Victims of existence
A selfish god wouldn’t make a very good one.
Good to who?
Primarily itself.
If it were selfish, it would experience the exquisite array of all the pains life has to offer.
Pain is pain.
But it’s an entirely different animal when it lives in existential terror.
This is man’s life, of course.
Do we make “good” gods?
If we are “ourselves” — we do harm to others.
If we are “ourselves” — we sabotage our every step.
If we are “ourselves” — we have, feet of clay.
So can it even be said, then, that we are gods?
We, standing alone, cannot be.
Why?
Because we’re hopeless by ourselves, as ourselves.
If we “block out” God, we cannot be with it.
We cannot be one.
And so we cannot be It.
Faith isn’t the hope that a certain something will show up on your doorstep one evening.
Nor is it pretending one mustn’t see reality clearly in order to move within it effectively.
And it’s certainly not crawling into a hole, proceeding to shake in the fetal position, willfully pretending that you do not wield the very same creative powers as It.
One must come to learn that grabbing life “by the reins” isn’t the same thing as controlling it. And that this marriage can only be perfected, by understanding the wisdom underlying this inherent lack of control.
How can something like this come?
Questions. Time. Pandemonium.
All manners of apparent absurdity on the outside, reflecting a strange, unknown crawl through the inside.
There is no answer.
I sat, and nothing.
You can’t just “do” something like this.
If I say how many years, this will become a benchmark. A false benchmark, that has no basis in anything, other than to create a new waiting game.
Even mentioning the word “years” will likely relegate this as a total impossibility for virtually all who might read it — because who in their right mind would “commit” to something they know nothing about?
Something they can’t even see. Something with no guarantees, no insurance policies, other than your own blood and guts (which is hardly any assurance).
If I say that it can happen within a day, or this very moment, and actually has to — then you will simply sit and wonder, when will it come? Will these words make it come? No? Then who’s?
It cannot come this way.
Failure is absolutely certain.
Why?
Because it would be a backburner initiative.
And you can’t possibly hope to backburn your way towards anything but quiet suffocation.
This “backburning” is really just waiting. It’s settling towards a satisfactory arrangement for The Long Wait.
And the truth is the mere idea of this being a possibility is all anyone really wants.
To pretend. To put it on a shelf as a display piece.
To save it “for later” — “one day” — “just in case”.
The comfort of lying about the possibility of getting there, is actually enough for most people.
And of course it is, because if you don’t know what it is, how could you possibly want it?
Something within you must click, change, transform, blossom, and explode.
You and I have no idea what this something is, or what your perfect alchemical formula may happen to be.
But wouldn’t you say that the point of life is to live?
Then why are people so lost in thought?
Why is there always a “problem”?
Why do things have to be a certain way?
Why do you need this person to do this, or be that?
Why do you agonize over your cravings for temporal happiness?
Why do you plan for a day that never comes?
I’ve always hated plans, because they’re inherently unnatural.
Just another Something to file away in your memory. To keep on your radar. And memory is nothing but a burden.
If you really wanted to do something, would you forget it?
If you really did, would you talk about it, or do it?
And how could you?
I can’t see with a projector casting images before my eyes. Can you?
You can’t even hear what your own language sounds like with all the ideas it sends soaring through your head.
As a child I would play a curious game with myself. Essentially, it was an exercise in truly listening to what the English language sounds like.
“Blocking” the understanding of language allows one to actually hear it.
If it sounds like nonsense, it’s likely your first time truly hearing it.
Like a word, repeated over and over, until it begins to lose its meaning.
This, which one may call a “sensory oversight”, is just one example, one thread in a large, rat-infested ball of mind.
What kind of gods can’t effectively use one of their own senses?
Having visions and having plans isn’t the problem.
The problem is becoming lost in the anxiety of them.
The attachment.
You can’t live like this, and you can’t even live then, so then what is the point of your life?
The idea of something is the opposite of that thing.
The word “God” is so glorious, and yet you’re very much a part of it, and always will be.
But it’s too glorious. It’s too fantastical. It leads one straight into starry-eyed visions of grandeur.
And is it grand?
How can I argue that it’s not?
But it’s not a grandiose idea — it’s a mysterious reality.
Ideas and their corresponding realities couldn’t be more different than each other.
Life lived with a single pair of eyes is no life at all.
If you’ve never known anything else, how can you be sure you’re really living it?
How could you know?
If you tell someone the truth is that they know nothing, they will become insulted or upset.
Why?
Because they simply cannot entertain the idea that they don’t know. What this would mean. And how they would feel about themselves.
Why?
Because this would turn their entire life upside down.
Who wants that?
Who really wants to change?
Isn’t it easier just to remain Yourself?
Maybe understanding the truth that no one really knows anything, is what allows a person to “take the knee” and examine for themselves. To forego the perceived shame.
Perhaps this is what’s required to allow one to “go and find out”.
Do you really want to know what you’ve allowed yourself to become?
The utter pain and dragging of the feet that’s slowly creeped into the reality of your existence?
This is where everyone gives up. Where they curl up, and call it a night.
They do not realize that venturing out into the night, alone, is the only way to discover the hidden door to the light.
There is a Hard Exit that one must take in this life, if they are truly ready to let go of the mess they’ve allowed it to become.
This Hard Exit is like breaking an addiction.
It’s about looking at what’s really going on. What really matters to you. And nobody else.
You can’t fix it. You can’t clean up this mess.
This problem is like a vampire that’s sipping away at your blood, day by day.
You can’t negotiate with it.
It has to go.
Your grand plans, your hopes, your expectations.
These ideas necessarily revolve around the idea of you and your existence.
And because you think it’s you, nothing but it can exist, ever.
But nothing can actually come from these thoughts.
You can’t make something happen by “thinking about it”.
You can’t even make something happen by “trying to make it happen”.
The thought is not the action. The action spawns from somewhere else.
The actions are automatic.
This is a delicate gearbox you do not want to play with.
All of these ideas of yourself, can only introduce friction.
Selfish god is an oxymoron.
The universe takes what it needs to take, nothing more, and forgets the whole thing.
In fact, there is nothing to forget.
What do we do?
Why do we do it?
What are we afraid of?
What does all of this center around?
A selfish god is no god at all but a victim through and through.
A painted, humanoid figurine, sitting atop a mirror-backed display case, having been petrified into stone by Medusa’s stare, long ago.
Fear hardened this poor soul, like so many others, until the day it shattered into dust.