Saturday, June 29, 2013

Free Yourself! 

Pay attention people.  Pay attention.  There is a very very quiet alarm clock going off.  If you stop for a minute you might be able to hear it.  Its telling you to wake up.  Wake up.  Wake up sleepy head.  Wake up, rub your eyes and take a good look around and see what is really, really going on. 

Like rats in a cage the minute you start to come to your "senses" you are fed another pellet aimed at providing you as much faux joy and bliss as possible so that you focus on getting more pellets and not the cage.  

Because like it or not you are still in the cage.   And the pellets look a lot like the following: 
  • contrived media blitzes,
  • superficial finger pointing at celebrities,
  • stories that get you all fired up about something and then keep you going about that some thing over and over again
  • disasters and weather
  • electronics and other distractions
  • cheap, yummy, colorless or artificially colored food
  • drugs, legal and illegal
  • people that make you think they care about you but don't
In the movie Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, Frodo, bless his little Hobbit self, finally gets to the last, and perhaps most difficult leg of his journey; the ascent to Mt. Doom to throw the Ring of Power into the pool of lava where it will be gone forever.

What is left of the fellowship bands together, and in a last ditch effort heads to the gates of Mordor where they prepare to sacrifice themselves to the enemy in what is sure to be a lost battle (there's like 6 of them against herds of men, orcs and trolls and other disgusting beasts), in the name of Frodo.  They haven't seen him in ages but know he hasn't fulfilled his mission yet because here they stand against the ugly, relentless team of assholes that pervades every crack of Middle Earth.

It doesn't sound very smart but it is actually genius.  Because in the next moment we see that terrifying, all-seeing eye of Sauron whip-turn his gaze from elsewhere to look directly at the seemingly important battle about to take place, thus distracting it from the even bigger and more urgent situation- that of Frodo getting rid of the ring forever and destroying Sauron and all of Mordor---which we know he does.

Middle Earth is actually a lot like real Earth. We too are being distracted but in our case its the bad guys doing the distracting, and sometimes they are a lot more pretty or trustworthy than an obviously evil orc.

I hate to tell you this but while you are in the cage, focusing on the pellets, you are actually being moved to an even smaller and shittier cage.  And when you take a look around that home, there will no longer be any pellets left.   You are going to either become deeply depressed or completely enraged and beg for help.  But by then it will be too late.  Everyone you know and love will be in tiny cages too.

But if you're reading this, its not too late. Not eating pellets looks a lot like the following:
  • Being around people that actually care about you
  • Eating and/or cooking yummy high quality naturally colorful food
  • Joining people that are working for things you really care about
  • Leaving the commercials behind
  • Being outdoors
  • Saying "who cares?" to the latest celebrity finger pointing
  • Asking yourself what you think is true or important
  • Talking with people, neighbors, friends in person
  • Sharing, or as 2-year-olds call it "taking turns"
So if you can, get quiet now, and listen, wake up, see what being conscious feels like.  Be one of the few who is actually watching Frodo climb the mountain.

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