Who Am I?

While religion has attempted to define that for me and failed, to find yourself isn’t listening to how you have been labeled or perusing through self help books, but looking within and answering the question all by yourself.

The duplicity of humanness is evident even in the structure of everyday language. Who am I? Want to find your real self? Automatically, these imply there is intrinsically more to you (two of you) and that there are many I’s within you, and there is self—The real Self, and finding that one demands you understand that the I you have been trained to be, isn’t the real you, or the entire you at all.

Unconsciously or consciously, we all mostly identify with two selves. The life you live in the matrix, and the real you that tires of wearing the mask. The imperfections you displease in the mirror and the ideal self you, that you can never quite master.

The you that complains about the way the world is but cannot change your own consciousness, habits, or secrets, has no room to judge anyone else who can’t change either, where real change is mostly accomplished by pretending and frequent relapse.

Many of us are quite aware (and tired) of the hard work and imposture of acting out our performative and cultural selves. Humans often seek refuge in nature, in the home, the bedroom, the bathroom; places where the conscious performance of their everyday interaction rituals can be put on hold.

Those that no longer identify as I, are those that have dropped the rigor of charade and discovered self. Ethically, then, it may be important to recognize that for the most part, we are all real impostors—each playing their preferred game; that little niche of life that dispenses the most hormones to their particular personality. The rigorous scholar, the realist, the spiritualist, the concerned politico, the worrier, the philosopher, the court jester, the asshole—each in his own right the perfect display of a self governing organism, when they can get away with it.

If one is to blame all are to blame. Like republicans blaming antifa for leading the White House riot, yet republicans followed them in—when they thought they were republicans…

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Aluna—The Conscious Earth…And Us

The Kogi of Columbia eluded the spaniard invasion, hid in the mountains and for over 500 years have been caretakers of the earth. They understand the Earth to be a living being and see humanity as its “children.” They say that our actions of exploitation, devastation, and plundering resources is weakening “The Great Mother” and leading to our destruction.

The film, Aluna, takes us into the world of the Kogi. At the heart of the tribe’s belief system is “Aluna”—a kind of cosmic consciousness that is the source of all life and intelligence and the mind inside nature too. “Aluna is something that is thinking and has self-knowledge. It’s self-aware and alive. All indigenous people believe this, historically. It’s absolutely universal.”(1)

Coincidence? Consciousness and our self awareness is in the mind of all nature. Self awareness, according to the Kogi is inherited from the self awareness of the earth. The deep, human neural processing ability seems to be the one, over-evolved specimen willing to kill the very thing that insures its ability to thrive, all along with the awareness that we are doing it.

The modern disconnect with nature is problematic. Can we at least try to feel what the Kogi see as plain as the nose on our faces? With all the attempted research on consciousness, maybe we should be looking backward instead of forward.

Self Awareness

You may not be what you think you are. You may not be as clever or adept as you think you are either. According to this study done at Cornell, people with the worst skills in the different areas of the study thought they performed the best, while those with the highest skill levels were also more accurate at estimating their ability. The mere fact that you are seeking and evaluating yourself as an individual, is a good sign that you may be a little more savvy than the average joe.

As an atheist, as well as most atheists I am aware of, we have gone through critical phases of self evaluation. We all wondered if we were crazy for doubting, crazy for believing, and sought answers to difficult dilemmas in contradictions of the gospel, then sought information outside of our indoctrinated upbringing.

Breaking away from the numbing effects of acquiescence when so many are rolling along in a near stupor of acceptance of a thousand things that add up to zero. Zero evidence that god is good, god is love, god is merciful, or god is in control. When compared to what is seen in the real world the opposite is true, “if” there was a god. Microanalysis of prayer to seek a smidgen of answers adds up to pure rationalization for its ineffectiveness, then we accept a non answer as gods will. What is gods will? Well, nobody really knows, but a lifetime of indoctrination leads us down the path of excuses.

The study concludes that all hope is not lost if you are one of the trouble spots. With education the numbers changed to a noticeable improvement, but how do you get someone stuck in the trap to look outside of what they already know, which apparently isn’t much when it comes to knowledge outside what they want to believe.

“It didn’t even help the poor performers to be given a benchmark. In a later study, the most incompetent participants still failed to realise they were bottom of the pack even when given feedback on the performance of others”.

Most of us have lived the religion side and learned enough to walk away. Maybe it’s time they walked in our shoes to determine if our views have merits, instead of hand waving and discrediting the reality that there is no god.