EternalCowabunga said:

Does anyone else get the feeling that absolutely everything we do is programmed and has been determined for us since birth?

That most people (or even more frightening, all people) are not really alive at all but acting out conditioned responses of their mind?

If I walked up to you, and told you that you were nothing more than an artificial program, would you believe me?

You know, a lot of people say we are animals.. I think we're a lot closer to being machines.

The main point I'm getting at is this - is higher self-awareness simply the ability to detach oneself from one's programs? And what would the point of this be if there is no real self to find outside the programs?

It is nights like these I'm thankful for the veil of materialism and the layers of illusion we can distract ourselves in. I remember Markos recently said that it is the greedy ignorant masses who are terrified by infinity and I suppose you can count me in with those for now. It is not the emptiness, or the love that is terrifying, it's the fact that everyone you thought you "loved" was nothing more than a projection of your mind and that those people are also mostly just minds who are barely more alive than a rock.

I mean, wouldn't you rather be asleep than have to be the only person awake enough to see the futileness of the masses? How many awake people are out there? Maybe it's getting less lonely...

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Beyond that we have a culture that creates a "hyper reality" that has nothing much to do with our natural reality

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This is very strange indeed. From my perspective, this hyper reality has a life of its own in the minds of individuals - it exists because enough people believe it does. I examined it once while on LSD, and it kind of looked like this picture:



This hyper reality limits the mind greatly and stifles self expression in those that put their faith in it. I'd go so far to say that it is a virus in consciousness.

EternalCowabunga said:

I change my mind from last night. Although we may be robots, there are some people out there who are good enough imitations of the real thing.

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Beyond that we have a culture that creates a "hyper reality" that has nothing much to do with our natural reality

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This is very strange indeed. From my perspective, this hyper reality has a life of its own in the minds of individuals - it exists because enough people believe it does. I examined it once while on LSD, and it kind of looked like this picture:



This hyper reality limits the mind greatly and stifles self expression in those that put their faith in it. I'd go so far to say that it is a virus in consciousness. 

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Interesting you say virus as in the movie  The Matrix. So...Want to take an amazing look at the rabbit hole? I totally recommend this book to everyone. A Beginner's Guide to REALITY, by Jim Baggott The book for anyone who has ever wondered what is real and how we know.

Middleman said:

One of my favorite quotes:

We reproduce catastrophe because we ourselves are traumatized – both as a species and individually, beginning at birth. Because we are wounded, we have put up psychic defenses against reality and have become so cut off from direct participation in the multidimensional wilderness in which we are embedded that all we can do is to navigate our way cautiously through a humanly designed day-to-day substitute world of symbols - a world of dollars, minutes, numbers, images and words that are constantly being manipulated to wring the most possible profit from every conceivable circumstance. The body and spirit both rebel - David Watson (The Pathology of Civilization)

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