Cages

Despite going for a run over four hours ago, I sit here.  It’s late – well past midnight.  The deified ichor which permeated the very sweat of my body as I ran has formed a light film on my body.  My skin feels tight and alien regardless of how much whiskey I offer it.

I need to shower – I know.  Believe me: I know.  Housekeeping came first, though. 

I’ve had this thought itching in my head for nearly two days now.  The notion struck me yesterday while driving home, as if the force of a thousand cement mixers smashed into my body – in reverse.  It was as if for one, small, fleeting moment I could see the infinite curve of time.  I could understand tomes of glossolalia. I understood the largest secret in existence.

But it’s not a secret – in fact, it’s one of those things that doesn’t even exist.  It’s the base value in every equation, but we – as a culture – aren’t trained to value zeroes as a valid number.  Yet, without zero, there is no one, or two, or three, and onwards.  That’s Base systems for you – no one EVER credits zeroes.

This is a concept, though, so better to reduce everything to one word:  Cages.

See, I'm tired of people blaming cages for everything that's wrong with the world.  Maybe I'm just tired of people.  That's perfectly feasible - it seems the greater majority bares a vested interest in being miserable, while the lesser minority finds a way to monetize that malcontent.  I mean kudos and all, but for the love of humping monkeys:  do we need to perpetuate these miserable mentalities?

However, that's not my complaints with cages.  There’s a certain complacency to them - an inability to see the forest for the trees; the ocean for the waves; the day for the sunlight.  It's this defensive mechanism so many seem to spring upon the world, wherein they claim it is the world that's holding them down. 

This conjecture is not without merit.  We spend the first five years of our lives learning the rules of being alive – language, social interactions, when and how to use a bathroom, what is appropriate to wear in public, and so on.  The next thirteen are spent learning by was of large, impersonal centers of education.  Among the topics covered, we are taught diluted mathematics and physics, a vague understanding of classical and modern literature, and a sampling of music.  Our understand of history and politics is doubly reinforced – though its importance is easily halved.  In these arduous sessions, we are shown time and again how we humans have been oppressed through the ages.  How, from these oppressions, we’ve mounted large assaults resulting in fantastic cultural transformations.  How we fought archaic mathematics to learn the system we’ve used for over two centuries now.  How our concepts of physics has been locked since the early 20^th century.   How there will never be better literature than anything written prior to 1910. 

We are indoctrinated to believe that there is always some greater power holding us down.  That if in how ever many years a better boat has not been built, then there is no reason to go to sea.  From these foundations, we are parceled out, and we are assimilated into a faction that confirms that we – culturally - are, in fact, oppressed.  From organized religions to anarchy, they are all key in shaping our worldview.

They are key, because they all share the same core value – that there is a greater power bent on oppressing us.  In the case of God, we fight against Satan for the holy right.  In the case of Anarchy, we fight against the Government for the rights of the society.  We fight against the 2% because we’re the 98%.  We fight the Democrats because we’re Republicans.  The homosexuals because we’re straight.  The universe because – dammit all, we were here first.  There is a force holding us in our places, and there is another force that is diametrically opposed to this, and we should be in its good graces.

We are not taught that everything wrong with our worldview is “wrong” because someone else decided it for us – this is a concept we allow to be branded onto the grey matter between our ears.  In some cases, the logic sticks.  We accept their worldview, and things go on normally.  We never question whether there’s a greater machine in which we are simply cogs.  In other cases, we have revolutionary wars, Somali pirates, and government conspiracies regarding AIDS pandemics in Africa.

But the real cage – the very essence of what confines us; what cultivates us – has nothing to do with any of this.  This is all just the grand circus – a Sunday afternoon at the coliseum.  These things are just a vast ocean of red herrings to prevent a person from seeing the true Self.  There is only one cage: that which binds your spiritual self to your physical self.

You are inevitably – and invariably – capable of seeing the world in whatever way you want.  It is incumbent upon a person to perceive a red stop sign as being an indicator requiring a cessation of movement, as much as a for reading the bold, white lettering that is intended to reinforce this.  That sign does not say ‘Stop’; that shape does not, independently tell you place your foot on the brake pedal.  That is just a piece of wood or plastic.  Very ornate,  quite fetching, and fun to ricochet laser beams off of. 

Everything that you see and that you hear can only ever be interpreted by – you guessed it – you.  That sign doesn’t say ‘Stop’ – you are referencing what those shapes mean, and you are applying a value to it.  The shapes, letters; the letters, a word.  That word in turn has a motion. The motion, in this case, is referential by the presentation of the shapes – on a six-sided sign.  The sign is a color that you have been told to designate with a movement that will cause you to involuntarily freeze, or stop, before referencing what the words even mean.

In short – that sign only ‘tells’ you to stop your car, because that is how you are interpreting it; because that is how you are allowing yourself to be influenced by it.

No one can make you angry – you can get angry at what someone says, or you can be largely nonplussed.  No one can make you hit them – those synapses are under your control at all times.  No one can make you believe the world is holding you back – because you are the only one who can let the world hold you back.

When you remove all possible symptoms, you are left with the cause.  In this case, there is no one ‘thing’ acting as a true cage – except your own mind.  It has been trained to work for everyone except you.  And in doing so, it has made your body the first ‘cage’.

I tried to think of a synopsis – if you will – of my whole argument while running tonight.  One of the reasons I’m nervous about calling it a day is for fear of forgetting it.  So, without further ado, here you go:

It's not the government.
It's not religion.
It's not society.
The only cage we live in is that which ties ethereal to corporeal.
This cage can be made from lead or as prone to flight as a feather.
This is the cage that you bend to your will.
Everything else is the illusion.

Living is how you see it.  I can’t write few words and expect you to change your view – not only would that be impossible and unrealistic – it flies in the face of you discovering you.  If you see patterns and rhythms in society that resemble the corralling of livestock, that is present because of what you want to see.  If you see ultimate freedoms being suppressed, that is because you want to believe this is how a human behaves.  These are worldviews that have been twisted to fit a personal perspective or agenda.  We – as humans – have no such inherent limits.  We can do what we want, be who we want, in the ways that we want.  It’s easy to say being larger than our perspective is impossible; it is to give in to society’s expectation of what we should be.

Every single person is a light in the dark.  We are taught from youth to hide that light.  We are taught that the light brings the monsters – monsters of ego, selflessness, and the id.  We are never taught how to fight these monsters - simply that they are bad and must be avoided. We are taught a disassociated abstinence that sees what is wrong, but are taught that we cannot change these situations.  We are shown these faux cages and concepts meant to hold us back, instead of being shown how we are holding ourselves back. 

The easy, simple thing to do is to accept this truth.  It is to see life as a nine-to-five job, two and a half kids, white picket fence, golden retriever running the yard, hot dogs lightly burnt on the grill, and baseball on the old 46” telly.  This is the life we are given, and you know what? – it is easier.  Oh, fuck yes – so much easier to just be what the world expects.  But is it personally gratifying? – no.  Does it create a darkness in your soul for reasons you know now with solutions you will never know? – yes.  People are not being held back by the government any more than people are responsible for the moon being full one night, and new the next.  These are phases, and they too will pass.

The harder path is to find all the ways in which you’ve held yourself back.  To actually look into the pit, and face the demons.  Throw a hornet’s nest inside all the concepts that seem to make perfect sense.  If they still make sense when you’re done – congratulations: there’s nothing I can do for you.  Please collect your ribbon, party hat, and cake.  Exit’s to the left.

For me, it started with my repeatedly asking myself, “Why am I doing this?”  I wash the dishes because they’re dirty. I help at the shelter because no one else can.  I run because I want to lose some weight.  Not one of those is a purpose, though.  They are all excuses - every last one.  Not any of those is something that necessitates or implies my desire.  In a way, I can say that my life has been very reactive – something “needs” doing, so I do it.

That’s a whole lot of noise that needs fucking right there.   Know why?  I run for me – I love being fit and fast.  I wash the dishes for me – I want a clean kitchen.  I help at the shelter because I want to.

When you reduce the symptoms – the excuses – you’re left with nothing but yourself to be accountable.  Actually shaking down all that made me reactive, focused me on all of the ways I was not active.  And it was at that point that I realized, in providing an excuse for everything I did, I was making myself less than what I could be.  I wasn’t ever giving back to myself, but I was taking from myself.

I was making myself a cage to my own mind.