» The Dreamer Has Awakened
I’ve been sick since Good Friday. Eight days, so far, and they’ve been long and difficult.
Before I begin: It wasn’t Azuma. Yes, I had a slightly-rubbery rainbow roll. Yes, my fortune did say, “the treasures of the rainbow will soon be yours”. Yes, the first of my several doctors started by treating me for poison and parasites.
But no, it was not Azuma.
My second and third doctors (I discarded them until I got results) settled on a serious case of the flu. It was either that or something that would have needed surgery. I’ll spare you the physical details. Anyway, they’re boring compared to the psychic ones.
First, I became oddly sensitive to sound. The TED “swoosh” at the beginning of each talk… How do I describe it? Like a blast of cold air shooting up my spinal cord. Even now it feels like a surprising touch at the base of my neck.
The sound of the automatic sun shades deploying in the Dockside used hit me right in the stomach. I’m used to it now. Actually, don’t get me started on this place. The little annoyances that come with all poorly-designed software are magnified by delirium and anthropomorphism and ubiquity. I catch myself hating the townhouse’s environmental computer, and the ghost in the walls seems to hate me back.
After the synesthesia, I started to dream lucidly. I figure this was an artifact of exhaustion: I was too nauseated to sleep, but too exhausted to be awake, so I split the difference.
I realized I had gone lucid when I dreamed I was sitting in a board room, discussing detailed plans for some massive project with several advisers. They were adamant that my ideas wouldn’t work. I realized it was a dream, and that I had absolute power. I hesitated a moment: Even if they were just figments, was it ethical to kill?
“Yes”, came the answer. I pointed a magic gun at them and turned them all to sand. They blew away in the wind. No slave-morality here.
Last, I’ve become really emotional. When a nurse noticed how sick I was she pulled me out of the waiting room and set me up in an examination room so I could lie on the bed. She brought me water. I was so grateful I started crying uncontrollably.
Or today, when I saw on the BBC that His Royal Highness, The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has now become the longest serving royal consort in the history of Britain, I shed a tear or two for the old chap and the old Empire, singing the climax of The Pirates of Penzance (spoiler alert):
Police:
We charge you yield…
We charge you yield,
In Queen Victoria’s name!Pirate King:
You do?Police:
We do!
We charge you yield,
In Queen Victoria’s name!Pirate King:
We yield at once, with humbled mien,
Because, with all our faults, we love our Queen!
I’ve also had spikes of blistering, bellowing rage for things as simple as being asked how I’m feeling, or not wanting anyone to sit behind me in a car, or the fucking environmental computer waking me up with the air exchanger.
Anyway, I’m still in Victoria — but not for long. I have a meeting with a producer and artist in Vancouver on Monday which I’m trying to push, but no word yet. We’ll see. I’ll try to resist turning them into sand.
Oh, and: I’m feeling better, but still not well.
I know I’ve read at least one short story where a house environmental computer decides to kill the occupants. In modern terms, how would it do it? Probably by breeding toxic mould somewhere.
Jared
19 Apr 09 at 1:54 pm
Get better soon Alex!
karen
19 Apr 09 at 5:07 pm
Eckhart Tolle starts from the observation that the entire universe is constructed in our minds* and builds a pretty interesting system of thought. He almost claims that the reason philosophy and religion don’t make people happy is that they assume solipsism is not the case, when in fact it is.
* Key point: Your senses are interpreted by your nervous system, everything else is “you” processing that interpretation.
To bend that idea in a silly way, in the manner of the ancient belief that Ruler is Land: I was born in Winnipeg, and I’ve been sick since it flooded, with a sickness of hydration. I’ll probably feel better when the Red River, on the shores of which I spent the first two years of my life, stops disgorging water (identically: when my body does).
Jack
20 Apr 09 at 10:56 pm
Tolle cites Meister Eckhart, you should read him.
Tolle himself is selling crazy. “Watching the thinker” is particularly bullshit. You should write a full post about him so I can spout off. }:)
Jared
21 Apr 09 at 10:50 am
For some reason I’m starting to think more in terms of The 48 Laws of Power than anything now. I’m looking at the higher-intensity moralities as suggestions of things to do once you actually have power.
There are a couple of dominant principles I look for in thought systems, namely syncretism and a kind of basic, universal identity. If your truth isn’t a reflection of all truths, or can’t absorb them, I lose interest. For example Catholicism with its narcosaints and liberation theology:
“Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani?” is the single most understandable, human thing said in the Bible, “the Gospel of Death”. Santa Meurte and Jesus Malverde seem an expression of that… But now I’m probably blaspheming.
It strikes me that seeking power for its own sake has those two qualities (syncretism and unity). It feels like a different response to “the source of suffering is desire”, or maybe even a different formulation: “the source of suffering is lack of power”. Those differences are easier for me to buy into, because I have a fundamental problem with slave morality — it just doesn’t ring true.
In short: I need proof that worldly success doesn’t lead to bliss.
“Love and Control” is an idea for a game I’ve had for a while now. I want it to be team-based, a game of social power dynamics. The concept is just abstract at this point, however. I still need to noodle it.
Jack
21 Apr 09 at 7:13 pm
@Alex Personally, I think you don’t get it: desire for power leads to suffering just like any other desire. To end suffering you can’t seek power, you can’t seek salvation, you can’t seek anything.
Jared
22 Apr 09 at 9:51 am
I understand that’s what the people in power tell us. I don’t believe them anymore, I require direct disproof. If power sucks, give it to me. I’ll take it for a spin and verify the suckage for myself.
[Added:] My point is that Siddhartha started life as a prince, who was denied absolutely no physical pleasure. More, he had been a prince in several of his past lives.
Who are we not to follow his example?
You sit down with a friend at a restaurant. A waitress brings over a plate. Your friend takes some of the food.
“Oh! That’s awful,” he says with his mouth full, “You wouldn’t like this at all.” He eats another piece.
Your friend is obviously joking, transparently trying to eat your share to humorous effect.
However, for some reason when you replace “plate of food” with “wealth and power” in that story it blinds people.
“Oh! That’s awful,” says the Buddha as he takes another follower, “You wouldn’t like power at all.”
Jack
22 Apr 09 at 10:13 am
I also think you don’t get it. Happiness comes from with-in not from power. From your links:
1) Laws of power, Law 10: You can die from someone else’s misery – emotional states are as infectious as disease. …
2) Eckhart Tolle says: Living in the past or wishing from the future saps the enjoyment of now.
You are asking for proof that power sucks. Well it isn’t that power it itself sucks or makes people unhappy, but it also doesn’t make people happy. One brings to power their emotions, happy or sad. The issue is the people that usually seek power, do if for greed and envy. They feel that it will satisfy some hunger in their ego, but their ego stays hungry for more power.
Kevin
22 Apr 09 at 7:04 pm
I understand the teaching, I just reject it: Trying not to desire power doesn’t bring me peace.
I agree with you though, Kevin: “Well it isn’t that power itself sucks or makes people unhappy, but it also doesn’t make people happy.”
That makes sense to me. I rephrase though, because I slightly disagree: “Don’t take power games personally.”
My ego, in other words, is already completely out of control. It’s okay though — we all have infinite lives to work it out. I’ll just try again next time, like Buddha did.
Jack
22 Apr 09 at 7:36 pm
@Alex, You have one life to live, waste, experience, cultivate, explore, love, hate and experiment with. Spend it how you want. When the bill comes due, I hope you enjoyed it.
Kevin
22 Apr 09 at 8:17 pm
I’m just assuming that Mahayana Buddhism is correct – with no work or thought on my part, I have infinite lives to wait for a Bodhisattva to give me a dollop of their grace (I can’t remember the proper Buddhist term here,so I’ll inject a Christian one) to give me free enlightment and release from samsara.
Even better if the LDS church has it figured out – I get to die and wait in limbo until some earthly mormons ask to baptise me and get to go to heaven.
In my eastern religions class in university, I appreciated the answer that the Buddhist TA gave when asked where the notion that existence is suffering came from. He didn’t tell us that desire is suffering or that a spiritual longing experienced by some people qualifies as "suffering" or that feeling bad after losing something you love outweighs the benefits it had provided. He just told us that life pretty much sucked in olden times, what with serfdom, infant mortality, and dirty water.
Don
22 Apr 09 at 9:06 pm
Oh okay, so you don’t believe any of that Tolle crap? I can dig that. But why did you post it without a disclaimer? Sometimes you seem to flip-flop between will-to-meaning and will-to-power.
Jared
25 Apr 09 at 2:39 pm
I think it’s more that I need the two to be consistent. My will to power has to come from a place of meaning, otherwise I’m no better than a petty dictator (this is probably because I was trained to be a Jesuit). On Thursday I played a power game with a family member that made me so depressed (because it worked so well) that I carved the word “love” into my forearm so I’d learn the lesson.
I am no longer interested in power untempered by meaning. The cost in terms of my soul — “guilt” — is too high (this is what my shrink means when he says that I am a narcissist with a maladaptive punitive superego).
I like Tolle because inside what he calls “the gaps between the words” I get a feeling of immense, meaningful, power. He has the quality of the Spoon Buddha in the Matrix, or the sound of the Gion Shoja temple bell: PopZen.
Plus, he wears ridiculous clothes and stops talking at weird times — Two giant power games that I am forced to respect.
Tolle also trips my bullshit sensors, but his trick is so well-played it seems to fit his philosophy: “Even this teaching is meaningless”. If you want to tear him to shreds, I’m interested in why he’s wrong. I’m not going to write a post about why he’s right first, though — I don’t have enough material
@ Disclaimer:
I met Alex in a lucid dream. He asked me to take over blogging so that we could discuss ideas without people thinking we actually believe them.
I am the dream that awoke.
I am the disclaimer.
Jack
25 Apr 09 at 11:26 pm
[...] QFT, and jibes perfectly with Tolle. [...]
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