The current opportunity we find ourselves faced with is the chance to
reclaim that which is true from amidst the vast wasteland of that which
has hitherto been claimed as true in falsehood. All of it – all the
rubbish and the refuse of centuries that has weighed us down. If not now,
when? Is there really going to be some better time, or a better
opportunity somewhere down the line to reclaim who we truly are
from amongst the ashes?
You might sense that there is a kind of timer within you. Perhaps you
sense that you are nearing the end of a great cycle that can no longer
be sustained. Or, you may simply feel saturated with the mental and
emotional litter of the world and know intuitively that this dimension
in its present perceived state has taken you about as far as it can
take anyone.
No one is winning any ideological wars, and even those
who seemed to have were either usurped or soon may be. Where does it end?
Are you still awaiting an external conclusion that would end this charade?
Maybe the timer is already going off for you, and the very real sense
that there must be something meaningful beyond all of this cyclical,
fleeting and ultimately dissatisfactory realm is making itself known
to you at very visceral level. The arising of inner questions such as
‘what is the point?’ Or ‘where is all of this leading to?’ are such
markers of reaching a phase in which you signal your readiness for
change to the universe.
This change is reclamation.
It is far less important to apply some kind of conceptual overlay or
philosophical modelling to your existence than it is to broach some
very serious inner questions.
So why has everything we have tried, personally and collectively,
yielded such unimpressive results? How can it be that our human
endeavours have put men on the moon and robotic rovers on far distant
planets, but we haven’t solved simple problems of basic human suffering?
Why do we still drive ourselves and each other to death and madness
in the name of a quick buck, or a belief system? How is it that instead
of having a clear understanding of who we are, we reinvent all of
these absurd modalities of self-identification over and over again?
Me, the one who adheres to this political system. Me, the one who
has been shaped by my circumstances into a victor (or a victim). Me,
the one who got it all right, me, the one who got it all wrong. Me,
the one who has just the right answers at the right time. Me, the one
who has mastered the ability to reason with myself and others. Have
you entertained the possibility that this is all just a story, mere
narrative pressed into the service of self-torture or as an exercise
of egoic masturbation? The conquests, the victories, the shortcomings,
the failures.
What if the reason your world looks like trash is
because you thought white was black and black was white?
Do the people who love you give you something you don’t have? Do the
people who dislike you threaten to take something from you that is real?
Are you caught in ‘your’ story? If the story belongs to someone,
who is this one to whom the story belongs? Are you a character in your
own personal movie, novel or fairy tale?
These questions are all very worth your time, particularly if you don’t
have any clarity around what is real. The test for whether you don’t
have a clear understanding of what is real is already known to you – it
is whether you are still actively searching for something. Really, anything. Material, spiritual, intellectual – it makes no difference. It is the religion of ‘the next big thing’, that which is always coming, but never arrives.
This is goal-driven, seeking behaviour, even if you never go outside of yourself (introverted ‘spiritual’ types are some of the most notorious and imperturbable seekers). If you are, that implies forward momentum into the world, an attempt to manipulate it toward your own ends. The whole project of ego has been an expeditionary foray into the false, with the hope of bringing back something that so glitters that it will make us gods.
Alright, so what has been tried before? What hasn’t?
What has been tried before is: everything under the Sun. Don’t you think
if there was some miraculous solution that would save us one person in
history would have somehow found it and made it work? Remember those
people who were so certain they had the answer that they gave every atom
of their entire life in service to it, and it even changed whole countries,
political systems, saved some people killed others? Even that level
of extreme devotion must meet death, because it is up against the
universe itself.
So what exactly is it that hasn’t been tried that would
terminate our restless seeking? Is the answer to that collective or
personal? Both? We also know that simply giving up in frustrated cynicism
isn’t the solution either, because how often has that been tried to no
effect?
People don’t see just how simple and straightforward it is to let go of
all of this. People fail to see how such a simple factor as their agreement
could command such a range of effects. Stories within stories of
victimhood and blame, resentment, judgment. These are all chains we
happily wear while we pace around our cages. We are so eagerly invested
in this crap that we even volunteer to check that what is keeping us
caged and chained is in good working order. The locks are well oiled,
the bars are secure so that no one will be making it in or out. We make
for very well-behaved and cooperative animals in a very bad zoo.
Even the rebels and dissidents are all a welcome part of this infernal
machine, because every role contributes something by way of rendering
the meaning of a collective narrative, from the saints and sages to
the corporate elite.
If it was all doom and gloom, we likely would have come out of the
collective illusion by now. The difficulty is that we have found ourselves
in a set of conditions in which our restraints and limitations are the known
and familiar, and as uncomfortable and restrictive as they may sometimes
be, they provide us with a miserable sense of comfort, security and
reassurance. In other words, the comforts of the known offer protection
against the presumed horrors of the unknown.
Being fitted with collar and chain, being broken is the perennial solution the world offers against that which is claimed to be evil in advance of any serious inquiry.
Let’s go back to what hasn’t been tried before. The thing that hasn’t
been tried before is the thing you probably haven’t ever even thought
about attempting. Stopping. Seeing what is actually here contrasted
with what the world has offered you as temptation to keep up a mindless
forward momentum. Have you tried stopping for one real moment? Does
your body know what it feels like to do anything other than run toward
the next day, the next moment, the next imaginary milestone? You’ve
actually been so afraid of even looking at it that you built an
entire human lifetime, including the complex structures of a human
personality to avoid facing it.
Don’t settle for being comfortable in the familiar. It isn’t what you think
it is! Don’t settle for being reassured, for having security. Remember this
is what has been tried before, this is the old reliable that keeps
spouting more and more crap year after year. The world has offered
you a phoney promise of comfort to secure your tacit agreement to not
look, to not go snooping behind the curtain. Comfortable is
self-reinforcing. This is the same phenomenological expression in effect as
nepotism or cronyism – keeping the devil you know in power to
guarantee more of the same.
In a very real sense, to discover that which is new to you means to
effectively guarantee that you will be shaken, disturbed – maybe even
wiped out.
If you are utterly fed up with the bullshit of this world, and you
will know it, you will arrive at a sense of determination which,
if you touch upon it, will provide you with the tenacity and wherewithal
to push beyond the known limitations of comfort and security in each
new moment. You will know what that entails when you need to know,
because you will be fed from the source of that from which all truth
springs.
Dissatisfaction with the false feeds hunger for the truth. At some point,
more variegated or refined falsity will cease to appease you. How
many times can you be lied to before you are willing to question where
your allegiance should lie? How much bullshit (from yourself or others)
would you be willing to put up with in order to defend your tenuous stake
in the ground?
The name of this game is reclamation. Reclaiming the truth of who you
are from the tentacles of the false world in which it has so long been
wilfully trapped. What is at stake is your inner transformation, the
thing that has been waiting to happen for time immemorial.
What happens when the small things that used to bother you don’t do so
anymore? That notion may even provoke a fear response in you. But then
what about the big things? You might not even know who you are anymore,
or who you thought you could be. Your entire perceived world could
change, even turn inside out. That could actually be the psychological
end of your world as you know it. Does that sound frightening? Who or
what is it that is frightened? Is it you (as in the real you) or ‘you’
from the perspective of the configuration in which the way things were?
Could you concede that in the face of reality? Would you be prepared to
give up everything you thought you knew, including all of your arguments
and conclusions, weak or strong, in order to clear the table for truth?
The entirety of the known in your life up to now may be a casualty in the
process. Would that be so utterly terrible? How would you really, finally
know unless you let it happen? And I don’t mean as some single unchanging
conclusion, but as a life ongoing lived at the very edge of mystery?
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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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If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles from 2021 from Amazon as a Kindle ebook or paperback. 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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