I am a newly published author with more books to come. I blog about fantasy, philosophy, self-discovery, and their intersection in the worlds each of us build. I also look forward to a newsletter in the future.
Author: G L Hooks
Self-published author. My first book Return to Hub World
is available and I have a middle grade fantasy just released, as well as a YA epic fantasy in need of editing.
I have been writing in the mountains of Southwest Virginia
for a few years now, and hope that the escapes from reality
of fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror are still in demand.
I recently made a decision. It was a relatively simple choice between staying at my current minimum wage job and accepting a management position. The first allows me to write, focusing my creative energy on projects of my choice, but doesn’t pay all the bills, or net enough for me to publish what I write.
The management job uses the skills I have developed over decades, and just to start, pays more than double, plus bonuses. I could afford to publish the three manuscipts that are ready to go to the editor, but the focused energy required by a management position might cause my daily writing and creative spark to suffer. I considered it for weeks, made lists, weighed options, and finally came to a decision.
Thirty years of challenging joy
Some of my family and friends thought I should take the money, use my skills and experience to pursue corporate excellence in a small town. For me, this would be the safe choice. Confident in my understanding of business, and the restaurant world specifically, I never doubted I was up for the challenge.
Others thought I should continue to chase my dream of being a published author and not give up. I truly love to write, to weave a tale that others enjoy is so satisfying, but promoting myself and marketing my work is not how I wish to spend my time. The constant need to grab attention, to wave my arms and shout ‘look at me, look what I’ve done‘ is exhausting. How do you capture anyone’s attention when you’re one of millions shouting the same thing into the void?
Wishes Granted
Besides, how many dreams should we get? I found the love of my life; a dream many never realize. Together, we raised her daughter. She grew into a powerfully independent person, married her love, and gave us a beautiful granddaughter; another dream fulfilled. We tried many businesses, finally buying a restaurant, and succeeded beyond our expectations; yet another dream achieved.
Did I make a good decision? Did I make the right choice? Only time will tell…
What an inane and witless phrase! Of course it was the right choice, for where I am in life and where I want to go, it was the correct path.
I have to admit, waiting to see how it turns out is exciting and aggravating. To live the suspense of life as it unfolds can be almost unbearable. But one way or the other, it will all work out, exactly the way it should.
Wow, hard to believe it’s already time to renew my wordpress website and domain.
Confusion again, but he knew this was a place he had been before, though he couldn’t remember when or… anything. What was his name? Where was he? Heavy, his arms were leaden, a weight he couldn’t move.
Some lady he couldn’t remember knowing said, “You had a seizure, Frankie?”
He tried to say Who the hell are you?… Who the hell is Frankie?… but nothing came out. The effort to remember was exhausting and frustrating at the same time. He squinted, bright light in his eyes, and heard another voice.
“Step back, please. He’s having another one.”
***
There were flashes. He couldn’t say it hurt, but it was disorienting. Disconnected for a few seconds, then thick darkness… and smells. Loamy, earth-wormy soil and a wet fur smell filled his nostrils. With his eyes open wide, he couldn’t see a thing, but he heard rustling. Panicky, he gulped the heavy air.
“Is something there?” he whispered, hoping there wasn’t.
“What are you doing back so soon, Frankie?” He knew her voice. “You couldn’t have gone home for more than ten minutes. When I told you to go, I meant for another fifteen or twenty years, not a few minutes.”
As his sister talked, everything began to lighten up and memory flooded back, along with a hollow emptiness. He knew Bess, remembering her long battle with cancer. The years of treatment and the wasting away that was hard to watch, operations and, finally, hopes dashed. Tears welled and the hole grew with the memory.
This was not the wasted Bess from those recent memories, but the Bess he’d known his whole life, making the loss more poignant. Her vibrant glow and energy were almost too much as he dared to hope. The beautiful smile and shiny auburn hair made him feel like he always did around her, like his dreams were possible.
The light grew and everything expanded. An Autumn evening revealed itself, with a sweater-weather cool breeze and a few clouds. The scene, orange, red and gold, clarified itself before his eyes.
He looked around. “Where were you before all this appeared, Bess? I mean, I feel bad leaving you in this place. I’m supposed to look after you, and to know you’re trapped in some dank cave with some animal until I come back is not reassuring.”
“I wasn’t trapped and I don’t need you to rescue me, brother. I thought you understood, but let’s try again. I was resting and I like earthy smells. The smell of damp fur is soothing to me and I create those feelings and smells because they relax me. What you think of as trapped and closed off, I love and find calming. After all, this is my idea of heaven, not yours.”
A doe, with a barely spot-free yearling beside her, bounded from the bright forest. Frankie was surprised and cautious, but Bess smiled, reaching into her green sweater pocket, she pulled a handful of dried fruit mixed with grains.
She squatted, “Here you are, sweeties.”
Both animals ate from her hand as she reached back into her pocket and made a pile of dried fruit and grains. A squirrel came from a nearby tree, scampering up her back to perch on her shoulder. She rubbed the deer’ necks as she stood, and turning, reached into her other pocket. She presented a pecan to the squirrel, who got busy removing the shell, with his little twinkly black eyes never leaving Frankie.
“What are you doing back here, Frankie?”
“I don’t know. It is so calm here and so painful and hectic there. I’m confused and scared. I can’t remember anything or anyone when I’m there.”
“I’m figuring out what it means to be Great Spirit, but I do know it’s not time for you to be here. There are things you still want to do and life to practice before…this. It’s the whole reason I put you in the hospital in the first place.”
“You put me in the hospital?” Frankie looked surprised.
“Yes! You are trying to do better, with your walking and change in diet, but the consequences for your actions stuff was going to catch up with you. There were still physical things that were going to take you before you were ready. The seizure was the only way for the doctors to catch and treat the problems.”
“But that could have killed me.”
“That’s why it happened in town, before you went home. The rescue squad was there in no time and had you at the hospital in a few minutes. There’s a plan, Frankie. You are welcome to override it with your choices, which is why you keep showing up here.” Bess smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“But I’m worried about you. I can’t leave you all alone. I’m supposed to look after you.”
“How do I explain this when words are so tiny? I’m not anymore alone than any of us. We are each Creators, and what you think of as reality is where we practice creating. I believed I was trapped in a small insignificant body as it fell apart and you helped me tremendously by being there. I finally realized fear of the unknown and a confused need to fight, to hang on, were keeping me attached to a body that could no longer serve me. It was then that I was ready to become the more we all are.”
“The more we all are? What the hell does that mean?”
“Each of us is Great Spirit, The Creator, The Divine. Whatever word makes you comfortable, since words cannot describe any of this.” She waved her arms wide and a breeze ruffled her auburn hair, swirling leaves of red and gold, while a flock of birds danced on the wind. “This, you see, is all me. We are each aspects of our own reality and it is all One. We play in what we think of as reality and pretend we aren’t whole and complete. The illusion goes away when you pass through the veil, if you want to know.”
“So, you mean how we act doesn’t matter? We all end up in heaven?”
“No. We all get what we believe we deserve, which can be the harshest judgment. Our beliefs are so much smaller and limit what we truly are in the afterlife.”
“Is that another way of saying we get what’s coming to us?”
“In a way, but not really. Happiness is an emotional expression of joy and something everyone deserves. If you believe you have to have a certain car, job or person to be happy, you have limited your access to happiness. Your decision doesn’t mean happiness isn’t right there as a state of mind anytime you want it. It’s the same on this side of the veil, only much bigger.
“So, if I believe I am completely justified in treating others like crap and taking advantage of their trust just to accumulate more, what happens to me here?”
“You have the material illusions around you that you treasured in life. The hollow, empty, lifeless things you thought you needed. In fact, there are aspects of Great Spirit trapped in a bleak, polluted world with all the creature comforts, and no one that cares for them. It is by their choice they stay, just as in life when they cut themselves off from the important human lessons all around everyone. There is no right or wrong, it’s not that simple. There are many levels of understanding and everyone is doing their best with the lessons they’ve learned.”
“This stuff is making my head hurt.”
“Which is why it’s time for you to go back. You won’t remember any of this, but know I am in a great place doing great things and stop worrying about me.”
Bess reached out, placed one hand lovingly on his cheek and tapped Frankie twice right between the eyes.
***
He opened his eyes to an artificially lit room, with three people standing over him.
“I think he’s coming out of it,” said woman in a nursing top. “Frankie, can you hear me?”
“Yeesh …” he whispered, nodding his head slowly.
“You’re very lucky to be here.”
He nodded, feeling tired but oddly content, like someone was watching over him. A squeeze on his hand, he squeezed back. Drifting off, he wondered who the nice ladies were.
I write fantasy right. A few years ago an article started me thinking about trees and forests, and how they communicate. Their social interaction became a fascinating subject as I dug into it. Ideas popped and I wrote a short story to help remember the premise and where it would possibly lead. A have recently picked it back up, adding a few scenes and expanding on the idea. This is an excerpt from the work-in-progress.
Forests play the long game
A Piece of ‘The Forest’
The creature appeared as it always did, different every time, but with the same deep, dark eyes. This time it was a squirrel, larger than normal squirrels and shiny black. It sat on a fallen tree, waiting for him to notice. When Clay made eye contact, it scampered along the trunk of the fallen tree toward the exposed root. He raked his hair out of his eyes as his short frame labored over the tree trunk, sweat running down his back. He saw a faint trail running slightly uphill. Nothing looked familiar, but that was normal in this forest as everything changed depending on how you entered and what you were seeking. Luckily, the forest, for a short time, would allow him to seek El without knowing his cousin’s reasons for breaking his word.
A shiny black flash, maybe a tail, told him he was moving in the right direction. The glimpses of the mountain to the north became fewer as the canopy closed, darkening everything and cooling him off.
The forest was older than the mountains it had overgrown. It started eons ago by surrounding the bases of the ancient range, and had slowly consumed each peak as it was worn by time. The trail ran along a small ridge paralleling a little stream.
He heard rustling in the brush close to the water as a stag raised his head, tilting it slightly, seeming puzzled by the sight of a pudgy little human in his forest. A breeze rattling through the upper branches never touched the forest floor, but joined the soft sound of water over rocks and provided a kind of background white noise.
Clay stopped at a fork in the trail, catching his breath, unsure which way to go. He heard a chittering down the fork leading across the stream, but he waited to see the squirrel. The forest could be fickle with its permission and caution was usually rewarded, just as recklessness was punished. A moment later a rustling of maple leaves as the black squirrel dropped from the upper parts of a tree to appear on the ridge trail. Forest twilight thickened as more and more light was choked off by the canopy above.
He heard the low hum a few minutes before he found the clearing. Blinking as his eyes adjusted to the brightness, the dull, black obelisk was there, standing in the center of a circular depression. Lavender and grasses surrounded it, rustling in the light breeze. The sun’s warmth felt good after the cool of the forest. The scented meadow, full of wildflowers and busy insects, was pleasant as he crossed to stand beside El.
Clay handed El a shirt and removed his jacket, trying to forestall the sweat down his back. They stood for a moment, looking at the light-absorbing, black shard stabbed into a white slab. The two eye level glyphs were etched in bright red, as always, and Clay was sure there were two more on each of the other two sides. The cleansing hum never got any louder, just seemed to penetrate deeper the closer you came. Two mallets lay on the white slab beside the obelisk.
A Work in Progress
It is tough to let go of a story, to stop the inner judge and leave it (which is why writers have editors). Every time I read something I wrote, I think it would be better if I said this here or deleted part of this. Constantly seeing from a different set of eyes, each of us change from moment to moment. The new me sees things the past me missed, and loses the perspective the me of the past had so in focus.
What was I thinking? This excerpt is a glimpse into the past me, and will evovle into a book, with the future me, my editor, and time.
If the pandemic did anything, it showed the world who the essential workers truly are. Now the haves are forced to push back against the should haves. It’s not, as the ones who control the purse strings say, that folks don’t want to work, it’s that they don’t want to work for peanuts anymore. Especially after they watched the haves remain safely sheltered in place. The essential minimum wagers and the underappreciated were economically forced to brave the ravages of the pandemic world, and didn’t have the option of staying at home.
There are millions of folks who realized their worth (that our economy doesn’t run without them). They are beginning to understand their power. The cry goes up by employers, we can’t find anyone to work, and that cry should finish with, for what we used to pay. Now the ones, who for decades paid a pittance for great worth, are trying desparately to put the value genie back in the bottle.
Part-time becomes full-time as the employer needs more. Competent, well-mannered individuals have become rare in a pandemic ridden world, and their value remains woefully unappreciated by those so used to receiving the lion’s share with so little effort. For many decades, the wealthy few have allowed the pay of those that labor to fall behind.
The Giants Wake Up
The irony is those who have supported this world economy with their sweat and hard work are, in most cases, self-motivated to do a good job. That social need of individuals to feel included and valued takes over. Combine this with the desire to do good work, and a corporation can take advantage of these human needs. This is a corporate tendency, to undervalue and not worry about the pay for essential employees. There is no concern with whether wages keep pace with an employees cost of living. Unfortunately, the workforce understands the bare minimum isn’t covering the risk any more.
What wolf?
But now the sleeping giants have awakened to their worth. Employees realize that Jack, the wealthy sneak thief, has stolen their golden goose. The problem for the giants is the wealthy have already created a world that works for them. They operate behind the curtain, snatching most of the value. They have many ways of getting the giants to forget, or fight among themselves. Getting them to believe the lies, one day you’ll be one of us, or that giant is different and bad, or don’t let the needy take what you have.
We are like the flock of sheep, scared by the threat of the wolf all their lives, just to be eaten by the shepherd. All of us need to realize whose enjoying the benefits of our golden goose. Hint, its not the neighbor who needs help to make ends meet. It’s not even the wolf they use to scare us into spending more on our defense, at home and abroad. Look behind the curtain to the corporate welfare that supports our rickety system. Look to the billions, generated by our work, to be passed back and forth between the few.
I started a new job this week, having experienced a scare. A couple of weeks ago, my roof started leaking and my car needed surprise repairs. I realized my pool of funds could fast become a puddle and something had to happen. This wake up call came like an alarm erupting in the middle of a wonderful dream, grating and unignorable.
I look back on all the time I had to write, avoiding reality by burying myself in the next paragraph. What a gift that time was and how unappreciated. It’s truly amazing how you can’t see your blessings when you’re in the middle of them. I took my time so for granted, working steadily toward getting a book published. Accomplishing that didn’t put me on easy street, or even give me an income, other than sporatic sales, but I proved to myself it was doable.
I did meet my goal of publishing a book, and I continue to write. Thanks to those productive years, I am awaiting coverart for my next ready-to-publish book. It is a middle grade fantasy, The Collector’s Apprentice. I’m spending my free time working on The Last Straw (a fantasy involving pixies) and editing A Source of Dragons (a YA epic fantasy). I also have the first draft of the second book in my Hub World (a dark fantasy) series.
What cha doin’?
So, I’m staying busy or, as some writers know, avoiding the things I dread. Looming over me is the tedious work of marketing and social media promotion that is essential to self-publishing, if you hope to break through. Some love that part of it, but I huddle over my computer, writing to escape the need to toot my own horn (and housework). Avoidance, of first this and then that, is truly why I have written so much.
Now that my time isn’t all my own, I am striving to be grateful for what time I do have. I count myself lucky to avoid reality through my writing. This is a habit that will serve me very well, even if my writing remains a hobby. Gratitude for laundry is next on my list of thankful challenges.
Accomplishing a goal can be the most freeing, or the most confusing thing you can do. Freeing, in that you have succeeded. You decided there was something you wanted to do, and you focused your energy enough to do it. Confusing, because of the what now? hanging over your head after you accomplish it.
For ten years, I pursued a literary agent and traditional publication for my fantasy novels. I had a trilogy I was very proud of, a third draft ready-for-real-editors (That’s what I thought at the time).
The goal of writing a novel accomplished, I allowed the next goal to step forward. Get that first book out there. I queried agents, having used up my preferred agent short list rather quickly, I continued through hundreds in search of a match. I doggedly rewrote query letter, bio, synopsis, and opening pages, trying desperately to catch the attention of someone to introduce my book to the world.
Then it struck me, my writing creativity was being siphoned off by the process, and that process was flawed. Much like the Catholic church when Martin Luther came along, agents were losing their gatekeeper status. Instead of how to make the book better, an agent’s advice evolved into, find your own beta readers, get some critique partners, make your own website so you can market and promote your book.
Refocusing My Goals
Literary agents used to provide or help with these things. They worked at limiting distractions, so writers could focus on their writing. In this modern universe, you have to be so many different things at once. There’s not much help for most, no one to hold your hand, tell you how good you are, or buffer you from the rocky shore of criticism. That luxury has been swallowed in a self-publishing frenzy.
The only balm to ease the anxiety is attention, and that’s where traditional publishing is focused now. A mediocre book can be a bestseller, if marketed correctly, and conversely, an excellent book can be lost in the ocean of new books released. This leads to doubting your ability. The public has to notice your book, and since I didn’t catch the Moby Dick of advertising campaigns with my debut novel, writing more books seemed to be my answer to getting better and being noticed. I realized, if I actually wanted to write, instead of focusing on wooing someone to advocate for my book, I needed to learn to self-publish. Step one, I needed to be on social media and create my own website, but a lot of agents expect this from their writers these days. So, IT chops are now necessary to write successfully, or the cash to buy IT.
After U-Tube research and preparation, I plunged down the rabbit hole of self-publishing. I hired a great editor (Grace Bradley), a great cover artist (Lia Davis), and used Draft2Digital to publish my e-book and print version of my fourth novel. I created a website, glhookswriter.com (because I couldn’t afford an IT hookup), and a Facebook page to promote my writing. I am now working on publishing a second novel, and editing my third. I have three works-in-progress, and a couple of ideas for what comes next.
Now that I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on how to do this for a living, I must take a step back. The world doesn’t automatically provide payment for chasing your dream, or the long game required for the payoff. I start a new job today, because…bills.
When the collapse of order happens, the cycle always begins again with the measurement of time and use of linear memory to define it. We accept the perception of a passage of time and the belief in changes instead of the understanding of cycles. We will again learn to communicate thoughts and ideas, eventually building complex stories so we can domesticate and control the next generation.
We place our faith in the ordering of things, the building upon that order, and the promises made by order. We discount the cycles that rise from and fall back into the un-nameable. The examples of these cycles hide in our concept of time and the grading of the importance of things. We deny the fact that we and every other thing has a life cycle that leads us back to the source. This denial creates what we choose to believe, and causes our need to deny or ignore our natural cycle to drive us. We strive to accomplish some goal before the day, month, year, decade, or century grinds us down, instead of traveling the life path with joy.
The miracle of simply being, and the experience of now, are lost. They’re lost in the accumulation and grading of things, the setting and accomplishing of some arbitrary goal, and the desperation created to hold fast against our cycles. We fight every aspect of life, instead of enjoying the now. As humans, our final hurdle is old age, and the realization that all the created layers of order won’t stop death. But death defines you only if fear drives you to cling, believing your body is you.
Goals Aren’t the Goal
The focus on past accomplishments and future acquisitions, or past regrets and future disappointments, makes our now just another commodity, another thing to be clung to and judged against the now of others. How productive have you been? How many things have you collected? How much do you know about the things of the world? How busy are you? How many goals have you achieved?
Busy work isn’t the goal. Accumulation of more isn’t the goal. The knowing of things isn’t the goal. Goals aren’t the goal. Often there is a total lack of satisfaction at the end of a person’s cycle, as they return to the source, realizing the shiny things distracted them. When they leave, all they have accumulated or regret not doing, all the now not lived, shows in their lack of contentment.
The true question is how often have you looked into another’s soul, seen need, and helped? How many times a day do you stop and quietly thank the universe for your now? How often are you grateful for what you have? Recognize you are a vast ocean of unlimited potential temporarily separated from that knowing. Being apart from the un-namable, as a wave seems apart from the ocean, doesn’t make you any less that essence. Since all this is only a cycle, and at the conclusion you will rejoin the potential yet again, enjoy the now.
What If?
What if our ultimate achievement is to transcend the cycle and realize our full potential as creators? Select philosophy and theology constructs argue we are all one. What if our goal is for each blessed bag of mostly water to recognize the collective-self we are all a part of? To transcend our societal constructs, forgo the judgmental nature of our dog-eat-dog world, and realize that the pattern continues until we all become aware of ourselves? We must stop creating unconsciously and become deliberate and aware of who we are and what we do.
This is a stopping place for this theoretical philosophy of a magic system for a fantasy world. The following are answers I have arrived at from asking the right question, at the right time. This list will surely grow, or shrink.
Time can be explained as a product of our perception . It’s a very complicated concept that proves difficult to consider as long as we operate within its linear progression. By recording one word after another, it could be argued that I capture and hold time. Just as you use time when you read the words held on the page. The understanding of the thoughts behind the words might further use our time.
A fascinating theory that brings science and philosophy closer leans toward the fact that memory, and the conscious ordering of events, make it possible for time to exist. Or, to put it another way, time is not a real thing if there is no linear memory, no observer. In reality, everything rises from and folds back into the now, and now is all that exists.
Wait…what? If we don’t remember something, it fades back into the vast unknown, to be rediscovered in a new now. Language became a way to pass on our definitions, plans, and ideas without having to cycle through recovering them from the potential. Instead of losing everything as another culture collapsed, this time we have learned more elaborate cheat codes. We have created ways to sort and understand previous civilizations, and built a body of knowledge, beliefs and opinions. This constructed order grows, building each layer upon previous understandings of how to organize our reality.
We impose these understandings on the next generation, and other cultures within our reach. Unfortunately, this has led us to believe the world of things is the most important part of our existence. This one belief has allowed technology to define our reality, far out stripping our humanity. Our opinions cause us to lose our true selves in the world of things we have developed and created. We act like this loss of connection with all-that-is, our loss of self, is not important.
Knowledge comes from comparison and contrast, the determining of right or wrong, good or evil, the gradient of things and where they fit on the notching stick of judgment. By putting things in order, we impose ideals on everything and comparisons of real life to the ideal. These notions aren’t wrong, but they cause us to miss the perfections of an imperfect world. They try to place the unnamable potential and its cycles into boxes of defined rules.
As long as we see our reality as this judgment based, dog eat dog world, we will miss our own nature and cling to the illusion. A part of us is drawn to the logic of balance implied by good and evil, black and white, right and wrong. It makes us comfortable to think we know, but that serves our shallow, opinionated self. The potential we truly are is the source of all that is, and lies deeper, beneath what we believe ourselves to be.
The Cycle Repeats
Your limits as a creator are only those you accept. Your realization of this is what terrifies most societies, at the root. They seek to control the masses and how will society do that if each of us is a conscious creator? Not that acceptance of norms isn’t a good thing, but the structures our civilizations build always take it too far. When the societal construct becomes too afraid and stifling, it becomes inflexible and brittle, collapsing as it always does in this world of cycles.
We will rise again from limitless potential as we have unknowable times before. Starting to box and define the potential into manageable chunks, we order things by judging and grading. We do this to protect the people and advance our collective knowledge. The cycle begins again as we pass these chunks of cheat code down.
Limiting the number of folks taught all the secrets, the powerful try to horde knowledge in order to reserve power for the few in-the-know. We do this in the name of protecting the masses from themselves and guiding society. Manipulating knowledge and keeping secrets is what humans do, seeking an advantage in the black and white world is natural, from a certain linear point of view.
We take the tendency of potential to balance things out and modify it so those with the knowledge benefit exponentially more than the ones that don’t have the secrets. This imbalance must be addressed if the cycles are to be broken.
Can We Stop It?
When greed and selfish desire is rewarded, the imbalance is exploited and adjustments aren’t made. This pushes the cycle to complete itself, and through time, each collective society draws closer to collapse, losing all as it falls back into the source.
Rot at the base of a ladder can cause a fall from great height, but those always reaching for more don’t see the need to adjust and repair the structure they stand on, until collapse is inevitable. Attempting to repair the rot is more costly than catching it before it develops, but the few that benefit the most seldom see the value of the initial adjustment to prevent the problems, nor will they agree to the more expensive fix later.
With the privileged few trying desperately to maintain their position on top of the structure, permitting huge benefit with small cost to them, the cycle perpetuates itself and inevitably results in collapse. The selfish focus and fear-based protection of things is the more basic and expected human response within the cycle. This becomes a self-fulfilling end to our societal experiment every time, and the collapse back into our potential happens yet again.
We have, in some cases, attempted to incorporate adjustments into the structure, in a modify-as-you-go set up. In other cases, we have tried to rework the entire system every time power overwhelms. Some of these approaches have worked, allowing civilizations to flourish, slowing the cycle to a limited degree. Few have ever included all of creation and none have been able to raise all into a self-aware vibration. This elevated consciousness will allow all of us to step out of the cycles in which we are trapped.
For the world to break the cycle, each of us must rise above the groundhog day repetition and be who we are, creators. To choose selfless kindness above the world of judgment, to give because there is need, without thought of reward. Helping each other and healing confusion will extend our cycle.
We can balance creation while we reach the mountaintop, but we have to want it as a species. Each of us has to give up the me-me, mine-mine approach to this reality. This is a tall order and the reason only a very few every generation step out of the cycle. We, as a whole, are still living the cycle, instead of rising above judgment and the grading of things.
Doubt invites attack by showing vulnerability and society protects its structure by trying to silence the questioner. Confidence draws unsure people like moths to a flame, because it gives them a feeling of safety.
Act like you know what you’re doing
Radiating this confidence signals that the person is on familiar ground and can take care of whatever arises, meaning their opinions are given weight by others. People wish to connect to folks who make them feel safe and are willing to accept their expert opinions, because of this feeling.
If you wish to lead others and have folks feed your feeling of importance, confidence in your beliefs is a great thing to have. However, being accepted as right and important does not make you either. It’s something others choose to believe about you, and is driven by fear and a need for acceptance. Finding your own path is the goal, not leading others. Confidence in your own path doesn’t mean your view is correct for anyone else.
Be aware that confidence is a construct of your conscious mind. This structure requires ordered clarity, an explainable understanding, and repetitive success. If you’re positive of a thing or sure of a situation, one of three things has happened. You’ve sorted things yourself often enough, or applied another’s successfully working structure, or are fooling yourself/others so you feel in control.
There is a need, by you and the folks that have chosen to look to you for guidance, to feel you’re standing in a known space, on safe, solid ground. Safe, solid ground is not a bad thing and is a great place to rest when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Everyone needs that from time to time, but it’s not the place that creates growth and change. Doubt gives permission for you not to know how you know. Doubt and vulnerability tell you you’re walking into the unknown, and the discomfort your conscious mind feels is a chance for growth.
The Stupidity of Intelligence
Intelligence doesn’t prevent you from hitting a saturation point of conflicting opinions and doubt, but it can make you believe you have it sorted. In fact, intelligence will build excellent structures to ensure your conscious mind remains comfortable. These are the structures folks sell to others as the answer. These are, at best, a temporary and unsatisfying respite from the search your spirit longs to continue. Your conscious mind’s comfort isn’t the answer.
Wait… what? Once the intelligent person spends all this time building a structure of understanding , they will, like everyone else, stop being open to new information unless it fits their story’s narrative. They have hit their saturation point and formed conclusions about the many things. These conclusions should be temporary and revisited as more info comes in, but often become permanent.
The more intelligent the person, the cleverer the conceptual idea and the more confident they become in their opinions. Unfortunately, they become more convincing as well, and can lead others to believe they have discovered the answer. That is, the all-powerful and never-changing answer, which will ease the conscious mind, but doesn’t exist in this word-filled reality.
Once a structure of ideas is finished, the intelligent person has achieved clarity and comfort. If they refuse the challenge of contradictory information, they miss excellent points of enlightenment others can offer. In this way, intelligent people can make very ignorant decisions. Their intelligence is turned toward defending the structure they have built and working to retain followers of their ideas, instead of seeking what should be their evolving personal truth.
Working hard
Conscious Choices
This happens because the conscious mind thinks its comfort and surety is the goal, when discomfort and doubt is actually necessary to the cycle of growth. The conscious mind must chose the discomfort of the unknown, if growth is to be achieved by the spirit. How do you get the conscious mind to choose vulnerability?
We must allow the right questions and focus upon growth at the cost of structure and safety. This can be a scary proposition for the self that prizes its collection of beliefs and opinions. Much like the caterpillar’s structure must breakdown into a gooey mass to recombine into a butterfly, we must be willing to release the filter we view the world through and remake our perception of reality and of ourselves.
Letting go, of the word-filled structure we use to confine and define reality, can take place one piece at a time, or in large chunks all at once. The power of the right question must be used to expand into doubt and discomfort. Choose carefully, for it is up to you how fast you go, and that should depend on how ready for change you are.
The Pitfalls of Restructuring
The saying God never gives you more than you can handle is not true. It tries to hide the harshness of the reality we live every day, hiding behind soundbites. If God were in charge, we would have Eden, a utopian cooperative, without judgment or malice. There would be no hospitals, no mental or emotional breakdowns, and no one falling apart from the pressure of living, but God isn’t in charge of distributing suffering. Pain is a given, but suffering is optional.
Remember, you need to question everything, but how much you try to handle and how fast you move is up to you. It is possible, like a jenga tower, to move too fast or try to do too much. Do the best you can each day, try to replace at least one incorrect opinion, and be kind to yourself. You must learn to doubt without blame or guilt.
Don’t judge yourself harshly for believing what others taught you, and don’t judge others for passing on what they were taught. Everyone, from their point on the path, is doing what they can. Measure your progress against where you were yesterday and don’t push past your best. Trying too hard or measuring your self against others leads to confusion, madness, and death. A dramatic statement, but utter collapse isn’t what we seek. An understanding and acceptance of our potential is the goal.
The pursuit of cleaning your filter is not the safe bet. It is a personal and bold step into the unknown. You are attempting to see the world with new vision, leaping into the void, and admitting you don’t know. It involves trusting a part of yourself the world of things has told you is scary and illogical. And the world of things is correct about the scary. There are few rules to govern doubt, and words will only take you into the edge of this unknown.
Psychologists explain encounters where the wordless potential breaks through with rational constructs. They use archetypes, disorders and syndromes to understand how folks do or don’t fit the sane frameworks of a given society. We put them away to reconfigure their filter and maintain our created order. Oddly enough, larger societal constructs can add stressors to what causes the labelled disorders or emotional turmoil in the first place.
Denying our natures and forcing folks into limited behavior models that feel wrong to them create many deviations from our definition of sanity. Theology, philosophy, and the occult apply hierarchies and create elaborate structures to define the insane and unexplainable. All of this is Conscious Mind at work, trying to place things not understood into controllable, word-filled, well-defined boxes.
A well-argued point can shake a person’s ordered foundation, but it is a two-way street. Each person’s opinion is an attempt to sort and justify their own beliefs. If, in someone’s attempt to find their truth, they completely accept another’s opinion or belief as true, they open the door to confusion for both. If the seeker believes your opinion, your conscious mind sees that as validation. Unfortunately, believing an opinion doesn’t determine its trueness or its plausibility. Our conscious minds incorrectly equate acceptance and rightness with safe and true.
Awareness and acceptance by the person whose foundation is being shaken is vital, if psychological damage is to be avoided. Defensive and even violent reactions take place when someone isn’t ready to have their structured perception of reality challenged. After all, that is how they understand and interact with the things of their world.
The Transition Cocoon
Shaking or rebuilding a foundation should be done carefully. Questioning what you know is a good start. Kindness from a best friend, a therapist, or even a stranger, can be helpful, if they don’t download their own belief structure. Instead, they should give their answers to your questions as they come up. When you’re ready to accept a reexamination of your beliefs with conscious understanding, you are very vulnerable and need different points of view.
You know the structure you have is no longer a good fit for continued interpretation of your reality. However, it’s usually better to replace your foundation by doubting a piece at a time, rather than taking someone else’s pre-assembled structure as gospel. We do this a lot because it’s easier, but the neat orderly package hides our discoveries of personal truth. We can only find our truth by putting in the work of questioning everything.
This processing and transition phase can cause the illusion to fall apart or change with the right word or phrase. The changes can be fast or slow, but this cocoon phase is essential and scary. To experience growth, we have to let go and work without a net. We must drop all the constructs that our mind has built, all the ideas of who we are, but we don’t have to do it all at once.
Better to read poetry and appreciate art to find the wordless known. What we seldom allow ourselves is the luxury of wordless knowing. The answer it feels right, or the intuition of a hunch, is frowned upon and must be layered with proofs and structure. This is not to argue the answer that feels right is correct.
The Created Filter
Wait…what? Just as art, literature, or poetry is subjective, so is personal truth. The answer feels right for the filter you are personally using at that moment in time. That filter has been created by everyone or everything (including TV, music, etc.) you have ever accepted an opinion from and is unique to you. You have to be ready to clean your own filter. Make your adjustments based on changes you experience as you let go of beliefs and opinions. As you apply the scalpel of doubt, the blinders fall apart, and the scary void is exposed.
It’s perfectly acceptable to not have an ordered explanation for the how or why of a thing. The question is; Does the story I tell myself express the knowing I feel? Understanding or even relatability are requirements for scientific proof, but not requirements for your personal truth.
Unless, of course, you ask the conscious mind, which demands you show your work and prove your case. The army of opinions you have accepted must have a defensible position established. The conscious mind must maintain the righteous illusion of correctness, whether what it defends is true or not. Does it truly matter if someone thinks you’re wrong? Should you waste your time trying to convince them you’re right? The answer is…maybe.
Who Are You Convincing?
Wait…what? A couple of questions should be considered. Are other people in need of convincing? Will a discussion that fleshes out your view be helpful to others with decisions in their personal reality? If so, allowing the words to rise from potential, to be heard, may be wise. However, this approach can lead to cofrontations from those whose foundational beliefs are challenged.
The conclusions we’ve drawn from experience and stories can be traced back to wise words rising from potential. The word-of-mouth wisdom expressed and passed down, elder to tot, originates from the void.
The problem is a lot of these stories have been honed over generations for control, instead of clarity and understanding. They focus intent or structure behavior that benefits society and domesticates each of us. In some cases this is a good thing, but we all have a storehouse of these understandings, and they need to be examined through the lens of doubt. Are they helping clear a part of your filter or are they applying limits to your potential? Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s right.
Everyone is Your Teacher
Everyone has puzzle pieces or tidbits that will help open your knowing. You have to try each one and see which pieces fit your puzzle. We are all dipping into the same wordless pool of potential to create, and the words that rise from focusing our attention have power. If a saying or someone’s comment rattles your structure, stop and look at it. Rough the edges up and examine it closely to see why it rattled you, and whether it will clarify your view.
Begin to consciously question everything, especially what you believe you know. Not the nuts-and-bolts questions, which will only get you caught in the study of detail, the judging and ordering of things, and the winning of arguments. Questioning beliefs refers more to the asking of the big questions, where there’s not a right answer, understanding becomes a personal essay, and we transcend day-to-day detail. You must look at the themes you are positive of, and even further down the rabbit hole, realize most of what you know to be true is at least partially, if not completely, wrong.
A different view of reality
Attention Determines Discovery
The truths we seek, while they may be universal, are sought because they apply to our personal filters. All the universal truths can be seen clearly once the visor you view the illusion through is completely clean. This is seldom accomplished by those who walk with us. When it is accomplished, we usually silence them, or deify them, or both. Their insights threaten our societal constructs, and those with material power cannot tolerate an uncontrolled populace of seekers.
The problem comes with where our attention is focused. Children are sponges, absorbing cues from before they’re born (a fetus begins to hear at eighteen weeks), retaining information, and filing stuff away. Part of what we learn very early is others know things we don’t. We are not taught to look within for answers, but to pursue and accept the stories others have heard, accepted, and passed along to us.
During our life, we reach points in our search where we have a saturation of conflicting information. We temporarily stop this overload by shutting off the flow of ideas, so we can sort. This happens at different points for different people, and doesn’t have to be permanent.
However, most of us know an individual that believed, at some point, they knew all they needed and stopped considering different notions. They could be very intelligent, but once you stop accepting new information, that intelligence turns to defending your opinions. Each of us can quit learning things new to us, but that doesn’t mean you know all you need, just that you hit a saturation point.
When we reach that saturation point, the war of internal conflicting opinions takes over and we flounder. We begin to search for someone to tell us what to do, to give us the secret. We find a person who says they know how to sort the world of things effectively. This happens because growing up you were taught by word and example that you should listen to everyone but yourself, and you must be able to justify your opinion. Everyone knows better than you and they must have the answers. Just look how confident they are and how doubt-filled you are. This is more confusion, because doubt is a key to growth.
