Table of Contents
This world we live in, apart from being fun and entertaining, is insane.
By world, I don’t mean the world of trees and rivers and fluttering sparrows. I mean the human world, society, culture, conditioning, call it how you want.
The suggestions, opinions, and beliefs gush out of the human world unasked and uncontrolled like vomit. They seep into our bones and start replacing our marrow, so that eventually we’re puppeteered like those ants infected by cordyceps aka the zombie-ant fungus.
It turns us into stranded fish or drowning birds wondering why the world is so hostile and unfulfilling.
One of the big results is that most of us are convinced that we need to justify our existence.
You need to work hard, be successful, don’t waste time, think about the future, be ambitious, be productive, always know what to do, have all your shit together preferably yesterday, keep working harder, help others, improve the world, improve yourself, fight causes, keep up with the Joneses, be better, learn more, know more, do more, be more…
Stop.
Just stop.
We have forgotten the essentials. We’ve been thoroughly bone marrow washed by the human world’s vomit.
While we’ve been busy chasing thing after thing, life was frolicking in a flower field not caring one bit about should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.
All this vomit oozing out of us makes us miss life. It has convinced us that attaining [insert whatever you’re chasing] will make us whole, complete, fulfilled, and happy. Wipe the vomit out of your eyes and see that whatever you’re busy chasing is not the solution but the problem — as a rule, we are looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places.
When have you started caring more about an imaginary future that might never come than caring for the only moment that ever matters? Who has convinced you that piling more and more on top of yourself is the way to go? Have you ever chosen any of the convictions and beliefs that make your life miserable?
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I know, I know. We all want that great living quality and people shaking our hands because we’re such successful mega awesome individuals who have made it.
But made what?
Made asses of ourselves, that’s what.
Sacrificing enjoyment and appreciation of life right now for a shiny thing down the road. And when we finally get down the road, down the road is no longer down the road, and then we start seeking the next fata morgana further down the road.
Please don’t think I’m arguing for unrestrained consumption or against good living quality and success. Attain all you want but if you don’t know who’s living your life you’ll always feel like you’re lacking something.
That’s what I mean by forgetting the essentials: we spend too much time living through and for concepts and conditioning, pursuing the idea of a life we haven’t chosen.
Some people live their whole damn lives through concepts and conditioning, never ever taking a break and asking themselves what the heck is going on here?
What am I doing and why? Why do I sacrifice my life for irrelevant stuff? Why can all this irrelevant stuff impede my present moment fulfillment? Is there not more to life than running on a treadmill?
Perhaps deep down we’re afraid of something.
We’re afraid that when we stop and look inside we might realize that we don’t care about any of the stuff (the good and the bad) we’ve been taught to care so much about. We’re afraid of discovering who and what we really are and that we’d have to get off the stage and stop playing this role we’ve comfortably relaxed into over our lifetimes.
But therein lies the only true freedom — the freedom to be, without the perpetual need to be something.
Stepping Off the Treadmill
We reify the stories in our minds and are largely unaware we’re doing it.
Of course the stories in our minds aren’t ours to begin with. They’re the unbroken chain of hand-me-downs. They’re the drops of the human world’s vomit geyser blessing us with the beliefs that cause worry, fear, stress, (self-)hate, guilt, shame, and all other kinds of neurosis and psychological suffering.
If you feel the constant drive — that says something isn’t right — to chase after things in the hopes of fulfillment and happiness, to fix an undefined wrong, then you can stop now.
You can give yourself a break now.
You won’t find fulfillment and happiness by adding on to yourself. You won’t find a sense of freedom and peace by becoming your own worst enemy. You won’t find out who you really are by continuing to use society’s vomit as sustenance.
Can you imagine who and how you would be if you were free from the program running you?
What if you no longer believed that you have to prove your worth? What if you no longer craved approval and appreciation? What if you no longer cared for social tokens? What if you no longer postponed your happiness to the future?
You would step off a treadmill.
The treadmill is where all the carrots dangle. The treadmill is where humans go to become mindless automatons.
Imagine a treadmill going at breakneck speed, without any buttons for control, with a nice and shiny golden carrot teasingly swaying in the front and a pitch-black abyss in the back. Imagine yourself running on this treadmill. Now imagine replicas of this setup on all sides of you. And finally, imagine that we’re all convinced we’re racing each other.
That’s human life, at least what we assume human life to be.
But human life only really begins when you get off the treadmill. Many of us have to fall on our faces many times to realize how ridiculous this setup is. Some of us need to fall less.
But when you finally refuse to keep milling with the other treaders — first and foremost, yourself — something wonderful happens.
Your current moment of being alive becomes the most important one.
Fighting Vomit With a Broom
It’s one thing to practice being present; it’s another thing to realize that this moment is truly all you ever have and all that ever matters.
To make sure the treadmill analogy is not misunderstood, let’s clarify something: This is primarily an inner change — although it’s likely that it will reorient your outer life as well.
If you think it has something to do with being more successful than others you have sidestepped onto another treadmill. Living now also doesn’t mean doubling down on consumerism and instant gratification. That’s avoiding now and it’s classic treadmill behavior.
We’re speaking about considering the possibility that you can live an unconditional life, that your life is no longer victim to unquestioned beliefs and assumptions, that events can no longer emotionally bully you, that you no longer need the things society has convinced you you need for happiness, that you recognize that truly and deeply everything is fundamentally perfect the way it is — including all the horrible and unwanted.
To some, this might seem radical. And in some way, it is.
You’re asked to entertain a different life, a life that is direct, immediate, and not based on fear. A life where you first and foremost care about what is real and true, and anything that’s happening in memory or imagination is not it, especially if it serves no purpose for the present.
It only seems radical because the beliefs that have been running each of our lives since we were children are strengthened with years of emotional energy flowing into them making them seem true and real and important.
The treadmill, like us, runs on vomit. As long as we fuel it (=emotionally empower the same old limiting beliefs), we have a hard time stepping off. It’s just too damn fast to get off safely.
But when we withdraw our emotional energy the treadmill slows down and stepping off becomes a real possibility.
The key point is this: You must take a hard look inside.
Question your most fundamental beliefs and assumptions — specifically the ones that make you who you think you are — and redirect the emotional energy into discovering who and what you are.
Put aside all the beliefs and convictions. Look at the world and yourself with fresh eyes, free from everything you think you know.
What are you without any concepts? Where do you end and the world begin? Try to see as if for the first time. And then see what’s what.
Most of us would be surprised to see how much we can uncover about ourselves and the world by looking and thinking for ourselves.
I wish I could offer more step-by-step instructions but there is no one-size-fits-all instruction for knowing thyself. Besides, step-by-step instructions for life are pure vomit. The truth is you don’t need that. Start looking inside with sincerity and you’ll find your way.
But most importantly don’t make the mistake of justifying or fighting against the vomit and its source. That is just more vomit.
You don’t fight vomit with a broom. You pull the plug and flush it out. And if you can’t find a plug you probably know where the buckets are.
To Summarize
To put a nice bow on this rant, let’s reiterate the main points.
Conditioning is like vomit infecting and controlling us in ways we’re not aware of. It has convinced us that we must prove our worth. It wants us to fulfill all kinds of conditions for fulfillment. Chasing these conditions as a means of fulfillment keeps fulfillment away.
Note: Feel free to swap fulfillment with any word that indicates the ultimate achievement for you.
The vomit treadmill (called that because it runs on the same conditioning we run on) is where the drama unfolds. It’s the collective game we’re all engaged in and where we try to justify our existence. It makes us believe we can win or reach some final goal.
That is its greatest illusion.
To reach lasting fulfillment we need to question the beliefs and convictions that postpone fulfillment to an imaginary future dependent on the right conditions.
We must realize that this moment right now is the only moment that matters. There is nowhere else to be. We must reach the point where fulfillment right now regardless of circumstances is the most important thing in our lives. We must see that what we are is already fulfilled.
We can realize all this through focused thinking, questioning, and looking. And we can live it by being fully conscious, actively enjoying and appreciating this current moment of being alive, and ceasing all resistance.
None of this means that we shouldn’t improve our lives or engage with the world. In fact, the improvement and engagement will be more effective because we no longer do it out of fear, compulsion, vanity, or approval.
Now would be an adequate moment to imagine a world without an endless row of treadmills. But we can safely forget the world for a while and point the finger back at ourselves. No amount of world will change without each of us changing.
When we do look inside, instead of transforming water into wine as a certain holy dude did, we’ll transform vomit into water, and finally discover what being properly hydrated really feels like.
Luka
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“Note: Feel free to swap fulfillment with any word that indicates the ultimate achievement for you.”
Oh. Wait this time it hits differently. Oh boy here I go diving into the uncomfortable place again. Where did I leave my flippers?
Always good to have your flippers handy. ^^
The unexamined life is truly not worth living.
Cheers to that. Reminds me, in David Foster Wallace’s book Infinite Jest there is bar called The Unexamined Life, which, I think, is pretty funny and ingenious.