by David Cain of Raptitutde

One evening I went with my family to a Thai restaurant for dinner. They seated us near the back, not far from the kitchen doors.

A very bubbly waitress brought us our menus, filled our waters and told us to let her know if we needed anything, or had any questions about anything at all.

When she came back, we ordered. “Perfect!” she said with a huge smile, taking our menus. She went off to the kitchen. As soon as she was through the doors, her voice changed. She was chatting with the staff and we could hear every word.

“Oh my God, I was so sick this morning! I couldn’t stop puking. My boyfriend had to hold my hair back for me.” She went on about the trip to bar, the shooters, the cab ride, the stupid friends who didn’t show up. Lots of details and swear words.

Then she came through the doors again, her waitress face back on, and took orders from a few more tables. She went back into the kitchen again. More profane banter. When she brought out our food, she had a wide, wholesome smile, and it was really hard not to laugh.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Jean-Paul Sartre had written about a similar scenario to illustrate a human tendency he called bad faith. His waiter at a cafe seemed to be completely under the spell of his role as a server. He moved too quickly, too snappily. He spoke about the daily specials with an enthusiasm that no food could warrant in real life. His gestures were so ridiculously waiterly that he seemed to have lost track of the fact that he was a free-choosing person, as if there was nothing to him besides his current role.

Sartre believed that we have much more freedom than we tend to acknowledge. We habitually deny it to protect ourselves from the horror of accepting full responsibility for our lives. In every instant, we are free to behave however we like, but we often act as though circumstances have reduced our options down to one or two ways to move forward. 

This is bad faith: when we convince ourselves that we’re less free than we really are, so that we don’t have to feel responsible for what we ultimately make of ourselves. It really seems like you must get up at 7:00 every Monday, because constraints such as your job, your family’s schedule, and your body’s needs leave no other possibility. But it’s not true — you can set your alarm for any time, and are free to explore what’s different about life when you do. You don’t have to do things the way you’ve always done them, and that is true in every moment you’re alive. Yet we feel like we’re on a pretty rigid track most of the time.

We often think of freedom as something that can only make life easier, but it can actually be overwhelming and even terrifying. Think about it: we can take, at any moment, any one of infinite roads into the future, and nothing less than the rest of our lives hinges on each choice. So it can be a huge relief to tell ourselves that we actually have fewer options available to us, or even no choice at all.

In other words, even though we want the best life possible, if life is going to be disappointing, we’d at least like that to be someone else’s fault.

When freedom is scary, we pretend it isn’t there

As soon as I learned about the concept of bad faith, I started noticing that I am guilty of it all the time. I might delay on a worthwhile-but-nerve-wracking phone call until it’s no longer an option to make, and tell myself the opportunity slipped through my fingers accidentally. I might pretend I didn’t hear a critical comment so that I didn’t have to decide how to respond to it. I often tell myself I can’t do any worthwhile work unless I have two uninterrupted hours to do it in.

I have a long history of bad faith. Maybe you do too. In high school, I remember deliberately learning as little as possible about scholarship opportunities, because I’d rather not apply for one than apply and see it go to someone else. Afterwards I might even complain that a guy like me could never compete with all the goodie-goodie students who schmoozed with the teachers.

I also used bad faith to rationalize my extreme levels of shyness, making life much harder in the process. Some part of me knew that being a functioning adult meant learning how to engage in small talk. But it was scary, so I told myself that small talk is all vapid and worthless, and I was abstaining from it out of principle, rather than fear. Like a lot of very shy people, I didn’t date in high school because I was afraid of rejection, but told myself it was because I had high standards.

We’ve probably all done this one: you’re dreading a to-do item because it requires a difficult decision. So you put it off, ignoring reminders you’ve set for yourself, putting less-important things ahead of it. You do this even though some part of you knows it has to be done anyway, and delays only make things worse for you. You make excuses why you can’t do it today — “I should get a better sleep before dealing with this” — even though nobody is fooled but yourself, and not even you benefits from your pretending you can’t do it yet. But you do get that hit of relief when you make a new excuse.

All of these kinds of behaviors are ways of denying our own freedom. If we acknowledged all of our options, the obvious thing to do might be something intimidating. Once you’ve acknowledged that it isn’t actually impossible for you to quit smoking, then you have to quit smoking. When freedom is scary, we pretend it isn’t there.

Bad faith is easier to notice in others than ourselves. You’ve almost certainly known people who complain about their situations, and insist that it is beyond their control when it obviously isn’t. When it’s really obvious, we call it a victim mentality. We tell ourselves stories that make us out to be hapless objects in the world — billiard balls on the table, rather than the players.

A former friend of mine perpetually expressed dissatisfaction with his overweight body, and had a shoot-down reason for every possible way to lose the weight. Running is bad for the knees. Restricting your diet leads to eating disorders. Lifting weights is for meatheads. Gyms are trying to rip you off. It was obvious these were not real barriers he ran into when he tried, but ways of arguing that his circumstances alone are responsible for his troubles, and that he was out of moves.

Essentially, all instances of bad faith are performances of some kind, in which we’re acting as though our hands are tied. We’re trying to convince ourselves (often by way of convincing others) that we actually can’t do the right thing, when in fact we simply won’t.

Life is a field, not a corridor

Bad faith leads to living inauthentically — living others’ values because you’re afraid of living your own. It is inherently self-defeating.

Sartre wanted us to really feel our freedom, as an almost physical sensation — the sensation of walking down a corridor, then noticing you were in a field the whole time. It is an exhilarating feeling to consciously go the other way at a juncture where you normally act in bad faith. It feels like you’ve unlocked a hidden area with new skills and possibilities, and that such secret rooms are everywhere.

Whenever you feel a sense of “this is just the way it is”, there is probably some bad faith there. For years I assumed I can’t expect to get any writing done after 5pm — the energy or focus just isn’t there, so I’m practically sentenced to spend the evening reading, watching something on a screen, going out or otherwise not working.

This is an old, self-defeating lie, and there’s no telling what it’s cost me. There’s no barrier at 5pm. The line is completely imaginary. There’s just a strong aversion to my work when I get close to that time of day, and I pretend it’s some kind of natural law.

Our lives are riddled with imaginary lines. Bedtime isn’t a real thing. It’s a choice, every time. Going to work is a choice. Eating lunch is a choice. Letting ourselves down is a choice. Meeting a deadline is a choice, and missing it is a choice, as much as we’d like to believe each of those outcomes was inevitable all along.

Noticing bad faith doesn’t cure it, but it makes it harder to ignore. We can let ourselves suffer certain problems for years, if we think they’re happening to us, the way weather does. But once you recognize a particular condition in your life as ultimately voluntary, its days are probably numbered.

I can’t describe to you how strong a feeling it is, but once it’s past 5pm, it truly feels like I can’t write. It seems like the part of my brain that does that is shuttered like a storefront on a Sunday evening.

But when I actually do sit down at six or seven or eight and start typing, the words come out like any other time. The door was always open, I just walked by it again and again and again.

by Gary “Z’ McGee at Waking Times

“The Universe is saying: Allow me to flow through you unrestricted, and you will see the greatest magic you have ever seen.” –Klaus Joehle

You’ve probably heard the now common cliché, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” How true it is. But it’s not enough to know it with your head. You need to understand it with your heart; with your mind, body, and soul, in order to create magic with it. You need to be proactive about it, in order for it to really have an impact in your life. Like Daniel Pinchbeck said, “Deep down, nobody wants a job to occupy his or her time. We want a mission that inspires us.”

This will probably require getting a little “crazy,” a little bit “nuts.” In order to make your life more magical, you may need to take a non-dogmatic leap of faith. Let yourself go mad. Let yourself be weird. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Farting around is making a big stink, it’s laughing at the all-too-serious human condition, and it’s falling in love with impermanence.

You are a magical creature, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. Your inner-child wants desperately to come out and play, even if you have suppressed it; even if it has been oppressed by a sick society. Jump into the angry abyss with a smile on your face. This is how magic has always been created, from shamans to Shakespeare. Get out there and live! Look for the magic within things. Look for the magic within you. Like William Butler Yeats poetically articulated, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

Dreamer of Dreams

“Not to dream boldly may turn out to be irresponsible.” –George Leonard

Haters gonna hate, lovers gonna love. And the best place to start loving, is to start dreaming your love into being. Dream of cathartic thunder resonating between lonely hearts. Dream of lightening in a jar drank to the dregs by humorless men desperately trying to regain their sense of humor. Dream of chaotic empathy usurping orderly apathy. Dethrone the parochial by dreaming God and Satan are playing tennis, and no matter how much they play, the score is always love-love. Like George Bernard Shaw said, “You see things, and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’”

Between wakefulness and dreams there is a third thing: metamorphosis. Dreams don’t stand still: they move; they change; they dissolve and crumble and coalesce and regroup. As a dreamer of dreams, you must do the same. And if your dreams are “flying south for the winter,” then that’s probably where you should be heading. Turn your dreams into a quest, into a journey of the most high. Whether it’s the quest for health, truth or love, “quest” is the key word, and the journey is always the thing.

Forget logic and reason for a time. Let unreason and magic shine. Then bring logic and reason back in for a little tidying up. Do it with high humor, and the magic that comes from being the dreamer of dreams will not elude you. Like Carl Jung said, “Reason and understanding must unite with unreason and magic.” Let them unite within you in perfectly imperfect recognition.

The Greek word Thumos is the desire for prestige. It is the dream of the perfect recognition, when all that is great within ourselves synergizes perfectly with all that is eternal in the cosmos in harmonic synchronicity.

Mythmaker of Myths

“Dream the myth forward.” –Carl Jung

The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. And nothing is as powerful, alchemically, at transmuting the passions than myth.

Joseph Campbell described mythology as having four basic functions:

• The Mystical Function: experiencing the awe of the universe,
• The Cosmological Function: explaining the shape of the universe,
• The Sociological Function: supporting and validating a certain social order, and
• The Pedagogical Function: how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.

As far as being a myth-maker is concerned, the mystical and the pedagogical functions are the most important. This is because the primary method of myth is sensual, not verbal. Language is secondary, and only because it is the only way we have to communicate the mythic vision. But by relearning this, sensual, nonverbal language (what Derrick Jensen calls “a language older than words”), we open ourselves up to the majesty of the cosmos and allow for the inner-workings of nature to rethread herself through us.

Our tool is myth. Our goal becomes, as Thomas Berry said, “to move the human community from its destructive presence on the planet to a benign or mutually enhancing presence on the planet.” The myths we harbor can work for or against us. Our current myth is a violent, exploitative, dog-eat-dog system. Unfortunately, we’ve swallowed this myth: hook, line, and sinker. Our duty, if we have the courage, is to update this outdated, unsustainable myth by becoming mythmakers who have the audacity to create a contemporary, sustainable system that meets violence with laughter, exploitation with expiation, and the dog-eat-dog system with a human-support-human system.

Mythology is an ever-present, ever-receding horizon mediated through the creative imagination of individuals and cultures and venerated through art and cosmology. As Louis G. Herman wrote, “The retelling of mythology helps access the creative energy of the ancient past within the present. In this understanding, past, present, and future become separate faces of a single reality,” or, as Jean Gebser put it, an “ever-present origin.”

If we can step back every once in a while and think like an outsider. If we can let go of the “story,” and release the myth. If we can think past it, around it, inside and out of it. If we can accept it for what it is, and then let our imagination run rampant all over it. If we can take the frame of our yester-life and reshape it, widen it, rebuild it out of rubber-bands, or weaponry turned livingry, or desertification turned greenery. If we can break it, if need be. If we can do that, then we can prevent the frame from ever becoming a locked safe. And if it ever happens to become a locked safe, it’s never too late. We know the combination. And if for any reason we should lose that combination, then we must have the courage to shatter the lock. Like Tony Robbins said, “Passion is the genesis of genius.” Being a mythmaker is having the passion to shatter outdated locks with updated sledgehammers.

Jokester of Jokes

“Life should be lived to the point of tears.” –Albert Camus

Nature loves audacious courage. Commit to nature and she responds by removing obstacles from your path. This is how magic is done. This is the art of chewing life up and spitting it out. This is the shamanic dance in the abyss.

One of the most amazing things that courageous people discover on their journey is how fulfilling the self-made path is, especially when they don’t know where it might lead. The awesome realization that if the path were clear, and everything ahead of us were known, it simply would not be fulfilling. Even if we cannot admit it to ourselves, we yearn for astonishment. We long to be surprised, to be in awe, to be taken aback by the majesty of the Great Mystery.

It is within the labyrinth of our own journey, with its twists and turns, ups and downs, hidden demons and thrashing thresholds, where we find true fulfillment. Not on the clear path of others, with their wide-open and clearly forecasted ways, their all-too-noticeable signs, their spoon-fed morsels of already-lived life, and their parochial paradigms handed down piecemeal from shrunken comfort zones. In the adventure of our own labyrinth, there is no such thing as dead ends. There is only the illusion of dead ends. On the already-lived-path-of-others there are always dead ends, especially if you don’t do things as “they” did, or as authority commands.

This is not to say that we should not stand upon the shoulders of giants. We definitely should. But we ought to make such standing a part of our journey rather than an end to it. If we can allow ourselves to be individuated voyeurs, peeking in on the paths of others, borrowing the magic that works and discarding that which insults our soul, all while using it to see further than they could, then we make our journey our own while learning from those who came before us. And the best part is we don’t get stuck, because we’re simply borrowing an egg or two (of knowledge) from their baskets, rather than placing all our eggs into any single basket.

By living the self-made labyrinth of our own journey, we turn the tables upon the cosmic joke itself. Instead of being the butt-end of the joke, we become the almighty jokester, the personified trickster, transcending seriousness with a humor of the most high. We become the one who laughs instead of the one who is laughed at. We liberate ourselves to laugh at it all, to poke holes in makeshift ideologies (especially our own), and to usurp outdated thrones with updated humor.

The paths that came before us pale in comparison to the paths that lay within us. Similarly, the dogmatic seriousness that came before us pales in comparison to the humorous sincerity that lies within us. Their old magic is no match for our new magic. I beseech you, you who would live a magical life of adventure and self-discovery, your path begins at the perceived limits of your comfort zone. Authentic love begins with genuine humor. Dream the dream forward. Dream the myth forward. Dream the joke forward. Laugh, and laugh hard, especially at stagnate dreams, outdated myths, and parochial gods. The world doesn’t need more obedient followers, sycophants, and bootlickers. It desperately needs more disobedient dreamers, mythmakers, and jokesters.

“In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.” –Robert Anton Wilson

by Mateo Sol of LonerWolf.com

At some point during your journey through life you start to become quieter inside.

For me, coming in contact with this inner stillness and embracing it was the moment that changed everything.

Up until that point, life had felt like a busy marketplace full of the loud, stimulating noises and harsh, continual clashes of energy. I not only felt lonely – it was worse than that – I felt the paradoxical isolation of an Outsider; lonely while surrounded by a crowd of people.

Although we all vary in levels of Introversion and Extroversion, everyone can benefit from finding quiet moments to stop, be still, and rediscover the solace of their own company.

Rediscovering the Power of Solitude

Everyone experiences loneliness to some degree – it appears to be a natural and inescapable condition that humans have experienced all throughout the ages.

For most of us loneliness is a product of the toxic connections that we've formed with ourselves, with others and with nature. How many times have you constantly been surrounded by friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors and acquaintances ... and yet still felt a sense of disconnection and isolation deep inside? This happens because we've been taught to arrange everything so that it remains separate; we've been taught to possess, to use, to compete and to fear others. Thankfully, through inner silence we can learn to encounter, to communicate and to love again.

It is only by coming to terms with your solitude that you can truly be free to relate with others from a place of inner groundedness.

One of the most startling discoveries that I made while cultivating inner quietness was that we're all alone deep at our very core. We are born alone, we die alone, and although we like to fool ourselves through superficial appearances, we live our lives alone as well. We can try to forget it, we can try not to be alone by making friends, having a lover or mixing in with the crowd. Occasionally what we do on the surface touches our very roots; a lover that reaches our soul, a friend that understands our being – but if that friend is lost, if that lover is gone, those solitary roots will still remain.

To those who rely on the outer world for happiness and fulfillment, this realization is a cause for profound despair. But when you encounter this realization from a place of inner quiet, this truth is full of joy, peace and possibility.

Redefining Quiet

From an external perspective loneliness and solitude look very similar: they both share the quality of physical aloneness. The similarities end there.

Internally the experience is drastically different. A lonely person is miserable, anxious, incomplete, restless, off-center and dependent on others. It is only through finding the depths of inner quiet that they become comfortable in their solitude, and it is only through redefining what it means to be "quiet" that they can feel happy in their own skin, fulfilled in pursuing their authentic dreams and free from the weight of other's expectations.

Some people claim that being quiet and solitary is the ultimate state of independence, but to me being quiet and solitary is more of a state of interdependence.

When I watch a sunset with a loved one, I know that I could also enjoy it equally as much alone – I don't depend on the person's company for my satisfaction. A lonely person however, is more concerned with sharing the experience with the person next to them who is filling their inner void, rather than enjoying the sunset from a grounded place of quiet inner space. Two people who share an experience from a place of inner neediness taint the experience with hidden fears and agendas, however, two people who share an experience from a place of inner wholeness embellish the experience with joy and a purity of intention.

You'd be surprised how much this feeling of loneliness affects us. We mold our entire lives around avoiding isolation and trying to find a way of "removing" it. We study subjects and get jobs that others expect from us. We worry about how to dress, what to pretend to like and what others will think about it. We enter relationships as needy conditional individuals asking the other, "How should I behave and act to make you like me so you don't leave me with this horrible feeling of loneliness?"

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this lifelong escape is by comparing lonely people to beggars who seek anyone's company to mask their inner voids. Solitude, on the other hand, means feeling like a King or Queen. Redefining quiet means being happy with ourselves and being capable of choosing someone's company not because we need them due to an inner feeling of emptiness, but because we want to be with them, from an inner place of wealth.

Cultivating that inner place of wealth requires two things, Quietness and Courage.

Becoming a Quiet Warrior

To be quiet and solitary requires the courage of a lone wolf, a Quiet Warrior.

Only sheep, full of fear and afraid to be alone, live in a crowd and move in a crowd. You've never heard of a lone sheep have you? If you've ever seen a herd of sheep move you'll notice that their bodies are in a continuous friction with one another and there is barely any space at all between them. This feels warm and comforting, and it provides a certain protection to think "I am not alone. There are hundreds of others with me." Very soon you learn to lose yourself in a crowd.

But the amazing thing about this Quiet Warrior journey is the paradoxical solution to our deepest problem: only by becoming comfortable in our solitude can we finally realize that we are never truly alone.

This realization of never being truly alone can be compared to feeling yourself as part of a large, cosmic puzzle; you begin to feel composed of a myriad of forms and colors, with trees and animals of all types, rivers, clouds, oceans, deserts, jungles, stars, lakes and mountains. You are alone but you are never lonely; you are part of something infinitely vaster than yourself that can only be encountered in those moments of stillness in between thoughts, those moments of quietness in between emotions.

I encourage you to re-encounter and reexamine the connection that unites us with existence; our lost "umbilical cord." Spending 20 minutes alone with yourself in silence everyday is all it can take. Getting in touch with your inner quiet is getting in touch with yourself; it's an inexhaustible presence that can make you feel at home, anywhere, all the time.