All Parts of this series can be found here: Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Meme

Comfort is Found Within Our Conditioning

While I most certainly hope it is not the case I suspect that I lost many of my classically trained empirically minded readers by the second or third paragraph of Chapter One. I don’t say this in a derogatory manner at all for in many respects I was and still am cut from the same bolt of cloth. And if I were reading this essay fifteen years ago I would probably shut down as well for I was a man of data, facts and science and to me this would all be seen as just nonsensical foolishness. By my late twenties I had discarded all the fantasy and fiction I mentioned in Chapter One as childish toys no longer needed or wanted.

As with so many other men and women I began to shake myself awake as part of what is often called the mid-life crisis, that time when so many begin to reassess all they have done and where they are going. For the vast majority this existential crisis is relatively short lived. And once the self doubt and reflection is washed from the system, the mind hardens and narrows even more than before. Once cleansed of any lingering non conforming thoughts that couldn’t be ignored or dismissed, they finish their career and retire in a blaze of corporate glory comfortably sated in their self induced numbness. After all, who the hell wants to be a rebel at fifty or sixty when retirement is just around the corner? That’s a young man’s game.

There is great emotional and intellectual comfort to be found within the highly trained and conditioned mind. Everything has a place and there’s a place for everything except for the few outliers that can usually be trashed as aberrant thought or even one offs. What I didn’t see at the time and only later began to grasp is that while I knew many scientifically proven facts, in reality I didn’t know much at all. I realized all the really important and interesting questions were still to be answered and that each conclusion was as unique as a person’s fingerprint.

The illusion of scientific, moral and intellectual certainty that had sustained me for several decades was ultimately not liberating at all. Instead it was a wonderfully constructed and quite convincing thought meme erected in honor of the false God of empirical thinking. As I began to pull back layer upon layer of the onion I was emotionally and egoically crushed to learn that the more I thought I knew the less I really understood about anything of real consequence. While I might be able to describe to you how my cell phone functioned I was unable to explain to you who I was and why I was here.

Just as important I came to appreciate that it was the pursuit of these questions that would be the source of my future growth rather than the answers themselves. What I had always believed was true freedom derived from the ability to examine everything through the lens of logic and scientific method was instead a mental straitjacket. What I considered to be a factual view of my world was actually a belief system supported by official supporting documents and authenticated certificates of proof. The more specialized I became the more narrowly I saw the world and the bigger the burden became of defending my belief system. Every outlier I came across was a danger to the whole and as such must quickly be qualified, quantified or derisively dismissed.

The seduction and denial begins in believing that we don’t do precisely what we have done. Having become second nature after decades of training, we are in a constant state of weighting and judgment, always sorting, collating or categorizing most everything even if just on the subconscious level. We are taught from birth that there is always correct and incorrect, true and false, approved and unapproved, black and white. And while we may intellectually claim we understand that the world is full of gray, emotionally we still collect those ‘things’ which confirm our consensus reality belief system and reject those that don’t.

This is a built in bias that works silently in the background and is part of the control system that keeps us safely confined within our perceived reality box. However if confronted as I now do with the reader, many will strenuously assert this isn’t so, that we fairly examine any new piece of information that enters our field of vision. But of course when an outlier comes floating by we use our established and cherished standards and processes to measure and validate what is real and what is not. In so many ways we use circular logic to confirm that which we already believe to be true.

When examining others it seems self evident that the more committed we are to a particular persuasion, belief or dogma the more likely we are to defend that belief as if we were defending our very life. And in so many ways we would be for our perception and belief determines how we view and live life. Yet we are mostly blind to this process within ourselves and we rarely see the belief system of “science” or of the “scientific method” as a similarly rigid or embedded point of view.

We assure all those around us that only the truth prevails in science. But always we apply the same tools already ‘proven’ to be ‘true’ to information that is nonconforming or suspect. Thus the measuring stick designed only to measure that which is already conforming to the accepted standard successfully rejects those that do not.

Any change of view or perception that does enter the control system must clear impossibly high hurdles. And even then the change doesn’t gain widespread acceptance until the old guard is long dead and buried. For a discipline that supposedly accepts proof that meets certain standards, why is it that long held beliefs and customs are jealously defended which just so happen to deny entry to change? Maybe it isn’t science itself that is the problem here, but rather the practitioner of science that is the malfunctioning component? In other words it is the application of the scientific process that is distorted, thus producing distorted results.

The Journey, Not the Destination

When explaining this to others I often employ a thought picture to describe what is happening. As I grew older and my worldview and belief system became ever more complicated and interwoven it began to feel as if I were carrying around an eighty pound bag of ready mix concrete. While I could manage the load I needed to maintain a firm and constant grip which eventually eliminated any flexibility and adaptability I originally started with. This is one of the reasons why real breakthrough ideas spring from young minds not yet conditioned to know what they want to do or what they just did was impossible. Soon enough I became wedded to a white elephant in ways that were never really obvious to me because I was in the middle of what I had come to accept as normal.

My box was not a box, but instead my entire world. This in turn ignited a severe case of normalcy bias well beyond anything I could imagine. So while I didn’t necessarily see it as a burden at the time it most certainly was. In effect I was so busy treading water that I was rarely making headway. And the more belief weight I took on the more burdensome the load became. I was now controlled by my own belief system and not the other way around. And because this is considered a normal and natural part of everyday life and something everyone else deals with, it was just the way things were. This is modern day life we are told, no more or less.

When I realized I was on a treadmill going nowhere fast it quickly became obvious that a change in perspective was desperately needed. Instead of defending my belief system at every port of entry, why couldn’t I simply suspend belief (an entirely different concept than suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a fictional book, TV show or movie) and allow these nonconforming ideas and concepts to simply exist without vetting or qualification?

This meant that everything had a ‘right’ to exist in my reality without affirmation, confirmation or rejection. If it didn’t fit my current belief system there was no longer a need to apply the only two choices I ever really afforded things like this in the past, to reject it or accept it. Instead I could simply see it as interesting or curious and place it on a back shelf in my mind ready at a moment’s notice to be pulled down for further examination and assimilation.

This is more important than might be obvious at first glance. While we may reassure ourselves that anything we reject (or accept) can and will be reexamined if new information is presented (or if we reassess old information) in practice once something is ‘disbelieved’ there is very little incentive to reassess our position. We simply give little to no credence to things that have already been dismissed as impossible or improbable. And the reason we ‘disbelieved’ it in the first place was because it was impossible or improbable. We ‘proved’ that, right?

The flexibility we claim we will apply to new or additional information is a deceptive conceit we afford ourselves in order to maintain the comfort of hard and fast rules of belief, which in turn maintains our narrow perception of reality. This is the circular logic I was talking about earlier. The parts confirm the whole which confirm the parts which confirm the whole. That’s not to say that we don’t nibble away at the outer edges of our belief system because clearly we do.

But the very fact that we do accept minor changes enables us to believe that we could and would do the same with major sections of our belief system, when in practice nothing could be further from the truth. We are encouraged to think outside the box, but not too far. We are taught that in order to build a diverse and healthy social order we must be tolerant of alternative memes and beliefs. This is a fiction we practice only on the surface because in order to protect our belief system we must do exactly the opposite. The proof is the polarized and divisive world we live in. We are conditioned to recognize differences and to draw clear boundaries to affirm our narrow perception of reality, not to seek out similarities and to approach others with empathy and loving care.

And this conditioning is deliberate in order to maintain the status quo of the consensus reality which in turn is controlled by the powerful. We so easily believe that powerful people work towards maintaining their power yet we find it nearly impossible to believe that the thought meme control system would be designed to enable precisely what those in power most desire. And make no mistake about it; controlling thought is the ultimate power. This is why major social change can only occur when a new and energized generation takes the helm and begins to control the prevailing meme. This is also why entire nations and regions of the world can careen off the rails for a generation or two when group think takes control of the collective. It works both ways.

Shock Therapy

If usually takes a shocking slap to the face, often in the form of acute physical illness, loss of loved ones or severe financial hardship, to force us to reassess the basic underpinnings of our beliefs. But even then the bias is towards regaining ‘normalcy’ rather than exploring new concepts or ‘realities’. It takes great courage to break from the herd mentality and blaze new trails when we have been conditioned to believe there are monsters under the bed. It’s even more difficult to go it alone when our world has just been shattered and the conditioned tendency is to seek comfort, not more emotional pain.

However, great freedom and release comes from rejecting the confining parameters of dogmatic groupthink and belief. No longer do I need to haul around huge sacks of concrete mix while defending each meme intrusion as if it might be my last. In the same manner one would hold a butterfly, meaning gently with little to no force applied, if my belief system can’t accommodate an outlier or aberrant concept I can simply release that portion of my belief system that is acting as a roadblock and allow it to drift while I examine the new information. If the butterfly returns that’s all well and good. If it does not, that’s good as well because I’m not dependent upon the new belief just as I’m no longer dependent upon the old.

Actually if we are to practice this on a daily basis, to continue to use the term belief would be a misnomer because little remains that is fixed and immovable. I now make a conscious effort to avoid using terms such as “I believe” or “I know” because those words symbolize rigid thinking.  There’s an old saying when trying to break ingrained habits. Fake it until you change it. By modifying my language usage I am trying to rewire my brain, the first step to exploring alternative realities.

This is not to say that I must outright reject or abandon my old belief system. Only that it no longer controls me by demanding that I use it and only it as the Gold standard by which I determine what is true or not. I can still drive my car, love my spouse and walk the dog. Only now, when something floats into my field of vision, I no longer must make judgments of fact, truth or reality and I can simply accept it for what it appears to be at the moment.

The outlier can no longer threaten me or even help me for that matter. Value or moral judgments are useless in this context because reality is no longer being measured by rigid standards, but rather is simply allowed to exist. It just is as it is at that moment. This small perspective change becomes a giant leap for our mind because now that we are no longer defensive in our approach, creativity and originality can come rushing to the surface. I no longer perceive the world solely through someone else’s definition of reality.

What I have just described is exactly how an infant or young child’s mind interacts with the world around her. There is no right or wrong, no true or false, no real or not real. There is simply what ‘is’ at that moment. Instead of saying “no, this can’t be real” or “yes, I believe this is true” the infant or very young child just sees and experiences. It is no more or less than what it is at that moment.

After exploring the new object (aka a new reality) the very young mind simply files it away as interesting or not and moves on to the next. She doesn’t categorize it (at least not yet) except in the simplest of terms such as tasty, colorful or fun. The child does not apply moral or value judgments in the manner we understand these terms to mean or how we use them to confirm or affirm our consensus reality.

We forget that very young children have very few innate fears and that most of their early fear perceptions are learned from fear memes their parents or guardians are conditioned to believe are real. While I would never argue that (at least in this consensus realty) some fear is not helpful in promoting longevity and health, most of the fear we experience on a daily basis is artificially induced for control purposes only and we willingly and for the most part unquestioningly go along for the ride.

In a very real sense the only thing we have to fear is ourselves because we are the ‘real’ boogie men in our lives. No one ‘makes’ me happy, sad, glad or afraid. The word ‘make’ in relation to any emotion is mostly a thought meme designed to encourage us to abandon responsibility for our own emotional sovereignty and independence. When we outsource responsibility for our emotional wellbeing we give our consent to be controlled. This is an integral component of the abuser and abused bonding, the symbiotic and codependent relationship with our abusers that I constantly discuss.

Breaking Free

If we are going to (once again) become sovereign entities and autonomous individuals we must begin the process by thinking and perceiving as one who is sovereign. A slave or captured mind does not see the world through his or her own eyes, but rather through those of the master. In every way imaginable the slave’s world revolves around the reality dictated by his (perceived) ultimate authority. The master creates the slave’s reality and thought memes, essentially his perception of reality, through the deep implantation or inception of programming memes which are then reinforced through conditioning and psychological and/or physical abuse.

Consider how ‘free’ and sovereign individuals who are captured and enslaved need to be ‘broken’ before they are considered to be usable or saleable. The external body is brutalized and nearly all sense of his or her former ‘reality’ is forcibly stripped from them physically, mentally and emotionally. Only then can the new thought meme (that of helplessness and dependency upon external control systems) be successfully implanted. The military follows a similar practice with new recruits. Break down the present reality, then program in a new one. The physical and mental shock to the system prepares the newly turned soil for the meme seeding.

This is the underlying premise behind Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, an important read not only if we wish to understand what’s going on globally, but also locally within our mind. Our conceit, our enabling self deception, is that while we all recognize to some extent or another the effectiveness of this type of conditioning upon others, we fail to appreciate (for obvious reasons) how it is used upon us via the drip method of social conditioning and assimilation.

We all wish to point to evil doers manipulating the masses into unspeakable acts. Believing this sooths the ego and massages the mind which in turn allows us to believe that it’s all them and not me, thus absolving us from responsibility for our own (in) actions. While the master might physically control the whip, it is we compliant slaves who are the primary control system and by extension the remote hand on the whip.

We stifle dissent amongst ourselves for fear that by not doing so we will attract the whip, while at the same time by default we consent to being slaves because we do not raise objection nor do we dissent. In a similar manner we teach and train our own children the rules of slave hood before handing them over to the state, all the while following the rules and learning all the new thought meme tricks which we then dutifully teach our children.

Since our captured minds are already immersed within a world not of our own making, but rather one we have adapted to and adopted as our own, how do we break free from a prison when we cannot see the walls and barbed wire? In order for the slave or captured mind to (re)gain his freedom and sovereignty some fundamental understandings must be proactively germinated.

First and foremost we must recognize that our condition is not natural or normal and that we are not free, but can be free if we so wish. We must begin to accept that our world is not constructed as we perceive it to be, that our reality is distorted and manipulated. While the reader can easily see the slave is obviously a slave, can the reader see his or her own slavery? In order to do so we must deliberately and consciously push against every boundary we have been trained to believe is immovable and unchangeable.

This is the most difficult step of the entire process to internalize because we have always been a slave and being a slave is all we have ever know. There is nothing in our world other than that which already exists in our captured mind. This is our box and we have but one yardstick with which we measure our world. Because our mind and by extension our body is trapped within the box the only chance we ever have of seeing outside is to treat that which we formerly believed to be impossible with the same validity we now reserve solely for what has already been proven to us to be real. Question everything and accept nothing at face value, especially things we have always accepted because it has always been that way. It is not about changing the yardstick; it is about expanding it exponentially.

There Is No Spoon

We must suspend our confining and self confirming beliefs, even if at first we can only sustain this for a few moments, and train our minds eye to move beyond our self imposed limits by declaring that there are no limits and then acting as if it is so because it is so. In essence we make ‘real’ anything we completely and without reservation believe is ‘real’. By extension we delegitimize, dematerialize or make ‘not real’ anything which we seriously question as not valid or real. In my view this is the message behind that wonderful scene from “The Matrix” with the boy and the spoon. “Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

The perceived impossibility of bending the spoon with just our mind is an illustration of our conditioned blindness to anything other than what we ‘know’ to be true. It is we who must bend our minds to perceive alternative realities. It is useless to try to achieve the ‘impossible’ and bend the current perceived reality into a form we wish to see. The consensus reality in its present form will only redirect our energy back against us. There is no winning in this present reality because we are only offered tools that will fail.

Do not fight the overwhelming river current of the present perceived reality, for this is impossible. Instead withdraw your consent to participate within the present consensus reality while at the same time opening your range and sensitivity of perception to alternatives. In essence we must improve and expand our depth perception of reality.

Ultimately it is a failure of our imagination that is the barrier to our freedom because the captured and conditioned mind does not perceive as real that which it believes is impossible or improbable. This is why we must suspend our beliefs for it is our belief system that defines the limits of our reality, not matter or science or our masters. It is the very definition of futile insanity to continuously use the same measuring stick to measure the same box and expect to perceive a different reality. Our masters control our mind and the body dutifully follows, thus for all intents and purposes perception is reality. This cycle must be broken.

Once started down the road to autonomous individuality and the sovereign individual, all concepts, beliefs and truths must be examined and reexamined in this new light. Everything that we believe we know must be washed and filtered with the absolute certainty that at this point we know only what a captured mind knows. As discussed in prior chapters, we cannot see outside of the box if we are unable to perceive the box itself. But this ‘limit’ is just an illusion when we understand that it only applies to the captured mind.

This illusion of limits is foisted upon us by the consensus reality in order to confirm the limited consensus reality. We are conditioned to believe that we must know nearly everything before beginning our journey. But this is only true if the only purpose for being on the road is to arrive at the destination, an outcome we do not wish to achieve nor could we achieve at this point. All we need to know is that everything we believe we know must now be viewed as suspect. We are in essence creating a new reality by questioning every aspect of the old one. We don’t need to know where we are going in order to go forward at this point.

While disorienting at first this will quickly pass so long as we recognize that we don’t need to change everything at once, only those items that must be changed to enable the next step. It’s OK to continue to live within the fundamental premises of the current consensus reality in order to maintain our balance as long as we accept and understand that it is all someone else’s reality and that it all must eventually be reexamined. To thy own self be true is the ultimate goal for if we fully participate in the master’s reality, we are the master’s slave. The danger here is one of denial, of convincing ourselves we are only resting in the present consensus reality when in fact we are still fully immersed with no real intention of ever leaving.

Ordering of Priorities

Secondly while we must concede that at times we may have limited physical control over our body, particularly if we live within a police or debt state, our captured mind must begin to recognize that our sovereign mind is ours alone to command and control and only when we surrender it do we concede our sovereignty.

When we have (re)established sovereignty of our inner conscious being, of our mind and inner self, only then can we begin to command our body and external being. There is no way around this ordering of priorities, no shortcut to nirvana. I understand that this ordering can be extremely frustrating because we want change now. But in order to navigate our way to sovereignty we must be in control of our mind and our perceived reality.

For example, when sweeping around a corner on a motorcycle, we must look as far ahead around the corner as possible, not directly in front of us. When we look far ahead, when we focus on where we wish to go, not where we are, our body and the motorcycle follow smoothly and under control. By the same token, if we focus our attention on a spot just in front of the motorcycle, this results in unsteady operation, constant over correction and a greater chance of disaster. An experienced motorcyclist knows you should look to where you want to go.

This is also the case when driving a car quickly on a twisting road though it is much more pronounced on a motorcycle because the bike responds to our slightest body movements. Our mind is even more intimately connected to our body, thus if we wish to regain our inner sovereignty we must have a clear understanding of where we are going and be able to see far down the road if we are to successfully navigate our body through the coming insanity. Looking to where we wish to go expands our awareness and perception while gaining perspective and diminishing distractions.

The control system and the insanity are trying to do just the opposite to force us to see only the here and now directly in front of our nose. Returning to the motorcyclist one last time, an inexperienced rider is often plagued by something called target fixation. If a rider sees a pot hole in his path and continues to stare at the hole, despite his sincere desire to avoid the hole he will hit it every time. The body flows to where the eye is looking and the mind is fixed. The control system teaches us to be target fixated, to become so immersed in the consensus reality that we can see nothing else. This is why we must command our mind and soul before we can hope to direct the body.

We have been conditioned to believe that we have no control over our reality, that it already exists in a completed form all around us and that we are just pawns on the chessboard of life. The captured mind and the slave mentality is more than willing to accept that our reality is preformed and that our only job is to cope, not create. We are kept so busy exploring our mental confinement and its physical prison walls, often through school, work, television, entertainment and politics which all combine to make up our perceived reality as proven by the scientific, legal and governmental process, that we fail to understand that this control system process is precisely what defines our reality, not what our reality actually is.

The scientific process, law, governmental regulation and all the other associated instructions and procedures defining our daily life are simply methods and techniques used to describe our consensus reality. It is not reality itself in the same way that a picture of the person is not the person itself, but simply a visual description of the person.

Unlawful Justice summed up this concept nicely in the comment section of Chapter Three when he said “We must always remember that symbols and what [they] stand for are not the same thing. The flag is not the country; the uniform is not the person, the crucifix, the Star of David; the actor is not the character portrayed; the medal is not the courage; the college degree is not the skill or knowledge.”

If however we have been taught and conditioned to believe that the flag is the country or the picture is the ‘real’ person, we will then form that unquestioned belief into reality by our actions. We make real what we believe or perceive to be real in both the figurative and physical sense. This is an insidious confusion deliberately propagated to shift awareness from the limitless reality within to the fatally limited false illusion externally imposed.

Our consensus reality is simply a belief system cultivated through all aspects of the slave control system. Like rats in a maze, we spend our waking days in conditioned response mode similar to an athlete’s muscle memory. Get up, eat, go to work, eat, come home, eat, watch the indoctrination box and eat, then go to bed. This is all repeated endlessly with weekends reserved so we can shop and spend money to drown our abject misery. The only way to escape the present consensus reality is to withdraw our consent for and of the present consensus reality, a reality that is only ‘real’ precisely because it commands a consensus among the captured minds.

Sadly our consent often comes in the form of deciding to do nothing and surrendering to the river’s current, a current which in turn is nothing more than the consensus belief or herd mentality. The most important concept regarding consensus belief which we all wish to ignore is that a decision to do nothing is often the most destructive decision to ourselves that we could ever make because by doing so we surrender both our will and consent at the same time. Our apathy and indifference are the chains that bind us to our master. We willingly consent to be slaves, an idea that is viciously refuted by those who wish to avoid all responsibility for their present enslavement.

Finally, in order to avoid taking nothing more than the first step, then becoming hopelessly locked in an endless cycle of one move forward and the next one back, we must make a daily commitment to ourselves first to act on a daily basis, then to accept baby steps as the definition of progress. In this essay I am describing a lifelong pursuit, not a weekend retreat or week long workshop. We must manage both our expectations and our denial if real progress over longer periods of time is to be realized.

This statement alone will be entirely unsatisfactory to the vast majority of readers who clamor for change now, for quantifiable results we can feel good about and revel in. To this I ask a simple question. Have you ever wondered why after thousands of years of resistance, revolution, renaissance and renewal that we stand today at the peak of a consensus reality insanity, that we are repeating yet again the same mistakes all over again? External change is never permanent when the inner self remains abandoned, a fundamental truth that is always lost and forgotten once the belly is full and the mind calmed.

It is the fundamental intent behind our actions that ultimately determines our success or failure, not just the effort involved. If we simply wish to change our status in the pecking order of the present consensus reality or we want our pain to be relived in order to return to the familiar numbness of oblivion, then we are doomed from the start. As well, if we feel compelled to ‘save’ others from the escalating insanity without first focusing on ourselves, even if it is only our family we are trying to save, then we are acting for all the wrong reasons and we will fail miserably. Ask someone who is recovering from a severe addiction and has been stable for many years. Chances are they will tell you it was only when they dropped all pretenses and excuses and concentrated on themselves did they make any progress.  

Our present consensus reality is coming apart, dematerializing before our very eyes because it is being delegitimized by way of an escalating loss of faith and belief by the masses. This in turn will compel the control system and those in power to ramp up their ultimately self destructive fear and control memes and physical oppression in the same manner a drowning man will flail and grasp at anything, including his rescuer.

All illusions and denials, particularly deeply held ones that are widely shared, die a hard and ugly death not because the next chapter is so difficult to accept, but because the old chapter is so painful to let go. It doesn’t need to be this way, at least on an individual level.

This is why we must save ourselves first. Nothing else we do matters if we join the others in the agonizing death throes of our dying false reality. As long as we believe that what’s dying is real and thus worth saving, we will never let go and we will be pulled under with it. The only path forward is inward. Find yourself. Only then will you be able to find the others.

Cognitive Dissonance

05-12-2011