Phil: You don’t approve of religion because?
Ayn: Because it’s mystical, because it’s based on faith. Not on reason and facts.

This made me think…I still to this day, using my own mind, do not hold things to be true based on arbitrary assertion. Typically when someone says they have ‘faith’, they have a belief in an arbitrary assertion. This is dangerous. Very dangerous.

But if a person doesn’t know something to be true, yet has enough experience or knowledge that they can trust that something might be true…this can be called ‘faith’, of which I can say I have regarding there being more to life than…well the pursuit of material gain, or satisfying sexual urges. I have faith that I can somehow attain the same sense of life I once had when I was in my youth. The same feeling of freedom, joy, and interest in the mystery of the world, instead of being a tired old curmudgeon that see’s the world as a big math problem that has been mostly solved, where the honest and humble are trampled and left in the dust of the cut throat.

Note: Something anyone must understand about Ayn Rand is her history. She came from Soviet Russia where the majority supported forced altruism, where you had no choice, the government was going to take your money and everything you owned for the “good of the people” as a whole (collectivism). She is not against private charity, or your personal decision to help those in need. She’s against any sacrifice by force/coercion.

The Mystic

I want to further clarify something I learned from Howdie Mickoski recently. I used to think that mysticism was the result of men trying to explain the universe they did not truly understand, only to create a sense of security for themselves in the universe, or to explain what happens to us after we die (out of fear of an unavoidable non-existence). I myself would rather accept a point of non-existence rather than lie to myself with some story of a “Christian” heaven.

Ancient schools known as ‘mystery schools’ were created to teach the ways of attaining this knowing of that which is beyond our mental reasoning/conceptual capacity. It is not because they wanted to be secretive that they are called ‘mystery’ schools, but because of the nature of what is taught that ‘mystery’ is the word used. “Mystery” is related to the Greek word ‘Myein‘.

"A mystic is one who searches for the answers to such questions as who am I, what am I, what is God, or what is the universe? They seek out these answers through acquired knowledge, personal experience, and altered states of consciousness where they attempt to reach the truths beyond the physical world. The experience of mysticism is beyond words. It can never be explained, but the explanations entice others to follow a similar path and experience similar beauty. Mysticism is not religion, yet at the heart of all religion is mysticism. It is not concerned with beliefs, doctrines or rules, but knowing, love, and the realization of a deeper reality.

A mystic is one who searches for the answers to such questions as who am I, what am I, what is God, or what is the universe? They seek out these answers through acquired knowledge, personal experience, and altered states of consciousness where they attempt to reach the truths beyond the physical world. The experience of mysticism is beyond words. It can never be explained, but the explanations entice others to follow a similar path and experience similar beauty. Mysticism is not religion, yet at the heart of all religion is mysticism. It is not concerned with beliefs, doctrines or rules, but knowing, love, and the realization of a deeper reality."

- Howdie Mickoski – Ancient Egyptian Widsom Revealed

This is what I want. I can somehow tell that my own judgmental stances are keeping me from enjoying my life like I used to. I hear something, and it reminds me of something that embodies trite, old, stale, overdone, etc…I don’t have time for it. There is so much for me to process in this life, I must filter out the shit. So I filter out the crap music…and for good reason…but there are likely many things I throw out…many babies thrown out with the bath water. A song reminds me of  Creed, or sanitized adult contemporary crap (Michael Bolton), or…so many lame things…and I can’t listen to it. I stopped listening to songs that were good even, but I didn’t want their influence corrupting my artistic vision of the type of music I wanted to create.

So many experiences ….

1. What kind of self inquiry have you done? I’m not sure. The pointers I was given didn’t point me in a direction I felt comfortable with. It seemed as if it wanted me to question everything I know, but I expected a trajectory, a path, not just throwing me into nothing and…no training wheels.
2. Did you like doing it? I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know where to start, what was the 2nd step, the 3rd step. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t expect to have my hand held, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? I had no clue what I was inquiring into?
3. Was it revealing, satisfying, challenging, disturbing, or something else? Frustrating.
4. How do you see your concerns, your capacities, and your limitations in relation to inquiry? Fuck you.
5. How fixed is this knowledge about yourself? Lots of stuff is fixed. Whatever. How is this fucking inquiry into past inquiry attempt supposed to fucking help me? How am I supposed to get beyond that by talking about past failed inquiry?
6. How does that knowledge affect your experience of inquiry now and your openness to pursuing it further? I don’t think I’m going to make it past 5 minutes at attempting. I think I’m going to expect it to just fall flat…no progress. Just this talk about not expecting anything, not having beliefs, etc. etc. asking yourself about those…but not really getting anywhere. Not realizing something deeper than where I’m at right now.

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. ” – from Intentions by Oscar Wilde

I identify my feeling first as ‘boredom’, but really it is un-ease, anxiety. I feel it in my arms and chest. It’s like this nervous energy being pent up inside of me. I feel a craving in my stomach, even though I have already ate.

I need to hold onto this money I have, because I don’t have a job. I need to save it for tolls and parking so that when I go for a job interview I don’t get hit with fines and fees. I cannot help to feel anxious and then justify spending money on something that will possibly make me content with my life in the moment. I hate this cycle. I just keep spending a little bit by little bit, then I see how much I’ve spent and I beat myself up over it. This doesn’t help. Still after all the searching, and hunting for something to do, I have a lingering anxiety, plus the fear that I won’t have that money available when I need it.

Spiritualists say that I’m in my head too much, so much energy in my head. It makes sense. I almost feel tired of thinking so much. I constantly think about what to do next, what to do next, what will make me happy, oh this, oh that…It’s madness!!

I should be able to just sit here, meditate, or something. I don’t find myself doing that. I find myself continuing this cycle of trying to find something to satisfy me, and all I do is just run away from this anxiety. It’s pointless. I’ll never win…I’ll just keep running all my life or learn to get rid of this unease…this dis-ease. The shitty thing is that I know that it’s possible to experience the anxiety, to dig into it and find out what emotions are responsible for it. But I just resist doing it. I have a room mate that is here right now, so I can’t be loud expressing anger or sadness. But when he’s gone I still end up doing other things.

I think I’m going to start writing about my past…like a sort of discursive auto-biography. I’ll start out chronologically, but I’m not going to confine it to that. It’s going to be everything that is associated with any fear based emotion. Childhood to the present.