If you knew that everything was about to fall apart, how would you redirect your effort?
Let me tell you a little about me. I'm 28. When I was younger I had dreams of grandiosity; not ones of self-glorification, necessarily, but of grand ideas. Becoming a cookie bouquet delivery driver was not on that list, but that's the case for me. I have $40,000 in student loans, no degree, and very few possessions. The dreams have been sitting on the back burner. Higher education, as well as consumer debt, mutilated those dreams - almost.
We've gone from imagining what could be to nightmares of what is - which, to me, is increasingly restricted intellectual functioning. The disregard for any kind of reasoning is uncomfortable to witness; it's even worse to live. Like many others, I struggle through the routine to pay rent, pay the car note, pay the CEOs, pay the shareholders, etc. I always look forward to the day that I'll actually sit down and continue my German lessons, learn about Greek musical theory, read the philosophers in their own language, write this damn post...
Well, at least one of those is getting done.
As I go about a rather meaningless routine, I feel other eyes watching, and I begin to see from the perspective of those eyes. It feels like I am not quite lodged in the immediately physical plane. Even while daily worries are going through my mind, this "other" part of me watches. And judges.
Some of the Greek philosophers (such as Plotinus and one of his successors, Iamblichus) distinguished between irrational and rational parts of the human soul, and this sensation might point to that general idea. The higher part observes and, if given permission, can make commentary. What it has been telling me - and many others, to be sure - is that much, of not most, if not all, of these mundane daily tasks that we are forced to participate in are actually complete bullshit. They are a waste of the limited amount of time and creative energy we have while we are here.
Why should I scramble to pay off a car I don't want, to live in a city that I hate, be bound by contracts that I've assumed are important (leases and smartphones), and all while denying this higher soul the nutrition it needs to have more control over its vehicle's direction? Why should you?
There comes a time when drastic measures need to be taken. I was recently speaking to a friend about this issue, and he told me that his moment came when he walked into work and the fire alarm had been beeping once every ten seconds. It had been doing that for hours, and no one had bothered to check it. That beeping was his cue to walk out, and he did. He then proceeded in an entirely new direction, pursuing new knowledge and the application of that knowledge, and even lived in the desert for a while.
I told him that hell, Christ wandered around the desert for a while, and he apparently had some pretty good insights.
The only way to get to this point of self control, I feel, is to see from that higher vantage point. The times that I am able to see from here, my TV morphs from an entertainer into a monstrous time thief. My credit cards grow teeth that gnaw at my freedom. All the pretty lights in my car remind me of the stars that I cannot see in the midst of this city - and of course, I see the dash light up every time I'm on the way to use a credit card to rent a movie to watch on my TV.
Yes, from the proper vantage point the veil is lifted and I am horrified at the way we are herded in drovs by things like "credit" and "jobs" and "assets". Most of all, I am horrified at my consent.
What happens if we dump it all?
Not surprisingly, we're freed. Would you rather spend the rest of your life working on command or command yourself? If it's the latter, the price you might pay (in this society) is your car, your credit, even your home. That's why it's easier, in some ways, for those of us at the bottom of the economic scale to initiate. We've never had the opportunity to be fully immersed in the "American Dream" (now becoming the American Nightmare) and thus, maybe it's easier for us to feel that higher soul encroaching.