Watercolor on paper, back etched + painted acrylic, with aluminum hinged frame. 37.5 x 51 cm. 2023
II. Abstract:
Sometimes I wonder whether society has turned into a bunch of parrots. Individuals who generate new information are a rarity, and oftentimes the people we encounter are so absorbed with repeating the footsteps of the dead.
Whether it is through “manifestation” or “letting go”, “Spiritual Awakening” is a trend that civilization is trying to “gavage” us with. Unfortunately, all these “Spiritual Systems” a.k.a. religions, doctrines, philosophical clubs, etc. share very limited and similar end goals: A sense of inner peace, oneness with everything and everyone, bliss, the “thousand petaled lotus”, having a brain orgasm like that “Ecstacy of St. Teresa” statue, enlightenment, ad nauseam.
As the age old adage goes, “ignorance is bliss”. Enlightenment does not simply equate to happiness the last time I checked. Do we really need a spiritual awakening to improve the quality of our lives in the first place?
III. Introduction
One theory states that everything exists because the universe comprises iterations of one “Infinite Creator” or “Source”, who divided itself into multiple consciousnesses in order to experience itself/ its creation. Eventually, all these little sub-consciousnesses which comprise every sentient being (including us humans ), will return to this Source to make it whole once again.
With this kind of world view, we’re not individuals at all, just fragments of one super consciousness. Reincarnation is supposedly the process that will allow us to return to this consciousness. And logically, gravitating or incarnating towards this Source a.k.a. Nirvana is matter of time, even if we have some “devolutionary detours” along the way.
Since we will reach enlightenment by default as long as we waddle around “Samsara” long enough, all this urgency to speed up the process is unnecessary. It actually tells us a lot about human nature, that most of us are willing to try anything to shortcut our ways through the present moment, even if there are NO SHORTCUTS to a meaningful job well done. We’re also suckers for freebies even if we don’t necessarily need them. Call it an addiction to distraction. If a feeling of “oneness” with everyone and “inner peace” is the reward for reaching the final destination, then the marketing strategy is not appealing enough. Those certainly are not things I look forward to.
III, IV. Method and Results:
All my creative momentum springs from maintaining MY sense of equilibrium in the disharmony of human existence. I don’t need a spiritual upgrade to achieve a sense of inner peace, and neither do you. Just find work that you love. My enlightenment level may be “gin tonic”, but I can feel a sense of “oneness” with nature by being faithful to my lifelong quest of understanding light and shadow, or by learning things like making this drawing perfectly proportioned to the Golden Mean Ratio. “Enlightenment” is not elusive, when we spend more time thinking about what really makes our time qualitative. All these people who devote their lives to researching, and following other people’s instructions for “the way” are escapists. It’s easier to follow a manual than to chart unknown territory.
V. Discussion
There are supposedly secret societies like The Order of the Golden Rosy Cross which have hidden headquarters in “holy places” like Switzerland, Tibet, etc. They are said to be very spiritually evolved beings who recruit humans who also have attained a certain degree of spiritual excellence. As a reward, these recruits then get to help The Order in their quest to expedite humanity’s reincarnation towards the Infinite Creator. Why?
Why are they touting “Serving humanity” as a reward or prize? It doesn’t sound like much incentive for achieving spiritual “elitedom” to me. As ordinary humans we can serve whom we choose, and choose not to help underserving cravens. If this is the case, we might as well stay unenlightened because there’s no obligatory reward. Ironically, as commoners we are already free. There is also something intrinsically wrong with the equation when you need a prize or reward to motivate self improvement in the first place.
Why do facilitators like The Order even exist at all? It makes it seem like this Source is in a hurry to get all our itty bitty consciousnesses back and become whole again, justifying why it needs to “employ” humans under the ruse that they were selected for being spiritually superior. If the proverbial Source is supposedly infinite, shouldn’t it have an infinite amount of time? What’s the rush?
This Source also blatantly knows the allure of catchy marketing terms like “bliss”, “oneness”, and how the again pseudo-virtuous yet vague, “serving humanity” would suffice into convincing people into a prescribed path to enlightenment. Since humans are addicted to instructions, on even “how to think for oneself”, it certainly has an excellent marketing strategy to recruit willing victims who think they’re liberating their souls.
As ridiculous as it may sound, what if all this reincarnation/infinite creator/source stuff was made up by aliens? They have a target market, and they’re familiar with the mindset. It makes more sense that they’re using this enlightenment frenzy as bait to make people doom scroll for meditation techniques and philosophies so that they can harvest whatever they need from us (One conspiracy theory says it’s dopamine shhhh). They’re liberating us into obeisance or submission. And the less we think, the easier we are to control. Hey, harvest doesn’t mean kill right?
Then there’s that other catchy enlightenment advertisement: “You are not your mind”. It certainly sounds like we aren’t responsible, and therefore accountable for our thoughts. Huh? Since the body is connected to the mind, it’s probably better to spend more time training it, than meditating indefinitely to determine where the brain ends and consciousness begins. After all, if we can control our thoughts, we don’t need to escape from them.
Keeping the mind quiet doesn’t necessarily mean disassociation or detachment either. It can simply mean staying calm. Meanwhile a state of enlightened ecstasy like what we see in religious statues or people who have attained certain levels of meditation sounds like another altered state or diversion from reality. What difference is it from taking synthetic chemicals? “Potato, potahto”.
What about the “You are not your ego”jargon that also seems to be everywhere nowadays? Why do they make the ego sound like an involuntary or parasympathetic force that’s also beyond our control? My ego allows me to push myself beyond my own capabilities because I’m not satisfied with the current reality. Therefore a healthy ego combined with personal goals and standards can be a force of nature. It’s really a matter of management, not denial nor detachment. Again, why do all these spiritual evolvement concepts want us to abandon our sentience like we are victims of our mortal cells?
I will constantly be the natural adversary to all this “letting go lingo” by perpetually carving out my ego-fueled reality as long as I am able.
VI. Conclusion
I tend to believe that the Universe is dual in nature. Without opposing forces, we have nothing to compare anything against. We don’t need a fancy degree to know that good times are much more appreciated when we’ve gone through hardship. This lack of contrast makes the supposed eternal bliss and peace of making it back to The Source sound like eternal blah.
All the urgency to get our asses back to oneness via the reward-based facilitatorship mentioned earlier brings up another hypothetical possibility: That all our consciousnesses are a result of a massive catastrophe of Universal magnitude. What if our Source was in battle with another “Universal Being” and bled all our consciousnesses out of an injury? What if it’s still bleeding? Then it would make more sense that the “Infinite Creator” desperately needs to harvest us fragments, so that it can recover and become whole again.
Isn’t the primary goal of all propaganda to dissuade you from other options? The fact that all these “spiritual systems” are synonymously trying to convince us that there is only one big happy ending for everyone affirms the likeliness of multiple end-game scenarios. It only means that Nirvana is just one of them, and not an inevitability. Please pardon my undeveloped human brain, but just the thought of feeling “one” with someone who can listen to Nightwish makes want to search for another dimension.
If we really want to evolve as a species we need to outgrow all this “monkey see, monkey do” business. This overlaps with overcoming the fear of being responsible for oneself. By copying someone else’s method, there is always the safety blanket of blaming something other than oneself when shit happens.
While we’re on the topic of enlightenment, I might as well touch upon the thousand petaled-lotus concept. With a “Kundalini Awakening” we transcend this reality and feel that sense of oneness(again) with all life and the Infinite Creator. Please refer to the illustration above, which is a standard diagram of what the world recognizes as a “wormhole”, with the seven chakras superimposed over it.
Doesn’t anyone even notice how funny the accepted diagram for a wormhole is? Even if we go through the hole, we’re still in the same dimension, which I’ve marked as X for clarity. Same thing when religious teachings draw the human energy field as a torus. Why are people so satisfied with the idea that going through a donut will transcend you onto a different plane of existence? This is yet another good example of how people accept what they are told so easily. Hasn’t anyone noticed that this is less logical than the debate about alcohol being good for one’s health.
While there is definitely something out there that is distracting us from looking elsewhere, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that it’s still of “egregoric” proportions. Perhaps instead of “The Source”, or “Infinite Creator”, a clue would be my first band’s name.
To give credit where it’s due, whatever it is that is trying to control us actually divulged some useful information (except for the instructions on how to use it). This is why I decided to make my own fun little diagram of a wormhole so that jumping through dimensions would make more sense geometrically.
There is so much iconology *cough*advertising*cough* e.g. the Caduceus, that tries to divert our attention so that we would believe that there is only one comprehensive formula for all existence, one grand finale, and how we can even briefly experience what it feels like to return to The Source with our mortal flesh. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be any visual representation for stepping out of this underwhelming “default”.
When I integrate my Light/Shadow Theory with the concept of different chakra combinations, it’s easier to see how there are many ways out. Horizontal is really diagonal, and “reverse” and “negative” are not interchangeable, making “all the way down” completely different from what everyone supposes. With these ideas in mind, even all the mystery behind 23.5 degrees fits perfectly into the puzzle.
It’s about time someone creates new iconology and iconography for the grossly unrepresented potential of creating one’s own salvation system. I’ve gladly accepted the task.
So that instead of chasing enlightenment, we can spend more time pursuing excellence, and truth.
The black one is Zonor. I don’t know the names of the white or the two headed one yet, but the latter is “True Bi-pass” (omg another guitar joke).
We don’t need more dicks, we need balls.