Is There Anybody Out There?

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been in wonderment at the craziness of human beings. I never could understand how they could subscribe to the highest ideologies on the one hand and yet indulge in such horrid behavior towards each other. It was so hypocritical, so bizarre, and so obviously detrimental. Our society is sick, neurotic, and completely unnatural when it comes to just being able to live a happy, free life. How did we get so off the track?

Over the years I have been studying the alternative media for clues and there is a plethora of information available on the internet describing how our so-called leaders have sold us out to corporate interests through the use of the most insidious of mind control techniques. Check out www.davidicke.com or www.commondreams.org for examples.

As soon as we are born, the programming begins. Our parents, already having been completely absorbed into the corporate-think, begin the process by telling us what they expect from "good" little "boys" and "girls". We watch TV and find out more about what we are expected to believe is important, how we are meant to fit into the system. It's all about consuming the products that the corporations tell us are fundamental to the good life we are supposed to want, and because everyone around us is plugged into the same cycle of working to acquire more of these objects of desire, we go along with it like sheep. The so-called educational system only teaches us to be good little worker bees and tax payers, not to think for ourselves. Even if we are unsatisfied enough to seek alternatives, they are just more of the same dressed up in prettier clothes.

I have had some pretty amazing experiences of jumping so far out of the system through using meditation, drugs, and alternative lifestyles that re-integration is no longer a possibility for me. But I am still in this human body and must somehow find a way to continue, and there are precious few options that have any attraction for me any longer. I can't bring myself to be a part of the machine that poses as the American Dream - it is a sham that is falling apart at the seams. And I can't be a part of any group that is in direct opposition to it either as it merely feeds the problem. The closest activities to any basic sanity are those labeled "spiritual", but that has also become a marketplace filled with personality cults, endless, and expensive, processes and programs, and maybe in the future, if you do it the "right" way, some possibility of enlightenment.

Now this enlightenment "business" really has started to bug me, because most of the time it is couched in such esoteric terms that no one understands at all how it is accomplished. I've met people who have been doing yoga, meditation, positive thinking, chanting, oming for world peace, and a kazillion other practices supposedly designed to bring one to self-realization. But very few actually reach this goal. I find that this striving to "get" somewhere is just another bottomless pit that is no different than any other material goal. Calling it "spiritual" just puts it on some lofty plane where you get to be more cool than those who are merely striving for more materialistic gain. But it is really the same old story that puts you right back where you started as far as being programmed to believe in some glorious future that will come about if you work hard enough. It is Bogus!

As long as you seek for your happiness in some outward activity or manifestation, it will not last. All outer phenomenon is transient at best. Change is the nature of things in this 3-dimensional universe. The question is: What is it that does NOT change, that is eternally present, that hums in the background as we scurry around trying to accumulate more "stuff"? How can we just rest within the great Isness of Life itself?

Well, the meditators start off on the right track, since it is in SILENCE that one can actually make contact with one's eternal nature. But you can't compartmentalize the infinite, can't fit it into the finite world. Many try to do so, I mean look at all the books that have been written and are gobbled up by the disillusioned in hopes of getting a taste. But it is just taking up room on your bookshelf and you are still unsatisfied. This all works to the advantage of a social system that wants you to be dissatisfied, always wanting MORE and MORE. There's only one way to step off this endless treadmill. And that is to JUST STOP IT. Stop participating in the hallucination. Take the big plunge!

In Zen, you go to a sesshin and sit, sit, sit. You sit in silence until it dawns on you that YOU are what you seek, YOU are the ONE. And then you sit some more. Silent sitting takes you out of the loop and allows the Truth to reveal itself, and if it really catches you, you would rather sit than just about anything else. And there comes a point when this fabrication, this story that you've been telling yourself about yourself falls away, and you are just HERE, present, much like a child who is happy just watching the grass grow. And for most this engenders great fear as if one was facing one's death. Because all you have known is what you have been conditioned to believe by society, and you discover it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO YOU ARE, it begins to fall away. This is always the point that is the greatest challenge to people, and this is when they often get up and run out of the room. But all the masters that ever were went through this dark night, this death of the conditioned SELF, before they woke up and achieved complete liberation. That's what LIBERATION is, freedom from ALL the conditioning and programming, right down to even thinking you're male or female. And the mind fights it because it looks like death. Real death is the same thing and we will all face it one day. But if you want liberation in this lifetime, there's only one way. Walk away from the dream long enough and JUST STOP.

Since I still am in the body, and need to feed, clothe, and shelter it, and because I left behind any desire to participate in the current nightmare playing out on the international stage, I have minimized my physical needs such that I have no debt, no obligations to others, no appointments to keep, no clock to watch. Just simple Being is enough. Yet the idea still comes...are there others, like me, who would create a sane life away from the maelstrom, where Truth can flower, and new, original ideas flourish? Is there anybody out there?

Bottom line is I would like to create a retreat center here in Costa Rica where the focus is on living an awakened life, where serious folks can actually STOP being a part of the growing insanity. This world is changing so fast, the earth changes are not going to get any better, and it's time to find a quiet place to rest. This isn't some airy, fairy lah-de-dah new age loopy groupy sales pitch, just a real possibility to step off the treadmill, hang with some cool folks who have no agenda whatsoever, grow some bananas, mangoes, and papayas, and let the rest of the world finish playing out this madness so we can start anew. Or maybe we'll be in paradise watching it all fall apart around us. In that case, I'll raise a glass to Life's amazing persistence that there IS a way to evolve and awaken, even if mankind has screwed it up once again.

If this post has you the least bit interested, drop us a line at iamgodsjoy@yahoo.com . We would love to hear from you.