Eyes to see it

“History has been the pursuit of a false God. The God of stability. The God of permanence. The God of the unchanging. And we’ve become, just, neurotic on this subject. People were just, fed up, with the 20th century by the time the atom bomb arrived. And what they wanted, and what they had been promised, by the New Deal Democrats was, a paradise.

Well, the only way you could deliver paradise in that political context, was, it had to be, an ersatz paradise. A paradise of stucco, and TV, and TV dinners, and tube furniture. And that’s what they got. They got an ersatz paradise.

And then out of that comes the discontent of their children who see that Howdy Doody and a water sprinkler on the front lawn doesn’t feel like paradise. And that is what has driven American society deeper and deeper into artificiality, is the need to supply this synthetic manufactured paradise. That’s why the cult of the celebrity, and the intense media saturation, and all of is diversion… it is a substitute for a life. That’s why what “get a life means” means is, “go get stoned, go get laid, go climb a mountain, or kayak a river,” but somehow take back your own authenticity from the people who are peddling you canned experience with laugh tracks and caffeine augmentation, so forth and so on…

Whether the only transformation in life is the is the personal dying that awaits each of us, or whether there is a grand opening and opportunity just ahead at the end of history… the bottom line of this, from a feeling and a heart place is what is being said here is, reclaim experience. Do not dwell in the mistakes of the past, do not loose yourself in the castles of the future, and do not give your authenticity away to experts, gurus, government commissions, bosses, wives, mates. Take back your mind and your body, and begin to engage with the fact that you are alive, you are going to die, nobody knows what being “alive” is, nobody knows what “dying” is.

You are involved in a mysterious engagement where every living moment presents you with mystery, opportunity, and wonder. There is no mundane dimension, really, if you have the eyes to see it.”

-Terence Mckenna

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