10 Reasons To Buy Essays On Awakening

 

 

In celebration of the release of my newest book, I am sharing 10 short snippets from it for your perusal. I have even been so kind as to provide you a link at the end where you might purchase it, kind person that I am.

                      

In our quest for achievement and progress, we have walled ourselves off from joy. Joy requires a certain amount of leisure and silence in which to work its magic, whereas our society has killed silence and replaced leisure with never-ending distraction. We toil ceaselessly in order to chase a happiness that is ever illusive, or else fritter our restful hours in consuming externally-produced information and entertainment that serves only to sell another’s narrative. The voices from outside drown out the one within that alone can experience joy and make us aware of all the joy that is available to us, that is our right as human beings.

Often we seek to be good, ignoring Oscar Wilde’s advice that when we are happy we are always good but when we are good we are not always happy. We feel the need to be something other than what we are, and forget the miracle of our own being, instead pursuing fantasies of what we should be. We seek to be good, valiant, noble, self-sacrificing, when in truth simply by being human we will be all that and more. It is in our nature. That is what it means to be human, but we have somehow come to believe that being human is not good enough.

We struggle to acquire wealth, and once we have acquired it, we need to justify our struggle by purchasing things we don’t really need. We spend on lavish dinners while we forget the joy we experienced from harvesting from our own little gardens. We purchase berries out of season at the crowded supermarket, forgetting the miracle of chancing upon them while hiking on an early summer day. Convenience is convenient, but no substitute for joy.

What joy does society give us today? It seems so many of us dread the company of our fellow human beings nowadays, since the sharing of joy seems to be a thing of the past. We shop at stores that don’t offer us human interaction, giving us convenience and speed at the expense of joy. We joylessly interact with machines rather than face each other, seeing in the eyes of others the joyless reflection of our own souls.

Joyfulness is not only our default setting, it is our destiny. If we do not look towards our future with the anticipation of joy, we are severely off-track. Regardless of the incessant call for individuality and freedom that is used to promote the path we are on, no group of free individuals wants a future bereft of joy. No free thinker looks forward to a time when we are all ruthlessly competing to see who can become the joyless king of a joyless planet. If joy — true contentedness in both being and working towards becoming the human you were born to be — is not part of the equation that formulates your world view, I would humbly suggest you are walking a needlessly painful and ultimately futile path.

More than a cup of coffee or anything human civilization has been able to create, staring up into a bright blue sky with the sight of the occasional bird soaring high above is the best way to start the day.

Another world exists. I have seen it. I see undeniable evidence of it daily. The more clearly I am able to see the matrix for what it is, the more beauty and rightness I am able to see outside of its confines. This other world consists of all living things, of all history and culture that has been able to live outside the corporate-created matrix that so many never stop to question. There, miracles exist. There, beauty is more than surface deep but incorporates spirit and soul. There, is a connectivity and sense of belonging we shall never experience in a corporate matrix that exists to create discontent and desire for more, always more.

Even after you begin to realize what is taking place, you will need a good amount of faith in human nature and the inevitability of change not to be freaking out a little. Because what is happening cannot be placed in convenient little boxes in order that we might understand it. Something big is happening, the situation is very fluid, and our intellects are not the tools we think they are that can get us through every problem we encounter.

Donald Trump was the first huge manifestation of the change roiling within. He is an ugly crack on the dead epidermis that we mistook for what is, but has only been covering what is becoming. Trump is no reflection of what it is that’s coming, merely a warning that something is indeed coming. But Trump is enough to terrify those who do not see change as necessary and positive. They wish only to patch up the shell, because they are terrified of what lies beyond their superficial understanding. They would allow what is being born to die rather than lose their simplistic notion of what life is.

Trump is not the face of the transformation, he is but the death rattle of the existing order. And Democrats are not the answer to Trump and to outmoded ideas, they are the life support system that is keeping the existing order alive longer than it naturally should be allowed to live. Democrats are the existing order, Trump an echo from the past that seeks to be an answer to that existing order. Between the two you have the insufficient present and the past that needed to be replaced fighting it out over the future. Neither is the future. Both are preventing the future from being born. It’s like a Grandpa arguing with his daughter about how his granddaughter ought to behave.

As promised, here is a link to Essays On Awakening. I assure you that this is but a taste of what you can find within those pages: https://www.amazon.com/Essays-Awakening-James-Rozoff/dp/B0FS274XXB/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

Quotes On Awakening

 

Artwork in progress for Essays On Awakening

Some quotes from my forthcoming book, Essays On Awakening:

Any choice you opt for, any candidate you vote for, that is offered by the system, is opting for and supportive of the system. Any corporate product you buy or political candidate you invest your energy in is profiting the corporate system. There is no way within the system to fight the system. That’s not an option they are going to give you. Prison guards don’t give weapons to the prisoners they profit from controlling.

This may sound very discouraging, as if there is no way out of the dilemma. And when we feel discouraged, when we feel there is no real way to improve things, we shut down, stop trying, ignore the problem because we feel as if we can do nothing to fix it. This isn’t the case at all, but it is what the existing system wants you to think. They want you to think that there is no hope and there are no solutions. And that is true, but only when you look to the system for answers. The system will only give you answers that support the system, therefore they will only give you lies that will ultimately leave you feeling hopeless. That’s where you are now whether you are fully aware of it or not. You have been beaten down and made to feel that you can only hope for the crumbs that they throw you.

If you cannot say no and you always come up with reasons for supporting those who rule you in ways you should not be ruled, you are a slave. And good for you if you want to be a slave, that’s your choice. But for God’s sake, don’t try to lecture the rest of us. If we do not listen to your master, we are not going to listen to his lackeys. Go live your slave lives but don’t go preaching to us.

So how do you know when you are effectively opposing a system that is created to oppress rather than encourage individual rights? When the system tells you you are wrong. When they try to silence you, when they tell you you are not merely wrong but dangerous. You ARE dangerous. Dangerous to THEM. Dangerous to the power they have usurped from the masses. You are dangerous to unjust power. And when you are dangerous to unjust power, that means you are powerful to oppose injustice. And that’s a good thing.

The courage that permits wisdom demands you relinquish all of your biases, which act as defenses. You must abandon not only self but your larger affiliations, which, after all, are merely larger sorts of self. You must attempt to see reality through God’s eyes. And in doing so, you must not limit God to what you believe Him to be or what your larger group tells you God is. Again, you must see through the eyes of others. You must attempt to see God through the eyes of those who call him Allah, must see him through the eyes of those who call him Vishnu, those who do not call him by any name and yet seek him though they know it not.

Seek the wisdom of the young, who see life through unbiased eyes. Seek the wisdom of the old, who at last have seen through the many stages of life. Though their eyes be weak, their vision blurry, their knowledge of what to look for is unsurpassed.

The greatest courage we can attain is to step out of our own little shells, to leave self and ego behind and float, selfless and vulnerable, through all the life we encounter. In leaving our home, we find everywhere to be home. In leaving ourselves, we find everybody and everything to be us.

Once wisdom is attained, courage is no longer required.

Do not fear that you will never be free from their machinations. They will always be ahead of you in the games they play, but all their plotting will come to nothing if you keep to the basic principles you know in your heart to be true. They cannot manipulate you if they cannot make you stray from your core values.

Do not hate, even when you do not understand. Do not support violence, even when you are afraid for yourself and your family. Hatred and violence are their tools, not ours. Hatred and violence make tyrants strong but they are the ruin of civilizations.

Have faith, in yourself and in the overall goodness of humanity. Perhaps people are not naturally angels, but neither are they naturally devils. The deciding factor is the way we choose to perceive ourselves and others. If you commit to seeing the better angels of your own soul and of those you meet, you will turn the tide in favor of goodness.

Primitive man realized he was part of a family as much as he was an individual. Advancing, he realized he was part of something larger, part of a clan. Then still something larger, a tribe, a city, a nation. The history of humanity is one of searching for belonging in an ever-bigger community. We have now arrived at the logical endpoint, the realization that we are all one people, a global family, each of us depending upon others for our own survival.

P.S. Essays On Awakening will be a sort of sequel to my book Essays On The Media, which is available HERE

An Awakening To The Power Of The Media From The Novel "The Association"

 

In 2014, I wrote a fictional account of someone awakening from the existing paradigm to become aware of the narratives that shape our lives. As a paradigm dies, the institutions that have best served the paradigm will continue to pump out narratives that no longer fit the current reality. I will try to deal with crises with tools that serve the outmoded paradigm and thus will only make the situation work. This then, in fiction, is a telling of one who is waking up to the power the media has to shape our consciousness. The Restaurant in question is, as you might have guessed, a Buffalo Wild Wings.

They were led through the noise of the crowd and a competing amount of televisions by a bubbly blond waitress. Everywhere, television screens stood as distractions to the patrons.

Dave and Johnny were seated at a table, rows of televisions on all sides of them. Johnny was talking, but Dave couldn’t help being distracted by the various action taking place on the many screens. There were three screens directly above him, another four neatly arranged one tier below. Televisions were on both sides of him, hanging at the periphery of his sight. One was showing sports highlights, another showing some college football game, still another a lacrosse game. One of the screens was asking trivia questions, but the wait between questions—stuffed with advertising—caused him to shift his gaze towards more kinetic offerings. Even the commercials distracted his attention, were designed to grab at his attention, he couldn’t help thinking. No, not grab his attention. That was not what they were designed to do. They were meant to grab his eye, to funnel their messages not to his attention but to somewhere beneath his attention to poke at his subconscious motivators.

He watched a commercial with two men sitting in a library, one of them eating a cookie. With no sound, Dave had to guess the message. One man soon becomes upset and dumps over the table. Soon, a woman comes up from behind him and smashes a chair over the back of his head. Another man then pushes over a bookshelf in anger, knocking over other bookshelves like dominoes. In mere seconds, the library is on fire as everyone and everything in it is being thrown or smashed. At the end of the commercial, an Oreo cookie is shown, along with directions on where to vote. Apparently, the argument that has destroyed an entire library was about a cookie. Dave could only imagine what kind of message he was supposed to have received from such a commercial.

Dave tore his attention away from the screens, looked at the people around him. They were for the better part ignoring those they sat with, as Dave felt himself doing with Johnny. As they watched the screens, the wait staff walked around doling out smaller, hand-held screens for the patrons to use in order to interact with the bigger screens mounted on the walls. Thus, Dave couldn’t help noticing, the people’s attention was further divided by having even more competing screens.

What interaction that took place at the tables was merely commentary of what was taking place on the screens. It was as though all of the information was sent funneling through screens until it was digested by the patrons. Like pigs at a trough, thought Dave, not knowing what it was they were consuming, nor caring why it was they were being fed. He found Johnny’s voice to be just one of many sources of information competing for his attention. Text scrolled across the televisions in front of him in layers, too quickly for him to process. And all the while the screens at the periphery of his sight were pumping out vast amounts of information and images, feeding his brain whether he wished them to or not.

It was not that they were drowning out what it was that Johnny was trying to convey to him, not even that they left no room in his mind for thoughts and ideas of his own. No, he felt that somehow, amidst the constant barrage of useless and ephemeral information, there was some sinister virus that was travelling along with it, the screens above him like UFOs beaming rays into his head, planting their seeds deeply into his subconscious like spidery aliens.

He tried to relax his mind, allow the messages to come without trying to process them. He thought that by silencing his own thoughts he would be able to witness in a tranquil manner the effects the messages were having upon his mind. He felt the placid aspect of his consciousness receiving the flow, being played upon by the constant influx like an instrument that has wind blown through it. He observed the images that stimulated his passive mind, felt the effect they had on it. He contemplated each message that seemed to excite his psyche, wondered what the intent of it was and who or what it was that sent it.

He found his mind working on an elevated level, even as he realized it was not capable of any kind of useful action at the moment. He was witnessing the working of his mind that was always occurring but of which he was seldom aware. A vast amount of thought was occurring beyond what he was ordinarily aware of, was always occurring. It was both fascinating and frightening. He was so much more than he gave himself credit for, and yet so little of what made him who he was ever was truly decided by his conscious self.

He found himself beginning to rebel against the information being thrust at him from so many different angles. They all wanted his attention, all wanted a piece of his consciousness, to take from him what was rightfully his. No, they didn’t want to take what was his, they wanted to take him, to own his mind, to replace his thoughts with their own. Some alien thing wished to replace his internal consciousness with some overlord kind of mind. And there was too much of it he was being bombarded by to fight back. Fleeing was the only option, and he found himself exiting the building in a less than polite manner, bumping into a crowd of young men as he went.

He did not stop until he was beyond the sound of the external speakers, back at the van. He soon noticed Johnny walking towards him, a look of concern on his face.

“What’s the matter, Dave?”

Dave looked into the tattooed face of Johnny, and he wondered if he had had anything to do with what had happened. “Did you do that to me? Was that you playing with my head? Is this some sort of display Doug had you put on for me?”

“Naw. You’re just beginning to see a little more clearly, that’s all. You’ll get used to it. It effects us all a little differently, we all come to it in our own way.”

“I don’t want to get used to this. I don’t want my consciousness changed.”

“Just think of it like you’re developing a new sense. Like smell. Some things stink, but you’re glad you have the ability to smell, nevertheless.”

“But…it was like there was something in the randomness, something I couldn’t quite understand but knew was there. Like there was something living amidst the thousands of messages the televisions were sending.”

“All human thought has a life of its own. That’s the problem. We don’t know a tenth of what’s going on in our minds, but they’re always working. When the conscious mind does not jibe with the subconscious, we waste our human powers, they get siphoned away and coalesce into something else, something not really living but alive, if you get me. That’s sort of what ghosts are on an individual level, a creation of energy made by emotion that could not be reconciled with thought. But when the power of the conscious mind is able to come together with the power of the sub-conscious, when they jibe, that’s what you’re starting to experience now. That’s you beginning to connect with your human powers. In observing what is out of joint, you are given the knowledge and ability to set it right. It’s just…well, it’s hard. It’s a long journey. And just like every other aspect of life, you never really arrive.”