The paradox of greed and selfishness

• 19 September, 2023
• consciousness
• culture
• society

To gain a deeper understanding of what we can describe as the human predicament we need to look at what is powerful about human beings. It cannot be denied that we are one of the more powerful species alive on this planet. We have powerful memories, very powerful memories which manifest through powerful imagination, visualization and conceptualization. Despite the fact we are no longer children in physical form, and our physical form is impermanent and transient in nature, we can vividly remember our childhoods. We are capable of mystical experiences, and often when we cheat death by a whisker, we can experience a mystical experience as a Near Death Experience. Then you have the many forms and examples of human creativity, art, music, film making, design, business.

Then we have words and language, the basis of belief and ideology, the whole concept of culture, and so therefore we can say that words are powerful, very powerful. This is still a two edged sword, because while we can share ideas, visions, dreams and experiences, and we have the capacity to share love through words, we can also destroy someone's mental health and emotional well being with nothing more than words. Words used inappropriately can create fear and division, and one of my lifelong interests social stigma, which lies at the heart of social divisions.

So then it follows that we also have powerful desires. When people talk about the power of choice, what they are actually referring to are the powerful nature of desire. A powerful desire can manifest on so many different levels. It can manifest as ambition, a major life objective, when coupled with curiosity and a desire for learning or knowledge a simple desire can transform into a passion or a deep interest. But see also desire forms the basis of compulsive behaviour, crime, addiction, and at the deepest, darkest end of what we understand to be depression, a desire for total self-destruction and suicide.

This is what we're going to be thinking about today in this post - desire as manifest through greed and selfishness and the paradox of both.

Greed as a basis for desire

At a basic level greed can be seen as the basis of desire. We witness greed in its purest form in the natural feeding response (something we share with other animals) of say a baby or small infant given milk or something to drink. But then as we become older we get socialized and greed becomes associated with guilt and shame because we are taught "Don't be greedy."

However during the 1980's or thereabouts much of the social and cultural taboos were stripped from greed together with much of the guilt and shame. This came with the new social and political objectives of constant and perpetual economic growth, the rise of corporate power, the notion of profitability, and all of a sudden greed became fashionable again through seemingly endless material consumerism and consumption. In Britain and the US and indeed throughout much of Europe and the West, there was a renewed emphasis on the social binary of work and play. You went to work to contribute to society and then, with your own money you were allowed to 'play', indulge yourself in material consumerism and seek pleasure through greed.

Even today this simplistic social binary exists in our social, cultural and political values. If you don't have money you get a job, and if you're poor but have a job then you need to find a better job which pays you more. Then when you have a job and your own income you're encouraged to spend money and further contribute to society through material consumerism.

This gave rise to the cultural notion of getting what you want, when you want, how you want, seemingly without limitation. These developments in culture also at some individual level feed into our individual thinking and desires. This is how greed manifests after the process of socialization and intellectual rationalization.

Please also note I'm focussing on greed here and not selfishness which is an entirely separate issue and I don't want to make things too confusing at this point.

The Sweet Spot - getting high off desires

Next we come to what is known as The Sweet Spot. The Sweet Spot isn't something I came up with but a term I learned from UK advertising and marketing guru Rory Sutherland. This should give you at least a hint of the paradox inherent in the Sweet Spot. But what is the Sweet Spot?

Fundamentally the Sweet Spot is the successful conclusion of a desire. We can go as far as to even define success as the momentary fulfillment of a desire. It's an incredibly widespread social phenomenon that we are all familiar with and it manifests on so many different levels in our lives.

Let's start with a relatively simple example. You're out and about on a hot day. You become thirsty. But you're still out there travelling say going home. You're stuck on the train or bus and there's still a dozen stops on your journey. You're driving and you're caught up in traffic. But you're thirsty and need a drink. So you get home, and make it to your kitchen. Or if you're not that patient you get off the bus or train and you head to the nearest shop. Let's say you buy water, or the first thing you do at home you grab a glass and fill it with water. You drink the water and for a moment you hit that sweet spot of having your thirst satiated with cool water. You say to yourself "Ah that hits the spot."

So let's take another simple example, which is more common and I'm pretty sure you've experienced. You're out and about and you get the desire of wanting to go to the bathroom and pee. But again you're out driving, or you're on public transport and there's still several stops to go. Now if you've ever been in this situation you will be aware of the incremental nature of the desire to pee. This means that the longer you leave it the stronger the desire to pee becomes. It starts out that you can think about something else and forget the desire to pee. Not a problem.

But see there's an escalation in the desire to pee, so the longer you hold it off and try to think about something else, the harder it seems to come back on you and force its way into the focus of your conscious attention. Then it starts to drown out your thoughts and attempts to overlook the fact that you need to pee. So you start to think about time and how much left you have to travel to get to a bathroom. Are you going to make it? This is where you notice the powerful nature of desire and how it affects the rest of your thinking. You get to the end of the journey. If on public transport you've got to be the first off the bus or the train. If you're driving you're not too careful with your parking. But still the desire builds. You start walking funny. If you're a man you start looking round for discreet alleyways and bushes. You finally make it home, bobbing up and down as you unlock your front door.

You get to the bathroom and make it to the toilet and for a moment you experience something close to a sexual orgasm. Really. The culmination of a long held desire to pee often makes your eyes water.

I shouldn't need to get into a sexual example as this is something which should be very clear to you. This Sweet Spot doesn't involve any thinking whatsoever as it's purely about experience and often this is a very memorable experience. We can all remember various sweet spots and high points in our lives. I'm sure you can remember the first time you got paid from your first job. When you bought your first car. That moment when you moved into your first home. Your first date. The first kiss. Getting through your first day in school. If you're a sports fan, say a football supporter I'm sure you can remember the winning goal which won the title for your team, or where your team escaped relegation from say the Premier League. Your first concert and seeing your favourite band live on stage for the first time. So many memorable experiences. All coming from the sweet spot of experiencing a desire come to fruition and the dawning of a new reality and experience.

The transient, fleeting nature of success

So now let me move onto my next point which is the transient, fleeting nature of success and the fundamental impermanent nature of life experience. As stated previously desire is very powerful because it's the one thing we can create which can lead us directly to the sweet spot and the felt sense of immediate experience, that what creates the powerful memories which last us throughout our lives.

But no matter what desires you have and how you go about fulfilling those desires or getting those desires fulfilled by others the simple fact remains that success, however which way you choose to slice and dice it, is always going to be a sweet spot and a fleeting, momentary experience. If you were to string together all the various sweet spots in your life putting them all together side by side they would probably not amount to much more than two or three weeks of life experience. This would be true even across several decades of actual life experience.

Much of what life is really all about, and here I'm referring to the 'meat and bones' of real life, is the various processes and journeys between the desires and the sweet spots or lack of sweet spots - depending on how well your life process has panned out.

Indeed much of what Real Life is really all about is the learning processes involved in the fundamental karmic process of life. It is this karmic process which defines what we understand what life is really all about, the never ending sequences of conflicts, contradictions, unexplained happenings, events, circumstances, misunderstandings, getting stuff wrong, preconceived notions, assumptions, beliefs, mistakes, failures, struggles, and it's all these things which break up the drudgery, monotony, boredom, and vast periods of emptiness and nothingness when there's nothing much happening and nothing really to talk about.

This is where we start to get into the various myths and cultural illusions which can often form the basis of our assumptions about life and our thinking. Let's take for example the simplistic notion that hard work always pays off. No it doesn't. Human beings are complex and we live complex, complicated lives, particularly after emotional maturity and having completed the process of socialization and jumping through all the hoops to become a Good Model Citizen deserving of Widespread Social Respectability. It does not matter how hard you push and how hard you work, it will never amount to anything more than a few weeks of sweet spots throughout the course of your life. You will not escape the trials and learning processes of what real life is all about. In fact, if anything, living your life according to such a simplistic notion might push you more towards the monotony and drudgery of living existence and even further away from those sweet spots.

More is always better

Indeed there are many cultural and social illusions which, if you're not careful, or paying attention, could result in you following your desires to the point of getting caught up in the social and political process to end up as nothing more than a cog in a bigger machine. This could very easily see you go through the frustrating process of seeing your desires, hopes, dreams and ambitions being subverted by some employer through a corporation or business, so that you end up doing all the work and your employer gets all the sweet spots.

One such example is that simplistic hard work always pays together with the ever so subtle cultural message put out there implicitly that more is always better. It's important to always keep in mind that culture, politics and to a large extent socialization does not exist for your benefit, or my benefit, or anyone else's, but for the comfort and convenience of hierarchies and institutions ranging from corporations, institutions, thinktanks, focus groups, lobbyist groups, religious institutions, and political parties. We, the people, are merely players in the real life version of the board game Monopoly.

This is where greed as a basis for desire merges with consumerism as people seek out the sweet spots and trying to put them together in some sequence to try and escape the spaces in between. If you pay attention to advertising and the way that it's organized you will find the bigger stuff mixed in with lots of advertising presenting you will low level opportunities to take a simple desire and turn it into an immediate sweet spot.

Okay what's for dinner? How about some steak? Or some chicken? Oh and maybe we can have a dessert to go with it. Oh and how about that new brand of coffee? Okay so you've got the coffee. But what are you going to do after dinner? How about a movie off Netflix? Or maybe we can go see a show. Okay so what about after the show? What do we do after the show? Maybe we can check out that new wine bar. Okay after a glass or two of wine let's go for a walk. Okay so you go home after the walk. Have we got any beer left in the refrigerator?

Do you see how this works? This isn't something which affects so much poorer people, many of who can't afford much of this but who are stigmatized for being too needy or dependent on the system (the State). No the prey in question here are the better off people who have the disposable income to get caught up into being strung along with these little consumerist dopamine hits from all those constant little sweet spots pushing for their attention through the ubiquitous nature of advertising. This is what makes consumerism as addictive as social media which is a similar low level sweet spot strategy game with somewhat different rules.

Then you have the major game online, which is porn. 70% of all internet traffic is porn and stuff which exploits our sexual desires.

This is where you start to get caught up in separateness because through all this consumerism and hitting of the little sweet spots and petty little luxuries you're avoiding or at least being averse to the space between the sweet spots and the real life which exists within that space. Consider the powerful nature of the state of not being able to afford something and all the stigma that goes with it. This is where greed and desire starts to become both socially divisive and destructive.

Separateness through the screen

So far we've look at how greed is something natural and how it usually defines the process from the creation of a desire to its conclusion or completion. Now we need to shift our attention to separateness something which distorts both greed and selfishness - which is also natural (though I'm aware that some of you will disagree with me at this point - which is fine because I haven't stopped writing) - and turns both into environmentally and socially destructive forces.

One of the clearest and most widespread examples of separateness that most people experience today is through social media, television and celebrity culture. We are bombarded with images of other people who appear to be living hugely successful lives, lives which seem to be made up of one long sequence or string of sweet spots. The media is awash with stories and the goings on of celebrities, who don't seem to have achieved anything or done anything that profound with their lives, but for some reason they're famous and well known, and there's an entire media industry devoted to the goings on and intimate details of their apparently perpetually successful lifestyles. We get to hear about every new romance, every new major purchase, every marriage, every affair, every divorce, and even down to what events they attend and what they're wearing to that event.

Then you have social media, and the culture of likes, comments, friends, followers, subscribers, and so on. You've probably got some people in your friends list who aren't your real time friends, some who hardly know you, but they follow you, or they have thousands of friends and this is what has made internet popularity a commodity together with internet fame and the rise in the culture of social media influencers. These are people who are usually more popular than you, and they put out content based on their opinion and perspective on a wide variety of subjects. The actual content in itself isn't that important, it's the notion that they're more popular than you and so it's assumed that their opinion on a given subject carries more weight than your opinion, knowledge or even experience.

Television and broadcasting no longer occupies its traditional role as the main form of social conditioning and propaganda as it once was, because now we have the internet as an equally powerful means of social conditioning and propaganda. No longer is the internet a fascinating tool to share and gather information, or a safe and friendly space where people across different communities across the planet can connect to one another. This culture still exists admittedly, but it's increasing being subverted by separateness into an onine environment where it's getting harder to figure out what is fake, and what is truth and genuine information, and what is simply made up for attention, likes and subscribers.

So while many people still make use of the internet to connect to one another, family, friends, distant relatives, between different cities, even across different countries, the general vibe you get off social media is not one you really want.

You see on the one hand separateness is what lies at the root of our less desirable experiences of living in society, the sense of isolation, alienation, feelings of inadequacy, lack of self-worth, loneliness, the feeling that we are worse off than others or not quite as valued. On the other hand social media also all too often diminishes our sense of success and achievement, accomplishment, Our notion of success all the things we do to mitigate the feelings of alienation, inadequacy nd isolation. I'm sure, if you visit a social media platform such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter (or is it now 'X'?) or even Instagram, and you post something about your life as a sweet spot or high you wish to share with your friends online, all too often what you post doesn't get noticed because someone else has had a bigger sweet spot or even your post has been subverted by an algorithm which favours paid for content, and your friends don't even get to see your post.

Perhaps you can see how social media has become a powerfully socially divisive and destructive force which often alienates people from each other than connects them together in some online community.

This has particularly devastating consequences for people who have no real time friends, family or support network and who's major form of social interaction comes from a mouse, keyboard and monitor, or increasingly more, the screen of a smartphone. Consider that having a sense of social inclusion is one of the most powerful human emotional needs.

When the emptiness in your life becomes much too much

You see there comes a time in your life - which happens to most people - when you don't want to fill in the spaces in your life any more. This is when the futility of your predicament, of trying to grab at things in time to fill in the empty spaces in your life becomes too apparent. This is inevitable because greed as a process of an unfolding desire is measured against time.

This is often a mystical or meta-physical process. The sweet spots of the immediate stuff are no longer as intense. The the bigger sweet spots or successes seem much too far away in time and something inside you reminds you that "Hey. You only got a finite amount of time and energy left in your life and this is starting to cost too much." You get a sense, hopefully, that the fundamental basis of your life is a finite amount of time, a finite amount of heartbeats, a finite number of days.

Conscious of the fact that one day you're going to die, something which terrifies you because you instinctively know that it means the end of your Ego, your desires, everything that you've been taught to believe is you. But conscious of this fact you start to realize and understand that maybe, just maybe, pursuing all your desires and hitting those sweet spots is not going to be enough in the end. You may start to feel trapped, caught up in a process and life that you're not going to be able to control. This is when despair usually kicks in, at that point when the futility of what you're doing hits home.

This is something which will inevitably confront you irrespective of who you are, your relative social position, how much property you own, how much money you have in the bank, what your position or role in society is. This realization is the great leveller in life. It affects everyone in some way. Every homeless person sleeping on the street. Every single Prime Minister. The King. You. Me. Everyone else. What car you drive doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the make and model of your smartphone. How much your house or flat is worth. There comes a point in your life where enough really has to be enough and you need to shift the focus of attention elsewhere in your life.

Take a look at the Tarot card from the Major Arcana above marked 'Death'. See the Grim Reaper in the form of the skeleton on the white horse? Do you also see the king standing before him begging him for more time and more life? Death is the great leveller in life. People often claim that life is unfair. I beg to differ. Karma is always just and equal to all. Choices, the starting point of desire and greed, become consequences, and its the consequences which determine your next choices, on nd on and on and on, throughout your life. This is why life is process, this is why I call life a karmic process.

Now without exception, if you've got this far and are reading my words, you will understand what I'm writing about here.

I am often at pains to point out to people that Ego, belief, social identity, belief in external authority, none of these things are sustainable enough for a whole life. Your Ego and social identity is only you at your most immediate, most superficial level. These things are good for a starting point in life, when you're young and relatively immature and need someone to guide you, teach you, show you the way. But you cannot spend your whole life clinging to the cradle and being cossetted by everyone around you and expecting politicians and governments to make your life all okay for you. Politicians are not teachers and this is not primary school. You have still got to dig deeper into the mysteries of life and come up with some sort of meaning, deeper value, significance to your whole life process. Being a homeowner and having a career isn't sufficient. Neither is calling yourself a Christian, Muslim, Jew, socialist, conservative, whatever.

So what is despair? Despair is a sense of inner emptiness. Despair is actually the seeds of the next level of life experience. But for the seeds of despair to take root and grow into something meaningful you're going to need to shift up and address the issues in your life on a different plane of consciousness.

Selfishness

So we come to selfishness. I've kept selfishness separate from greed and desire for a reason. Selfishness is just as closely associated with desire as greed is. But it's a completely different situation. Your perspective on selfishness is likely somewhat different from what my perspective on selfishness is, which is why I've thrown in another song quote by the Beach Boys from 1969. This is to help you understand where I'm coming from when we're talking about selfishness.

Now, as a socialized human being living in society more than likely you see selfishness as something antisocial in nature. You probably associate selfishness with Ego, egocentricity, with narcissism. It's something you're conditioned to avoid and go out of your way to avoid being seen as selfish.

Okay I get it. But you're looking at selfishness probably from a position of separateness, where selfishness doesn't work, where you only understand half of what selfishness is about. From my perspective it's interesting that some people believe that is necessary to love yourself, i.e. you must love yourself before someone else will love you. Yet people associate selfishness with narcissism, which is the outcome of self-love. Not sure how you square that little contradiction in our social and cultural values. For me it's a very clear paradox. It's also interesting that greed has become so fashionable and in vogue, but selfishness has not.

So let me put you in the picture where I'm coming from when it comes to selfishness. It comes down to how you define 'self'. Having gone through my fair share of training in Theravada Buddhism and eastern cosmology I define 'self' as the Sanskrit word 'atman'. Self in the fullest possible meaning of the word. Not just you and me as self, but this world as self, the universe as self, and self as the fundamental basis of being. Self for me equates to individual, the polar opposite of totality, the universe, the entire cosmos, God, the Kabbalah, however you wish to define it.

But see there's also the question of relationship, because it's not possible to exist in any form without being relative to everything else in existence. For example you're always relative to an environment, be it natural or social. Part of your social environment is made up of other people. Doesn't matter if it's a family, a social circle of friends, a community, or society in general, you are relative to other people. In fact we can go as far to say that you cannot be you if other people cannot be who they are. This brings us back to the ultimate social illusion we're all operating under and that is separateness. There is no separateness anywhere in existence. It's a lie. It's an illusion.

Oh and while I'm on my soapbox here in this post, on my blog, on my website I'm going to lay another hard truth on you.

The human intellect is insufficient to address the growing number of social, environmental and economic issues which are affecting us. The human intellect can only take us so far, but see we've let greed run so far out of control - socially, politically, culturally - we're not going to get out of our current predicament just by human intellect, science or even our current political system. This is a particular issue in the West. Other parts of the world are made up of people with zero carbon footprint who are living much, much closer within their ecological means than we are in the West. But we're still struggling to let go of our failing 'Man over Nature' strategy from the 19th century and no amount of bleating about climate change is going to change much if we don't change our fundamentally abusive relationship to the planet and other species.

The 'Man over Nature' strategy has failed. Business as usual is no longer on the menu. Even today socially affluence is gettng much harder to achieve for most people, increasing the space and distance between the desires and the sweet spots. The main vehicle from the desire to the sweet spot is work, which is becoming less and less accessible to many people and finding work is getting harder and harder as a desire to fulfill. Even when you have work the cost of living is increasing reducing the number of accessible sweet spots. Fulfillment from work is diminishing, as is our nature and quality of life. Our entire social structures are crumbling and starting to fail more and more often.

All the while this is going on, which is further being hampered by political squabbling, finger pointing, scapegoating, and attacking 'wokeness' the karma is building up when it comes to our relationship to our natural environment. There's a very clear choice here. Either we make the necessary adjustments ourselves, or the planet itself will put Mankind in its collective place, and it will do so in ways which are harsh and cruel.

Please keep in mind that human beings are not a necessity on this planet, something which goes against us as a species.

The sheer necessity of a shift in consciousness

Currently there is no way we can continue as a society in the West living as we are because generally our social and cultural values are massively outdated and based on the failing 'Man Over Nature' strategy. We need to become necessary and relevant to our natural environment as a species very much in the same way as bacteria is necessary to life is for most if not all other species. This is going to require a shift in consciousness towards a new 'Man Integral to Nature' strategy which is more characteristic of Taoist thinking, where Nature is seen as the Dao, or something like Qultura which I have designed to be an equivalent system.

Please keep in mind that I have designed Qultura in a way to work with local community culture but do not envisage being alive to see it fulfill its potential by becoming as popular or widespread as Taoism. I'm not going to live that long and for years have always treated the Qultura enterprise as my legacy.

We need to get our mindset around understanding and respecting the flow of life. Personally I feel that replacing our consciousness centred around the Ego for the Principle and Process is by far the simplest and easiest way to go about this. Most people who have come into contact with Qultura as a system have no issues with embracing this new conscious awareness. It does not change who they are or how they see themselves but merely reminds them that who they really are is not based on Ego but instead on the sum total of their perception and awareness of consciousness. The same but different.

What this comes down is to listen to, hear, and flow in harmony with the universe, Nature and our natural environment. This is going to need a different concept of self, a different societal structure, and a different political system from that what we already have and have known to date. But how would it look?

I don't know. I can't tell you. But see this is the thing, I'm just one human being from around eight billion other human beings on this planet. I live in a country of approximately 70 million people, roughly a quarter of who live in the same city as me, London. There's around 5,000 people living on my housing estate. Why should I have to come up with a plan or a solution for everyone? Why does this always have to come down to one person and everyone else playing 'Follow the Leader'?

See this is one of the issues we're coming up against. People expecting other people to come up with the solutions and come up with the goods. People really need to break out of their Ego structures, separateness, dependence on authority figures, ideologies. Understand that everyone is holding a piece of the puzzle and this needs to be a community process. We've spent centuries not understanding poverty and many of us still don't understand poverty. Why? This has got everything to do with separateness and refusing to listen to the poor and their experiences of life.

Don't you think that it's interesting that you've got all these people claiming to know what's going on with this planet and the world, and yet nobody cares about or understands the people who are homeless and living on the streets? We rarely if ever discuss our political and social failures and how to change things in a meaningful way because we're so wrapped up in our separateness and Ego that we're too busy pointing fingers, identifying scapegoats and apportioning blame. Or pushing our own Egos and agendas. Separateness again.

There is no way we're going to overcome this separateness without a shift in consciousness. Relying on our intellect and thinking isn't sufficient to overcome all the boundaries, empty spaces of ignorance, divisions and belief systems that are holding us back. Liberation has to be a community process but before this you have to become mentally and emotionally liberated yourself. Otherwise how do you expect to be able to connect to others?

What I'm referring to here is empathy, the ability to connect, the ability to listen and hear your environment, the ability to listen and hear other people and what they are saying, the ability to listen to and hear the planet and learn to understand its language. You see its these natural qualities, empathy and the ability to connect which transforms both greed and selfishness into powerful tools to develop human consciousness.

Planes of consciousness and levels of reality

It is possible to change your plane of consciousness and function on a different level of reality. We all exist on many different planes of consciousness and levels of reality. You can change your energies. It is possible. Years ago I used an analogy of radio frequencies to explain the different levels of reality and planes of consciousness we exist on. See living existence has five dimensions, three of which are physical, two are meta-physical. All physical existence is based on energy, energy cycles, energy vibrations, and energy frequencies. I'm assuming that you understand this and I'm not writing in language that is foreign to you.

This is going to be a difficult part for some of you, because here I'm going to get into the issues of karma and reincarnation. But some of you might get this and be comfortable with what I m writing here. So let's work with a band so you can understand how my analogy works and get the point I'm making here. Let's choose FM (Frequency Modulation) because this is a band most people seem familiar with.

You see on one level you think you are John Doe or Mary Smith living somewhere in London. You think you are a man or a woman. But you have so many different levels of identity. Why do you choose to cling to that particular reality when you have so many different other planes of consciousness or levels of reality to choose from? Probably it's because it's being fed by your senses and your thinking mind. But until you're able to actually sense and 'feel' your way through life, using your 'third eye' and your pineal gland, you're always going to get caught up in identifying yourself only with the most tangible and most basic level of your reality, and your physicality. You know? Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, hair, body size and shape, and so on.

You see the level of physicality you identify with determines both your energies and the level of reality you experience. You're dealing with physicality, energy and space, because in terms of your conscious perception that's all there is to perceive - physical form and space. This is at say 106.8 FM, right at the left hand edge of the band.

But who I see you as is usually very different to who you think you are. This is where we get into the analogy of the radio frequencies. It's an analogy I feel we can all get and understand, because I'm sure you're familiar with tuning into a radio station by turning the knob and watching the little red plastic indicator move left or right along the band. If you're not ask your oldest relative you know how to use an analogue radio. But here you turn the knob with your mind, your conscious perception and your sensory awareness.

Okay so let's turn the knob and move right along the band, and say let's go as far as 104.3 FM. On this frequency what you see is your physical reality. It's all still physical form and space. You see buildings, trees, people - man, woman, old, young, fat, thin, blonde, dark-haired, bald, eye colour, developed, undeveloped, able-bodied, disabled, and so on. Now if you're preoccupied with this reality in yourself this is how you see everyone else. If you think of yourself as ugly, then you're going to be looking at everyone else and sorting them into two basic categories, physically attractive and beautiful, and physically unattractive and ugly.

If you think you've got a weird shaped nose, then you're going to focus on everybody else's nose. If you think your tits are too big or too small, then you're going to be looking at everyone's tits. If you're bald then you're going to focus on everyone's hair and looking for signs of balding in other people. Much of your energy will be spent clocking other people. If you feel that you don't have the right clothes, all you're going to be noticing is what other people are wearing. This is a particular issue for women who get heavily stigmatized by the media and society in general for the way they look and present themselves.

Then we can give the dial or knob an ever so slight turn and tune into say 103.5 FM and find a similar station. This is the station for people who are lonely, horny, and preoccupied with sex and sexual relationships. They're looking at everyone to determine who is available and who isn't, who is attractive and who isn't, and who turns them on and who doesn't. Shagging FM (to give this station a name) is a very popular station out there among people. You will find it not far from Kink & Fetish FM which is the alternative sister station to Shagging FM. If you've got a Daddy fetish then older men will ping before everyone else, as will anyone wearing leather for anyone with a leather fetish. Autumn is the season for leather fetishists because it's the time when women start wearing boots again, and it's as popular as summer is with foot fetishists. Everyone has their season I guess.

But then we can turn the dial again and get to Money FM at 101.4 FM. This is the station for people who are obsessed with money, wealth, status and position. It's the station for competitive people who see themselves as somewhere in the middle of a societal league table and they're focussing on those who have more than them or, conversely, those who have less than them. These are the people obsessed with status and status symbols, perceived wealth, property values, house prices, earnings, income, how to make money, being an entrepreneur, and so on.

Then we can give the dial a few turns to the other side of the dial to somewhere like Qultura FM at say 88.4 FM. Then you're looking into someone else's eyes and seeing yourself reflected back in another human being, and understand also that when someone looks at you they are actually seeing a reflection of themselves looking back. You understand that we are all reflections of each other, as are the dogs, the cats, the birds and even the trees. We are all the different many facets of existence in unique physical forms reflecting against each other. We are all spirit manifesting as physical forms of life on a living, breathing planet in a deeply mysterious, fascinating universe.

Then you can turn the dial right to the end and the radio vanishes, you vanish, I vanish, everyone else vanishes and what you are left with is vast, empty nothingness which isn't nothing at all but the infinite space of the universe itself and what is known as the Ultimate Void. This is where you go when you die, but see, having once existed in physical form you cannot later not exist, simply because you are not the totality of the universe. Non-existence always goes hand in hand with existence. Sure all those folks who are constantly tuning in to Shagging FM, Money FM and holding onto their physical reality for dear life won't perceive you, because they will be scared to go out of their minds, and so they will miss you. But you will go on and on and on and on and on..

Which brings us to karma and reincarnation. Don't worry, we're coming to the end.

The meta-physical side of greed and selfishness

I'm going to use one more analogy which is that of a clock and time because I want to finish this blog post by going over the meta-physical aspects of greed and selfishness. I'm assuming that by now you understand that what we are all experiencing is relative reality because we are all relative to different things; the universe itself, this planet, and being relative to this planet, we're also relative to each other and everything else which is living on this planet.

Being always goes hand in hand with relationship. You cannot physically exist without being in a relationship, just as you cannot be in any sort of relationship without being and existing yourself. The basis of being is energy (physicality), consciousness, space and spirit. All physical existence is based on karma, which is physical memory and physical action. A cycle of karma, or a cycle of existence, such as a life cycle is in itself a karmic process. Think of a clock going from 12 o'clock back to 12 o'clock. This is for the sake of argument an incarnation. Reincarnation is simply more than one incarnation or cycle, over and over and over again.

There are very many different examples of reincarnation and karma - breathing, sleep, ageing, habits, compulsive behaviour, the various ritual aspects of loving relationships, and of course life and death. In fact much of what you understand the physical aspects of your life to be are all based on reincarnation and karma. But for simplicity, and because I want to finish this blog post and you have other things to do other than read it, I'm going to focus on the life cycle and life and death.

• 11:59 to 12:01 - complete unity with the universe

  Let's start with the very beginning of the life cycle, which is the moment of death of the previous life cycle. Unless you are killed or commit suicide, this is the slipping away and letting go, and going through the traumatic process of death, rebirth and birth. This is the mystical experience, the dream like state where everything is connected and everything is one, but you are disembodied.

  This is no different to sleep where you go to sleep feeling tired and fatigued, but wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and full of energy. You are not the totality, you are not the universe. Just as you cannot be alive without experiencing death, it also goes that you cannot be dead or disembodied without returning to life. So if you are dead your reality is rebirth and life.

• 12:01 to 12:04 - pregnancy, birth and incarnation

  So you take on physical form again in a new incarnation and life starts all over again for you. You're now back to being, and as a being, you're also relative to an environment. The environment here is your mother's womb and a new physical body growing out of an egg. You take on new physical memory from this body which you have taken around six months into your mother's pregnancy. Your sense of unity takes on a physical reality as your senses start to develop but as they're still relatively undeveloped (you see this is still before birth) you're relying on extra-sensory perception. Unborn you pick up on stuff from your mother's environment. You're at one with your mother. What's out there? This is the formation of desire, therefore greed and selfishness, because you percieve everything as you and you feel unity with everything.

• 12:15 to 11:59 - karma, Ego and separateness

  So you're born into a new life with a certain amount of karma but very very early in your childhood you make the assumption of separateness, assuming both "This is me" and "This is not me", creating a division between self and other. This sense of separateness is reinforced by your parents, siblings and everyone else and out of this you develop the Ego, which is the compromise between your innermost world of perceptions, feelings, desires, thoughts, and the wider, larger, more powerful external social forces around you.

  This is the subject of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the Book of Genesis, which if you read dispassionately, without getting emotionally or psychologically involved, is all about the separateness between Man and God. Eve took of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and shared the fruit with Adam, and so they went against God's authority, and went from being to knowing. The whole Book of Genesis is all about separateness and sin, which is essentially all about insufficiency. But it's also about karma, and very much about choice and consequence.

So yes I've kept the above clock analogy short and incomplete, because this just about covers the reality for the vast majority of people on this planet. Most people live out their lives in complete separateness, identifying completely or pretty much primarily with their Ego. Everyone exists on so many different levels of reality and planes of consciousness, but most people pretty much consciously choose to only exist in one, two or maybe three realities and only on the most tangible and physical planes of consciousness. All the other planes of consciousness and levels of reality are still there. They all exist in all of us. But most people don't want to know that. They don't even want to identify themselves as human beings or even part of the entire human species, because most are clinging tightly to their labels and belief systems, man, woman, American, Brit, Indian, Christian, Muslim, conservative, socialist, and their role attachments.

You don't have to take my word for it here. Take a look around you, listen to what people are saying, look at what they're focussing on, what they devote their lives to.

Most people are therefore in denial of the other aspects of their identity across the other planes of consciousness and levels of reality in order to cling tightly to the one or two levels of reality they're most comfortable with. In such a situation neither greed nor selfishness, expressed only across one or two planes of consciousness and in only one or two levels of reality, is going to work. This is the main point I'm making here, while both greed and selfishness are natural form of desire, neither work within the context of separateness. This is only going to result in imbalances, inequality and further division and the outcome from that can only be despair, disappointment, struggle and misery. Such outcomes are experienced on an individual level, a social level, and ultimately at an environmental level. All create additional karma which needs to be worked through and cycled out. If not in this incarnation, then in subsequent incarnations.

So now we come to spiritual liberation or what we understand to be freedom. A spiritually liberated individual is one who has embraced their complete identity across different planes of consciousness and levels of reality and is able to exist on all levels of reality and all planes of consciousness. They have transcended the limitations of the levels of reality and planes of consciousness they first thought was absolute and which trapped them.

These are people who look no different from anyone else, nor do they live that much differently, but they are able to switch from one level to reality to another and from one plane of consciousness to another just as easily as you switch channels on television using a remote control. They are free in the sense that they are no longer subject to their social and mental conditioning, not so attached to their physical identity and status, not so attached to beliefs or ideologies, and so are impervious to all the social and cultural programming that's going on. They are committed only to the relative truth of their living existence. Such things as fear motivation do not work on such people because free from dependency on external authority they are able to switch planes of consciousness and change their perspective without anyone knowing any different.

Spiritual liberation is easily accessible to everyone who wants it. You just have to change your desires for conscious awareness and work with your greed and selfishness on a different, meta-physical level of reality. But see, you've got to really want it and be willing to go the distance for your own spiritual liberation and freedom. Nobody out there is going to spoon feed it into your brain and those who claim to, without exception, have an agenda and ulterior motives.

I just want to finish up here with some bullet points. You take it from here.

• Insanity is clinging to any particular reality

  Please be clear about my distinction here between clinging (attachment) and functioning at a particular level of reality. If you are a fully conscious being and serious about a proper conscious lifestyle then you function at all levels of reality and seek to do so simultaneously.

  As an example I function on different levels of reality simultaneously. I still meditate but I don't need to sit down in the lotus position and focus on my breathing. I've reached the point where I am able to meditate for days and even weeks but still be aware of what's going on around me. It takes time and practice but it's possible for you to do the same. You can have your physical identity, your psychological identity, your spiritual identity, your astral plane identity, and you can be at one with everyone and everything else, all at the same time.

• Awakening is transcending the limitations of a specific level of reality

  This is what, as a human being, you were born to do. Understand you have been equipped naturally and biologically with all the tools you could ever need and wish for to be able to go through this process. In terms of biological evolution we are the culmination of all the other species as we have evolved through them and very much in the same way as trees, we are the start of the next level of biological evolution on this planet. Limiting your reality to just one or two levels of reality on the physical levels, i.e. Ego, psychology, worldview, and denying the other levels is a waste of your potential as a human being.

• There is no separateness anywhere in existence

  All the energy, consciousness, space and spirit that's out there also exists within you. All of it. Who you are is the same as your environment and what your environment is who you are. You cannot separate being from relationship. You cannot not exist because - for the same reason - you cannot be relative to everything else without existing.

  This means that to the degree that you think about and focus on one level of reality you get caught up in that reality, and you become separate from the flow of your life. Once you deny all other levels of reality in favour of one reality you get stuck in that reality and are in denial of all the other levels of reality.

  But this cuts both ways, simply because of the inseparable nature of being and relationship. This means that the more levels of reality you embrace and take on, working them into your identity, the more consciously aware you become, and the more consciously aware you become the more your life will start to flow. The more your life starts to flow the easier it becomes to cycle through and resolve karma. This is the basis of mystical or meta-physical power, which is based on the principle of non-attachment. This is in direct contrast to physical or political power, which is based on attachment and clinging to specific forms of reality, which works against flow and evolution. There is no power in anything physical, because all physicality is karmic, based on energy, and is therefore transient, impermanent and often illusory. Nobody is in control, simply because that's not how this universe works.