Yikes, People Are Taking This Seriously
I’m going to imagine that I wrote a book about a rigid cosmology, a set of useful beliefs, that is new and helpful. People read the book and take it to be my belief system. At core of that book is a catalog of divine characteristics with recognizable colors and other attributes that people can find and look at inside themselves.
Q: Are these objects you write about universal to all humans?
A: Probably. I haven’t worked with anyone who didn’t find them.
Q: Do you experience them?
A: No, not so much.
Q: Did you experience them?
A: Yes, much more so.
Q: What happened?
A: As each one explained itself to me over time, it got me all buzzy, and after a number of times visiting it, once it had completed its self-explanation, I never saw it again.
Q: Why do you think that happened?
A: I have noticed that anything of wisdom has to depart, perhaps to make room for more wisdom. But more so, I think that I push out things I have already learned for another reason. If it sticks around, it stops being a lesson in the moment and reifies.
Q: What’s wrong with reification?
A: Nothing, except that it’s a sure sign of delusion and panic.
Q: So you’re saying that these objects that you describe in your book, which may be universal and even helpful in some peculiar way, are another fantasy that is to be discarded in time?
A: Exactly! How did you figure that out?
Q: So why did you write the book?
A: Books are about things that have happened to people. Some people write books as their job in the world. That doesn’t mean that the author or book is productive, helpful, useful, or necessary. The last reason to write a book is to persuade someone to reify yet another thing. But I guess that’s what I’ve done. It’s just a job, man.
Q: Do you miss having the experience of the essential aspects?
A: Yes and no. When I first realized that I was reifying them in order to discard them, I would get a bittersweet feeling when one got “integrated” and buzzed, knowing that it was now gone from my consciousness in any substantial way. But I’m happy to have moved on, not that moving on is progressive. I just mean I’m happy for the periods of emptiness that are followed by new things being taught through me. I like it when anything concludes. It’s fun to see the world find its way to organize itself around what is next.
Q: Why do you have clients to whom you show these objects that you no longer experience?
A: Besides for the money?
Q: Yes.
A: I’m not sure. I warn them I have no interest in helping them, and that if they feel I’ve helped them that’s fine, but if I thought I was helping I’d be fucked. Then two crummy sufferings would arise for me and work would be a drag. One, I would be presenting myself with a person who needed help instead of a strange, fascinating shapeshifter. I like whole people; they’re spontaneous and surprising. Two, I would have to aim my life to fix the problem that I had projected on them, which probably was my problem. Fixing problems, even my own, isn’t my cup of tea these days.
Q: So why do you have clients?
A: I don’t know. They come to me. They stick around for a while. I find them endlessly fascinating, which is love. Quite a lot like watching TV, but more immediate and colorful and loving.
Q: Loving?
A: Yeah, that’s just what happens when I remove my filters, my defenses.
Q: You can do that?
A: It’s not hard.
Q: Now I don’t believe you.
A: But you are ready to believe in these colorful objects floating inside you when your eyes are closed, the things in my book?
Q: But I don’t believe that people can get out of the way of their defenses. That would be non-suffering.
A: Oh, I see. You’re hung up on perfection. It’s not like that. The only thing perfect is the minimal organizing principle that keeps me out of harm’s way until it doesn’t. Everything else is shades of fun.
Q: Why do you use language like that? Aren’t you serious?
A: It’s play, dude. I’m a funny little meaning-making machine. I look around, scan and pick out interesting variables, work their valences to get them to form a machine, and when I’ve finished constructing the machine I articulate the completed form back to myself and call that meaning. All I’ve really done is complete a puzzle. Meaning just indicates I’m done. The funniest part is that I never give myself a puzzle that I don’t have some potential to solve. So I’m not even challenging myself, really.
Q: What about purpose?
A: Making one meaning after another isn’t enough for you?
Q: So you wrote a book that you don’t believe in, and you don’t help people, and all you do is play?
A: All of that sounds about right. But one more thing. I toggle between awe and love. Like with time, space, and the minimal organizing principle, I just can’t seem to get away from awe when I’m reduced to a pair of eyes looking out, and love when I’m an empty blob fascinated by a particular thing in close view. Not that I want to get away from awe and love. They’re pretty nice.