***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)

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[ or ‘off the the other shore’ ]

 

CONDITIONS

We’re born naked. We die naked. As not only religion but also logic suggest, no matter how much funds we raise throughout our worldly journey, in the face of Ultimate Reality, even the most beautiful diamonds and castles merely amount to worthless chunks of mud. There is of course the argument of safeguarding relatives and loved ones, putting our kids on golden thrones and what not – but, honestly, can we really ease their various, vastly unpredictable hardships – emotional havoc, political corruption, abusive encounters, ageing, deterioration, madness – with monetary ailments? Besides, are we doing such an apparently altruistic act really unconditionally, with only their best interests in mind, or do we actually expect a return-of-investment, where we need them to do certain things in exchange, behave in certain ways, before our hard-earned juices will change bank accounts at the end of the day? As most of us haven’t been loved by our parents unconditionally, there is usually a wicked agenda behind the way how we interact with each other. Most exchanges are burdened with crooked meanings underneath and beyond the actual surface transactions. Like the sticky fingerprints we leave as soon as we touch it, Money involved in human transaction inherently corrupts any relationship through its conscious and unconscious strings attached – its Conditions.

Looking at this dilemma from the diametrical opposite side we can say that for the most important things in life, the things that make us innately human – virtue, integrity, loyalty, love, warmth, grace, comfort, in short everything coming straight from the heart – cannot possibly be paid for with any amount of money. How could they? They wouldn’t be what they are – unconditional, uncorrupted, honest and pure Energy, radiating from deep within us. Primal, unspoilt, adamantine Truth.

The monetary system currently in place, bolstered via banks and their ever tightening grip through outright quack game theory (pioneer John Nash later refuted its applicability to human beings) has led to an ever widening gap between us, castrating our exchange of something genuine and honest. We are increasingly entangled in a world of lies and abuse, which at its very end leads to a complete breakdown of any real intimate bonding. We are essentially artificially rendered into monkeys in a giant chess game in which the only way to solve our ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ is to always lie, no matter what. Under the pretext of a shamelessly capitalist biased Darwinism we have been coldly theorised into mere rats, stumbling around in a maze with trap-doors continuously threatening to sack us, compelled to fight for the limited resources of cheese with our equally trapped game-playing peers. If we manage to achieve the game master’s ever increasing targets we might be rewarded with the ‘bonus’ of proceeding to the next level, an even tighter but tauntingly more ‘rewarding’ maze. So much as to ‘survival of the fittest’.

Basically living our lives in the present framework means that any virtue we have, any internal values dear to us, we better keep hidden from everyone else. Not only would we dangerously embarrass ourselves with vulnerability and openness. In the instigated rat race, the more of those values we might display, the more jealousy and patronising we attract from our co-players. Competition is tough, artificial competition even tougher, and we better silently swallow the generically prescribed Prozacs to successfully keep the spirit of internal alienation alive. In a way, through the absence of any higher beliefs ‘career’ and ‘money’ have gained a ludicrously spiritual dimension. We’re conditioned to be thoroughly empty inside and instead stick fake external values on our ageing hulls like glittering medals distracting from the suffering zombie underneath.

 

II

REALITY

Waking up to this grim and fearsome reality we frankly ask ourselves:

Why should we really care about targets or bonuses or other bizarrely dehumanising agendas? Why should we care about yet another reality-tv show or other mind-numbing crap we’re supposed to watch on our brand-new, giant plasma screens? Why should we care about any supposedly bigger picture of the world the media blasts into our incessantly washed-out brains? Ultimately, why should we care about this or that or any other political rhetoric, conjured up to ensure ‘social stability’ and ‘economic growth’, for that matter?

Since the only Reality relevant to us is how we feel about ourselves and – as a result – how we interact with people around us. Who are we affiliating with and how genuine are those bonds? Are we not because of (programmed!) insecurities trying to escape any real, intimate contacts with other people? Are we compensating our lack of self-esteem and inner values with an inexhaustible hunger for status and money in order to be ‘loved’? Are we caught up in a seemingly inescapable cycle of conditional interactions and therefore unable to ever relax with people, open up and trust?

Is there a way out? If there is then it is definitely not an easy one as money has become the binding agent, firmly cementing the prison walls between us. Perhaps re-evaluating our internal, intrinsically human assets is a start. But this requires purifying ourself in the midst of daily survival and this can’t be done without our full attention and commitment. Myriads of old, deeply ingrained patterns need to be changed. Only then can we regain control over matters of time, headspace, virtue, health or integrity. In other words – if there really is any (Darwinian?) struggle in life then it is the one inside of our Selves.

But then again, the abandoning of illusory external values means also that we’re set up against everyone else still fiercely subscribing to them. Nobody really wants us to succeed with breaking free as it would make the trap everyone’s stuck in all the more more painfully obvious.

III

FREEDOM

How could we then survive the revolutionary act of breaking free from it all? Also how is it going to work out, in the end, for those who eventually make it? How about those who stay put? What new, all-improved framework can ensure bread and preferably butter, as well as a roof atop our although now clearer, unfortunately also more vulnerable heads? Will those in power, the game masters / bullies, ever step down to just let us get on with our lives? Well, if the ‘victims’ stop being victims they’ll bloody well have to. Those patronising others into their values and beliefs are ‘happy’ only on the surface they’ve compulsively created for themselves. Because of the nature of of their internal emotional reality – distrust, anxieties and the lack of ever being genuinely loved by anyone without ifs and buts, unconditionally – they have to exlusively resort to forced entries into other people’s minds and bodies . These ‘body counters’ therefore have got an equally hard time to ever escape their very own prisons – even though they might look like glittering palaces from the outside. Every bully has to doggedly monitor their tight grip on others, day-in and day-out, and it’ll be exactly when they are worn out by too much of those entanglements / ‘reponsibilities’, when their victims will suddenly turn the tables and let go. Complete abandonment and the realisation that everything they seem to possess has been built on a lie is definitely not an easy task to take on board. Whereas those who manage to simply walk off will instead regain nothing less than their priceless virtue and integrity. Unconditional freedom – a higher, although perhaps initially harsher, since unknown reality – is awaiting.

True, some of us might not survive the free fall into such existential freedom. But more likely than not we will, having gone through the life-long coercion of rat-race prison, as our hitherto trapped confidence and authenticity will attract other like-minded people who’ve only been waiting, like ourselves, for the time to come when they can be real again – meet and mingle with all their unearthed purity, innocence and vitality.

As to how exactly this will work, there is no definite answer. It won’t be an easy journey, that’s for sure. True freedom, per definition, means that everyone has to find an answer for themselves, really. All we have to do is reach the Other Shore, the shore of becoming Human again, where we can be giving and receiving unconditionally. It’ll be an utopian, paradisiacal island where we as truth-seeking, blossoming children are free to experience our individual slices of reality. Maybe we will die on the way there, drowned in the vast sea of the Unknown. But also maybe Life and Death are ultimately even more serious than we have thus far come to believe and reaching the Promised Land inside of ourselves is our only chance and goal.

[ October 2008 ]