What Causes Happiness?

My book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia is available at Amazon and Powells.

You can drink a glass of water. You can spread butter on a slice of toast. You can wash your hair and prune your plants and draw infinity signs on a piece of paper. Your hands work wonderfully well! Their intricate force and sustained grace are amply supported by your heart, which circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. After your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This masterful mystery repeats itself over and over again without you ever having to think about it.

Contemplate the unfathomable prowess of your digestive system. Countless chemical reactions have to unfold with alacrity in order for it to work as well as it does. The gastric juice has to be composed of just the right mix of pepsin, rennin, mucus, and hydrochloric acid. The bile and pancreatic juice must arrive at the right spot and at the right time. The enterocytes in your small intestine always have to remember anew how to carry out their uptake of ions, lipids, and peptides. How can they possibly be so good at knowing exactly what to do and when to do it?

The circulation of blood and the conversion of food into fuel are just two of many alchemical feats that the secret intelligence within you takes care of. Thousands of other exchanges and transformations and syntheses are ceaselessly working their wizardry inside your body without your conscious participation.



What causes happiness? Brainstorm about it. Map out the foundations of your personal science of joy. Get serious about defining what makes you feel good. To get you started, I'll name some experiences that might rouse your gratification: engaging in sensual pleasure; seeking the truth; being kind and moral; contemplating the meaning of life; escaping your routine; purging pent-up emotions, doing practical work that helps others or that serves your high ideals. Do any of these work for you? Name at least ten more.



When many people talk about their childhoods, they emphasize the alienating, traumatic experiences they had, and fail to report the good times. This seems dishonest -- a testament to the popularity of cynicism rather than a reflection of objective truth.

I don't mean to downplay the way your early encounters with pain demoralized your spirit. But as you reconnoiter the promise of pronoia, it's crucial for you to extol the gifts you were given in your early years: all the helpful encounters, kind teachings, and simple acts of grace that helped you bloom.



In Homer's epic tale The Odyssey, he described nepenthe, a mythical drug that induced the forgetfulness of pain and trouble. I'd like to imagine, in contrast, a potion that stirs up memories of delight, serenity, and fulfillment. Fantasize that you have taken such a tonic. Spend an hour or two remembering the glorious moments from your past.



Mark Morford explains why militant optimism is essential to fighting back against entrenched power:

"The system isn?t nearly as powerful as it wants you to believe. It is, in fact, far more feeble, fallible, terrified (just ask the GOP). It?s also changing by the minute. It can change again in a single act, law, cultural tipping point. Happens all the time. For better, for worse. It?s happening right now.

"This is why the Ferguson protests, or Cosby?s belated takedown, the #‎YesAllWomen phenom, the onrush of legal gay marriage or even Obama?s China environmental agreement, health care battle or immigration plan, are all so vital. They snap us back to attention. They nudge the disruptive energy awake. And they remind us of the most important takeaway of all:

"Want to help keep the system as it is? Believe all is lost. Want to ensure the system?s eventual, perpetual, ongoing annihilation? Believe the exact opposite."

Read Morford's whole essay



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

Take inventory of the extent to which your "No" reflex
dominates your life. Notice for 24 hours (even in your dreams) how often you say or think:
"No."
"That's not right."
"I don't like them."
"I don't agree with that."
"They don't like me."
"That should be different from what it is."
Then retrain yourself to say "YES" at least 51 percent of the time. Start the transformation by saying "YES" aloud 22 times right now.



You don?t have to be anything you don?t want to be. You don?t have to live up to anyone?s expectations. There?s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that?s not very interesting to you. You don?t have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented, and you don?t have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling.



I kick my own ass and wash my own brain.
I push my own buttons and trick my own pain.
I burn my own flags and roast my own heroes.
I mock my own fears and cheer my own zeroes.

Nothing can stop me from teasing my shadow.
I?m full of empty and backwards bravado.
My wounds are tattoos that reveal my true beauty.
I turn tragic to magic and make bliss my duty.

I honor my faults till they become virtues.
I play jokes on my nightmares
till I?m sure they won?t hurt you.
I sing anarchist lullabies to lesbian trees
and love songs with punch lines
to anonymous seas.

I won?t accept gifts that infringe on my freedom.
I shun sacred places that stir up my boredom.
I change my name daily, pretend to be nobody.
I fight for the truth if it?s majestically rowdy.

Gravity fucks me and I fuck it back.
The sun is my sex slave, the moon smokes my crack.
I pump up my conscience with idiot laughter.
I?m living happily, in love ever after.

I brag about what I can?t do and don?t know.
I take off my clothes to those I oppose.
I?m so far beyond lazy, I work like a god.
I?m totally crazy; in fact that?s my job.



Americans Believe Violence is Worse than Ever; When in Reality U.S. Violence is Lower than Ever

"Here?s a narrative you rarely hear: Our lives are safer. This message is so rarely heard that half of all respondents to a recent YouGov poll suggested that the violent crime rate had risen over the past two decades. The reality, of course, is that it has fallen enormously.

"The decline in violent crime is one of the most striking trends over recent decades; the rate has declined roughly by half since 1993.

"To be precise, the F.B.I.'s count of violent crimes reported to law enforcement has declined from a rate of 747 violent incidents per 100,000 people in 1993 to 387 incidents per 100,000 people in 2012, which is the most recent year for which it has published complete data. This reflects the fact that over this period, the homicide rate has fallen by 51 percent; forcible rapes have declined by 35 percent; robberies have decreased by 56 percent; and the rate of aggravated assault has been cut by 45 percent. Property crime rates are also sharply down.

"These trends aren?t caused by changes in our willingness to report crime to the police. We see an even more significant decline in violent crime in data derived from surveys asking people whether they?ve been the victims of certain crimes over the past year. The National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the rate of violent victimizations has declined by 67 percent since 1993. This reflects a 70 percent decline in rape and sexual assault; a 66 percent decline in robbery; a 77 percent decline in aggravated assault; and a 64 percent decline in simple assault. This survey has nothing to say about the decline in homicide, for obvious reasons."



Some historical perspective that forms the context of what we are seeing in Ferguson:

"In the American South, white slavers imprisoned African Americans on their plantations, forcing them to live short, harsh lives in extreme poverty, working without any compensation, constantly subjecting them to regular beatings and threats of violence. Female slaves were often raped by white male slave owners. Well into the twentieth century lynchings of blacks in the southern United States were not only common but were social events where white families would bring the children and a picnic lunch, and take pictures of the hanging, to be made into commemorative postcards.

"On average, an African American man, woman, or child was hanged, generally by a white mob, once a week, every week between 1882 and 1930, as police actively participated or stood by and condoned the murders. Lynchings continued until the 1950s, as thousands of black Americans were hanged for offenses like ?disputing with a white man.? (A much smaller number of whites were lynched as well, often for taking the side of a black person.)"

Read more from this article.



Report: Black Male Teens Are 21 Times More Likely To Be Killed By Cops Than White Ones

?The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police,? a new ProPublica report explains, noting that if whites were killed at the same ratio there would have been another 185 white deaths, just during that three-year period, just of those in that narrow age range.

Read more.



When you're an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road; you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked.

"That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire, "from which it follows that irregularity?that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment?is an essential part and characteristic of beauty."



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

You can also listen to an audio recording of the excerpt below, You Are a Prophet.

Here's how it starts: Your imagination is the single most important asset you possess. It's your power to create mental pictures of things that don't exist yet and that you want to bring into being. It's the magic wand you use to shape your future.

And so in your own way, you are a prophet. You generate countless predictions every day. Your imagination is the source, tirelessly churning out images of what you will be doing later.

The featured prophecy of the moment may be as simple as a psychic impression of yourself eating a fudge brownie at lunch or as monumental as a daydream of some year building your dream home by a lake or sea.

Your imagination is a treasure when it spins out scenarios that are aligned with your deepest desires. In fact, it's an indispensable tool in creating the life you want; it's what you use to form images of the conditions you'd like to inhabit and the objects you hope to wield. Nothing manifests on this planet unless it first exists as a mental picture.

But for most of us, the imagination is as much a curse as a blessing. We're often just as likely to use it to conjure up premonitions that are at odds with our conscious values. That's the result of having absorbed toxic programming from the media and from our parents at an early age and from other influential people in our past.

Fearful fantasies regularly pop up into our awareness, many disguising themselves as rational thoughts and genuine intuitions. Those fearful fantasies may hijack our psychic energy, directing it to exhaust itself in dead-end meditations . . . .

Read or hear the rest.



Here's a letter sent to the Beauty and Truth Lab by a pronoiac researcher named Risa Kline:

DEAR BEAUTY AND TRUTH LAB: The chemo treatments burned out all the math skills in my brain, which were already pretty meager. On the other hand, they awakened my ability to feel perfectly at ease while in the midst of paradoxical situations that everyone else finds maddening and uncomfortable. The chemo also made me ridiculously tolerant of people's contradictions, sometimes even their hypocrisies, and freed me to enjoy life as an entertaining movie with lots of interesting plot twists rather than as a pitched battle between everything I like and everything I don't like. I guess I could say that my cancer helped turn me into a pronoiac! - The Chaos Artist Formerly Known as Risa Kline



There is no God. God is dead. God is a drug for people who aren't very smart. God is an illusion sold to dupes by money-hungry religions. God is a right-wing conspiracy. God is an infantile fantasy favored by superstitious cowards who can't face life's existential meaninglessness.

JUST KIDDING! The truth is, anyone who says he knows what God is or isn't, doesn't really know.

Now read Adolfo Quezada's prayer, then confess what you don't know about God. "God of the Wild, you are different from what I expected. I cannot predict you. You are too free to be captured for the sake of my understanding. I can't find you in the sentimentalism of religion. You are everywhere I least expect to find you. You are not the force that saves me from the pain of living; you are the force that brings me life even in the midst of pain."



Possible names for the cult we could start:

Born-Again Pagan Church of Amazed Anarchists

The Ism-Free Sect of the Love Butter Congregation

Flaming Jewel Temple of Living Outside of Time

The Tempestuous Temple of Sacred Uproar and Rowdy Blessings

First Church of the Last Chance

Magic Order of Educated Rapture

The Polyester Pagoda of the Palpitating Pulpit

Any others?



Alert, relaxed listening is the radical act at the heart of our pronoiac practice.

Curiosity is our primal state of awareness.

Wise innocence is a trick we aspire to master.

Open-hearted skepticism is the light in our eyes.



Below is an excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

One of life's great bounties is its changeableness, which ensures that boredom will never last very long. You may underestimate the intensity of your longing for continual transformation, but the universe doesn't.

That's why it provides you with the boundless entertainment of your ever-shifting story. That's why it is always revising the challenges it sends your way, providing your curious soul with a rich variety of unpredictable teachings.

Neuroscientists have turned up evidence that suggests you love this aspect of the universe's behavior. They say that you are literally addicted to learning. At the moment when you grasp a lesson you've been grappling with, your brain experiences a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting your pleasure levels. You crave this experience. You thrive on it.

So the universe is built in such a way as to discourage boredom. It does this not just by generating an endless stream of interesting novelty, and not only by giving you an instinctive lust to keep learning, but also by making available an abundance of ways to break free of your habitual thoughts.

You can go to school, travel, read, listen to experts, converse with people who think differently from you, and absorb the works of creative artists. You can replenish and stretch your mind through exercise, sex, psychotherapy, spiritual practices, and self-expression. You can take drugs and medicines that alter your perspectives.

And here's the best part of this excellent news: Every method that exists for expanding your consciousness is more lavishly available right now than it has been at any previous time in history.

Never before have there been so many schools, educational programs, workshops, and enrichment courses. Virtually any subject or skill you want to study, you can. You don't even have to leave your home to do it. The number of online classes is steadily mounting . . . .

Read the rest of this essay.



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Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

Notice how you feel as you speak the following: "The strong, independent part of me resisted the embarrassing truth for a long time, but I finally came to accept that I'm someone who craves vast amounts of love. Ever since I surrendered to this need, it doesn't nag me all the time, as it used to. In fact, it feels comforting, like a source of sweetness that doesn't go away. I never thought I'd say this, but I've come to treasure the feeling of having a voracious yearning to be loved."



A common obstruction to a vital intimate relationship is what I call the assumption of clairvoyance. You imagine, perhaps unconsciously, that your partner or friend is somehow magically psychic when it comes to you -- so much so that he or she should unfailingly intuit exactly what you need, even if you don't ask for it.

This fantasy may seem romantic, but it can undermine the most promising alliances.

To counteract any tendencies you might have to indulge in the assumption of clairvoyance, practice stating your desires aloud.



According to Jewish legend, there are in each generation 36 righteous humans who prevent the rest of us from being destroyed. Through their extraordinary good deeds and their love of the divine spark, they save the world over and over again. They're not famous saints, though. They go about their business anonymously, and no one knows how crucial they are to our well-being.

Might you be one of the 36? As a temporary experiment, act as if you are.



The renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma once came to the home of computer pioneer Steve Jobs and performed a private concert. Jobs was deeply touched, and told Ma, "Your playing is the best argument I?ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don?t really believe a human alone can do this."



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

As an experiment, I invite you to say this twice a day for the next ten days: "Novel intuitions are now erupting from my smart heart, awakening me from any trance I've been ensnared in. I am hereby breaking and escaping obstructions that have hindered my ability to express my soul's code. My unique capacities are being liberated, my potentials activated."

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In response to our culture's ever-rising levels of noise and frenzy, rites of purification have become more popular. Many people now recognize the value of taking periodic retreats. Withdrawing from their usual compulsions, they go on fasts, avoid mass media, practice celibacy, or even abstain from speaking. While we applaud cleansing ceremonies like this, we recommend balancing them with periodic outbreaks of an equal and opposite custom: the Bliss Blitz.

During this celebration, you tune out the numbing banality of the daily grind. But instead of shrinking into asceticism, you indulge in uninhibited explorations of joy, release, and expansion. Turning away from the mildly stimulating distractions you seek out when you're bored or worried, you become inexhaustibly resourceful as you search for unsurpassable sources of cathartic pleasure. Try it for a day or a week: the Bliss Blitz.

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The greatest gift you can give might be the gift that you yourself were never given. Give that gift.

The most valuable service you have to offer your fellow humans may be the service you have always wished were performed for you. Offer that service.

An experience that wounded you could move you to help people who've been similarly wounded. Heal yourself by healing others.

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?Nothing?s going right in my life. I feel anxious and paranoid all the time. My relationships are a mess.? In my line of work, people make confessions like that to me.

My first response is usually something like this: ?Do you habitually gobble junk food near bedtime, steal a paltry five hours of sleep per night, gulp two cups of coffee and no breakfast in the morning, then bolt to a workplace where you get no sunlight or exercise and sit in an uncomfortable chair??

They often reply, ?You must be psychic! How did you know?!?

My point is that many psychological troubles stem from our chronic failure to take good care of our physical needs.

Name three things you can do to promote pronoia in yourself by taking better care of your body.



The following isn't from my book, but from Robert Anton Wilson:

"The underlying principle of Robert Anton Wilson's philosophy is 'I know I'm wrong, I want to be less wrong.' This is very different to now, our current internet culture, where the underlying philosophy is 'I'm right, and I want you to know that.'

"And if you go onto any internet discussion, or debate, or things like that, you find people declaring certainties loudly, people with very fixed positions that they can express in 140 characters, that they hunker down and defend, and don't listen to anything else, and attempt to drown out all the others.

"That's so different to Robert Anton Wilson: he believed -- hang on, the word 'believe' is difficult with Bob -- he thought that what you believed imprisoned you, he thought convictions create convicts.

"His philosophy can be called 'multiple-model agnosticism.' That's not just agnosticism about God, that's agnosticism about everything."

http://tinyurl.com/mqg2kme



Below is another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

SHADOW SCHOOL

You're a gorgeous mystery with a wild heart and a lofty purpose. But like all of us, you also have a dark side -- a part of your psyche that snarls and bites, that's unconscious and irrational, that is motivated by ill will or twisted passions or instinctual fears.

It's your own personal portion of the world's sickness: a mess of repressed longings, enervating wounds, ignorant delusions, and unripe powers. You'd prefer to ignore it because it's unflattering or uncomfortable or very different from what you imagine yourself to be.

If you acknowledge its existence at all (many of us don't), you might call it the devil, your evil twin, your inner monster, or your personal demon. Psychologist Carl Jung referred to it as the shadow. He regarded it as the lead that the authentic alchemists of the Middle Ages sought to transmute into gold.

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Astrologer Steven Forrest has a different name for the shadow: stuff. "Work on your stuff," he says, "or your stuff will work on you." He means that it will sabotage you if you're not aggressive about identifying, negotiating with, and transforming it.

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The shadow is not inherently evil. If it is ignored or denied, it may become monstrous to compensate. Only then is it likely to "demonically possess" its owner, leading to compulsive, exaggerated, "evil" behavior.

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"The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values, cannot be accepted as a negative part of one's own psyche and is therefore projected -- that is, it is transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object. It is combated, punished, and exterminated as 'the alien out there' instead of being dealt with as one's own inner problem." -- Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic

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The qualities in ourselves that we deny or dislike are often the very qualities that we most bitterly complain about in other people. So for instance, an old friend of mine named Mark had a special disgust for friends who were unavailable to him when he really needed them. But I was witness to him engaging in the same behavior three different times, disappearing from the lives of his friends just when they needed him most.

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"Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event," said Jung. If you disown a part of your personality, it'll materialize as an unexpected detour.

Everyone who believes in the devil is the devil . . . .

TO READ THE REST OF "SHADOW SCHOOL," go here.



"All I ever wanted in life was to make a difference, conquer the universe, travel the world, meet interesting people, find the missing link, fight the good fight, live for the moment, seize each day, make a fortune, know what really matters, end world hunger, vanquish the dragon, be super popular but too cool to care, be master of my own fate, embrace my destiny, feel as much as I can feel, give too much, and love everything."

- Tatsuya Ishida



Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies. Novelist J.G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination. "I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote, "to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."



"The Way of Abundance is all too often misconstrued as a shallow sense of 'getting what one wants,' 'eliminating the negative,' or 'being free from pain.' Even the often-touted 'manifesting your dreams,' offers a psychological disposition that generally remains fixated around manifestation as 'the project of me.'

"But the 'project of me' can never be enough, for it does not meet 'the other,' and real living involves meeting. The touch and contact with all of life, the full freedom of non-separation, the completeness of full relationship, and the radiance of compassionate ecstasy is what we are inherently hungry for."

- Rick Jarow,

Alchemy of Abundance



Think about your relationship to human beings who haven't been born yet. What might you create for them to use? How can you make your life a gift to the future? Can you not only help preserve the wonders we live amidst, but actually enhance them? Keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward."



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

I invite you to consider making these pledges:

I pledge:
to push hard to get better and smarter,
grow my devotion to the truth,
fuel my commitment to beauty,
refine my emotions,
hone my dreams,
wrestle with my shadow,
purge my ignorance,
and soften my heart?
even as I always accept myself
for exactly who I am,
with all of my so-called foibles and wobbles.

I pledge:
to wake myself up,
never hold back,
have nothing to lose,
go all the way,
kiss the stormy sky,
be the hero of my own story,
ask for everything I need
and give everything I have,
take myself to the river
when it's time to go to the river,
and take myself to the mountaintop
when it's time to go to the mountaintop.



Unconditional, a poem by Jennifer Welwood:

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is purest delight;
To honor its form -- true devotion.

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More poetry by Jennifer Welwood.



An interviewer urged the Dalai Lama to discourse on how to cultivate lovingkindness. His Holiness said, "That may be too much to ask. How about if we just work on getting the 'kindness' part right?"



Aldous Huxley was the renowned 20th-century intellectual who wrote the book *Brave New World,* a dystopian vision of the future. Later in his life he came to regret one thing: how "preposterously serious" he had been when he was younger. "There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet," he ruminated, "trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That?s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling . . . Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you?re feeling deeply."



PRONOIA RESOURCES

The coming era of unlimited -- and free -- clean energy.
"Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years -- as costs have been dropping. Solar energy is only six doublings -- or less than 14 years -- away from meeting 100 percent of today?s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth."

A message from comedian and prophet Bill Hicks

At the Cloud Appreciation Society, you can vote for Cloud of the Month and see the gorgeous art that Gaia creates on a regular basis:

More lovely, turbulent, unpredictable clouds.




Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

Behind your back, your imaginary friends are plotting with your inner child to overthrow your guilty conscience.

Meanwhile, your future self has time-traveled into the past to enlist the spirits of your ancestors in a secret plan to unlock your sleeping genius.

There's more: The superhero you used to fantasize about being when you felt most helpless has been brought to life by the mad scientist in your psyche's basement. Allies you never imagined you had are gathering there to offer their support.

There's no way you can prevent all of these plotters and schemers from giving you a big crazy dose of assistance.



As much as we might be dismayed by the actions of our political leaders, pronoia says that toppling any particular junta, clique, or elite is irrelevant unless we overthrow the sour, puckered mass hallucination that is mistakenly called ?reality? including the part of that hallucination we foster in ourselves.

The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.



I hope you can obtain the Avatar Elixir stashed in the golden obelisk in the underground fortress beneath the glass mountain. It will allow you to produce the ?triple-helix? energy that will give you the power to cross freely back and forth through the gateway between universes.

Then wild beasts will obey your commands. Rivers will become your allies. Every star in the sky will shine directly on you.

And if for some reason you?re not able to get your hands on that Avatar Elixir, you may be able to achieve similar results by drinking a bottle of beer stashed in the lower left rear section of the beverage cooler at a convenience store within five miles of your home.

Magic might be wherever you think it is.



This perfect moment is brought to you by the mummified middle finger of Galileo's right hand, which is on display at the Museo di Storia del Scienza in Florence, Italy. May it inspire you to flip the metaphorical bird at anyone who proudly embodies the kind of high-level idiocy Galileo had to endure.

See Galileo's mummified middle finger



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

It's Bad Luck to Be Superstitious

Review in painstaking detail the history of your life,
honoring every moment as if you were conducting
a benevolent Judgment Day.

Forgive yourself of every mistake except one.

Create a royal crown for yourself
out of a shower cap, rubber bands, and light bulbs.

Think of the last place on Earth you'd ever want to visit,
and visualize yourself having fun there.

Test to see if people are really listening to you by asserting
that Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers.

Steal lint from dryers in laundromats
and use it to make animal sculptures for someone you admire.

Fantasize you're the child of divine parents
who abandoned you when you were two days old,
but who will soon be coming back to reunite with you.

Meditate on how one of the symbols of plenitude in Nepal
is a mongoose vomiting jewels.

Once a year on the night before your birthday,
say these words into a mirror: "It's bad luck to be superstitious."

Start a club whose purpose is to produce an archive
of controversial jokes and obscene limericks about beauty, truth, and love.



Pronoia doesn't promise uninterrupted progress forever. It's not a slick commercial for a perfect balmy day that never ends. Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different kind of blessing than the waxing.

But whether it's our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, fresh power to transform ourselves is always on the way. Our suffering won't last, nor will our triumph. Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become.



Many people sincerely think that they will be called before God to account for themselves on Judgment Day. If you yourself have held that belief, you can stop worrying about it. The fact is, according to a survey of over 800 dissident bodhisattvas, urban witch doctors, sacred agents, and undercover geniuses, that you are called before "God" on "Judgment Day" on a regular basis.

Since you still exist, you have apparently passed every test so far. "God" obviously keeps finding you worthy. You shouldn't get overconfident, of course. But maybe from now on you can assume that although there may be a world of pressure on you, that pressure is natural, merciful, and exactly what you need.



"The sign of a beautiful person is that they always see beauty in others."
? Omar Suleiman



"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change." - Dalai Lama

"If Buddhism proves some aspect of science wrong, science will have to change." - the bodhisattva disguised as a homeless man in the Safeway parking lot



Below are more excerpts from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

PLAYING EASILY IN THE DEEP

"We are fully human only while playing, and we play only when we are human in the truest sense of the word." - Rudolf Steiner

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"'Approfondement' is a French word that means 'playing easily in the deep.'" - Tom Robbins

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"The ancient Greeks knew that learning comes from playing," writes Roger von Oech in his book A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative. Their word for education, paideia, he says, was close to their word for play, paidia.

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Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has proposed this simple definition: "Play is spontaneous behavior that has no clear-cut goal and does not conform to a stereotypical pattern. The purpose of play is simply play itself; it appears to be pleasurable."

In a study of 26 convicted murderers, Brown discovered that as children, most of them had suffered either "from the absence of play or abnormal play like bullying, sadism, extreme teasing, or cruelty to animals."

Brown's work led him to explore the biological roots of play. "New and exciting studies of the brain, evolution, and animal behavior," he wrote, "suggest that play may be as important to life?for us and other animals?as sleeping and dreaming."

- Stuart L. Brown, "Animals at Play," National Geographic

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"How much courage is needed
to play forever,
as the ravines play,
as the river plays."

- Boris Pasternak, "Bacchanalia"

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"You can't know fire unless you play with it," says Mark Finney, a math whiz who develops computer models for fighting forest fires.

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Western science and religion have differing views on how the universe was created, but they agree that it happened a long time ago. The mystery schools of the West, on the other hand, assert that the universe is re-created anew in every moment through the divine erotic play of God and Goddess. They say that if we humans treat lovemaking as an experimental sacrament, we can attune ourselves to the union of the two primal deities and, in a sense, participate in the ongoing creation of the world.

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"As a free deed, meditation is naturally individual, uniquely our own. It is where we most fully become ourselves. Its practice is also always individual.

"There are no rules. Just as every potter will elaborate his or her own way of making pots, so every person who meditates will shape his or her own meditation. No two people will do a given meditation in exactly the same way. The same meditation practiced daily will be different every time.

"Every meditation is experimental. One never knows what is going to happen. Improvisation is essential . . . Meditation is something to play with . . . There is no 'wrong' way of doing the meditation, except not doing it!"

- Christopher Bamford, Start Now!: A Book of Soul and Spiritual Exercises

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Monitor the calm, gentle, sweet spirits in your life for the possibility that they may act as agents of deception or passivity. Be inspired by the creator gods and goddesses of ancient myth, who playfully forged millions of beautiful things using wind, mud, tears, and lightning.

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You are a mutant deity in disguise -- not a Buddha or a Christ exactly, but of the same lineage and conjured from the same fire. You have been around since the beginning of time and will be here after the end. Every day and in every way, you're getting better at playing the preposterously amusing master game we all dreamed up together before the Big Bang bloomed.



American author Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) expressed his mission in the passage below. I aspire to be like him!

I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air.

I am to fire with what skill I can the artillery of sympathy and emotion.

I am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy, the Ideal and Holy Life, the life within life, the Forgotten Good, the Unknown Cause in which we sprawl and sin.

I am to try the magic of sincerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets.

I am to celebrate the spiritual powers in their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this time.

I am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end they cannot see, by appeals to the great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosoms.



FATE BAIT

Sometimes we have a strong sense of what our destiny is calling us to do, but we don't feel quite ready or brave enough to answer the call. We need a push, an intervention, a serendipitous stroke -- what you might call "fate bait." It's a person or event that awakens our dormant willpower and draws us inexorably toward our necessary destiny; it's a thunderbolt or siren song or stage whisper that gives us a good excuse to go do what we know we should do.

Do you have any ideas about how to put yourself in the vicinity of your fate bait?



Here's how cartoonist Matt Groening feels about love: "Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun."

Here, on the other hand, is what composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart believed: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

Which do you vote for?



Below is another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

To hear it as a spoken-word piece, go here.

GLORY IN THE HIGHEST

Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don?t fully understand, you?re still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you?ve been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect.

The interesting gift of these vivid hues is furthermore made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear explosions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.

Your hands work wonderfully well. Your heart circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. And after your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This wondrous mystery recurs over and over again without stopping every minute of your life.

You can smell intoxicating aromas. You can hear provocative and soothing sounds. You can taste a thousand different tastes. How is any of this possible? You can think thoughts any time you want -- big, wide, colorful thoughts or tiny dark burrowing thoughts. You can revel and wallow in great oceans of emotion. What colossal secret intelligence or improbable series of fabulous accidents conspired to bestow these superpowers upon you?

TO READ AND HEAR THE REST OF THIS PIECE.



Thoughts on true skepticism versus pseudo-skepticism:

True skepticism does not carry an undertone of anger, ridicule, and derision. It is even-tempered, clear-minded, and full of equanimity, satisfied with showing what's illogical or incorrect in the argument it critiques.

A true skeptic does not use emotionally charged language in an effort to portray the person whose argument he's critiquing as a stupid fool.

A true skeptic has no attachment to proving that she is smarter than and superior to the person whose argument she is critiquing, but rather is content to have her argument win the day purely on the strength of its elegant reasoning.

A true skeptic is willing to consider the possibility that there is some merit, however small, in the argument of the person he's critiquing. He is not afraid that acknowledging this merit will undermine the absolute truth he purports to possess.

A true skeptic is not consumed with the certainty that she is always right. In other words, she resists the temptation to become a fundamentalist.

A true skeptic has a respect for the fact that many questions don't have final answers. She recognizes how much about the world is mysterious.

A true skeptic is skeptical of his own skepticism.

A true skeptic is as likely to be a woman as a man. (97 percent of the pseudo-skeptics are men.)

A true skeptic shows humility, in the spirit that Carl Sagan demonstrated when he said this: "An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence.


"Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no God exists.

"To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

"A wide range of intermediate positions seems admissable.

"Considering the enormous emotional energies with which the subject is invested, a questing, courageous, and open mind is, I think, the essential tool for narrowing the range of our collective ignorance on the subject of the existence of God."



Homework: Write essays on one or more of these topics:

1. ?How I Used My Nightmares to Become Smart and Strong?

2. ?How I Exploited My Problems to Become a Spiritual Freedom Fighter?

3. ?How I Fed and Fed and Fed My Monsters Until They Ate Themselves to Death?

4. ?How I Turned Envy, Frustration, and Smoldering Anger into Generosity, Compassion, and Fiery Success?

5. ?Why Perfection Sux?

-from my book The Televisionary Oracle.



Some people put their faith in religion or science or political ideologies. English novelist J. G. Ballard placed his faith elsewhere: in the imagination. "I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world," he wrote, "to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen."



Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

What is the "soul," anyway? Is it a ghostly blob of magic stuff within us that keeps us connected to the world of dreams and the divine realms? Is it an amorphous metaphor for the secret source of our spiritual power? Is it a part of us the rational mind can't pin down and control, ensuring that we remain accessible to the numinous?

Yes. And also: The soul is a perspective that pushes us to go deeper and see further and live wilder. It's what drives our imagination to flesh out our raw experience, transforming that chaotic stuff into rich storylines that animate our love of life. With the gently propulsive force of the soul, we probe beyond the surface level of things, working to find the hidden meaning and truer feeling.

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"If you need to visualize the soul," wrote Tom Robbins, "think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved."

P.S. Here's Robbins' conclusion: "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe."

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As part of the Beauty and Truth Lab's ongoing crusade to wrestle the English language into a more formidable servant of the ecstatic impulse, we're pleased to present some alternate designations for "soul." See if any of the following concoctions feel right coming out of your mouth: 1. undulating superconductor; 2. nectar plasma; 3. golden lather; 4. smoldering crucible; 5. luminous caduceus.



"I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

-Vincent van Gogh



Pablo Neruda says: "To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weakness -- that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things."

- as reported by Lewis Hyde in his book "The Gift"


While you commune with us here at the Conspiracy to Commit Insurrectionary Beauty and Smart Love:

Your favorite phrase is "flux gusto"

The colors of your soul are sable, vermilion, ivory, and jade

Your special emotion is skeptical faith

Your magic talisman is a thousand-year-old Joshua tree whose flowers blossom just one night each year and can only be pollinated by the yucca moth

The garage sale item you most resemble is an old but beautiful and sonorous accordion with a broken key

Your sweet spot is in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics

Your sacred fungus is yeast and your soil of destiny is peat moss

The shape of your life is oval with soft dark sparks

Your lucky number is 3.14159265

Your lucky phobia is arachibutyrophobia, or the fear of peanut butter adhering to the roof of your mouth

Your holiest pain comes from your yearning to change yourself in the exact way you'd like the world around you to change

from my book The Televisionary Oracle



Here's another excerpt from
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

LET'S MAKE MORALITY FUN

Are you turned off by the authoritarian, libido-mistrusting perversity of the right-wing moral code, but equally reluctant to embrace the atheism embedded in the left wing's code of goodness?

Are you hungry for a value system rooted in beauty, love, pleasure, and liberation instead of order, control, politeness, and fear, but allergic to the sophistry of the New Age?

Are you apathetic toward the saccharine goodness evangelized by sentimental, superstitious fanatics, but equally bored by the intellectuals who worship at the empty-hearted shrine of scientific materialism?

It may be time for you to whip up your very own moral code. If you do, you might want to keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. A moral code becomes immoral unless it can thrive without a devil and enemy.

2. A moral code grows ugly unless it prescribes good-natured rebellion against automaton-like behavior offered in its support.

3. A moral code becomes murderous unless it's built on a love for the fact that EVERYTHING CHANGES ALL THE TIME, and unless it perpetually adjusts its reasons for being true.

4. A moral code will corrupt its users unless it ensures that their primary motivation for being good is because it's fun.

5. A moral code deadens the soul of everyone it touches unless it has a built-in sense of humor.



"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

- Albert Einstein



"Why is it so hard to find a soulmate?" asks psychologist Carolyn Godschild Miller in her book "Soulmates." Her answer: "Because most of us are actually searching for egomates instead. We place the most limited and unloving aspect of our minds in charge of our search for love, and then wonder why we aren't succeeding. To the degree that we identify with this false sense of self, and operate on the basis of its limited point of view, we aren't looking for someone to love so much as recruiting fellow actors to take on supporting roles in a favorite melodrama."



None of us is in danger of losing sight of the world's suffering. Every form of news media, art, and entertainment relentlessly barrages us with reminders. The rebels and iconoclasts offer an alternative truth that sometimes rises above the nihilistic propaganda: that the world is beautiful, that humans are miraculous, that we are doing amazingly well as we carry out this impossible experiment called life.



"Love the earth and the sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labors to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass*



I want to call your attention to one of the few NC-17-rated pieces in my book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. It's called "THE ORGASMIC ROOTS OF PRONOIA."

"THE ORGASMIC ROOTS OF PRONOIA."

If I quoted from it here in the newsletter, however, it would trigger all the spam filters that lie between me and you, preventing the text from reaching you.

Instead, I will give you
a place to read it online.

PROCEED WITH CAUTION! This material has graphic references to love, lust, tenderness, bliss, and rapture.



If you would like to make a contribution to me via Paypal, here's where to go:

Tip Jar for Me




IMPOSSIBILITIES

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
- Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad."
- President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company

"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
- Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946

"Space travel is utter bilge."
- Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, The Astronomer Royal (1956)

"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
- Dionysius Lardner, English scientist (1793-1859)

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility."
- Lee DeForest, American inventor (1873-1961)

"Guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Records turning down the Beatles, 1962.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
- Spencer Silver, originator of Post-It Notepads.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, 1872.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
- Grover Cleveland, 1905

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- Bill Gates, 1981

"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress."
- Sir William Siemens, electrical engineer, upon hearing Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"I believe all the music that can be written has already been written. We're just repeating the past." - Tschaikovsky in a letter to his brother