On Being Fully Here

On Being Fully Here


In a beautiful remote corner of the world there is a vast and deep gorge separating this side from that side. A grand old oak tree swirled in a coat of wet fog stands at the nearest edge. As you approach, you breathe in deeply. The air is fresh and electric and the sound of a rushing river below rebounds off patches of thick, clinging fog. You’ve come to the edge.

Just like I told you, it is there. A great rope bridge that spans the width of the canyon. It is strong and secure, very well made. It seems magical hanging there. How did humans make this and manage to get it across this vast separation of land masses?

You are not afraid as you step onto the rope bridge and place your hand on the edge to guide you. You begin to walk. You came a long way to get here. It’s a moment you’ve been waiting for all your life. As you walk through the fog, your footsteps gently echo off the rock walls of the gorge. The mist of a waterfall brushes against your cheek. Just keep walking.

While you walk, I’ll talk. I want to tell you something.

This may sound odd, but it’s still true. I have never fully been here, on Earth, until now. I’ve been here physically. I’ve been here mentally. But an entire huge, fundamental and most important part of me has not been here.

All my life I sensed this, but could not know it, and no one I could have asked, if there was a way to ask, would have known what I was talking about. Because by and large the people who comprised my life experience before now did not have this part of their being with them either. Their experience was exactly the same as mine, not in the physical details, but due to unrecognized yet inescapable applied methods and their inevitable results. I think this applies to most everyone, and I also think that very few people are ever allowed to be fully here, much to our personal detriment, and definitely to the general serious detriment of planet Earth.

We hear of the soul, of the mind, of consciousness and higher self. There are all kinds of words that mean all kinds of things that just don’t explain anything very well. What do they mean when they say soul? The word “mind” is so dry and generalized, what does it mean? What about extrasensory perception? Precognition? Knowing when someone is lying or telling the truth? The spectrum of emotions that accompany every moment of our lives, where does that come from?

Because all these words tend to confuse more than clarify, I use the term “invisible self” and allow that to mean the whole of my being that is not strictly physical and measurable. Because truly it is everything beyond that which is physical and measurable, that is who we are. That is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. That people have physical bodies and limbs and that we can observe that people are conscious, can do math, can memorize things and learn how to spell and read, says literally nothing about who they are. Not a single thing.

I am much more than that stuff, and everyone I know is more than that. But the sad fact is that we are given to believe that who we are stops there, at physical form and education levels and that whatever else there is beyond that is mostly superfluous. But it’s not superfluous, it’s the whole point I exist. Everything beyond that stuff is who I really am. It is me.

This is the part that is castrated by the demands of social conformity; the part that is rejected by authority and doctrine and those who would be our gods on Earth. And there’s a reason for that. It’s the part that threatens every established thing in the world. It could threaten every established authority, every rule and law, every social standard, and every perspective on life and the way things are in this world. This is the part where the most important and meaningful work happens in the course of an individual human being’s life. It’s the only place, the only part of our being where we can evolve.

This part of our invisible self is where we are creative and noble and wise. Where all facets of our being can be unleashed free of influence from others. It’s like a grand private workroom where everything we know and learn and experience is stored and we can go in there and put all these pieces together, in our own way, without anyone else butting in or being involved or being able to control us. This is where we apply imagination to what is already known to see new things and see old things in new ways. It’s where we can explore the entirety of who we are and do the ongoing work of creating ourselves; and in so doing we can and will bring new influences to the world.

I’ve come not just to believe this, but to know it as fact, that there are entities, forces, people, call them whatever you like, who don’t want mankind to know about this denied part of ourselves. It totally threatens the stranglehold these forces have on the world in literally almost every detail. They are working tirelessly around the clock too, with unlimited funding, recruiting the finest scientific minds to figure out how to make sure that humanity is once and for all cut off from that part of themselves. Only in so doing can these interests be certain that they will not be challenged and revealed for who and what they are.

Only if people are taught to disregard any notions of there being more than what can be measured and tested can people be led away from fully existing. If people are taught to laugh at and put down as idiotic anyone’s assertions that things exist beyond what we can see, then people can be led away from being fully human and fully existing in their one short lifetime. We are told there’s nothing out there, there is nothing more to our minds or beings, when the reality is that there is everything beyond those falsely asserted cut off points. Everything we are and ever can be lies beyond those fake imposed boundaries.

Getting past those boundaries is the furthest thing away from mysterious and spooky, it requires no special skills or teaching. Every child is born easily and joyously existing in their full being. The job of greater society is to coax every one of us out of our creative centers, out of the grand workrooms of self and life and all that matters most, and to shut the door behind us, and pull the drapes across it and to never mention it again.

That part of self is not gone. It is abandoned and unused, it may be atrophied and dormant. But because it is a living thing, a part of the invisible self, it can be resuscitated and rejuvenated. The windows can be thrown open to let the sunshine in and it can very much feel like home. It can hurt, because it means we must at times reject what everyone else believes and go against the grain. This often causes tension, and worse, and that has to be less important to us than taking full possession of our true and full potential. What “everyone believes” is often wrong and is the major roadblock between us and ourselves, and if we really want to get there, we have to remove the roadblock.

I said it was hard, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s so worth it, it’s not even funny. I feel anger and resentment that it took so long for me to find this out, and I had to do it myself, and it was the hardest work I’ve ever done. But the pay-offs have been more than I ever knew were possible. Not doing this would have been to waste my entire life, and what a terrible, painful shame that would have been. One has to fully be here to exist, or you’re just showing up in a shell, a costume, and playing a role on a stage for someone else’s benefit. We might as well be made of cardboard and stood up in a corner for all that’s worth in the course of a lifetime.

Our disconnection from the whole of ourselves is something we’re all perfectly aware of. It’s that restlessness inside that never goes away even when we have what we want and need. It’s that empty hole that’s like a hunger for more, for meaning, for something else, for substance, and it can’t be filled by buying something or by taking drugs or drinking or sleeping around or extreme bowling or being a fanatic star-struck follower of fashion. No external label we try to apply to define ourselves will fill that hole, because that hole cannot be filled by anything outside of ourselves. The fact that you feel the hunger, the emptiness, the need for something else exposes a truth. Allowing yourself to reopen that closed down part of your invisible self will be the challenge and reward that will feed you again and again. It’s not a one-time thing, nothing about staying alive is a one-time thing. This, like every part of yourself, is something you incorporate seamlessly and use every day of your life. It’s not separate from you, it is you.

What’s missing from your life is you. A part of you that you’ve been told can’t exist, but there it is anyway. It’s you. An unused, unrecognized and truly not wanted by external forces major part of you. The real you. It’s not a secret or a sin or anything to apologize for, it’s you.

I do believe that people will stop searching externally and in vain for all of their answers once they realize how much of their search is for that lost and buried part of themselves. There are external answers to be sure, but if there are external answers, then there must also be internal ones. We do become conditioned to think in terms of there being nothing more of ourselves, that any more is undesirable or problematic, that we have no intrinsic value or creativity or power beyond our physical possessions, and that only certain specific others and types of others, who are officially condoned and certified, have all the answers and all the importance. It’s a total crock.

Why are we so strongly encouraged and pushed to only believe others and go to others for every answer and direction? It makes us neurotic and insecure, obsessive and depressed. It doesn’t work. If it did, this should be the healthiest, strongest, most thriving society on the face of the Earth. It’s not. It’s coming apart at the seams and that’s in direct measure to how much experts have taken over our minds and how much conformity and “political correctness” has come to dominate the society. These are tools to shut down original sources, to vilify unique thinking, to frame both personal and natural social evolution as dangerous negatives.

Yet, the more we are required to conform, the sicker and weaker we become. Clearly something is not right. Something is missing. Something we’re being told isn’t true. We will never get everything we truly need from out there. All we’ll get is a pathetic one size fits all crutch for our crippled selves that will make our existence feel stunted to pointless. We are doing it wrong. It is supposed to be much better than this, and we all know it. It can be and it is when we reclaim our mental real estate and begin to figure out the world and ourselves for ourselves.

We need our own culture, we need many diverse cultures, the more the better. We must make our own music and sing songs together instead of buying songs and never singing. We must dance instead of watching experts dance. We don’t need to care about doing it right, we need to care about doing it even if we’re not experts at it. Who cares about experts? What good do experts really do us? Good for experts, but we’ve got our own thing, and theirs isn’t a part of our personal lives. We need to live life ourselves.

It’s quality, not quantity. It’s participation, not perfection. It’s experiencing, not hoarding. It’s caring, not turning our backs. It’s having time, not rushing. It’s having enough, not too much and not too little. It’s about connecting, not separating. Kindness, not cruelty. Courtesy, not rudeness. We count. We all matter. Diversity draws us closer, it does not break us apart. There is no such thing as only one right way. We should be able to see that by now. We should also know that any imposed “one world order” will surely kill us all.

What is all this one world order stuff anyway? This already is one world. What are they babbling about when they say that? It makes no sense. What are they trying to pull? It’s a word game, a trick of mind. This has always and only been one world. It’s already unified. We already get along. We already have trade and spiritual beliefs and dance and food. What seems to be screwing it up is what power imposes on us, what power demands and inserts and insists upon. Money and power monopoly is the dark interference, the war, the terror and economic blight. I don’t think we need no stinking one world order. In fact, I’m sure we don’t. It’s the last thing we would ever want, because it will demand complete and total conformity, the diminishment of all diversity. One world dogma insists that we decrease ourselves and each other, reduce our minds and bodies, become irrelevant and unimportant. In a great sea of conformity no one stands out. Who wants to live in a world like that?

External forces have outlined and ushered in somebody else’s version of what life on Earth is “supposed to be.” It’s one thing to offer and suggest new things, but it’s a whole ’nother thing to force them down our throats at gunpoint, especially with so much underhanded lying and subterfuge. Their ideas are not explained, but hidden. Their purposes are veiled. Secrecy is becoming the norm of power, money and corruption are inseparable, and violence and force have replaced justice. We are being led to a cage where we will be forced to comply or die. Their ideas are crap. We don’t need them or want them.

The idea of success itself is an external one, and the definition of success is completely externally created and imposed. That doesn’t make it right or real or all that desirable. The definition of education is wholly made up by others and imposed. How much of what you think of yourself is based on someone else’s imposed definitions? No one has the legitimacy to define anything for anyone else, that’s square one and people have always known that much. It’s taken many years and much underground effort and cash to slowly convince the world that we should all follow and only official others should be the leaders. They are selling us bullshit. It doesn’t stand up when looked in the eye. It’s all crap. Today, all officialdom is crap.

We’re not to think this way, at least that is the message every single one of us has somehow managed to have deeply implanted within us. We think it wrong and naughty to have our own opinions and we’d never boldly speak them in defiance of set standards of thought and opinion. At least a lot of people don’t. And they don’t, because somewhere deep inside we have actually accepted the false assertion, the strange notion that someone else’s so-called expert or official opinion has more validity than our own. That speaks to how little we think of ourselves and how subjugated and servile we have slowly become, to the point that by and large this society is mentally pathetic and shut off and stuck in rote circular movements that take us nowhere. Except to work each day, and then we die. By listening to and believing only outside sources we are learning to cease to exist. That’s a big red flag, as I see it.

I would say there is more to life than what we’re given and expected and pressured to believe. A hell of a lot more. I think it’s time we flung open those doors within our minds, the doors that so many others have forced shut and locked and covered with curtains until we forget those doors are there. I say rip away those dusty old drapes and toss them out of your head. Open that door and walk right on through. You get to be, to become, you get to be who you are, why wouldn’t you? Who says you shouldn’t or can’t? Who are they to say such stupid things? Our masters? Our owners? Our bosses? I don’t think so. I know nobody’s my master, no human being can be more than my equal. I won’t live on my knees to anyone, why should I? Why should you? Why should anyone be expected to? What nonsense.

It’s no wonder that our self-esteem is so damaged in this society, it is devastating to have the bulk of ourselves and what really matters forcibly closed down as we grow up. All we get are messages of conformity and the expectation to conform. We are rewarded and approved of when we conform, and when we’re super-conformers, we get a gold star. This is true in kindergarten, and it stays true throughout any professional career. Conformist thinkers, conformist workers, supporters of the powers that be, those who excuse the obvious inequities and flaws and abject failures and crimes of the status quo, who are blind to being used and used up by those in control of our lives, they are patted on the head and told “good girl” and “good boy.” The rewards don’t go much beyond that. It just goes to show how desperate we become for approval and notice, when who we are is defined by outside sources instead of the only source that really matters.

Nothing comes without a downside, though, and there’s no exception here. We don’t get through life alone. We need others. We very much need good guidance, we need to be taught many important things, and we, unfortunately or fortunately as the case may be, usually don’t have any choice about who those teachers are or what they teach. Good parents teach us right from wrong, not under threat, but by explaining why. They teach us how to think past the obvious, think for ourselves, and encourage us to be independent while at the same time achieve a balance that allows us to work and live and be with others and respect them.

It takes skill and conscious work to become a decent human being. And that’s why I say I haven’t really been here, even though I seemed to be. I didn’t know that there was more than achieving conformity or that I wouldn’t begin to exist until I shrugged off that erroneous belief and got to work on finding out who I am and what life is about for myself. No one ever said as much or explained the fact that it was a life-long, ongoing job, and a hard one, to make myself into who I am and who I want to be. Someone I am not ashamed of or embarrassed about, not based on external standards, which are meaningless, but based on my own values and beliefs. Beliefs that aren’t just handed to me and absorbed without thought, but which I pull apart and explore and test until I get it and see the value in them and own them myself. It would have been nice to get the heads up on this before so much of my life had gone by.

That is the insidious nature of believing without questioning, and it is all but impossible to refuse to conform when everyone around you is a true believer in conformity. Even when you can see that none of them have ever thought it through, that they’ve simply taken on as their own what someone else devised not for the greater good of society, but to enrich themselves at everyone else’s cost, very few will stop to hear you out. But better late than never at all. It’s great to find out that there is always room for self-correction and improvement and that’s a good thing, not evidence of being flawed, and that it’s never too late, too much to ask, or unnecessary to face yourself and fix what’s in the way of being a real person. We’re not perfect, but we are always capable of self-repair and growth and even great change, if we desire it. It is the hardest work we can ever do, but it’s work worth doing. At least that’s what I’ve come to see. Without doing the hard work of really finding out what we’re made of and who we really are, we can be no more than what our external generic society demands of us, and that’s just not enough for me. I realize it is more than enough for some people, and I have to say I feel sorry for those people. But it’s not my call what they choose for themselves. If being what others dictate makes them happy, then who am I to criticize? But I doubt very much they are happy. I doubt very much their deepest inner hunger is ever fed.

This is why people search for answers, knocking on the doors of every religious establishment and spiritual theory hoping to find a resonance that feels like self. But, of course, it’s nowhere out there, it’s inside them. When they have that, then they can likely go to any religion or spiritual school and benefit from it, but likely not before and not without. They’d only forever have questions, and not really understand the teachings. Someone would always be their master, when they are supposed to be their own master. These are my beliefs, not facts, I can’t prove them. I observe these things, and I have questions about it all, and I spend lots of time in my own workroom hammering out answers, fitting the pieces together and coming back out with a section that fits in here, and one that fits in there, as I slowly grow the overall picture to completion. Or at least the first picture. There are likely many more.

There is so much loneliness, anguish and resentment out there; and violence and depravity are springing up like weeds in the absence of real people growing real selves. People have been lied to and confused, and now they think that sex is love and are confounded, when they find out it isn’t, because it’s supposed to be. There’s nothing else out there, the external sources assert through pictures and movies and pornography and books, that’s supposed to do it. You need “good looks,” and six pack abs, and a nice car, and you have to work out and have your hair cut just so, and wear the right clothes, and have the right job, and feel sexually attracted to someone, and that’s supposed to do it. But none of that has a thing to do with love.

It’s no big shock that this society is busted apart and lonely, separated and silent, afraid and starving with no end in sight. Love is a place, not a thing, and true beauty comes after love, not before, but we aren’t told about any of that. We aren’t told the truth about anything in fact. I fear for the future of mankind. I fear that it won’t be long before our inner starvation allows us to accept being modified and chipped and augmented until there is no more humanity. Until we are all products that perform functions and don’t care about love, or meaning, or that part of ourselves that won’t just be hidden, but will finally be forever gone.

Should man create other men? Should mankind take it upon himself to make other men into his own image? Or shouldn’t each person make himself into a better person, his own way, with his own mind? We have yet to reach our full potential as human beings, and external augmentation is not the means to get there, that is only the final detour. That is the final path away from being everything we can be as human beings. What a shame that someone out there, some group of very strange people, have such a strong driving need to destroy mankind, to undermine humanity, to enslave it and humiliate it, and teach us all to believe that we have no value and we don’t matter and we can’t think for ourselves or be more than we are. I don’t know what would posses these powerful people to so despise the world, but they do. And we are endangered to the literal edge of our extinction. The wars and genocides are all a part of some grotesque greater plan, and separating the human being from himself is the beginning and end of hope for our species.

In case it needs to be said, we don’t have to go along with anything that we know is evil or wrong or destructive. We do not ever have to choose to be devalued and disrespected by anyone who claims to be more important than ourselves. They can only be more important if we choose to believe they are, and thus deny and subjugate ourselves. But it must be asked, why would we do that? When anyone says that we must be less than we are because they say so, we already know they’re lying. We already know that no legitimate being would tell us to be less than we are so they can be happy. That’s not love. That’s not respect. It’s not even reasonable. It’s the overt demand that we stop existing. That’s slow death from the inside out. On a vast scale, when all of society gets down on its knees to mere men who say they must, it is spiritual genocide. We are free to stop doing it anytime.

No part of ourselves can be taken from us by someone else, it can only be destroyed or undermined. No one else can reduce us, we can only reduce ourselves when we believe the exquisite lies we are told. Perhaps a simple rule of thumb that might expose those who claim to be our betters is to notice if what they ask of us makes us less or more than we already are. If it makes us less, then it is a part of the incremental destruction of mankind. Little by little, bit by bit, it’s hardly painful, at least not right away. But cumulatively over decades humanity is changed, reduced, lessened, weakened, lost, dependent, and finally ceases to exist.

We are up against something so evil that it’s hard to believe it could exist. But it does. We have only to look around us to see that it exists. I don’t know why and I don’t know much else about it, but I can see that much with the naked eye. I feel the outrage they evoke with their endless insults against my kind, humanity, with their endless removal of justice and fairness, with their disrespect and lies, and their endless assertions that money is king and all-important and the measure of a man.

They are sheer evil, and we are up shit creek if we don’t wake up and tell them where to shove it. We must create ourselves. We have to know the difference between real teachers and real leaders and fake ones. The ones who make life better and bring us more are the real deal. The ones who don’t should be rejected, shamed and exposed.

By the way, that rope bridge you’re walking on, that’s your bridge, and you should have guessed by now where it goes. What’s on the other side is the rest of you, and nobody gets to say you can’t go there. Of course you can. The real complaint is that those who want you to cease to exist, they can’t go there. Thank God for that.

It is always and only your choice to keep walking or turn back and blend in with the rest of conforming society. You will always be rewarded for conforming. It’s a guaranteed paycheck, albeit a wholly inadequate one. I would not be able to resist exploring what I found in my own private world. I couldn’t bear never knowing who or what I could be, what I’m made of, how I really think and feel about things. I see every single thing I thought I knew completely differently now. All I had to add to the mix was my whole being. It is my sincere wish that everyone would cross their own bridge and find the most amazing and wonderful part of themselves, and own it and enjoy it and live life empowered and strengthened by it. Everything there is, is over there to discover. It’s a very interesting place to be.

Be advised that bridge is the most hated enemy of those who would be Earth’s new rulers. They’re cutting away the ropes, you know, chewing through the fibers one by one. Bit by bit lengths of rope are falling off, down into the water below. There will come a time when you no longer have the option of crossing your own bridge. They don’t want you to have that option. They don’t want you to go over there. They don’t want you to know yourself or any other truth about anything. They don’t want you asking your own questions and providing your own answers. They don’t want any of us to get it into our heads that they are not our owners. They want us to sit down and shut up and do as we are told.

If that works for you, then you’ll be fine. Don’t do a thing, it’s coming. If it doesn’t work for you, you might want to keep on walking. If you do keep on walking, after you get there and after a while, when you’re settled in and feel quite at home, would you do something for me? Drop me a postcard. I love getting postcards.



Angie Riedel