A person of the first kind establishes what he wants and pursues it. To attain the goal he will sacrifice his lifestyle, health, relationships, time for fun. He will literally do whatever it takes.

The second person wants to live simply and easily and knows that money won’t actually accomplish that. So he gets a cheap piece of land and lives there in a hut or buys a bar on the beach on the Caribbean or simply becomes homeless or a wanderer. Again, sacrifices are made.

The third person is the plague of our modern world. This person wants to eat the cake and have the cake at the same time. He wants to attain goals, preferably financial with 7 digits but at the same time wants to live simply, peacefully, and easily. So he starts new projects all the time,  that will bring him to this goal. He constantly is thinking and talking about how he will do it. It looks as if he is actually doing something and pursuing what he dreamt of. But as soon as problems arrive a conflict appears. Because achieving the goal does not fit with living easily. Moving through obstacles is hard! So he stops his pursuit and moves onto another project. Thinking, this time it will be easier. But it never will be. And so he starts to work on his goal on and on. Beginning and ending, the cycle perpetuates through the years until death comes. And it comes easily and effortlessly and this is when he finally can rest in peace.

“I do not call art all that you call art, which is simply mechanical reproduction,
imitation of nature or other people, or simply fantasy, or an attempt to be original.
Real art is something quite different. Among works of art, especially works of ancient
art, you meet with many things you cannot explain and which contain a certain
something you do not feel in modern works of art. But as you do not realize what this
difference is you very soon forget it and continue to take everything as one kind of
art. And yet there is an enormous difference between your art and the art of which I
speak. In your art everything is subjective—the artist’s perception of this or that
sensation; the forms in which he tries to express his sensations and the perception of
these forms by other people. In one and the same phenomenon one artist may feel one
thing and another artist quite a different thing. One and the same sunset may evoke a
feeling of joy in one artist and sadness in another. Two artists may strive to express
exactly the same perceptions by entirely different methods, in different forms; or
entirely different perceptions in the same forms—according to how they were taught,
or contrary to it. And the spectators, listeners, or readers will perceive, not what the
artist wished to convey or what he felt, but what the forms in which he expresses his
sensations will make them feel by association. Everything is subjective and
everything is accidental, that is to say, based on accidental associations—the impression
of the artist and his ‘creation'” (he emphasized the word “creation”), “the
perceptions of the spectators, listeners, or readers.
“In real art there is nothing accidental. It is mathematics. Everything in it can be
calculated, everything can be known beforehand. The artist knows and understands
what he wants to convey and his work cannot produce one impression on one man
and another impression on another, presuming, of course, people on one level. It will always, and with mathematical
certainty, produce one and the same impression.
“At the same time the same work of art will produce different impressions on
people of different levels. And people of lower levels will never receive from it what
people of higher levels receive. This is real, objective art. Imagine some scientific
work—a book on astronomy or chemistry. It is impossible that one person should
understand it in one way and another in another way. Everyone who is sufficiently
prepared and who is able to read this book will understand what the author means, and
precisely as the author means it. An objective work of art is just such a book, except
that it affects the emotional and not only the intellectual side of man.”
“Do such works of objective art exist at the present day?” I asked. “Of course they
exist,” answered G. “The great Sphinx in Egypt is such a work of art, as well as some
historically known works of architecture, certain statues of gods, and many other
things. There are figures of gods and of various mythological beings that can be read
like books, only not with the mind but with the emotions, provided they are
sufficiently developed. In the course of our travels in Central Asia we found, in the
desert at the foot of the Hindu Kush, a strange figure which we thought at first was
some ancient god or devil. At first it produced upon us simply the impression of being
a curiosity. But after a while we began to feel that this figure contained many things, a
big, complete, and complex system of cosmology. And slowly, step by step, we began
to decipher this system. It was in the body of the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its
head, in its eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there was nothing
accidental, nothing without meaning. And gradually we understood the aim of the
people who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts, their feelings. Some of
us thought that we saw their faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the
meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across thousands of years, and not only
the meaning, but all the feelings and the emotions connected with it as well. That
indeed was art!”

G.I. Gurdjieff

Wait for the Sphinx of Games!

‘[..]man’s chief delusion is his
conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and
the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does
anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood.

Everything happens

 All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from
him —

all this happens.

And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result
of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the
surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the
wind.
“Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions,
opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of
himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says,
does, thinks, feels—all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything.
It all happens.
“To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it, to be convinced of its truth,
means getting rid of a thousand illusions about man, about his being creative and
consciously organizing his own life, and so on. There is nothing of this kind.
Everything happens—popular movements, wars, revolutions, changes of government,
all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as everything happens in the
life of individual man. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he
wants to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire—all
this happens.
“But no one will ever believe you if you tell him he can do nothing. This is the most
offensive and the most unpleasant thing you can tell people. It is particularly
unpleasant and offensive because it is the truth, and nobody wants to know the truth.
“When you understand this it will be easier for us to talk. But it is one thing to
understand with the mind and another thing to feel it with one’s “whole mass,’ to be
really convinced that it is so and never forget it.
“With this question of doing” (G. emphasized the word), “yet another thing is
connected. It always seems to people that others invariably do things wrongly, not in
the way they should be done. Everybody always thinks he could do it better. They do
not understand, and do not want to understand, that what is being done, and
particularly what

has already been done

in one way, cannot be, and could not have
been, done in another way.‘

from: Ouspensky’s “In search of the miraculous”

It is just a state of mind

I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity and its relation to mind states. There is a certain mind state that could be best described as ‘flow’. It is a state in which everything you do is done effortlessly. There is no struggle, everything is quick, efficient, you move from one task to another, in a matter of hours (which seam like minutes) you get everything and even more done. Also what you get done is the result of your stretched capabilities, meaning all your talents act in synergy with each other. This state of mind is the core of many Eastern teaching such as Zen, Tao, martial arts. All of these teach you not how to get to that state, but rather what not to do, so that this state naturally emerges. Because as I’ve come to believe it is the natural state of being of a human (although it is so rare). This mind state is often described as “no-thought” or “no-mind” and it is the best way I can describe it also.

The second state of mind or rather set of many states is entirely different. They could be called “thought states” because thinking is present. And by thinking I mean analyzing, rationalizing, being stuck in the head, being self-conscious. This is the main characteristic of the second state, you are conscious of your “self”. There isn’t just doing. It is “you” thinking, “you” writing, “you” playing, “you” singing, “you” programming. You are not enjoying yourself fully and you are not fully present and merged into the task. And you can feel that something is wrong, because any kind of work where you have to administer your thought processes or what you’re doing is exactly the opposite of flow, and that is unpleasant. Work seems like struggle, you can’t meet deadlines, conversations are dull, dancing seems weird, you procrastinate (reading blogs;), what you finally get done is mediocre at best.

Yesterday I wanted to write something on the blog but instead of writing I was thinking what to write about or why I should write. And when I ask myself the question why write there is a lot of answers, but none seem great, so great that I’ll feel an urge to write. I start thinking about the counterparts of motivations. And I can think of even more reasons for not to write. This is a whole list of things ranging from logistic problems to insecurities of mine.

When you get stuck in thinking like that sometimes something magical happens and you get out of your head and you are able to look at yourself, at your thoughts from another perspective. You think, all that is bullshit, why not JUST do it?

“just do it”

What does it really mean. How do you JUST DO IT?

In the simplest form: instead of thinking about what you’re going to do, you JUST do it. More specifically you get out of your head and into your body. So that there are no thoughts except you controlling the body and performing the task. You are JUST doing, nothing else is there.

This sounds simple but isn’t. If it was simple nobody would ever procrastinate. The thing is you have to decide to do this. And to decide really to do this, you must first disassociate from the bullshit that is going on in your head. No matter how much thinking you’ve done, you have to say to yourself “it doesn’t matter, I’ll do it anyway”.

The easiest way to do this is to understand that your thought processes aren’t real. If you’re thinking about doing some work on a game for example, you might start thinking that: “today I am tired” or “nobody will like it” or “its pointless” etc. You have to be willing to say fuck off to those thoughts, don’t take them as granted. To do that you must believe on a deep level, mostly on your heart level, that what you’re doing is worth it and you will do it no matter what. Nothing matters really, you will just do it.

It’s in your head

The problem with thinking is that it is based on a world in your head. Thinking is done by the brain and the data the brain is operating on comes only from the 5 senses of body (hearing, seeing, taste, touch, smell). From that data the brain creates a model of reality. And this is crucial to understand. It is JUST A MODEL. The world you are experiencing right now is not exactly the real world. It is a model, at best an approximation of reality. All thinking is based on a model of reality and if the model is wrong, the thinking is wrong. So if the thinking is wrong, why does it make so much sense a lot of the time? Why does it seem real, logical, convincing? Why does it make sense to conserve energy and surf the web instead of working and creating your dreams?

Because your WHOLE model of the world is ultimately and fatally incorrect. If you believe in the things you believe right now and if you follow them blindly you will be mislead your entire life and live a life of unaccomplished dreams. You will be thinking “it just can’t be done”. And you will have so many reasons to back that theory up. The theory might make sense, but unfortunately it is based on a misconception. The misconception that what you are experiencing right now is reality and whatever makes sense in it, makes sense in the real world.

Thoughts are not real

It makes sense only in your head because YOU ARE LIVING IN AN APPROXIMATION. You exist in a world that is entirely in the head of a human being. A result of neurological computations of the brain. And those are mainly wrong, because it is just a machine. It is built for basic survival and living in a mammalian pack. It was not built for making games, creating music, creating monumental work. The brain must use a trick to get that done.

Become conscious

There is a way to bypass this bug in the human specie. The brain can realize that it is a brain and that it is creating models. There is something out there that is ungraspable. You must trust certain things.

 Illumination

The brain becomes conscious of itself.

This is when the magic happens and you stop believing in any kind of bullshit like government propaganda, media, religion, family, other people and most of all your own self thoughts (because they were created exactly by those listed). This is where you see that “just doing it” is the only way to go. This is where you start seeing that you have to base your decisions on something else than thinking. This is where you discover that you have a heart.

So just doing it means ceasing the thoughts about whether to do it or how to do it or any other kind of analysis and doing it just by the basis of what you feel is right or wrong in your heart. Of course this takes courage. But that is exactly what courage is, not believing in anything, just trusting.

This post is probably about the source of art and to talk about art I must talk about our minds internal representations. It is a speculation on my path of searching for the true meaning of art and how to create it.

There are certain questions you encounter on this path. For example what comes first: emotion or thought?

Let’s define thoughts as everything that is happening in your awareness such as your inner voice, abstracting, analyzing, rationalizing, imagining, visualizing, hearing, seeing stuff inside your mind.

Emotion is whatever you feel in your body or in general, like the state of mind you are in.

Now do thoughts change emotional states?

Or do emotions change thoughts?

For example I can be sitting in my room thinking happy thoughts about bunny rabbits and how cute they are. Now this will make me joyful. But is it like that? Can’t it be the other way around?

What if I was already feeling joyful and that produced the thoughts of hopping bunny rabbits.

It is important to know what comes first because then you’ll know where does brilliancy come from. Does it come because you think about it and then produce it, or does it come from some place else, rather undefinable. A place which can’t be described much in words, cause you can never catch it like that. A place which is always there with you, every second of your existence. You know about it and you feel its power. Like a tingling sensation inside of you, of existence itself.

For your reading pleasure…

There are things that you notice only after you slow down your thought processes considerably. Let’s say that whatever is happening in your mind is like trains running on tracks. They are fast, they switch tracks, there are many of them and you hop from one train to another. This is happening all the time. By slowing down your thought processes I mean either slowing down the train you are currently on and noticing where you are heading, where did you come from and noticing your surroundings or getting off the train entirely and just looking from a static perspective. This is not easy. It took me a couple months to get good at it. I wanted to do it because there is a lot of bullshit going on in your head if you don’t notice it. Like I could be walking down the street and thinking what is a random person in front of me thinking about me. Now why the fuck would I think about that? Why would you ever even consider what a stranger that you will never meet again in your entire life think about you. Why do you even assume that this person is thinking about you, or even better why do you assume he is thinking at all! Absolutely no reason. But stuff like that happens in your head. And if you don’t learn to notice it and discard from your thought processes you’ll have a lot of mental noise that prevents you from thinking about more important things (like bunny rabbits).

The positive side effect of slowing down thought processes is that you start seeing where do thoughts come from and you get an answer to the question “what comes first: emotion or thought?”. It is rather obvious for me now that thoughts come from emotions. But it is a lot deeper than that, because emotions also come from some place. They are a lot closer to this place but there is an important distinction. Let’s call this place an “inkling”.

It is different than emotions cause you can localize anger being in your chest for example. An inkling is different because it is non-local, just a sense of something. You just know that there it is. Like knowing that you’ll be eating breakfast tomorrow or just sensing that you’re sitting on a chair. It is very very simple, but because it happens fast we don’t notice it. It’s a matter of miliseconds and it is transformed into emotions and into thoughts. So quickly instead of just experiencing yourself sitting on a chair, you might start feeling discomfort and out of that you start thinking “Why am I sitting here?”, which is mental noise, because you don’t have to have a reason to sit, you can just sit.

Anyway, this inkling, is in fact your driving force or the driving force of life itself. And believe me or not everything that you ever experience comes from it.

An elaboration on that statement would be too much for me to write. Let’s say it is something you must see to believe. As R.A. Wilson once said when you notice this it is like spotting your father in a large crowd of people. You just know that it is him, and you just know he is your creator.

How do you notice this? Let’s say you are playing Soldat and you decide to slow down your thought processes (this will in fact make you a better player). You see an enemy you aim and click the fire button. Now what is happening on the subjective level in your mind. You want to kill, you notice a gostek, you decide to move the mouse over him, when it is on the dude you press fire. OK easy but let’s go deeper. Why did you notice the gostek in the first place, not how your eyes work, but why did he enter your awareness, like why him and not the tree scenery that was next to him? What happened first was your wanting to kill. The search for prey. Now what is that want? It is exactly the inkling that is driving you. It doesn’t just drive your hand to move the mouse, but it drives your entire field of awareness. so there are things that you see and things that you don’t see. There are things that you do and things that you don’t do, things that you think and things that you don’t think because of it. Maybe this is simple but can be a shock once you realize how this works. I think the best way to show it is to watch this video:

http://www.gigglesugar.com/349186

You didn’t notice it because there was no inkling. Literally everything that enters your awareness from your 5 senses and everything you think about comes from it. It is the source of your experience. So obviously it is also the source of experiencing true art (or knowing that this is it). Emotions come from it also. We all work like this, either because our brains work like this or for some metaphysical reason. I don’t really care, I just know that this source is the same for all human beings.

In a nutshell, what I want to say is that all human experience is the same. If you want proof just think about it why does this video have 240 000 views:

No not because people are fucking stupid. It’s because people have generally the same response to everything. Of course you may not like it, but that is a matter of taste and that comes later, it is a thought. What was first was an intuitive feeling about the movie, an inkling. And that is the same for all of us, call it an instinct if you want. We all recognize cuteness. It is the same experience for all of us. We are one because of it.

So coming back to art. You might listen to the Moonlight sonata by Beethoven and you might like it or not. You may think you don’t like piano music, you might think this is great because it is classical music and it is a classic or quite the contrary you might feel that you hate classical music. What I want to say is that it doesn’t matter what you think. If you trace what is happening in your awareness from your thought, to emotion, to an inkling you’ll encounter what is true. And there is a certain feeling, a sense that there is something brilliant going on here. The problem is that on this level it is hard to grasp what makes it true art, but you know it is. Just like the ravioli I ate today.

That is do not think about the word ‘pencil’.

Do not think about any symbol associated with a pencil.

Do not think about the pencils structure,
dimensions,
texture,
size,
weight,
color,
material,
sharpness.

Don’t think about what constitutes a pencil.

Don’t think about the stick of graphite.
Don’t think about the wood or the metal.

Don’t think about the eraser.

Furthermore, don’t think about what constitutes the material.
Don’t think about the atoms building the wood.

Try zooming in as close as you possibly can into the pencil and its atoms. Where’s the end of it? Where do the objects forming the object end?

Don’t think about the elemental particles, electrons and protons forming the atoms.
Don’t think about what builds up these elemental particles. Don’t think about the quarks.

Can an object like a pencil, exist without other objects that create him?

The more scientific progress we make the better lenses we make for microscopes. We hope to find an elemental building block of the universe. For a long time it was believed to be the atom.
It’s not, we can zoom into the atom and find even smaller stuff. The more powerful the measuring device, the more stuff we discover. There’s stuff all the way down and I believe it will never end.

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

It’s turtles all the way down.

If all you can think about is turtles all the way down, you’re objectifying.
If you cannot think about a pencil without thinking about its attributes you’re objectifying.

If you’re objectifying you’re disconnecting yourself from a deeper understanding of reality. Objectifying is one of the modes of thinking the brain can operate on. It is a good tool if you’re trying to read the manual to your DVD or build IKEA furniture, but other than that it creates misery, not only for you individually but for humanity in itself. People fight each other, because of the concept that we are different. That we are objects separate from one another.

The human mind works on symbols and abstractions. It cannot go beyond that. Would you ever know what a pencil was if you have not created appropriate symbols for it, like the word ‘pencil’ or a mental image of a pointy stick with graphite? This is why we can only see turtles all the way down. It’s just wood, erasers, colors, atoms. The more we look the more we see. Because all we want to see are objects.

Objects are just symbols that hide the truth.

Words are one of the most powerful symbols of all. We take words for granted and use them as if they were real things. Symbols are mistaken for reality.

A pencil is not THE pencil.

It’s hard to imagine that the pencil is actually not the pencil. It’s a fucked up linguistic trick that our brains play with us all the time. 
There is a philosophical game you can play with yourself. Grab a pencil, look at it and start repeating to yourself loudly “pencil, pencil, pencil, pencil, pencil…”. Do this until the word pencil loses its meaning and becomes just a grunt coming out of your mouth. This excercize is magical and I recommend it. 

Words have associations with everything we can think of. We use them for thinking. There is no escaping this. The question is what is the problem with this, why would you need to understand this?

Most people never question the symbols that are used in everyday life. Do you ever question the words you use and do they always mean what you want to say?
I never say what I truly want to communicate because most of the time I am lost for words. And even if I have the words, communication is a two way process and there is always something lost or distorted. This is why I know that whatever I write here isn’t ever going to be fully understood if you’re not in the same state of mind as I am (Chakra: I don’t smoke anything). But you will always understand something and take something from it, maybe use it. Maybe question my ideas, I have no problem with that, at least you’re trying to think. Just always think that you might be wrong too.

Are the symbols you use serve you? Or do they serve a social role?

Like think about the word ‘Muslim’.

What connotations does that have? Probably depending on the culture you live in it will have different meanings. Symbols are not universal. Muslim has a negative, positive or neutral meaning, depending on your background and context in which it is used. Let’s say you have a negative connotation with that word. Now, why would you think like that, is there a real threat here? Or did somebody impose a meaning to that word, for their own selfish reason, which you have taken without questioning?

Think of the word ‘bad’.

What if you say to yourself you’re bad – not good enough, not worthy. Now why would you use this symbol? What purpose does it serve you? Is it possible that thinking negatively about yourself serves a social function, like the pecking order of chicken?

So getting back to our pencil.

A lot of discussions here on this blog are about the existence of reality and what it is. There might be a confusion that says I do not believe in reality, sorry but far from it. I believe in the existence of an ultimate reality. It’s just that what we have in front of our eyes and especially in our minds is NOT IT. The world we confuse for reality, is the world of abstract symbols we create, obtain and manipulate for the purpose of living in an ultimate reality. So the pencil exists but does not exist. What we think of the pencil is not the pencil itself. So where does the pencil exist, in our minds, in reality, or both?
I don’t know, but if I stick it in your ass you’ll feel it.

Maybe I like this idea because I make games for a living, but maybe not.
Maybe this is what the whole universe is about?

The universe exists entirely out of itself. There is no cause of it happening. It just is. It exists to exist.
The world is playful in its essence, because it is like a play, no concrete reason for it. This is the Zen standpoint on the meaning of our universe. We people, spawn out of the universe, we are part of it. So our purpose is the purpose of the universe.

There was a Dutch theorist Johan Huizinga who wrote a book called Homo Ludens, which means “Man the Player”.

It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society. Huizinga makes it clear in the foreword of his book that he means the play element OF culture, and not the play element IN culture. Much can be said about play ‘in’ culture, like it’s a method of socializing, learning and bullshit like that. But wonder about the playfulness OF culture! Why does it exist? Why do people exist at all!?

The universe is playing a game. Culture exists to add more to this game. It is just more fun for it to be. In the same way we exist, because it is more fun for us to exist. It is wrong to think that this is a game being played with us or against us. For example the struggle for survival in nature. There are no winners and losers here. As I wrote, it is just there to be playful. There is no prize. Each moment of the play is there just to be there, and to be experienced.

People like to think of themselves as being separate from nature. That the world existed here by itself for thousands of years and suddenly here we come! Watch out world! Now we’re gonna do some serious damage haha!

This is just human selfishness and ego. We are nothing different than nature. There is no difference between a human and an apple.

Alan Watts liked to say “We call it an apple tree because the tree apples. And the earth peoples.”
Just as an apple tree grows apples, the Earth grows people. Human beings are a function of the current state of the universe. People are not separate from the world, they are an outgrowth of it. There is no division. We can say as Michael Jackson used to say WE ARE THE WORLD.

We are the world looking at itself. That’s why you come into existence. You are here to experience and just experiencing is in its essence playful. Because there is no real reason for it, it’s just for the fun of it.

Some of the definitions of “play”:

– To deal or behave carelessly or indifferently
– Activity engaged in for enjoyment or recreation
– A move or an action in a game
– Freedom or occasion for action
– Movement or space for movement
– To perform
– To pretend
– To flirt

The existence of the universe is an opportunity for movement and for freedom, and that makes it fun. Why are you consciously experiencing the world? It is just an opportunity for the universe to experience itself. You are the eye of the universe, looking at itself, from a point of view of a human on a little blue planet. That makes it even more interesting and fun.

Homo Ludens is a terrific idea. Everything we as people do is playful. Even seriousness is just there for fun. Also pain and other horrible things. It is like in the story of Adam and Eve. We gained knowledge of what is good and evil, so we became godlike, because from that point we had free will, we could choose on which side to be. Isn’t that fun!? I always cheer for the villains in movies. I always hope that Darth Vader wins or that the replicants won’t die in Blade Runner. It’s like this with pain, it’s there so we can have a choice. So we have more knowledge of the possibilities. That makes it more interesting.

There isn’t a real meaning to it all. There is no real meaning assigned to pain.

Christians like to say that it is noble, that pain is a spiritual path. Bollocks. I don’t even feel like explaining how stupid this is.
Scientists like to say that pain is a defense mechanism, so that when you touch a hot oven it hurts and you remember it. Fine, but what reason is there for you to EXPERIENCE IT!? Can you imagine a robot being built with heat sensors touching an oven? Now it will produce electrical signals which will make its robot arm move away, this might be interpreted as pain. Fine. But is there any concrete reason for a conscious experiencer of this pain?

Absolutely no reason for it. So also there is absolutely no reason for your existence.

Sad? Not if you look at it like this. You are just there to be. You are a person sitting in a cinema watching the movie. It’s a roller-coaster ride, built for self-amusement…
I have to quote Bill Hicks at this point:

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think its real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and its very brightly coloured , and its very loud and its fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question – is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say, ‘Hey! Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…

…and we kill those people.“

So… HAVE FUN!

There is this old song that has been completely forgotten, probably because it is too cheesy for today’s standards (no, it’s not a Manowar song). The lyrics of this song go something like this:

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time
It’s easy.

Now what did the author have in mind? Or better to say, what state of mind was he in to write such a thing? Everything is easy? Yes it is.

I had this theory for a long time now with me but lately it had clarified in a way that I connected all other theories of mine in an elegant manner. This is why I call it the theory of everything. I had a conversation recently with a friend. We were talking about finding solutions to life dilemmas. He told me his answer to this problem and it astonished me because it was precisely the thing I had in my mind for some time now. Separately we came to the same conclusions.

I’m happy that this theory is rational, so you can think about it in logical terms and it makes sense, if you like that. This is how it goes:

What do we see in the universe? Everywhere we look at there are certain structures and patterns. These structures are formed by a set of laws or maybe just one law.

We see atoms joining together. We see many atoms joining to form matter. We see matter joining together forming planets and stars. On these planets we see many chemical processes. One of these processes on the planet earth is called life. There are certain chemical structures like amino acids which have a property that makes them join with other amino acids forming proteins. Forming DNA, forming all the life forms we see around, including you. The universe seems very complicated but if you look closely everything is in fact doing the same.

Let’s examine a theory like the Big Bang. Once upon a time there was a gigantic explosion. All sorts of particles came to existence and started flying everywhere randomly. Now out of this chaos certain elements formed like hydrogen. These elements then formed more complex matter. They formed planets, stars, eventually life etc. etc. It is a process going on, since the beginning of time and it is going on at this very moment everywhere.

Now a lot of people will try to explain this by randomness (everything like the forming of planets or evolution of life is random). I don’t believe in randomness. It is just a way to be ignorant. If you don’t know much about something you call it random. There is a certain theory called Chaos Theory, which is called by some smart people just Unpredicted Order.

Imagine you are shooting at a target, a bullseye on a wall. You shoot randomly at the target. If you shoot at it 10-50 times or so, it will seem like a random set of dots formed around the target. But if you shoot 100000 shots suddenly a pattern will emerge. There will be a giant black hole where the target was (I assume you’re not a good shooter). So what seemed random was just an unpredicted order around the bullseye.

It is like this with everything in the universe. The more closely we look, the more we see the same patterns. The same laws governing everything. Notice that everything in the universe is:

1. Coming together

2. Evolving towards more and more organized structures (elemental particles, matter, fauna, flora, humans…)

I think it is obvious that something is going on here. There is like a universal Law that tells everything in the universe to become part of something else and to evolve in that way. Everything wants to join with something else and become something more. So the question is, what is the unpredicted order of the universe, life and everything? In other words – where are we heading towards?

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.

I don’t know. But I do know what I personally want from life. I might be a really weird person, because I like to feel good. Most people on this planet actively seek out ways to make themselves unhappy, stressed, worried and feel bad about everything. I want to feel good. Why not. So how do you do this?

It’s easy.

You just have to understand this theory of everything. Let’s get back to what is happening here, right now, in this universe, life…. it is a PROCESS.

Now you have a choice. You can either join this process, you can ignore it, or go against it. From my experience this choice will determine the level of your well-being. What I found out is that when you realize what is your role in this process and you go with that, you join it and you follow it, your life will become astonishingly simple, you will stop asking stupid questions (like for the meaning of it all) and just enjoy the ride.

I sort of knew this for a long time, but the hard part for me was knowing what part of this process should I become? I know many people have problems with this too. If you don’t know this you’ll have unanswered questions like: what do you want to do in life? What is YOUR purpose of living? And so on.

So how do you establish your role?

As always the answer is written everywhere for all to see, but nobody looks. I won’t write what it is, cause if I write it, you’ll just say “oh yeah that sure, obvious pff…”, you’ll click the X button on the top right and forget about the whole thing. But it is so fucken IMPORTANT!!!

Let me guide you and you’ll answer yourself (and please don’t think about this in the way everybody is conditioned to think about it, it does not have anything to do with what society and TV tells you what it is, just connect it with an understanding of evolution in our cosmos and you’ll see what it really is and that it is and always was a part of you).

What is the one human emotion or feeling that does the exact same thing as the whole universe does?
What is the universe doing and what you can feel in yourself, that will make you do the same things – come together and evolve?

It’s easy…

Everyone is awesome!

In my previous post On arrogance (this is the second part) I wrote about how every human being places himself in a social hierarchy (or pecking order). Which results in him feeling better or worse than other people.

I am not arrogant because of the simple reason that I do not feel better than anyone. I just feel great about myself, without the need to compare that to anything. Why do I feel great about myself?

Why would you need a REASON to feel good or bad about yourself? If you’re thinking like this, it is exactly the pecking order in work. If you’re seeking reasons for validating yourself, you’re actually comparing yourself to some person or an ideal and feeling accordingly. You’re placing yourself on a social hierarchy (that you have made up by yourself, as I explained).

I am standing apart from that. There is no need to justify my well-being and thinking of myself as awesome. I just am. And so are you. If you realize it or not.

This probably comes from an understanding that everyone is the same thing actually. All people are equal.

The only thing that we are different at are our looks, size, biology, behaviours, culture, thoughts, words we speak, actions, jobs, titles, achievements, knowledge and so on… seems like everything?
Well no, I listed only the things which can be perceived externally. If we study a human being scientifically and objectively we will find all these things. When we objectify people we find only differences. If we compare people’s waist lines, people’s IQ’s, people’s opinions and tastes about music each person will have a different measurement. If we study humans all we see are differences.

But I see just one and the same thing. Do you have an intuition of what it is?

• It is the simplest thing in the world.
• A child understands this.
• It’s actually the first thing that happens to you when you are born.

Before you had any knowledge about the world. Before you could actually hear sounds, see something else than light and darkness, before you were taught anything, before you learned to interact with this world all you ever had was… experience.

I’m talking about your subjective experience. Consciousness.

You just arrived on this earth and started experiencing. You were JUST conscious. You were just experiencing the “I am” of your being. You were completely melted and embracing this peculiar experience. Because it is strange.

Probably the minute I was born, I thought to myself – what the fuck? Why am I experiencing reality, what is this? And I started crying.

Now what I am going to write about here is my current speculation about the subject. I don’t really care how correct it is, but I do know it works empirically, it makes me feel good about the world, humans and myself. So enjoy.

Of course we percieve the strawberry differently, nevertheless the fact that we are experiencing the strawberry remains the same.

I believe all humans, animals and vegetation are conscious, in the exact same way you are. It is just a tool for something to look at itself.

I don’t think it is anything magical or fancy. I think of it as a physical property like gravity or a magnetic field. It is sort of a field. An ouroboros of the universe which has an ability to look at itself. It is used by living organisms when there is a demand for it. Mostly living organisms use it for survival, because they need to create models of reality and they need to experience that model. Why is there a need to experience the model? I’m not sure, but I suspect it would not work without it.

Of course this is extremely counter-intuitive. It is hard to imagine a worm being conscious. Even harder to imagine a tree being conscious. But every living organism in fact does the same thing. A worm must create a model of its earth reality in order to dig holes and find food. A tree must create a model of reality in order to seek sunlight and fresh soil. We humans also create models of reality in order to find funny videos on Youtube.

Human consciousness arises through the 5 senses (seeing, hearing, smell, touch, taste). If something enters through the eyes or ears we become conscious of it. Of course in a worm it is much simpler, or different, cause it just has a sense of touch. A tree also has a different sense, I can only speculate what it means to be a tree. But just because we can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean it is not true. The senses are different but the arising of consciousness is the same.

Let’s focus just on people. We all have brains don’t we? These brains have the same function – they create models of reality in order to help the body live in the world right? All brains are made out of the same thing – neurons, synapses and other grey and white shit. So if this is the same in all humans why would they be any different than you? Or why would their present functioning be any different?

Of course they are different, but not in the sense I am talking about. All people have different thoughts, ideas, emotions, they see, hear and believe a million things. All of these things that happen in the mind are different. But the thing that always stays there is THE FACT THAT THERE IS AN EXPERIENCE OF THEM. Or in other words there exists an experiencer or observer of all these things.

Your conscious experience now is functioning in the exact same way as everyone elses. Consciousness is in you and me, your friend and your neighbour that you don’t like! We are all here to experience reality as human beings. Have as much fun as we can, live as fully as possible. We are all awesome, just because of the fact we exist. You are great and you don’t have to justify it. Never explain yourself or feel sorry for anything. No reason.

Look for an answer of your own and test it. My theory makes me feel at peace. I wouldn’t really consider it if it didn’t give me results. Talking to people from this point of view is… effortless. Even if it is somebody I never met before, I already know him/her, we are the same, it’s like talking to yourself. Also I developed a lot of compassion for humanity nowadays and there are lots of other side effects coming from this thinking, like feeling OK with everything, but maybe that’s just me…

Of course I have not wrote everything I wanted to say. What started as a post on arrogance will eventually lead to a third part. In that post I’ll leave the best part, actually my theory of everything haha. So until next time…

Appendix. I probably overcomplicate stuff, so here is a video of Tim Galwey, he is talking about the exact same thing – At the Feet of the Wiseman.

The only way to get rid of it is to realize that it is bullshit. You are thinking bullshit yourself and you are thinking that other people think something else than bullshit.

This is the same as the fear of being percieved as arrogant. People won’t step out of their comfort zones and go after the thing they want because of the belief that you shouldn’t be overly confident or arrogant. “People that say and do what they want are dicks and assholes. I don’t want to be like that, I want to be good and accepted. I will forget about my dreams and desires only to be accepted and loved by EVERYONE. If a random douche on the internet calls me a ‘bastard’ I will cry myself to bed for a week. I don’t want that pain, I will never reach out, say what I feel and do what I want. Being an asshole is bad and I will never become one. I’d rather die having a miserable life than be called an ‘asshole’ by ‘random douche on internet #37′.”

Lately the common theme for some people is to call me and Sigvatr arrogant or assholes. I know where it comes from. I write that my games are best and I will conquer everybody that doesn’t agree. Of course this is what I write and it is arrogant, but I myself am not actually arrogant! I am nowhere near it. So what am I? I’m writing this blog so it holds as a reference point, for anyone that wants to discuss assholeness with me.

Every mammal on this planet that lives in social groups lives in a group hierarchy. It is also called the pecking order, you can imagine chicken doing it. Can you imagine humans doing it?

From Wikipedia:

Pecking order is a system of organization among a flock of poultry [..]. In this system, a bird pecks another bird who is of lower rank, and submits to pecking from a bird of higher rank.

It is a basic concept in social hierarchy that has its counterpart in other animal species as well, including humans. Among mammals and other animals, the term “dominance hierarchy” is used. [..]

The basic concept behind the establishment of the pecking order among, for example, chicken, is that it is necessary to determine who is the ‘top chicken,’ the ‘bottom chicken’ and where all the rest fit in between. Consequently, this also determines which chicken gets to eat first or which chicken gets to peck on any other chickens they want. The top chicken is one which can peck any chicken it wants. The bottom chicken is one that lets all the other chickens peck on it and stands up to none. There are chickens in the middle, who peck on certain chickens but are, in turn, pecked on by other chickens higher up on the scale.

Simple right? Now how do you think this works? How do these chickens establish who is higher and who is lower in hierarchy?

Is there a Judge chicken which analyzes all chickens and throws them on a scale? Each chicken wanting to know where it is in hierarchy asks the Judge?

Maybe there is something like a NASDAQ stock market index, where all chickens are evaluated and there’s a chart. All chicken can then clearly see the Top 10 chicken from it?

Absurd. So how does it work? The pecking order of course is not centralized and it is not objective. It is working in each and every chicken.
There must be a special delegated brain circuit whose sole purpose is to evaluate and define the chicken in the group. The chickens brain is actually placing itself in the hierarchy. Probably based on a number of subjective inputs like own size compared to other, well-being, age, current health etc. as well as basing it on subjective experiences and memories.

What is the moral of this?

Your brain establishes a social role for you and places you on an artificial social hierarchy so you are obedient to the groups system, hence preserving the continuity and evolution of the group.

What does it mean in simpler words?

Your brain fucks you up.

It will place you on a social ladder based on some arbitrary and completely subjective idea of what it thinks the current social hierarchy looks like. It will make you feel better than some people. And it will make you feel bad and inferior to other people. If you feel worse than your boss, the President, a police man, a Playboy model, it is because you have placed yourself lower in the hierarchy. If you feel better than a bum, hippy, ugly girl or a Counter-Strike player, you have placed yourself higher in the hierarchy.

And this does not have anything to do with what you THINK!

You may think your boss or teacher is a prick, analyze and rationalize all day about why you are superior to that person. But when you actually come into contact with him/her and you don’t feel like yourself, you don’t act normal, say what you want – you are the ‘bottom chicken’.

Now if the idea that your brain, your own precious brain does this to you, does not make you mad I don’t know what does.

The critical thing to know is that there is no social hierarchy nowhere written down. It is not defined anywhere, written in stone or on Wikipedia. What is percieved as higher in one culture is percieved as lower in another. It is 100% subjective. Each chicken defines its place in the pecking order by using a subjective scale.

If nothing clicks inside of you now I can’t do much more. This is a book subject and I can’t fit it in one blog. I’ll get to why I am not arrogant in a second. For now I want to explain that you can transcend or deactivate the ‘pecking order’ brain circuit.

If you transcend it, it loses power over you. You will have freedom of action, thoughts and feelings in situations in which you didn’t have before.

If you do something embarrassing publicly and you feel bad about it, you are not feeling bad because what you did is objectively wrong. You are feeling bad because you make yourself feel bad. You make yourself feel bad because you believe you have dropped on the social ladder because of the thing you did. You unconsciously processed what it means to be high in hierarchy and decided that tripping over for example is not something a person like that does. Based on that subjective interpretation you lower yourself on the social ladder, trying to make up for it by nervously laughing (lowering yourself even more on the ladder because you’re now begging other people to accept you).

If you don’t believe the lies this brain circuit feeds you, you won’t ever feel embarrassed by anything ever again.

So once you deactivate this brain function and you stop believing in the pecking order do you feel better than other people?

No. If you think like that you are not there yet. Realize this: whenever you compare yourself to somebody, you are analyzing people in order to place yourself in the pecking order.

When comparison ceases,  then and only then you are independent.

If you don’t compare, you don’t feel better and you don’t feel worse than anyone. You just ARE, living aside from the social ladder, as an observer.

So am I arrogant?

Definition: ar·ro·gance [ar-uh-guhns]
“Offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.”

Superiority and self-importance imply comparison. You must be superior -to something. More important -than something.

If I write I will make the best game in the universe. I’m writing it because at that moment that’s how I feel and I’m being honest. If I say you are the ugliest person in the world does that mean anything besides me being honest with my perception at the moment? How can I know how all people in the world look like. It’s just my subjective opinion. That statement does not automatically imply that I am the prettiest person in the world as well as saying my games are the best does not imply all other games are crap. I’m not comparing, I’m just stating a feeling. Don’t think so much, feel more. If I say to a girl I love you to death, that does not mean I will actually love her until I die, it just says how I feel at that moment…

This is beginning to be long, but I still have one important thing to say. Probably the most important and optimistic part. I’ll leave it for a second part of this blog.