todays english paper, written 4o minutes before class.

Mankind & his enslavement to suffering.

(Cause&Effect)


Depression seems to be the new plague; a rampant, incurbable affliction which can affect anyone regardless of their health, exposure, location, age, sex, or race. It requires no outside stimulus although most often it can be shirked off as having been caused by one. It cannot be ignored by the one suffering it, nor can those around them escape its effects. When a machine stops functioning because the key no longer works, does it make sense to keep trying to use the key over and over again to no avail, or to find another way? Society's self-imposed pain and suffering can easily be overturned, it only requires that the participants are finally willing and no longer have the will to cause themselves pain. Our mental processes manifest themselves in our physical world whether we are trying to make them or not, or are aware of that or not, and when they are negative, we bring the whole ship down with us.

According to the Uplift Program, which many therapists, authors, and counselors contribute to, "Depressive disorders affect about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year" which is approximately 18.8 million American adults, which, as a statistic, obviously excludes the amount of teenagers that suffer anxiety in this country. They also report "Pre-schoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers -- over a million -- are clinically depressed." I am afraid to imagine the number we would come to if you were to combine the amount of depressed adults, teenagers and children in America.

What are these statistics really saying? That there is obviously something wrong with us as a society, though many refuse to acknowledge this (ignorance and bliss). How can we act as if things are "okay" when, as the Uplift Program theorizes, "Depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020"? Not a sickness or a war or a huge natural disaster, but people killing themselves will be responsible for the second highest number of deaths we can record; isn't that amazing? We live in a society that imposes on us how to act down to the very tiniest aspects of our personal lives, always made to feel as if someone is watching over our shoulder, whether it be the law or god. We are always meant to feel as if we are doing something wrong and should be chastizing ourselves for it, which creates a severe shift in self-esteem and perceived self-image. We are perpetuating this "disease" with our mental inclinations, and though we see the obvious manifestations of this in our physical world, most of us chose to believe that rather than causing it, it is being inflicted upon us by some outside source... we can't blame ourselves, we have to blame others, or blame god. Humankind chooses to ignore its responsibility.

What is depresssion? A feeling of no self-worth, uselessness, hopelessness, abandonment, guilt, shame, regret, worry, and fear all arising simultaneously. Sometimes we lose a job, a family member or a lover, not just to death but because of something we have done, and we find ourselves experiencing these things. Did I make the right choice? If one is always meant to feel that he is choosing incorrectly and acting out of accordance with the rules, that style of thinking will permeate into all corners of his mind and be present for every little decision, blocking him from attempting to do what he thinks is right by convincing him he will not arrive at the correct outcome on his own. "I am so stupid," "I am wrong." Have you ever felt this way?
Our addiction to our ego may be the obvious cause of all of this pain. When one cannot let go of functioning how others perceive they should, nor can he let go of worrying about the acceptance of others, there is much room for self-doubt and self-loathing to take the place of confidence and self-love. Our ravenous need to be identified and liked by others makes us form our false-identity, our ego, which is made up of all our bad decisions we made in the past that continue to haunt us, our current goals and intent, and our opinions. We are so voracious to prove that we have an identity that we form opinions, a severe discomfort over something and an allowing of something, just so that we can look a certain way to others. We have to prove we exist by compromising someone else's thoughts, worrying about what we experienced before in our lives, and calling attention to ourselves with our current actions. This empty egg shell cannot be filled with anything genuine, with any true feelings from our hearts, because our hearts tell us that this way of thinking is wrong. When it hurts because we are rejected, it must be wrong. "Pain is a warning that something is wrong" said Madonna, but many think that they deserve to feel the pain that they do and so perpetuate it, even though they know that it shouldn't be happening!

Would it not be suffice to say that we caused this epidemic? We have victimized ourselves to gain attention in the way of our last choice: pity. Should we be pitied because we pity ourselves? Our current way of thinking is forcing us to kill ourselves or live in complete suffering, and yet there still has not been a mass realization that this must be the problem, and those suffering are their own villains. Again, blaming everyone else seems comforting, that way we can say we have no control over anything, completely relinquishing the reasons for our decisions to everyone but ourselves. But if we do not have control over our own minds and bodies and experiences and perimital worlds, then what does it even matter what decisions we make? Humans function under this hypocracy absolutely. Why should you feel bad about something you did, if it wasn't even your fault that you did it? This shows me that we realize the underlying truth, we are responsible for everything, but it is easier to run away and procrastinate taking our true place than to face the music.

uhm how did i get a paid account?? O_o

[link] new sonic game

yes today is the apocalypse. i mean, my birthday. i've been 21 for 14 hours. last night my mom came to my room and said,
"i'm going to come down and jump on your bed at 4:20 in the morning, and tell you to wake up, it's your birthday!"
at this point, i knew my birthday was somewhere within the vacinity of that time frame... i actually was thinking more like 4:22, but of course mommy would know for sure before i would. it all makes so much sense now... of COURSE i was born at 4:20am! come drink with me tonight.

in more exciting news, did mushrooms on friday at my house with keith & jackie *squee*. "mexicanos", thats what she called them.. i suppose they are a mexican strain (hydroponic). well they were fantastic regardless... two quarters between three people is a little over an eighth for each of us... i must say, i've never tripped quite like that on mushrooms. we ate them at about 1, it kicked in around 2, and we chilled to get over the initial nausea until the trip really set on. then we went for a walk.

i live in a relatively dark area, back country, lakeside... with no moon out, its particularly dark. streets have little if any lights on them and the possibility of cars at 2am is 0-1%. the idea had been to go on a walk. usually, walking is a great adventure on dxm (thats robotussin) like last time, when it really did involve a medieval sword. dxm promotes the profound feeling of inpenetrability, or invulnerability... like anything at all is possible. a different level of this presents itself in a mushroom trip and is comprised of something entirely different than the idea that "i've taken this substance, now i am invincible!"... on mushrooms, it's more like... "i am responsible for all of this... not one thing is out of my grasp of spontaneous creation." this is the concept that sticks with you after the mushrooms wear off and forms further and more obviously whether or not you're sober as time goes on. anyway, we went walking.

the roads are curvey, the distination is the dock. the dock has received much attention from fucked up people in the past, it is a fan favorite of any who have tripped or rolled or whatevered with us before. but jackie hadn't been (nor has she still) so it seemed like a perfectly possible and interesting conquest. i tried to make a text map, but the moongate flashbacks and livejournal's shitty inability to let spaces stand next to each other was too much for me. imagine long winding dark streets, which invoke a creepy, eerie trip, with shit hanging off trees you didn't even notice and no visible road. anyway, after about 10 minutes, once we got to the point where the field started, i gestured beyond it where one can see the lights of the dock (jackie wanted to know how far away it was).
"but, we still have to go all the way around on this road, or *sarcastically* we could go through the field."
i hadn't expected them both to stop, but they did. i tried to explain to them that i was joking about cutting through the field, its trespassing, not that any of us give a shit. neither of them could see a reason for not going through the field.
"this is going to result in wet pantlegs.." i muttered, hiking my scrubs up. well, after sufficiently submerging ourselves into the dark, extremely wet, unmanicured land, we began to realize as we stumbled through the completely uncontrolable terrain, that we were going DOWN hill... not that i ever knew there was a hill situated here. the dock wasn't getting any closer, in fact, it was sinking behind the apex of the hill. well there was no fucking way we were going to push through here and actually end up at the dock. i start to trudge up the hill. if this had been 3 years ago i probably would have been quite pissed, but i am me who is i now, and i was very happy to be climbing up an unpredictably hole-y and promentory, dark, wet landscape, with soaked shoes and shins and a handful of pants. until i realized no one was following me that is. i bounded back down the hill where the two of them were frozen. fear can do a number on you if you're on mushrooms. of course, i live here, no fear was involved for me. but they seemed daunted. keith wanted to go back, so i lead them towards the fainly lit entrance. at this time, in the field opposite the one we were in (across the road) a loud truck started up and appeared to be driving aimlessly through the field. this freaked them out and they bolted through the tall grass. i couldn't see what fear there was to be instituted by some crazy dude who obviously was drunk and driving his truck around a field.. rednecks do this all the time. the only problem would be if he somehow made it to the field we were in and ran over us, which i didn't see as slightly possible. we walked home and smoked a joint.

jackie went to the bathroom once we got back, and i noticed my cat(cannabis, "whis") in the living room (he is normally confined to my bedroom). i ran for him and he looked at me like i was crazy. then i discovered that every one of his long kitty hairs were propped perfectly upright and in distancial proportion to each other. OH YEAH! i had put some mushrooms in his dish. he must have eaten them. good kitty! back into my room, which, if i may say, is a right fine place to do hallucinagens. jackie returned some time later with a totally aghast look on her face, like she could not process what had just happened. with no apprehension, i speculated that she had run into one of my parents and they could easily tell she was fucked up, with pupils like black, life-sucking holes.. reflections of the void. i tried to get her to tell me what had transpired, but she wouldn't answer. she sat down and looked as if she was thinking really hard about something that had to be impossible. since this was followed by her continuous nervous headshaking, i could tell she was going over something that seemed impossible but was obviously checking out at every corner to be true, and she couldn't comprehend it. yet. she didn't say a word for 40 minutes! once on mushrooms i went completely silent to let stephen talk without any reciprocation (which was quite fun) but we weren't talking to her, much less talking at all. milkdrop was watched, whis was played with. i tripped ballz. jackie looked confused and shocked. keith started to roll a joint and jackie's first word in 40 minutes was,
"..weed?" which i think is absolutely appropriate. keith fell to the floor and couldn't finish constructing the joint. while we were walking, she had tried to ask me some questions that got muddled and dropped as soon as they came out of her mouth. i had experienced many sensations considering her during the mostly silent walk. radiating from her, i felt unease, the kind you have concerning people, when you aren't sure how to act with someone or what facade to pull out of your magic bag of ego. well, when you are conditioned to being in that kind of situation, you are always making constant decisions about your actions depending on the people around you. however, when you get around people who don't do that, who act however they like regardless of whom they are with or how they look, you stall. you start to look for an appropriate face to wear, and there isn't one. suddenly, owning all those masks becomes embarassing, as if their existence would make those who don't possess them disgusted. embarassment brings along shame and self-loathing, a feeling of seperateness from those you are not like. jackie went through a range of emotions concerning this while we walked. my good friend mushrooms-at-high-doses acts like a scimitar to cut through the world. while you might think you are hallucinating on p. cubensis, you realize you are always hallucinating, no matter your state of mind. these kind of realizations lead to a total make over in perception of EVERYTHING. finally, jackie mustered,
"are you real?" sounding meak, like it was all she could put forth. of course, i'm the kind of jerk who doesn't give straight answers. i replied,
"well.... that depends on how you define real." which launched jackie back into another 5-10 minute period of silence. at length she responded,
"so then.. all that other stuff was... just made up?" i don't exactly know what she was referring to by "other stuff"... but i can only imagine that what she meant by that was everything, everything she had ever seen, ever been told, ever imagined or desired or experienced. all of it, was made up.
"basically." i guess i have a knack for answering the most heavy and heart-wrenching of questions in the most light-weighted and non-imposing of terms. unlike someone who's world was falling apart, where they perceive that everything they ever had is being lost, she seemed more at peace than ever, like someone who realizes that there was never anything grasped in the first place to lose, like an onlooker watching another town being burned in the distance.
"everything... my mom, jail, my apartment.. carl and stacey, SAN?!" she didn't sound dismayed, she sounded convinced. "what are they? what are YOU?"
"me?" i sounded caught off guard... but of course, i never am. "oh.. i'm probably just an extension of you. it's like... a structuring of you, that all those different people and events pertain to."
"what is the universe?"
"it's.. us."
"what are we?"
"who's asking that question?"
"so.... i know everything."
"of course, you always did."
"so... everything really is going to be okay?" she was most shocked.
"most certainly, because it already is."
"i don't... want to play this game anymore.." she rasped. my surprised expression preceeded me.
"really?" i asked, unbelieving. no one could say that and mean it, one could only say it if they still didn't understand that it is all up to them, that they are all that is.
"what.. do i do now?"
"just ride it." i suggested. i can't assume to be an authority for others and take a position of power by telling them what to do.. i merely offer the best answer i can for another's conception.
"where did everything come from?"
"it arose at the same time, that's what alan watts would tell you." he had been in my mind all night quietly telling me things, much in the style of dead obi-wan kenobi appearing in the mind of luke, insisting that he use the force. where i had been staring, i suddenly noticed the fluttering of a paper. under my focus, i realized it was a joint paper sticking up out of the roller, where keith had left it incomplete after falling out of the chair. i hadn't noticed it before, though i'd been staring at the blank computer monitor for upwards of 5 minutes. there had been no changes to the surrounding climate of the room.. a little warm, but slightly breezy from fan-age, as it had been all night. the paper had not been fluttering before, that was my conclusion. and there he was,
"you see? there you were, just now..." and he directed my eyes to the paper. you know how to open and close your hand no more than you know how to set the sun or raise the moon, or in this situation, how you know to flutter the paper. you don't know how you do it, you just do it.

we went ouside to finally enjoy the pineapple-flavored juicy jay, and the night seemed brighter. over the trees east of my house was a faint light, caused by a nearby city.. probably dade city. we deeply enjoyed each others presence, and jackie continued to test out her new theory, to see where, if it ever could possibly, be wrong.. which it can't of course, she began to realize. above the light and the trees was a single star, which we all seemed to be viewing. i watched the thing give off different types of glow, colors, swirl around and dart suddenly to one side or the other. it flashed, and little globes of light appeared around it in flashes, as if the star were not only dancing, but exploding, only to remain exactly as whole after it exploded to do so again. i watched it with deep love in my heart, thanking the star for its performance, which it was doing with only us in mind. there was much silence involved with watching this, though i don't know what the others were seeing.. the star could very well have been speaking to them differently. suddenly, it hit me. WHAM! i gasped, drawing my breath very audibly through my throat. i slapped my forehead. DUH! how could i not have noticed until now. i dragged my hands down my slick face. duh. i pointed at the star.
"thats what we were reading about!" i exclaimed, but you need to know i mean "listening to the readings of on cd" and not reading personally. alan watts has a collection of seminars spread over probably a hundred or so cds; i own 7. the ones in question are "the way of zen" where he perfectly described the arising of and purpose of zen practice in india, china and japan. he told the story of the buddha, what i consider to be my favorite part now and was before i really knew much more than he retreated to the forest for several years and returned knowing all. it is said that after sitting in the forest for many years meditating, he could find nothing with the effort of searching his mind except his own effort. he relaxed his ascetic diet and ate something nutritious, and declared he would not leave the spot until he had attained moksha (nirvana in hindu). he sat all night in meditation until the first rays of dawn, where he had contemplated the single star in the sky. at the dawning he was suddenly provoked by the star into a perfect state of clarity, to which is the step off the edge and straight down into the void. the turning point of his quest, his knowledge... all the things he had known and seen before, how they all added up to this moment. how it all finally, completely made sense. this is called anuttarasamyaksambodhi, complete unexcelled awakening, to which he refers,
"i attained not the least thing from complete unexcelled awakening."

suddenly the rays of dade city were recognized as being the dawn (there is no real grasping of time on shrooms) which were like waves undulating at the shore of the star. it was the same thing.
"complete unexcelled awakening..." i breathed. keith understood, and jackie will, soon. it all made sense. this was the trip i had been looking for all along. i had experienced the "little satori" over and over again on trips and even more so in my waking, sober life. i had already started to wake up and look around the theatre, as jed meckenna might say. yet i was still understanding how it all worked (which is said by zen masters to take up to 10 years in the most conducive of surroundings, a zen monastary). now i really knew. now was the big satori. i could see the lines. i could SEE them. the leylines, they spread across the sky. they were reflected in the shape of the ground AND the doldrums on the lake, all perfectly synchronized. the trees fit perfectly. i did a test.. i waved my hand in my face. perfectly... perfectly the lines lined up. i closed my eyes and everything vanished. no trace of light i had been exposed to lasted in the darkness. suddenly i knew what watts meant when he said, "everything that is, everything that we do, is all just a way of dealing with the void." with the nothingness that must exist for somethingness to exist. it was true... in the darkness i felt complete peace, like i was... coming home. fabric of string woven together is the best analogy for existence ever made. they had gone inside at this point and left me to my contemplation. the lines were only becoming more vivid as the day grew, perfectly sconcing each cloud and wisp in the sky.

anuttarasamyaksambodhi is the shit.

for a long time you might have known me as libby or as kibby (or further impersonally, ~leviathen), both which i have to leave behind at this point. so i might as well use my real name. olivia marie hamilton. if you didn't know any of that, you're lucky.

i like to smoke weed & do other various safe drugs (except ecstacy..) &, you guessed it, take pictures. my real work in the photography field is either mostly or completely drug-inspired or i was actually fucked up at the time. i also like existensialism which is what i usually bring my pictures back to, as far as representation, naming or "meaning". i am vastly interested in nonduality & the origin of it all.

i'm taoist. i don't conform. i inderectly oppose most everything.