From: slider@anashram.com

"Basically we are not really that much different from other mammals and creatures. Beyond our ability to talk, the thing that makes human beings
really stand out is our apparent ability to create a conceptual image of
the world and then relate to that idea (or any idea apparently) to the exclusion of virtually everything and anything else.

Thus, our densely populated human world is full of different cultures and beliefs, all competitively vying and clamouring for attention. So much so,
that some suggest humanity has gradually become divorced from the
underlying background reality that all other living creatures on this
planet still have and retain an awareness of. Accordingly, human beings,
via this ability, have created their very own multifaceted ‘version’ of reality, one that increasingly flies in the face of the way things are in reality for the rest of nature, to the point that most people these days generally feel that they lack a deeper connection to the rest of the
universe, an idea that leaves them feeling somehow empty or incomplete and
thus has people searching for some kind of deeper meaning to life, whether
it be religion or philosophy.

The standard social norm of having a good job, a nice home and family, doesn’t always seem totally to fulfill that yearning need. I suppose this
is precisely where religion and philosophy are supposed to come into the picture, except that those religions and philosophies themselves also
often seem to fail us, in that almost all our religions only really
succeed in distancing us even farther from nature instead of bringing us
closer to it. Our religions comfort us by pertaining to answer all our questions, only they don’t really answer them beyond telling us to behave ourselves in the meantime, while at the same time, rather frustratingly,
just putting off the whole subject until after we die. As such they are
more a way of ‘explaining away’ the mysteries of life rather than bringing us closer to them.

I suspect the simple truth is that there is probably no ‘sense’ (no
meaning per se, or at least not a rational one) to life in quite the way
we might want there to be; that while we are alive we can, of course, do
all the usual things that the majority of people like to do, such as
working and having homes and families. Nevertheless, we still have to understand that all these ‘things’ do not really constitute nor represent the ‘meaning of life’ in and of themselves. Yet in modern society that is exactly and precisely what people are encouraged to turn to for some sort
of sense of completion and solace. The end result is that no one really
knows what they are doing any more. More often than not, we merely bluff
our way through life instead of consciously living it to the full in
complete awareness of doing so.

What then is this ‘fullness’ we seek, where is this ‘life more abundant’
that everyone inwardly craves but can’t really find? I don’t have any definitive answers, although being a keen observer I do think I’ve managed
to pick up a few clues here and there that might just well be of interest
to those with similarly inquiring minds. For example, if there’s such a
thing as a meaning to life and we are part of it, then we really shouldn’t have to look any further than into our own inner being in order to be able
to understand it all, or at least our own part in it.

Perhaps by going along with the universe, instead of rebelling against it
by indulging in all our own ideas that we project and superimpose upon the world instead of dealing with it the way it really is, we might just gain
a few insights. Not because we have so cleverly figured it all out with
our pencils and computers and such like, but because by going along with
things sometimes you can also come to understand more of its true nature
and that, although it may not be able to give you straight verbal answers,
that doesn’t mean you can’t still learn something from observing the way
it behaves and conducts itself with you and with everything else.

Maybe what we have to try and first understand and accept is that nature
itself isn’t intellectual and that, in the main, it has got to where it
has today after billions of years of unfolding without the benefits of
rational thinking and language to explain it; that although its purpose,
its (and thus our) whole reason for being, is a totally silent one that requires no explanation to function, which doesn’t mean we can’t still learn to go along with it and pick up a few interesting and useful things
about it and ourselves in the process.

Nature is our friend. Nature doesn’t lie. In other words, if we start off
at home by looking a little more into our own nature and our own natural abilities, then later may come a view of the bigger picture in which we
all naturally belong."

--extract from: 'The WILD Way To Lucid Dreaming'

### - originally wrote the above in the clear realisation that one of the accumulated 'effects' of WILDing is to reach a point of enlarged
perspective wherein the world one is completely familiar with - the one bursting with normal activity - is suddenly perceived in hindsight as
being somehow incomplete and lacking in terms of having any real depth to
it... upon arriving on planet earth we thus struggle to support ourselves
in an already firmly established society, one that offers only very
certain ways of getting by, and if you don't (or can't) fit in and make
with the program then you're basically doomed to struggle even harder &
more harshly: a square peg that can't be fully forced into one of the neat little round holes society demands, a reject as such!

even those that do manage to fit in and get with the program, rich or
poor, find their activities seriously proscribed to a small set of
socially accepted norms, the wealthy may indeed eat in better restaurants
and live in better houses but it's still basically all the same thing from
top to bottom to varying degrees: we wile away our time acquiring some
kind of standard education only to then work our lives away paying for
houses and hopefully families, all done at such a hurried and systematic
pace and takes up so much time that it basically leaves no time for
anything else at the end of it all besides retirement and old age!?

and that was it! THAT was our whole life! we went to school, got a job,
made a home and, if we worked hard enough and were lucky enough, hopefully families too, but that's all! that's really ALL most people ever make of
their whole lives! content perhaps to think that if nada else they at
least made it a little materially easier for the next generation, and then they're gone! show's over!

with such a slim choice on offer it's no wonder then many pour themselves
into their work and careers (and families) until THAT becomes WHO they are
and WHAT they DO and what they're basically ALL about? cc's line about "people's lives not adding up to more than a hill of beans, either for themselves or for anyone else" is patently correct in that sense! the most people ever usually achieve being to merely raise the next generation who
will accordingly then suffer a very similar fate in their turn! down the
ages whole civilisations coming and going purely off the back of all this useless + endless 'work' building complex societies and belief-systems
that ultimately don't even last!

and now here we are again today, the 23rd known civilisation (more or
less) to have appeared on this planet, as a society we may indeed be more advanced, have higher/wider aspirations & aims (and certainly better
plumbing heh) but our collective goals have remained basically the same material goals they've always been throughout, nothing has really changed
from civilisation to civilisation except maybe the technology &
belief-systems involved and as such there's no real 'depth' to it all, no meaning beyond the sheer physicality of everything! - life for the vast majority is 2-dimensional and thus ALL and ONLY about what you DO for a
job to support yourself and how much material wealth you've accumulated +
how you spend it! thus spiritually impoverished, we all end up basically 'bluffing' our way through life pretending to know what we're doing based solely upon the imagined things we 'think' we know anything about... and
that's it!

the question that usually comes to mind at this point being: well how in
the hell did it all end up like this anyway?? has it always been like
this: just some series of slowly evolving civilisations from apemen to
modern day homo sapians, or, could it have been as say Plato suggested, in
that once upon a time there was another, far older and wiser civilisation,
one that was utterly destroyed in some kinda ultimate global disaster, the
few struggling survivors of which, he said, were left, for 1000's of
years, like orphans to fend for themselves with no knowledge nor memory of their previous history & culture to refer to beyond that of myths &
legends, the 23 civilisations that subsequently arose after them being the direct descendants and heirs of those few original totally materially-needy/minded survivors?

personally, i tend to go for the latter explanation, if only because we do indeed appear to have latent/suppressed psychic abilities (such as
WILDing) that no one as yet really understands, stupendous abilities of perception that in their aggregate and practice paints an entirely
different picture of what life is really all about compared to what we currently think we know about it all - something which even science admits
is only as much as 4% of the known whole - as yet unused (or perhaps just forgotten) abilities which in fact adds a third dimension to everything,
iow: some genuine depth ;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)