Involute Volatility
Let me first start off by saying that there are many planes in life, on which to live rather, and we can exist on any one that we choose. Funny thing is that the existence of those planes is only bound by the limits of our imagination. The psyche and it's encompassing mental world are extremely powerful things; they allow us passage through hard times by many methods of diversion just as they manifest many coping mechanisms to assist us in dealing with things we cannot manipulate to achieve our ideal results. One who chooses not to dissect his own mechanisms is on the one hand depriving himself, and on the other hand a genius of massive capacity. We who fiddle-fuck with our intellect by feeding it false complexities are playing a dangerous game indeed.
Let's explore the concept of bias. It sways our opinions of things based on our own intentions and desires; If you ask a grasshopper what he thinks of frogs he's probably not going to have much good to say about them. Ask the snake what he thinks of frogs and the answer will differ greatly. Ask a tree what it thinks of a frog and you find indifference, which is really just a discontent LACK of bias, a valuable thing in itself.
I had six dreams last night, most of them bleeding together:
-one involved my job giving me a motorcycle with a cover that looked like a jeep and telling me to deliver things, inside which I was able to lay down and really jet between the delivery stops. I remember jail being a part of that dream...
-one that had me kidnapping and raping some girl repeatedly, oddly enough she ended up liking it and we would get it on in the bathtub while shit was on fire and burning down all around us...
-one that found me in a casino trying to find a pit boss because there were 3 people including the dealer laid out asleep and snoring on the roulette table and they were blocking my play...
-one that included the Ocean's Eleven players and pursued a plot that centered around my working at a surveillance equipment distribution company...
-one that included someone from the past about which I won't go into detail
-and some other one that I forgot...
Some believe dreams are meaningless, some think the dream world is a representation of one's unfiltered and uninhibited subconscious or 'shadow self', and some feel that dreams are auspicious and entertaining. I personally am a believer of all three, and in exploring this fact we are brought back to the concept of bias.
All of the above dreams can be explained, some of them by what's going on with me emotionally- sexually frustrated (hence the rape dream), gambling addict (the roulette dream), desperacy (including myself in a heist with the O11 crew dream) and the desire to escape(speeding recklessly and hastily on a motorcycle); others however, are just manifestations of the world around us, which for me has mostly consisted of work, hate for this place and loneliness (a Jeep is driven by someone at my job and I see it every day, my job itself was in the dream, my mom being in jail, etc.). I can see the bias cultivated in my dreams, illustrations of the excitement I used to know life contained before returning here, where I remember dreaming of such abstract things when living abroad. All I can dream about now is being back in pursuit of that which made me happy and giggly to the core. I should think the bias infects my dreams from a place of malcontent, as I see these exciting events taking place but these dream scenarios are all centered around me, as though I'm living them first person, as if they are my life and I'm living them real-time.
Why is bias a dangerous thing? Because it's imperative to perpetuate objectivism in your conversations with others. The bias (on a sneaky subconscious level) permeates our intentions in providing help to those that seek it from us, it clouds our vision and closes our minds. It's like cancer. I fear I've got the bias.
Now we talk about umbrellas. There is a black and white Pepsi umbrella in my truck that I've had for YEARS, and it originated from the trunk of a 91 Nissan Maxima I bought off a former boss for $300. Yeah, the umbrella has a story. God only knows where it had been before I found it.
So in shifting some things around behind the seat the other day, seeing it forced me to realize I'd forgotten all about it, and furthermore realize that I'd never actually used it, which brings us to what the umbrella symbolizes- comfort and assurance. I know the umbrella is there, and even though I'm the type that would envelop the enjoyment of being rained on before EVER actually using the umbrella, I know it's there. I can rest assured that if the time came to defy the great force of Mother Nature that is rain, I would be sufficiently equipped. Is this not the same ill-conceived dream of those who believe everlasting conspiracy is around the corner and spend their lives in absurdity preparing for it? We realize in this recognition that an umbrella can break, a gun can jam, and ultimately whatever we prepare ourselves for CAN defeat us, however well-prepared we bring ourselves to believe we are.
We have just discovered volatility.
What scenario do you prepare for in your life? It doesn't need to be a biological warfare fantasy or a fear of a one-world-government, it can be (and often is) as simple as preparing against financial struggle in the future. Let's ask ourselves exactly HOW volatile is this investment of our resources and energy -just like the gun jamming or the umbrella being crushed by the wind's great force- there is no guarantee that our efforts won't be in vain. Those of us employed by someone else could be fired or fall victim to a 'shrinking economy' and have our services deemed frivolous by he who controls us. Those of us who are in business for themselves could have their client base wiped out when WalMart decides they can build cars and engineer buildings. There is no end to the possibilites, in fact I should think it inevitable that we as individuals are all destined for failure not because we exert insufficient effort, but because we are all leaning inward on the same railing, it seems only fitting for the railing to break eventually under such pressure. We allow ourselves to be controlled, as I've said a thousand times before, and in our handing off our rights to the one with power we re-realize the validity of the phrase, "In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is King". Simply put...
"Weee're the puppet people"
Such is the volatile nature of things- we try to slap a label on another person and claim them as our own in relationships, defying the very core of our growth capacity as human beings; we overspend on frivolous things for their sheer aesthetic value and wonder why our banks go bust and economy crashes when we don't make good our commitments to pay them back. We don't create the means to our own end, as the end is the balance of existence. It is the inevitability of fortune of any kind to crash, be it emotional, financial or spiritual fortune. We understand the concept of equilibrium, we know that all good things must come to an end and the same is true for all bad things. We know what moves us spiritually yet the majority of our life's time is spent moving in the opposite direction of pursuing that which fulfills us.
What then? After we've accepted that it is the nature of things to end, even after we embrace the very real volatility that looms over our lives and well-being, we continue on. We choose not to change what it is we do, we take the lashes of our penance and persist through lives that leave us wanting more, that leave us dull and mundane. The spirit of life is experience and the more id we can reveal to ourselves the better off we are.
This brings us back to choosing the 'plane' of life on which we live and manifesting one where an ideal plane is absent.
I read recently a quote that said, "When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing -- then we truly live life" and a very negative train onto which I had boarded screeched to a halt on its tracks. It is in the exploration of our passions that we find our fires fueled the most, and it's imperative to realize through the fog that often rolls into our lives that our dreams come true only as a function of our passion for pursuing them. Never was someone that accomplished a dream demeaned for trying. Teddy Roosevelt had 5 kids, traveled the world, went safari hunting, began a myriad of conservation attempts toward animal life and land and still had time to become president and lead the country. His is a passion that burned bright, one that stopped at nothing to make dreams into reality, and I see far too often in this world and in my own life, that fire be extinguished by the effort-diminishing plague that is doubt.
"I don't care what you believe boy, just believe it"
The decision is ours to make, whether we want to live on a beach or go into space or engineer new technology. In adult life there is nothing standing in our way of success but our selves and our doubts. Bill Hicks once asked us to acknowledge that we have a single choice in finding the state of mind in which to live and advance the quality of our lives and of those around us, by choosing between seeing life through the eyes of fear or the eyes of love. Our doubts are fears that control us, that confine us to a primitive resistance to change and growth. If we can find the love that we live blind to in our times of fear, we will see the doors open and we can realize every second of life being a massive opportunity to achieve and inspire. We are our own guardians to those doors of happiness, and the plane of life we choose to live on determines how endless our happiness can be in this world.
Simple decision, simple choice.
Now I ask something of you, to share with me and all that view this entry, what it is your passions burn for. What drives you and toward what end are you driven? Let's open up a bit here and share some of our aspirations, dreams, hopes, etc. See through the eyes of love the life you would cherish and explore that world a bit with me. We all have hope, fear, we all dream. I'd like to know where that plane of life you're choosing to live on is taking you, and how did you come to manifest it?
Don't be shy, tell me stories : )