THE AFTERLIFE
I do not know for certain what happens after death, nobody truly does. Even those who have died still may not. I can only speculate from the research I have done and the conclusions I have personally drawn through intuited logical outcomes, spiritual experiences and synchronicities. It's always been fascinating to me how diverse the view of this topic is and how personal the perspective of the afterlife is. It is usually fostered through meaningful intimate experiences with the spiritual realm, and deep plunges into personal revelations often through the experience of life, death and grief. It acts as a mirror for most. For me, there are 3 paths I have come to believe we may follow after the death of physical consciousness. All pertain to the theory of eternal existence, though not in the way it is commonly conceived (where the original form/personality is eternal and indestructible).
1. Reincarnation. After we pass our soul/spirit is detached from the material, is partially lifted from the physical/terrestial into the celestial, and either is directly transmuted or remains in a holding pattern until we reintergrate back into the physical/terrestial realm at a certain time/place. The soul is in a constant state of learning, and will continue to be placed here in every point in time, in every lived experience, in every archetypal personality until it has reached some ultimate understanding and the presumed ‘end’ of it’s evolution, then cycling back into a sort of deevolution that propels evolution further. The soul does not have one fixed personality or ego, it cycles through each body and lifetime taking on different expressions among different life experiences. Matter never just disappears, it changes forms. The soul and mind are made of energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, it only transforms.
2. Among layers of reality, after death the soul is detached from material form and shot through a portal of light, alike to a birth canal. It transcends to other unseen transphysical/dimensional planes above and away from the one conceivable. Consciousness gains free reign to the fullest extent of creation, with access to all other fragments that have passed through and all events 'past, present and future' along the Space-Time/Energy-Matter continuum. Unlimited knowledge. Access to what I suppose is commonly called the ‘Akashic Records’ in New Age philosophy. This possibilty would also entail a permanent and total reintegration (a non-physicality) with the source and fabric of reality itself. Though, it is hard to imagine how knowledge of this extent could happen without a biological aspect (a body/brain to see/remember). Perhaps this is something more suited to a meditation or ‘astral projection’ and not death.
3. Complete reintergration with the universe/source without a following predestined ‘incarnation’. As we are made up of a cosmically created material and thereby created by circumstances on the cosmic stage, once we transform in death our spirit is brought 'back home' essentially, and becomes one with all cycles and creation in it's entirety. You die, you lose consciousness and your individual self to feed the earth and its cycles. A much lesser kind of consciousness, but still useful, purposeful and integrated. The essence that makes up our bodies disperses into the surroundings to feed the omniscient ouroboros, and we ‘live on’ through no control of our own. Each personality is animated by this material, performing a brief and separate expression and experience. We lose our individual awareness and ego permanently upon death, and become which is formless and dispersed, which may be used in future incarnations or manifestations of that cosmic material but not actually connected to the previous form consciously. We never regain any kind of otherworldy consciousness or feeling, but our energy becomes permanently reintegrated into the spiral and used for whichever purpose the universe/source happens to impose hereafter.
Reincarnation (physical rebirth), Ultimate Knowledge (mental rebirth) or Material Reintegration (earth rebirth)
Anything is possible. We still do not understand the true nature of our reality, especially what is unseen and unproven, and a ‘life’ after death is surely one of those things. There is still the possibility that nothing happens, we are thrown into the abyss and simply dissolve into nothing at all. Or we may be thrown into hellfire / heaven depending on your religious ideals. Death or transcendence in all theories I also believe not to be a dream-state, it is more alike to a dreamless-sleep state. How you felt before you were born. There are no stereotypical 'euphoric feelings', only in some cases when you initially leave the body due to chemical processes. I believe death itself is just a release, being freed from a multisensory flesh-cage. It is not a feeling, it is a non-physical state. As 'you' detach from the body, you are no longer tied to the body and therefore no longer tied to any unreal physical human emotion, as 'you' are no longer confined to the physical. Your body is all that is left. Each of us are an impermanent fraction of the story of this strange place we find ourselves residing. If the theory of eternality in respect to reincarnation/continued consciousness happens not to be our fate, the bodies that are left behind will still become reintegrated with the earth/universe (3). Therefore, we all will inevitably feed the earth and in turn, the universe in an eternal cycle, which is still a form of reincarnation as all is alive and changing. Eternality is the reality of everything, even when all that we know now reaches it’s destined oblivion. We only use our pre-described words and symbols to separate one thing from another for the purpose of marking change in time, they flow alike to their meanings. They are not permanent representations of a permanent reality. Nothing here is permanent, so we must appreciate it for what it is, and let our imaginations run wild, because imagination is a distinctly human trait. I cannot blame humanity for imagining the unimaginable.
I have personally experienced multiple instances in which the afterlife becomes a real question, those who I know that have passed have always somehow reached through the veil and made themselves known, seemingly communicating directly and retaining their personality. Giving gifts, giving directions, perfectly timing a message that couldn’t be deciphered any other way. It could always just be the human desire to continue connection with those who have died, maybe just projecting their personality onto the mundane to soften the blow of the permanence of death. But I think it’s good to have an open mind about the sources of synchronicities, and the possibility of survival after fate.
FEAR OF DEATH
**under construction**
The fear of death is not simply a human construct. It is felt by all earthly animals, even the tiniest of insects. We all have a survival instinct. Though perhaps this particular instinct, inbuilt or instilled, is ultimately the cruelest of all, and the most distinct particularly in behavior markers of human beings. We express our fear of death in multiple ways, through various methods of making our little mark on the world. Death is inevitable, unavoidable and often it is painful. Our instinctual conditioning directs us to avoid it, yet our form is predestined to fall apart and die with age. We try to resist it with medicine, medical intervention, treatments of all kinds, stripping a being of all dignity before finally letting them drift away. We make up stories to tell ourselves, to quieten the thought that may become a spiraling existential crisis. We huff copium but we never face the reality, as though if we ever were to do so in any meaningful sense, we might actually die or attract the eyes of death toward ourselves. I do believe this conception can be revised.
Though we are also animals and no different from them instinctually, we have the potential to deal with this reality in deeper contemplation than other animals can. Which is a blessing and a curse in many ways, as it has created both religion and community. The root of the fear of death manifests from fear of the unknown, of the uncontrollable, of change. This particular fear often leads people to believe that everything they seemingly can't control they need to stay far away from. This way of thinking really just produces more suffering not only for the person that seeks that control, but for the environment that is attempted to be controlled. Death and change appear in each of our lives in many forms, not only in death of flesh. Moments die. Day and night die interchangeably. Seasons appear and die away. Songs come to an end and thus die. But because these things appear and die from outside of our consciousness we do not necessarily fear the death of these things, perhaps only a vague sadness at the fact that it is over, but we know they are soon to reappear anew. Moments come and go throughout our lives, and memories are there to compensate for the loss. Day and night is a cyclic process. Seasons are a cyclic process. Music is found everywhere if you know how to look for it. This is the perspective in which we should be contemplating our own fates.
Societies attempt at covering up death is atrocious and violating. We hide every trace of death from the public eye. We can't bare to face it with our own two eyes. We treat it like a constant evil we must keep away at all costs. Medical professionals are praised for 'saving' while they mutilate and defile the form much worse than death ever could, a terrible contradiction that often bestows even more suffering after the fact. We take every opportunity to try to reverse every sign of it’s approach. The brutal clinging onto a permanent self, ego and time is what contributes to this mass psychosis. The only reason we even have the slightest awareness of the approach of our own deaths is due to the common conception of time; minutes, hours, days, months, years slowly passing by. The fear consuming bite by bite. What are we afraid of losing? Likely the self, the very essence of who we think we are. This fear is valid; our self are the only thing we have been taught to know as a representation of who we are. But to learn more of 'yourself' beyond this ‘self’ is where the fear of death dissolves from fear into profound understanding. In the grand scheme of things, ego self is formed only of bits and pieces of the world. The very concept of each individual self has some room to stand on it's own in the context of the world, but the person the concept represents is made from symbols and words that are of the world, of humanity. The collective human psyche is created of words and symbols, things the human race has created for the sake of communication and expression. Expression is vital for our souls and individual survival, but our constant mistaking of words and symbols being literal definitions of the things we speak of is a curse and a detriment to our true understanding of ourselves as beings that have been born from the living and breathing creature that is the universe. Over-identification with a collection of words and symbols rather than this core creature creates a greater void around death in the human mind. In order to escape this torturous trap we have created for ourselves, we must learn to face what reality truly is beyond these mere communication shortcuts. We are more than these creatively fictional definitions and we sure as hell shouldn't be applying them to ourselves in a such a serious manner, especially to the degree where we think of ourselves as something other than what we truly are. We are acting on a stage the earth has set for us, but outside of the costumes we put on, who do you think we are? The answer is pretty intuitive and the same for everyone once we drop it all.
Fear can be minimized in realizing the depths of the patterns we see within reality. We are living at the core of a constant death and rebirth. We are all being recycled forever. Death exists everywhere, in the form of constant transformation. When anything changes, when anything ends, when anything moves. Death is a matryoshka doll, it lives within itself. What is there to be afraid of, when we face this fate in all its forms unconsciously each day we breathe?
LOVE / SOULMATES
Love is everything. Love is more important than anything material. Love makes life worth living. Love gives purpose and direction. Love moves everything. If we were born unable to feel the complex emotion of love, life would become even more meaningless than it is now, and more importantly, we would become extinct. Maintaining love takes work. After all, it is a responsibility and dedication of yourself to others, and you depend on others to live just as much as they depend on you. Though the work is not laborious, it comes naturally from a deep sense of passion for another. This applies to a lifelong lover, as well as close friends and family. It is the most important and beautiful aspect of consciousness, even if un-reciprocated. Love is incredibly crucial to life, it is how we procreate and the cause in which we unite. Love prevails among all circumstances, it is what pulls you through to the other side of darkness over and over again. Every soul will be touched by love, and the infection will forever spread until humanity ceases. Even then, the contamination continues to permeate, and the universe creates it all over again in a variety of ways throughout itself. Forces clash and creation explodes into being. Man always indirectly imitates his surroundings. Love is inherent within us, no matter how desperately we pretend it isn't there hiding in our hearts and minds.
I believe soulmates exist, but not in the way it is commonly thought of, where there is one particular person made purely for another. We are victims of circumstance, and many people die alone having never found their one particular person. There are desirable traits in many people you meet in life, it is rare for one person to have everything you want and need, that knows every desire in-scripted on your heart, but there is always room to forgive and learn about eachother. There are rough edges on every existing being, life inflicts this roughness on everyone. It's okay to clash, because where you clash you grow, you learn to be among others and work things out with them. A soulmate is someone you can build with. Someone who accepts you for who you are, who listens to you, who encourages you to improve and to follow your soul. Someone who you can melt into, that you can take your mask off around.
A soul mate can also, simultaneously, align with you and fit into you like a puzzle piece. They make up for what you lack and you make up for what they lack, you teach and learn from each other. It's an equal exchange of different personalities that makes up a whole. This bonds two people together in a meaningful way. But you’re not a lone puzzle piece looking for one particular piece, you have other sides for other puzzle pieces to connect to. A soulmate doesn't have to just be a lover, there are many people, friends, animals or even specific locations, that can fit with your soul or align with your soul and in turn be a soulmate. You don't get just one soulmate in this life. There are many potentials for connection and alignment between your soul and another.
Those who prioritize relationships over other meaningful connections are misguided. Relationships are not the only source of love and intimacy, and you should not solely rely on that aspect of connection then unconsciously abandon your other connections. Doing so may result in isolation, and with someone that may not be 100% right for you, especially if you rush the search for love due to desire for intimacy. Intimacy does not only come from sexual/romantic contact. It can come from hugs, sharing activities/experiences together, deep conversations, emotional closeness, vulnerability, supporting others, simply seeing and listening to them, sharing traditions, acts of service, quality time together. Even creative expression, creating and consuming art on your own can be fulfilling in this way, as it releases similar brain chemicals as an act of intimacy does. Building a good web of support with those you connect with platonically is very important and should be a higher priority over a romantic relationship. Platonic relationships give you a much healthier stability and gives you connections in which you don’t have to artificially perform to gain or maintain. Don’t rush into a relationship as a quick cheat code into experiencing intimacy with others. And if the person you end up with is also using relationships in this way, there is bound to be exploitation in one way or another. Love stretches beyond the act of sex, it is a soul connection. You will always know it when you feel it.
THE MEANING OF LIFE
I don't entirely believe our existence was created by pure chance, but I also don't believe it was intentional either. The event of our own individual existence is still one in a trillion in either reality, and that is incredibly valuable. We decide our own valuability to the extent that we value life. Being able to live, breathe, love, listen to music, learn about and explore the world we are in is still a wonderful experienced to be had and contains a lot of meaning within itself. But I do not think it is worth sticking one crucial meaning on life (i.e the meaning of life is anything that produces happiness), because that's not how I believe life is meant to be interpreted. It is meant to be valued for the total experiences it can give to us, both positive and negative and everything in between. Feeling fear, anxiety, pain or discomfort in general is obviously not pleasant, and every other conscious being can feel it too, so it is not unique to us. But it is still a feeling, it is still worth experiencing and is better than to feel nothing at all. In fact, deeply feeling pain can lead to a sense of ecstasy. A circular spectrum. Our senses are a gift, and deeply understanding/feeling them (emotionally, logically and physically) is one of the most crucially informative sources of our own/others desires and needs. Perhaps the meaning is to experience and learn from said experiences, nothing more. To continue to evolve, like everything else that exists on this plane. I know for certain that living to work and suffer is not the meaning of life at all. Besides doing what you need to do to survive and following personal passions, working should not be a main priority for a person's entire life, only for them to retire for max 10-20 years and die. As much as you can, don’t live just to work for money and over-consume in the aim to fill the void we try to fill with meaning. Live to experience your consciousness and all that it brings with it. Humanity is seemingly unable to escape the monotonous capitalistic routine of work eat sleep and self punish, and that is one of the driving factors in which society will inevitably become more and more jaded as the years grow. The meaning of life to me is to be conscious, to fully experience everything you encounter no matter if it is good or bad, to dedicate yourself to the development and cultivation of who you are. To live until you no longer need to.
SUICIDE
If one believes their life is to be ended by their own hand, they should be allowed to follow through with that decision. If someone is living a life in which they cannot bare any longer, and they do not see a future in which their situation could possibly improve, nor wish to accept help or perspective from others, they should be allowed to find release. Feeling so much pain and discomfort to the point of wanting to self-immolate very much outweighs any kind of positive experience a person could have, and it is cruel to force someone to live for longer than they desire. You see a dying animal on the side of the desolate highway, you attempt to help it. The wound has become too cavernous and rotten to survive and it is too far gone to help, you allow it to die peacefully, knowing it is loved. Emotional wounds are just as fatal as physical wounds, and can often result in the same level of pain especially if unaddressed or reinforced by life experiences. Forcing an animal to live through the pain of a fatal wound is inhumane, and is beyond control as death will soon succumb it. You provide love, care and a safe place for it in the final moments to gracefully dissolve into the fatal grasp it's already in. It hurts for someone close to you to die, especially by their own hand. But it is their life and therefore their choice in what will happen in that lifetime. You can always get them help, or they could seek it out themselves, but it is entirely up to the individual themselves to accept or pursue that. If they are fully aware of what will happen afterward, who the action will effect, what they are losing in the pursuit of death and are not detached from reality completely, then let people do what they want with their brief existence. Even if it may hurt the people around them. Pain is transformative. Self interest is the main drive in the action of human beings, and if the discomfort of an existence unwanted outweighs all possible pleasure or hope, that instinct will prevail. Be assured that they will as a result be at greater peace by falling into the arms of eternity, after a lifetime of great discomfort and pain. Death is not the end. Life is painful, life is difficult, life is unfair. Being a human being can be extremely exhausting. If one feels misplaced, in pain or unhappy in their body, one must be allowed to have the option to leave. I will always stand by that. No one asks to be alive. No one asks to suffer as a result of being alive. Death is a human right just as much as life is.
I will add, if anyone you know is in grasp of suicidal ideation or mental health struggles, please consistently check on them. Be there to comfort them. Please assure them how much they are valued and loved. Attempt to make plans with them, something for them to look forward to. Tell them of things you encounter that remind you of them. Simple words of genuine meaning always makes a world of difference. Love cannot always save, but love will always lessen pain. We must all try to lessen eachothers pain while we are here. Suicide is often a closed world in the mind with it’s own reasoning that is logical to the individual, but you can always slip through the gaps in the logic and make them feel less isolated. If you yourself are struggling, if you have the strength to, please try to seek the help that you need (I don’t say this in the condescending “seek help” way that lacks emotional depth, as I am a failed suicide myself and know that doesn’t always help, and this doesn't always mean the impersonal suggestion of medication and mental health services, which is so often suggested by those who don't know what else to say. Mental health issues are inevitable in a society structured this way. But more in a sense of finding someone to safely confide in and a place where you can be cared for, to be lifted of the burdens of life for a while). Life is worth living through the whole journey, despite it's cruelty. There is so much more to this life than what they say there is, the system we have be thrown into. The chasms you are in will always be surrounded by mountains. Try to seek people who align with your truest self. You are not a burden. If you have no one you feel you can confide in, or you simply just need a friend, you are welcome to message me through any of the platforms I've listed through-out this website. This life often feels cold, lonely and confusing, so traversing it alone can feel incredibly isolating and frustrating, especially if you are someone who is very perceptive and sensitive to it. Your sensitivity to the reality of the world is not your weakness, but your strength. You have the power of your perception and you are in tune with it. That is a good thing. But you do not have to fight through the pain of that all on your own. There is always hope for you, and your fate is never fixed. There is so much more for you here beyond the depths of the pain you have felt. There is so much more here for people like us. You only have to seek it, reach out and reach far, and soon it will come to you. You have much more to learn and to see, hold out as much as you can bare. Each day is a temporary experience, each feeling is temporary before it falls back into the background of thought, but a decision cannot be taken back. Please fully examine your situation rationally, beyond the conclusions of that beckoning voice, before making any final calls. You may find that your answer does not lie with expediting death, but to find a way to be reborn.
I believe suicide is also a form of silent genocide, an unconscious mass killing of those who don't fit the mould or cannot find their place within a society that ultimately rejects their mind or their right to survival. When someone commits suicide, no one gets the blame. Not the school systems, the workplaces, the governments, the systems. It starts and ends with the victim. Suicide is a symptom of capitalism, ultimately. Systems this big cannot be destroyed within a day, so keeping someone here within these systems of torture as a game of luck, is cruel. Someone in this position can either choose death or revolution, to end their own suffering or salve the suffering of others in community, and in turn heal themselves (the latter is my personal choice).
"suicide: the forever decision"
TECHNOLOGY
Yes, I'm about to go all Ted K on you (RIP). Technology has been an active participant in many aspects of the degradation of society. In this statement, I not only include the capitalization of the internet as a whole but also the capitalistic technologies we use to oppress and control our overall environment.
It's delusional to ignore the environmental impact capitalistic technology has. Almost every single aspect is creating greenhouse gas emissions and total destruction to the natural world. Day by day Mother Earth is gored, losing parts of herself from deforestation, suffocating under the weight of our trash, and is slowly rotting away in pursuit of governmental control, shareholder and company profits over the real weighted needs of humanity and healthy maintenance of the earth.
The problem of total reliance on technology as a society becomes readily apparent as we continue to shop mostly online, replace physical media for digital media (of course the mass production of physical media is also a problem, but digitalizing everything is one way to lose mass amounts of data, be unable to own the media that we pay for and contributes to our carbon footprints, whereas physical media can be recycled), becoming more and more cashless, move work and schooling into digital environments, and on top of it all, bestowing any other task we could possibly do physically and intentionally upon some other mode of technology (or AI), in turn directly harming our independence and the true awareness of our own actions. I just wonder how we will adapt if any facet of it happened to stop working one day, after we've digitized most forms of interaction and societal function. A major collapse is incoming, either socially or environmentally when we simply cannot continue this way without killing ourselves.
In general, technology has worsened the quality of our interpersonal relationships. This not only includes the unfortunately horrific state of online dating apps, but also the disconnect of inner community as a whole. Most conversations and interactions with friends, partners, family and even strangers are all often filtered through social media. This is a cause for the depersonalization of genuinely meaningful interactions, growing self-centeredness and anti-social behaviors among others. It’s like a wall of glass has been put up between us. It is increasingly difficult to socialize in general, everyone is slowly losing their ability to communicate healthily and confidently due to years of social media dependence.
The online world creates a bubble of reality unlike the one we live in. People often delude themselves into thinking they are better than or more important than others based on the validation they receive. There are others who worsen the divide in society by having meaningless arguments about inane things, refusing middle ground, never acknowledging nuance in any situation. The disconnect from reality and general retardation really shows within people on both sides of the political scale. This is very emphasized online, behind the screen of anonymity which lifts the veil of egomaniacs. We learn to not see each other as real human beings, only text and images on a screen. And major social media oligarchs encourage it, because the more rage inducing stuff that gets pushed onto our feed, the more we fight on their platforms and generate them more and more money, worsening the class divide by fighting each other instead of the real cause of our anguish.
The most 'positive' thing I see coming out of current mainstream social media is the use of algorithms. The purpose of them is to keep you on the app for longer, to more or less perfectly attempt to reflect back to you what you desire, what holds your attention, what kinds of circles that you may or not be apart of, of course for them to generate more revenue for themselves. But because this is how they work, it is also a great resource for personal and collective shadow work. If we were to use them for this in a more conscious way, the world may begin to work through it's problems on a much more personal level which will also then show that progress collectively. Actually noticing this is the real challenge, since doom-scrolling is essentially a state of hypnotism which can affect your rationale.
Industrialized/capitalistic technology also adds to environmental decay through excessive production and consumerism and as I previously mentioned, online shopping. The advent of being able to shop for absolutely everything online, being constantly promoted different products and having ceaseless access to anything a human being could possibly want (but often never need), results in willpower being defeated, money being wasted and landfills piling toward the heavens. This obviously leads to the over-consumption of unneeded products, the over-production of unneeded products and an easily attained addiction to the dopamine release that follows. I have been guilty of this in the past. Buying and producing excess of what we don't truly need (and will often eventually throw out within a year), will absolutely destroy the planet, as it evidently already has. Allowing ourselves to be force-fed advertisements and exchanging money for a quick dopamine fix and a fleeting feeling of identity contributes to the upkeep of this supply/demand system, all secretly produced by slave labor in foreign countries (which makes this fact easier to ignore due to distance). We pay for blood-soaked commodities and litter the planet with the remains.
I pray that society will soon realize the future implications of total reliance on technology, and majority of it's usage will be ceased in the ways that are the most detrimental, so we can be given a second chance to be freed from the fate of our own unscaleable inventions. There was once a time where we used our technology healthily and appropriately, at a much smaller and local scale where we got what we needed when we needed it and was carefully weighed with the needs of humanity and reciprocity with the earth. Where we weren't so fatally binded to it as we are now. We have lost that reciprocity. Our subconscious disconnect to the world and it's inhabitants is a major fault of large scale technology and our intense need for control and power through using it. The more control we have gained, the further we have distanced ourselves from our outer reality / environment and refocused our aim upon placing ourselves above it superficially, all in vain, because we are the ones who will always rely on the gifts it selflessly gives. We are nothing without our outer reality. We should be developing technology in a way that continues to reflect us and our true needs, not fantasies of ‘something greater’, we clearly cannot live up to that unnatural standard without killing the world with our selfish hands. Destroy everything that destroys more than it consciously produces.
This is not at all to say that all technology is bad, small scale technology is alot more balanced and rational. I mean that kind that is mass producing without critical thought of where the product will likely end up or who it will effect by its existence, the buying and throwing away thoughtlessly, the kind of technology that makes absurd amounts of money at the expense of the working class.
"how to stop being terminally online" | "design for an entrance to the internet;" | dark patterns | "going dark: the beauty of text"
FREEDOM
There is no true freedom under the society we are living in today. Unless you're able to live a life away from modern society with others who want the same lifestyle (don't isolate yourself as you will most likely not survive, Chris Mccandless), besides that it is almost impossible. To me, Freedom is alot of things. Freedom is a state of mind. Freedom is the ability to live a life and death which is your own. Freedom is the ability to completely or at least partially disconnect yourself from industrial technology. Freedom is detachment from possessions and money. Freedom is detachment from artificial control. Freedom is self-reliance and community-reliance. Freedom is away from Abrahamic belief systems, any kind of projected/false ideals of reality, and being able to have faith in ourselves as a collective to do the right thing. Most of these things are achievable through intentional choice and discipline, but it is still incredibly difficult to achieve total freedom to the fullest extent unless there are others willing to achieve it with you. The only other options to escape the iron cage of this world for brief moments is through meditation, imagination, lucid dreaming or death. Being a slave to a world that doesn't care for the environment we live in or the people that live within it doesn't feel like a lifelong option for me, unless there is some kind of mass rejection/revolution. Which I frankly believe is unlikely because most people, despite hating capitalism, love consumerism due to the identity it gives (that capitalism takes away). Most people do not like to feel exposed or unsafe, even though being exposed and unsafe is exactly what life consists of. The cycle continues. But the revolution will not be televised, so maybe we really are warming up to something mentally. Enough atrocities have already happened. We are living completely out of sync with nature and it is making it increasingly difficult to live in the way nature provides for, which would entail the complete and utter freedom of the human race. We are enslaving ourselves by believing there is no other way, and by product of that thinking, being exploited by the 1%.
It is possible to achieve a kind of internal freedom, through enlightenment and full awareness of the reality of the world and in turn, living a life in which you decide would best rebel against it in pursuit of your own comfort in an attempt to live with society. There would still be, in a sense, an imprisonment within society, but having the inner knowledge and following your soul may lead you to achieving an imprisonment that is less torturous while being human in a human society.
FATE
Fate is real but a shifting aspect of reality. We are entirely in control of our own fates and are an active participant in them. Each person has a multitude of possible fates, as there are multiple possibilities free to be realized in the void. No being is destined to a certain specific fate, the only detriment to total control of our every existential circumstance are the choices that have been made by others before our individual being came into existence. Fate is not static and unchanging, but it is a result built up of our own choices mixed in with cosmic circumstances.
Despite these circumstances, we are alive, active creators and witnesses. Those who believe they are destined to a set of pre-determined choices, as if they are not conscious, present or living in a fluid world, do not understand the nature of reality. If you think you know your fate, you only know one of them. You will not know until physical death since the future is elusive. You only know the past through vague memory, and the past cannot perfectly predict the future. A path can be shifted dramatically at any time through a multitude of possible events, this is the result of both chaos theory and the butterfly effect. Life is chaos, no matter how desperately one tries to avoid the unknown, it stares each of us right in the face. Fate is a guide to action, action is a guide to fate. Fate is individual and each individual is their fate.
SPIRITUALITY
Spirituality is more than just materialistic possessions of supposed spiritual importance, manifesting self-indulgence, or faking a sense of positivity to avoid real issues. Viewing spirituality as a whole in this way only causes further attachment to impermanence, encourages the chase for unattainable ecstasy and fleeting exhilaration. It does not fully encompass what spirituality really entails, which will only lead to a dead end and an underdeveloped psyche. Similar issues occur with most religions, and concepts of the soul are risen up and above to the dictatorship of divisive gods. Spirituality should be down here with us, where tangible spirit resides. In the realms of cyclicity, blood, earth, death and birth.
In my experience, the most fulfilling view of spirituality involves the following:
1. The baseline understanding of duality/non-duality; unity
2. Illuminating the shadow / the self instead of avoiding it, being able to acknowledge reflections of yourself within the darkness.
3. Seeking answers within (introspection), through outer experiences, and from/through being open to learning from others.
4. Observing and being with others and nature, seeing the connections that bring evolution and unity forward.
5. Detachment requiring surrender and trust to the inevitability of chaos, not avoidance.
Through this, enlightenment can be attained for brief moments. Enlightenment has never been an end goal to be reached or a permanent viewpoint (we are not perfect), but a perspective to be frequently tapped into as much as possible. For example, a moment in which we see ourselves reflected in another human being in an unflattering light, instead of castigating them for what we cannot accept in ourselves. That singularity on the event horizon in which we find profound understanding and realization, is what would be defined as an enlightened perspective that is attained. Another example is of detachment; when we seek control over an environment or object/anything external to us that we do no have power over, but take a moment to realize it's impermanence and the inevitablity of change among the constant flow of reality. These little changes of direction in thought, using the mind to facilitate deeper understanding results in a feeling of wholeness with the continuum of reality instead of resistance, along with everything that resides within it. Dark and light makes grey, everything is shades and hues of grey floating together down the spiral of existence. Dark is not evil, light is not pure. But nothing is all dark and all light.
Spiritual psychosis is something I have fallen into the pit of many times, it can and will have disastrous effects on the psyche and life and is incredibly dangerous to get caught up in. Synchronicities have followed me around though out my life. When a major synchronicity pops into my sight, I will always read into it. Maybe a little too deeply, I might admit. I do believe that there will always be something trying to communicate with you, and death, separation or departure will never truly deter them. Paying attention to these things can be greatly beneficial and allows us to receive support and guidance from loved ones past and previous and from the universe as a whole, as we journey through the abyss. However, there is a point where obsession and attachment to these signs can become detrimental and damaging. Always try to come at these things with a somewhat rational viewpoint, and have a solid basis of thought from which to take action or progress (maybe making a list of personal meanings, paying attention to circumstances surrounding, learning how to make connections and actually learning something from them instead of assuming). When something aligns that is obvious to you, it is more than likely intentional. Forcing what is not there (or confusing it with what you desire to be there) will lead to resistance and confusion. It's not pleasant to feel stuck, lost and misdirected. Be and let be. What will come to you comes gracefully and suddenly, and if you are meant to receive it, you will never miss it.
We are born to see patterns of information in reality, we learn to seek consensus reality in alignment with society's perception. When we go outside of what is considered "consensus reality" in thought or experience, we are taught to believe what we experience or think isn't real or valid. When we are taught that these things are not valid because they extend outside of the current perception of consensus reality, they will not be seen or taken seriously by society as a whole, thereby ignored. This doesn't mean that these perceptions are necessarily unreal, just that they are not well understood or verified by material science. None of these things really can be, sometimes things just cannot be explained rationally, existence is irrational in its essence. Spirituality is a recognition of patterns. Fractals of information, patterns in numbers, patterns in form, patterns in life that infer connections in a preconcieved human reality and far beyond. If we write off spirituality based on the materialism, selfishness and ignorance of the few, or the ignorance of patterns that do not fit in the box we have created for ourselves, how can we ever hope to evolve while remaining inside that box, never venturing toward those untested horizons? We need a combination of both rationality and spirituality. Spirituality brings us closer to the true recognition of interconnectedness, of introspection, of the realization of our place in this profound totality, in recognizing all of the patterns in collective emotion and thought that show that we are not displaced beings, but a "thicker" expression of the matrix with the ability to evolve. Able to see, touch, smell, hear, taste, breathe, love, think and create.
