One decisive factor that has for millennia granted parasitic
memes an evolutionary advantage over Humanity, securing their control over
our perception and assuring their unconstrained freedom to breed in our
minds and feed with impunity on the vast stores of psychic energy that
is our natural human birthright, is their great proficiency at misdirecting
us into confusing true cognitive, emotional and spiritual freedom with
self-serving demands for the liberty to indulge the whims of personality.
What we label "personality," that unique, ever-changing, chance constellation
of memes and memplexes inhabiting each of our brains and calling itself
"I," is the parasite. When we serve its scatological cravings wallowing
in self-pity, being petty or bored, wasting time, chasing empty pleasures,
ferociously defending our right to behaviors or beliefs we know to be destructive
to ourselves or to others, taking things person-ally, holding grudges,
etc. we are not being "authentic," "true to ourselves," "genuine" or
"free." We are, instead, collaborating in our own enslavement, aiding
and abetting in the theft of the very psychic energy which, in our own
hands, would set us truly free, exchanging everything that is genuinely
unique and original in ourselves, along with our unimaginable individual
and collective potential as human beings, for the spiritual equivalent
of a few dollars worth of glass beads and trinkets.
The good news is that the evolutionary advantage can
be reclaimed. True freedom can be attained. Stripped of all
distracting memetic religious/spiritual ballast, the bare bones, most direct
path to the achievement of personal, cultural and planetary human awakening
is remarkably simple:
I. Personal
We must surrender the comforting illusion that the person
we are today, the "I" the chance events of our lives have made of us so
far, is the best we can do. The full breadth and power of our human
potential, as individuals and as members of collective Humanity, is an
altogether unknown quantity though the testimony of human spiritual history
suggests that what is possible for all of us may be very great, indeed.
We must stop cutting ourselves slack and wallowing in mediocrity, and begin
living up to our highest ideals. We must expect and deliver our very
best at all times. Who and even what we human beings are beneath
our mask of memes is a genuine mystery. Only by fully opening ourselves
to that mystery can we take it in and let it change us. We must drop
all of our preconceived notions about ourselves, people and reality, and
get busy verifying the limits of human possibility if we can find any
for ourselves. (This summarizes the first three Keys).
II. Cultural
If we wish to see the way human beings interact with one another on this planet change, then we must change in very specific ways. First, in order even to begin to understand the true stakes of our present global meme-wars, we must take the time and invest the effort to significantly broaden our knowledge and personal hands-on experience of human cultural diversity. Before we can form any kind of meaningful opinion concerning how we ought to collectively address the challenges facing us as a species, we must develop a deep, visceral understanding of the sheer number and variety of people we share this tiny planet with, and of what would really be lost if any segment of that number were eliminated. Based on that understanding, we must each decide how we value individual human lives, regardless of what people look like, where they're born, or the (curable) cluster of parasitic memes currently possessing their brains. Only after having made that self-educated choice are we equipped to seriously consider the direction of our common human future. Then we must stop making excuses and hold the bad guys accountable, starting with ourselves, but by no means stopping there. We must consciously conspire together to bring about a worldwide cultural renaissance, beginning with the two most obvious and immediate necessities for planetary species survival the end of oil use, and universal vegetarianism. Rather than allowing the societies we are, by happen-stance, born into to determine our spiritual possibilities, we must, instead, set our own unambiguous spiritual goals, then measure the relative value of our personal, local, national and global human cultures in light of their achievement. (This summarizes the fourth, fifth and sixth Keys).
III. Planetary
We must, as individuals and as a species, come to recognize as unreal our hypnotic confinement within memetic "storylines" that determine where we come from and where we are going, and which, by consequence of our belief in their reality, control how we value ourselves, each other, and all our present-moment behavioral choices, in service to the "story." Recognizing that the paradigms of Decline, Stasis and Evolution function on the level of the collective human dream, and are therefore never completely escapable for individuals until all Humanity awakens en masse, we must work to purge our psyches of Decline and Stasis memes, and to reshape our shared dream in an Evolutionary mold, centered in a clear vision of collective Stage Four: Limitless Frontier awakening as an exciting, communal opportunity worth working toward together. We must embrace the unknown past and unwritten future as the exhilarating mysteries they truly are, and accept responsibility for jointly creating a future worthy of a mature, Cosmic Humanity. We must surrender our narcissism, stop waiting for God or anybody's version of a rescuing Messiah to pull our fat out of the fire of the consequences of our own past behavior, and take decisive action in the present to solve a host of immediate planetary problems by using already-available technology to solar-power the Earth and mine space. (This summarizes the seventh, eighth and ninth Keys).
Key Question #10, Are We Alone?, plants a ticking time
bomb inside the locked box of the collective human dream. Only by
opening the box can we defuse it. Exactly when the bomb will explode
and kill us all if we are unsuccessful in our efforts, or simply fail to
try, is unknown but it seems prudent to assume that there is not a single
moment to waste.
INNER AND OUTER SPACE: THE TWIN FRONTIERS
In past centuries, whenever societies became too re-strictive,
kings too oppressive, economies too stratified, or religious or political
ideologies too stifling, outsiders to the prevailing consensus reality
of the day often broke away from the Motherland to take their chances against
the hardships of life in wilderness territories, isolation on far away,
uncharted continents, etc., exchanging the safe comforts of social conformity
for the uncertain but exhilarating promise of freedom on the frontier.
The United States of America is a quintessential example of the coalescence
of many such legendary frontier adven-tures, having been initially established
by colonies of religious pilgrims rebelling against the political and social
control of Britons by the Church of England, then peopled over the course
of two centuries by wave after wave of immigrant "frontiersmen" from every
corner of the world seeking the opportunity to establish lives free of
poverty or religious or political persecution in the New World.
Many moderns now argue, however, that with more than six billion of us
on the planet, and just about every square inch of Earthly real estate
owned by somebody, populated by many, and technologically "hardwired" via
TV, radio and the Internet into a unified "global media control system,"
there doesn't appear to be any frontier left anywhere in which non-conformists
can invest their hopes and energies
This common contemporary belief that there are no "New
Worlds" left to explore is you guessed it! a pernicious, untrue, species-controlling
meme that very effectively keeps us locked away inside the dream-box of
the grand collective human memeplex, the very box from which we must break
free if we hope to survive to experience Stage Four global awakening and
evolve beyond our present planet-wide dream of limitation and lack.
The "No New Worlds" meme tells us that there is no hope of freedom from
the way things are, and so we should settle for the vacuous pleasures of
the prison we are in, quietly acquiescing to the slow, psychic vampirism
of our common workaday reality as the best we can expect ever to envision
or achieve. Ensnared by this meme, to quote American philosopher
Henry David Thoreau, Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to
the grave with the song still in them.
The apparently opposed but, in practice, fully co-operative
balancing flipside of the memetic "No New Worlds" coin is the belief that
we can, in fact, escape dull consensus reality by personally identifying
with various colorful countercultural or alternative social lifestyles
or communities that, while appearing on the surface to rebel against standard
social norms, actually inhabit safe fringe "niches" within the larger shared
dream. Examples of countercultural "niche communities" might include
American Gay flamboyance, the "Cowboy Way," Rap music "Gangsta-hood" or
Heavy Metal nihilism, crystal-waving New Ageism, membership in gangs, cults
and Fundamentalist or extremist groups of every stripe, etc. All
such "Counterculture Paths" lead us to mistake subservience to various
self-contained, self-referencing "dream bubbles" floating on the periphery
of the collective human illusion for the true liberty that could be ours
if we just dropped all the intervening nonsense and woke up. In the
name of "freedom," we wind up willfully serving the parasite of personality,
dedicating our "song" to its glorification, enthusiastically pouring our
energies into the empty fads and fashions that feed it, preaching our "meme-gospel"
to all who will listen, working to reel in new victims by transforming
our personalities and lives into living neon billboards advertising the
"benefits" of surrender to exploitation by our favored meme.
Yet, all the while, just beyond the paper-thin veil of
the dream, lie unexplored frontiers of freedom beyond imag-ining.
We have already discussed the genuine physical frontier
of outer space that Humanity must explore if we aspire to evade extinction
here on Earth, and to establish anything like a permanent presence in the
Cosmos. That the apparently-opposing "No New Worlds" and strident
"Counterculture Path" worldviews described above mostly stand united in
their casual dismissal of space as a realistic option for resolving Humanity's
pressing difficulties or their even more common total disregard of all
things extraterrestrial as science fiction, as if the infinite physical
Universe beyond the Earth is some kind of fantastic invention of our human
imaginations that might dissolve away if we reach out to touch it is
evidence for their linkage as related memes in a larger memeplex of psychic
confinement, working as one to keep our collective vision glued to the
ground and our minds oblivious to any larger physical context in
which memes might find their authority to control our minds challenged,
lest we slip through their fingers and achieve awakening. The sooner
we physically open the cosmic frontier, making Earthly use of space-based
natural resources, establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars, etc., the
easier our mass awakening will become. By physically stepping out
into the real, material Universe, even against our meme-controlled, so-called
"better judgment," we can experientially put the lie to the illusion of
our Earthbound station, and inspire the true pioneers in our midst to seek
ultimate freedom and new, unlimited definitions of what it means to be
human out there amongst the endless sea of stars.
The second genuine frontier before us, and one which
is immediately available to every individual reading these words, is that
of inner space. Whereas the cosmic frontier is a material realm of
physical stars and planets and galaxies to be explored, colonized, utilized
and inhabited, inner space is an energetic frontier, an uncharted territory
of human possibility that memes separated us from eons ago, when they began
siphoning off for their own use the human psychic vitality that by right
should have made the furthest, deepest, most unlimited expanses of consciousness
our species' natural home. All spiritual paths capable of reliably
leading us to the edge of unexplored human inner space and beyond to freedom
Zen Buddhism, Toltec Shamanism and The Simplest Path among others share
two distinct features in common: 1) their focus is on energy conservation,
not energy expenditure, and 2) they do not tell anyone what to believe,
providing walkers on the path, instead, with tools for disassembling the
memetic machineries of belief altogether and moving beyond to the achievement
of a direct encounter with reality as it is. Entry into inner space,
in which direct knowledge of reality becomes possible, can never be achieved
by stressing and straining to breach its borders, or by imitating the gross
appearance or behaviors of those we perceive to have crossed over before
us. We must direct our labors instead toward fulfilling the long
process of identifying and cutting free from the ballast of all the false
memetic pseudo-realities now holding our minds hostage, in the process
liberating sufficient psychic energy that our consciousness eventually
returns of its own to its natural state of flight. Then the inner
frontier is ours to explore, ultimate psychic freedom ours to experience,
and new, unlimited definitions of what it means to be human ours to discover
and share with our companions on the path.
Just as our historical ancestors, largely in service
to the preservation of their core religious, cultural and political memes,
bravely left families and properties and native soil behind them to set
off in search of freedom in often hostile, unfamiliar lands, so we, too
this time in true service to the physical survival of our species and
the final liberation of our individual and collective minds from the very
memetic enslavement that drove our ancestors' quests must consciously
and willfully enter the twin frontiers of uncharted outer and inner space,
leaving behind all familiar, limiting definitions of what it means to be
human, of what is possible for us, and of meme-driven, often quite ancient
and stale Earthbound expectations regarding our ultimate human destiny.
What we will find beyond the veil of those dethroned beliefs what reality
and Humanity will look like outside the confining wall of limiting lies
with which memes have surrounded our psyches since that long-forgotten
day when we first invited them into our minds is an open question.
But it will, at long last, be a question that is ours to ask, ours to live,
and ours to answer.
IS THE SIMPLEST PATH A MEME?
Is The Simplest Path a self-proclaimed spiritual toolkit
designed to break the power of memes to control our perception, thereby
awakening our minds to a direct and enlightened experience of reality
itself, a meme?
The simple answer is Yes. Until we awaken, everything
in our experience of reality, without exception, is made of, or is at least
heavily contaminated by illusion, which The Simplest Path identifies as
a product of the activity of memes. That is the unavoidable present
human condition in which we all begin our journey to awakening.
But not all memes are created equal. While The
Simp-lest Path necessarily traffics in meme-sullied religious, spiritual,
cultural and scientific imagery since if it did not, it would almost
certainly never penetrate the hypnosis of ordinary life and reach anybody's
attention it is not, itself, a religion, a belief system, or even, really,
a science, though it comes close in many ways to a pure definition of that
term. The Simplest Path is a consciously crafted, anti-parasitic,
medicinal "designer-meme," that utilizes the same processes by which memes
occlude our minds to untangle the web of illusion that has been woven around
our perception, restoring our natural human freedom and psychic vigor in
the process. It is a meme purposefully designed to uproot and disable
other memes, allowing for the enlightenment of individuals and the eventual
transformative awakening of the entire human species.
But, yes, it's meme. Don't let that prejudice your
thinking.
When counseling students in the necessity of distinguishing
the path from the destination in Zen Buddhism, teachers routinely remind
students that "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon" and equate
Zen philosophy and meditation to a thorn one uses to dig out another thorn.
Once the embedded barb has been removed, a wise man throws both thorns
away, lest he find himself once again hooked by either. Translated
into the parlance of The Simplest Path, the only way to describe the true
path to awakening to minds engrossed in life's illusory dream is in memetic
dream-language that has been consciously designed to sound the alarm and
lead dreamers out of sleep, toward a direct experience of reality as it
is
At which point the path becomes irrelevant. Awakening
has been achieved. The challenges facing global Humanity with which
this book began have been favorably resolved. Our limitless human
birthright has been restored, and our collective cosmic destiny reclaim-ed.
Who can argue with that? Achieve the goal, secure
the prize, attain the final destination, and then, by all means, feel free
to leave the path and strike off to explore the furthest reaches of the
Limitless Frontier in perfect freedom. But until that day arrives,
we must start where we are, joining the path to personal and planetary
awakening where it begins, at Step One
FREE YOUR MIND
In his famed speech delivered on March 3rd, 1775, American patriot Patrick Henry declared:
Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Liberty or death that really is the choice facing the
human species as the 21st Century dawns on our restless, common planetary
nightmare of war, greed, environ-mental degradation and advancing social
and spiritual bewilderment. Thanks to our individual confinement
in ego-flattering dream-cocoons that place us dead center in the physical
Cosmos and the very Mind and Heart of God or at least grant us the comfort
of that illusory conceit few of us hear the ticking, and fewer still
the call to arms.
Your purchase of this book identifies you as a waking
warrior in our collective human struggle for psychic freedom, for physical
survival as a species, and for the right, not only to craft our individual
and communal futures in the image of our highest ideals and most developed
spiritual potential, but to have a future at all. The battle before
us is not with other people, no matter what those individuals and groups
especially those we strongly disagree with and self-righteously label
"the enemy" believe, say or do, but rather with the memes and memeplexes
controlling all human perception on every side of every apparent conflict.
If we turn blindly against one another, human against human, we are lost.
If we turn away from the battle, we are lost as well. But if we turn
toward one another in acknowledgement of our true predicament, each of
us fighting the good fight to depose our personal meme-possession, while
agreeing to stand back to back and shoulder to shoulder with the whole
of our species, everywhere on Earth, against a predator so subtle that
it has taken us thousands of years even to notice its feeding presence,
we gain at least the possibility of victory.
The battle plan is simple I wake up, and help you wake
up. Together we wake up our friends, our neighborhood, our city,
state, nation, and eventually, the whole wide world.
Even if, in our present state of sleep, we find it understandably
difficult to discern what true cognitive, emotional and spiritual freedom
might look like or make possible for Humanity in the long run, we have
at least, in just the few pages of this one thin volume, managed to flush
our oppressor out of hiding long enough to catch a glimpse of its form,
its strategies, and of the price of chains and slavery we pay each day
to rest quietly in its dream-weaving arms. We understand the stakes,
and have come into possession of the knowledge and tools required to unweave
the illusion and burst through, one by one, into reality, psychic liberty
and, eventually, together, into the Limitless Frontier of collective human
possibility.
The battle lines are drawn. Why stand we here idle?
Free your mind.