What Im about to describe is something crucial in my spiritual journey, and it perhaps it will aid you as well.
Beginning my life, I was just Colby. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, and in my innocence, that fact was undisputed.
However, over the course of life, I began to realize there’s more than just me out there, and because of that, I became a lot of people who arent Colby.
This was an important experience, but its important to understand I cant remain something thats not me. Henceforth, I describe how I became a demon, then a god, then nobody, and finally became a human again.
In isolation, a person can be oneself undisturbed. This is the genesis of the mind.
As you grow from infancy to childhood and adolescence, however, your cognitive abilities progress to the point where you realize the world is bigger than you, and contains others in it.
The importance of this point in development is this is where conflict begins, and critically this was delayed for me. You form all your opinions based on observation, though at first you have no critical thinking to go along with it.
An opinion on a topic will be impressed upon you, and because you have no basis of judgment, it will be good enough no matter what it is. As you begin to interact with a community, however, you realize that you can be hurt.
What I mean by being hurt is that your opinions cast judgment upon your character, and because you didn’t choose your opinions critically, this manifests as judgment upon you yourself. Judgment upon yourself inherently feels bad because you didnt do anything wrong.
What this amounts to, is that now you want to protect yourself from pain. But not knowing the proper way to do so, you change your opinions to conform to your community.
Now you cant be hurt because nobody will try to hurt you. You may be “cool”, which gives you an ego, but you are not an individual.
You are an automaton who is driven by feeling, which makes you a mere projection of the community you are a part of. Nobody in your community will hurt you, but if someone does, you will change to correct that.
With newfound self-awareness, which can be acquired in numerous ways, you may realize that being an automaton means you can never feel good and whole permanently. There will always be adjustment, and keeping up with that can be difficult.
Failure means your community will leave you behind.
This is the part where one becomes a demon, or a being that is composed of sin, as I have.
What I mean by sin is not a specific definition as prescribed by the bible or similar writings, but my own working definition, which is unadulterated hedonism.
Everyone wants to avoid feeling bad, so you fix yourself by acting in a way that makes you always feel good. But losing the ability to feel bad is to discard your own humanity, so you become something else: a demon (in this instance).
What’s wrong with being a demon? Well, if feeling good is your only virtue, then youre free from judgment, which means you are not enslaved by your community, or any community for that matter.
What you are enslaved by, however, is your own desires. Its easy to think that if youre chained by your own self-interest, that isn’t slavery at all. You are listening to your instincts.
But you cannot live for no one else, because that, in reality, does deny your instincts, which is contradictory.
Humans cannot survive alone, and if everyone acts purely in their own interest, then there is no society.
A world with only demons would be like the world before humans, but humans are fundamentally different from animals, even including other social animals, like wolves. So, instead of cannibalizing, lets be human.
I realize Im getting lost in the sauce as I write this, but the truth is still in there, and the truth is good because it is the truth. Lets keep going.
Being a demon feels bad once you understand what a demon really is. So, if you cant be an automaton, and you cant be a demon, then why not be god?
Being a god is easy, you dont need to do anything. You just need to be yourself, and have other people believe in you.
Then you can experience life as an observer. You’re above everything and everyone, so you don’t have to take part in it. Now truly nobody can hurt you, and you’re free.
See? We’ve improved from when we were a naive automaton, and also from when we were a demon.
However, then approaches the grim reality that a human shouldnt be god. By being above everyone in spirit, with neither community nor vices, only principle, you forfeit your ability to coexist with people.
Ironically, you’ve returned to the point of having an ego, but this time without being connected to anyone.
You’re alone in your heaven, and its dreadfully boring. You might as well be dead.
Heres the point where you dont want to be a god even if you can be.
If you cant be a creature, or an automaton, or a divine being, then what else can you be? The easiest conclusion to have now is to be no one.
Then you dont have an ego, and you can still be connected with everyone. This is what Neon Genesis Evangelion would characterize as instrumentality, returning to the LCL sea (primordial ooze).
If everyone understands each other, then you cant be hurt, and you also don’t have to worry about conformity or individuality.
Everyone is everything. Note that even though it seems like this would be desirable, it is completely unsatisfying.
No more pain, at the cost of no more fulfillment. You’ve lost everything, in a sense, so ending it all may seem like the best thing you can do, but there’s another option, hidden behind the lines.
I am the fool. Not in the sense that I know nothing, but I know that having knowledge (self-awareness) doesn’t make me different or better than anyone else.
I can still remain human in the face of this, because I choose the way of ignorance.
Now youre likely thinking, “isnt ignorance bad?” And it isnt wrong to feel that way, but what I’m getting at here is not that Im bigoted. Rather, its that I cant accept everything, but I can accept some things.
If you take everything you hear to heart, then your sense of self will be destroyed, but the answer is not to “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”
You can, and should observe these things. Thats what makes us human.
And Im no different from any other human, but humans themselves are different from anything else (the purely primal creatures, and the purely intellectual automatons).
What makes the difference is critical thinking, or taking the input, which is the sum total of your lived experiences, and using that to create conclusions, with the X factor being your humanity.
This is what it really means to know the difference between right and wrong. So, if you seek the truth, then being a fool is essential. By making yourself vulnerable to being hurt, by being wrong with intention, only then do you have the opportunity to learn the truth.
And the truth is good because its the truth, as the Knights of Eastern Calculus would put it.
That sums it all up. Im the fool.
Historically, fools are something close to priesthood. They distinguish themselves, as men of knowledge, from more traditional men of god and men of science, because they have no illusion of being correct.
Because they’re wrong at face value, nobody takes them seriously.
This gives them a unique privilege. By losing in the real, they always win in the spirit.
This is what is meant by "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." You have to lose something to gain something, so you have to lose everything before you can gain everything.