i

 

I wrote this philosophy over a year ago and never really went back to it, but my excuse has been that most don’t really care to understand what the philosophy means, or even read anything I have to write, much less the philosophy, unless they hurriedly click on the link at a glance thinking it says “photography” because they just want to get to the photographs, which is like a sick person ignoring everything a healer says because they just want to get to feeling better. This is not me being negative here; that was all typed with a smile. My immediate reality has left me with the painfully reoccurring “what does idiedatbirth even mean?” Well, I’ve been explaining it for years to deaf ears, and I wrote it down, so figure it out [/sarcasm]. I do still continue to attempt an explanation, but, as with most repetitive stories or explanations, each time leaves me with less enthusiasm and information to relay to the confused looking face who has immediately regretted the question. Maybe that would be a good time to simply hand someone my card, which seems like a reasonable solution if you ignore the fact that this person might be offended by the work itself.

To be honest, in my decade long quest to make sense of the choices I made, this title being one, the definition has constantly evolved, and there are aspects of my current philosophy that bother me a bit, and would seem contradictory to anyone who truly understood it, the greatest of which being the western meaning, importance, and argument lasting written time itself involving the first letter. I have been on a tantra journey lately, which is just mental science, that and listening to some Alan Watts the other day made something click in my head.

i.

Understanding that you died at birth is understanding Maya: reality, in and of itself, is an illusion. ‘Reality’, how you’ve been conditioned to define it, is actually what ever you want it to be, but you can’t redefine it on your terms until you claim yourself back from the void of delusion in which you were sacrificed for the greater good of the system that most of us struggle to be a part of, because it is foreign to us, it is not our nature, and it does not serve our souls or our purpose.

The real ‘you’, the beautiful ball of infinite energy and potential, was killed at birth, and was replaced with the ego you, which creates conflict and dissonance. ‘i’ is not the ego-driven, first person pronoun, ‘I’, but the all inclusive universe, i, which is not plural, but singular. The proper ‘we’ indicates various separate egos, but how do you get a people conditioned in ego to understand that ‘i’ is actually ‘we’ linguistically, without saying we and negating the concept? Same applies to the earlier ‘you’ died at birth, or the real ‘you’; ‘you’ is actually ‘we’ represented within the philosophy as ‘i’.

I find myself saying "we all died at birth," but the power is in getting someone else to say "‘i’diedatbirth," which they can’t understand because they live in ego and they didn’t actually die at birth, and there is a negative attachment to death in general. Those in ego demand that they not only have things figured out, but most exist in a kind of superiority, and most to all are completely ignorant to the fact that this existence pails in comparison to what they could have accomplished in their true nature and potential. Welcome to the circles I talk in.

This summer has been moist, well... when we're not playing with fire. I am not happy with how I wrote most of this. I can finally see what so many people have tried to point out to me. I have been blind to my own affirmations, but for me to go back and change them at this point would leave the post making even less sense. I see it, though. I see it.

Smile More

“The task of a philosopher: we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.” ~ Epictetus

It was so much easier to write when I was reading every day, like the Universe was giving me points to focus on. Without those little nudges of inspiration my words seem to drone on in endless repetition. Those other minds always seemed to reinforce the arguments I have been regurgitating since I was a child, but without them I feel like some idiot wandering down the street mumbling unintelligible nonsense to myself. I should get an empty cup and try to at least get some change out of it… a statement that gleams with a Shakespearean double meaning, but only to this brain, that has suffered this life, in this way (The line I was prompted to recite, not the obvious double meaning).

I still feel like a puzzle piece that has been thrown in the wrong box; they keep trying to fit me into the picture, but once their picture has been completed they realize that mine doesn’t belong and they toss it out with the wine bottles and crumpled up pages of their forever unfinished novel.

What I’ve learned in my journey is that most feel as though they don’t belong, as if it is some romantic ideal that we desperately grasp onto, a statistical cousin to demanding misery as proof of brilliance. I believe, though, that the biggest puzzle is liquid, and we would all fit beautifully if we let go of the ego demanding that we are this or that shape, whether it be defined by our selfish desires, or be the dysfunctional remnants of what we were told we are when we all died at birth.

This is the elusive puzzle that no one can see beyond the infinite pictures being constructed that we have been tricked into putting worth on; the forest through the trees. Man’s greatest fault is taking himself too seriously; that ignorant self importance is what’s destroying a potentially beautiful existence.

Just be you, not who you think you’re supposed to be, and love people for who they are, not for who you want them to be. Nothing will ever be as beautiful as who we are. We’ve lost that beauty as a species.

It doesn’t matter how well you fit into this delusion, all that matters is how much time and energy you waste in this brief existence focused on those things, which is a special kind of useless when they are things you can’t control: you are not old, or fat, or ugly, or short, or stupid, or anything else that thinking makes so; you were born beautiful, and it is up to you to find and immerse yourself into the liquid puzzle of the Universe.

Smile more.