We’ve seen the holographic nature of reality in “Physics: The Holographic Model”. As individual extensions of the Source, we have that very same holographic nature. In order to interface with that nature, our brains function holographically. In fact, the whole picture of the human brain is quite simple, though it plays out in infinite different ways. This section is absolutely essential in understanding the mind and its interface through the brain.

The following is a continuing narrative on the Holographic Brain from “The Holographic Universe”.

The omnipresent light of the Source intersects with the very same light beam coming through our own focus on our experiences in the physical. The two together record our experiences in a higher-dimensional hologram — a memory.

What is observed by us in the physical is stored in memory nonphysically, becoming part of our library of physical experiences and forms. Consciousness dips into the physical universe for a lifetime and picks up all these forms which can be perfectly reproduced (projected) at any time.

Since the brain stores and recalls wave forms, then our senses must be conveying their signals as wave forms. To achieve this, they must be acting as frequency analyzers.

Projection is one of the basic qualities of consciousness. We project our various sense impressions of the world out holographically to their perceived positions outside of us. We assemble them into a cohesive world.

The following is a hologram recorded in this fashion called “The Kiss 2”:

One of the most common things that I’ve seen in altered states of mind is overlapping concentric rings. I believe what I’m seeing is holographic wave interference patterns — the raw encoded holographic nature of the mind. This is what holographic plates look like without the reference beam shining on them to reveal their imagery. While we usually see the 3D holographic image, in some focuses we can also see the structure in the brain that holds the hologram.

Playing a scene via a 2D holographic plate is done by changing the angle of the beam. In our mind, our steady focus of attention lights the hologram, which we then move through in psychological time.

Starry Night by Van Gogh has a feel reminiscent of seeing these rings while on LSD.

The brain is a receiving station and interface between the physical body and the higher-dimensional mind. The mind works holographically as well, even outside the body.

Our experience can be reduced down to the intersection of two things — experiences coming from the now, and projections coming from our past.

The basic functions of the mind are pattern-matching and pattern-association functions. They’re not something biologically built — they’re far more foundational to consciousness than that. Consciousness perceives, and it retains. What it retains shines back (projects) onto what it perceives. This intersection forms our reality.

Our focus of attention shifts between various degrees of experience and projection, with pure experience at one end of the spectrum and pure projection at the other.

This is absolutely KEY to this section.

Another primary way we understand the world is through associations. Concepts are linked together in various ways in the mind. If your Emma bakes apple pies regularly, the concept of apple pie may become associated with her. Focusing on one part of an association can bring up thoughts of the other.

Similar specific associations naturally spread into general associations. Each specific association becomes evidence for the generalization.

The entirety of our past experience forms a vast database that we passively compare our present experiences against. This is how we recognize things and situations. Expectations arise from these holographic projections from our past into the now.

This passive pattern-matching is on at all times in the background. It allows us to recognize people, places, objects, and situations we know from the past. It compares new situations to those in the past with the same key features in order to provide information and to give us hints as to what is going to happen. This is automatic and takes no effort or attention. If there is an emotional component to the past experience, it is given more weight. Our situational knowledge and expectations are the effect of this automatic pattern matching system.

The tendency for a past experience to find a match in the present is initially due to its similarity, amplified by a) the past emotional charge it still holds, and b) our present attention. Our past experiences with emotional charges form a more active seeking, though it still usually occurs without conscious attention (see “The Fading Lights Model” in attention.php).

What we perceive now is selectively amplified based on what we perceived in the past.

The holographic nature of the mind is such that it can effortlessly compare vast amounts of familiar patterns at once. For example, I was playing Pokémon Go the other day, scanning across the tiny images of 6-8 different Pokémon on the screen, looking for new Pokémon I hadn’t seen before. I realized that at a glance I was instantly comparing what I saw against the 900 Pokémon I’m familiar with in the game. It was automatic and instantaneous.

How does something without our present attention passively project into our experience?

During each experience, the light of our attention flows into and takes the form of that experience, with all its new associations. That form continues to exist mentally, radiating outwards into our new present experience. The emotional component, being the brightness (or amplitude) of the image, radiates more brightly but fades more quickly than the concept itself, which remains far longer.

The action of past experiences in this regard is described in detail in “The Effect of Thoughts” in thoughts.php.

That point of light is a light to our attention — it’s not visibly seen, but it grabs your attention. I call this the attention field. More on this to come.

The hologram of our subjective experience is built at the intersection of our present physical sensory experience and our past experience.

When you see a small red object on the table, your mind matches it with a visual pattern you’ve experienced before, and you recognize it as a strawberry. This recognition calls up information on the pattern, including the taste and the linguistic symbol — the word “strawberry.” The relevant information may include such things as “I like strawberries” and “strawberries are safe to eat.”

We project those expected qualities into the strawberry.

We also recognize sequences — patterns across time. After seeing events play out a certain way before, seeing the same initial event generates an expectation of it turning out the same way. Just like object recognition, this is at play at all times as an attention-saving mechanism that allows us to predict what will happen next based on the past.

These expectations are also projections. We project what we expect to happen out into our experience so that we can quickly see it there when it happens.

Here’s a fun little example. Listen carefully to the following clip from Disney’s Peter Pan, in which the lyrics sung are, surprisingly, “think of Batman pooping snakes”:

You heard it clearly, right? Now listen again with the actual lyrics in mind: “take the path that moonbeams make”. You heard that clearly, too, didn’t you? There’s not a single word in common between those two phrases. We projected our expectations along with the video. Clearly, projections are incredibly powerful at shaping our experience.

Our sensory experience was used to confirm our expectations.

Everything we have a concept for lives in a cloud of associations. All the experiences we’ve had with each type of person or thing form thoughts and expectations about it. Looking at someone or something through that cloud means we don’t actually see much of them at all — we see our past associations and expectations. We project those out onto that person or thing and feel we know something about them based on that past experience.

The world is filled with unknowns. But we transform it into a world of seeming knowns through the projection of our expectations.

Due to the holographic nature of the mind, all expectations are projections. Anywhere we find unknowns, we project likely situations into them. We don’t know the future but we make guesses, projecting known patterns out into it. We proceed under the assumption that our expectations are going to happen. What we project is mixed into what we perceive to form our final experience (see “Our Experience Is The Meeting Point” above).

These projections can have a profound effect on our lives. The way we fill in the unknown, what we expect from the future, our degree of optimism or pessimism — this is our own contribution to our subjective reality. As we get older and have more experiences, we see less of what’s really there and more of our own projections. The world can become too known, too predictable.

There is a well-known experiment you can try right now. Each of our eyes has a small blind spot where our ocular nerve connects. The brain corrects for this blind spot by filling in what it expects to be there based on the surrounding context.

Take a look at the image below. Close your right eye, and look with your left eye at the +. From a certain distance away, the dot disappears, as the brain fills in the blank spot with expectations based on its white surroundings.

We entirely fail to see something that is actually there. We are seeing our visual expectations.

If someone tell you that you are about to meet someone, this brings about certain very general expectations. How do we react? We call on our general overall impression of other people. If it’s positive, then we will feel excited. If it’s negative, you will feel suspicious and distrustful. You react to this general “other person” unless you are able to get more details which may have significant meanings. “You are about to meet a 21-year-old girl with brown hair” brings about more specific expectations, yet they are still rather generalized through everyone you’ve known that fits that description. “You are about to meet Buttercup for lunch,” brings about a very specific expectation. Each attribute that has some meaning is cross-indexed to bring about a certain set of expectations about what is going to happen.

This is CENTRAL and CRUCIAL. I’ve directly experienced in many psychedelic experiences that a lack of attention that results in looking through past experiences is the central source of what blocks the Source and keeps us from experiencing the extraordinary beauty of the now.

We simplify the present by living in the past. Our attention is freed from the now at the cost of our happiness.

This pattern recognition function is always on. Its purpose is to simplify the present moment by comparing it to past experiences. As you go about your day, your sensory inputs are being compared to patterns from your past and motivations from the present. This frees up our attention for other things. In terms of survival, this is amazing. You instantly recall everything you might need to know about any person, object, or situation, which frees up your attention to fulfill other needs.

However, in terms of happiness, it’s crushing, as you experience only your past projections onto the world. This blocks out most new experiences, and is the cause for the growing unhappiness as we get older. Our world progressively becomes more abstracted in this way, as instead of seeing anything truly, we see our past conceptions of things.

The older you get, the more you feel you’ve seen it all before. Looking out through the filter of memory is not really seeing. If you’ve gotten used to something, you’ve adapted to it. The sound of the air conditioning, the cold temperature, the constant bickering; if it no longer affects you like it did at first, you’ve adapted to it, tuned it out.

This is also true of distraction. The more distracted you are, the more you draw on your past experience of a thing. This week’s trip to a park is seen as essentially the same as last week’s, even though it may be an entirely new park. We assume the people around us are pretty much the same as people we already know. Although the situation before us is new, we see it as old. Our attention is instead focused on past or future issues, and the current experience isn’t relevant to that.

As long as life is lived without attention, we experience nothing new and live in a world of shadow. Without attention, life becomes boring, repetitive, and our possibilities will seem to be exhausted.

Whatever we expect disappears. Expectation causes something predictable to gradually fade from our attention. Repeated stimulus that is deemed unimportant is adapted to and tuned out in our normal waking state. For example, a constant or repeated sound becomes background before long, and gets no attention. When a thing is expected, you’ve integrated it into your context and it becomes background. It essentially disappears from our attention. This is known as “habituation”.

This is evident with the senses as well. A new smell grabs our attention, but soon fades from our awareness. Once we sit down, the sensation of the chair slowly fades until we don’t feel it anymore. This is a basic neurological phenomenon known as “neural adaptation”.

Habituation can be overcome through our focus of attention. During deeper states of meditation, a repeating stimulus will be surprising each time. Expectations require memory. One disengages from their memory as they focus in the now.

When something is completely new to us, it probably has our full attention. Likewise, if we are fully present in the now, even something we’ve experienced many times before can feel new and we can gain fresh insights through from it. Uncompared, everything is perfect.

When comparing similar experiences, we see only differences and sameness. As in any comparison, a judgement of one being perfect makes all differences bad.

I can look back at the poor quality of the cartoons I watched in my youth. But at the time they brought me happiness, reminded me of who I am. It was me that was infusing them with value, with truth. It was me opening up totally to them, letting the light flow through my attention. But I can no longer enjoy them. I am aware of clichés, blinded by comparisons, and succumb to the limitations of my “finer taste.”

This forces us to find new things to stimulate us in different ways and leads us to expand our horizons, though the light becomes harder to find.

See “Standards for Enjoyment” below and “How the Source Speaks to Us” in flow-into-us.php.

Some expectations have an emotional component. If a person, thing, or event had a positive or negative effect on us, that strengthens the memory. That detail is stored along with the pattern, and recalled when we match that pattern in our environment. Emotionally-charged expectations (fears, desires) shine out more brightly onto our sensory landscape. Their emotional charge gives more weight to the projection.

Our happiness comes from opening up to the flow from the Source. Our attention comes forward into the now, and we have new experience, bringing happiness and pleasure. We’ll go into this in detail in “The Flow Into Us” in flow-into-us.php.

• When we expect pleasure and happiness, we open up and focus in the now. This allows us to experience pleasure by opening to the the flow.

• When we expect pain and failure, we close up, try to block the experience, and thus do not experience the pleasure of the flow.

Both of these situations reinforce themselves, regardless of what actually happens.

For this same reason, when one expects to have something and doesn’t get it, it is as if it was already theirs and was suddenly lost. So there is anger, sadness, disappointment. If one expected to lose something, and it wasn’t lost, then they feel better, and their energy rises back to its pre-expectation state.

As long as your experience seems to match your expectations, there is no need for attention to be drawn to it. Our attention is free for other things. But what happens when a new situation only partially matches our expectations?

There is an innate holographic phenomenon which draws attention to any sensory input or occurrence which breaks expectations. This “Anomaly Detection” kicks in and holographically lights up the difference between our experience and expectation, drawing our attention to the difference. This added attention primes us for learning. Our attention is drawn to the differences and we encode new memories.

As long as our experience of a strawberry matches our concept of a strawberry, it can satisfy our hunger while our attention wanders to other things. However, if the strawberry is blue, has a weird spot, or tastes different from what you expected, then that difference grabs our attention. We look closer at it, pay more attention to it, and decide this is not a strawberry we want to eat.

When we go out into the world filled with energy and focused attention, anomaly detection draws our eyes to new and interesting things, new opportunities to explore. Anomaly detection fuels our curiosity.

But when we are focused on an ideal, any anomaly may render it useless to us. For example, when we are trying to conform to the “perfect conditions” which we believe are needed for success, any anomaly is a sign of failure. In these situations, anomaly detection triggers fear instead of curiosity.

I’ll cover this in detail in “Social Conditions For Happiness” below.

During an LSD experience when I was 20, I re-experienced the flow of the Source into me. I called it the “Pure Essence” of every good experience I’ve ever had, separate from the form of those experiences. I’ll share that experience in the chapters ahead. For now, understand that the Pure Essence is that flow of love and light into us. It’s the very light of attention that we shine out into the world, or on our past experiences.

We all know the visual field — the screen upon which we see the world. It’s what we’re seeing with right now. But there is also an inner field of perception that relates specifically to attention — the attention field. It overlays all the sensory fields, including the visual field. In the physically-focused state of consciousness, the attention field is perceived only by our attention.

The attention field is a holographic field of inner light and darkness. When we’re fully focused in the now, the light of our attention passes clearly through it, lighting up our perception with an inner light and clarity. When we’re projecting in any way by focusing on desires, fears, or the past, the entire attention field dims and only that which matches lights up.

The attention field is most noticeable when we’re searching for something.

As described above in “Pattern Recognition: Expectations”, the whole of our past experience lies on one side of the attention field, with our present sensory experience on the other side. Together they merge into our filtered final experience. Our ability to recognize people, things, and patterns constitutes a passive ongoing projection.

When actively looking for something, our attention is phased (split) between an internal focus on a mental image (projecting it outward) and the environment we’re searching in. I call this “Specific Search”.

Specific Search is projection enhanced by attention.

We regularly use our projection ability every time we search for and find things. When looking for something, part of our mind focuses inwardly on what we are looking for. The light of our attention projects that image outward, interlacing it with our sensory perceptions, which filters out anything that doesn’t match and lights up that which does. Our attention is then attracted to whatever lights up. This light is typically not seen visually, but acts upon our attention.

All projections are holographic filters. While we focus some of the light of our attention on what we are looking for, that light disappears from our attention field, and only returns through whatever is matched.

In this way, we see the world through the filter of that which we’re looking for. Like all other primary functions of mind, this works holographically through projection.

Without any filters, we perceive our current environment fully. The light of our full attention shines out upon the scene.

Because the light of our attention is half focused on the object we’re searching for rather than our present experience, our present experience dims in the attention field. When a Specific Search matches something in our environment, that object lights up in the attention field, which draws our attention to it. Holographically, it’s the light of attention, the Pure Essence of the mind that’s shining out through the matched object. That thing radiates (to our attention) with ripples like waves from raindrops. I’ve seen this many times in altered states. Attention is always drawn to the brightest thing and thus is drawn towards the match.

Holographically, being the same causes resonance. That resonance lets the light through into whatever we’re looking for.

This is how the the match lights up, holographically. The “rings of relevance” are the raindrop-pattern rings.

This effect is frequently used in animation and illustrations, often as drawn-in lines surrounding and outlining a thing.

This is why the good guys in fantasy — fairies, elf queens, and heroes are sometimes depicted as glowing with a pleasant glow. It’s the light of “who you’re looking for”.

When we find that match, the light of attention shines out of us at it. This, too, can be seen in certain altered states of consciousness. It’s used to show that someone has found something, or fixed their attention on something in art and animation. We instantly recognize and understand this when we see it.

We become more present when we see someone we like, and in so doing, our light shines out more brightly, often in a sudden flash.

Image credit to Rent-a-Girlfriend

Emotions always intensify experience and make bigger impacts in our memories. Thus fears and desires are the primary sponsors of Specific Search. The fears and desires don’t need to come from personal experience — they can be passed from person to person through stories.

Fear-based specific searches focus attention on what might happen to take away our happiness. The bigger and more present the threat, the more attention is directed into the fear and its search. Fears are given focus as a defense against the object of fear.

Fears serve to protect us from having future negative experiences. During and just after a negative experience (as we reflect on it), some of our energy is removed from the total flowing energy of the mind and is hardened into place around the memory as a mental structure, a focus point. This hardened point serves as a protective eye that is ever looking out for whatever hurt or scared us in the past in order to protect us from it in the present.

Fears and desires are different sides of the same coin. When we fear a monster, we desire safety. When we fear being alone, we desire companionship.

The structure of the Specific Search itself is formed by pulling back from the experience, resisting it in psychological time. see “What Happens Energetically” in flow-into-us.php under “Fear, Contraction, Pulling Back from the Now”.

When we mistake the Pure Essence as coming from something outside of us, we will likely become attached to that form.

When we attribute the source of the Pure Essence to a specific form or situation, we will likely form an attachment to it. This is the essential mistake we make in physical life. And it’s no surprise, because we are trained by our bodies from birth to think this way.

Our physical bodies have the ability to divert our attention away from the flow of the Pure Essence. It does this to ensure its physical needs are met. As babies, when we are hungry, we find our happiness has decreased and there is a pain. At first we don’t even recognize it as hunger. We simply cry out, wondering where our happiness has gone. When our mother feeds us, the pain blocking the essence goes away and our happiness returns. As we put together the causes and effects, we realize that our mother is essential to our happiness and become attached. Rightly so — without her and others, we would eventually die.

In this way, our physical bodies train us to fulfill its needs, and we learn the lesson that our ability to be happy comes from outside of us. Due to our social natures, this network of needs for happiness can grow in any conceivable direction. This is covered in detail below in “The Conditioning of the Soul”.

Let’s say we’re having an amazing experience. Based on this lifelong training, we naturally attribute new sources of happiness (the Pure Essence) to various external things and situations (people, possessions, social status, drugs, wealth). We can easily become attached to the form of the experience, mistaking it as the source of the happiness we felt. In truth the happiness came from being present in the moment for the experience.

So we end up becoming attached to this person, this event, this drug. We think “That’s what brings the happiness. That’s what I need more of”. So we make plans for more, waiting on happiness until we have what we’re looking for. We feel anticipation as it comes near, and we focus our attention in the now, the flow. This focus brings happiness — early! We don’t even have it yet! Then it arrives, and we find ourselves happy. We’ve proven it true. We’ve unwittingly made it true.

Now home alone, we’re bored, thinking of the good time we had. As we focus on it, our attention has been pulled out of the light of our present experience into the past. We begin to feel the need to find it again to be happy.

To believe that happiness comes from an external source or condition is to make it so. By expecting it there, you will find it there. But we brought our ability to be happy with us to that original happy occasion. Now we’re ever running to catch something that was ours to begin with.

Attachment to any positive experience decreases the chances of having another. Fear is always involved with attachment — fear of not feeling that way again. Any and every attachment will eventually bring pain. Each need contains the fear that it will go unfulfilled. We act as if our life is being threatened when that source of happiness disappears.

Attachment is not necessary when we have positive experiences. It happens when our normal state is unsatisfying, due to having too much of our essence wrapped up in conditions. In such a case, when we have those positive experiences, we realize what’s been missing for so long and don’t want to let it go. If we can release our energy from their conditions in our everyday lives, then those positive experiences won’t seem so intensely bright in comparison. The experience will still be just as positive, but we won’t form an attachment to it.

If a form has helped take you to a deep place, that’s great! Now immediately forget the form. Leave it behind, so it doesn’t get in your way.

When we don’t want to let go of a positive experience, our energy contracts around the experience as it ends.

After a positive experience, our excitement dies down and things go back to normal. When we look back to the positive experience, we charge it up with a little bit of our attention. Perhaps our friends bring it up, and we shine attention onto it again. The more we do this, the more charged the experience gets.

Neurologically, it’s exactly the same as an aversion to negative experiences — our energy contracts in the same way, causing us to keep looking for the desire’s object to bring happiness.

In future chapters, I will describe how these structures melt down and release their energy under the effect of LSD and psilocybin, and how they lose their ability to attract our attention under the effect of marijuana. see “Primal Awareness” in pure-essence.php and “Deep Attention” in pure-essence.php.

Holographically, desires, fears, and expectations are the same — they all shine out to varying degrees from our past experience into our present. They all project into the attention field in the exact same way, if not to the same degree. They all filter out experience.

Desires and fears are expectations amplified by emotional charges, while expectations are often neutral. Together they form a position from which we try to safely and effectively navigate the unknown future. Expectations set the stage as our ability to understand our world and predict what is coming. Within this context, we seek after our desires while trying to avoid our fears.

Our memories shine their needs and their understanding on the main sensory “screen” of the brain, looking for significant things that we desire or fear. These specific searches contribute to the overall context of our experience.

The totality of our specific searches is a large part of our “mental state”, selectively intensified by our current context. In the absence of sensory context they can be activated by expectation or brought into being in the dream state.

For more, see “Mental State” below.

The focal points that are lit up with residual attention in our mind act as Specific Search projectors trying to reattract our energy. They are energy trapped in conditions, trapped in the past, looking for release. Each is a viewpoint. The classic arcade game Tempest has some similar elements — the crawler around the edge being the point of view shining on the center, the scene before you.

The strength of any Specific Search is equal to a) its importance and b) likelihood of finding it. If you are vaguely in the mood for doughnuts and you happen upon a bakery, then the doughnut search will be powered up! Now if you don’t find doughnuts there, your suddenly-intensified search for something sweet might just be satisfied with something similar; a more general match.

Many desires and fears sleep until a certain context brings them into focus. We may not usually be scared of bears, but if we’re alone in the deep woods and hear a growl, that fear will jump to the forefront.

These energy structures fade slowly over time through the regenerating aspects of sleep, though they may also be continually reinforced by our attention or situational context.

Desperation comes from an incredibly strong need. It increases possible Specific Search matches. When you’re looking desperately for a lost dog, and a cat walks by in your peripheral vision, you’ll turn to look, for it matches in a general way. The greater your need to find something, the more general the input needs to be to set off the recognition trigger.

Specific searches constantly pull from our attention, looking for their release conditions; the context where their energy can be released.

The ever-searching eye of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings feels so evil because it is constantly searching, searching. Since searching blocks out light, the eye is in darkness, single-mindedly obsessed with finding the ring. It represents desperation, unhappiness.

Imagine we see someone that may be a threat. Fear focuses on any possible threatening behavior. If it finds something (or imagines it finds something), we may choose to avoid or escape the object of fear by leaving the situation. To the degree that sensory awareness is discontinued (leaving the scene, closing our eyes, distracting ourselves), we allows ourselves to experience only the fear’s projections, allowing it to fill in the context with what we most fear. This further strengthens them.

In fact, anything that we can’t know — what someone is thinking, what their motivation is, what they did before we saw them, what they plan to do next — are filled in by our projections. To the extent that a fear has our attention, we’re reliving it, bringing that experience with us into the now.

Unless we face the object of fear and see it truly, these beliefs will only strengthen.

For how this works in terms of thought forms, see “The Influence From and Growth of Thoughts” in thoughts.php.

If there is one massive truth about consciousness we can extract from all of this, it is the following:

We tend to find what we’re looking for — except when we’re looking for nothing. That’s when we find happiness.

Optimism and pessimism will both prove themselves out. We are one big self-fulfilling prophecy. The sooner we realize that, the happier we’ll be.

Confirmation bias can be overcome through critical thinking and the principles of the scientific method. It takes fresh attention on evidence to change a belief.

We can also use confirmation bias to our advantage. We can begin to focus on a positive belief that counters a negative one we hold. Confirmation bias will then cause us to find evidence for the positive.

The soul knows no fear.

In our natural state, life is a joy. The world is full of light, and we are happy, curious, and full of energy. We openly and joyfully experience the world.

Our soul, come to inhabit a body and experience the physical world, brings no conditions on its happiness. But the physical body is another matter.

The physical body’s need for food, water, warmth, sleep, and health trains us from birth that happiness relies upon the satisfaction of conditions. Life becomes less pleasurable and fulfilling as we get more hungry, tired, or cold. The physical body draws focus to these needs automatically as they arise. It communicates them to us through discomfort or pain, which pulls at our attention until we satisfy these conditions. The physical body conditions the soul.

As babies, we are introduced to separation, hunger, and cold. But we slowly learn what we need to do to satisfy those needs. These needs then trigger our learned specific searches to satisfy them. When our experience is dimmed from pain and discomfort, we know what to do. We seek out what we need. Once satisfied, the pain and discomfort recede, we feel pleasure, and our attention is freed up. Returning our happiness is the body’s reward for fulfilling its conditions. As long as we do so, the body allows us to be happy. This is basic behavioral training our body does.

These conditions are important for maintaining a healthy physical body, and before long we accept these as natural conditions for happiness. Life would be rather simple if we stopped there, but as social creatures, we extend that belief in conditions for happiness into more and more areas as we grow up.

Physical conditions are pretty straightforward, and we learn how to satisfy them early in life. But we aren’t just physical creatures — we’re social creatures as well.

We have the need for friends, for relationships, for a place in society. We’re already used to thinking in terms of conditions for happiness. As we grow, we discover what is expected of us by others, what conditions we must fulfill to be accepted by our family and friends. Now instead of being conditioned by our body, we’re being conditioned by other people. We encounter all kinds of varying beliefs about what is acceptable and what isn’t. Family, friends, and culture define a spiraling array of arbitrary and complex new conditions. Some of these beliefs are contrary to others. These conditions can be literally anything — looking and acting a certain way, believing certain things, participating in certain events and traditions, liking or disliking certain things, treating certain groups of people a certain way, associating with certain people and not others.

We learn that joy and love can only be felt and expressed under certain conditions. We learn which qualities are valued and which are not. We learn which behaviors deserve which treatments. We can’t be too loud, too weak, too wild, too different. We learn that certain conditions only apply to certain people. We see conditions all around us. We see the people who fail to satisfy these conditions rejected or punished.

Now in order to get back to that original state of happiness we came from, we need to satisfy not only the physical conditions, but all the social conditions we’ve witnessed and come to believe in.

Social conditions are specific searches as well. When one’s acceptable appearance and behavior are constrained, we must always be watching ourselves and others. Behind each condition is a fear that it won’t be satisfied. Fear, our survival instinct, gets triggered more and more by social conditions.

Social conditions attempt to modify and standardize behavior. We find that we cannot be left to our natural joy without also fulfilling these conditions. When we fulfill conditions for happiness, we are considered worthy of happiness. When we fail to fulfill conditions for happiness, we are considered unworthy.

We grow up in a social world centered around our parents, siblings, and extended family. This gradually expands to friends, teachers, love interests, and so on. We learn what is acceptable and what isn’t from them. We learn that each person may have their own variations in what they think is acceptable. We begin to track these rules of behavior internally. How we might behave with friends might not be acceptable with our parents. So we regularly ask “what would so-and-so think?” This becomes a very important concern as we grow up.

I was a very empathic kid. I had trouble with empathy. I’d empathize with the viewpoints of people close to me, and I’d see things through their perspectives. I’d see things through so many other people’s perspective that I began to feel that it was interfering with the development of my own independent self. In my teens, I began a huge effort to throw off the viewpoints of others in order to find my own. All these other “selves” in me I referred to as “surrogate selves”.

Surrogate selves are the people whose perspective we see ourselves from. They are perspectives which we check everything we say and do against. It is always a bad thing. Most surrogates are judgmental. They are a constant influence on our thoughts and actions. They are people we want to impress or people we are afraid of. Often it is an overly critical parent, but it can be anyone.

The effect is similar to constant surveillance. It’s a constantly intrusive perspective in your mind, one by which every experience must be checked. It makes people unhappy at a very deep level because it keeps us internally focused, out of the now.

When we believe in a certain condition for happiness, we assume it to be universal and imagine it existing in the minds of everyone we come across. We judge everyone and act as if everyone out there is judging us by the same standards. If we judge the world harshly, it is because we see it as judging us the same way. Yet the person these beliefs affect the most is the person holding the beliefs. If we believe that being wrong is a universal condition for rejection, who do we reject most often and most harshly for being wrong but ourselves?

When someone puts us down, know that they are themselves suffering from a belief in the same condition. The ridicule they are directing at us is also constantly directed at themselves, limiting their own behavior.

When we are rejected due to some condition, the most common reaction is to seek to satisfy that condition. We change our behavior, or we answer questions according to what it is the other person wants to hear. We are then accepted. By conforming, we are showing our agreement with the belief in that condition. If you let me treat you badly for failing to conform, for example, then we have an agreement on conditions. We understand that you would treat me just as badly if our situations were reversed. We both believe it’s justified.

When we satisfy a condition, the energy in that condition is released back to us. We feel excited and we allow ourselves to focus in the now (not realizing we could have done that all along!). This often functions to reinforce the condition as we think “Look! I knew this would make me happy!”. But that release is a shadow of the light available to you, and only continues so long as the condition remains fulfilled. It may temporarily allow happiness, but you remain chained to maintaining the condition.

What the conditions are doesn’t matter. It can be and often is completely arbitrary. Changing styles, opinions, ways of talking, looking, behaving, appreciation of certain things and rejection of others.

Conformity is the natural result of social conditions. Social conditions always separate, create subgroups that are perceived as lesser due to their differences. Many of those in power worship themselves due to their own success and thus anyone who acts, looks, and thinks just like them is accepted into their group. Those who conform are seen as people just like them in need of praise.

Taken all together, the common social conditions for happiness form a broad picture of what a successful person looks like and acts like. This is the image that most conditioned people try to conform to. If you look and act successful, then you’ll be rewarded with social acceptance, job promotions, and opportunities. There is a very thin range of variation allowed within the strict confines of “successful.”

Those that succeed by conforming are unfortunate in that they are prone to happily support and encourage these conditions, as their success sets them apart from and above others. It is harder to reject a belief when it appears to benefit you.

When we conform to conditions, we spread belief in the conditions. Through our behavior, we are all teaching each other what conditions we believe in. This is how beliefs in conditions for happiness are spread from person to person. It’s like a behavioral virus.

We are taught that not everyone can be worthy. In schools, only a few get awards. In games and sports, only one player or team can win. Only certain people get love and admiration. So we learn to see our peers as obstacles and seek to outwit and outdo each other.

This competition can be a part of many social conditions. In most sports, the person or team in first place gets all the attention and everyone else gets none. We look for faults in others to make ourselves look better. Instead of working together, we’d rather compete. Since appearances matter most, cheating can feel justified as a means to an ends.

Often, there are conditions that you cannot conform to such as age, race, gender, nationality, and sexual orientation. There are also behavioral conditions we can’t possibly conform to, such as never making mistakes, never being wrong, and never expressing ourselves. When we are rejected due to any of these conditions, we find ourselves unable to change, and if we accept the condition as valid, we may hate ourselves for being what we are.

That, or we can reject the condition itself.

Being rejected can be the first step down a path to greater happiness.

When we are rejected due to some condition, the best response is reject the condition itself. If we see the way we’re treated as not justified, then we refuse to accept the treatment we receive. We stand proud, embrace the state of being that brought rejection from some group, and band together with others that are like us. We may even exaggerate our differences. These subcultures of misfits and outcasts include punks, goths, and alternative subcultures. We are trying to prove to the world that love and companionship can exist under conditions which some groups reject.

My girlfriend and I were walking along the road at a festival in rural north Georgia. A car drove by and someone leaned out and shouted “FREAK!” at us. We both burst out laughing. We’d accepted long ago that we were different and embraced our differences.

This defiance is also a message that spreads like a behavioral virus. Witnessing a rejection of the condition, people may begin to question their own support of that condition. In time social conditions can be reversed, though some will continue cling to their own conformity to that condition to bolster their embattled self esteem.

This is why fighting against racism and sexism by putting down the people believing in it backfires. Under the weight of even more rejection, they cling even harder to their inherent fulfilled conditions, the right to happiness that they earned through conforming. The solution, instead, is to make them feel worthy of happiness so that they don’t need to believe that racial or gender-based conditions (for example) are what make them worthy. These are people who have been submitted to strong and repeated rejection in their lives. The racism and sexism is in fact an attempt to reacquire their own feelings of worth.

We can’t have conditions for happiness without enforcing them. Otherwise people would stop believing in those conditions and they would no longer make us superior. Anyone could be happy at any time! People don’t want to let go of anything that makes them feel superior.

Social conditions cause us to separate people into groups according to how well they conform, and thus how worthy of acceptance and happiness they are. We learn to treat each group differently in order to enforce the conditions we accept.

In order to make a condition for happiness true, people need to enforce it. In the case of someone we “care about”, who we want to succeed within those conditions, this is done my behavior manipulation. Think of a parent teaching their children how to behave to succeed. This is usually done through reward and punishment. In the case of someone we don’t care about, it’s done simply through causing pain and rejection when they fail.

People may try to impose their fears on others in order to protect them. Often, one believes it is within reason to manipulate others to get them to fear what they should be fearing — for their own safety. But when it comes to spreading social conditioning, we are always doing others a disservice — we are protecting them from a monster we are helping to create.

Those who have worked so hard to satisfy conditions, to be worthy, do not want to allow someone who is unworthy to be happy. Especially when they themselves are worthy but not happy. They take it upon themselves to cause pain to those who should be feeling pain and encourage happiness in those who should be happy. Since conforming to social conditions isn’t actually required for happiness, people must enforce it for it to work.

First one needs to reward success in satisfying the condition. They say, “If you fulfill this condition, not only will I let you be happy, but I’ll be friendly, give you affection. I’ll let you be part of this group. I’ll give you gifts.”

Where the conditioning succeeds, we feel rewarded, yet manipulated. Where it fails, we feel open resentment for kindness or a reward that was withheld.

Secondly, one needs to punish failure to satisfy the condition. It begins with judgment and rejection. This could be rude words and closing that person off in various ways, like removing affectionate contact.

If rejection alone doesn’t work, then one may turn to active punishment and the infliction of pain. One will take away what we love, hurt us — whatever it takes to get us to satisfy the conditions that will allow them to accept us.

Negative reinforcement leads to a relationship based on fear. Where the conditioning succeeds, we will bitterly conform to the conditions. Where it fails, we have open confrontation. In either case, we end up with a negative, controlling relationship, or no relationship at all.

What this amounts to is conditional love. We are using our love and acceptance as reward and punishment so that they satisfy certain conditions. This isn’t love at all, but manipulation.

Conditional love teaches that we only deserve love and happiness under certain conditions. Conditional love is always manipulative, even if the one manipulating believes it’s in our best interest.

Social conditions say that people are justified in treating the unworthy badly. If we hurt someone as much as we believe they deserve to be hurt, then we feel right and justified. After all, unworthy people should not be allowed to be happy. We’re merely putting them in their place. It’s akin to proving certain food is dirty by throwing dirt onto it. People may inflict pain so that “bad” pleasure seems less worth it.

This is why we often see the most cruel actions coming from people who consider themselves the most good. They are merely enforcing the conditions that put them up on the pedestal. We see Superman beating the tar out of a bad guy and we cheer him on. “Yay! Kick him harder! Break his legs! He deserves it!”

We internalize conditions we agree with. We become our own watchdogs and torturers, freeing others of the burden. We learn the lesson that if we don’t feel bad on your own, others will make us feel bad. Our fear of being rejected by others causes us to constantly watch ourselves for signs of failing conditions.

More important than what we get in life is what we accept. We only accept what we think we deserve. All it takes to enforce conditions for happiness in ourselves is to focus on the condition that we’ve failed to meet. That simple focus takes us out of the moment, and filters our experience only to things that affirm that thought. That’s the holographic result of any focus on the past — finding matches in the present. We push happiness away out of fear. We alone can deny ourselves the pure unconditional love and happiness that is part of our own being, for it is available at every moment to everybody. We suffer at our own hands, until we stop focusing on it.

We accept what we feel we deserve by being present for it, to empower it with the agreement of our attention — whether what we feel we deserve is good or not.

With social conditioning, our natural goal of happiness is displaced by a goal of acceptance. Since our happiness is now determined by arbitrary social conditions, we can be easily manipulated.

Social conditions lead to a spiraling network of desires and fears.

Our simple desire for social acceptance and fear of rejection can be twisted by social conditions into virtually anything. No matter what form they take, the additional fears from social conditions become constant drains on our attention. as we attempt to find ways to conform to them. Simply feeling the need to compete for acceptance drains our happiness.

Social conditions make it hard to see anyone else as an equal. In fact, that is their point. They cause us to draw lines that separate us from others based on how well they satisfy the conditions we accept. The separations are for the purpose of feeling superior over others. Those on the wrong side of the line are rejected, and may even be the subject of hatred and violence.

Rejection of any person, quality, or behavior creates a separation from our greater self, and adds to the things we’re not allowed to be.

Social conditions give us reasons to suppress joy, to reject love. Fulfilled or not, they stand in the way of our happiness. Each condition is thus another reason to fear. Only by careful navigation and constant vigilance can we hope to keep all conditions satisfied. Change can upset our careful balance, and thus change causes fear.

Insecurity is the inevitable destination of social conditioning. The more conditions, and the more harsh those conditions, the more insecure we will be. Insecurity is a fear of not being accepted — of not being worthy of love.

Insecurity happens whether or not we are successful in achieving our accepted conditions. Even when we have fulfilled all our conditions, we ever fear falling from our unsteady precipice.

When trying to satisfy the conditions of another person or group, the true goal is to please them, not necessarily to satisfy the condition. We learn to present appearances as fulfilled conditions. Deception becomes a part of the toolkit of the person undergoing conditioning.

Not only that, but we will stop fulfilling or appearing to fulfill the condition if we think we can get away with it, such as when the conditioner is absent. At these times, the suppressed desires will run rampant, with all the strength built up over the period of time that it was forcibly restrained.

The purposes of conditioning and controlling are always contrary to the truth.

When we believe in social conditions for our happiness, we may use various forms of self-deception to preserve our self-worth. We may engage in denial or manipulate our own reasoning and perceptions.

Let’s say that we believe that being the best is a condition for happiness. When defeated in a game or sport, we may make excuses or choose to believe that others cheated in order to preserve our self-worth. We allow ourselves to believe these falsehoods. Or if we think we might lose, we might cheat because winning is the only thing that matters.

A bad experience with another person can also be repressed through attribution: “it must have been a joke”, “it was an accident” or “he didn’t mean it”. That makes it acceptable, and we don’t have to change anything.

At subconscious levels we know the truth, so we keep that knowing away through distractions.

A belief that worth comes from intelligence leads to a fear of being wrong. Someone believing this condition tries hard to appear knowledgeable. They would rather make something up than not know. Any evidence that they are wrong is a threat, and causes anger and defensiveness. Being wrong in an argument means that they are weak or lesser, and they will not apologize or back down to someone they see as lower than them. Rational arguments and evidence matters little, because rationality isn’t the goal; acceptance is. They generally look to reinforce what they believe, which is quite an easy task thanks to the filtering power of the holographic mind.

This fear also prevents people from asking questions, for then they may appear less intelligent. This limits their ability to expand their own knowledge.

If we are only concerned with the truth, then we have no fear of being wrong. If we are wrong, we are glad that we now know better and make an adjustment in what we believe.

Other conditions lead to fear of losing, fear of being weak, or guilt for things that cannot be changed.

To the degree that we believe in social conditions, we end up with a superiority/inferiority complex. I observed as a teen that people who feel and act superior invariably have strong feelings of inferiority beneath it. And those who feel inferior often sooth themselves with the thought that they are better in important ways than those who reject them.

At the heart of this is one thing:

Social conditioning grants the illusion of self-worth for a reason.

No matter how worthy one feels, it can be taken away by changing circumstances, and so one has to always be on guard. Everyday happiness disappears entirely into a concern with conditions which shifts and changes from day to day.

Narcissism

Belief in social conditions can lead to narcissism at the top and bottom of the spectrum.

Those who succeed in conforming to social conditions consider themselves “worthy” of happiness. Their behavior fits the model of grandiose narcissism, often characterized as “entitled self-importance”. Their core traits are “selfishness, entitlement, lack of empathy, and devaluation of others”. (Wikipedia)

Those who fail may end up considering themselves “unworthy” of happiness. Their behavior fits the model of “vulnerable narcissism”, characterized by “negative emotionality, social avoidance, passivity and marked proneness to rage”. (Wikipedia).

We all want to be worthy of happiness. In truth, we all are. Entirely. Right now, this very moment.

Unfortunately, if we believe in social conditions, our worth must be strengthened by the unworthiness of others. One of the worst parts of conditions for happiness is the monsters people become when they are deemed worthy.

Those who have succeeded in satisfying their social conditions feel they deserve happiness. They feel entitled to it. But since satisfying conditions doesn’t bring happiness, they have to figure out how to take it. They ignore anyone who is considered less than them (as long as they aren’t threatening their worth). If they don’t get their way, they can become loud, threatening, and violent, tactics which usually have a good deal of success with those who are insecure. They require “respect” from (control over) those around them.

The focus of the worthy and entitled is almost entirely on themselves, as they’ve achieved their ideals. Their attention remains focused on the conditions and the division that they are now on the “correct” side of. So they remain ever inwardly-focused, missing out entirely on the actual happiness available in the moment.

When someone with a big ego is wronged, then his idea of justice is not an eye for an eye, it is two eyes and a leg for an eye. The comparatively worthless person who hurt him will suffer according to his worth. With conditions, it is always that way; happiness according to worth, and pain according to lack of worth. Of course, if the one receiving this outsized “justice” has a big ego, then the battle escalates rapidly.

Those who believe they are perfect see any differences from them as a failure. Anything that challenges them or their status must be dealt with strongly. These “perfect” people are the ones who do almost all of the terrible things in the world. They have no issues destroying that which is different and therefore inferior.

Those who have failed to satisfy social conditions similarly tend to be focused largely on themselves. But in this case the focus is negative, centered on figuring out how to satisfy their failed conditions.

This leads to an intensification of insecurity and its resulting feelings and behaviors.

Importantly, these all exist just below the surface in those who consider themselves worthy, but the worthy are too busy focusing on their success, so long as it lasts. When the balance tips, they will likely find themselves in the same situation.

When insecure, we are even more prone to accept others as the authority on how we should be treated, since we are that much more desperate for acceptance. We treat ourselves in the same manner as those we respect treat us. We cherish those who give us acceptance and seek to appease those who are angry at us.

The different sets of limits on our behavior for different people and situations cause us to question what will be acceptable in any circumstance by any number of people there. We are constantly adjusting ourselves. We wish to keep a perfect appearance of satisfied conditions. Insecurity causes us to become fake — every word forced, every emotion an act.

We feel watched by a thousand eyes. The more we are watched, the more limited our behavior must be. We may disengage from others socially and keep to ourselves.

There are endless lists of things we shouldn’t say or do, lists of ways to behave in the presence of lists of different kinds of people, and emotions to edit and adjust so as to seem happy about it all. This leads to a fractured, situation-dependent self.

To the extent that we’ve internalized these conditions, our self is divided against itself. We condemn the unworthy parts of ourselves, get mad at ourselves, punish ourselves. With the uncertainty and confusion of dozens of viewpoints filling our minds (some of which can’t stand us), there is endless self-doubt. We question ourselves with the same intensity that others have. Our true emotions are often in conflict with what is expected of us.

Some social conditions cannot be conformed to, such as those involving race, physical attributes, gender, or sexual orientation. This may lead us to reject parts of ourselves. Due to the way attention works, this self-rejection only serves to focus attention on these parts.

When insecure, we base our decisions not on our own desires and needs, but on the desires and needs of others. These conditions dominate and subjugate our own needs and desires. This creates two separate and conflicting identities; that which we actually are and that which we want to be so that we can be accepted.

Many are left in a position of failing some conditions, but don’t feel strong enough to defy the conditions entirely. How do we cope?

When being rejected or punished for failing a condition, our self esteem takes a hit. It’s not uncommon at this point to attempt to make ourselves feel better by gloating over others who we think are less worthy than ourselves. This doesn’t make us any happier, but it does provide a temporary burst of superiority and this redirects attention away from our own failure. Unfortunately, by doing so we are not only hurting another, but are reaffirming our belief in a condition that we don’t meet.

An example of this is the child who is a victim of physical violence at home. His Wadsworth beats him, calling him weak. He can’t lash out at the actual source of his anger — his Wadsworth is too strong and could take away everything — so he looks for another outlet. He finds a smaller, weaker kid in the playground and bullies him. In this way he can feel like the stronger one.

A more extreme response may be to disassociate the rejected parts of ourselves by projecting them into others. Then we are free to be the righteous, good self and fight against that failure. In this way we can move into the perceived positive side of the condition. We get to become the victor for a time, rather than the victim. This is also a strong affirmation of the condition we believe in.

This leads to situations we see again and again in society. Some people become extremely vocal in their attacks on perceived negative qualities. We see the moral crusaders, and in almost every case, they’re deeply haunted by those very qualities in themselves. It’s as if they are shouting a call for help: “Please someone, stop me! With enough social pressure against my own unacceptable desires, maybe I can stop myself!”

It’s practically a cliché that the anti-gay crusader is engaging in gay experiences behind closed doors. Being so oppressed by failing his own believed condition of happiness, he has to jump the fence to the side where he feels like the righteous one and does so loudly. But as ever, it’s the belief itself that he needs to rethink.

This process of accepting and trying to satisfy social conditions for happiness is one of the primary stories of our lives.

We are born with a unified attention, focused in the now. Our focus on physical and social conditions divides and scatters our attention more and more. Each new condition weakens us. The more attention we have wrapped up in conforming to conditions, the less we are present in the now.

Our entirety of our state of mind at any given time can be described as our mental state.

Our mental state is best represented by all the ways our focus of attention is pulled at any given time. It’s based on how our past experiences match up with our current situational context. In other words, it’s defined by how our desires, fears, expectations, and beliefs interact with the present moment. This determines our thoughts and feelings.

An example:

Motivational logic is quite simple. It is like logic in circuitry. Conflicts are resolved by simply adding up all the relevant factors. For example:

• I am thirsty (+5 motivation to getting drink).

• But I’d be embarrassed getting up in class (-7 motivation to getting a drink)

• And someone’s giving a report (-3 motivation to getting a drink)

• But the doctor said I should drink more (+3 motivation)

• And now I’m REALLY thirsty (+6 motivation)

• You like to be sure of an action before you do it. Life is uncertain and you don’t want to take any chances. Your decision threshold is +5 at least.

Result: State of indecision. +4 total motivation isn’t enough to make an obvious and easy decision. When there are motivations towards doing mutually exclusive things like in the example above, then there is anxiety and a mental drain. The more conflicting motivations you have, the more unhappy you will become.

As you set your attention on this problem, you finally remembers the teacher saying “get a drink whenever you want if you’re thirsty” which adds +10 and makes it obvious and easy. Everything adds up, pushes over your decision threshold, and you go get a drink. Your confidence level is the same as the certainty of your action. In this case, an energy index of +14. Your thirst is satisfied and no longer distracts you. In addition, the inner conflict has been resolved, and the pleasure you feel at this is a result of the energy moving freely back into the system again. Your attention is freed to other things.

It is very simple and straightforward how this system works, but the factors involved can be difficult to realize and account for.

When you have lots of energy, it takes less motivation to decide to actually get up and do something. This is clear to me on LSD, when my high energy and focus in the now makes it feels like my body jumps up to follow any decision to move.

The human mind is in an ever-changing motivational state.

Desperation is a motivation that has grown huge, and motivations, if large enough, will find a way to express themselves. The things holding back motivations become inadequate blocks. For example, you don’t believe theft is okay, but you believe your friend might be in imminent danger and you need money to get to him. If you see no other way to do it, the possibility of theft becomes feasible because it becomes much greater than the motivation not to. When desperate enough, the choice to steal will be easy. One will then look for loopholes in their belief systems to justify their actions.

Our mental load is the amount of different conditions (desires, fears, and needs) affecting us. When we have a million things that we should be doing or a lot of behavioral rules to consider in every situation, we spend a lot of attention on seeking the conditions that will satisfy us and others. A high mental load equates to high stress.

We should seek to reduce our mental load as much as possible. This frees up our energy and leads to happiness. We are reunited with the power of our full, undivided attention, and the world looks new and filled with opportunity. Having reached the goal of being happy, our needs and motivations fade away.

We get stressed out anytime there are a lot of things pulling at our attention. Hard choices or conditions on our happiness scatter our attention and causes a shortage of energy.

The number and intensity of things pulling at our attention determines our mental load. This load is essentially the background noise to our present experience, eating up our attention. We only have whatever attention is left available to us to focus in the moment.

This is a CENTRAL concept. Our available attention determines how present we are in the moment, and this in turn determines how happy we are.

This being the case, it should be clear how the endless distractions of social conditions robs us of happiness, whether we are able to conform to them or not.

We are adaptive when our energy is free to flow into new experiences. This is our natural state, and it happens when we are not divided and distracted by fears, needs, or desires.

Adaptability is our ability to release the previous context when a new one arises. The ability to let go and accept something new. The ability to live in the now, in the moment. It appears as creativity and lightheartedness. This is determined by how much of our energy is free to move. To the degree that we are without attachments to the past, we are adaptive. With our energy freely available to us, we are present enough to overcome problems easily.

Adaptability is the difference between seeing something as funny vs stupid, beautifully unique vs flawed in comparison, interesting vs boring. The question is “do you have enough energy to flow into this new situation?”

Being maladaptive means having difficulty in adapting to new situations. We become maladaptive when we have a high mental load — when we have little free mental energy because our energy is attending to desires and fears. We are tense, frustrated, drained, and don’t have the energy to deal with anything. We have little attention available in the now because it is all bound up in the past.

Maladaptivity primarily appears as resistance to new situations. This is called neophobia. When one doesn’t have the energy to adapt to a new situation, fear rises because they can’t deal with it. Routine is a way of preserving stability, and so is embraced. One may stop liking new music and will go back to the music from the time when they last felt happy, when they were last present enough to feel the Pure Essence in it.

Once one has obtained acceptance through satisfaction of conditions, they’ll grip onto it. They become stagnant, and stop trying new things and taking risks. Anything new is seen as dangerous. Change can threaten and upset the delicate balance of satisfied conditions.

Neophobia is often visible in old age. Many old people cling to the old ole days and don’t take to anything very new. They become closed-minded and set in their beliefs. Their attention is so bogged down in the last that they can’t see the Pure Essence in anything new. That kind of happiness only existed in the past when they were younger and more adaptive.

One may embrace their failure to enjoy most things as an indication of intelligence, discernment, experience, and stands proudly “above” the more gross or common pleasures, as only certain sources are worthy of making them happy. The unspoken assertion is “I have been through all the garbage that you presently enjoy. Soon you’ll see there’s nothing in it, too.” It’s a condescending viewpoint we so often see in those with a prideful ego.

Those who feel this way suffer a lack of enjoyment in life. Their unhappiness and distraction cause them to unconsciously cross-compare more and more, blocking the essence out of most new experiences. The very few things left that they enjoy becomes a symbol of their fine taste.

See “The Curse of Comparison” above for how this happens.

We can be free of these conditions this very moment. It only takes a change of focus. Breathe, come forward, be present right now as you are. You’re welcome here. You’re safe. We can love and accept ourselves, unconditionally, as we are. All the happiness we could want is available to us in its fullness right now.

If we come fully into the moment right now, we are reunited with the Pure Essence — the light of our own consciousness, and find there is nothing more to desire than that. We’ve made it! It’s that simple. It’s that close to us. The things we feared didn’t keep us from it. The things we desired weren’t actually needed.

We must learn to love and accept ourselves just as we are, faults and all. The world is fine as it is. If it were perfect, it wouldn’t be nearly as good at teaching lessons. We are on a journey along with everyone else. We are all learning and growing as we go. Making mistakes is how we learn.

If we find it hard to be present in this moment, it is due to the weight of attention and emotion we’ve put into our past experiences. Those experiences are dim, fading lights in comparison to what is available to us this instant, right now. Without filters from the past, we can again see the present clearly, the Pure Essence back shining brightly out into our experience.

Social conditions aren’t real. They’re made up by insecure people to put themselves up on a pedestal above others. Defying social conditions removes their power. It’s a cruel game and you don’t have to play it. Reject all the viewpoints condemning and controlling you. Be unique. Be yourself. Do your own thing, at your own pace.

Remove all the social conditions and we see clearly again. Without the past, everything we experience is without comparison. Comparisons are filters which pull our experiences away from the beautiful now. We’re literally peering through the shadows of our past experience! Those past experiences, desires, and fears are what we spend so much of our attention looking at, it’s what our experience is flowing through before it reaches us. This is the holographic and neurological reality we experience.

We can laugh a fear to death. We can laugh at the tremendous weakness of those aspects of ourselves which seek to edit us to please others. How pathetic they are! Laughing destroys the seriousness of our fears and insecurities.

Without knowing it at the time, I had tuned to that higher frequency consciousness that was observing what was happening, and from that perspective, I saw the fears and negative voices for the weak things they were. I shone the light of attention on them and dissolved them. The feeling of a stronger vibration was that higher frequency consciousness, the unbroken focus that had been shattered by the constant distraction of the fears fueling my childhood conditions for happiness. Slower frequency perceptions will always be seen more clearly at higher frequencies of consciousness.

This was an important turning point in my life. I came out of that experience changed. That higher perspective freed me from those feelings of insecurity, and I returned to it whenever I got high from that day on.

Behaviors continue until you pay attention to them to change them. Attention changes our destiny.

We need to become aware of all the conditions we believe in (unconsciously or not) before we can reject them. How many ways could you answer this question: “I would be happy if. . . .”

Figure out to what extent and in what ways you are judging people. Ask yourself if various attributes deserves love. Do unintelligent people deserve love? Do unattractive people deserve love? Were you treated badly once for being thought of this way?

Become aware of your emotional reactions and ask yourself what the belief was that caused you to feel this way. What are you afraid of? What makes you angry? When you lose at a game, how do you react?

Whenever your primary goal is acceptance from others, then others are in control of you.

If you find yourself in an agreement, spoken or not, that trades control for something, break the agreement. The most common form of agreement is a trade of acceptance for control. We let someone else tell us how to dress, act, think, and so on, and they give us acceptance. When you tire of this external control, break the agreement. Reject their conditional acceptance and embrace your own freedom. Standing up to anyone who seeks to conform you to their conditions is an affirmation of self and life. It shows strength of character.

Being rejected by others can even lead to freedom. At the moment of being judged and rejected we can assert ourselves and reject the belief in the condition itself.

We cannot be controlled unless there is something we believe we need from someone else. The best defense against being controlled and manipulated is to find happiness within ourselves. Our happiness is the responsibility of no one but ourselves.

Some psychedelics allow us to experience life fully in the now. With LSD & psilocybin, the meltdown from Primal Awareness releases the energy locked up in Specific Search structures. With marijuana, in the state of zero context specific searches cannot be triggered by contextual matches.

Social conditions divide you against yourself.

The conditions exist due to one or more people imposing them on us. If we accept the conditions, we accept their viewpoint, and it is as if they are living within us to an extent. These conditions act as a surrogate self, watching over us from within. It’s a Specific Search sponsored by and enforced by others. We internalize it to protect ourselves. And in so doing we become divided.

A surrogate self that rejects us acts like any other belief projection. It will look in our experience to reinforce itself. Realize that we have internalized someone whose point of view is harmful to us, and reject it entirely. As our confidence grows, we release these internalized conditions and the viewpoints of people who have conditioned us.

Time spent alone without the influence of others is essential. This allows us to develop our natural self and pursue our own needs and goals. Instead of always seeing ourselves through others’ viewpoints, we start seeing others through our own viewpoint. How does this person make us feel? If we feel any manipulation there, end the relationship. Reject the influence. Only spend time with people who accept who we are.

With a stronger sense of self, we disregard both insults and compliments. Both of these, when accepted, serve to push us back into being controlled by others and believing in their conditions.

This is the freedom of being comfortable with yourself. On marijuana, our greater focus of attention can either intensify our self-consciousness or make it disappear altogether, depending on our focus.

When someone fails to satisfy our conditions, and we feel unable to accept and love them, then we are the one who needs to change. We will never be happy attempting to change others to conform to our conditions. Learn to love without condition. Leave behind the narrow view that only certain people deserve love and happiness. Everyone deserves happiness!

Unconditional love is the most powerful force of change there is. It is a demonstration against every condition for happiness. It is a statement that love is stronger than fear.

At first the idea of acting without a system of conditional worth arouses fear. We’ve spent our lives building up a fortress of satisfied conditions for happiness, and we don’t want to give that up. Yet that fortress is built on fear. It separates us from others, makes us feel better than others. We don’t need to be. We can be happy right now, for no reason whatsoever.

We fear that to be without satisfied conditions means to be without worth. But it is the conditions themselves which stand in the way of happiness. These beliefs aren’t the pathway to happiness, they are the gates that stand between you and happiness. Let down your guard. Be happy for no reason. Be happy just to be alive on this beautiful day in this beautiful world. And if people judge us? Let them! What do we need from them if we’re already happy? Spend time with people who accept you for who you are.

Love freely, without conditions, without limits, without attachment. The more we do this, the more we show by our own example that conditions are unnecessary.