Constructs

All common senses were thoroughly in tact. Sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste. But a sixth and most obvious trait, that of cognitive awareness and conscious conception of reality is hijacked entirely. Rather than seeing the ceiling in front of you or hearing the human voices near you speaking, you're consciousness is enveloped mentally by endless geometric patterns composed of infinite colors and shapes, but most notably teel green and yellow. All infinite geometric patterns shift and contort constantly to form many living entities that exist as one, with the overall presence of femininity. Voices speak to me in an unknown but understood tongue from all directions, again, divulging as one indistinguishable feminine voice who's volume and command heightens and intensifies the further into the rabbit hole I go. They laugh at me. They ridicule me and they possess me. She reaches into the core of my soul and pulls me toward her as if to prove that she is the bearer of all control and that I have none, however I do not concede. I communicate to her the request that she allow me to, in my physical state, continue to breathe so that I will not die. I breath steadily once again, although not naturally, only purposefully.

Her face shifts demonically, taking form of anger, hatred, lust and insecurity. It is an attempt to disengage me. It is a challenge. It is a test of my willingness to hold my virtues and maintain the power of recognition in spite of lack of control over my mental state. 

They challenge my skepticism and hiss viciously. A common description of God strikes me as opposite of these beings, but instead she is an evil and sinister being, encompassing an entire dimension of existence or non-existence and pulling me into her realm of illusion and deception. I let her take me where she pleases, but I never concede that I am powerless, and either out of spite or out of time, she sends me back.

With a gasp of air and a clumsiness of speech and rationality, I come-to. Laying still on my back, motionless and awake, staring at a morphing and and well defined ceiling, eventually coming entirely back to ground. Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of inner dimensional dialect, psychosis and lucidity, and I am fondly back to the reality I have and will exist in from my physical birth until my physical death.

A Tangible God

There is a falsity in religion seen by neither the religious nor the secular. A belief that one should either believe your God on your terms or believe that the laws of science alone accurately assess the ins and outs of being. A belief that there is either a God of scripture with rules and governing morality, or a purposeless existence that moves sporadically and without structure. 

Somehow, the middle ground glares at the fangs of society. The meaning to your life and existence is not nearly as abstract and interpretative as ancient religious doctrines proclaim, but not nearly as simple and decipherable as the anti theist maintains.

Somewhere in between the extremities lies the center of it all, wherein earth meets man and God meets earth. Somewhere deep in the flame of a campfire, deep in the rubble of a mountains rocky ridge. Somewhere deep within the silhouette of a ranges panorama. Somewhere within the rising and setting sun. Somewhere within the glistening stars and the mysteries of black holes. Within the infinite confines of time and space. Somewhere god, or at least a variation of God, exists, without judgement, fear, or the tainted words of men to misconstrue its graceful intent.

But maybe gods existence is not of this earth only, but of its inhabitants. Maybe God can be found in silence and solitude, when nothing speaks but your own conscience. When the influence of this loud world has dissolved. Maybe God can be found in a single blade of grass or a single leaf drifting through the autumn sky. Maybe God can be found in all forms of life, as well as all forms of death and even inanimacy.

And while you sell yourself for money, sex, and acceptance, your soul beckons your attention. And what arrests your soul are the definitions and boundaries of the society you have been led to believe is the core of humanity. But the truth is, God is not only within a scripture, nor a chapel, but within your own consciousness. The very consciousness you so desire to subdue and alter.

The answer lies not solely within ancient philosophy or age old superstition, nor entirely within the words of the evolutionary cultures that monopolize popular belief, but instead within you. And when you are contemplating what it may mean to be created in gods image, it is most obviously portrayed in the human beings capacity for loving and learning, but most of all its ability to create. An inherent ability exhibited on earth (to the highest scale) by humans and humans alone. 

And no where can gods tangibility be made apparent more vividly than the places where human influence exists at a minimum. When the loud world dominated by fear and unrest is muffled within the sounds of the trees creaking in the wind and the streams clashing against the river rocks.

The Illusion of Control

He's in his early forties. The sun creeps through the trees and begins to vanish in a light cloud cover. Beside him stands a small boy, likely his son, sharing his gaze (albeit with an entirely different frame of reference), which bares down on a specific gravestone, by which a bouquet of varied flowers decorates.

He takes one last glance, turns, then walks away, his head down, his hands in his pockets, and his pace steady. The boy follows with a skip and a hop, appearing relatively unphased by the concrete slab sticking out of the ground...

~

She sits beside you. An attractive girl, seemingly intelligent, and in a place where the booze flows liberally and the depth of conversation flows conservatively, you have found the ideal balance of both. A slight spin begins to overtake your vision, and a slight slur begins to overtake your speech.

You ask if she'd like a drink. "I don't drink," she answers.

"Why's that?" You pry, flirtatiously.

" I don't like to lose control." Her answer....

Wait... Stop the music. Set the drinks down... What??

For some reason, at this moment in time, you remember the face of the man as he walked slowly away from the gravestone. At that moment you hadn't really thought of the significance of his facial expression, but in this moment, intoxicated at a party, you do. Because as the word "control" slips out if her mouth, your first thought is of what it actually means to possess it. What does it mean to have control?

Two human beings (that you don't get to choose) conceive a child. The child then inherits genetic traits (that you don't get to choose) while in the womb of the mother. It is born into living circumstances that it does not get to choose. It develops a personality and a consciousness that it doesn't get to choose. Its parents or guardian (depending on its circumstance) choose its food, source of education, and housing. They (or someone relevant) teach it their understanding of words like 'love' and 'God' and 'exist' and 'reality'. They even teach it the word 'control'.

Granted, at some point this child is allowed to make decisions. It can choose when to sleep, what to eat, what kind of car it wants to drive, what college it will attend, what color hair it wants to have, etc.  All these decisions give the child the idea that it is an individual and that it is independent. But to what extent are these decisions a direct effect of its genetics, its upbringing, the nutrients in the food that it eats causing unforeseen chemical reactions, the traffic on the road, or the weather causing said traffic? 

Infinite factors play into each decision that it makes, the majority of which it has absolutely no control over.

So here it is, in the form of an attractive, seemingly intelligent girl, sitting beside you at a party telling you 'I don't like to lose control.'

~

This man walks away from his deceased loved one with the expression of defeat on his face. Body language screaming out 'what happened?'. One second someone is there, the next they are gone. They're driving home from work and their car hydroplanes on the rain washed freeway, sending them into a head on collision. They develop cancer at the age of forty three and the chemo doesn't cut it. A gunman shoots up a strip mall when they're shopping for the perfect anniversary gift. Or best yet, time has finally taken its toll on them, and they slip away peacefully.

Anything you can imagine that's going through the mind of the man as he strolls slowly away from the gravestone is most assuredly a speculation, but the brevity of life and permanence of death are certainly conspicuous enough to cause the question to arise; at what point did you have control?

There is a thought that rather than an existence as an individual being, you are only a color on a canvas, or an expression of personality coming to a realization as to the limitations of the human body you have inherited. That you are an extension of a collective and all encompassing consciousness glowing with the power of love, fear, and creation. That you are not you, nor I, but we. That the control you have over your own existence is as premature and undeveloped as the understanding of your own capabilities. That there is a strange comfort in naivety, and that your perception of the reality you contrive throughout your existence on earth is only an illusion in comparison to the reality of existence itself.

Walking Dead

You sit at a stop light in the left lane with a car to the immediate right of you and two cars stacked behind you. The clouds slowly crawl across the sky, mirroring the pace that you crawl through your day. The driver of the vehicle to your immediate right stares off into the distance, likely thinking of something far more distant than what his eyes perceive. The car behind you rolls his window down, and you observe as he carries an angry telephone conversation regarding large amounts of money being owed to him. A young couple wait for the walk signal to herd them across the street . As it does, they walk, passing an elderly woman who walks by herself at a speed not much faster than a snail. She fumbles around four grocery bags and eventually drops them on the asphalt in the middle of the intersection. She once again gathers the groceries and slowly continues on her way.

You think to yourself "why has no one even once acknowledged this woman?" As the thought crosses your mind, it occurs to you that you still sit comfortably at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn green so that you can carry on living your mundane existence. 

It is estimated that 7.1 billion people occupy planet earth, the only known planet to support life. It is also estimated that in the existence of this planet, 108 billion people have lived in it, meaning that approximately 15% of the total population of earth is alive right now. You can almost consider, based on odds, that it is an extremely unique coincidence, borderline miraculous, that you sit at this stop light with these few individuals at this moment in time. But what's most astonishing about this particular moment that you all share is that, despite the odds of sharing any moment with any given conscious individual in your lifetime, not one person can step outside of their daily mold enough to assist an elderly woman in carrying her groceries down the street.

You scroll through Facebook or any given social media page and you mostly see the same things. People plastering the page with frustration towards people with opposing views, people sharing semi-funny memes about semi pertinent events, or people bickering back and fourth about extremely generic social matters that largely have no effect on any of their lives. It is an unlikely scenario to come across any good story. People talk about politicians, immigration, Bruce Jenner, his ugly female twin, etc., etc.

If you're lucky, you'll get 100 years on this earth. That's countless moments just like this one, and in all of those countless moments, how many times will you stop worrying about the evil in humanity long enough to help an elderly woman cross the street when she can't do it on her own? How many times did you create good? 

Not everyone is going to be the next Ghandi or Mother Teresa. Not everyone is going to feed the homeless, adopt a child or donate millions of dollars to starving children in Africa, it's just not realistic. That isn't, however, a valid excuse to not exercise common courtesy. Can we not find the time have good will towards others? Are we so numb to life that other people are no longer important? If the community is only as strong as its weakest members, how strong is your community? 

Maybe our community has lost touch completely. Maybe instead of seeing people, all we see are worn out faces. Maybe it isn't a community after all... Seems like it's time to stop worrying about science fictions portrayed of a zombie apocalypse, it's already here, and it isn't imaginary.

Even being one individual among 7 billion does not detract from your ability to help your fellow man. It's in each and every one of us to do the right thing at any moment, but quite often rather than doing the right thing or the wrong thing we do... nothing. How different is that from doing the wrong thing? 

Pulling Punches

There was once a time in my life where I believed in treating all creatures of this earth with good will. Never slap a fly, never kill a spider, and never judge another human. 

The more I've lived life and observed nature as well as human nature, I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong. For every spider Ive allowed to escape without consequences, I awake with a new spider bite, just as if I were to give a homeless man twenty dollars, he'd likely go spend it on something other than food or clothing. 

The good will of humans towards other humans is not in itself detrimental towards mankind as a whole. A human choosing to be a vegetarian or vegan makes no positive or negative difference in the overall spectrum of life and death of animals. However, if a human in times without electricity, transportation, and reliable means of food were to choose not to eat meat entirely because it felt that it was inhumane to do so, the human race would likely not exist. Why? Before supermarkets and fast food, meat was a year round source of carbohydrates and protein. If we were to have evolved as a herbivore we might be more similar to a Panda now, who's inability to adapt to the dwindling bamboo resource has caused it to be threatened by extinction.

Sensitivity towards other living creatures is essential to sustainable life on earth. You shouldn't over consume any resource (I'm talking to you Pandas) if you hope to continue existence, but at the same time you cannot be blind to reality. Sometimes animals have to eat other animals. If those animals are intelligent enough, they learn to develop an adequate defense against predators.

There has been, in recent years, a movement toward acceptance and treating everyone as equals which, again, is not all bad. But living in a world where you can't be honest about the way things are and make a reasonable judgement on someone based on how they dress, what their belief system is, and if they are conscious enough to take care of themselves physically, is asking for the snake to bite you.

Should you hate a Muslim because they have a different belief than you? No! But you can look at a Muslim in comparison to an atheist and conclude the Muslim is more likely to strap a bomb to their chest and blow up a building. Should you hate someone because of their skin color? Absolutely not! But you can look at someone with sagging pants, a grill in their mouth, a chain around their neck and an all red outfit, and conclude that based on their upbringing, they most likely have a different sense of morality than you.

Just because you make assumptions, doesn't mean they're true, but no ones ever been a fool to logically play the odds in life.

It isn't popular to say in a world where everyone wants to be offended by everything, but if you're afraid to point out that Shabrille can't get a job because he doesn't speak proper English and can't pull his pants up for a job interview, he is much less likely to figure it out on his own. If you can't tell Billy Bob with two teeth and overalls that he's never going to leave his small Podunk town because he can't say his alphabet in the right order, he's probably going to die of alcoholism or mouth cancer before the age of seventy. If you can't tell Desiree that she's never going to get skinny as long as she eats fast food twice a day and drinks Dr. Pepper for breakfast lunch and dinner in between her pack of cigarettes she digs into once an hour, she's much more likely to die of heart disease in her fifties. If you pay your twenty-two year old son who lives in the loft upstairs one hundred dollars a week to take the trash out, he might have a harder time kicking the heroin addiction.

It may seem a little cruel, but they don't have the saying 'it is what it is' for no reason, because generally, it is. And if you're afraid to point out the obvious because you don't want to be considered a bully or one of the overused terms circulating social media now (fatshamer, islamaphobic, transphobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist, etc., etc.) then you are doomed to be stuck in a society with a consistent elephant in the room. If you can't adapt on an individual level to survive, then you won't survive. Basic Darwanism.

Does that mean call out every religious person, fat person, ignorant redneck or thug? Of course not, but it isn't ok to shy away from the truth in defense of someone's feelings either. The best conduit for growth is truth. Sometimes the best opportunity to objectively look at yourself and your flaws is when your heart is broken, and sometimes destruction is the best catalyst for growth. Nothing rejuvenates a landscape like a catastrophic fire, and it's ok to strike fire in the hearts of the complacent. 

It's ok to be honest. It's ok to be realistic. It's ok to be blunt. And it's ok to still have compassion for other people's circumstances while being all of those things. And if you kill the spider, it's not always because you hate it or fear it, it's because in real life there are no handouts. In real life your kindness towards the spider will result in you being bit nine times out of ten. For your own protection, it might be in your best interest to kill it before it bites you.

Advocacy for social justice causes are a distraction from the real hard truths of life on earth and beyond, and while compassion may not be a detriment to society, distraction from reality is. If a society cant hold a standard for truth and honesty on an individual level, how can it on a cultural level? If you are dishonest in the reality of circumstances ( such as the Ferguson police shooting), then you are indirectly advocating a lack of honesty on all levels, from your children, your friends, your significant other, and even your own government.

John Lennon was not entirely correct to say 'all you need is love,' because, as best stated by Henry David Thoreau, "Rather than money, fame, or love, give me truth." And truth will be the starting point for a positive change in humanity. 

Drugs and Fairytales

To what extent would you sacrifice your own comfort to protect another's liberty?

Everyone has heard the tale of the princess and the frog. Beautiful princess kisses slimy toad, slimy toad turns into Prince Charming, both find love together and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. 

This same idea has been embedded into the fabric of nearly every single children's film, nearly all romance films, nearly all pop and country music, and even into our schools. The idea that there is some magical world where the beautiful girl meets the handsome prince and everything else is history.

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but... That world doesn't exist... 

As much as we'd like to believe there aren't people strung out on meth begging for pocket change on the street corner, the reality is there are, and even though anyone with two eyes and the ability to observe the standard metropolitan area can see that, some people still think putting troubled addicts in big boy timeout somehow solves the rampant addiction problem in our society. We've all seen divorce, adultery and domestic violence, yet somehow there are still plenty of women between the ages of alive and dead that are making out with slimy, scaly amphibians, hoping they'll turn into a prince.

The idea that a grown adult can be told by another grown adult that is neither their parent nor employer that he or she cannot partake in whatever they want as long as it has no physical effect on someone else is absurd. Not only is it entirely contradictory to what America has been made out to be, but it enables an ongoing, nonproductive money pit for American tax dollars that could easily be allocated to more impactful and reasonable areas. (Like national debt... Or maybe drug addiction rehabilitation.)

When you are able to separate your idea of a comfortable utopia where there is no crime, every princess has her Prince Charming, everyone is equal, has two kids, a dog, and a modest suburban home with a white picket fence, your ability to make conscious, rational, adult decisions generally becomes second nature. When you observe the ongoing 'War On Drugs' in America, you're observing a blatant ongoing war on human liberty and right to choose. Taking away the freedom of nine people because one isn't responsible in their decision making is illogical. 

Go to any McDonalds in the country and you're likely to see an obese person feeding their kids the remains of under exercised, over genetically engineered mutant cows with a side of previously frozen, fried and processed potatoes doused in table salt for dinner. Should it be illegal to eat junk food? And if it were illegal to eat junk food, would it really keep people from doing it?

The fundamental common ground between liberals and conservatives (really all people) is that they do not want to be told what they can and cannot do, but they also have no issue with telling other adults what they can or cannot do. At what point do we realize that the more we allow the government to impede on people with different lifestyles right to choose, the more our right to choose is impeded on? At what point do we realize that this "War On Drugs" is never ending and more resembles an addiction than a war? Maybe this illusion that punishing people with addictions fixes the core issue is just that... an illusion. 

Anytime there is a money pit as deep as the "War On Drugs", it is worth asking the question; who benefits from this war? I still have crackhead neighbors. The national debt certainly isn't. The three year old kid who is growing up without a dad because he is in prison for selling illegal drugs is damn sure not gaining anything from it. 

Is it drug cartels? Is it the pharmaceutical industry? "Terrorists!" (In a G.W. Bush voice.) I know one thing, it isn't the American people. Is it just a coincidence that the originator of this war (Ronald Reagan) was a career actor turned president? 

It's very possible the same people feeding you this illusion are the same people telling you if you kiss the frog he becomes a prince...

If you aren't a drug addict, it's hard to understand one. If you aren't a homosexual, it's hard to make sense of a homosexual. If you aren't religious, it's hard to see things from a religious persons point of view. But to me the most unique trait human beings have that no other species known to man has is elevated consciousness. With that you have the ability to step outside of yourself and your own comfort zone and stand up for the rights of others even when you don't understand. We are perfectly capable of stepping outside ourselves and our own personal standards for living enough to allow other people the right to choose their own path, but have a hard time doing it when it doesn't effect us directly. 

Maybe it's time to really evaluate what it means to be free. Do you even want freedom? If so, the question must be asked: to what extent would you sacrifice your own comfort to protect another's liberty?

Generational Accountability

So often I hear from older people and younger people alike that 'kids these days' are entitled and lazy. That they think everything should be handed to them and have no respect for the system. While I recognize there is an amble amount of truth to that generalization, I also recognize that I am a part of that demonized generation, and I'm not sold that it is all in bad taste.

Since long before my open eyes graced this earth, a United States political system that allowed two options for highly regarded political office jobs has failed us. In the current presidential race, we have a lot of the same.

As I speak to an older man about the recent republican primary debates, he says something that I've heard from my elders and peers alike for far too often. "As long as we get a Republican in office, it doesn't matter who wins." Or as it is more commonly stated, "I just vote for the lesser of two evils."

While the logic behind this is not baseless, it plays into all of our current and past dilemmas as a society. I'll explain;

From the moment you can perceive that you are an American citizen, you're told tales of Columbus finding the Americas while searching for a trade route. You're told of how the United States was founded on the lines of religious liberty and freedom from political tyranny. You're told that you live in the most powerful and independent democracy on the planet and that everyone has a chance to be whomever they want and do it however they want, within the confines of the laws.

As you get older, you begin to realize that every individual has a different perspective of what this freedom entails. Each individual, while likely having a naturally unique opinion on how they are to be governed (or in my case, not governed) tends to be occupied by either the Right or Left Wing majority, best (or worst) represented by the two major political parties; the Republicans and Democrats.

Your whole childhood you are taught to believe that you have to fall in line with either of these two parties, the right running on a more conservative, capitalistic, nationalistic, religious pandering platform- the left running on a more socialistic, utopian idealistic, secular, environmental friendly, equality pandering platform. (Notice the usage of the word pandering)

We are taught to buy in to the illusion that if we fall in to any of those broad ideas, we are either a Republican or Democrat, depending on which side of the aisle the particular idea is backed by. 

Then comes the real issue; what if someone strongly believes something on each side? Better yet, what happens when a particular politician shares a large portion of your core beliefs, and maybe even the core beliefs of the majority of Americans, but is not a member of one of the two major political parties?

The answer is simple, your chosen political representative will be denied a voice before he or she can even use it on a widely publicized stage. In order to even be in the political eye, the politicians that go against the Right/Left grain must conform to either or, in the process sacrificing their true beliefs and overall integrity to please said party.

Which brings me to my point....

If you were to take a newborn baby and tell them there are only two types of food to choose from their whole entire life, they would always choose the better of the two. If you were to present the child with two different types of shit to eat, the child would likely choose the one that tasted less like shit. Would that make the food not shit?

From the beginning until the end of our brief existence on this earth, these are the choices we have, the shit on the Right and the shit on the Left, or at least that's what we are led to believe.

When I hear an elderly man tell me that kids in my generation are ungrateful and entitled, my first thought is; 'maybe it's because we are tired of eating shit!'

Those accountable for the corrupt monopolized politics in a democracy are not the corrupt politicians, but the people who elect them. The citizens who sacrifice their personal integrity to elect a government official who has no integrity are the ones responsible for the shit my generation is being fed. 

If you have a problem with a generation that you brought up and you coddled, maybe you should have stood up for your fellow countrymans liberty from the beginning instead of falling in line like generations before you and then blaming the current generation for your naivety. And remember, in twenty years when you are dead this generation will be the one with the votes, so maybe instead of criticizing them you should be leading them to not make the same naive mistakes as you. Maybe you should show them how to differentiate the shit from the ice cream so when they are in your position, they can choose the ice cream instead.

The beauty of a democracy is that your vote buys your government, not the other way around. The more you eat the shit, the more it's fed to you. And after all, you are what you eat.