1000 Days Of Presence

See You On The Other Side

2009-12-18T05:37:00.001-08:00

Got an add on Facebook the other day. The guy put a personal message in with his friend request, and it went something like this..

"Ciaran, you are an asshole. What's happen to your blog? You haven't posted in months. Where's the next update?"

Of course I immediately accepted the request. I like him already.

And he's right, where is the blog? What's the status on the experiment? Why haven't you posted?

Well, here's the deal.

I stopped the experiment because it was obviously not working. It was having an effect, but not the one I was looking for.

I could launch into what that effect is, why is was and what I'm doing now, but that brings me to why I stopped the blog.

There's a lot of people in the world, in this crazy blog-happy planet, who are more than happy to churn out their opinions, thoughts and ideas for the consumption of a hungry netweb.

And if opinion were all there were, I would continue to be happy to join in. But as I peel the layers on this onion we call reality I am increasingly convinced that this is not the case.

Simply put, there's something out there. Something really real, something very strange and potent, a place where all the questions dissolve and the answers are not simply obvious, but have a thundering power that is all their own.

There also seems to be a way for a person to connect with that power in a way which is also very real. Or at least, there's enough evidence, circumstancial and otherwise, to make a serious investigation of this phenomenon worthwhile.

But here's the thing.

It's a bit like heisenburg's uncertainty principle - what you look at, you change. The thing that you examine changes with the act of your examining it.

I thought I could use this blog as a kind of explorer's journal, charting a journey which others might be able to follow, to a place where crazy dreams like saving the world might actually be possible.

But I became aware that the act of writing about these things was interfering with my ability to really come to grips with them. It's hard to explain, but it basically boils down to the fact that writing a blog in which I punch deep into the stuff I'm looking at knocks off my aim.

And there's another reason - I am not enlightened. I've had several experiences which chart up there with any description of satori that I've ever read, but nothing permanent.

I'm still lost, still blinded by the delusion that plagues us all. And the thing is this, boys and girls - if this shit I'm looking for isn't real, this blog is worth nothing. And if it is real, then until I've cracked it, I'm just another douchebag with an opinion.

My wife asked me the other day how I was getting on with all this and I replied by asking her if she'd seen the film Armageddon. Because there's this bit which I kind of remember - where Bruce Willis is sitting on an asteroid that's going to destroy Earth. He has to drill a hole in the asteroid so they can place the bomb in the centre of it, and break it apart before it hits. They have eight hours to drill to 1000 feet.

The captain of the mission turns to him and says "We've been here four hours. How deep have we got?" And Bruce Willis is all evasive, and like "Well, you know, I mean..." And the captain is like "How deep?" And again Willis is evasive, and then the captain shouts at him "HOW DEEP?" And Willis mutters, almost under his breath "80 feet."

The captain looks stunned, then he turns away, determined to detonate the bomb and at least give the people of earth some slim hope of survival. Then Bruce Willis stands up and says "I know it's bad, it's really bad. But goddamn it, I have been a driller for 20 years and I have never missed a depth, never, not once. I will drill that hole."

That's kind of how I'm feeling. Enlightenment is tough, don't let anyone tell you different. Oh sure, it's easy to mince around the place saying pseudo-profound things you've ripped off from Gandhi or Tolle, Maharshi or Maharaj, Christ or Buddha, Alan Watts or Obi Wan Kenobi.

And you can tell yourself that you believe them, hell, you can actually believe them 100% with every fibre of your being.

But it don't mean shit.

There is something here, goddamn it. Beyond all the bullshit, behind all the spiritual crap and philosophical circle-jerkery, there is something here. And I have never missed a depth in my life.

I may miss this one.

But I don't see anything around me in this world to break myself across that has the potential to change the world like this shit.

So once more into the breach.

I'm not going to be posting here until I feel I have something to report. That is to say, once I feel there's a serious case to be made for my own enlightenment. At this point, after a lot of false dawns, I'm pretty cynical - but that's good, because it means I have high standards, and won't get suckered in by every spiritual buzz I can pull out of my subconscious.

Well, fingers crossed.

So look - the blog stays up, and the mailing list stays open. Sign up on the side of the blog if you haven't already. The next time I post, God willing, I'll have something to say you won't want to miss.

Thanks for all of you who've stayed with me. Anyone who hasn't signed up, sign up now.

And to those of you out there who see this world the way I see it, yes, this is tough, and it can be scary and treacherous at times. Dangerous, heartbreaking, lonely - all these things. But good God - we are so lucky to be here, born in these broken times.

For all of human history, the truth of this thing has lain buried beneath power and theology, stifled by priests and philosophers, kings and dictators and mobs and motherfuckers. And yes, we live in a time where the beauty and moral simplicity of those days has gone, and it's a scary thing to spin through the shrill and toxic desolation of this, our neon world.

Much has been taken, and many of us - the overwhelming majority of us - face daily the gnawing truth that meaning itself is weakening and leaving us alone in the cold.

But guys look - if there never was any meaning, then we have lost nothing but our illusions. And if there is meaning and it is real, if there is something true and eternal, some great power which can be tapped to heal this world, then the shallow glittering hollowness of this world is the best fucking friend we could ever hope for.

Indeed, there is a legend of Buddha's upbringing which states that a god intervened in his life to shatter his illusions, shake his world view and take away his ability to be content.

Looks like that god went mainstream. Good.

So what are we left with?

We have an ocean of information at our fingertips. We can pull up the unedited back catalogues of the great spiritual masters from any computer in a matter of seconds. We have ourselves, and the answer embedded within us. And we have free time and Starbucks coffee shops to sit in so we don't get distracted by XBOX360s or Heat Magazine or whatever, if only for a brief while.

I am not a prophet, nor really a leader of any kind. If you're sitting back waiting on me to crack this, you're a fucking fool. My chances in this are impossible to calculate, but all I know is that better, smarter, wiser and deeper men than me have thrown their entire lives into this and have failed utterly.

But more than this, if you're sitting back waiting on me to crack this, you are a coward. Hide behind your excuses if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. It won't for long. If ignoring this shit was an option, I'd be front of the queue. It's not. One way or another you'll deal with the emptiness of this world. You can get all up in its grill and try to stop it, or you can bury your head in the sand and wait for it to find you. Either way, there are no spectators. Not anymore.

I am a grunt.

Stinking, unwashed, rude. If this shit is going to go down we need less people directing the fight, and more people bringing the pain. Less pie in the sky, more boots on the ground.

But then of course, we live in a big world. Six billion and counting. And I refuse to believe that I am unique. I think there are others who look at this like I do. It's probably all in my mind, but in my darkest moments when yet another beautiful and promising avenue of inquiry has led me into yet another brick wall, I refuse to believe that this is simply me against the night. That there are hundreds, maybe even thousands out there willing to throw themselves upon this problem. Maybe you are one of these people. Maybe you are not. But by the law of averages I think it unlikely that they do not exist. God, I hope they exist. Because if this shit is on me, we're more roundly fucked than Tiger Woods.

I leave you with this, it made me laugh out loud. I was reading Nisargadatta Maharaj's book 'I Am That' and I came across this bit in it where the interviewer (who is from India, presumably) asks Maharaj about Western culture, and how Western culture doesn't really have the idea of an enlightened person.

Maharaj tells the story of his own master who was asked "what about the enlightenment of those in the West who have no concept of enlightenment." He said "It is useless to try. Let them live useful lives and be reborn in India."

Which in a way, is an insult. And in another way, it is a joke.

But there is a deeper sense in which it is a challenge, a challenge I believe it is our duty to answer.

So, this is Ciaran signing off. I don't know how long it's going to take. Nisargadatta Maharaj is said to have cracked it in 3 years. Buddha is believed to have taken 49 days. Jesus, apparently, did it in 40.

That said, Buddha and Christ weren't going at it fresh, looks like they'd been trying to crack it for at least a couple of years before their 49 day / 40 day final stretch.

Shit guys, I don't know what is going to happen. I feel like I'm on the brink of cracking this, but I've felt that way for months now, and I always end up turning up nothing. But time and again, although I fail to hit the mark, I am increasingly persuaded that there is a mark to hit.

This isn't easy. I've done some serious stuff in my time, taken on some serious challenges, and this is right up there with the toughest stuff I've ever tried to do.

A lot of the time I'm haunted by doubts, by how ridiculous it is for a guy like me to even attempt this. But then I think about the pointlessness of anything else I might be doing.

I also am keenly aware of how much of what I do is motivated by my weakness, which has always been egotism, vanity. But then I think that no matter how base my motivations for walking this path, the real question is not what has brought me to this search, but whether this search is credible in and of itself. And it seems plain to me that it is.

And sometimes I think I'm just ridiculous and I should just get a real job.

And sometimes I'm reminded of how lacking I am in any of the traits needed to walk this path -- wisdom, genius, compassion, patience. But then it strikes me that those traits aren't requisites for this journey so much as part of the destination itself.

Which is to say, you don't need them to get there, you get them from going there. Or something.

But truth is, I have made real progress. That is to say, looking back about 6 months to a year ago I can't believe the shite I was sifting through. The shite I'm sifting through now is much better.

Will I share that progress with you and talk you through all the positive steps I've made?

Well therein lies the rub. Guys and girls - I have no business writing a blog about enlightenment when I am not enlightened. No matter how slick my stuff is, and no matter how much effort I piut into making it good, it can never rise above the general haze of information out there because it just isn't coming from a pure enough place.

I need to get this done, and then I think I'll be of use to my fellow man. Until then, I'm just one more voice in a hurricane of noise, as are we all. And what's worse - writing about this stuff, thinking about it and dressing it up in words is something that's only going to fuck my ability to actually crack it.

So this is goodbye for now.

There is something here, people. I intend to find it, and I know how ludicrious that sounds. As soon as I have something to tell you, I'll hit this blog, so if you want to keep your finger on the pulse, sign up for the mailing list on the sidebar if you haven't already done so. It will keep you immediately updated of any posts I put up.

Also, add me on Facebook if you want to, I announce all my blog updates (as well as general life stuff) there and I'll almost certainly accept you as I have appallingly low standards. Natch.

Good luck and godspeed, and I mean that especially to those dumb enough to be doing what I'm doing. If you are that stupid and you want to share experiences, ask questions about what I've learned so far, or lessons I've pulled from the 1000 Days experiment, feel free to ask.

I might even answer.

Stranger things have happened.

See you on the other side, you crazy motherfuckers.

Much love.

Quick Update... Mini-Project Underway

2008-11-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

Hey guys and girls...

I want to quickly post something up so you know where I've gone.

Halfway through writing the Ayn Rand post I suddenly struck paydirt, in philosophical terms.

What I mean is, I connected two wires I'd never connected before and a shitload of questions I had about everything - the unconscious mind, the 'ego', morality, society - just answered themselves.

I walked around for a few days trying to get my head around the whole thing properly, and when that failed, decided to just start writing.

I'm still writing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit it all into just one post, and if I do it's going to be like a mini book.

Either way, I'm working on it now, so although it looks like everything's all quiet on the Western Front, something's in the works I think you're going to enjoy.

I'll get it up (so to speak) as soon as I can.And remember, you can sign up for email updates so you don't miss it...

Much love, and stay tuned.

Ayn Rand, Eckhart Tolle And The Destruction Of America

2008-11-09T13:12:00.000-08:00

A few people have asked me what I think about the ideas of Ayn Rand. She's a writer who's work is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Eckhart Tolle.

It's a fair question, and I've put off answering it for a while because I wanted to get my head straight on the issues. When that didn't happen, I thought 'fuck it', and decided to forge ahead anyway.

Rand expounded (love that word, it means 'came out with') a philosophy of living which she called 'Objectivism' or 'Rational Egoism.' At the core of it lies the idea that rational selfishness is the highest moral good.

Ayn (pronouced "eye - nnnn") Rand wrote two main books. One was called The Fountainhead and another is called Atlas Shrugged.

She is one of the most influential people of the 20th Century.

To sum it up in her words:

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Hear it from the horse's mouth:

Rand believed that meaning in life came from independent creativity, individual achievement.

What was collective was deadening, lifeless. Only selfishness was moral.

Socialist laws from on high shackled the best humanity had to offer to the service of the lazy and the weak.

And worse still, instead of just penalizing the best individuals to help the weakest, the weakest were kept weak by being made comfortable in their shittiness by handouts.

Social welfare (to give just one example) was a crime to it's beneficiaries - the enlightened thing to do would be not to shield them from the consequences of failure.

In those consequences would be the motivation they would need to climb high, and realise their potential as creative, independent individuals. I use the idea of a welfare state because it was something Rand specifically railed against... and because it's something we can all wrap our heads around. She extended the principle of what she called the 'parasite' of altruism to everything, including moral values.

So was she right? Well, the welfare state in Britain has indeed aided in the creation of a subclass that we call 'chavs.'

If you look at Chavs, it's hard not to concede that Rand had a point.

But let's take it to a broader level - if you look at the cultural fate of communist countries, it's pretty shocking.

Russia, home of Tolstoy, the world's greatest novelist, became a cultural wasteland for near to a century.

China's 'Cultural Revolution' cut through it's heritage like a chainsaw. Artists, poets, martial artists and visionaries were butchered like animals.

Eastern Europe was plunged into the darkness of a police state where the creative impulse was either used for propaganda, shackled, or crushed.

Indeed, you can go further. Because there was one major experiment in the thought of Ayn Rand in the 20th century. You may have heard of it. It's called America.

Ayn Rand's book 'Atlas Shrugged' has had more influence on US politics, business and culture in the second half of the 20th century than any other work. By miles. Nothing else comes close.

The second half of the 20th Century has been Republican. JFK got shot, Carter got kicked out after one term, and Clinton's 2 terms was the only extended period of Democratic leadership in the whole 60 year period since the war.

The Republican party was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand. The idea of laissez-faire (unregulated and unrestricted) capitalism had always been a core part of America's national identity. After Rand and McCarthy, it was fully realised as a moral imperative.

But let's look, shall we? Was it a bad thing?

Well, let's look. If we take the second half of the 20th Century as being influenced by Rand, how was the USA at the end of that Century?

By the end of the Century of Rand, America was the world's only Superpower.
It was militarily untouchable to an extent not seen since the height of the Roman Empire.
It's economy was the largest in the world, dwarfing it's nearest rival.
It had an output of films, music and international business brands that instigated profound cultural changes in every nation on earth.
It was one of the leading lights of advances in communications and technology that had revolutionised human interactions on a global scale, bringing human culture together in a way never before seen.

Simply put, it enjoyed a level of success which is almost unrivalled in the course of human events.

So to simplistically discard Ayn Rand (or the Rand-influenced ideals of the Republican party) out of hand is, to my mind at least, an inadequate response. As far as I'm concerned, the USA has has a pretty impressive track record with this.

So what does this tell us?

It tells us that whatever else you might want to say about Objectivism, you'd be a fool to suggest it wasn't incredibly effective at creating success.

Which is why you'd think that the dawn of the 21st Century would have been a major coup for America. 8 more years of Republican leadership. As we all know, it didn't work out that way.

The America that stood triumphant in 2000 is not the America we have today.

By 2008, a massive crash shattered America's financial industry.
The two most profitable sectors, mortgage lending and investment banking have disintegrated.
The legendary Wall Street now consists of two surviving companies, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Lehman Bros is gone. Bear Stearns. Gone. Merrill Lynch. Gone.
The American collapse precipitated a global financial meltdown which bankrupted the economies of several nations including Iceland and Hungary.
Even the great economies of Europe were brought to their knees as their banking institutions shattered like glass in the shockwave from Wall Street.
The mighty American army is caught up in two wars in lands on the other side of the earth. Bogged down by guerilla warfare of the kind that bled the US army - and the US national wallet - dry in Vietnam, no victorious end to either conflict is in sight in 2008.
An explosion of industry in China coupled with the carnage in America's own economy dealt it's supremacy a double blow.
Imprisonment without trial, kidnap and torture have been openly endorsed at a Presidential level.
The image of America abroad is in pieces. The goodwill in the wake of 9/11 has evaporated so completely that basically every American straying beyond the US border faces a barrage of venom.

Simply put, it has been a spectacular fall from grace which is only rivalled in American history by the 1929 Wall Street Crash that precipitated the Great Depression. Several key commentators suggest it may be far, far worse. Only time will tell.

Now wait.

Before we start getting into this being 'so bad' or 'so terrible', just hold. Hold off.

This is not that kind of blog. Although I do feel that it's sad, what's happened, I am not here to bemoan America's fate, blame the President or the Neo-Conservatives, or play armchair quarterback (to use an American phrase) to the decisions made over the past 8 years.

What I want to do is to step back from the glass.

To get away from the easy judgements, the easy posturing of 'this side' or 'that side.'

Step back with me.

Look.

Just look.

Wide angle.

Try not to rail against anything, Try not to hate. Try not to defend, and try not to justify.

Just look.

Don't judge it. Just look. The temptation to judge will rise. You can feel it. It feels like righteous suffering. Like fire.

Don't get sucked in.

Now what's interesting is this - in my life I've had similar patterns. This soaring achievement, and catastrophic fall.

It's happened to me a couple of times now. And that's a weird thing to say, because you'd think that once was enough. You think after the first time I had a shatteringly nasty crash which erased my successes like they'd never been and punched me through the bedrock, I'd think again before getting back into the sky.

You see, the fall is always nastier than the rise. It gives a lot of motivation - a lot of motivation to change.

Yet as you probably know either from your own life or from the life of people you've met, soaring highs and crushing lows are a recurring pattern that can lock people in for their whole lives.

This is very much the life I've led. Like Icarus, the winged man of Greek legend, I'd soar high...

...then crash out.

Then I'd spend a year or so piecing myself together, rebuild the wings in a new way, take a run up, fly, soar and crash.

Now this isn't just a pity party. I bring this up because it makes no sense. After I crashed out the first time, why am I so eager to get back up there, again, and again, and again, and again?

And in a way, I wasn't. Every time I crashed out financially, emotionally, professionally, personally - in whatever sense - I resolved at as deep a level as I could to change things so that I wouldn't fuck up again.

Just as the financial markets are, right now, looking at bringing a raft of legislation and regulation to stop another global collapse from happening in the future.

But no matter how deeply I resolved to change, I would always end up flying too close to the sun, always end up falling, and dashed on the rocks. It didn't matter how many times I'd piece myself together. I'd always end up gathering more and more damage.

Why?

Well, on the one hand I think it's true to say that the reasons I couldn't stop crashing out is that I was doing it for reasons I wasn't aware of and didn't have conscious access to.

And on the one hand that's true. Obviously. If I'd have been able to break the pattern, I'd have broken it. I didn't break it, therefore I didn't see what was really going on.

The same thing is true of the boom-and-bust cycles of the capitalist economy. It has a bipolar quality to it, with soaring highs and crushing lows. Unluckily for us, we just went over the edge.

But here's the thing - this isn't just something that's happening in our economy. It's something that's happening in our civilisation. The soaring highs. The crushing lows.

And there is a certain kind of romance to that life - when you're soaring. But the low will take that from you. It takes everything from you. I know that much from my own experience. So while it's easy to defend the highs and lows now, when you're knee deep in the howling you'll not be so convinced.

There is a pattern here, that seems to extend out from the individual to society itself. Essentially, what is going on with the Western economies right now is a large-scale version of how the population of the Western World lives their lives.

That is to say, like Icarus.

How does Ayn Rand fit into all this?

Ayn Rand takes the wings off Icarus and replaced them with a rocket engine.

The reason Rand has been so successful is because her work works.

If you see the world from her point of view you'll feel a total certainty to forge ahead.

You'll feel a burning righteousness even when you suffer in the pursuit of your goal, and that will become pleasurable to you because you are suffering for a moral cause: yourself.

You will be unburdened by guilt or shame and you will achieve.

You will achieve, in real life. Check this out - it's a short mash-up of speeches from the Ayn Rand inspired computer game Bioshock:

Yes, thinking like this, you will achieve.

And in achieving, you will gain a sense of accomplishment. This will happen.

Well of course, you'd be forgiven for bouncing up and down on your seat in excitement. Me too.

Swap the wings of Icarus for a Jetpack? Sign me up. I want a jet pack.

I've wanted one since I was 6. I will never stop wanting one. I want one right now.

And if that sense of accomplishment that you get from achievement is sustainable, Rand's philosophy is - as far as I can tell - watertight.

Let's look at it, and see, shall we?

In the world around us, and in your own life, there is a certain kind of success which has a destructive quality.

And the level of destruction this success has is related to the height of the achievement it originally gave you. The higher you climb, the greater the impact.

I say related - but not proportional. That has never been true in my life. The downswing is always profoundly more extreme than the upswing.

To illustrate with the Jetpack metaphor - no matter how cool it is to fly around with a jetpack, it's not ever really going to be good enough to justify going home in a matchbox after they mop you out of the crater you've made in the highway.

So what is it about this form of success that causes it's destructive aspect?

What is it in success that leads to ruin?

And is this destructive success and the kind of success that Rand posits as the highest moral good - are they always the same?

Fascinating questions, all. I'll throw up some ideas.

The truth is, this whole issue runs very, very deep in all of us. There are no easy answers - but there are answers.

I hope you've noticed that my moral condemnation of Ayn Rand is conspicuous by it's absence.

There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm not here to bash anyone. Secondly, I'm especially not here to bash someone who seems to be going out of their way to make me condemn them.

Rand has a habit of stating things in a highly provocative way, and almost for that point alone, I think it's important that we refuse to be provoked.

It is very easy to morally condemn Rand's thought, her deification of the self. That makes it boring, at least to me.

It's very easy to look down on the defiant and open self-obsession which Rand promotes as the highest moral good. It's also a waste of my keystrokes when I could be doing something more productive, like looking at porn or setting things on fire.

But I'm not here to look down on anything. I'm here to look.

The fact is that whatever it is Rand is suggesting, it works.

It seems to me that Rand has given form and voice to something that dwells inside each of us - a deep impulse that gives rise to striving and success - almost in the same way that Tolle gives voice to another deep impulse in human nature.

Neither of them are really the inventors of their philosophies. It would be more accurate to describe them as cartographers, mapping something they have found within themselves that is common to the human condition itself.

The success Rand's thought lionises is a very particular kind of success. It is a success that has certain qualities to it. It's not success in general - this is important. It's success of a certain kind.

It's a kind of success that is defiant. It is highly conscious of the superiority it has over the unsuccessful. This is not necessarily a bad thing - again, no judgement one way or another. This is just a quality it has.

It has a deeply moral resonance to it - which is to say that in this world view success and a higher morality are the same. That means that those who fail are not just inferior - they are morally inferior.

Again, let's not judge this. Let's not say 'oh no, what a bitch.'

And if you're on the other side of the coin and you agree with Rand, try not to get too caught up in that either - the 'Damn straight, fucking hippies' mentality.

Just step back from the glass as much as you can and look at it.

Because here's my thoughts on Rand. And indeed, success.

I've achieved success of the kind Rand talks about in several different areas of my life. It's all fallen apart since, so I guess I'm off her Christmas list, but I know how it feels to succeed.

And it's very interesting, because there's one question we have to ask ourselves:

What part of us are we feeding?

You see, if the success feeds that part of us (and it is a voracious part of us) that wants to be morally superior, then that part will grow.

And as it grows, it gets more and more ravenous, and more and more hungry.

As it does, it twists our perceptions of the world into terms of moral superiority and moral inferiority.

It's not that we're 'bad people' - but we see the world through such a compelling and simple lens that we are unable to resist the parasite within us. A parasite grown fat on our victories. A parasite called 'moral condemnation'. Otherwise known as hate.

It is the hatred of the weak embedded in the structure of moral judgement itself which is what shatters all success gained from a self-worshipping mindset.

Why? Because it is morally 'bad' to hate the weak? Or perhaps it is I who am 'wrong' about this because I just don't get how good Rand is?

Bad. Wrong. You see how subtle they are? How easily they creep unnoticed into our minds?

Creep? No, even that's not true. We welcome them in. We love to have the feeling of pure purpose, certainty and meaning that condemnation brings. We welcome it. We look for things to feed it.

Look at a newspaper or watch the news tonight. Or better still go right now to CNN.com, or BBC.co.uk/news. Look at the tabloid websites like News Of The World, or the quality papers like The Independent.

It is as if the journalistic industry gathers outrage from around the globe every day - like a harvest. It then presents it to the world like food. Delivered fresh in the morning, and in depth at night. There's even the websites to give you a snack in the daytime if you get peckish.

Moral judgement is like an insect, a parasite.

It takes you over, pretends to be you. Gives you in one instant a massive hit of righteous fire.

But it's based on a fiction that success sends spiralling out of your control.

The fiction deepens, becomes more compelling and more simple. From your point of view everything is swimming into focus, but what's really happening is that you're getting more and more lost.

It always ends up consuming you.

And the higher you climb, the further you will fall and the more anguish you'll feel when reality rips you to pieces.

The problem with Rand is not with Rand. It is with US. We are locked in this world of morally-charged identity. Fictions that we were born into. Fictions of right and wrong, good and evil.

Fictions that claim to be the storehouse of all righteousness, be they religious, cultural, whatever.

But they are not the storehouses of righteousness.

They just tell you what to hate.

Has Rand heard this before? Yes. And she's defended herself against it to:

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. "

This is fair.

But there is a link between the desire to achieve and madness itself.

Is it always to be so? Can we never seek to achieve? I don't know. I hope not - but what I will say is this:

Our cultures, our worlds - and our minds - are so deeply infected with the parasites of moral judgement, division and conflict that our desires to achieve are doomed unless we deal with the problem at the source.

Moral arrogance is the fate of those people - and those nations - who feed that part of themselves that likes to be superior to others, that likes to condemn, that likes to be in the right.

Not a "side effect" of those who feed their sense of superiority through achievement.

Not a "danger" of those who feed their sense of superiority through achievement.

It is the fate of those who feed their sense of superiority through achievement.

You think I'm talking about America now, right?

Wrong.

I'm talking from my own experience - and that of my own country.

Britain.

In the 19th Century, the British Empire straddled the globe.

It was the largest empire ever seen in history. The Mongols, the Romans, Japan, the Chinese, the USA, Germany, Russia - none of these giants of history has ever even come close to having an Empire on the scale of Britain's.

Britain initiated the industrial revolution, the revolution that made all modern technology, culture and capitalism possible. Without Britain's industrial revolution, we'd all still be living on farms - and not the techno-farms of today. Old school farms. With horses, and everything.

Britain spread it's language throughout the globe. It brought parliamentary democracy to the planet. It built roads, set up infrastructures.

It did a lot of good.

But alongside that was the haughtiness and arrogance for which Britain is still - to this day - renowned. The aloofness, the coldness. The inhumanity. The total moral arrogance that looted India and Africa. That massacred people at Kawnpoor and Rhodesia.

Mike Davis, a historian of the period, estimates that there were between 12 and 33 million avoidable deaths by famine in India between 1876 and 1908. The cause? Callousness of the ruling class, and their free-market ideology.

Messy.

And of course we all know that Britain gave up it's Empire willingly. And that is true.

But even then the moral arrogance that had come to characterise the British rule led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands - maybe even millions - in India and Pakistan.

The British government had scheduled India's independence for 1948. Mountbatten cut the time by half to mid-August 1947 because he was impatient to get back to England and build his naval career. Something in the region of 500 000 people died in the resulting chaos.

Look, I love Britain. But Britain has a major self-image problem. It's the only country I know of where if you say "I love my country" people look at you like you're a freak.

Again - see the urge in yourself to morally judge this fact. Don't get sucked into it. And don't get sucked in to the urge to condemn Britain's past either. There is a deeper truth here.

The reason British people don't say 'I love Britain' anymore is that we were shocked to discover what we became - what power made us. Britain was always about honour, about decency and fair play. Just as America is all about freedom, opportunity and justice.

British people don't say 'I love my country' anymore because of what we became when we said it last time. We became arrogant. Terrible, destructive caricatures of who we are, of what Britain really stands for.

It was as if our self belief contained something more terrible even than the self-doubt that we were so eager to run from. Something we had to let go. Something we had to let die.

I went to America recently, and travelled quite a bit. And a lot of things blew me away. It's an incredible country.

But there was at least one thing I encountered that I didn't expect. Something that I don't think America's experienced before - even back in the 60's with Vietnam.

With Vietnam, America reacted with shock and outrage to it's own atrocities.

Now?

This is different. It's not the fiery moral outrage that says 'I still believe in America, and this is not it!'

It's the jaded cynicism that says 'I don't know what America has become now.' It's the horror of seeing through a mesh of lies and not knowing if there's any decency left in the dream that was once the United States.

The past 8 years have discredited more than the Republican party.

It is as if they have discredited America in the eyes of America.

Just as Britain's essential goodness was discredited in the eyes of Britain.

And, in a more extreme way, the way that Germany's essential goodness was discredited in the eyes of Germany. Although it happened much faster and much more violently, the deep structures that led Germany into barbarism were not of a different type.

They were just more intensely followed, more intensely believed. More industrially implemented. Everything else was in place. The moral righteousness. The total self-belief. The rapacious hunger for victory and achievement to feed the fiction.

I digress.

When I was in the states that sense - not of Americans hating America, but of Americans deeply questioning America's essential goodness - was something I came across time and again.

And not just in California, but deep in the heartlands of the South, the engine of America's self-belief.

What were they rejecting? Were they rejecting freedom? Opportunity? Justice?

No.

They were, and are rejecting the terrible, destructive caricature of itself that America has become.

It's funny- it almost reminded me of home, so deeply did it resemble the self doubt of my own nation.

I love America, I really do. I feel it's turned a corner now, and I am hopeful for it's future. Even had Obama lost, the last eight years have shown America a side of itself that it never knew existed. And after having seen what it has seen, perhaps it's politics have turned a corner.

I don't know if the damage done to it's self-belief is enough to grant it the wisdom it needs, or if America will sink into indolence and self-hate. Or perhaps neither of those things will happen, and America will forget. The next generation will ignore the warnings and the cycle will repeat all over again.

Until eventually the fall is so massive and so extreme that the world will die before America faces it's demons.

Time alone will tell.

But I talk about this to raise the point that moral arrogance does not come from nowhere.

Moral arrogance is a very specific thing and it does not just rise out of the ether.

It comes from a very specific set of behaviours, both external and internal. It is very deeply rooted in the human condition and is ultimately no more than a magnified version of a voracious weakness that infects all humanity.

This is not an American problem. America is going through this right now because it is the most successful nation in a world right now. When Britain was, Britain went through it. And if you ever become successful as a person, you will go through it.

If you are successful, perhaps you're going through it right now, and you don't even know. But if you are - you'll find out soon enough. Reality has its ways of making sure of that.

And at the end of the day, this destructive cycle has one centre. Just one.

Drawing your meaning, purpose and happiness from your personal achievements.

And not because it is 'bad' in some vague moral sense, and not because your achievements 'belong to everyone' or because they 'should support your fellow man' or any of that crap.

It's bad because it feeds a part of you that will twist you out of all recognition and turn you into a monster.

But of course, that begs a question that I think is very high on everyone's priority list.

Is there another option?

Is there a way to be successful - in real life, in the real world?

Is there a way of living successfully that will not obliterate what is highest and best within you, and turn you into first a monster, and then a wreckage?

Well?

Is there?

Armistice Day In The Matrix

2008-11-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

The Matrix Revolutions always confused me.

Now don't get me wrong, like you I was disappointed, but not for the reasons most people were.

A lot of people bitched about the invasion of Zion, saying it was too 'Playstationy'. Some others pointed to a disjointed narrative, stale characters, whatever.

Not me. I didn't mind any of that. What I did mind is that I just didn't 'get' it. I didn't understand the ending.

Now before we go on, just to warn you that none of this is going to make any sense to you unless you have watched at least the first Matrix film.

Normally I'd go to pains to make it more accessible, but frankly, if this is you I'm doing you a favour by forcing you to watch it. It's brilliant. You only need to watch the first one to get what I'm saying - I'll explain the rest.

I've even embedded video feeds of all the relevant bits through the use of techno-witchery.

Anyway - the ending of the Matrix Revolutions. My problem with it was that I didn't understand it.

Agent Smith, the creepy baddie from the first film, has discovered how to replicate himself. He spreads like a virus across the whole matrix, taking it over from within. He stands poised to possess everyone in the entire matrix, and thus take it over.

Neo, blinded by Agent Smith, comes to the end of his journey and walks into the heart of the machine city as the machines finally crack the last of Zion's defences.

He goes to the core of the machines, and meets the AI at the centre of it all.

He proposes a truce.

He says that the program known as Smith has infected the Matrix. Soon Smith will spread throughout the Machine City and destroy it too. When it is destroyed, the AI will fall. The AI is unable to stop Smith because he has infected the Matrix so completely that it cannot remove him without destroying the Matrix, and itself with it.

Neo says - I will defeat Smith. Hook me in to the Matrix.

Cables extend from the walls of the Machine City. They hook into Neo. He enters the Matrix. Back in Zion the machines pause in their onslaught.

Neo walks down a city street in the driving rain. Thousands of Smiths line the sidewalks, but do not attack. They are cheering on the main, original Agent Smith who talks to Neo about his impending death.

They fight. It gets pretty silly.

Ultimately, Neo is beaten and lies broken in a crater created when Smith smashed him into the ground. Smith gloats, mocks Neo at length. Then he drives his hand into Neo's chest, possessing him.

Smith looks at Smith. Smith has won.

Then the new Smith begins to twitch. Light shines from behind his shades, when through them. Then they shatter, then he screams and explodes in a burning light. Back in reality Neo is shining like an angel.

The light extends like a chain reaction through all the Smiths, killing them all and purging the Matrix of his presence

Back in reality the AI lowers Neo to the floor. Is he alive? Is he dead? We don't know. The AI's voice speaks one last time: “It is done.”

Now call me a stinky, blue-skinned muppet, but I didn't really see the deeper meaning here. To me it was just a very convoluted, visually spectacular but ultimately disappointing end to the Matrix Trilogy.

I'll tell you why.

The first film is just scorching. It's a brilliant metaphor for something that runs extremely deep in all of us – and it's a kick ass action movie.

But the reason I was looking forward to the sequels wasn't because I liked the martial arts. It was because The Matrix displayed a depth of insight into the human condition that I'd simply never seen in a big-budget film before.

I want to know how it ended. Just as a metaphor for existence, the first Matrix film plumbed so deep I had high expectations for the third film.

The second film was a kind of philosophical 'set up' piece. The final film was to be the knock out blow.

But I didn't get it.

Damn.

Yesterday I was really pissed off. Not about the Matrix, just in general.

A lot of things were grating on me. It wasn't really anything big, but the chill I'd been building up seemed far away. I was fragile and volatile. On edge.

The funny thing was almost how little it had to do with outside circumstance. I'd not been in an argument, and although I'd had a scary couple of days last week for personal reasons (see next monthly casefile) there was nothing really wrong.

But yeah, I was sitting in my room working on my computer, getting really pissed off at nothing.

Like when a page took too long to load I'd get this compulsive urge to punch out the screen.

We've all been there. It was like whatever anger/rage/hate/pain/suffering/whatever that lurks in the recesses of my subconscious mind had decided that it was getting bored and it wanted to kick off.

Sitting cooped up in this room wasn't helping. I needed to walk it off. I get a text from a friend who wants to meet up. It's a good excuse. I put on my new jacket. I like it. I feel cool.

I walk out the door of my flat – five steps from my door a guy brushes past me. In my mind I smash his face into the pavement.

I walked down the street, my face like thunder. The rage was in full swing now, and I was wrestling to keep it in check, wielding my presence like a fire extinguisher. It didn't seem to be working.

I get to the crossing and a car drives past. It's wheel hits a puddle and three drops splash my left shin through my jean. In my head I take the metal-tipped umbrella from a passer by, close it and throw it like a javelin into the back of the driver's head.

I'm walking and my anger is boiling. Going outside was a bad idea.

I can barely hear Eckhart's voice over the sound of my mind, filled with fury at a thousand imagined slights. I feel the keening joy of hate, that sweet taste of righteous fire.

The sweet and filthy ecstacy of driving your fist over and over into the face of the person you hate and they scream and cower and weep.

I'm angry. Really angry. It's getting out of control. Ok, ok, slow down. Stop.

I stop walking and lean up against a railing. The rage is still kicking off. I can't see my friend like this I'll break her in half, or at the very least be a total dick. Probably the latter.

I take the mp3 player out of my jacket pocket. I check the volume. It's only halfway up and it's already pretty loud. I jack it up to full and Eckhart's meek still voice booms in my head like a megaphone. My ears hurt. I turn it down slightly – not much, just a little. Just this side of pain.

There's something about listening to Eckhart Tolle on full volume when you're either raging or in despair. It is really interesting.

It's like there's a point of volume where it's too loud for your mind to talk over it. Your mind can't ignore it anymore. And just the simple fact of having that level of presence booming in your head. It's potent stuff.

The other major effect is that you're not engaging with Tolle's ideas in an abstract way. It's all too fucking real, which is on the one side a bad thing, but on the other an opportunity.

Opportunity it may be, but it's still not working. Still fucking angry.

Ok. Ok. I've got a little distance on the rage now.

I notice something. When you're angry and you try to 'look at the anger', often there's a subtle undertone of hatred to your looking. You're so full of anger that you hate the anger and you want it to go.

This is extremely difficult to get around. It's not just a case of just knowing that it happens. It's deeply imbedded, way below a level where you can consciously turn it off.

But Tolle's voice booming in my head is cracking the space open, like a wedge driven between me and the hatred.

For all the volume and all the power of his presence, it's still not a big gap. The rage is still powerful. It's still there, seething and boiling and lashing out.

After about 15 minutes I realise Tolle's not just going to dissolve this shit for me. I'm calmer than I was but the anger is still twisting and tearing.

But there it is - I can see it now, there's a separation between me and the rage.

I focus on the serenity. I try to remind myself that the serenity isn't just part of me, it is me. The rage doesn't care. It keeps flickering and sucking me back in. Tolle's voice keeps pulling me out.

I'm not going to be able to beat this shit. I'm not going to be able to beat the conflict. It's too strong, too strong by miles.

Then suddenly, in the space of a heartbeat, Armistice.

An Armistice is an agreement between two warring parties to stop fighting. In Britain we remember the Armistice at the end of World War One every November 11th. We wear poppies as a sign of respect for our fallen servicemen.

An armistice is not like a peace treaty - it is what is called a 'Modus Vivendi' – fancy Latin speak for when you agree to disagree.

You do not go into all the knotty issues as to why you want to win or why you want to surrender. You just agree to stop fighting.

I called an Armistice with the rage.

It is a strange thing to make peace with conflict.

Not to make resolve the conflict – but to make peace with it.

And not a specific conflict either.

But to make peace with conflict itself.

Making peace with conflict.

Tolle calls this 'allowing the pain to be'. It's really interesting though, it's like actively making peace, swearing a truce, allowing the rage to rage. Allowing the despair to despair. Allowing the hate to hate. Letting the pain hurt.

But not just that, it's deeper. What Tolle talks of when he says a 'deep allowing'. It's not just silencing your mind. It's something different, it's almost impossible to describe.

When you say 'let the pain be' there's a truth in that which is far more real – far more real – than anything you can wrap your head around. It is so counterintuitive and massively contrary to every way we've ever interacted with pain before. Than we've been taught to interact with it by every aspect of our lives and cultures.

But despite that, it is real. It's not just 'another idea' that you 'try out'.

This is a real process that has a real effect. You hit it or you don't.

As soon as I began extending peace to and through the conflict inside me – as soon as I started make peace with the rage – making peace with conflict itself, rage itself, hate itself – the separation happened.

It was as if rage had no answer to peace other than more rage, and if you're willing to accept that, the Armistice holds.

Pain raged inside me still, but it had the space to rage. Burning, jagged, lashing out with all it's stored energy, it stood exposed as something not me. Something almost alien.

Serenity rose.

And with nothing to feed the rage, the energy it was expending slowly began to run out.

It became weaker and as it did I became more serene – but not an empty serenity.

No, this is the serenity that is the same as 'being in the zone,' the serenity that Zen masters, athletes and weirdoes speak of.

I met my friend in the bar and I wasn't a dick at all. A few of her mates were there, and we had a fantastic time. Chill, full of fun and laughter, connections, all that jazz. and that is a small miracle when you think of the fury that was pounding through my head mere minutes earlier.

This is like the third time something like this has happened.

I wrote about it once before on this blog in the "Ignition" post – it's the same thing I felt here.

It was interesting though, it was like I came at it from a completely different angle. To make peace with pain. To make peace with hate. Now that means individual hatreds – but it also means hate itself, in it's essence.

And that's what I'm trying to get at here. That's the insight of this whole thing. It's not about making peace with your demons. It's about making peace with the entire demonic realm.

Make peace with evil itself. Call an armistice. A full, and unconditional Armistice with Hell.

And does that mean you become demonic?

No – the opposite is true. You already ARE demonic if you react with resistance to hate, fear, pain and despair.

Why?

Because all these things are forms of conflict. And if you instigate conflict with a form of conflict, you have become the very thing you are attacking.

So you make peace with the rage - in it's entirety. You make peace with the despair - all of it.

And what will the response be?

From rage, the response will be rage. From despair, the response will be despair.

But all you need to do is to keep making peace with the rage in it's fullness, the despair in it's fullness. It's

You are NOT trying to reduce the rage. Or reduce the despair, or the fear, or the pain, or whatever you're facing. If you try to reduce it you'll fail because you're getting into conflict with the pain.

But the great thing is that you don't need to. The pain will dissipate on it's own - yes, even that hardcore deep emotional hardship that you've been running from all your life - if you call that armistice and hold it.

Trying to change the pain, reduce the fear, fight the rage - this is the deep reflexive pattern that has been keeping humanity on it's knees since the dawn of recorded history.

You can see this very clearly in arguments and counterarguments, positions and counterpositions. You see it in conversations between people you know. You see it on a national scale across the globe. You see it in every scale in between.

To seek an end of conflict through victory is the way humans have been doing it since year Zero.

But to make peace with conflict itself? That is a revolution.

That is a different path, a different angle from anything that has gone before. It is a new way, a way out of the cycle of pain, an escape from the relentless prison that has all humanity trapped.

In fact, you could truly say that it is the only way out of pain, hell, suffering. Everything ever done on any spiritual path that has any benefit spiritually is essentially this: making peace with conflict itself.

And THAT is what the fucking ending of the Matrix 3 is about.

You cannot beat the machines. They have all the weapons.

You cannot just 'go along with them' either, forget your problems and drop back into the Matrix because it's not real and it will destroy you, and itself.

So what can you do?

You have to make peace. Make peace with the darkness. Make peace with the conflict.

Make peace with darkness itself. Make peace with conflict itself.

Once you do, the dysfunctional part of the Matrix will rise up and attack you – but you will be invulnerable to it, to everything it's got. Because your weapon is peace, you are the peacemaker.

This is the deep meaning of what Christ said when he said

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

He didn't say

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are morally superior.”

He didn't say

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for making peace is the right thing to do.”

He said

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."

Sons of GOD. That's not just saying someone 'did well' or that peacemakers are 'really, really good'.

No, he said they will be called sons of God. That's a very big, and a very specific thing to say.

Sons of God.

Motherfucking sons of God, motherfucker.

Is this shit swimming into focus for anyone else, or is it just me?

Hmm.

Remember though - all of these are just words. No matter how what words Christ uses, or Tolle uses, or I use or anyone uses to describe this thing, this deep reality, I am continually smacked in the face by the fact that all words conjure up an illusion that is, by definition, profoundly misleading.

No matter how well I describe this thing, all I'm doing is spinning a fairy tale that in some way 'corresponds' to a reality that I could never even begin to discuss. That you could never begin to understand. That no logic could ever define – but from which all true logic arises.

It's crucial that you do not get lost in the mental images I am painting with these squiggly shapes in cyberspace.

It's crucial that you do not get lost in the mental images all words, by their very nature – even these ones – conjure up.

There is a real reality that really exists under all this stuff, and it is really real, in real life.

It's when the pain rises that you'll find it easiest to experience the reality of this stuff, because that's when the reality of this is the most immediate and your motivation for getting out of it is the most intense.

But seriously – don't take my word for it. Get an mp3 player and some in-ear headphones. Jack it full of Eckhart Tolle and see this shit for yourself.

It'll blow your head clean off.

My Favourite Comedian

2008-11-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

I think you'll see why. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the late, great, BILL HICKS!!

WOOOOO!!!

Secret Dossier Deadline EXPIRED!

2008-11-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

For those who didn't sign up on time:

You dumb bastard!

You just missed the first secret monthly dossier. It was a doozy!

You can check out the discussion at the Facebook group 1000 Days Of Presence... if you want to beat yourself up more for missing out on the literary/spiritual/philosophical event of the millenia. Nay, the aeon.

For those who DID sign up on time:

You monumental genius!

You just got the first secret monthly dossier. It's a doozy!

You can discuss it HERE in the 1000 Days Of Presence Facebook group.

I'll read all comments and respond to them personally. Much love, and thanks to everyone who got in on the ground floor. You'll always be the coolest ones.

Much love.

Ciaran

Discover The Secret... 24 Hours Till The Monthly Report!

2008-11-02T15:31:00.000-08:00

That's right children. It's the end of the first month of my hardcore, 3 year stint of full Zen immersion.

It's been a heady time, and a lot has changed. It's weird to think that just 6 weeks ago I felt like I had a head full of razor blades. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Anyway, it's been a fucking crazy week. All change, as they say. I'd go into the details, but that would be spoiling it.

As mentioned in the sidebar to this cybernetic soapbox, every month I'm going to send out a secret report.

What's secret about it?

Simple. It's going to contain a lot more personal detail. It'll go into more personal depth about things that I wouldn't want someone from work to just stumble across on the web.

And also, it's a chance for me to take a bit of a step back, and lay down some hardcore shit about life, presence, and what exactly I'm doing here.

In short, I'll make it juicier than a normal blog post.

So sign up on the sidebar. As mentioned, I have no idea how to spam, and have no Viagra to sell. I ate it all.

Mmm. Viagra.

I digress.

I'll give you latecomers a days grace. First monthly report goes out in 24 hour's time.

Put your email in the box to the left.

24 hours, baby.

Be there or be square.

Demonology, Demons And The Demonic

2008-10-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

Demonology
de·mon·ol·o·gy Pronunciation: \ˌdē-mə-'nä-lə-jē\ Function: noun Origin: 1597
1 : the study of demons or evil spirits 2 : belief in demons : a doctrine of evil spirits 3 : a catalog of enemies ................................................................................

Socrates posed a lot of really spot on questions.

I loved the ancient dialogues. Written by Plato, a wrestler and devotee of Socrates, they're extremely readable. Insightful without being pretentious, gripping without being shallow - they boot ten shades of shit out of 99% of everything that's called itself philosophy since.

There's one called Protagoras. Protagoras is this famous philosopher, seen as the wisest man in all of Greece. Socrates sends some of his mates to this guys house to boot him out of bed and bring him out for a 'philosophy off'.

It's a short piece, but important, and here's why. It's where, for the first time, Socrates comes out with one of the core insights for which he is famous:

"No one willingly goes to do evil or what he thinks to be evil."

He goes on:

"To make for what one believes to be evil, instead of making for the good, is not, it seems, in human nature. When faced with the choice of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might equally choose the less."

Socrates' question is simple: If evil leads the person doing it into damaging their relationships, themselves, their own lives - everything that is theirs - why would anyone do it?

And his answer is - we wouldn't. None of us do and none of us would.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "Lots of people do evil things!"

Yes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about you.

When have you ever done evil?

Now before you get all down on yourself, don sackcloth and ashes and start whipping yourself for all the things you hate yourself for, that's not what I'm talking about. There's something interesting here.

We are so fast to condemn the actions of others - it rises up from deep inside us as an instinctual hatred or revulsion.

But here's something a little odd. All the times when I've done something fucked up in my life, I was totally convinced I was in the right.

Is that not strange?

I mean, you may have vandalised something, or been nasty or bitchy, but in the actual moment where you were doing it, you considered yourself completely justified.

In fact, there's an even stranger thing. Think back to the moments in your life where you were, with the benefit of hindsight, most shitty. Think back to those real doozies where you really dug the knife in and twisted it.

Those moments where you were most nasty and cruel and hurtful - the moments that you don't like to think about because they make you wince.

There is a universal thing that runs through all those moments.

The moments where we are the most 'evil' as human beings are the moments we are most totally convinced that we were doing the right thing.

Look at your past, at the times when you've inflicted the most damage on those around you. Remember how you felt as you inflicted that damage. The righteous fire.

Moral certainty is what evil looks like from the inside.

You see, a lot of us would react to Socrates' claim by saying "No, Socrates - I know this person who is evil, and they just don't give a shit!" or we might say "What about serial killers?" or we might even pull the old "What about Hitler?"

And of course you're right. It's easy to see shittiness from the outside. But you should bet your bottom dollar that all of these people and every other motherfucker from the dawn of time was totally convinced that they were absolutely, positively, doing the right thing.

We see very clearly the shit that other people are do.

Maybe this person's being an asshole, or this woman's being a bitch. You can see very clearly that they're being cruel. You can see the nastiness and the superiority in their eyes. We get to experience just how creative they can be with their shittiness.

In that situation it's tough not to push back. It's like a reflex to resist their shittiness in whatever form it takes.

And from that reflex it's extremely easy to move from opposing their particular shittiness, and oppose shittiness in general.

Think about it in your own life. How quickly the battle goes from you against some person, to you against what they represent to you.

You're not fighting that bigot because they were racist and you want to hurt them... you're fighting racism itself, you're a hero in the cause of equality.

You're not fighting that bitch because she was cruel to you and you want to take her down... you're fighting bitchiness itself and you want to strike a blow against bitchiness.

You're not fighting that bastard because he's so arrogant - you're fighting him because you hate arrogance and you want to see arrogance destroyed.

I mean think about it.

Fighting a racist, or a bitch, or a bastard, and you're just fighting one asshole.

But fighting racism is a moral crusade.

Fighting cruelty is a moral crusade.

Fighting arrogance is a moral crusade.

There is a subtle switchback trick that something in your head is playing on you. It's been doing this to all of us from the dawn of time.

On and on the mind spins it's tales, drawing the world in broad strokes of right and wrong and good and evil.

We translate from the particular to the universal - from the small and personal to the large and epic.

We're not having an argument with a workmate. We're fighting all arrogance in a grand moral battle. There is something about us now which makes a victory over our workmate a great triumph in an ongoing war of good vs evil.

Even if we lose in the fight against the racist or the bitch or the bastard, there is something grandly tragic about our loss. Instead of being just some guy or girl having an argument with another guy or girl, we are the nobly wounded representativeof the armies of light.

It's not about instigating conflicts. It's about escalating them to a grand scale, and we swallow the lie because it casts us as the hero.

This is one of the core dynamics driving the madness of our society. It is one of the core dynamics tearing this world apart. It is one of the core dynamics creating explosive conflict in your own life.

So how do you stop it?

Well, the first thing you need to realise is that all evil, no matter how grand or powerful, has no real power. It is always based on lies, and all lies have no power at all.

This process, like all lies, cannot be fought. To fight it is to buy into the fiction that it is on the same level as you, and it is not, for you are real and it is a lie.

Think of it like this - a lie has no reality, just like a hole. A hole isn't something - it's the absence of something. If you try to fight a hole in the ground you will not win. There's nothing there to hit. It's a hole - an absence of something.

Swing your fist at it and you'll just fall in.

Same thing with a lie - attack it and shit will explode in your face. And you'll be so busy fighting that you'll forget in an instant that it's a lie.

And as soon as you forget that evil is a lie - it's not a lie anymore.

This sounds weird and metaphysical - I don't mean it like that. Nor do I mean it in some vague mystical way, some vague Ricki Lake kind of way. I mean it very literally - once you start fighting someone you see as evil, that person will see you as evil and fight back.

And in that same instant, the process of 'scaling up' the conflict will kick off in both your minds.

You will both be morally certain of your position.

Every attack from the other side will further cement your moral certainty in your head.

Every attack from your side will likewise make your opponent more certain that you are evil.

And you will both fall into an escalating process of demonisation. You recreate your opponent as a demon in your mind. Your opponent recreates you in his/her mind as a demon.

Both of you see yourselves as fighting a moral crusade. You can see this happen on a small scale with little arguments you have at home or at work.

You can also see it on a large scale with nations and religions throughout history

It's interesting to look at the big versions of this - the religious wars and the national conflicts.

But always remember that humanity is humanity, and these things that take place on a national scale are exactly the same processes that take place on a personal scale in your own life.

So you have a contingent disagreement. It's about where the hedge should be or whose stapler it is.

All of a sudden you're 'fighting evil' and it's an 'issue of principle'.

Neither of you can back down because it's not about the actual fight anymore. It's about good vs evil.

And the further you get into this - and it is a silken and slippery slope - the more the process spirals and accelerates. It grips your mind and you - and your 'enemy' - both begin to unconsciously rationalise the world in terms of your moral conflict.

This is something that happens on an intimate level, inside you. It is the core process of every entrenched disagreement you have or will experience.

And at it's core is one process. This process of demonisation.

Instead of some woman being a bitch, she's an evil whore in a million different ways. The mind builds her up to be this grand bond villainess who needs to be taken down a peg or two - and you're the person to do it.

He's not just some ignorant racist. He's a representative of the mindless hatred that's tearing our society to pieces, that sets man against man, woman against woman. That generates fracturelines and malice where none need to be, and you know what - someone needs to draw a line in the fucking sand and teach these racist bastards a fucking lesson.

And it's not that this guy is an arrogant prick. It's that arrogant pricks think they have a right to push people around, and they've been pushing you around since year zero. No more. Not me, not now, not anymore. Someone should teach these guys a lesson.

You see the process? Small scale translated to large scale. And at the core of it, the process of escalating a personal conflict to the scale of archetypes - or rather, from the small to the epic.

We swallow the lie because it casts us as the hero.

But here's the thing - the escalation rests on something. It rests on our image of our enemy (the bitch, bastard, racist, whatever) as being so uniquely evil that they can act as a stand-in for the universal darkness we tell ourselves they represent.

That's a bit of a mouthful. Let's break it down, make it simpler.

It's about hating someone so much we can fool ourselves we're fighting a grand battle by fighting them.

Or to break it down to just one word:

Demonisation.

Like all universal human processes, people can gather together and do this en masse.

It is the heart of racism.

It is the heart of sexism.

It is the heart of sectarianism.

It is the core process driving bloodshed in Israel and Palestine.

It is a universal factor in all hatred.

And you can sum it up in one word.

Demonisation.

Unless you paint your enemy as a demon you cannot have your moral crusade. And if you cannot have your moral crusade you cannot have your moral certainty. And if you never feel the righteous hatred of moral certainty, you will never be evil.

When you demonise someone you call a demon into being - in yourself.

Whether you think that this is a worryingly accurate metaphor or an actual infernal gateway is by the by - the process is something we each can recognise within ourselves each day.

Just as we can, in the cold light of day, recognise the shattering damage it has inflicted, is inflicting and will inflict on our lives.

Moral certainty is what evil looks like from the inside.

All moral certainty is based on demonisation.

All demonisation is a lie.

Lies cannot be fought.

They do not need to be.

You see, the next time you feel angry, you'll know exactly why.

You'll know that somewhere, some part of your buried unconscious mind has created a monster, a demon, out of someone in the outside world.

So look for the demon. It won't be hard to find. It's the person, thing or concept you're raging about relentlessly in your head.

Then look at the demon. The bitch, the bastard. The racist. The cheat. The liar. Whatever. Whoever has become the bane of your life - look at them.

You'll see the image you have, grand and evil. The furious emotional charge around them.

Look past the hate and see the humanity. See the individuality of the person. See them as they are, not as your rage would like them to be.

You will usually see very quickly the weakness beneath the surface. How the pain they are causing comes not from their grand, evil strength, but from their own fear and ignorance.

This isn’t something you impose on top of your feelings of hate. It’s something that you will see clearly, and in seeing it, your hate will be punctured like a burst balloon, and will collapse into feelings of pity and a consciousness of the irrelevance of your former enemy.

Don’t take my word for it. Give it a go.

And I’m not saying in some bullshit Ricki Lake way - “evil is just fear when you get deep down.” Everyone knows that at some level.

The trick isn’t knowing it intellectually. The trick is breaking the recurring processes of demonisation and hatred that turn you into a bastard and destroy your life. The trick is to break the cycle of hate creating hatred. Of poison begetting poison.

Of these intractable spirals of emotional and physical violence and alienation which form the contours of every aspect of human life, from the personal scale right up to the global.

The more you look at the dark side of humanity’s consciousness, the more it will seem to you that there is something in there that we have yet to confront in this modern age.

Processes of such twisted and vicious sophistication it's almost as if there were entities hiding in the dark cathedrals of our subconscious minds.

One could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps there were beings of an entirely different stripe to us. That have no ability to live outside of the worlds of agony in which we humans often dwell.

Things not of flesh or bone. Things that have no power of their own, for they have no reality of their own.

They are formed of lies, they are created of lies, they live in lies and lies sustain them. Their only power is the power of deception, but it is a power they have wielded unchecked for a long time, and they have grown fat on the pain and hate on which they feast.

They cannot be fought, for to fight them is to feed them.

But then of course, like that hole in the ground, you don’t need to fight it. You just look at it for what it is. A hole in the ground.

And that arrogant bastard just becomes a slightly pathetic guy who’s desperate to have people look up to him.

That cruel bitch becomes a vaguely sad figure - a woman desperately trying to prove to herself that she still has some power because so little in her life means anything to her anymore.

The racist just looks like a lost person, a thug. Nothing grand. No great crusade.

Just lost people pulling others off their aim, off track, off target.

And there’s a Greek word for missing the mark.

We all know this word - ironically enough - as one of the main tools for demonisation.

The word is very small.

And when you look at what it meant originally, and how it is now seen and has come to be used you might see it as the most misinterpreted concept in the history of language,

You might also see it as the greatest deception the Devil has ever pulled.

The word is sin.

Tolle, Truth And The Great Lord Xenu

2008-10-23T02:28:00.000-07:00

So why Eckhart Tolle? Why not Tony Robbins, why not Brian Tracy or any one of the thousands self-help gurus out there?

Well, it’s a fair question. There are a lot of people reading this blog who’ve never even read his stuff – or even heard his name before coming here.

I decided to write a short piece on A New Earth and why I think it and Tolle are important.

A New Earth is the whole deal, an exhaustive and gripping exposition of Tolle's entire world-view. In it he writes about society, relationships, and takes it right down to an individual level. But then of course, there’s a lot of writers who’ve done that.

There’s scalability to his thought – it sheds light on things from the largest scale to the smallest scale. But then of course, there are a lot of writers who’ve done that.

It's potency - and its revolutionary force is in its clarity, its coherence, and its extreme level of accessibility.

Most gurus, spiritual teachers, philosophers and religious leaders of all traditions have said similar things, but there's always a heavy buzz of background static.

Take philosophy. Pick up any philosophy book today and you find a mass of dense and unreadable prose. I remember to this day the first phrase I read out of a work of academic philosophy. It was by a guy called Bernard Williams, I think.

The phrase was “the deontological nature of non-cognitive meta-ethics.”

Sheesh. I mean, that's not just badly accessible. It's like someone has sat down and invented words to make it less accessible, intentionally. We're talking extreme levels of inaccessibility.

Ironically, this is not far from the truth.

So yeah, I see philosophy, certainly in it’s present academic form, as a dead end. What about self-help? Isn’t self help what Tolle does?

Well, not really. Certainly not in the conventional sense. There’s a deep shift in priorities that Tolle has instigated and I’ll go through it now.

You see, old-school dedicated solely to helping people feel better about themselves and succeed. It does this at the expense of everything else – including the truth.

This is taken to an extreme in NLP-based self-help like that of Tony Robbins where you’re actually trained to program your mind and beliefs in a way that will aid your financial and personal success.

The issue is this - buying into and developing useful fictions spun to make you feel better, do better or perform better will always have a nasty flipside. And it’s this – your life is based on a lie. And that’s not ‘bad’ in some abstract sense.

If your life is given direction and motivation by fiction, sooner or later reality’s going to come smack you in the face to remind you who’s in charge.

I mean, I’ve noticed this in a pretty extreme way over and over in my life. Reality doesn’t give a fuck what you tell yourself. If your life is based on convenient fictions, you will end up deeply and profoundly damaged in ways that you never saw coming.

This isn’t some vague karmic law. This is obviously what will occur. If you’re walking on a path by a cliff face, you don’t stare at the map Tony Robbins drew for you, you stare at the fucking path.

So although many think of and speak of Eckhart Tolle as a self-help teacher, there is a crucial shift from men like Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy to guys like Eckhart Tolle

The former see truth as a tool on the path to happiness. The latter sees happiness as an incidental byproduct of the truth.

That is the difference between what you could call Self-Help and Self Help 2.0 – and it’s crucial. If you set happiness and success as more important than truth, your happiness and success will inevitably be built on fiction.

If you set truth above happiness and success, happiness and success will come as byproducts, and they will be far deeper entrenched than the frantic, manic successes of the first stripe.

And of course the only universal truth is that infinite, universally intelligent oneness that lies beyond and before the prison of labels and judgements in which we live.

The core of Self-Help 2.0 is exactly that the man said way back in the day - Seek only the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.

This emphasis on truth is also the hidden meaning of Christ’s parable of the wise man who builds his house upon the rock, and the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand. He’s not talking about architecture, nor is he talking about dogmatically following the static rules of religion.

He’s talking about truth being the only foundation – and a relationship with the infinite intelligence and compassion of the universe (or as he put it God the Father) as the only truth.

Self Help 2.0 is driven, first and foremost, by that truth.

Now, is that truth contained in religions?

Yes, obviously. It’s all they’re about. But in spiritual traditions you find – in every religion, not just Christianity – a rigid hierarchy and stark divisions of the world into good and evil.

Every religion has this – be it Christianity, Judaism and Islam (the good/evil divide), Buddhism, Zen (the enlightened/unenlightened divide), Hinduism (the holy/unholy divide) – the list goes on.

In religion you also often find the deepest truths imbedded in the most ludicrious and wacked out dogmas.

It’s interesting that many of the Christians I know with the deepest and most profound grasp on the human condition are also Creationists.

Many of the commentaries on the Tao Te Ching or the Bhagavad Gita likewise fuse extreme levels of spiritual insight with some really wacky shit about personal immortality (Taoism) and reincarnation (Hinduism).

Of course in all these cases the original texts from which the traditions are derived are, in their unadorned and unanalyzed nakedness, shining works of immense power and insight.

But there is something about spirituality in general that leads to the wackiest, craziest beliefs that are so weird as to boggle the mind.

I call it the Lord Xenu effect.

I digress.

The point is that Tolle's thought is pure and clear as polished crystal. This has two effects.

Firstly his message has clarity to it that I've never encountered anywhere else.

Secondly, because he does not get distracted or pulled away by weird dogmas, he penetrates to the very deepest levels of philosophy and psychology.

The reason that Tolle is seen as a 'spiritual teacher' is that modern philosophy is in a very bad way.

It's a bunch of men (and some women who should know better) arguing with each other over who is the cleverest.

To work out who is the cleverest, they create mind-warping puzzles from the logical structure of language.

They solve these self-imposed puzzles to prove the superiority of their analytical capabilities.

This is not an insult. This is actually what it really is, in real life. Really.

No, really.

This is so deeply entrenched that the philosophical estabishment has yet to notice that a guy who's insight rivals Socrates. A man who has produced a psychological map of such stunning accuracy that it makes Freud's best work look like it was written in crayon.

It seems like I'm heaping crazy levels of praise on the man - in a way this is true. But in another way, it's less a measure of how insightful Tolle is, and more a measure of how far we've fallen. All he’s doing is looking at the human condition in himself and others and describing, in simple terms, what he sees.

But that’s where his strength is. You see, that’s all philosophy is at the end of the day – say what you see. No argument is or can be involved. It’s perverse to think of arguments having any place in philosophy at all, and I’ll tell you why:

If you take philosophy as the examination of the human condition – wait a minute. We all fucking have one. You, unless you are an alien scanning these words from the mothership, have one. If someone raises a point about the human condition, check your own to see if it’s true.

Arguing in abstract terms about the human condition is like arguing in abstract terms about the colour of the clothes you’re actually wearing at this very second. Just look at your damn clothes, and stop being so pissy.

Our philosophical establishment is exactly that - an establishment. It seems to serve no other purpose than the deepening of entrenched argumentative positions.

I think that everyone who calls themselves a philosopher should have yearly reviews in front of a bunch of 5 year old children. If they can’t get those kids understanding what they’re talking about and nodding along, they should be immediately fired and made to get a real job.

It would also stop the death of the thousands of trees that go to make the journals where philosophers bicker with each other over things they have invented in a language no-one else speaks.

I cannot overemphasize how total the destruction of genuine wisdom and insight has been in the modern world of academic philosophy.

Tolle’s A New Earth is a different kind of animal. It doesn't rise from inside the arguments that have been raging for (literally) millennia. It rises from a place so deep that the only thing many people can compare it to is a religion.

It contains a vision of the world that is stunningly accurate and has massive explanatory power.

It contains a psychological map of the human condition that is so accurate as to provide a total explanation for the human animal's entire emotional range.

It contains a social philosophy so deep that it accounts for all human dysfunction, and proposes a way to resolve it which can be empirically tested by the individual (and is being, by this individual, with potent results).

It proposes a totally bloodless revolution which has the capacity to change the world without a single act of violence.

But what is perhaps more miraculous than any of these things, Tolle has effectively proven the existence of God.

He proves the existence of God by providing the reader with direct links with the realm of the infinite.

Let's be frank about this - philosophers have been trying to write this book since philosophy began. It's the wall I've been smacking my head against since I was 17. Tolle just did it.

In centuries to come his name will be spoken of as the man who both ended and began the philosophical project.

He ended the philosophical project as we know it by transcending the arguments and undercutting the structures that philosophy has rested on and been trapped in since records began in Ancient Greece.

He began the philosophical project by changing it from an intellectual pursuit to a real voyage of discovery. He did this because his work provides gateways into a metaphysical realm that is not some hocus-pocus bullshit, but is as real as the ground beneath your feet and immediately accessible.

He ended argument over the existence of God by providing direct experience to the dimension of the divine to the individual.

Don't get me wrong, society has yet to catch up. But it will. It has to. We're shit out of time.

Whispers Of Stillness

2008-10-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ok - something cool just happened that I want to share with you.

What I've been doing, to bring everyone up to speed, is to carry around an mp3 player full of Eckhart Tolle, and plugging it into my head whenever I'm not actually doing something that requires me to interact with people.

So at work, I'm just doing work, but come lunchtime I plug in. At the end of lunch I get back to work. At the end of work I plug in, and go home. When I'm interacting with people, flatmates, friends - I unplug. Obviously. Otherwise it's just rude. When I go to bed I plug back in and stay plugged in until I wake up again, when I unplug to have a shower then plug back in for the journey to work.

There's a lot of plugging and unplugging involved. It's very complex.

I also bought some fancy in-ear headphones - they're a lot better than the big-ass chunky headphones I had. Although I did like walking around with massive headphones on looking like an NME reject. Frankly, I look damn sexy, like this guy:

But here's the thing - fancy in-ear headphones, when you take them out, hardly make any noise at all. It's because they're buried in your head that they sound so awesome, so clear and lifelike - but because they're so close to the eardrum the noise they make is very small.

So anyway, I'm at work and I take them out and put them on the desk. I forget to turn them off.

The day passes, and I work as normal. Every now and then I 'Zen out' and stare blankly into space for a little while, then snap out of it. But here's the thing.

The politics of the office - yes, the whole office - start to dissolve around me.

Not kidding. All the little dramas, the "he said she said bullshit" as Mr Durst would put it, starts to break down.

Not by much. It's all very subtle. But it does start breaking down. By the end of the day I've made more progress in bonding with the office than I have in the month I've been there.

Hmm, methinks. Let's see what else this does.

So instead of turning my mp3 off, I instead just let the headphones dangle around my neck. Bear in mind that no-one but me can even hear anything this is so silent. I certainly can't make out any words.

It's just the sibilant and plosive sounds I notice every now and then, just on the edge of my hearing. Just tiny, subtle whispers of stillness.

And all of a sudden I realise just how much anxiety I carry around with me. How paranoid I am, not usually in anything huge or major, but just on an ongoing low level. IT flares up sometimes, but yeah, damn.

Paranoia and anxiety, so interwoven with the way I look at the world that I hardly notice it.

I could never see it before, not really. But it's there and it's so unnecessary. I'm having great conversations with everyone. Not deep lifechanging stuff, just normal banter - but easy, flowing, fun.

People start opening up to me, and I start opening up to people. Fascinating.

It's a subtle effect, and each individual breakthough was in itself tiny and almost irrelevant.

But all through the day there was this underlying stream of sanity, of insight.

Really, don't take my word for this, try it.

So I think - let's see how far we can push this.

Point being it looks like the 1000 days just stepped up a notch. I'm not just listening to Tolle when I can. He's whispering just beneath the level of conscious hearing even when I'm doing other stuff. I'll report on this new development as things progress.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Much love.

It Still Turns

2008-10-19T03:29:00.001-07:00

Step beyond the edge of understanding. That's something Tolle says somewhere, I think in the first part of Through The Open Door.

It's one of those 'spiritual' things to say. It sounds ever so profound, and usually provokes one of two different reactions. One is violent, contemptuous rejection. The other is treacly, fawning acceptance.

The violent rejection may seem like the more dark, the more broken, but this is an illusion. At least straightforward rejection, no matter how rash or irrational, has a kind of honesty to it. It dresses itself up as an intellectual rejection - a rejection of the 'pseudo-philosophy' of spiritual thinkers, a rejection of the fuzzy logic, a rejection -- let us be straightforward here -- of hippies.

A filthy hippie

Most gut-reaction revulsion to deep spiritual truths (or whatever you want to call them) comes from this - a strong distaste for the self-delusion of the happy-clappy hippie crowd. There's a lot of this is Christianity too, and I speak as a Christian. I know a lot of atheists claim that they reject Christianity because of the judgemental rules, the doctrines and the dogmas, the injustices, the cruelties, the paedophiles - and all the rest of it.

But I think secretly, the reason most people won't even consider Christianity is because of a deep-seated fear of becoming that weak and fawning, happy-clappy drone, gleefully building a world of delusion around them. It's the fear of being so broken that you are complicit in your own imprisonment, like Winston at the end of 1984, if you've ever read it or seen the film.

At least in the defiance, there is a kind of integrity, broken though it may be. And it is this integrity that many, including myself, cling to even as it drags them again and again into madness, horror, failure and despair.

It's a devil's deal, isn't it? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Faust

On the one hand, all the darkness that people run to religion to escape. It doesn't go away if you're an atheist. It doesn't give a fuck what you believe. It doesn't give a shit about you.

On the other hand, burying yourself in a world of lies. Breaking so completely that you no longer care what truth even is. You'll agree to anything just to make the pain go away. You have broken. You have failed at the deepest possible level.

And that's it, really. That's how I lived, certainly. One or the other. I would pile on the damage to prove to myself I still had spirit, still believed. In what? Hard to say. The value of courage, the value of the truth.

But the past couple of years I've been feeling weary. Like I was getting really close to not giving a fuck anymore. To breaking completely and just diving straight in to the world of delusion.

And I suppose I tried. But the kicker is this - lies don't make it better. That world of delusion's like a house of cards in a hurricane when the nastiness rears it's head.

But here's the thing. No matter how much of a Goth I've been, no matter how 'film noir' I've let myself become, I have always believed that there's another way. That there's something else that lies beneath and beyond that terrible choice between damage and delusion.

The truth. In and of itself. Something that is not a delusion, something non-theoretical. Something really real, as real as the ground beneath your feet or the chair beneath your ass.

Something real.

We're so used to living in a world of fiction we don't know what reality looks like. We've never used our eyes before. But that time last week I punched through into something. I did it agian last night.

And guys, it's fucking real. Really, really real. Not like 'should it be like this or should it be like that,' but real like a lump of fucking stone or a pair of fucking tits.

Some stone tits

I mean, we argue so much about this or that, but think about this - I hope that we can all agree that we are born into a mesh of cultural judgements, fictions, rules, assumptions and bullshit that is deep and thick.

And we strive for our honesty, for our integrity, for our happiness. Some of us strive for God, some of us don't.

But here's the the kicker - we're so deep in this shit. Like deep deep.

And all the ways we 'change the ways we look at the world' - how the hell would we know that we're not just rearranging the fiction.

I'm not making an abstract point. So many times, reading through the Power Of Now or whatever, I'd get some insight and suddenly I'd 'see the world in a different way'.

But we are so deeply steeped in fiction! How would we know what truth looks like, when we have never seen it in the raw? How?

How easily can we be deceived, can we be led into lies or fiction? How we each want to believe so strongly that we have finally made it through the labyrinth, that this - no, this - no, THIS is the real answer.

How do you know what infinity looks like?

You stare into the night sky. It's just there, it's what it is. Silent, infinite, epic and simple all at once. And so far beyond any of those words that it makes all words, no matter how grand, look like childish scribbles in the sand next to the untamed majesty of the sea.

I just looked at a televangelist ripping Tolle on a US TV clip on Youtube. And it's amazing, it's like watching the Inquisition threatening Galileo with torture for saying the earth revolves around the Sun.

It's not that it's an injustice. It's got nothing to do with that. I'm not saying 'oh, this Televangelist is wrong.'

It's that there's something ludicrious about watching people try to argue with Tolle. It's like watching someone trying to argue away a rock.

A rock is. It doesn't matter how much you rail against it. It doesn't matter how much you undermine it's intellectual underpinnings. It doesn't matter if you believe in it, or how much passion or righteousness you pour into your argument.

A big rock

The rock doesn't give a fuck. The simple reality of a humble rock is deeper than the reality of your best argument or your most impassioned speech.

There's a legend, with no proof to it, that Galileo had a parting shot to the Inquisition. "It still turns," he is alleged to have said.

It still turns. You see, the Inquisition threatened him with torture and he recanted. He announced publically that he had been mistaken, that the Earth was indeed the centre of the universe.

It was a lie of course, and one might believe that it was the lie of a coward unprepared to face torture for what he believed.

But here's what I think.

I think that Galileo knew differently. I think he knew that recanting his ideas meant nothing. That in winning the argument against him, the Inquisition had acheived nothing... because it wasn't about him. It was never about him. Nothing he said would change the fact that the world still turns around the sun. No victory the Inquisition scored could mean anything in the face of that.

The truth is the truth is the truth. And we are so often caught up in the dramas of life that we believe like fools that our beliefs are even relevant.

They are not.

The truth simply is.

And here's the thing. Twice now, once last week and once again last night I was able to get through to that world. That "timeless state of presence" as Tolle calls it. That real world, the really real infinite moment from which all creativity and love arises. And it's really there.

But to finish up, let me sound a note of caution. My mind threw up a thousand fakes before I glimpsed the real thing. Do you believe the darkness in you is so stupid as to be unable to pass itself off as light?

Of course it can. The only time Satan shows up in the New Testament the only thing he does is quote scripture. The darkness is a master of deception and it will fool you.

But the reality is unmistakable. It has a quality of reality to it that is so deeply pronounced it is like a hallmark on gold. It's this sense of clarity multiplied by a thousand, an incredible sharpness to things. Way beyond anything you could ever impose upon reality from the outside.

It's not like I'm living in that state. But I have seen it, and in seeing it, I know it's there.

There are two effects to this saturation so far.

One of them is to give me secondary benefits. Just dwelling in Tolle's presence makes me chill and clear, heals my mind, sorts my shit out.

But the real prize of this whole thing is reality itself. That truth which Tolle speaks of. And the more I glimpse it, the more his words pull themselves into focus in a way I never expected them to. It's like I'm hearing him describe something that I'm increasingly starting to see in real life.

I don't know. We'll see where this leads. But this shit is real, and it is reality which it points to. And it's there, guys. It turns. It turns whatever we think of it, whatever we believe or get lost in. It's there, and it turns like a motherfucker. It's so far beyond the fawning agreement of hippies and happy-clappy Christians.

My honest opinion is that many of them are more lost than the most broken, hate-filled atheist alive.

This shit isn't 'nice' or 'good'. It's way beyond that. It's real. It's fucking real. It's crazy, it's exactly like Tolle describes it but far, far beyond what you picture in your head from listening to his descriptions.

And God, it's beautiful.

Simple And Clear And Crisp And Cool

2008-10-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

Looking back over the past few weeks, the change in me has been profound. It's weird though, because with actual, genuine change, you hardly notice it as it happens. There's a load of small little things that are dissolving - little neuroses that always seemed so deeply entrenched.

My diet's improved. I'm eating a lot more vegetables. I'm going to work on time. I'm going to bed at a normal hour, I'm getting my work done efficiently. I'm increasingly able to organise things.

This might seem like a collection of the most banal little things that could possible be. A bunch of boring-ass mediocre shit that only a weirdo would mention. And don't get me wrong, I've never claimed not to be a weirdo. I'd be on pretty shakey ground if I did.

But to me these things are little miracles. The fact I'm eating a lot more vegetables is amazing - I'm fucking 28 and I've never bought vegetables in a shop before doing this. Crazy, but it's just that ingrown childish revulsion to them that I've never shaken.

It's fucking stupid, I know, I'm not expecting you to read this with a straight face, but I cannot describe the relief that I felt when I looked down at my shopping basket and saw a load of stuff there that was actually good for me. I know - retarded, but looking back on my mosey through Tesco's it wasn't like I was feeling more mature or more responsible, or even more health conscious. Nothing like that.

It was more that my body was choosing the food it wanted. Normally my mind chooses the food it wants, which essentially boils down to sweets, chips and meat. But this time, and with no effort at all from myself, I just wandered around and without any thought, gravitiated toward healthy stuff.

And again, you might think this is ridiculous, and from one point of view you are obviously correct. It is fucking ridiculous. But for years I've had this worry at the back of my mind about my diet. I've tried to eat better, and my pitiful attempts have always devolved within days to my usual junk-food fare.

So I hope you can see that when I looked at the shopping bag and saw this stuff there, and realised that, without any thought or effort I'd been eating a lot better recently and really enjoying it, I was overcome with this sense of gratitude and relief.

I get it, this is dumb. But for me, for my life, this is a big change I've tried to make for ages. I just find it happening around me.

And as for going to work on time - every job I've ever had I've kicked off major grief with my boss for being late. All of them. I'm 28. I've had a lot of jobs. Every single one I've been late in. Every single one except this.

And going to bed on time - I realise how gay this sounds. Like I'm becoming a stepford wife. But the truth is that when I look back at the fact that I've gone to bed at between 12 Midnight and 2 am, even on a work/school night, ever since I was 15...

And it was weird. It wasn't like I was partying. It was more like this sort of sullen rebellion to the fact I had to get up to go to work the next day, or school, or whatever. I used to resent hitting the hay in time to give me enough sleep. Always had.

Now I don't. I can actually plan ahead. Just one day, but good God - that's unheard of for me. I'm no longer a fuck-eyed zombie at work, so I can actually enjoy it. I'm no longer late for it so there's a whole dimension of nasty drama that I don't have to deal with.

And fucking hell... I can plan ahead! Me! Ciaran! I can plan a-fucking-head!

So fucking what, I hear you cry. Let me put this in context for you. Once, not too long ago, I was looking into different psychiatric medications. I like to research the shit I'm pumping into my bloodstream. Prozac had become less effective - although that's not to disrespect Prozac - for all the jokes and derision people pour on it, it literally saved my life on two separate occasions.

No, I was looking into remedies for Bipolar depression. The Prozac's good for pulling you out of the bottomless pit of howling self-hate that's at the end of one extreme, but I was just sick of spinning constantly between manic creativity/burning purpose on one hand and the darkness on the other.

So I'm looking at what medicated peeps are saying about Lithium. Pretty fucking scary stuff. I never went on it, and I pray I never do. If this whole thing does nothing other than to stabilise my shit and keep me off that zombie-juice I'll be on my knees throwing thanks at whatever deity's listening.

But one of them said something that really resonated with me. It was one of the few positive things mentioned about Lithium, but it hit me like a hammer. This woman said "I can plan my life six months ahead... and stick to those plans."

I wish I could give you the view from inside my skull when I read those words. To me, looking at the kind of mental volatility I'm packing, the kind of man I am and have been, the kind of personal history I've got, how I instinctually approach and react to situations....

The ability to plan ahead by six months, even holiday plans or simple things like holding down a job, is to me like the ability to fly.

And now I'm doing it. I'm planning ahead. And don't get me wrong - six months haven't passed yet, although they will soon enough; but I can plan and do keep to those plans. It's not some nightmarish struggle. It's simple, and clear, and crisp and cool.

Here's what I think's happening. My problem has never been the inability to plan as such. My problem has been the horde of hidden subconscious neuroses, and the head full of chaos that I've had since as long as I can remember.

Here's a picture of Sigmund Freud, father of psychiatry and proponent of a neurotic theory of human nature. Ironically enough it was drawn by Salvador Dali, well known nutcase.

Now those subconscious neuroses are being drawn into the light of day, and now that there's a level (by no means complete yet) of chill stillness in me, the obstacles are removed. No, that's not right, not really removed. But weakened. Seriously weakened.

I guess I'm just living better than I have before, and that's all I wanted to say with this post. Nothing huge or groundbreaking on a cosmic scale - but these changes are huge and groundbreaking to me. For so long I've just assumed that I was fundamentally disorganised, or fundamentally chaotic. I wasn't happy or unhappy about it, I just dealt with the neverending torrent of shit it caused because I felt that was my lot in life.

And again, don't think I'm floating through a rainbow stream of fairy dust and eskimo kisses. There's shit in my life, there's still a big weight of nastiness inside me. Stuff kicks off, as it always has.

But I am changing, and changing for the better. Changes both profound and subtle that I'd never even hoped for. It's cool. It's really cool.

Get yourself an mp3 player.

Can This Thing Be Engineered?

2008-10-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

It is a strange thing when you think about it. The importance of pain in the origin of the key spiritual traditions.

I mean, think about it. Your top three religious leaders are Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed. In terms of being 'hooked up' to whatever's out there beyond the reach of analysis and logic, those three would certainly be pretty damn high on anyone's list.

Now this is very interesting, because in all these cases the individual in question lived a pretty uneventful life until he decided to starve himself in isolation until something mental happened.

Really. Take Jesus. I remember the first time I actually sat down and read a gospel from cover to cover. They don't actually have covers, but you know what I mean. It's very interesting, because one of the big things I got from it was the fact that there are all these sign and portents, but Jesus doesn't actually do anything that intense. He's just this clever working class kid from a shitty, dead-end town.

Then he goes into the desert and he starves himself. And does he meet God?

No. He meets the devil.

After he's resisted the devil he comes out of the desert like a spiritual juggernaut, drawing huge crowds and performing works that would make a Jedi blush.

Mohammed was middle class. Married at 25, a merchant in a merchant family. He gets discontented by life in Mecca, and wants something more. So as a young man he retreats from society into a cave and he stays there until he's 40. Then pow - he has a revelation from God and that's the very first Ramadan.

I decided that I wouldn't put a picture of Mohammed in here. Instead, here's a picture of some lightning with a quote from the Q'uran. This is because I want to live.

Anyway, Mohammed he comes down from the mountain this charismatic powerhouse. By the time he dies aged 62 he's conquered Mecca and Medina, united Arab culture and the rest, as they say, is history.

Buddha was a rich kid. Long story short he seems to have got sick of the emptiness and banality of life, a little like an ancient male Paris Hilton. So he decided, essentially, to sit down and not eat until he gets it.

Check out this picture of the Buddha's 'lean days':

Sexy.

My point is this - what if this isn't just a coincidence? What if these three men have done something, put themselves in a certain situation which has allowed them to punch through to a level of reality from which they were able to draw incredible wisdom, charisma and power.

It's like in each case they turned their lives into a pressure cooker - they exposed themselves to the full weight of suffering. Let 'suffering' or 'negativity' or 'loneliness' or 'the devil' or 'failure' or whatever - let it in. Take the shackles off it and face it full on.

It seems that these men, the top three religious teachers in history, all did the same thing and whatever they did unleashed vast amounts of power inside them. The presence of each of these men radiates down through the centuries. I wonder what any of them would have been like face to face?

What would it have felt like to see such presence in the flesh? What would it feel like to be like that? To have that level of clarity, wisdom and power of mind?

What effect would a person like that have in the modern age?

They punched through to the divine, they all did. Or the divine punched through to them. Or both, or neither, or whatever you want to say.

But all "divine" really means when you get down to it is "something so much greater than anything we can wrap our heads around that to attempt to label it is something of a joke."

And Tolle - the connection he has he openly admits came to him in the midst of deep despair, at the most extreme depths of darkness and self-hate.

And that breakthrough I had recently - nothing on anything like the scale of any of these guys, you understand. But it was the intense inner pain that suddenly gave reality and context to the words Tolle had been speaking.

And shit - I still get lost in my head, still feel that deep pain that we all like to hide from ourselves, hate, judge, label - all the rest of it.

The main difference, and what I was trying to get at in the Ignition post is that 'presence' as Tolle calls it is no longer a theoretical concept to me. I mean, don't get me wrong - I had no idea it was a theoretical concept to me. I thought I 'got it' a thousand times.

But the other day, deep in pain, I suddenly felt and saw the simple and immediate reality of it. It's blasted me to a level I'd never even dreamed of - and I still know I have a ways to go.

That's fine, it's not a problem. It's fascinating. Damn, I'm glad I'm doing this 1000 days.

But here's the thing - here's what I'm trying to get at. If you can disidentify with pain when it's flaring up, you seem to get a massive boost to your 'presence' - and by that I mean connection with the infinite, with God, with compassion, with love, with oneness, with Zen - whatever.

Could we instigate some kind of much deeper and more extreme unleashing of spiritual power through similar means? I'll blaspheme three major religions all at once in one sentence now - but I must raise this question: Can this thing be engineered?

Because if it can - that would be very interesting indeed. Because then you wouldn't be looking at one person in the modern age like this. If there is a process that can be unlocked, there's no reason why more - many more - could not walk that path.

I always think like this. Trying to find ways to kick off global revolutions and save the world. It's one of the deepest and most entrenched parts of the fiction I've written for myself.

Ooooo - it is compelling though, is it not, to think of such an occurrence? Such a process?

I should probably bring some more awareness into the way I constantly turn everything I'm doing into this kind of thing.

Hmm.

In other news things continue to kick off negativity-wise, but they're bouncing off me inside and out in a way I've never seen before. Again, as mentioned I'm very far from Jedi yet, so I'm sure life's going to smack me about a bit going forward... but compared to the neverending car wreck of my past, shit's going swimmingly.

Love to my homs.

Ignition

2008-10-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Today I interviewed a celebrity.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it wasn't like a global megastar or anything, but it's a TV regular who appears with frequency on British TV.

He's a comedian - Sean Lock. He's on a show called 8 Out Of 10 Cats, and he's a regular on various panel games and such.

Here he is on QI.

He's a career comedian - been doing it for 19 years. I got to interview him for a local Edinburgh entertainment review paper. It broke up the day nicely.

In other news, this Tolle stuff continues to kick ass.

I feel like the last post - that whole week - was a major moment for me. I've got a whole new perspective on this whole thing now. It's fascinating.

The best way I can describe it is like a moment of ignition. The past few days I feel like I'm not theorising anymore. For better or for worse, something specific, something very real, some irrevokable mental shift seems to have taken place in my head.

Now if you're nodding along with this, beware. A thousand times a thousand I thought I'd made 'the breakthrough'.

I think it comes of wanting it so much. No matter what caveats Tolle puts into his work, I don't think anyone's really got into it who hasn't reinvented it in their own heads as some kind of utopian paradise.

As some kind of beautiful ending, the thing that will make everything ok. And in a way, it is. But if you're engaging with it in those terms you're not getting it. You might as well be worshipping a stone idol, burning a witch or backstabbing your friends to get ahead in your career.

The fact is that thinking 'ah, I finally see' is a screaming symptom that it's just one more lie filling your head.

But damn, he's right - I knew he was right. There's something here, something real. He's really right, really talking about something highly specific and non-theoretical. This isn't a 'belief system' as much as it a map with a big X on it. There is a very real treasure buried here, very real.

But just as it's not a 'belief system' as such, it will become a 'belief system' very fast. The mind is amazing at constructing belief systems. Do not be so naieve as to think you will, or even can, avoid this. You cannot. If you could, you wouldn't need to listen to Tolle in the first place.

That's why I think this saturation approach is deceptively strong, for all the 'Oh no, that'll never work because of X, Y and Z' stuff that you can throw at it.

I mean, to my mind A New Earth is easily - easily - the most groundbreaking work of philosophy since Immanuel Kant's body of work. There's nothing in the last hundred years that can even come close to it in terms of originality, insight, power, relevance, clarity or power. Not close.

But here's the thing - it's just a book. And a book shining with truth, no matter how bright, will only take you a few days to read. After that, what's left?

The presence? Sure, reading anything by Tolle gives a kind of zen thrum that lasts for a few days.

The ideas? Sure - but in a way that's almost a bad thing. The concepts he uses to point to the internal process he's trying to trigger inside you are just that - concepts. After a few days, weeks, months - whatever - you'll forget them, or confuse them, or distort them. Worse still you might 'agree' with them, and believe them to be 'right'.

There's a lot of subtle distinctions here, don't get lost in it.

Think of it like this - the point of Tolle is not to give you presence. And if you read 'A New Earth' and agree with it, Tolle has failed in his purpose of writing that book.

There is an actual moment, a process. If you know anything of Tolle's past you'll know that in his life there was one moment where he, to paraphrase 'separated from his pain' and triggered the rising of the clarity and peace for which he is now justly famous.

The point is this - ignition. That's what you're looking for. Ignition. There's no point agreeing with the stuff - and piggybacking off Tolle's presence is only a temporary and highly limited way of experiencing what he's talking about.

I mean, don't get me wrong - Tolle's work is compelling and you will agree. But if you don't move beyond that you might as well have read a copy of Mein Kampf for all the deep change that will occur in your life. Nothing will change. You will remain lost and life will break you over and over, as it has always done, as it will always do.

And as for piggybacking off Tolle's presence - if you have any doubts as to the deep power that this guy has tapped into then get a copy of A New Earth and read the fucker. You'll see what I mean. The deep sense of clarity and vibrant calm that you get from it is unlike anything I've ever got from any other book at any point in my life ever.

But who gives a fuck? What does it matter to add a little calm to your life - or even a lot? It's not self-sustaining. All your deep inner shit is still there, it's just held at bay. It's like you have a dark room full of roaches. You can shine a light in the window and scare them off, but you'll not get rid of them forever.

To do that you need to light up the room permanently. Eliminate all trace of shadow. And set a fire that'll burn those fuckers out.

Ignition.

Your head is full of roaches. You know it. You keep fucking shit up. You've got all your regrets and even now, as you live your life day in, day out, even today - you do messed up shit you have no control over and you know it.

And it's not messed up in some vague 'moral' sense. We're talking the kind of deep self-sabotage we're all guilty of that ruins the loving relationships you've watched crumble to dust. That ruins the opportunities at work that you miss because you weren't on the ball, or because you let yourself be sidelined because you weren't sure what to say.

We're talking about that book you'll never write because you'll never have the clarity of vision. The children who will hate you because you'll talk down to them - and even knowing that you're doing it you won't be able to stop. The friends you'll watch leave your life forever - and the awesome friendships you never knew you never had.

There's something else beneath all this - beneath all this shit. Beneath all this talk of Zen and such hippie bollocks as 'spiritual awakening'.

Something's here. A thing you can do inside your head that will permanently change things. I don't know if it's for better or worse yet - I guess we'll find out soon enough.

But ignition. Ignition, my friends.

Beats agreeing with this spiritual bullshit. Beats theorising about the 'correct' way to 'awaken' or somesuch crap. Beats living in fear.

Beats living in fear.

Ignition.

That moment that Tolle speaks of, that he describes, where in the depths of despair he saw his own pain and was separated from it. That's the only thing here worth anything. Everything else is bullshit and chaff.

My formula for ignition is as follows -

Sustained saturation in Tolle. This has two effects. Firstly, it will make you aware of a whole new dimension of reality you'd never known about before. Secondly, it will give you the map - the psychological directions that are necessary to get beyond psychology.

But both of these things are useless in and of themselves. Waste of fucking time. Might as well play Xbox. Timesplitters 2 is my favourite. And Burnout 3. Burnout 3 rules. Timesplitters 3 was a bit of a disappointment though. Nevermind.

This is all about making this shit self-sustaining for you. So you're not dependent on the presence of some dinky German.

This is about putting this shit beyond a point where you can fuck it up.

This is about starting a self-sustaining, irreversible process in yourself.

This is about igniting this shit inside you. Most of the time we're just warming our hands at the fire. But unless we become the fire, unless we ourselves ignite with incandescent flame, this whole thing's going to be one long circle-jerk. Just a bunch of fanboys watching the latest vogue from Oprah.

So the first two things Tolle Saturation gives you:

It makes you aware of a new dimension of reality.
It gives you the map to get beyond your own psychology.

There's a third and final ingredient that is necessary for ignition to start.

Luckily this final ingredient is something that life is happy to provide in abundance.

Pain.

That's right boys and girls.

Pain is needed. It's the only thing that makes this real, that takes this out of the arena of theoretical debate. It's the only thing that can give you the context to apply the map you get - and the motivation to fucking use it.

And before you think I'm getting all Opus Dei on you, be cool. I'm not suggesting you seek pain. I think we're all old enough and ugly enough to realise that it finds you. It always finds you.

Pain will find a chink in your armour. It will crawl under your skin. It will tear you apart.

This will occur. Nothing that you do can stop it.

But in saturating your mind with Tolle you can get the presence and the map to give yourself a chance you've never had before. To use the pressure and heat of your pain to ignite your personal presence. To pass that irrevokable boundary, to make that permanent shift.

And that's what's going to change your life.

It's Not About The Pain

2008-10-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

Well that was certainly, as the Chinese say, 'interesting.'

The last week's been extremely challenging. My neck was just the start - it was as if outside and inside negativity just unleashed a coordinated attack.

On a personal, emotional and professional level, the last week has been one damn thing after another.

It's interesting, this is the second time this has happened recently. It's like a cascade effect.

Mostly we're in a low-level state of siege. Internal negativity, external shittiness - things come up every now and then. It's as if the darkness is probing our defenses.

Since I started this 1000 days I've been feeling a lot stronger.

I think there are stages you go through when immersing yourself in Tolle. One is annoyance - I never had to deal with this, but I've spoken to many people who get angry at Tolle initially, even as they intellectually agree with him, or intellectually acknowledge him as a shining genius.

Ironically, intellectual agreement is one of the most subtle and powerful obstacles to actually getting anything useful out of listening to Eckhart Tolle.

Some other people get massively tired - he just knocks them out. As I mentioned in the comments to the last post, this is because when you've been drawing all your energy from hate, sorrow, rage or bitterness, you build up a huge fatigue debt in your psyche. As soon as you weaken the negativity, a great tiredness comes.

At the same time, the most recognisable immediate impact this has had on my life is to instill within me a great sense of chill, of inner strength, of peace, calm and acceptance.

As such, the general, low level probing of negativity has been bouncing off me like rain. It's almost surreal to watch the things that would normally have crawled right under your skin and driven you nuts just flow through you without consequence.

But these low-level attacks are not the only weapons open to that darkness. It has cunning, and more control over yourself and others than any of us would care to admit or like to believe.

The neck was just the start. Over the next few days poison and toxicity flooded in from various unconnected sources on the outside. Inside, I became angry, frustrated. That feeling of being hard-done-by, of being unfairly treated by life reared it's head. It was accompanied by deep sadness, and moments of despair.

By Thursday I could hardly hear Tolle. The headphones were on full volume, but my mind was louder. Raging at the wounds I'd suffered unfairly, justifying and blaming in equal measure. Then moments of sorrow at the impossibility of the situation.

That night I poured it all out to a friend. It was good - it helped get space and clarity around my anger. That's not what normally happens when you talk about this kind of thing. If you have someone who enthusiastically sympathises and agrees with you that you are hard done by, that just accelerates the rage, sadness or pain. If you have someone who tries to argue you out of it with logic, that's like throwing petrol on a red-hot coal.

But if you have someone who listens with openness and acceptance, they can provide that present awareness to your anger that Tolle advises you provide for yourself.

This is the value of counselling - and the problem with psychoanalysis. But I digress.

My friend mentioned that I should pray. I haven't prayed in a little while, a few weeks or so. And so, as soon as she left, I addressed the big guy thusly:

"God, help me, man. I'm fucked. I don't know what to do. I'm lost in this shit, again. Again, God. Help me, really, please. I'm out of ideas."

I'm still full of frustration. The talk has helped, but it's getting stronger again, coming back.

I get home and walk into the kitchen. There, sitting on the sideboard is an mp3 player. Not mine, my friends. Attached to it were some in-ear headphones. You know the kind that burrow into your brain and make the music echo around in there, like the band is sitting inside your skull hammering away.

I pick them up. I look through the mp3s available. I've used this mp3 player before as a backup. My Creative Zen player can be a little temperamental, so I've put a few Tolle pieces on this thing. What have we got. Let's see...

Choose To Awaken Now.
In The Presence Of A Great Mystery.
Through The Open Door.

Choose To Awaken Now is good. It's got a funny bit right at the start where there's a deafening scream of feedback in the middle of Eckhart's speech. He pulls it back well - the dude's got quick reflexes. I'll let you find out what it's like yourself.

In The Presence Of A Great Mystery I haven't listened to yet.

Through The Open Door is potent. It's like Tolle with full reverb. The acoustics of the room it was recorded in have an echo to them, it makes his voice so penetrating. On top of that, I think he just got out of the bed on the right side that day. The dude's on form.

Through The Open Door it is. Full volume. In ear-headphone-tastic.

Tolle's voice BOOMS in my head. The volume is teetering on the edge of uncomfortable but I don't give a shit because the second it starts it punches through the darkness in me like a .357 Magnum bullet.

This is the best time to listen to Tolle - when you're fucking furious or massively unhappy. Normally his insights are sharp and crisp, but when you're in the middle of a deep negative mind-pattern everything he says is directly relevant. Urgently so.

And there, finally, after having read his stuff for a year, after having filled my head with it over and over, after having tried so hard to dissolve that gaping hole inside myself, I finally, finally see.

I finally realise what he's telling me to do. What I have to do. It's everything he's been saying for all the time I've been listening to him. And it wasn't that he wasn't being clear - it was that I was layering all my different ideas on top of his, creating chaos and confusion.

It's not about dissolving the pain. The pain doesn't go away. The pain is irrelevant.

For so long I've been trying to get to that state of Zen beingness that would make all the shit go away. But it's not like that. It so much easier. So much simpler than this. So much closer than this - closer to us.

We're not a thousand miles away from salvation. We are each the same distance from eternity. And that distance is a billionth of a millimetre. The Kingdom of Heaven, as the man said, is amongst you. Not amongst you all, but amongst YOU, as in you, yes, you, you reading this sentence, you, right here, right now, you.

For so long I've tried to dissolve the darkness. To resolve the negativity. In the world outside, in myself.

But the negativity has no resolution. The pain in your life cannot be resolved. The pain in the world cannot be resolved.

That's not how it works. That's not what it wants. It wants to live, and given even the slightest chance, it will.

The pain says 'if only X could happen, everything would be fine.' If only this person would agree with me, would do things my way, would see my value, would see my talent, would open up, would calm down, would this, would that... then everything would be fine.

It's the lie, the core lie of all pain - that it has a rational reason and that, by rationality, it can be resolved.

No pain is rational. All pain claims to be. In fact, pain is so strident in it's claims to be rational, that what appears from the outside to be the rationality of a person - or a nation, or a world - is in fact just rationalised pain - agony sculpted into a raging mockery of true logic.

For me, it became 'if only I can build up enough presence through listening to Tolle, then I will be able to resolve the pain.'

It will not work, it cannot work, it will never work.

But the reason I committed to this 1000 days was because I believe there is a deeper truth. That Tolle has done what philosophers have attempted to do for millenia. That he has broken through to something that I do not even know. And that this thing, this thing that I do not even see, may yet make these 1000 days something more than what I believe they are.

The truth is not that the pain can be resolved. The truth is that the pain can be seen.

The truth is not that thought can be resolved. The truth is that thought can be seen.

The truth is not that trauma can be resolved. The truth is that trauma can be seen.

The truth is not that hate cannot be resolved. The truth is that hate can be seen.

The truth is not that failure can be resolved. The truth is that failure can be seen.

The truth is not that the harrowing nightmares can be resolved. The truth is that the harrowing nightmares can be seen.

The truth is not that anything can be resolved. The truth is that anything can be seen.

And it's funny, because this is what Tolle's been telling me this whole time. And he's said that over and over again. And I've been looking at the pain, seeing it, waiting for it to dissolve so I can be enlightened, saved, free.

No, no, no. Silly boy. You're not paying attention to what he's saying, are you, Ciaran? You're trying to use stillness as a bludgeon to batter your pain into oblivion.

Oh, it's so simple. And he's seen it, God bless that tiny German bastard, he's seen it. He got it, he nailed it, he nailed it to the floor.

It is as simple as he says it is.

Normally we're trapped in a stream of thinking. We're trapped in a stream of analysis. We're trapped in a stream of judgements. We're trapped in a stream of labels. We're trapped in a stream of worry. We're trapped in a stream of regret.

When we fight these things they are like the hydra of Greek legend. One head comes off, two more grow in it's place. The monster just gets stronger. We get more lost. We get more broken. Either we give up and resign ourselves to a hateful life, or we resist and suffer untold damage.

It's not a great list of options.

But if you look at what is happening - if you look at it, then YOU are looking at IT. You become you. It becomes it. You're not lost in the rage anymore, or the sorrow, or whatever. You're above it.

That's it. That's all he's saying. And it's not like IT then dissolves. It doesn't. That's not what's going on here. That's not where the payoff is in all this. That's entirely secondary and completely outside your control.

Do you hear what I'm saying? All this time we're focusing on how to 'escape the ego' or to 'dissolve the pain-body' or to 'be healed of the pain'.

We're still thinking that the pain is the barometer of our success in this.

It's not. The barometer of our success is the seeing.

Because that brief moment of peace, of introspective silence when we look at ourselves... that's not the route to dissolving pain.

It's way more than that. The pain-dissolving powers of that brief moment where we look at the hate/pain/rage/despair or whatever are incidental.

Do you understand? Incidental.

Now Tolle keeps saying that that 'seeing', that 'awareness' has amazing powers to dissolve negativity and entrenched pain. And I'm not saying that's not true - it is. It's very true. But as long as you're getting the presence in order to dissolve the pain, you're still the pain's prisoner.

Once more in bold - As long as you're getting the presence in order to dissolve the pain, you're still the pain's prisoner.

It's the key to this whole thing.

The presence, the seeing for it's own sake. That's where the action is. And as soon as you realise that - or more specifically as soon as I realised that - this shit just got one hell of a lot more simple.

There I was lying on my bed with Tolle booming at me and the rage boiling inside. And I saw the rage. The rage didn't go away. I just saw it.

But - oh, how to describe this in a way that makes sense - I was me again. I was me looking at the pain. And not some "super-advanced-Enlightened-Ciaran-2000-series" me. Just me. Just plain old me. The me I've always been. The me I am just in general.

Just me looking at the rage. Nothing spooky. Nothing metaphysical. Nothing mystical. Just me.

And it wasn't like it normally is. Brief (or even extended) interludes of presence that I pour onto the negativity in hopes of dissolving it, always ending in frustration because the pain doesn't get dissolved. And either a minute or a month later when the rage/despair/arrogance/whatever arises again I feel like shit because 'it didn't work'.

It will never work. It's not about it 'working'. If it's about it 'working' then it will never happen for you.

That seeing of the thought stream or the negativity is important for it's own sake. Not for what it does to the pain. That's good but incidental. And it's not rapid as in all your pain just evaporates.

It's just rapid compared to every other method, because presence does permanently dissolve pain, even if it takes a while - and nothing else does.

But again - it's not about the pain.

Most of us who look deeply into this do so because we've just had enough of shit kicking off in our lives.

And so we want the shit to stop.

But as long as that's your motivation you're still looking to the shit to tell you if you're successful. And the shit is shit. It's a universe of Godless horror that doesn't give a fuck about you. It will lie to you, build you up, give you false hope, then tear you apart again.

But the seeing - it is so deep. It's so friendly, and so close. It's like slipping into the oldest, most comfortable pair of slippers you own and it's always there, right here, right now. Yes. For you.

Don't agree with this. Your agreement is irrelevant. Your agreement isn't you. It will make you think it is. You agreement is a lie your mind is telling you. Fuck agreement.

Don't argue with this. The world is full of meaningless argument. If you want to disprove it, do it and see what happens. That way, if you want to take this down you can do so with impact.

But yeah - crazy days. Just goes to show that the darkest times are when the darkness is the most vulnerable and exposed.

Just make sure you've got some in-ear headphones and the Through The Open Door mp3 set handy.

It's ever so good.

My Neck Hurts

2008-10-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

The other night I went to sleep with headphones on. Normally I'll take them off to sleep and turn the volume up to max, leaving them beside me so I can hear Tolle gibbering on as I lie drooling in blissful slumber.

This time I stuck the chunky earphones onto my heeeeed. I'm pleasantly surprised that I can snuggle up comfortably on my pilllow with Tolle reverberating at full whack in that hollow boombox I call my skull.

I wake up the next day, feeling Zen as a mountain stream. It's a great feeling, waking up like that. Noticing that I wake up highly alert, and don't had a thought in my head until I'm out the door fully dressed on my way to work. It's pretty cool.

So there I am in work, Zenning away as one does. Lunchtime comes. My neck starts to hurt.

The pain is exactly like you get when you sleep with your head at a funny angle.

It gets worse and worse, stiffer and stiffer.

It still hurts. My neck mobility is hovering somewhere between Batman and Robocop.

Dunno what it is. No other symptoms apart from feeling generally not chipper because my neck hurts.

Thing is Tolle mentions somewhere that physical aches and pains can accompany the dissolution of the pain body. Almost like it's striking out physically as it diminishes. Don't get me wrong, it could well be something far more prosaic like I slept at a dodgy angle due to chunky headphones.

Strange it didn't kick in till mid-afternoon though.

I hope I haven't got meningitis.

No idea what this is, if it's relevant, what it means. But as I'm cataloging this experiment and Tolle himself mentioned things like this, felt I'd flag it up.

Seriously guys, if this is psychosomatic it hurts like a bastard. Motherfucker.

Ow.

A Floodlight Cutting Through Darkness

2008-10-06T11:11:00.001-07:00

As you may have noticed by a few things I've said, I've got a job.

It's awesome - I've got a normal job for the first time in ages. I love it.

I won't go into too much detail about what it is save to say that I sit at a desk and stare at a screen from 8:30 to 5:30. And that it's cool.

Here's the thing though. Before I started the Tolle stuff, all my jobs were hard-fucking-core. I've very rarely just done a normal job. Mostly I've been in extreme, high-stress environments. Anyone who's seen me can tell you that the colour of my hair backs this up.

If you'd ask me why you might expect me to say something like "I'm an adrenaline junkie" or "I love a challenge." And if we were in a job interview I might answer like that.

It's not true though. The reason I've always had these crazy-extreme jobs is because for as long as I can remember I've had this crushing terror of living a worthless life.

What I mean by that is simple - I have, all my life, been shit scared of doing 'nothing' with my life. It has been the boogeyman under my bed for so long. Given the choice between a kick-ass relationship, a rock-solid friendship, or the merest whisper of a chance to do something that would have meaning and value, I would run to the latter like a crazy person.

I've sacrificed a great deal on that altar. Relationships, friendships, money, career - anything you can think of, really. Anything I could think of, more specifically. In many ways I've lived my life almost based on the assumption that if I just sacrifice enough stuff I'll be able to get my wish.

Here's a blanket apology to all those reading this (you know who you are) who've been caught up in that. I've done a lot of damage, upset a lot of people. I guess the only solace they can take is that the overwhelming majority of the damage I've done has been directed inward, at myself.

Now, there are some people, maybe even some of you, who would look at that and think it heroic. Really. Don't laugh. There are.

There are a lot of people who feel the same way I felt, who live the same way I lived. I think a lot of the reason I built up the following I built up was because my madness is far from unique.

And look, here's the thing. I'm not here to don sackcloth and ashes and bemoan my past. What's done is done. I'm certainly not here to defend it. I don't think it's useful to morally judge in general. And the judgements we cast on ourselves are always the most damaging and deluded.

Point is this - it didn't work.

I mean, not only did it not work, it led me into one emotional, personal or professional car crash after another. It was fricking catastrophic.

Here's something cool though.

The fear has retreated. Massively. It's still there, like a whisper in the background sometimes. Listening to Tolle does that - his presence pushes back negativity like a floodlight cutting through darkness.

I feel free. I go to work and I can just put all my emotional shit on hold. I work good - better than I have before. Ever. I'm so calm. It's crazy. I've never been a calm person. Now I am. I can actually organise things. Anyone who's ever worked with me will realise that's a miracle on a par with walking on water. Normally I'm a fucking mentalist.

And the thing is, I have had some serious successes - especially in my work life. But they've been in spite of my mindset and not because of it. This is just so much better.

I actually feel secure in my job. That's a weird feeling - never had that before. I mean, it's especially weird given the current economic climate. And I love the work, it's cool. It's not 'interesting' from an outside point of view - if I were to describe my day to you you'd not be enthralled, I'll tell you that now.

But it's cool. Doing things is cool when you're chilled. You can build skills, see yourself getting better, get creative with how you do things - all that jazz.

I love it. I do. I'm not terrified every day that I'm wasting my life every second.

And that, my friends, is a big fucking gift from that tiny German mofo.

A Chunk Of Zen

2008-10-05T02:19:00.002-07:00

(Originally Posted on WordPress, October 3, 2008)

This is interesting. After just a few days I’ve started to notice something.

There was always a reactivity about me. I was always good in arguments. I used to see flaws in other people's thoughts, in their ideas. I'd take people down, be the clever one. It was like crack to me. I could hardly resist the urge to explain or expound.

There’s something about me now. It’s hard to describe. It’s the ‘presence’ that Tolle’s talking about, but there’s a difference to it. anyone can experience that. Just pick up a copy of Power Of Now - you’ll know what I’m talking about before you get to page 5.

It’s like a deep undercurrent of chill that flows through everything I do. And here’s the thing - I have no control over it. It’s interesting, because it’s not like “I am really chilled out” as such. It’s like this project is building up an inertia of something inside me.

I can’t quite put my finger on how to describe this properly, I haven’t experienced this before. Here’s what I reckon might be happening.

Initially, when you engage with the work of Eckhart Tolle it’s fun to play around with all the little tools he gives you that give you glimpses of presence.

My favourite was always listening to silence. It sounds like the kind of thing a hippie would do, and of course that is true, but it’s like a route to immediately experiencing the vastness of being, the dimension of the sacred, God, the Holy Spirit - whatever you want to call it.

Briefly, you know how words on a page are little black squiggles surrounded by a vast emptiness (relatively speaking) of whiteness? Well all the noises you are hearing right now, from cars on the road outside to thrash metal music exist in silence. Silence isn’t just the absense of noise - it’s the backdrop to noise which allows you to hear noise clearly.

Listen to it. Take a few breaths and listen to the vast empty silence that lies beneath the noise you hear.

….

…….

………..

Cool, huh? Yeah, it’s interesting. Just one of Eckhart’s little gateways, things you can do to experience presence rapidly.

(btw - if that meant nothing to you, don’t worry about it. Start reading A New Earth or something, you’ll get it soon enough)

They’re really important, these little gateways he has and I think are one of the key things that separates him from other spiritual teachers. He can prove to you that he’s not just talking mumbo-jumbo. You can experience the truth of what he’s talking about immediately and directly.

However - at the end of the day all I was ever able to do with that stuff was get me a glimpse. I could hold myself in the place of ’stillness’ as he calls it, and it was cool.

But it was like the stillness was still at the disposal of my darker self. I’d use it, then congratulate myself for being such a good ‘Zen’ person or whatever. The point is I could never sustain the deep level of presence.

I could have potentially got better at it (which is a very dodgy way of putting it Zen-wise) but I’d always just forget. Life is very distracting and pulls at the attention in a million different ways. And it always, in my experience, finds a way of getting under your skin in the end.

Whether it’s through a girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife, job, argument, friendship, vendetta - something will pull your eyes off the ‘Now’ in the end. And suck you in and down and away.

That’s a pretty dark way of looking at it, I realise. But it’s been my experience on a personal level. I’m probably a special case (basket case) in certain ways, probably more volatile than average… but that’s what seems to happen.

Hey - don’t let this discourage you if you’re having personal success, BTW. I’m just doing my experiment and it’s only been going a few days. I don’t know if what I’m doing is better or worse than any other approach - but we’ll all find out in the end.

But anyway, I digress. The point is that the presence was like something I could ‘do’. I could ‘turn it on’ and revel in it if I wanted to. I could understand it and articulate it, and analyze and number crunch - but of course in the end I’d always sink back beneath the waves of mental noise, slipping back into the pettiness and banality of regrets, judgements and pipe dreams.

Something different is arising in me. It’s made of the same stuff as the presence I felt before - the main difference is that it’s a lot more robust. I’m becoming extremely hard to shake, or to get an emotional reaction out of.

Of course, everything’s relative. There are a lot of people who I’m certain have never heard the name Eckhart Tolle and are a lot more chilled than I am now. But compared to the rawness, rage and reactivity that used to blast through me I’m like a totally different person.

And it’s interesting, because it’s not like I’m less interesting, driven or passionate than I was. If anything the opposite is true. There’s a clarity that surrounds me that wasn’t there before that means I see everything - both internally and externally - with a deep purity (I know this isn’t a great description, I’m doing my best) that I’ve never really seen before. It’s cool. Really cool.

It’s like I’m building up a big-ass chunk of Zen inside me. A mass of presence. And this presence doesn’t go away when I get distracted, when I get pissed off or annoyed. It’s always there, rooting me. Grounding me.

And so you know, yes my mind often throws up belief systems surrounding what I’m doing. Labels, judgements, mini-ideologies from every angle you can conceive. I can only assume that there are several bubbling beneath the surface that I have no idea about. Conceptual maps, ideas, judgements, moral extremes - all that jazz.

But here’s the thing, and I mentioned this before. That shit happens anyway. Certainly it happens to me, and has been happening to me since I can remember.

The mass of presence - that’s new though. Haven’t had that before. Groovy.

I suppose that if I were to be wildly optimistic what I would hope for from these 1000 days is that the presence will build to a critical mass and trigger the kind of conceptual-identity-dissolution that Tolle himself experienced.

It’ll probably just give me a slight German accent.

Only time will tell…

Second Thoughts...

2008-10-05T02:19:00.001-07:00

(Originally posted on WordPress, October 2, 2008)

There are a number of reasons why what I’m doing is a bad idea.

The biggest one is that the mind is constantly working, constantly analyzing. I myself am more prone to this than most, but we’re all prone.

Eckhart Tolle occasionally says that if you fall into analyzing his stuff you’ll find it boring. I’ve never had this problem. If anything, the opposite is true.

I’ve always found deep insights into the nature of being and humanity to be the most fascinating thing around. I’m something of a junkie for it. I can rant for hours about the structure of moral rationalisation, or how we order the world around us to convince ourselves of things that deep down we know aren’t true.

I’m well aware of the human capacity for self-deception because my own is so highly developed. This isn’t to beat myself up about it, it just is the truth. In the past I’ve fought through crusade after crusade, switching one for another and making my life a battle for the privelidge of seeing myself as a hero, or a martyr, or a genius, or whatever.

We all do it.

And the thing is that I’ve done something like this before - never on this scale of course. I’ve saturated my mind for weeks on end with Eckhart’s voice. I’ve had mixed results.

The reason I did it is that I’m prone to deep depression. I’ve been on and off Prozac for a few years, which I suppose makes it official. The smallest glimpse through my last blog will show you some pretty intense posts, and the last year has taken me right to the edge a few times.

Whenever I’d listen to Eckhart it was like plunging a red-hot sword into a pool of water. I could almost feel the hiss and bubble as my mind rapidly cooled.

But no matter how soothing his words, how profound his teachings, my mind would whirr and buzz and weave a web of thought and judgement. I’d construct a philosophy around his ideas, go on missions in my head to “destroy my ego” or “transmute my pain-body”.

I’d go hell-for-leather at it, then get depressed and frustrated as initial insights and successes descended into chaos, confusion and failure.

Still, initial successes that in the end led me back to square one.

I don’t know how much of that was down to the old life I used to lead. Trying to reach a profound level of chill in the situations I’d put myself in was often like trying to build a house of cards in a hurricane.

That’s of course not to say that I’m retreating to a zen mountaintop. Actually, the point of this whole thing is to see what happens when I load myself full of Tolle in the context of a more or less ‘normal’ life. I have a 9-5 job, I have friends I go out with, I have TV shows I like (Supernatural is great, IMHO) and all that jazz.

At the same time, I found myself crashing out emotionally over and over. It hit a point where it became apparent to me that, in the words of Marilyn Manson “all the drugs in this world won’t save you from yourself.”

So I decided to listen to Tolle every night when I slept. Instantly I was more chilled, less volatile. Then I got an interview, and took the job. I really enjoy it, by the way. Great fun. At this stage normality’s like a novelty to me. I feel so official, I love it. The work’s good fun too. Creative, interesting. Not too stressful. It’s cool.

Then I started listening to him in the day.

Then I sat back and reflected on my options. There is a deep anger and agony in the centre of my chest. Tolle’s voice chases it into the background, but it’s always there. It’s like all my nastiest, weakest traits and it’s gone unchecked for a long time. It’s been feeding for a long time.

Thing is, no matter how much I may agree with what Tolle says, agreement won’t save me. No matter how deeply I may be able to understand or articulate his thought, I’ll still get sucked right back into shit when left to my own devices.

The thing is, I don’t think I’m going to be able to significantly chill if left to my own devices. No matter how many flashes of insight I get, no matter how deep they are or how profound, no insight is going to save me.

And why?

It’s simple, and really quite prosaic. Truth is, because I’ll just forget.

Given a week on my own I’ll latch on to some other mission, some other answer. And I’ll follow that will-o-wisp into another patch of quicksand.

This way I don’t need to remember anything. Eckhart’s always with me, keeping me on track.

The other thing is this - that in doing this I’ll create what I used to call a Zen Ego. I don’t really like the use of the word Ego in this context (even though I was using it to refer to a conceptual sense of self before I even read Tolle). Not because it’s inaccurate, it’s a great word to use.

At the same time I think it’s all too easy to conflate that word Ego in the sense that Tolle uses it with the word ‘arrogance’. You hear the word Ego and you hear the word Egotistical, but the Ego that Tolle refers to is a much broader concept, a much deeper concept. It doesn’t just refer to arrogance, but to any sense of who you are based on ideas in the mind. Arrogance can easily rise from this - but so can deep self-loathing, so it cuts both ways.

A Zen Ego therefore is not a Zen Arrogance. It’s a conceptual identity based on ideas gleaned from Tolle. Easily done. So how to avoid it over the next 997 days?

The answer is, again, simple. I can’t. I really don’t think it’s possible for me to do this and not build a conceptual identity out of the concepts I’m pumping into my head. It will happen. Over and over.

My theory, and in some ways my bet, is that there will be another process going on under this. The truth is, I’m going to build an identity around whatever I’m doing, be it my job or whatever harebrained project I’ve dreamed up next.

The analytical identity will happen. That’s a given.

But here’s the thing. I reckon that Tolle is a special case. The man sweats Zen. He oozes chill, he oozes presence. I believe that there’s a chance that even while my mind twists itself around his words, his presence itself will undermine that twisted process.

Given enough time.

Truth is, I don’t know if it’s going to work. I think there’s a chance that it might.

And no-one else will be my guinea pig. So I’m doing it.

After the 1000 days are complete, we should have a pretty good understanding of the process.

I’ll keep you posted.

1000 Days Of Presence

2008-10-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

(Originally posted on WordPress, September 30, 2008)

There comes a time when you’ve got to face the fact that the common denominator in all the fucked up situations you get into is you.

I could list the crazy shit I’d done, but there’s really no point. Suffice it to say that I could go toe to toe with anyone you’ve ever met for having a weird-ass past.

I’ve made some strange choices. I’ve done some dumb shit. I’ve been a pretty intense guy.

I’ve got a story I could tell you about me in the past, about the mental stuff I’ve done and been. It involves drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Problem is, I always had an ambition. Deep down somewhere in me since I was a young kid I always wanted to be a philosopher. Not to ‘think deep thoughts’ as such, nor for the mystique of the thing, although to be honest I have gotten lost in both those sillinesses at various points.

No - it was because every now and then I’d get a glimpse of something. Or more specifically every now and then I’d see the world from a certain angle and everything would make sense.

I think it’s hard to describe what philosophy meant to me, but I’ll try.

For me, philosophy was the only possible answer. You see, once, when I was young, I looked around the world in which I lived and saw something unifying all the people in it, myself included. And that unifying force wasn’t good. There was some common darkness that united all humanity in a veil of delusion.

It was like a mesh of moral judgements that only existed in our minds. Like each person contained a whole constructed universe of division. Like everyone in the world, or at least everyone I could see, even (especially?) on the news or in positions of power.

That all humanity was subject to some kind of elementary flaw - a flaw that was completely universal and highly specific.

That was the kicker, for me. That the fucked-up-ness of the world was not random. I mean sure, the ways in which that fucked-up-ness expressed itself seemed infinite, and infinitely cruel.

But it seemed to me then that the basic mechanics of hatred were completely universal. It was the same mechanism, the same process.

And I resolved that if I could get to the bottom of that process, then maybe - just maybe - I could do something for the world in which I lived which would actually help it.

Now before you get all gung-ho, don’t get me wrong. I could talk for days on this subject - it has been the grand obsession of my life. The truth is though that it’s led me into some twisted places. Just as hate is hate is hate, no matter the context and no matter the scale, obsession is obsession is obsession.

I have been obsessed for a very long time.

A lot of my life I’ve been indolent. Wasting time for timewasting’s sake. You see one of the things about an obsession is that it gives you huge energy when you follow it, but everything else seems pointless beyond measure. I’ve spent a lot of time in trivial pursuits and I’ve not done many basic things that I really should have done. To give you an example I’ve beaten a vast number of computer games, but I’ve never learned to drive.

I don’t mind that much. I live in Edinburgh. It’s a lovely city for a walk.

The times in my life I haven’t been wasting time, I’ve moved with furious energy. All-consuming, burning energy levels. Like a kamikaze I’ve thrown myself at things and very often those things have broken me.

Don’t worry, I’m not bitching. All my really deep wounds are self-inflicted.

But recently, about a year ago now, I was introduced to the work of a man called Eckhart Tolle. He’s a German, a man who I would classify as a philosopher. A real one. The kind I’d always wanted to be. The kind I’d always thought of myself as.

I remember the first time I read something he wrote. I was in a hotel room in London, with a bunch of strangers I was trying to impress. The book was ‘Stillness Speaks.’ My friend Owen had been telling me to read Tolle for ages and, lacking anything else to do within reaching distance of my hand, I picked it up and opened it to a random page.

I don’t remember what the first line was, but I remember it stunned me. It was rare that I would be impressed even in the slightest by someone else’s philosophy. But in one line it was apparent that Tolle had been looking at exactly the areas I’d been looking at - the lies we tell ourselves, the divisions in us, the deep reasons behind all conflict.

And in the same line it was apparent that he’d gone further than me. There was a sense in my mind like “this is something new. Haven’t seen this before.”

There was a clarity to it. A deep clarity and truth that shone from his words. I’d never seen anything like it.

I buried myself in the book. On the way to the airport to fly back to Scotland I bought myself a copy of The Power Of Now, Tolle’s first book.

By the time I got home I realised that he’d written the book I’d been trying to write for ten years.

I started delving into his thought, delving into his ideas. This was deep, way deeper than anything I’d seen before. He was tapping something primal, something profound. It wasn’t like he was really clever and he’d ‘worked out the answer’. It was like he was living the answer, sending messages from the other side.

Every sentence in his book hummed with life and power. I read all four of his books.

Well, that’s not really true. I’ve never been able to make it through The Power Of Now. I always get halfway in then have to put it down with my mind blown.

But I made a simple error. I approached it like a philosophy. Like a system of thought. And it is a system of thought - Tolle constructs an incredibly coherent picture of the world around us that is as comprehensive as it is fascinating.

As a philosopher I’d always chased epiphany, chased that one insight that would make everything clear. Each time I’d hit it, get to that ‘eureka’ moment. Each time things would make sense. And each time the simplicity would once more descend into complexity and chaos. I’d lose it again.

This post is dragging out too long, but I wanted to give you some background on why I’m doing what I’m doing now.

You see, Tolle’s philosophy is worthless, as is my philosophy. What I’d always said was that beyond the world of moral division in which we lived there was another world, a deeper nature. A deeper morality that ebbed and flowed way below the level of what we normally understand by use of the word ‘justice’.

That state I called ‘compassion’. Eckhart Tolle refers to it as ‘presence’. My idea was that if I could find a way to destroy the fake it would expose the real. What I failed to take into account is that destruction itself is part of the veil of delusion. That destruction itself was the very core of the universe of morally charged fiction which was and is destroying humanity. For a decade I fought fire with fire, and all I burned was me.

To mangle the truth into something that makes sense in human terms, Eckhart Tolle has discovered the answer to philosophy. And it’s not something you need to understand with your head - or something I need to understand with my head.

It’s something I need to cultivate.

I’ve always been the kind of dude who tests stuff. If I’m going to believe in something, I’ll live it. It’s not because I’m brave. It’s because I’m genuinely interested in whether what I believe is true or not. And if it’s true, living it to the hilt will be a blast. If it’s not true, living it to the hilt will mess you up hard and fast.

At least that’s the theory.

So from today I’m going to be putting my money where my mouth is as far as Eckhart Tolle is concerned. I have an mp3 player. Ironically enough, it’s a Creative Zen player. It’s full of Eckhart’s audio stuff.

For 1000 days - that’s about three years - starting today, I will be listening to Eckhart Tolle at every available moment.

The rules are simple.

When I’m at work, at my desk, I don’t listen to Tolle. If I’m going out with my friends, I don’t listen to Tolle. If I’m in the shower I don’t listen to Tolle, until I get some waterproof headphones.

All other moments I have Tolle in my head. When I get up in the morning I listen to him on the way to work. On my lunch breaks at work I plug straight in. When I leave work I put on the headphones and listen. I continue to listen until I sleep.

When I sleep, I sleep with Eckhart Tolle playing all night. Then I get up in the morning.

I repeat this 1000 times.

This is the blog diary of 1000 days of presence, 1000 days of light. I’m pretty damaged goods, pretty dark.

We’ll see what happens.

Stay tuned…