"Existence": A poem

Mind, a river rushing downstream;

Thoughts, the waves that arise and dissolve;

Consciousness, the still sky over all that stirring;

And this World, the mirror in those waters, 

Reflects all: the desired & the averse:

Confusion is thinking you are those passing reflections.

Clarity is knowing you are the endless possibility for reflection.

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Thanks for reading. Thanks for reading. If you liked this, be sure to check out some of my other work by following this link: My Poetry

Boom De Yada

(This is an edited version of an article I wrote for a magazine called "Coastal Braid", and I have used it in public speaking competitions before and one first place. I might make a YouTube version of it in the future.)

Have you ever really thought about the profundity of your existence? On dark, sleepless nights has it ever all just "sunk in" No? Well, let me help you with that...

On average, two million fertile sperm cells are produced every day in the male. That’s an average forty-five billion life-containing cells in one lifetime. Every single one of these seeds has its own unique DNA and the potential to create a person with a past, a present, a future, and a calling, who will love, and suffer.You are one of those sperm, and the possibility of it turning out to be EXACTLY you is 1 in one-hundred fifteenth billion.

The possibility that your grandfathers sperm will become your father and that your fathers sperm will then go on to become you is: 1 in one-hundred and forty four quadrillion.

The possibility of your existence after 25 years, since we live in an often wicked world of disease, war, natural disasters, etc is one in six hundred vigintillion. Let alone your father surviving, or your grandfather....

Those calculations are only based on fatherhood. They don’t include such things as motherhood, death by natural causes like illness, death by unnatural causes like suicide, etc...

If those things we’re included, the possibility of your existence would be ZERO PERCENT.

Literally, ZERO PERCENT.

And yet, against all the sheer logic and numbers, here you are... existing... ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. So lets take a moment to really appreciate this moment, to appreciate every little aspect of this one particular moment.

Are you blind? No. We have a sense of sight, thanks to a hundred million receptors. Take a moment to really sense your self seeing out of your skull and to treat your whole visual field indiscriminately; just take it all in without labeling. Amazing, isn't it? Count blessing number two.

Are you deaf? No. We have a sense of hearing, thanks to twenty-four thousand fibers you have built in each of your ears. Take a moment to hear sounds passing in through the sides of your head, listen to everything indiscriminately through your auditory field, all of the noises, loud and subtle, and think could you live without this? Count another blessing.

Are you paralyzed? No. We can move, for within us Nature has designed hundreds of muscles and two hundred bones, with seven miles of nerve fiber all synchronized to do our bidding. Take a moment to shake your body, every limb. Isn't fun?

Our lungs labor always to filter life-giving oxygen through six hundred million pockets of fresh air while they rid us of gaseous wastes. The breath is always nourishing and purifying us no matter what we do. Take a deep breath.

We have blood in our bodies and air in our lungs. Within us we have twenty two trillion blood cells and within each cell are untold millions of molecules and within each molecule is an atom oscillating at more than ten million times each second. Each second, two million of your blood cells die to be replaced by two million more in a death-rebirth cycle that has continued since day one. Never let anything hold you back: The old you is always being replaced by the new you BIOLOGICALLY, so why not make the old you be replaced by the new you PSYCHOLOGICALLY, too?

You deserve it, because this screen you are reading this on is made of atoms, you are made of atoms, and I am made of atoms. We are the universe experiencing itself.

Ah yes, and free will! The steering wheel which controls this human body-mind and which we can use for good or for ill. Let us choose to master, rather than obey. Let us choose to love, not hate. Laugh, not cry. Create, not destroy. Preserve, not quit. Heal, not wound. Give, not take. Act, not procrastinate. Grow, not rot. I can see that you are all alive BIOLOGICALLY, so CHOOSE to take advantage of it by being alive COGNIZANTLY too. You didn't choose to be born, but no one but you can choose to be ALIVE.

We have brains, the most complex structure in the universe, which we may never fully understand. Within its three pounds are thirteen billion nerve cells which allow us to create, learn, and ponder. To help file away every perception, every sound, every taste, every smell, every action we have ever experienced since the day of our birth, we have implanted, within our cells, more than one thousand billion billion protein molecules.

Every little incident in your life is there waiting only our recall. With this mind we can think, reason, and imagine- and we can dream. Oh yes, this world is indeed a beautiful place, but the beauty even of the universe out there is surpassed by the beauty of the universe behind our eyes and between our ears, this inner universe, that place where a man can make an idea, and that idea can change the world around him, that place where a man can go and contemplate, cry, or hide.

Truly, no work of art is greater than this work of art that made it, no machine is greater than this machine that made it - the human being.

All these things are provided to you in moment, every moment, free of charge. We have a lot to be thankful for. Its true! The best things in life really are free!


Boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada
Boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada
I love the mountains
I love the rolling hills
I love the flowers
I love the daffodils
I love the fire's glow
When all the lights are low
Boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada
Boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada, boom de yada

Illusions in Language

In a way, everyone speaks their own language. I am writing in “Dylan”-English right now, and as you are reading it you are thinking in “(insertyournamehere)”-English.

One of the biggest problems is the fact that every word can have thousands of different meanings according to the material the speaker,reader,thinker,etc has at his disposal, not to mention whatever complex associations at work inside him at the moment. It becomes an even bigger problem when we always assume that people are using the same definitions as I am both in daily, practical life and in heated arguments. We only understand other people’s language vaguely or not at all.

This assumption is completely false and only applies to the most practical essence of life. Such as, I'd know that if you talk about how 2 + 2 = 4, we know that we are both talking about the same thing.

But as soon as we leave that and go into loftier spheres, the commonality in language and understanding that you and I have collapses, and we are unconscious of the fact that we do not understand each other. As a result of this illusion, two men can say the same thing with absolute certainty but call it by different names, debate forever without suspecting that they mean exactly the same thing, argue against each other without knowing we are talking about two entirely different topics, or agree with each other without knowing they both mean something completely different.

To illustrate how this is so, lets analyze two common words: “Man” and “God”.

Imagine I am in a conversation with a feminist, a spiritualist, and a scientist. I bring up the phrase “All Men are Good” to refer to all of humanity, as ancient writers often did, and "Good" in the sense that we are, in our essence, inclined to do good. Lets say I don’t feel the need to elaborate on how in this context “Man” means “All of Humanity” because I feel it is obvious.

But everyone in the conversation links the word “Man” from their own accustomed point of view. The Feminist hears the word “Man” and thinks about it in relation to the sexes (Man/Woman), thus my whole idea is immediately made meaningless to him because he immediately thinks, “Oh? just men are good?”. The spiritualist hears the word “Man” and thinks of it as the Immortal Spirit incarnate temporarily as a Man, but is itself not the Man, and thinks “It does feel pretty good to be human right now, sure”. The Scientist does not grasp my idea because he thinks of Man as being a zoological type, an individual unit consisting of the structure of his bones, the distance between his ears, etc. and thinks, “Yes, the animal called Man is very good”.

In essence, I am transporting an idea from my head to three others’ and it instantly transforms into three entirely different ideas, and then a massive conversation/argument erupts from four different viewpoints of people talking about entirely different things and entirely different topics as a result of the same word: “Man”.

To use another example, let us say a Transcendentalist uses the word “God” in the phrase “God is Great” in a conversation with an Atheist and a Christian. The Atheist links the word God with the image of an imaginary invisible, bearded, paternal sky-ghost who hurls thunderbolts worshiped by ignorant, redneck bible-bumpers. He refutes: “Actually, God is Awful”. The Christian hears the word “God” and links it to Jesus, and responds: “Yes, God IS Great!”. But what the Transcendentalist was referring to was the idea of an omnipresent, omni-benevolent, transcendental consciousness that is within oneself. Because of this the Transcendentalist is happy the Christian agrees with him (despite the fact that he means something different than he does, but is unaware of it) and gets into an argument with the Atheist (who is thinking of a totally different concept than what the Transcendentalist is thinking). As a result of this a totally illusory argument and agreement has taken place simultaneously.

In order for both of these situations to be remedied, for everyone to arrive at the ideal of exact, universal understanding, we would need an exact, universal language. But such a language does not exist, attempts at making such a language (Esperanto) have failed, and since such a language would have to have exact words that would also establish the context I am using them in it would be a very complex, difficult to learn language. Hence this problem will always exist.

It gets especially tragic, even existential, when we consider the fact that, being a consciousness with such-and-such thoughts and sensations temporarily passing through me I greatly rely on other people, who are experiencing reality in just as isolated a fashion, to confirm to me what I am thinking, feeling, sensing, etc, but we cannot understand each other. Hence, doubt envelops everything just as smoke envelops fire.

Mechanicalness Vs. Humanness

(This is an article version of a public speech I did, which won me 2nd place in the competition and won me 50$. Not bad, not bad). 

Let us consider for a moment that we consist of two parts: one part that is what has come from outside,
what we have been conditioned to do, and the other part is what comes from inside, what we always are. Let us call it The Mechanical Nature and The Human Nature.

We are the Androids.

Society gives us prepackaged beliefs and goals. We assume that we agree with them because we are told, probably since birth, that they are the truth. It is like we INHERIT all of this. But we find that if we tilt the investigative lens inside ourselves that we may actually not agree with any of it. We find it does not match up with our inner and outer experiences of life.

This is the start of forming your own opinions, and forming your own opinions is how we avoid getting swept up in the current, and who knows where that current might be headed?

Being swept along in that current is the Mechanical Nature. An advertisement tells you to desire something, something that is designed meticulously from the ground up to be desirous, and then, just like clockwork, you want it, very badly. The news tell you that such-and-such is the real story, the full report, and you believe it, just like clockwork. Mechanicalness is when you act on every impulse that the external world stirs up in you.

This state of living entirely at the mercy of the external world, being driven along through the mazes of life by sensations and desires, this state of having all you think, say, and feel be decided by things other than yourself, is mechanicalness. We are the machines. All our deeds are the results of external influences.

Pictured: The Real Robot Apocalypse

Now, mechanicalness and societal conditioning has a place in the world and it always has. For example, society has programmed me to not be a nudist and I think you would agree that is for the But, a crisis always emerges when our mechanical side is dominant over our human side. We never go against the crowd. We are ruled by self-destructive habits like laziness or overindulgence. We neglect doing things we want to do in favor of things we do not want to do.

This happens because whereas the development of our mechanical nature happens on its own, the development of our own humanness is solely by our own volition.

The human nature is when reason kicks and says, “Wait a minute, I don’t REALLY want that. It’s a waste of money and time”, or “That can’t really be true”. The human nature is when intuition kicks in and says, “There’s something about this. I just know it.” or, “I should go there, I don’t know how or why, but I should go there”. The human nature is doing what makes you come alive and doing what you know is right. The human nature is pursuing and acting on your highest bliss.

The mechanical nature is what you inherit from the world, the human nature is what you give the world. The mechanical nature is what the world makes you, the human nature is what you make of the world.

Take a look at yourself in the psychological mirror and distinguish between what is human and what is mechanical in yourself. Compare the “YOU-ness”, innate qualities that you have always possessed, against what you have learned and been conditioned to do.

With the scalpel of self-observation we can cut through the circuitry, tear off the metal plating, and reveal the humanness underneath. With the will of our defiant individuality we can be a fixed pole that does not sway even when the whole world goes in the opposite direction. We can make our own happiness, set our own goals, be our own masters.

Struggle against your mechanicalness!

You have fed the mechanical you, that you of the world, that you inherited from the world, for long enough. Awaken the human you, the you that you are in spite of the world, the essential you.