value. It was one of the first times I felt the pull of mysticism hidden amongst the ordinary. I realised even from within the confined structure of Roman Catholicism there was suggestion of something so deep and valuable that even that which was conventionally accepted would need to be left behind in order to come into contact with that which was true.

It was like a crack of mystical light shining though the otherwise banal woodwork. This is a theme that would follow me for decades, and an attitude of reverence and mystery that accompanied me into my much later readings in the Buddhist tradition, where I started to learn more about the role and function of an authentic teaching. Such a teaching doesn’t exist purely in and of itself – in order to close the circle, it requires one who is ready and willing to attend the lesson, to listen with every fibre of one’s being as though one’s soul was filled with nothing but eyes and ears.

I would like to share two significant spiritual experiences from childhood that suggest to me that the there is a universality in divine symbology, comprehensible even to a child instructed in limited ways. It may also point to prior existences or learnings. In any case, the point I would like you to remember is that my spiritual education was limited to the mythology presented in Christianity, specifically the version espoused by the Roman Catholic Church. I didn’t even know there were alternative views. That was the cultural framework with which I had to understand what I heard, read, saw and experienced as a child.

I did, however, have television.

There was a critical moment in an animated movie I watched. I believe my age would have likely been four or five. I never usually knew what was happening in movies because I have never had a particularly good attention span. What happened in this movie was that a young boy was stabbed by a sword at sea, on a boat. His lifeless body fell into the water, surrounded by ribbons of red blood. I remember this scene filling me with such a deep sadness as I related to the boy, wondering what it would mean to me and my family if such a thing were to happen to me.

A later scene toward the end of the movie showed the opening of the petals of a flower, and inside was a baby. I had no idea what the movie was about, but I understood intuitively at that moment that this same boy had been reborn into a new form. I suddenly knew the heart of reincarnation without terminology, instruction or cultural framework. It was as clear as watching a new dawn, or hearing the clear peal of a bell. It is difficult to describe what arriving at such an understanding is like, particularly when there is no pre-existing spiritual or religious framework to assimilate the experience. It was, and still is, one of the most profound and spiritually resonant experiences of my life.

The other experience was also due to watching a movie, in this case ‘The Dark Crystal’ on television on Christmas Eve. I believe I may have been between five and six years old. From the opening credits of that movie, I was utterly engaged and entranced. It was as though some vital instructions from the distant past had been set up to examine everything that was to follow in full awareness.

Again, lacking any of the framework which I now see clearly laid out in other traditions, I came across a profound experience of what seemed a soul-level comprehension. As the movie concluded, there was presented what I now recognise as the very distinctively Eastern, very substantially deep Advaitic notion that the duality present in the world expressed in the polarity of good versus evil is actually due to a vital division at the core level of our being.

Insofar as childrens’ movies are concerned, we were typically fed on the standard narrative about the battle between the forces of good and evil, with good always prevailing, and any other result being a kind of sacrilege or a cause for nihilistic despair. The message of ‘The Dark Crystal’ was categorically different, and it left me speechless – really in a state of what I would describe as transcendent awe.

It wasn’t preaching the usual polarity of good versus evil, it was suggesting that the reason there was even a split into this apparent duality was due to a fundamental wound, a core separation. It was further suggested that the healing of this rift not only collapsed the apparent duality of good and evil, but restored to its natural state that which was itself neither intrinsically good nor evil, but whole and therefore inclusive of every possible expression.

Now, I could never hope to explain this to anyone as a child, because I didn’t have the words, only the realisation – but the understanding of the concept of nonduality had shaken me to my core. I believe these two experiences were necessary to awaken me to a lifelong gravitation toward the mystical traditions in which I found gentle directions homeward to that which can never be satisfactorily expressed in words.

There is a point of spiritual maturity at which we forego our preoccupation with good and evil and begin to level our gaze toward wholeness and completion.

It is the stamp of a parent’s spiritual integrity that they give their child permission to find their own path to the truth. To fail to do so speaks to a level of relative immaturity. I had many childhood friends who were home-schooled because their parents did not want their intended course of development to be affected by alternate viewpoints or ‘negative influences’. For the most part, those friends were successfully indoctrinated into adulthood views resembling the closed and limited views of their parents.

I remember well the rationale woven into the mindset across families at the time. It was always some form of: ‘we have been reassured that our views are correct, because the word of God as presented in the Bible is infallible, therefore we reserve the right to override our childrens’ choices and freedoms on the authority of superior access to knowledge. The value of this is that we are only sparing them from error in advance, since any movement away from the path will be error, so in restricting their freedoms we are actually giving them the highest service of love and care’.

Only a lack of faith and a disrespect for human freedom would insist on a child’s staying put in a servitude of blind devotion. Yes, these parents love their children and want what is best for them. This is not a guarantee that they are seeing clearly. Even when superficial systems of inquiry are promoted, one is encouraged to arrive at the ‘right’ answer. Perhaps the reason that fundamentalist religion in every form the world over is so offended by the principle of evolution by natural selection is not so much that it removes the role of a creator, but more that it implies that some form of change might be central to the function of reality.

What could offend a fundamentalist religion more? It consists of an ideology of belief structures which are so fragile, and are up against the weight of the entire universe which is a spiritual masterclass in change itself. Such an ideology is dead and fixed, not fluid and alive, and the significance of this is that you have to work with a system that is completely incongruent with the fabric of reality. This is why those systems of belief must be endlessly promoted and reinforced through indoctrination (our ideas must be right, discard your objections), evangelism, browbeating and wrongheaded pressure to procreate.

Imagine being told that you should morally be bringing another life in the world just as another vector for ignorance and unconsciousness to survive in some form. The value of that life is not intended to be a loving celebration of life and freedom, but a pawn of flesh and bone. It is a powerful trance indeed that would convince a parent to bear children with the lowest, most shadow-enshrouded motivations and still dress it up as obedience and sanctity. To forbid abortion is a perversion of the same reasoning.

Which is not say that such a tradition cannot be composed of beautiful, kind-hearted people, and genuinely loving families. I have found such people in all walks of life. These people are often natural mystics. The knowing of divine truth is not upended by any religious or doctrinal brutality inflicted upon them. Perhaps they can only have continued to survive under such conditions because they have found the means by which their souls find nourishment from within. Perhaps they are divinely called to serve in such dark corners of the world to support similar growth in others.

I remember meetings in which people who had decided to leave were renounced. Different members of the church would have the opportunity to voice what they believed were the persons shortcomings as a Christian and a church member, and I remember feeling that there was a great sense of fortitude amongst the church, establishing who they were defined as, as opposed to who they were not. The ostracizing of the outgroup is in the same movement the building up of the in-group, and everyone felt very cohesive, righteous and proud.

This is a clear example of the ego’s masterful illusion of seeking to establish a sense of unity through separation, or other-making. It may look cosy on the surface, but it is poisonous. This is because in exchange for the precarious sense of cohesion it affords, it demands a human sacrifice. The same thing is ubiquitously present in modern social politics. You are cajoled by your peers to throw the least of your brothers under the bus so that you can feel a fleeting sense of unity.

It is said that the devil’s greatest trick was to convince mankind that he did not exist. I do not think this is very clever at all, and I would have to admit that I think the devil would be far more nefarious in his approach. I think it would be more accurate to suggest that the greatest trick the devil could ever play would be to so convince people that they are on the side of truth, good and righteousness, that they are prepared to close their hearts and minds to those who occupy perspectives different from their own.

The people who either left the church group or were excommunicated were openly decried and generally not tolerated to be spoken to again by other members, even though most remained committed to the Catholic faith. You will find the same blindness in groups the world over, religious or otherwise.

We aren’t talking about good versus evil, right versus wrong. We are talking about educational levels not being universally applicable. And no, I am not claiming that one life philosophy or religious tradition is kindergarten whilst another represents university. My experience has been that wherever you find yourself, in whichever time or space, you will unfailingly find the highest level of education available to you, as befitting your needs.

I believe the syllabus of these educational needs are often far more complex and occluded than we are privy to at the human level. I would never assume someone is either unsophisticated or indifferent to their soul’s education because they adhere to one system versus another, nor would I assume another to be advanced for the same reasons.

Both fools and wise men wear exceptionally convincing disguises in this world.

One of the most prolific theologians of the west, Thomas Aquinas, was an example of a prodigiously educated mind who speculated on the nature of the divine for a lifetime. By some, he is seen as a sainted father of the Catholic faith, a Church Doctor and master theologian whose work is mentioned in the same breath as Aristotle and Plato. Others, particularly those of a more mystical than philosophical persuasion, might be inclined to say that such a person may have been little more than a windbag for most of their life.

Towards the end of his life, however, Aquinas effectively retracted his theological views. He indicated that nothing he had said about anything had touched upon the truth and that all we could know about the divine could not be formulated in words, and in doing so, he took a vow of silence that reputedly lasted the remainder of his life.

I have come across few consistencies in this strange universe, but one of them is that all things contain at their core a valuable lesson, whether a relationship, a miracle, an illness, a disaster, a birth or a death. The opportunity to learn (or unlearn) is never absent. Another is that all things are in a state of constant flux – everything that arises will also pass away. The third is that there is no situation in which waking up to your true nature is anything but beneficial.

You may not like it, you may not be ready for it yet, you may not want it at all – but the path of awakening to truth and setting foot on the path of the Dharma can only bring medicine to the soul.

You could assemble a symposium of the brightest minds on the planet arguing why a plant shouldn’t thrive on sunlight, but this would not impact one single plant’s most fundamental requirement for sunlight. Waking up to your true nature is no different. You can wake up in a church, a mosque, a kindergarten or a psychiatric hospital. There is no prescription for what that should look like, or how that should pan out over the course of that lifetime.

In my own experience, it has been a little like the mind over the course of a lifetime was caught within an artificial hurricane in a cylinder with a separate person in the middle being hit by thousands of chunks of debris hurtling around at tremendous speed.

The noise and chaos force you to cringe, cower and spend your time covering your most sensitive areas, including of course your eyes. You might think such a situation would be like hell, but if you didn’t know any different for 20 or 30 years, it would just be assumed that that was the way things are. Then one day, in some unpredictable and graceful moment out of time, the power to the hurricane machine is suddenly switched off. It just happens – you didn’t do it.

Then, all of the debris that has been flying around punishing you and attacking you loses its momentum and falls to your feet. What would you think, or feel, or conclude if that happened to you? There are no accurate words here. We have all had this revelation to some degree, it is just a matter of how it has caught your attention. You tend to notice it very clearly if you have been involved in turbulent suffering and discord. Other times it will just casually drop in uninvited.

The point is, once you settle into what this realisation has to offer, everything changes. Your entire outlook of reality changes, from the ground up. Now you are looking at a world that was not designed to cause you suffering. How could that even be possible?

You change by degrees at the very centre of your mind and your heart, with no effort on your part, only a willingness and an availability. All of those vulnerable and sensitive areas of your body (yes, including your eyes) are no longer in danger, and so inch by inch, you begin to trust that you can correct your posture of cowering and uncover your eyes. Now what does the world look like?

You are tasked with the discovery of something of critical importance in this world.

I will continue to be drawn to the Sun-like beauty of truth until breath leaves this body. I will continue to explore the depths the great teachers pointed to, even if only through the silence of my being. Beyond that, I neither need nor ask for knowledge, because the light they speak of, the same light I speak of, is unmistakably present here and now. Place your trust in what is real, that which echoes through the halls of your being. You can be very surprised by reality, even shocked, but you cannot be led astray by it.

Hold this lightly as you place a foot into the darkness.

The supreme intelligence inseparable from us is not here to brutalise us into compliance. Only we do that to ourselves, and we are consummate masters at it. It makes no difference which religion or lack thereof someone tells you they are. See the one who comes before you.

As the philosopher Douglas Harding put it so eloquently, to lack divinity is to lack being. This love that is here does not play by the rules we humans have set up – exclusion, denial of affection to manipulate, conditional love. This misunderstanding, this ignorance, is the source of the majority of self-created psychological suffering.

There are at least two things I know would be wrong for me to accept. Firstly, it is that there is anyone in the universe we should harden our hearts to, anyone who is not merely a messenger of the divine in a clever disguise. To accept this would be wrong-minded to me.

The second is that there is anything worth grasping onto for dear life, anything however true or noble, that is not ultimately worth letting go of into the ocean of Truth. Beautiful as they may be, they are all fingers pointing to the moon. They are all contrived means and methods of directing one home to reality.

Liberation isn’t partial, and it isn’t locked away in some imaginary future heaven for nice or obedient people – it is fully here, now, present and ongoing. We only come to it by meeting our present conditions fully and unreservedly. It is there for the just and unjust, the pure and impure. If it wasn’t, what would support reality? Upon what foundations would the universe rest?

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles from 2021 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). Compilations of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Loser Syndrome

As Western society continues to collapse, the psychological health of Westerners continues to worsen. As it does, the rate of Loser Syndrome increases, which is the main reason why there’s so much visible trashiness in society today. This essay looks at the causes and effects of this phenomenon.

Loser Syndrome can be found wherever a person has a negative effect upon their social environment because of a weak psychological makeup. Losers are those who cause their family, community or nation more problems than they solve, usually because of a shitty attitude that makes them refuse to put their ego aside long enough to make any positive contribution to anyone else’s life.

It’s not fair to call people losers if they were born with genetic conditions or if they were abused or neglected as children and left with traumatic stress disorders. Such people may be unlucky, but they’re not necessarily losers, as they are still fully capable of entertaining the gods through striving to overcome their conditions. The loser does not strive to overcome; true Loser Syndrome can be understood as a psychospiritual phenomenon.

There are two aspects to Loser Syndrome.

The first is giving up on life. This involves rejecting the reality about life and its temporary nature. The loser has no ambitions apart from vague power fantasies. He mumbles, doesn’t make eye contact when talking, disrespects people, and generally lowers the tone of any environment he’s in. His eyebrows are either knotted in a surly scowl or relaxed in a dimwit gaze. He has surrendered.

Some losers are narcissistic enough to dress and groom themselves well, but give themselves away both through body language and through a child-like solipsism that makes them act as if they were alone in the world (a.k.a. Main Character Syndrome). A predilection for destruction over creation is typical of someone who has given up. As such, Loser Syndrome acts like a cancer in the wider social body, preventing it from thriving.

The second, and most important aspect, is an expectation that others will also give up on life. Anyone who tries hard to achieve something, anyone who strives, is sneered at and ripped down by those afflicted by Loser Syndrome. They would rather that everyone else sink to the lowest level of society, and become like them.

If the loser themselves cannot be venerated, no-one can. So anyone who venerates someone else has to be torn down. Such is the viciousness and depth of the resentment that Loser Syndrome is fuelled by. Those with it are always unhappy to see other people do well. The successes of their friends and family bring them no joy. In fact, such successes can often create further resentment.

Herein it’s clear that Loser Syndrome is a slave morality. Like the other slave moralities, Loser Syndrome lifts up the lowest and most execrable (other losers) and pushes down the honourable and the good (non-losers). The more society hates you, the more the loser likes you, and vice-versa.

If misery loves company, so does trashiness.

To some extent, Loser Syndrome and trashiness are similar things, however Loser Syndrome is unique for its aggression. Many trashy people are happy-go-lucky, whereas the genuine loser strives mightily to take everyone else down. Anyone happy, especially if they’re happy about themselves, has to be attacked.

In this sense, Loser Syndrome can be conceptualised as an advanced form of trashiness, in the same way that psychopathy is an advanced form of narcissism. Trashiness can be fun and light-hearted, but Loser Syndrome is a pathological intensification of trashiness that emanates low vibrations. Normal people can have trashy friends, but they can’t have loser friends, because those losers will either rip the Normies down or find a reason to turn on them.

Unfortunately for us, increasing economic pressures mean that Loser Syndrome is predicted to become more common.

The harsher the economic climate becomes, the fewer people get to enjoy a dignified standard of living, which means the more resentment exists. When inequality reaches such a degree that those born without talents see no hope of climbing the ladder, the destructive intent characteristic of Loser Syndrome will fully explode.

Loser Syndrome is ultimately a social contagion that is emblematic of collapse. No-one in authority seems to give a shit, so why should anyone else? Unfortunately, when someone does start giving a shit, and drives the losers out, chances are they will be an authoritarian psychopath who causes tremendous collateral damage. The loser, therefore, is the harbinger of widespread suffering.

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The Path Of Self-Inquiry

There may arrive a point in many of our lives where we begin to feel a natural, indwelling sense of encouragement to question the nature of our lives. I don’t mean that in the traditional sense of reflecting upon who we are and where we are heading with our partners, career and so forth – although that certainly can be a part of it.

Really what I am talking about is looking at is the nature of the entire worldview that we have inhabited, and what is has meant for us to occupy our place within it. Our beliefs, our judgments, our compulsions, neuroses and habits – what has it all meant? Why have we done the things we have, and where did our investment in energy take us along the way?

Self-inquiry in some form or another is often the precursor to great shifts in our understanding, not only of ourselves, but also the way in which we view reality, and ultimately how we move through the world.

Self-inquiry could take the form of ‘something in my life needs to change’. It could derive from a sense of overwhelming dissatisfaction. When I am talking about this line of inquiry, I don’t mean how we can be bigger, better, or different versions of ourselves. Personalities are already very much engaged in this kind task at any given time, so we aren’t talking about that aspect of reflection.

What is however revolutionary in our inner world is to begin to question that which has been fundamental to our entire way of operating.

Changing a partner, a name, or a profession is a little bit like swapping out one pair of shoes for another. We are not talking about touching upon a superficial change. The task of self-inquiry questions in a way that does not emerge from any of assumptions about getting somewhere else, being someone else. It centres its focus on pursuing a clear and direct understanding of the way things are. This is not a relative understanding – how we think they should be, or how they were, but how they actually are right now – in other words, what is actually real?

Who am I really, when all of this personal history with all of its various wants and habits falls by the wayside?

Some people will not feel any clear pull to do this. There are some people who are compelled to do so even from an early age, and even when it was far from comfortable to do so. This inquiry is not necessarily outward – asking our parents or teachers, for example. It is more that is a very direct inner experience of questioning in which we hold in a light of unremitting scrutiny, again, not to look better or to feel better – but to actually know.

The renowned Indian sage Ramana Maharshi famously likened self-inquiry as being like a stick used to stir the embers of a fire. The stick of ‘who am I?’ would stir the hot coals, and in doing so, would itself catch fire and eventually be burned away. This analogy demonstrates something important about the nature of the self-inquiry process – it isn’t really about the power of our answers, but the power of our questions. What is energetically real within those questions does not remain for us as psychological form, but is reclaimed by the truth.

Nothing is perhaps a clearer sign of awakening than the falling away of questions.

When there is any confusion inside us about the nature of things or our true identity, there is usually a persistent sense of being unsettled. Whether we give voice to this confusion or not, there is a yearning for closure that has a way of gnawing at us internally.

Usually, the response for this kind of disturbance or discomfort is some form of going along with a temporary distraction as an analgesic. Making the sense of discomfort going away can work temporarily by any number of methods. Some people do things as simple as ride a bike, watch a movie or listen to the radio in the car.

In other more acute forms, the disturbance of unresolved energies can lead to more dysfunctional patterns. Once you begin to look in earnest upon your inner world, you will begin to see how much of your strange behaviour, built upon years of habit, has been recruited and held in place just to manage certain persistent kinds of unpleasant feelings. My experience has been that in any case in which we experience painful or uncomfortable inner states, we are really being presented with an issue being brought to our attention that asks for closer examination.

Sometimes, the path of inquiry can appear relatively simple. We might have had one feeling haunting us for years when all it was really asking of us was to be looked at once, only to dissipate.

This is not altogether that rare, and it is something I have observed first-hand.

It can be a strange experience waking up into the next moment, only to no longer think or feel something that you might have been unwittingly committed to for decades. Understanding can be a very quick or gradual process of uncovering layers of error. Mostly it is some combination of both. We aren’t problem solving, or committing our inner world to any kind of rigorous psychoanalysis. We are starting out by just looking in the energetic direction the question is coming from.

Do we want to be a bigger, better ‘me’, or do we want to meet the truth with our entire being? Sometimes these confusions and questions carry an immeasurable power behind them. This is why the negative effects we experience from some unresolved questions can seem so turbulent.

Usually the question ‘who am I?’ being the basic question of identity has an enormous momentum, because the reality is that we have either discovered who we truly are and we have stopped seeking, or we haven’t and we’re left unsure.

There’s an enormous amount of energy that can be tied up in this question. Strangely enough, this can also be one of the reasons people are so terrified of dying (specifically our ideas about what death might be), because they don’t know who they are yet, and they feel an extraordinary compulsion issuing from within for them to find out before it is too late.

It is a grand irony that the one thing that is asking you to stop for one moment in total stillness, also happens to be very same the force within us prompting our frantic searching in all directions.

Have you ever had the thought occur to you ‘Imagine what I would get done in life if I no longer had to worry about this?’ It is very much like that. What the process of self-inquiry is doing for us is freeing up our energy so that we can really get on with this task of living, and not persist in driving with our brakes on.

My own experience has shown that the most powerful of these questions have been, for me: ‘who am I?’ and ‘what is actually true?’ The form your own questions take will vary, but choose whatever you feel resonates as the most important and meaningfully worded line of inquiry for you.

There are no predetermined answers here – a volume of written answers would not be worth one true revelation within you, however small. It is critically important that you meet this inquiry, whatever the result, in the privacy of your own heart. After all, the benefit of the authenticity of this intimate process is that you are not taking anything for granted. In this inquiry, no reference is being made to what anyone else has taught you or imposed upon you. You are a free agent.

If the will is pure, and you will know the degree to which you seek truth for its own sake, you will happen upon whatever is most important for your own unfolding.

In what we call spiritual affairs, there is no truth so certain and universal that is justified asking someone to believe on your behalf. It simply doesn’t work this way.

This is illustrated in the Chan tradition (the Chinese origin of the Zen tradition) in the following way: to have a piece of knowledge as a belief or a commitment is like someone giving you a cup of tea. You could be anyone, holy, righteous, high ranking – if you had the tea given to you, you could show everyone else that you had the tea, and bring it out any time you wanted. However, having the tea is not the same as tasting the tea – if you have not tasted it, then you haven’t connected with the real value in having it.

All true spiritual revelation comes to us by way of tasting the tea. Many people insist on believing things they have never experienced that have simply been bequeathed to them by other people they once placed their trust in, whether it was friends, family or cultural institutions.

If someone attempted to tell you who you were, in the closest, most exact definition possible in your native language, that would still get you nowhere. You would maybe have a nice definition, and you would run around reproducing that definition as a thought form. It might even change your life in all kinds of ways, but it would never be the truth. In self-inquiry, we’re not after mixing things up in our life, we are after a revelation of truth. Therefore, we have to meet it directly, or not at all.

This process can seem intimidating for a number of reasons, the first of which is that we have erroneously been led to believe that the unknown is always dangerous, and therefore to be avoided. The second reason, whether we are aware of it or not, is that our sense of psychological survival is tied up in who we believe ourselves to be as a conglomeration of memories, thoughts, beliefs and identities imposed by ourselves as well as others.

When these are met with challenge, this arouses within us a kind of existential fear. In the realm of self-inquiry, both of these fears are unfounded. They really are phantoms of conditioning. Of course, it will not help you to believe that, but I hope this at least gives you a sufficient nudge of encouragement to brave the first meeting with yourself.

You will not disappear, die, or be possessed by evil spirits.

The only thing that is real in us is what has been here all along, so know that you will not be facing anything that cannot be met fully. The ground of being is a little like a universal safety net. You’re not going to lose ‘you’, but you likely have entertained very distorted ideas of who ‘you’ were thanks to our collective enculturation. You may arrive upon a very different understanding of who you are, but you are only going to find more of what is real inside there, not less of it.

Who you are is something that is not an idea. It is not encapsulated by ideas. The only things that can fall away are illusory. Because what is real in us is very powerful, it is also prone to misunderstanding. When you come upon it, it is likely to surprise you. Sometimes losing our psychological definitions can be sudden, dramatic and unsettling, but more often than not, the alterations are more gradual, nuanced and bring with them a sense of having weight taken off your shoulders.

These moments of realisation, even when they are small, carry the quality of having woken from a troubling dream.

Likely everyone has had the experience of being asleep, fully convinced that something very complex, involved and stressful was happening, only to realise upon awakening that actually this wasn’t true at all – you were dreaming the whole thing. Waking up from the dream of personal identity is much the same type of experience. Don’t take anyone’s word for it – go and discover this all for yourself. You will not regret it.

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

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Dear FaceBook: A Break-Up Letter

Dear FaceBook,

we’ve had 15 years together and I feel that this is enough. It’s time to go our separate ways. I feel that a separation is the true desire of both of us. The way I see it is, I’m going up, and you’re going down, and the tension is too great to keep us together any longer.

When I opened my FaceBook account, in 2007, you were the coolest thing out there. One big problem with life before then: you could make great friends through, say, a mutual acquaintance, and then those friends would go back overseas and you’d lose contact with them. A network that a person could use to stay in touch with these people was the perfect thing for a then-university student.

I can still remember how much fun those early days were. Back then, everyone I met through you was cool. You seemed to only know cool and interesting people: the talented and the educated. In 2007, if some random commented on a friend’s post, that random was probably someone worth knowing too. A FaceBook account was a gateway to a world of great people.

But over the years, I saw your standards fall and fall.

The first sign was the televisionisation. The prospect of money from the advertising guys seemed like a drug for you – you were hooked instantly. Suddenly there were ads everywhere, in between the quality posts from intelligent people. Ads, ads, ads, ads. Everywhere.

Then the quality pages started to get throttled. The great awakening/conspiracy pages started to reach far fewer readers. And then the mainstream media started to muscle in. Soon there were “Recommended” posts that were all mainstream media content. Just the same mainstream media content that I stopped watching television in order to avoid!

The worst thing, though, was the bannings. Why ban me for making Hitler jokes? Were you worried about losing advertisers? Eventually a person could get banned for anything on FaceBook. It was a simple matter of making a joke that the Filipino moderators on $1/hr didn’t approve of, and wham – banned.

It seems to me like you care more about money now than information quality, which is the exact opposite of the spirit of the Internet. The old FaceBook, which was full of groups of subject matter enthusiasts sharing expert knowledge, is gone. The great meme pages have been censored into oblivion. Now it’s just ads and low-IQ drivel.

Now, every pissed-off loser is on FaceBook, crying about stupid shit that I don’t care about. All the scientists and philosophers are long gone. By today, 2022, you are filled up with trash, worse than television ever was. I’m more likely to get death threats through FaceBook than invites to a good party.

In fact, many of the worst people I know I have met through you.

This is a complete turnaround from 15 years ago. Back then, it was the people in my physical environment who were rough and trashy, and online life gave me a chance to get away from them, and to meet a higher quality of person. But now that I’m getting older, getting more accomplished, earning more respect, the people in my physical environment are fairly decent. The people I meet through you though… ‘rough and trashy’ only begins to describe it.

It seems like all the quality people no longer have FaceBook accounts and spend time elsewhere. And it’s not just me who thinks this. Your reputation is in tatters. People now call you ‘FaecesBook’ without any irony, and, worst of all, you show no sign of any intention to change the direction in which you’re going. That’s what tells me that we now have to go our separate ways.

I’ve enjoyed the entertainment you have given me. I have had some good laughs over the years, winding up tards and debating politics with normies. But you’ve shown me that you’re going downwards and have no wish to change course. So this letter is to give you notice that I am deleting my FaceBook account. Best of luck to you in sorting yourself out.

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