Today I feel like writing, so I will.

Having just watched two TED talks (on the subjects of sexual evolution and porn, respectively) a resounding message is clear: we need to wake up. Its time to wake up. Much of our lives these days are composed of living out fantasies programmed into us. As my incomparable middle school music teacher Marc Lionetti wrote Were a jealous generation, posing for cameras, watching our faces, making eyes in the mirror, doing trademark tricks for video viewers as if it were a life we could enter. Stop being trademark. Stop doing what youre told. Realize who told you those stories and where they come from. Take some time to get educated, educated about yourself (which you are not, because if you love or hate yourself, then you are you and your self is something else) and realize the things that built this unique expression of the universe in the thing you think you are. As David Steindl-Rast said in the TED talk of his I watched this morning: Stop. Look. Go. Just like traffic. Dont just do things without checking in with yourself first. Take a moment to acknowledge: OK, this thing is here and later it will be gone. Who put it in me? What do I really want? To answer that question for you, you want peace, happiness, and contentment, just like every other living being on the planet. But dont believe that something has to be right on the outside for it to become so. Realize that you ARE happiness, contentedment, peace already, and everything else is just icing on the cake. As such, let go of the notion that something will complete you. And this extends to everything. Dont seek to become famous just because an insane world told you thats the way youll have worth. Monogamy. What you wear. With whom you hang out or to what you listen. What makes you happy. What makes you unhappy. Question these choices, these identity indicators youve picked up by proxy and accidentally assumed are you. Not because were stupid. Youre not. But this insane egoistic human society is so all pervasive that almost everyone has lost sight of their true nature, their true being. Because no one ever told us the difference. But you are not your mind. I can tell you many things you are not. I cannot tell you what you are, not because its different for everyone, but because what it is is so impressive, so awesome and terrifying that it cannot be put into words. You are the Universe, the sun and the stars. You are the space between your cells, and you are God. You are me, and I am you, and together we are one beyond the veil of illusion. And what is the illusion? Separateness. The belief that you and I are not fundamentally the same thing. We are. What we call that thing may differ from time to time, person to person, minute to minute, but I guarantee you this: when all of this form ends and even our physical bodies dissolve, we will see with absolute clarity that we were never many, but always one. I believe the internet is the greatest boon to human consciousness and evolution weve ever received. Its taken human unconsciousness (the thing that makes us believe were not good enough, need to be thinner, bigger, have a longer erection, a larger cup size, the next house, the next paycheck, the next, the next, the next, the thing that makes us think were separate) and projected it outward so that more people can see it more and more often. The internet has exposed the madness of the machine, just like the Vietnam Conflict showed us what the consequences of our then-modern political and socioeconomic system really cost. Yes, it often puts us to sleep, but that means those moments when were awake (conscious of actual life, not just framed perceptions of it) are that much more powerful, that much more integrating and impressive. What do I mean by that? Being awake is when the self dies away and everything within us, the stuff (or lack of stuff) that we actually are emerges, blissful and free, deeply in love with other humans, other beings, the planet and the whole miraculous and fleeting dance

of existence. And luckily, that feeling awakeness scratches the age old itch, answers all the questions weve never had answered, makes us feel alive, whole, well again. The internet is bringing us closer to the singularity than anything ever has. How? By showing us what is mental, what is wrong, what is deleterious and harmful to the human experience and, indeed, the direct experience of life. The singularity is coming. The internet will accelerate its approach. Life as you know it is ending. Be grateful for that. Then we fall back asleep. We identify with the mind and begin to panic about what hell think or am I good enough or why am I not more famous maybe all I have to do is be succumb to fascistic claims of what makes me good vs. bad and then live up to those and THEN I can be happy because someone will have told me Ill be good enough. Enough. You are good enough already. Adam and Eve fell from the State of Grace when they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A brilliant metaphor. Adam is the Hebrew word for Man, Eve the Hebrew word for Life. Life (the material world) tempted Man (or all people) away from the Garden of Eden (the state of natural oneness and completeness), not because people are bad but because who was to know? Who knew things were already perfect? But we cant go back now. We can never go back. Maybe youve never had a moment of awakening. Thats alright. Maybe you wont in this lifetime or the next or the next. Thats fine because its out of your control Heres a simple acumen to judge whether something is helpful or hurtful: does it cause ANY negative emotional reaction in you at all? If yes, then do this: check in with yourself and figure out where that negative emotion comes from in your experience (because the situation isnt what makes you unhappy, your mind is what adds unhappiness to you), then resolve to simply never let that happen again. Let go of the hurt, the pain, the old thing you thought was you that helped you survive and thrive and evolve once long ago (depending on your beliefs, maybe ever several lifetimes ago) and realize it serves no purpose here now.