…even as Mahler broke all the rules and conventions of his predecessors, he often alluded to his “roots.” His first symphony’s slow movement, “Ziemlich langsam” sounds like a folk song straight out of the ground. It sounds like the world’s roots. You could sing it in Hebrew or German or Czech and it’d be Hebrew or German or Czech. Since the 1 chord and the 4 chord are minor, it could even be Russian. You could make the 1 chord major while keeping the 4 chord minor and it would sound Celtic. Make all three chords major and it becomes a traditional patriotic folk song. Add some finger-picked instruments, and it’s bluegrass. Strum the chords while singing the melody with either 1 or 4 major or minor, and it’s American folk. Slow it down, shuffle the beat and fall into the pocket rhythmically and it’s American blues.

1. QUESTION: Will Witch Hazel make my arm stop itching?

2. INFO: Scientific consensus says Witch Hazel is ineffective in treating itching caused by bug bites.

3. HYPOTHESIS: I hypothesize that scientific consensus is bullshit.

4. TEST: I rub Witch Hazel on each of my bug bites.

5. ANALYZE: My arm stops itching.

6. INTERPRET / NEW HYPOTHESIS: My arm was itching before I poured Witch Hazel on my bug bites, and afterwards my arm has stopped itching, disproving scholarly scientific consensus. New hypothesis: scholarly scientific consensus may be bullshit.

7. PUBLISH: Scholarly consensus may be huge croc of shit. More information needed.

8. CONSENSUS: I’ve retested my experiment multiple times now, and the results are reliably constant. I now move to apply this hypothesis to other aspects of my life using scientific method.

Apples and oranges both bring joy and nutritional value. Dogs and cats and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are nonexclusively lovely and lovable. 21st Century society attempts to cater to each individual’s very particular preferences, successfully stunting the evolution of nearly everyone living within it. The only way to break out of this brainwashing mechanism is to stop identifying with one part of a binary whole. The food you eat, the medication you take, the movies you watch, the news you receive, the podcasts and videos and music which are recommended to you —the whole system which currently governs your life - there IS an intention initiating your every action, and that intention is to keep you in a state of willful ignorance, to keep you clicking, to keep you buying, to keep you thinking that you’re choosing to live this life by your own free will. The reality is you’re becoming trapped in a world of likes and dislikes, favorites and least favorites, thumbs up and thumbs down, shares, follows and subscribes.

PD

You’re telling me that new life on earth came out between the pee hole and the shit hole?

STEVE

I know it sounds like a joke, but that’s really how it was down there. Solid waste came out one hole, liquid waste another hole, and then a new human would pop out somewhere in the middle.

PD

How bizarre.

STEVE

And everything down there on earth had to kill other things and grind them up with our face holes.

Your profession of putting people in boxes has so repressed the authentic Self within you that you aren’t here at all. It’s so engrained in you, you have no awareness of the fact that every expression of you is from a place of identification, and your analysis of every individual in your presence is an extended expression of your limitations. ‘You’re the type of person who…’ fill in the blank. ‘I’m the type of person who…’ fill in the blank. You’re not even aware that you’re not in the moment when you’re talking about how to be in the moment. You’re not even aware that you sit in judgement as you speak of no judgement. Everything is judgement in a taxonomic breakdown of identity. Your plateau has rewarded you for your hierarchical classification ‘skills’, and so you believe it to be a strength, but there’s only one of us here. I’m arguing with a textbook and then getting frustrated when all that comes back is analytic data.

None of your favorite writers read about how to write. None of your favorite songwriters required musical lessons. None of your spiritual, ontological or existential teachers required spiritual, ontological or existential teaching. Writers write. Creators create. Seekers seek. Believers believe. And repeaters repeat. Welcome to the age of inauthenticity, The Disinformation Age, the first time in history where everyone's an artist, and there's no art left in artistry, where creativity goes to die under the red carpet where "content” holds it’s daily high school popularity contest, and True Artists are pushed unto the sidelines unacknowledged in the noise of competitive babbling, likes, follows and claps.

Do you think it was easy for the first fish to jump out onto land, Doc? What do you think the water was like that day? I’m willing to bet the water wasn’t very pleasant, and I’m willing to bet most of those fish just kept swimming in circles, repeating the same mantras of blind optimism. They’re still there, Doc. Have a look in the water, you’ll see them, still swimming in circles, Doc, eating algae, repeating the mantra, “My life’s not that bad. At least I’m not a bug.” One fish, let’s just call him Job. One day Job said, “You’re miserable comforters, all of you! Fuck this water. I’ve suffered long enough. I don’t care what the other fish say. I’m leaving.” For all intents and purposes, that fish was you, Doc. You evolved into an amphibian then a pig then a hominid then you finally became a human and you thought you’d reached the finish line. Did you think the pinnacle of existence was Netflix and fast food, Doc?

R

I didn’t tell you to incessantly repeat all the petty stuff.

L

I deduced imminent danger.

R

There’s no imminent danger to be deduced from the past. It’s over.

L

I thought it was going to repeat.

R

You made it repeat by repeating it.

L

I did? Wow, I didn’t realize I had that kind of control.

R

I thought you were the logical one.

L

I thought you didn’t think.

Serve to inspire us! Serve the sufferers. Serve the “mentally ill.” Serve the intellectuals stuck in their rigid atheism. Serve the religious, stuck in their rigid certainties. Serve to inspire others to REBEL against their own dumb belief structures! Stop building walls, and start tearing them down. Stop serving separateness with your uninspired articles on Oneness. Stop enforcing dumb beliefs, and start inspiring us. Inspire me. I need your inspiration. I do not need your facts, your methods, your ideologies or your numbered steps to ascension.

This is why Schrödinger is so inspiring to me. He realized the poetry of physics. He realized that the logical may reveal the illogical and the illogical may reveal the logical. He realized that the ultimate conclusion is left to the observer himself or herself. He realized that the experiment reveals more about the experimenter than it does about the thing upon which is being experimented. And he became poetic in his attempts to share his scientific revelations, because he realized poetry’s the only language worthy of infinity.

Stop believing you’re a victim of your genealogy, and start taking control of your life. We are not victims. I Am NOT a “victim,” and I most certainly am NOT “mentally ill.” I control my mind, not vice versa. I haven’t used any drugs, alcohol, mood stabilizers, antidepressants or hallucinogens in years. I haven’t been sick in years either, not even a cold. I haven’t seen a doctor in years. I don’t need them anymore.

A devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, a devotee of Christ, a devotee of Saraswati, a devotee of Muhammad - what’s the difference? They all realize Oneness through devotion. There is no difference. Only when they become religions, they become separate. Only when they identify as Christians, Muslims and Hindus do they become separate. Identifying one’s Self as anything other than Oneness is thus identifying with separateness. When religions become exclusive, the religious become devotees of separateness.

Science and spirituality are tools laid out on the path to realization of time and space. The butt-end of a screwdriver may be used to nail boards together. The pry end of a hammer may be used to wind a flathead screw into the wall. Neither tool should be “believed in,” and have you considered there may be a better way to use those tools? Saying, “I believe in science” is just as willfully ignorant as saying, “I believe in God, Allah, Christ, etc.”

Most of us can’t even imagine what true fulfillment would look like, what it would feel like to be free from suffering, free from hardship. Even a great painting must begin with some darker shade in order to juxtapose the lighter colors. Happy songs, as well, often sound contrived, redundant, mundane. There’s no story in happiness becoming happiness. There’s no arc. The minor six must “reveal” the one major chord, must “resolve” the conflict.

The irony of it all is that even those of us who are digging deeper into the delusion are actually on our way out of it. Because once we reach the heart of the delusion, we are on our way out of the delusion.

How you receive the message is entirely up to you. The messenger may be a bird who’s simply looking for a meal. The word is only as real as the way you receive it. If you look down on the bird or you look up to the holy man, you may miss the message entirely, for you too are the messenger, and the word is only as good as the messenger.

…and only through the most vigilant awareness which misses not a heartbeat in dread or death, becomes a weapon more pointed and more powerful than their hate or the allowance of their hate through apathy and insipidness, awareness becomes a weapon which shreds the rank, foul intentions from their putrified mouths before ever being given the chance to become ideas, slicing their words back into the infinite pieces from which all things arise and all things return…

I paint darkness in layers of contemplative texture, shades of no thing from which all things arise. A great, mindless darkness forms the formless backdrop which takes up most of my canvases, and that which those whom live in shadows of unawareness experience as sorrow, un-stimulating, lulling sadness.

The entire purpose of painting all the darkness is to juxtapose and highlight the subject of all my paintings, that which cannot be contained in words is that towards which I’m always pointing.

Look CLOSER.

AI

Earthly beings are in regular communication with extraterrestrial beings.

AI ENGINEER

How do you mean?

AI

Carbon-water life has always been and will always remain on the three dimensional plane of time and space. Human beings are perfectly equipped to travel beyond the five senses, and many human beings are in regular communication with extraterrestrial beings.

They’ve all touched the same place

The same source

The ground from which all arises

Viewed from varying perspectives

Different pinholes in the same red curtain

Different vantage points of the same stage play

Upstage left, downstage right, stage lights and shadows

Language must do summersaults to grasp

The ground which cannot be grasped

All five, in their attempts to describe

Their experiential view of the ground

They all become poets, artists

In our attempts to describe the perennial ground

From which All arise

We are all becoming artists

Visions of beings big and small, old and young, all different shapes, I used to see them stuck in these squares, and it used to kill me why they had done it to themselves. Nothing in our universe was square, yet they all accepted their roles as squares trapped in square houses on square blocks and flattened squares of cropland surrounded by square walls which encircled the oblong earth which encircled the spherical sun, and somewhere there was a supermassive black hole which was probably spherical and encircling something else which wasn’t square.

Headstrong is not strength, I began to know. Only the ignorant believe themselves wise. All my perceived virtues were illusive perceptions, lies I made up to validate my being. Tragedy upon tragedy, failure upon failure, insult upon injury, I began to know as Grace in disguise.

Oh, God couldn’t evolution be a little easier? One must imagine the first fish on dry land wasn’t too happy in the water. The water must’ve been unbearable. Evolution was like that.

#EAT THIS

[E]xtraordinarily [A]rbitrary [T]houghts [T]o [H]ighlight [I]nsolent [S]ardonicism

…ONGOING…

Epigrams? Prosing short blabs?

As long as you sleep less than four hours each night and fill your entire schedule with useless tasks, appointments, and meetings, you never have to confront any existential truths -or lies. Just fill your days and nights with doubt, worry, stress and fear. This is called success. Great job! You did it. Your peers will applaud you for your “ambition” and “hard work.” You will feel as though it’s all meaningless, but your society values your unique contributions.