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Life is a mess, isn’t it? And the usual way we deal with it is by avoiding looking at the painful truths about life.
These truths may hurt, but they’re on the way to freedom from delusion and self-deception. All you need to do is look at them honestly. But looking honestly is one helluva thing to do and most of us would rather spend a life with our eyes closed than look honestly.
Even while reading the hard truths you might not look honestly. You might superficially agree with some of it and then go back to your old ways, which is not bad or wrong. So if you’re satisfied with your life and want nothing to change, you might want to reconsider reading this article.
However, if you’re truly ready to look and no longer fool yourself, then you might find some fuel to burn down your construct of self-delusion here.
You might not like what you’ll read here, but that’s to be expected. No one likes their safe scaffold to be torn down so that you tumble down into a fathomless void.
But even though you might not like it, there is this small ruthless voice inside you that will tell you what’s bullshit. And as far as I’m concerned, it will tell you that it’s all bullshit.
This voice is not some bad guy you want to silence, it’s the voice that wants you to claim your birthright.
It wants you to recognize who and where you really are. It wants you to stop living on second or third-hand ideas and reclaim your self-sovereignty. It wants you to live a life on your own without all the conditioning and programming we’ve all been fed our whole lives.
So, with all that in mind, shall we get started?
We Are All Selfish
This is something you can see quickly if you’re honest with yourself.
What’s the reason for doing nice things for others? Why do we want to save the planet? Why do we act as if we care so much?
Because it gives us a good feeling, that’s why. Or the more messed up version, because we want to avoid feeling bad.
If everything we do for apparently selfless reasons is providing us with an emotional payoff, are we really selfless? Of course not! Selflessness means receiving nothing in return. Feeling good about being selfless is receiving a positive feeling which is not nothing, and hence, is not selfless.
Selflessness can’t exist alongside ego.
The ego’s main goal is self-preservation, which means keeping the illusion of itself up. So even the one who wants to be selfless is the ego. Selflessness then becomes something the ego wants to achieve for self-gratification.
True selflessness can’t be intended and is only present if there is no awareness of anyone having done a good deed. That’s a truly rare breed of humans.
But hey, it’s okay to be selfish. Why? Well, because we’re all selfish and it comes out of an instinct for self-preservation. The only difference is that some of us like to claim the opposite.
You don’t need to stop doing things for others because it’s all selfish anyway. You only need to stop deluding yourself about the reason for your actions. If you’re doing something for someone and you’re happy and they’re happy, then what’s the problem? It’s a win-win.
We Are All Bullshitting
There is something called imposter syndrome. No matter how successful you are in your respective field, you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments and are followed by a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud.
Basically, you think you are bullshitting and fear that others will call you out on your bullshit. Additionally, you might even start comparing yourself to others who you think are not bullshitting.
But here is the truth.
Everyone is bullshitting. Everyone is acting as if. After all, life is nothing but make-believe.
Sure, some might clad themselves in fancy titles and seem like more serious bullshitters. But they’re still bullshitters. We can’t avoid bullshitting because bullshitting is the medium of this dream world. Whether it’s good or bad bullshit, it will be bullshit.
So, it’s not about the bullshit you bullshit, it’s about enjoying your own bullshit.
Although this article is about painful truths about life, this truth might actually be rather painless.
Know, that it’s okay to think you’re not qualified enough because no one is qualified enough. No one knows what the hell is going on, although many like to claim they know.
Life Has No Meaning
Thinkers, philosophers, and metaphysicians of all ages have tried figuring this one out. What’s the meaning of life?
But isn’t the answer obvious? This is not to devalue anyone’s opinion, but how can there be any meaning beyond the mind?
So, the painful truth is that life has no meaning. And any meaning life might have can never be grasped by the mind. All the mind can do is break life up into individual parts and then assign meaning to those parts.
We assume that without meaning and purpose, nothing is worth doing and you’re right, doing nothing is worth doing.
In all honesty though, isn’t the constant search for meaning and purpose behind all your actions the problem?
Instead of being like life is, we try to get beyond it somehow. We strive to be better than life and raise ourselves on some pedestal of meaning and purpose. Exactly this is the problem. We try to get to a place that doesn’t exist outside of our minds and thus won’t last.
But before you venture down a hole of cynicism and nihilism, ask yourself why this shouldn’t be good news?
Of course it’s good news! You can stop trying to find any hidden meaning and simply enjoy the beautiful simplicity of life living itself without any meaning or purpose.
No One Will Save You
Whether you’re aware of it or not, most of us have this subconscious belief that someone will save us. This someone might be another person, the government, God, or a flying spaghetti monster.
But the truth is no one will save you. No one can take one single step for you.
Hope is what keeps us going, but hope is a grand delusion. What is hope but the cousin of fear?
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
Don’t expect anyone to swoop in and save you of all your misery and sorrow. It probably won’t happen. But if the flying spaghetti monster comes by and turns your life into eternal bliss, oh boy will I look stupid. I wouldn’t bet on it though.
As painful as this truth might be, the only way to live your authentic life is to reclaim your self-sovereignty. Screw authorities, institutions, and people who tell you how to live. Take responsibility and start thinking for yourself.
Control is an Illusion
The neurotic drive for controlling everything around us is classic human. And the more we think we have control, the more we feel like we need to control. It’s a vicious cycle.
But the belief that we have control is nothing but an unquestioned assumption. What has made us believe that we can have control?
Control would only be possible if there was a controller. Simply try to find the controller that you apparently are. Spoiler alert: There is none.
When you do some serious self-investigation, you’ll see that you can’t put a finger on ‘yourself.’ This is because ‘yourself’ is nothing but an idea. The sense of being an individual self is thoughts in combination with emotions. There is no ‘you’ behind it.
When you truly see this, you’ll surrender the illusion of control. Most of us will have difficulty relinquishing control but only because we think we have control.
This is the point, you never had and will never have control, yet to be in control you have to release control.
You Can’t Escape the Matrix
In spiritual circles, there is the tendency to throw around the matrix analogy and talk about taking the red pill. But the ultimate cosmic joke is that you can’t escape the matrix.
The matrix is all you have. There is nothing outside of dreaming.
This is a hard truth to swallow for someone who’s been convincing himself that he’s on his way out of the matrix.
And even if we take the matrix concept onto a lower level and say it’s about freeing yourself from media, government, and big corporation influence, you still won’t be able to escape.
As long as you’re part of a society, you’re taking part in the matrix. You’re influenced by everything around you. You depend on the resources the matrix provides. Can you really see yourself living alone in the wilderness without human contact? Yeah, me neither.
We all would like to be Neo and escape the evil matrix. But the matrix is neither good nor evil. And Neo actually never left the matrix, he just went to another (less pleasant) level.
Every Day is Anything Can Happen Day
Do you think your death is an occurrence in the future?
Well, it might be but the truth is that every day is anything can happen day. No day is too mundane for catastrophe to strike.
Let this sink in deeply. What does this mean for the way you live your life? People have said this ad nauseam, but what if you were to die tomorrow?
This is not supposed to be an excuse to spend all your savings and treat your body like a waste dump but to account for the fact that you don’t know what can and will happen most of the time.
The mind is awfully limited in its capacity to perceive possibilities.
You might win the lottery tomorrow, then get hit by a bus five minutes later, get patched up in the hospital, just to be hit by another bus as soon as you leave the hospital.
What’s the lesson in this? Good question. The basic answer would be to not take anything for granted. But let’s not pick the basic answer.
The real lesson is to contemplate your death and surrender to the fear that some serious shit might start seriously hitting the fan.
You Are Nothing But Beliefs
Do you think you know who you are?
Think again.
When you think about who you are, what comes up? Your name? Your body? Your mind? Your profession? Some identity you’ve assigned to yourself?
All of these do not hold up to serious scrutiny.
Can you find an ‘I’ in any of these descriptions? You might find an ‘I’ thought and some vague feelings, but what makes you believe that that’s you? Believe is the key word here because your whole self-image is a complex construct of beliefs, nothing more.
Don’t expect anyone to give you the answer though. No one can give you the answer to the question of who you are. If you’re serious about knowing then you’ll seriously start looking. And the only place to look is in your own experience.
Know that you can’t cognitively know who you are because whatever you think you are, is definitely not who you are.
‘Who’ is the altogether wrong pronoun here (not that other pronouns are much better). ‘What’ might be a slightly better choice but still implies an object which you are not.
Pick your favorite self-destructive question like “What am I?” or “What is truth?” or “What the fuck?” and then investigate.
Happiness is a Mirage
This is going to be a real bummer.
Happiness, what we think of as happiness anyway, is a mirage. The sooner you discover this painful truth about life the better.
When we go out and seek happiness all we’re doing is tying ourselves up in a pleasure chase. We think a car, a house, a lover, a career, a billion dollars, or a giraffe will make us happy.
You don’t need me to tell you, that that’s in vain. You’ve tried this your whole life, haven’t you?
You’ve got a great lover and you felt good for some time but after a while, the lover started to be annoying and you asked yourself if this might be not where it’s at. But what most of us do at this point is we think that we’ve got the wrong lover and we go out and look for another one.
Happiness is not found in another lover, or car, or house, or career, or [insert any other thing here].
The issue is that we don’t want happiness. We want this thing that’s very important to us and happiness, otherwise, we refuse to be happy.
Ask yourself this question: Would you choose happiness but never get the thing you so desperately desire?
This doesn’t mean that there is no happiness. It means that true happiness is not what we think it is. Happiness cannot be tied to things or conditions.
Surely, you’ve had glimpses of it. You were sitting in the garden, listening to the birds, nothing special was happening, and everything was perfect in all its messiness. That’s it!
Life is Suffering
This is self-evident but many of us refuse to accept this at face value. Life is suffering.
You don’t have to think long or far to know this. You might be having a first-hand experience of it right now.
But here is the twist. Life is actually not suffering. The suffering is not in life. The suffering is in the belief in a separate individual self.
Where there is an ‘I’ there is suffering.
Sure, pain can’t be avoided but suffering is another thing. Suffering is when you take the pain personally, when you think it applies to someone. Yet most of us have to suffer for quite some time before we even consider that there might be a way to live without all the suffering.
If we disregard physical pain, where does most of our suffering come from? It’s mental/emotional suffering. The mind is unsatisfied with how things are.
The mind says “This thought is wrong and this emotion feels wrong, I need to do something about it.” That’s when suffering begins.
Suffering is not the thoughts and feelings but the belief that something is wrong with these thoughts and feelings.
What if nothing is wrong with anything? What if the person who is suffering is just an unquestioned assumption? What if all suffering is simply an investigation to look closer at what’s really going on? Indeed, what if?
The Truth Hurts
One of the most painful truths about life is that the truth hurts.
If you have read the foregoing truths and have felt all kinds of emotional reactions swelling up, you can be sure there is something that wants to be acknowledged.
No one wants to look at the truth because looking at the truth challenges everything we believe about ourselves, life, and reality.
Everyone wants the nice soothing “truths” like you are love and bliss. Everyone wants the aftermath of seeing the truth–a life without inner conflict. But no one wants to actually see the truth because that would mean burning your neat and tidy beliefs to the ground, which can feel like burning yourself to the ground.
Most of us think spirituality is all about sitting in a lotus posture and calming your mind, which can be part of it. But where the true journey to truth begins is when you start thinking you’re losing your mind. When nothing makes sense, everything seems pointless, and you’re in free fall into the abyss.
That’s what a glimpse of the truth will do for you at some point.
We turn towards spirituality to get rid of our suffering but for the suffering to get less, often, we have to go through a lot more suffering first.
Much of contemporary spirituality focuses only on the light and love and bliss aspect and there will be some of that too, but don’t be fooled into spiritual bypassing.
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Be a fierce warrior and face the painful truths about life so that they transmute into the soothing truths about life. If you doubt that, read the article again but imagine the title to be The Soothing Truths About Life Everyone Needs to Hear and see the truth in it.
“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” – Lao Tzu
Luka
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Thought provoking. Thank you.
You’re most welcome!
Thank you for this <3 🙂
You’re most welcome, Sarah! 🙂
“Suffering is not the thoughts and feelings but the belief that something is wrong with these thoughts and feelings.”
This hit me like a ton of bricks, and is my current sticking point. Awareness has burned through so much garbage in my mind by utilizing the techniques you’ve described in other articles, namely observing, but there are a few that are very, very stubborn. Observing these triggers seems to build them up rather than relive them, still working on the correct “angle”. Thanks for your writings.
Thank you for sharing, Chris. Yes, some things are stubborn indeed. Feel free to send me an email if you want to chat about something specific.