Is that really who you are?

There are no problems in life. You think you have problems, you believe them all to be true....you think you have to solve them and that there isnt a minute to loose..

Those problem are the minds attempt to keep a sense of identity. Im going to try and describe that now......

Most people think they are a thought. A position. A mind made image of themselves. And this always needs comparison with someone else. This identity that im trying to talk about NEEDS other people to derive its own sense of identity. It needs to be either better than someone at something (you would normally derive some kind of pleasure here) or worse than someone (this would usually carry some kind of pain, and the blind hope that one day you will conquer them in the end). Either way youve equated this with who you are.

These thoughts (that you think are your identity) are running around in your head all day. Lets look at an example...... You think your funny. Suddenly Jim carrey walks into the room, now your not funny. Most people experience this as a diminshment of who they are. You 'thought' you were 'the guy that was funny'. In other words you had an image of yourself as being the funny guy, and now theres someone who can do that better, and your role is threatened. This is the essence of what spiritual practices call 'thought based identity' or more traditionally the ego. Your ego derived a 'sense of self' from the thought of being 'the funny man'.

The ego's basic problem (which is your basic problem if you are in the grip of it) is that it lives in an imagined world. Now in your imagined world, you think (staying with the previous example) that you are the funny guy and 'others' laugh at your jokes, enjoy your company and revere in your hilarity. Now when someone comes along and cripples that imagination, you start to suffer. Sometimes the ego will even lash out at the perceived threat to 'your mind made world'.

So now a problem or hurt is born, your identity was threatened and you contracted. Maybe now you want to take lessons in comedy, or work on your scripts, oneliners etc. Now something to notice here is that you don't want to do these things because you enjoy it, but you want to do them to protect your sense of self. You felt threatened and this is a 'reaction' to it -  in fact, to the ego this is a very serious problem indeed.

The whole thing was false because, you were never a funny man.

You were a man who happened to be funny. Its that way round. You are 'being' first. Your identity is not with 'things' or 'roles'. Your identity really is far deeper than any thought can ever be.

Funny man is not who you are! It might be one of the things you happen to do (to a certain degree) but its not who you actually are. You are not  a thought. Funny man is just a thought that comes and goes.

Your identity is  the being or awareness that even makes those thoughts possible. When you just be that, there are no more problems and life starts to feel good.

7 reasons to believe schools produce educated idiots and not smart individuals

The aim of any educational establishment is to produce individuals who better society and solve the problems humanity faces. In light of the progressive degeneration of our society into a people who enjoy watching shows of the calibre of 'deal or no deal', it is now time to ask some important questions about our system and where it is going. In closer inspection we find that not only do our educational systems fail at key tasks, they may well be designed to fail. Why you ask? Could their very purpose be to dum down our own population. After all, a servile obedient people are not a threat to authority or the status quo and will quietly do their job, asking no questions. A heavenly fodder for big businesses and the elite runners of society. As was said in a time during the industrial revolution - "the factories of england need their fodder". Here are a 7 things schools do on a daily basis to produce educated idiots as opposed to clear thinking individuals.

1. Drill them into a routine

We assume life happens by routine, Monday-Friday, 9-5, most weeks a year. But thats only because of conditioning. Life doesnt happen by routine, employees happen by routine. They have to do the bloody leg work! The people who run the businesses dont work by routine, they work when they get ideas. Some of the most successful people work by inspiration, a routine would merely get in the way. The most innovative ideas, the best businesses, profound literature and most sublime art were not concieved as part of routine. They happen precisely when a routine approach to life is abandoned. They happen when you decide to live life now - not on a monday morning as u slug yourself into work. 

2. A form of external governance

If you are being bullied, what should you do - obviously go and whine to the teacher like a spineless buffoon who cannot take responsibility for their own life. Bullying is not tolerated? That doesnt stop it being a fact of life, one which you will encounter throughout your life whether you like that or not. There is much to be learnt from bullying - by facing that which you are scared of, you learn new things about yourself, and you ultimately learn that there is no reason to be scared. You have a voice with which to speak up, a mind to reason and two feet to stand firmly on the ground. Paradoxically those who learn this will have a much less chance be bullied. The ones who go running to teacher will have to keep running their whole lives. Obviously schools openly encourage such damaging and delusional behaviour, advising anyone who is bullied to run to the nearest form of authority who will duly deal with it. This external form of governance portrays unrealistic and false impressions of the world which everyone will realise the hard way sooner or later. Schools encourage mindless, fearful wimp like behaviour over taking responsibility for your life and the results are plain for everyone to see.


3. Subsurvience to authority

This is a pretty obvious one. Schools shamelessly enforce obedience and servile behaviour. Does this make good people - no - it makes excellent employees. What do big business leaders or industry leaders want? Someone who has been trained all their life to take orders and simply get on with it, have a good respect for authority and has come to terms with the fact that it isnt something to be challenged. He/she must also be willing to work throughout the week (like all normal people), and count themselves extremely lucky every friday for being granted the generous gift of weekends. And what better preperation for that than our present educational system? Business leaders must be rubbing their hands with glee, unless they of course had a part to play in it.....

4. A central figurehead

A headteaccher or dean, looked upon in awe as the figure of ultimate authority within that institution isnt a very friendly idea. And its not as harmless as it looks. Central authority is a dangerous idea. It carries with it the threat of a heirarchial power with (for the student) the threat of progressively more severe punishments. There is always the ominous threat of 'taking this further', 'to the head of year, then the head of school' etc. This makes the victim feel like a very insignificant and powerless entity in the face of the imposing wrath of the institution. The fact that the head of power isn't immediately visible adds to the mysterious and ominous threat of it. And this is something the child is conditioned to come to accept from a very young age. Thus beginning a position of fearful respect for the looming sense of authority which will in most cases direct the rest of his life.  

5. Undervaluation of creative subjects

If we were to look at the value the creative mind has brought into the world, we would have to concede that humanity would still be trying to rub his hands together in order to cook a dead antelope without it. From the spears needed to kill prey to the internet to aviation, we have no better way of overcomng obstacles than our own creativity. The examples mentioned above are grandiose, but creative solutions play a part in every small niche in the smallest and most obscure communities, many of which go unnoticed. Unfortunately schools have largely dismissed creativity opting instead for the more 'traditional' subjects. The dictum 'just repeat it until it becomes second nature' is no short of a rape of natural intelligence. A slow painful death for creativity. And theres evidence of that all around us. We all know severeal individuals (and i know a few), whos minds work like they were produced en masse in china. Always thinking about what to do next, what to solve, what to work out. These are the unacceptable individuals who do sudokus on the train because it is a 'more productive' use of time (in all the pointless concoctions of mankind, the sudoku must rank up there with best). Tragically those who are more inclined to have a creative approach to life are told to stop being pretentious and 'be like everyone else and just get a job,' and most eventually give in.

6. Give the dog a bone, Keep them wanting more!

When you are given fixed periods of freedom such as 'playtime' or 'recess' or other such imbecelic contraptions, you start to believe that freedom is something that is given TO you. And that life is inherently a struggle most of the time, 'spare time' being something to look forward to with excited anticipation. Again this is great preperation for the working life, in which you will be grateful for the couple of days off a year that you may or may not get. Thats life! Not for the people that seem to have been extremely fortunate - but it is the case for you and I - thats what were conditioned to believe in. For years to come the educated idiots who eventually become adults still look forward to playtime, perhaps now instead of skipping ropes they blow of steam with A class drugs (this is true in the city). 

7. Keep the idiots focused on the future so theyll never actually live

Probably the most damaging of all influences is the persistent requirement that we live now soley for a better future, and while this has some truth to it, it has been driven to the point of absurdity. The future does not exist! What i mean by this is that the future is nothing but a mental concept. Only the present moment really exists, thats where you can make the best decisions which in turn will inevitably result in a better future. But our system says to us: get good grades, make good relations, become a better person, become more polite, plan for university, and for gods sake dont be happy now or youll surely fuck up your future. The reality is in fact, when you truly live now you can make your own future, not fearfully take exams that may offer some vague benefit in the future (and today it seems very unlikely that they will).