I need help. Serious help. I had hoped that ayahuasca could give me what I need, but now it would seem that this is the only option that remains. You see, this is to be far more than your typical piece of writing. This will be a deeply personal, introspective journey- one that I have invited you to observe.

There are several reasons why I have decided to share this with the Steemit community. For starters, I feel that I owe an explanation to those of you who have followed me for quite some time. You have no doubt come to expect a level of quality or insight from my posts, and I have failed to deliver on this in recent months. My hopes are that this series will provide some understanding as to why that has been the case.

Secondly, I feel that others may benefit from reading this. I'm highly doubtful that there is anyone out there who has the exact same troubles as I'm currently faced with, but I believe the observation of the self-analysis that will follow could be replicated and used to overcome entirely different personal issues.

Lastly, as it seems prudent to be honest, given the nature of what I am going to be sharing; I have bills to pay and a dog to feed, so I know that I should really be attempting to monetize anything that I am putting a great amount of time or effort into.

I haven't the slightest inclination as to how long this is going to take. It could be a day, or it could be a month, but by the end of this thing I will be ready to make a decision I have been avoiding for far too long. I feel that I am in a cocoon, and I am unable to grow any further until I have decided what I would like to transform into. An underwhelming analogy perhaps, but that is because I mean it quite literally.

I realise now that this journey of self-scrutiny will have to begin in the next post, because I must first explain my current state of mind and what I aim to achieve from this., or you will have no chance of comprehending what comes next. To anyone who decides to share in this experience with me, I ask that you keep an open mind, for if you cannot, you don't belong in mine. I will most definitely be diving deep into topics that most would regard as controversial, strange, or even supernatural.

Lastly, if at any point this starts to sound like nothing more than the ramblings of a mad man, I would ask you to remember all that I have written in the past, and ask yourself again if I am truly insane. If after that, I drift off into Crazytown again, then you should probably just tell me I really am bonkers, because I've been wondering if that is the case for quite some time now.

My Cocoon

I don't really know how to do this delicately, so I will just come forth with it. I have come to believe that we are living in the end times. This has been a particularly unique experience for me, given that I am not a follower of any religions.

I understand that this is no small thing, and I can assure you that I did not come to this realisation easily. In truth, I have been seeing signs of the end times for over a year now. Like any rational person, I convinced myself that everything I was seeing had been put there intentionally in order to make me(and many others) believe the end is nigh. It made sense. Why wouldn't the powers of this world want a lot of us to believe that the end times are arriving? There's no reason for us to fight back against our increasingly obvious enslavement if we think Jesus is coming to save us anyway.

It was easy to convince myself it was bullshit. Even when I finally looked into it, and found that there was tons of Bible prophecy being fulfilled, still it was easy. It wasn't being fulfilled by chance, these fuckers were clearly actively seeking to make it appear as though that was the case, all to pacify the Christian populations of the world, and have them resign themselves to the current state of society. That's what I thought, and I figured that they only needed to do it until blockchain is fully integrated into society, because then there'd be no way to fight back anymore anyway.

The problem with that was, I had held a conflicting belief in my mind for just as long. I do not think that the powers of this world want us to lay down and take it anymore. Almost everywhere I look I see anti-government sentiment being cultivated within the masses, and I have known for some time that this will eventually be settled on the streets, most likely coinciding with the public's realisation that the dollar, pound, euro and every other fiat currency is dead.

I often make a point of highlighting when others are holding two contradictory beliefs, yet this time it was myself I was forced to enlighten. It would make absolutely no sense for them to be purposefully inciting a revolution whilst simultaneously convincing people the end times are here so that they won't bother to fight back.

As one would expect, I had to work through my cognitive dissonance, and in the end I came to the conclusion that the end is coming. But, please do not misinterpret my interpretation of this. I recoginize that the end is synonymous with the beginning, and so I do not mean to imply that I believe the world is going to end. No. I simply believe that we are approaching the end of an era, and that this means a new, exponentially different one is on the horizon.

Now, as I said, I do not follow any religious doctrine. I believe in a Creator, but I see the need for no middle man in our relationship. However, I do not think the Bible is complete poppycock. I recognize Jesus, Lucifer and Satan as aspects of human consciousness. So when I say that I regard this new world to be one constructed by Lucifer, and ruled by Satan, I hope you will realise that I do not mean any singular entity, but the parts of us that have been nurtured by our time's Earthly environment.

So, here I am. A non-religious man who believes that Satan's world is being constructed at hyper-speed right before my very eyes, and the decision I am faced with, is what role will I play in this new world, or whether I am done playing roles entirely.

The last few months have been the loneliest of my life. I was once able to conquer loneliness with a mere thought. That was the power of my imagination, I thought. But it could not have been power, not that I can control at least. For the last few months, my imagination has been able to conjure only that which leads back to what I care not to think about. Marijuana has helped dearly, but I can no longer dull my mind just to avoid my own thoughts.

When I am not high, I feel like an observer in an age of actors, and I care not to align myself with the cult of commerce that everyone who surrounds me is a part of. Everywhere I look I see a person, a word derived from an Ancient Greek term for "character in a play." And each of them has their own characteristics, that determine their actions, which will in turn determine their role in society.

It's all bullshit though. People have been wearing their masks so long they have forgotten they have one on. Not only that, but it would seem that our language has been manipulated to facilitate our self-deceiving behaviour. And the world of tomorrow, which is only years away, will nurture this aspect of us more than any other. Steemit is a good example. Many of you know I have struggled with this place because I am too good at reading people(or at least I believe myself to be) to stomach half of the friendly comments on this platform.

In a world where there is a cost on survival, people will always be willing to adopt disingenuous personas if it will earn them something, and as we move into an attention and rewards economy, genuine interactions between humans will become rarer by the second until we are all nothing more than a bunch of stories. Stories that amount to little more than what is required to prosper in such an economy, but that fail to touch on any of the characteristics honest human traits that make our species so beautiful.

This is where my dilemma lies, and it isn't a new one. I arrived at this same fork in the road long before I embraced the end times as part of my reality, and even before I discovered Steemit. You see, I have been trying to break free from this cycle of acting, and return to a life of simple existence. It's rather clear to me at this point, that I can no longer have one foot in and one foot out the door.

By the end of this, I aim to gain from myself exactly what I need to make a decision on whether to follow Jesus, or to follow Satan. That is to say that I will nurture the purest part of myself, and decide never to betray my own sense of morality again, for no reason, ever, regardless of the consequences for me, or for anyone else- my family included, as this is something that society has forced me to do for far too long. Or, I will adhere to the lessons taught by society, and feed the part of my consciousness I now recognize as Satan by embracing money and materialism as the way of the world, and giving up on this quest to be better than my environment. Essentially, I will finally commit to playing the game, and to being a winner.

I shall achieve this through asking myself a series of questions that have been weighing heavy on my mind, and by scrutinizing my answers to find clarity on what direction is best for me and Vito. The first question will be;

Is it possible to be both a good person, and a good citizen?

I will answer this, and then pick apart my own response until I have a new question, in the next post.