lost and stumbling

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Murphy’s Law and some variants and similar memes

• If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
• Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.
• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• Everything takes longer than it takes.
• If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

"When your mind is empty of prejudices you can see the Tao. When your heart is empty of desires you can follow the Tao."

Master Lu Teachings (via lucifelle)

(Source: lazyyogi, via lucifelle)

Anonymous asked: I wish i could remove parts of my brain so I could just forget some shit forver and move on. Idk, I just wanted to reach out to someone. I love you. <3

i love you, too, anon. i can’t tell you enough just how much i can sympathize with that feeling, whether the thing you want to get rid of is something of your own doing or it’s something that life or fate or a mistake or another person inflicted on you, i know how it feels to want part of your life to just stop dragging you down and poisoning your soul.

but i have another problem, too, almost the reverse, which gives me a little dual vantage point. i have, for the most part, a terrific semantic memory, that is, i can remember facts, ideas, concepts, things like that. but my episodic memory is conspicuously lacking; i know a whole lot of facts and metainformation, but i can’t very well remember events and situations i’ve previously experienced. i have only a very limited ability to recall things from my personal history, and i find it very difficult to ‘travel back in time’ or re-experience events in my memory.

if you take a moment to think about it, everything whatsoever that you know, about yourself or the world around you or even your own thoughts, is stored in your mind in the form of a memory. even reading this sentence requires you to store some form of a memory of the beginning of the sentence, so that you can understand why the sentence ends the way it does. our entire cognitive existence is for the most part a comparison of current circumstances relative to all of the memories we’ve amassed prior. so, we are our memories.

as individuals, what separates us from the collective experience of the rest of humanity is our specific, separate perception of the events, ideas, and thoughts we experience. our personalities, our concepts of self are defined completely by our perception and memory of perception of the world.

what this has meant for me, having slightly sub-par episodic memory function, is that time seems to pass by much more fluidly, and i find that while i dwell heavily on memories of emotions, ideas, and other intangibles, i simply can’t consciously recall much of anything that’s happened, event-wise, in my life. if prompted about an event, i often recognize something for which i have a memory, but it’s most often small conceptual hints of notable moments and a large amount of information about the circumstances surrounding the event. even my memories of a course of action, a series of events, seems more like a vague, nebulous idea of the thing rather than some sort of memory of the perceptual experience i initially had. only with continual nudges toward the bookmarks in my memory by someone else who knows what happened does my mind seem to open up the folders containing all of the relevant memories for easier access.

the deficiency isn’t so severe that i have any functional impairments preventing me from a normal* life, but it does consistently frustrate me as i try to remember things that have happened to me, memories for which i feel a sense of ownership, the defining events and my thoughts and actions, the chain of circumstances that led to me being me. not even taking into account the immeasurable portion of thought that occurs subconsciously, i simply feel like i don’t have ready access to the memories that make up my identity, the thoughts that “kyle” is built from. it’s very lonely, and confusing, and it jackknifes my anxiety as i try to make decisions based on an incomplete understanding of who i am and what i want in life.

if anything, i try to look at it not as a failing, but as a forced perception shift. the way my memory seems to work, because of my relatively weak episodic recall, i experience semantic memories with more of the depth and impact one might relate to recollection of firsthand experiences. given that and my empathic tendencies, it’s not very difficult at all for a story of someone else’s memory to trigger emotional and mental reactions in me, almost as if i were recalling a memory of my own firsthand experience. also, i have a strong belief that there is a collective human consciousness, accessible to each individual and with infinitely greater intelligence and cohesion, transcending a sort of ‘cloak’ made of human body matter and separate individual cognitive experiences, which we tidily explain as the ‘self’ and call “I”. it’s a pretty gnarly concept to try to manifest in thought, but i feel like my deficient episodic memory actually contributes to a perception of myself far less individualized and removed from the whole than it otherwise might have been. consider it a farfetched, endlessly pointless silver lining to hopefully at least make you smile or think about something distracting for a while.

(see, i’d almost forgotten why i was writing this post, but then i remembered i was trying to comfort you about your shitty feelings. i got stoned and started thinking about removing parts of brains and this is what came out. hope i didn’t put you to sleep!)

*though it was the most appropriate i could come up with in context, “normal” is, of course, a meaningless fucking word.

(Source: fernsandmoss, via thetruthisone-deactivated201203)

The Egg

by Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now .”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. And into lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” you said.

“Oh sure,” I explained, “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time. “Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

source

i am he and you are he and we are he and we are all together

lostandstumbling:

reincarnation? yes.

every human is every human is every human.

reliving life with only the vaguest notion of their previous experience.

some people read about past events and get homesick for another era. some people meet someone else and it feels like they are practically the same person. some people even seem to be aware of more than their own possible knowledge; things like precognition, telepathy, psychic abilities beyond simply reasoning and empathy.

every single human who has ever or will ever exist is the same person. you, him, us. we. me.

we are human.

we are the same.

livin’ the dream

In considering the nature of reality, two broad approaches exist: the realist approach, in which there is a single, objective overall space-time reality believed to exist irrespective of the perceptions of any given individual, and the idealistic approach, in which it is considered that an individual can verify nothing except their own experience of the world, and can never directly know the truth of the world independent of that.

(Source: Wikipedia)

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."

Dalai Lama. (via beaivi)

(Source: thelittlesea, via starrchild)

my ongoing love/hate relationship with societal connotations to certain words

of the most common insulting words in use today, a small fraction are actually insulting to me and the vast majority are simply not insults at all.

fat is not a bad word.

slut is not a bad word.

whore is not a bad word.

stupid is borderline, and i struggle with the inherent bias i’ve been conditioned with which convinces me that intelligence is good, because i have to try to remember that not having intelligence is not necessarily bad.

and honestly, it boils down to this. if you call someone a name like this, you are far more likely to lose my respect than to convince me not to respect that person.

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."

Henry David Thoreau (via whenashleysmiles)

(via church-mouth)

(via victorioushandofgod)

"Je et moi sont engagés dans un dialogue trop véhément, comment serait-il supportable s’il n’y avait pas l’ami ? L’ami est le tiers qui empêche le dialogue des deux de sombrer aux abîmes; hélas, il y a toujours trop d’abîme pour le solitaire."

Friedrich Nietzsche (via oh-my-dear-muse)

(via church-mouth)

"Become silent. In your silence, all questions will disappear. And the dance will begin, whatever the figure! Because as far as your inner being is concerned, it has no figure; it is just a luminous flame which can dance. It has been eternally there, repressed by you. You are the greatest enemy of yourself. My effort is to turn you into the greatest friend of yourself."

Osho (via mymindcravesnectar)

(Source: nirvikalpa, via breathemystardust)