Caitlin Johnstone

Maturity Is Discovering How Everything You Believe Is A Lie

Listen to this article: You get your first taste of it when you’re little. You find your Christmas presents in your parents’ closet in early December, or maybe some older kid just tells you that Santa Claus isn’t real. What the hell? What the hell is this? Some freaky psyop run by your parents, just…

Caitlin Johnstone
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Listen to this article:

You get your first taste of it when you’re little. You find your Christmas presents in your parents’ closet in early December, or maybe some older kid just tells you that Santa Claus isn’t real.

What the hell? What the hell is this? Some freaky psyop run by your parents, just for kicks? And all the other parents are in on it too? And Hollywood? All those movies and TV specials about Santa were just lies? How far does this go?

What is this strange reality?

Ah well. We’ve all got to grow up sometime. From now on you only believe in real stuff, like the Tooth Fairy.

Thus begins a maturing process of discovering the various ways you’ve been deceived about what’s real which, hopefully, continues for the rest of your life.

When you get a bit older you might start gathering information which causes you to realize that some of the people in your life might not have been telling you the truth about some things. Soda and Pop Rocks can’t really cause a dangerous explosion. Your eleven year-old friend probably hasn’t “boned” every girl in class. You actually haven’t been seeing Dad much since the divorce.

And that’s usually about as exciting as it gets for a while, because you’re a young person trying to learn how to function in the world and you can’t learn if you believe everything you’re being taught is a lie. But that period of credulity doesn’t last long. Not if you’re lucky.

Maybe you start questioning this religion thing. It sure seems weird how they tell you you’ll be rewarded with eternal bliss if you espouse a belief system around which entire empires have been wrapped, which still to this day influences political thought and makes a whole lot of money for some people, but you’ll be tortured forever if you don’t. That sounds made up. Like the sort of thing you’d make up if you were trying to manipulate a large number of people into believing something that benefits you.

And maybe that opens up a bunch of other areas of exploration. Maybe it’s no big deal if someone loves somebody who’s the same gender as them. Maybe the hard labels and roles we assign to gender aren’t necessarily as solid and real as we’ve been told. And maybe relationships don’t need to look a certain way at all. Maybe relationship structures are completely made up, and people can write their own rules with consenting adults in whatever way they like, even if it’s unusual and doesn’t seem like something you’d enjoy.

Maybe it’s okay for everyone to find their own way in this life, since there don’t appear to be any trustworthy roadmaps of authority on the matter. Maybe it’s okay for people to take up any philosophy or approach to living they find useful, for however long they find it useful, and then take up new ones when the old ones aren’t useful anymore. Maybe it’s okay if they want to smoke a joint or have sex with many different people, or do anything they like as it doesn’t harm others.

Maybe you start to wonder if the political ideology of your parents is stupid. Hey, who knows? Maybe what they’ve told you about the world and how it works is no more true than what they used to tell you about Santa Claus.

If you continue to mature, at some point you’ll start to notice that the news isn’t being entirely honest about things. Is every single war of the US and its allies really good and just? Are the nations which aren’t aligned with the US really nefarious monsters who constantly plot our downfall and commit atrocities? That sounds made up. Like something you’d make up if you were trying to manipulate a large number of people into believing something that benefits you.

As you discover more and more things you’ve been given false or misleading information about by the “reputable sources” in the mass media, at some point you’ll notice that the picture you are now seeing of the world is completely irreconcilable with what you were taught in school about your nation, your political system, your government, and your world.

You were lied to. You do not live in an imperfect but well intentioned democracy in which the people determine the best course of action for their government using votes, you live in an oligarchy with no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, whose fate is determined not by votes but by a loose transnational alliance of plutocrats and sociopathic government agencies. You do not live in a separate nation in a world full of other separate nations, you live in a globe-spanning power alliance which functions as a single empire controlled by unaccountable elites who use governments as tools to advance agendas of control and domination.

The economy is a collective delusion. Money is a conceptual construct that’s only as real as we all agree to pretend it is. All the written and unwritten rules which govern our society are made up, and if enough of us wanted to we could simply make new ones. All the stories about what our world is and what it should be are constructs of the human imagination, and we are free to collectively re-imagine or simply dispense with them if we collectively choose to do so.

As you uncover more and more lies and mature even further, you start getting curious about what other beliefs in your head are false. Beliefs about life itself. Beliefs about society. Beliefs about your loved ones and your relationships. Beliefs about yourself.

Maybe you begin unearthing beliefs you didn’t even know you’d had that had been lurking in your subconscious mind, pulling the strings of your life from behind the scenes. Beliefs like, “The world is a dark, scary place.” Or, “Life is supposed to be hard.” Or, “I have to stay in this marriage because I promised I would.” Or, “I have to maintain a relationship with my mother even though she’s horrible to me.” Or, “I don’t deserve to be happy.” “I am disgusting.” “I am ugly.” “I am unworthy.” “I am unlovable.”

And maybe you start changing your life so that it aligns with what you know to be true instead of with your old false beliefs. Maybe you find love. Maybe you quit your awful job to take a chance on something you enjoy. Maybe you leave your unfulfilling marriage. Maybe you begin creating a whole new life based on truth and consciousness.

And maybe, just maybe, at some point you discover that even the thing you take to be “you” isn’t real. That there is no solid separate self to be found anywhere outside the realm of mental narrative, and that all of your psychological suffering has been caused by the fact that most of your thoughts revolve around a “me” character who has never ever existed. Maybe you discover that separation itself is a lie that is only given the illusion of reality by belief in mental labels, and that beneath the false narratives of the labeling, dividing mind, it’s all one.

And maybe you keep right on maturing, remaining curious about what’s really true for the rest of your life. And the more clearly and truthfully you perceive what’s going on in yourself, your life, your society and your world, the more efficaciously you are able to move through it all. And maybe you discover that this brings an amount of happiness, love and beauty to your life that you never would have previously dreamed possible.

Or maybe you don’t. It’s your adventure, and I could be lying as much as your parents were as they set out the milk and cookies for Santa. I just wish you a fulfilling journey into your own relationship with truth, for as far as you want to take it.

___________________

I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

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Featured image “Santa’s Tombstone” via Steve Jurvetson, Creative Commons 2.0 license.

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64 responses to “Maturity Is Discovering How Everything You Believe Is A Lie”

  1. Peter Mann Avatar
    Peter Mann

    “at some point you discover that the thing you take to be “you” isn’t real.
    That there is no solid separate self to be found anywhere outside the realm of mental narrative, and that all of your psychological suffering has been caused by
    the fact that most of your thoughts revolve around a “me” character who has never ever existed.”

    Nobody will discover what Caitlin said, because discovery needs an underlying reality to happen. The absence of something can only be inferred, not discoverred, nor proven.

    Denying the existence of the self is as silly as denying gravity
    just because gravity cannot be seen, nor put in a bottle and sold.

    The only valid distinction here is what some mystics call the “false self”, which the Toltec describe as the “foreign implant” … (it being a transducer of the parasites whose prophets declare that Armageddon is divine justice.)

    In this nonHuman meddler we have an explanation of everything from sociopaths to saints, depending on how much immunity we have to the disguised cruelties of a parasite which feeds on misery and death.

    As a surgeon of the aetheric, i daily proved that self is comprised of substances and structures which can be damaged and repaired by outside forces. Structures which properly are attuned by internal forces, such as attention and intent.

    But here on this hell world, what we are coerced to believe about our Self has destroyed our self-respect and our natural immunity against stupidity. With a false god who robs and rules by “divine” commandment, how else would we accept a government which rules the poor based on obedience+punishment .?.

    Even though the agents of stupidity misrepresent conquered civilisations,
    it is easy enough to learn that many preColumbian nations were governed by wisdom+generosity+truthfulness.

    Their self-organising anarchic social dynamic was stable for countless generations … a far more congenial and efficient social engineering, as was brought to common knowledge by the movie “Dances With Wolves”.

  2. Bobby Avatar
    Bobby

    Very good. As someone once said, It’s a tragedy to be a philosopher at 17 years of age. That’s when I became one, way back in the 1960’s and 70’s, having pretty much reached most of the insights of the author or this article. In fact, In fact, Caitlin has only scratched the surface of the solid wall of illusion that most human life is built on. The conclusion of all of this is not to be depressed or feel defeated but to understand that God is real and that without clinging to his reality with faith, we will never feel whole. Be free and happy in all circumstances by understanding that there is a power and force that does care about you, despite appearances to the contrary. PEACE.

  3. Rabbitnexus Avatar
    Rabbitnexus

    I’m 58 and a long way from maturity. I’ve not really tried too hard, but I have never lost my sense of curiosity and like a precocious child never stop pushing the boundaries of what is known. No limits. That has certainly led to all the understandings listed. Maturity and wisdom sound like burdens though. Something to do when the legs give out.

  4. Tom Braun Avatar
    Tom Braun

    53.
    Ninety-nine percent of humans have beliefs about life but are too busy to examine them; 78% are afraid to examine them; 50% don’t care if their beliefs are true; 97% believe that their beliefs are the only true beliefs and everyone else’s beliefs cause arthritis, and the 1% who have actually experienced and know the truth about life and tell others are hunted down and killed by the 257% who believe life isn’t funny.

    1. Striketheroot Avatar
      Striketheroot

      Tom, big fan of yours. The biggest belief that humans entertain is that we are our bodies. All other beliefs proceeds from there. IMHO the hardest thing a human can do is to have NO beliefs. Try it, every morning examine what you believe and throw it out the window . Very difficult task and very enlightening… Beliefs become like psychic prisons both here and hereafter.

  5. Truth Avatar
    Truth

    Maturity is the *willingness to accept* that everything that you’ve believed is a lie.
    Plenty of people discover the lies in their beliefs, but immaturity leads them to handle that cognitive dissonance by further burying their head in the sand and doubling down on the emotional components of denial, much like a child winding up in to a tantrum.

    Few will mature enough to let go of their perceived identity enough to challenge their belief systems in such a fashion.

  6. tom charles osher Avatar
    tom charles osher

    Thanks you for the confirmation of my maturity. These thoughts I believe, coincide with yours:

    One might wonder why like science, humanity hasn’t refined itself and advanced, such that we have a world where all the needs of humanity are most easily met and without wars, without poverty, injustices, so much corruption and betrayal, programming/propagandizing , crime, environmental destruction, and constant never ending atrocities. How has humanity gotten itself into so much trouble, especially now, with the “pandemic” and mandate to be injected by a corrupt gov’t., and facing extinction and the possibility of world totalitarianism.

    How did this happen? Whose fault is it? I don’t see these obvious kinds of questions being asked. We are under a tsunami of information, but this has been excluded, why?

    Are we all individually responsible for this horrid state we find ourselves in? I would suggest that in a way, we are. After all we have allowed it to progress to this state. But is that fair, could anyone have done anything to change it? Some individuals have done their best like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, now Robert Kennedy Jr., and others. But the vast majority are not activists.

    One could easily surmise that there are many reasons for this. After all, we have all been under a constant and ubiquitous barrage of propaganda from the moment we were born. Our minds have been programmed very specifically to believe in pretty much what we believe. This is not just my opinion, one could easily investigate to see how this is true.

    We depend on information to make decisions and come to conclusions. The media, the education system, entertainment, religion, all of it is controlled by a relatively small group of people. Vanguard and Blackrock are two holding companies that control most of the wealth of the world and own the banks, the multi nationals, almost everything, as their worth is in the hundreds of trillions (https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/monopoly-an-overview-of-the-great-reset-follow-the-money/?fbclid=IwAR1Mh0zQvEs6BrcQMz30EAChw7IYXq8V5e814jW62EH0GWawGlyB3qCrEqQ) .

    The reason why all of these horrors have continued and proliferated is because humanity has constantly been deceived and manipulated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caCkMX6YdYU). It is as simple as that. The popular idea that the outside is a reflection of the inside has much truth to it. But it can be confusing.The world is not a bad place because my mind is bad, it is a bad place because my mind and everyone else’s believes in things that have permitted it. We believe that we are free, that capitalism is the best economic system to manage society, that war is acceptable, that voting for the best of the worst is democracy, that politicians have our best interests at heart, that contamination of the environment is acceptable and allowable, etc., etc.

    What we accept and have accepted shows us how much our minds have been hijacked. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and many others have seen through the deception and have warned us. Even JFK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ-8_9N-OPo) and Eisenhower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU) have sent out the alarm. But the immense powers that be just roll over and on by these little tweets of light and nothing of significance is improved or rectified.

    If they shut down the internet, it will be like all the lights are turned off and we will be left alone, lost, and under their control. Even with the internet we have not been able to self organize and stand up for our rights, for the planet, for all the species that are being wasted daily, and reorganize humanity to create a just and ethical society. We have remained divided and powerless. We find ourselves at the mercy of the merciless.

    Protests and revolutions have not worked. Overthrowing governments have not worked. Changing the people in government has not worked. A new strategy is that we must end vertical governance and self govern/organize/manage horizontally, decentralized, localized, without politicians or lobbyists, by removing the entrance points for corruption. This 7 minute animation that we made explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8. Since therre are living examples of this right now, this is something that just might work.

    The only hope I see is for us to create a new, non-spying, secure internet which some are attempting to do right now. And to create a network of networks of millions to billions of like minded individuals, groups, organizations and networks with the most advanced tools for organizing and collaborating on all scales. It is a way to unify and become a force for good.

    We have been working on such a network since March, 2020. and are still at least a year away from launch as it is complex and expensive. We want and need to collaborate with any and all who are doing the same or similar, but it isn’t easy with problems such as interoperability, maintaining the sovereignty of one’s organization, equalizing, when some have invested much more time and money than others, creating the state of the art tools, managing horizontally, etc.

    If you agree with this commentary, please spread and share it. We can use all the help we can get. utopiacornucopia.org

  7. JWK Avatar
    JWK

    Perhaps maturity is becoming aware that the search for truth is the only worth while pursuit of consciousness, while at the same time realizing it can never be conclusively discovered. One can never point their finger at this or that concept and legitimately claim “here lies the truth”. Because you may discover a “truth” tomorrow that completely discredits it. “I think therefore I am” is the closest we can get to even proving we exist, and it only works on an individual level. Which leaves us in the position of accepting as truth, on a temporary basis at least, that which we have discovered, so far. Tomorrow trying our damnedest to disprove it.

  8. Eddy Avatar
    Eddy

    Very good, truthful article. I recall when I retired from work. The euphoria at finally being free, never having to cowtow to anyone, never having to supress my views which may run counter to my employer’s views, was exhilarating. People do not realise, how we adjust our personalities to suit out employers demands, we pretend to be someone we are not, simply to hold down the job. We spend a lifetime in this pretense, thus when retirement comes knocking, to many it’s a mental nightmare. Thus there are so many divorces during such a period. It took me a good 12 months to re-adjust my mental and personal outlook on life. For the first time, since I left high school, I could once again be the real me, (if I could find him, that is) eventually I did, and it’s been a picnic ever since. But friends who have retired recently, have found it to be far more challenging. Especially when their wives refuse to adjust their lives after a lifetime of doing their own thing. When I talk to these guys, I usually point out the onus is on them to make the adjustment, not their wives as they are still in the same environment as they were in before their husbands retired, and that they’d need to give a lot more leeway and make adjustments themselves to fit in. Sometimes it’s taken on board, sometimes not and a divorce follows. I still believe it’s a BIG issue, and many folks are totally unprepared for this change.

  9. Brian in Chile Avatar
    Brian in Chile

    There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
    The earth, and every common sight.
    To me did seem
    Appareled in celestial light,
    The glory and the freshness of a dream.
    It is not now as it has been of yore:
    Turn where so e’er I may,
    By night or day.
    The things which I have seen
    I now can see no more!

    Heaven lies about us in out infancy!
    Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    upon the growing boy,
    But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
    He sees it in his joy:
    The youth, who daily farther from the east
    Must travel, still is Nature’s priest.
    And by the vision splendid
    Is on his way attended:
    At length the man perceives it die away,
    And fade into the light of common day.

    I am a poet!
    My feet show it!
    They’re Longfellows!

  10. Alex Avatar
    Alex

    And worse – as Mark Twain noted:

    “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”

  11. Johnny Avatar
    Johnny

    Douglas Harding is spot on:
    https://www.headless.org/english-welcome.htm

  12. anarchaos Avatar
    anarchaos

    And, if 99% of all lawyers were laid to rest on the ocean floor what would it be called?

    1. Ian Perkins Avatar
      Ian Perkins

      Sub judice?

      1. Victor G. Avatar
        Victor G.

        Pollution

    2. speedbird Avatar
      speedbird

      A start?

    3. Stuart H Avatar
      Stuart H

      Step one in getting our lives back (and I am a non-practicing J.D.)…

  13. Millard J Melnyk Avatar
    Millard J Melnyk

    I’ve been following you for years Caitlin, love what you write and love the direction you’ve been steadily going in. It’s been obvious that you’re growing.

    This piece is right on.

    However, discovering that our beliefs are all lies is not maturity — it’s only the beginning of our growth process. It’s the door we must go through to begin
    maturing. And there are two tracks we need to pursue.

    One is obvious: reverse our false beliefs.

    We usually try to do that while ignoring the second, far more important track, the one we need to avoid getting stuck in another dead-end, hedged in by other lies told by other liars.

    We need to understand why we were lied to. We need to understand the motivations and intentions of those who lied to us.

    Lies are products of liars, symptoms of their mental debility that made lying look attractive to them. As necessary as the first track might be, we change very little on it. We don’t affect causes by changing effects, and the change we achieve along this track is not scalable.

    We deal with causes on the second track, and the change we achieve along this track isn’t just scalable, it’s works like fire.

    Motivational and intentional drivers are characteristic and distinct, and it’s easy to test for them.

    Only after we’ve pursued the second track awhile do we begin to realize our own motivations and intentions that made us susceptible to taking lies for true. That is our own specific, unique path of maturity — a path for one which only we can see in detail and only we can walk.

  14. Ian Perkins Avatar
    Ian Perkins

    I asked below in what ways our economies are a collective delusion. Several readers replied with comments about the nature of money, which, valid or not, don’t seem to me to explain how our economies are a delusion. We work (many for money, many not). Is that a delusion? We produce goods and services. Are they delusions? In the process, we pollute our planet, perhaps to the point of making it uninhabitable. Is that a delusion? Whether through collective agreement or class power (I think the latter, but it’s a bit beside the point), some people get more access to those goods and services than others, and some get none. Is that a delusion?
    Caitlin writes, “All the written and unwritten rules which govern our society are made up, and if enough of us wanted to we could simply make new ones.” The rules may be made up, but are they a delusion? Try breaking a few, and prison or worse may be your fate. Is that a delusion?
    And while its true that if enough of us wanted, we could make new rules, would it be simple? My guess is the oligarchs and corporations that dominate our economies, and the governments that depend on them and back them, would strongly resist fundamentally new rules for organising our economies, and would fight to the death to defend their power.
    I agree with much of what Caitlin says, but here I part company. I think our economies are all too real, and independent of our supposed agreement – or disagreement. And even if by magic we could all, plutocrats and parasites included, agree we need a new way of organising our economies, what then? What do we do with the capital we’ve collectively produced so far? Waking up to reality and the need for co-operation doesn’t seem to me to show us a way forward. We may be one. We and our planet, or the universe, may be one. But how does that realisation feed and house seven billion of us, never mind sustainably and equitably?
    Or maybe I’m just missing the point. Caitlin, I hope you’ll expand on this idea of delusory economies in future articles!

    1. jef Avatar
      jef

      Ian – If I may … You seem to be confusing two very different things.

      You are 100% in that the immediate reality for 90% of the population is – no money you and your loved ones will suffer and die. Brutal and as real as it gets.

      The economy, which is how any given person accesses money is completely delusional, fantasy world, made up, a rigged game. There is just enough winning to keep the rubes playing just like in the casinos it is modeled after but the house ALWAYS wins, the rich will always get richer. Sure a few here and there will lose it all to give the impression that it is fare but just look at the statistics. The wealthy 1% increased their wealth by trillions while the 99% has lost untold amounts.

      You have keyed on a major issue in that the reason nothing can get better is because everyone needs to go to work in the morning, they simply. can’t take the time to do what it would take to make change happen. Why is that do you suppose?

      1. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        Thank you. I still don’t really see why the economy is a delusion. As you say, “The wealthy 1% increased their wealth by trillions while the 99% has lost untold amounts.” I take that as reality. Rigged, to be sure, but far from fantasy. Made up in the sense we’ve collectively set the rules, or not prevented them being set, but as brutally physical as starvation or imprisonment if you’re on the wrong end of it, as many are all too well aware.
        Why do I suppose things are this way? Partly class power; trying to make change happen has always been met with violence, extreme violence when significant change is on the cards. And not knowing what to replace our economy with. ‘Communist’ systems haven’t always turned out to be utopias; what other options are around? In the meantime, we all need to eat.
        But thanks, I’ll think about it. I sure think our economies are insane; not just unfair, but suicidal. In a way, if only they were delusions, and all we had to do was wake up and see things differently!

        1. Ian Perkins Avatar
          Ian Perkins

          And, if I may, I find “The economy, which is how any given person accesses money” completely the wrong way round for most of us. While it may apply to the ultra-rich, for most of us in modern societies, isn’t money how we access the fruits of the economy?

          1. Victor G. Avatar
            Victor G.

            Yummy fruits …
            May I have some more, Sir?

    2. Utu Avatar
      Utu

      Rather than a delusion, I would say that an economy is an egregore. Which is something created by a group of people (consciously or unconsciously) who pretend it’s real, and in so doing, give it a certain power over and independence from the group that created it.

      We all pretend that money is real even though the value is arbitrary and we trade it around in the economy we have built. While we could change that any time we wanted (with enough of us anyway) the money itself (and those that have a lot of it) has taken on the ability to rule our lives in ways that we have to abide by.

      1. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        Thank you. I’d never come across the word egregore before. It seems to be something like what Hegel was getting at with his impenetrable philosophising about how ideas or social relations we create, that have no physical existence, still have a life of their own which can have profound and real influences on our lives. (Money, though, doesn’t always have an arbitrary value. Rice has been used as currency, and tinned fish is in US prisons. In both cases, I think, the value is far from arbitrary, but very much related to the value we’d get from eating them.)

        It’s not in any of the dictionaries I’ve looked in, but Wikipedia says, among other things, ‘Eliphas Lévi, in Le Grand Arcane (“The Great Mystery”, 1868) identifies “egregors” with the tradition concerning the “Watchers”, the fathers of the nephilim, describing them as “terrible beings” that “crush us without pity because they are unaware of our existence.”‘ Which does ring true!

    3. ThoughtPolice Avatar
      ThoughtPolice

      IAN PERKINS,

      How an economy is a collective delusion?

      1. We use Newspeak as our official language.

      2. Economy is a newspeak word it means: The structure of how things are made and used by the people who live within it.

      3. This means that ECONOMY is an idea.

      4. Collective Delusion is a newspeak word it means: A firmly maintained belief that is accepted as reality when done by a group of people.

      5. The economy does not exist for babies, children under a certain age animals or insects.

      6. Egalitarian, Slavery, Feudalism, Capitalism, Communism and Socialism are all configurations of Economy.

      7. Many of these configurations overlap.

      8. Economies are totalitarian ideas, they exist around the dictates of a central ruling authority.

      9. The authority can be an individual, a government (ruling group), or an idea that comes from the aforementioned.

      10. The cohesion of every economic system is held together by faith and force in that order.

      11. The consequences of these economic systems are real in so much as one makes them so.

      12. This is the answer to the questioned you asked. Your ideology may make it impossible to comprehend it, but that is another matter.

  15. Daniel Scot Avatar
    Daniel Scot

    Reading these philosophical pieces, I’m often reminded of the teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz and his sons Don Miguel, jr. and Don Jose. The story linked below is one I have heard Jose tell many times, in his very unique way, and it illustrates the nature of the personal dream/illusion we all live within. We can’t really break out of it, but with awareness we can shake our belief that our perception is the only valid one, and we can learn to have compassion and respect for other’s illusions (whether they are aware *their* point of view is an illusion or not).

    BTW, the story appears in Don Miguel and Don Jose’s book ‘The Fifth Agreement’ which as good an introduction to their teachings as any, although I would also recommend ‘The Mastery of Love’ for those that are more heart-centered.

    https://www.healyourlife.com/don-t-take-it-personally

  16. Pascal Avatar
    Pascal

    “Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awoke, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man”.
    Zhuang Zhou

  17. freefall Avatar
    freefall

    Good one. I come to this site due to the authenticity of what is written. I must assume that the writer is chasing the magic of learning something new from her own words thereby proving to herself that she is not the author.

    In this way, you will know that you have found your purpose.

  18. Timothy Michel Avatar
    Timothy Michel

    And then after you discover that everything you have ever known is a lie or made up, you look inside your heart and ask, what is real, and what is an illusion?
    .
    Perhaps then you discover what it is you really want.

  19. Marcus Raccus Avatar
    Marcus Raccus

    And maybe. Just maybe we realize what we’ve been taught about death is an illusion. As a being of the earth, you’re made up of the elements of the earth. You are the earth, the earth is you. And like the earth in an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth, so are we. We are one in the same. Not remembering is a blessing. Remembering a gift. Each turn a miracle. Endless cycles of time enough to be everything and anything. The fear of death disappears. Relax…Maybe. Just maybe.

    Your work is inspirational. Really incredible. This latest piece how the whole picture is put together is treasure. The micro and macro view. The external and internal is really excellent. Thank you very much.

  20. Costa latorre Avatar
    Costa latorre

    I learned to question everything told to us when in graduate school my engineering professor said to us that everything you were taught in undergrad school was a lie or very close to a lie, toss all those formulas and anything else out the window of our minds. In grad school we began to rethink reality. I woke up.
    From there i learned that the ancient historians, writers, were also distorting and misdirecting history, pushing hoaxes, hiding things, pretty much like the media does today.
    And then finally i came to grips with the fact that there never was a Santa Claus, nor Easter bunny.

  21. h inseel Avatar
    h inseel

    whoever this writer is is not mature. She is a pretender who thinks she’s oh so high and mighty and got everything figured out. Maturity is to understand pretenders like this and actual truth.

    1. anarchaos Avatar
      anarchaos

      My pretension is that H Inseel is one who is judgmental and entirely full of SxxT. What is your actual truth?

    2. Victor G. Avatar
      Victor G.

      What choo doin’ hee-ah, bro?

  22. Some One Avatar
    Some One

    Karl Rove:
    [On] Discovering How Everything You Believe Is A Lie
    The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’
    Some One:
    [On] Questioning This Religion Thing
    “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” “[A]t some point [may] you discover that there is [a] solid separate self to be found outside the realm of mental narrative].” It is called soul – as intertwined with spirit.
    https://seaclearly.com/2019/07/09/the-word-infallible-dialogues-2/

  23. King Von Avatar
    King Von

    But isn’t thinking about it, about all those, lies, and telling lies oneself, a mental illness? Or is that a lie? Strange, but for some reason just thinking about sex is considered a mental illness and it seems to always be in the news, but blowing up Yemeni kids with big expensive bombs is somehow perfectly healthy human behavior and never worthy even so much as an honorable mention. Even the necessity of our own continued existence would seem to also be a big lie.

  24. Robert B Avatar
    Robert B

    Or maybe, after being reeducated you will realize that the truth is what the state says it is.

  25. Em Avatar
    Em

    Agreed!

    The discovery, however, is that maturity is less depressing, when expressed as: a being more fully aware is truth; like a newborn infant is sensately fully aware; one hundred percent receptive consciousness.

    Sadly, this is the moment when all the distortions of outer conceptual forms begin to wrest control away from the fullness of a being alive simply.

    What is maturity but a linguistic term for an ideation of mind.
    Does a ‘learned’ being become mature simply by having been ‘well-schooled’ in any of the arts of deception?
    Reality has shown us, glaringly, throughout history, that the answer, in no uncertain terms is NO, definitely not!

    Does losing one’s credulity (gullibility) at an earlier age help in one’s ability to ‘function’ successfully in a world built on deception (hypocrisy)? NO, definitely not, from the perspective of one not so fortunate!

    Ostracism is an unconscious reactive form of torture of any ‘other’ by the rose-colored glasses wearing, self-delusional, alienated, cogs in the machine.

    For better, or worse, this frog jumped out of the lab beaker eons ago, definitely much older, yet no wiser, and certainly not more successful, measured in terms of conceptual constructs.

  26. Sue Avatar
    Sue

    For the record, it’s entirely possible to wholeheartedly agree with Caitlin’s writings on politics and economy, while disagreeing with some of her other views on religion and society. Ramadan blessings to all observing the fast.

  27. Howard Switzer Avatar
    Howard Switzer

    It is why I am a monetary reformers right? Money is key to governance and that mutual respect is basic. I have often said that ‘belief is where one stops thinking which is why there is a lie hiding within it. ‘ I have more faith than belief. But you are right, belief is personal as religion is personal, it is “ones relationship with the powers and principles of the universe.” However, when it is used as “the art and practice of influencing others” that is the definition of politics. I think of God as that unseen creative power within all that is and isn’t, why we are told to “look within” and that science and religion go hand in hand. A8t 76 I hope to witness that quantum leap in human consciousness.

    1. tjrich Avatar
      tjrich

      I do hope you are right. Being forced to go to Sunday school and church as a youngster. I began to question things the clergy was telling me. When one explained a picture of hundreds of men hauling a huge stone block up the side of a pyramid. I asked where did all those people come from? The deacon explained they were slaves. So then I asked why were they slaves? This started a back and forth which frustrated the Deacon and got me kicked out of Bible study. To my everlasting joy.

      Religious nutcases are entitled to their nonsensical beliefs – but they have to understand they cannot foist that nonsense on the rest of us through threats and violence. The Saudis have religious police HA HA HA (no wonder they are so backward). USA evangelicals are determined to load the courts with yahoos like Amy Coney Barrett (who when not dispensing justice is speaking in tongues). They truly hope they can start armageddon so Jesus can return to Earth kill all the gays and Muslims and then rule the world for 1,000 years. In that silly creed is the idea that even if you are a good person with morals and ethics and empathy. Who lives a dignified quality life without accepting Jesus as your personal saviour you are doomed to spend eternity in a lake of fire!! (so much for personal choice). Meanwhile, if a serial killer asks Jesus for forgiveness with his dying breath. He is instantly forgiven and given a place in heaven where he can mingle with those he tortured and killed.

      The one thing the world truly needs is: FREEDOM FROM RELIGION

      1. anarchaos Avatar
        anarchaos

        AGREE absolutely, have you heard of the Freedom From Religion Foundation? And, of course, that famous biological evolutionist Mr. Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

      2. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        I’m reliably told that, despite the religious police, Saudi university students will, as a class, say, “It’s OK, teacher, you can talk to us about xyz – we don’t swallow all that official religious crap.”
        And I too parted company with my bible class for similar reasons!

      3. Stuart H Avatar
        Stuart H

        If you have noticed, Amy Coney Barrett seems to be compromised. That is, while she may be or have been a Christian idealogue, she has spent her first several court cases siding along with Chief Justice Roberts…to the dismay of her backers. In fact, none of Trump’s appointees have benefited him at all in any election case or other cases, nor have they sided with the Republicans. It is usually only Alito and Thomas. As for religion (as opposed to spirituality) it is a control mechanism like government. In fact, it was government before the enlightenment. Indeed, our courts and congressional buildings are built like giant temples where judges dress in robes like priests up on podiums.

    2. anarchaos Avatar
      anarchaos

      “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”..George Orwell HEY Howard, Good to see/hear from you. Do you still occasionally read the awesome book by Stephen Zarlenga = “The Lost Science of Money”? For other readers here = http://www.AmericanMonetaryInstitute.com All the Best, Howard. Sincerely

  28. jef Avatar
    jef

    We do not teach nor even encourage critical thinking any more.

    Now it is all critical and no thinking.

  29. Keith Organ Avatar
    Keith Organ

    Thank you Caitlin. I am nearly 74 and in the final stages of “maturity”. I lived every stage you described in your essay – it sounded like my biography.
    Thank you for your writings and your love.

    Keith Organ

  30. Rick Pipkin Avatar
    Rick Pipkin

    Caitlin, I which I had the words to express the joy, delight, and hope, I get from reading your material. You bring to the current public/political discourse an expansion of conscious I can find in no other place. I read your blog, and I read your books. Just this week I consumed ‘Notes for the Edge of The Narrative Matrix.” Wonder, thought provoking, concise, clear and compelling. Thanks you for being you.

    P.S. I believe you stand at the threshold of cracking the code that is the cause of so much conflict in ones personal life, and ones understanding of what it means to be human.

  31. Ian Perkins Avatar
    Ian Perkins

    I don’t understand what you mean by “The economy is a collective delusion.” Being poor and having to spend your days working long hours for peanuts in order to survive, if you are lucky enough to find work, seems real enough.

    1. Gimmeabreak Avatar
      Gimmeabreak

      Economies are conspiracies. People “breathe together” and agree to place value in tokens that you can’t eat, can’t use to hunt, and can’t use to build shelter. You can only trade it for things that you can use to eat, hunt, or build because people are told that they can and should and so they do. It’s a collective agreement, a conspiracy, not a natural reality like gravity or thermodynamics.

      1. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        You don’t have to agree to place value in such tokens to find that you need them. If you’re forced off the land your ancestors have inhabited for centuries, money becomes a necessity, regardless of whether you accept the narratives around it. If you’re allowed to remain on the land, but forced to pay taxes in money, then money equally becomes necessary. That or rebellion, which usually ends in disaster. The economy may not be a natural reality like gravity or thermodynamics, but it’s hardly a delusion, is it?

        1. Starry Gordon Avatar
          Starry Gordon

          If everyone believes in a delusion, it becomes an effective feature of most people’s reality. A good example of the phenomenon is race. In the case of economic facts, money (for example) is a deliberate and convenient delusion whose delusional quality many people seem to be aware of. Another is the variety of notions collected in the more general concept of value. Many things which are said to be of great value by some people are valueless to others. Yet in economics these entities are spoken of as if they possessed hard, physical reality.

          1. Ian Perkins Avatar
            Ian Perkins

            Much economics is junk pseudo-science used to justify class relations, and much of it is delusional.
            That doesn’t make the economy an illusion. Our economies produce poverty, wealth, weapons and greenhouse gases. I find it wishful thinking to label them a delusion. Collectively deciding to organise our economies differently would be nice, essential even, but if our economies are mere illusions, what would be the point?

        2. Gimmeabreak Avatar
          Gimmeabreak

          This is why people frustrate me so much. I say one thing and you begin to argue against something that I didn’t say. Just read what I wrote.

          1. Ian Perkins Avatar
            Ian Perkins

            I’ve no issue with what you wrote, except that it doesn’t appear to me to explain why our economy is a delusion, and you say we agree to place value in tokens, when I don’t see that our agreement really comes into it. It’s a hard reality that we need these tokens in our modern economies, whether we agree or not.
            Other than that, your comment seems fine, but somewhat tangential to mine. Even if our economies are conspiracies or collective agreements – and I strongly dispute the latter – that doesn’t make them delusions, so far as I can see. And my comment made no mention of money or tokens, which I think far less relevant than what we produce and who gets to use it..

      2. Stuart H Avatar
        Stuart H

        Yes, a monetary system is just a sophisticated agreement. Value is placed on an asset used to denote that value in exchange for real value (food, shelter, water, etc.). In the US, the federal reserve fiat currency system is a very complex system but similar to a pyramid scheme. It is backed by nothing but the threat of the US government to tax and bomb, and the Federal Reserve Bank is actually a private, closely held set of banks (where only the Chair is appointed by the President). Many at the bottom of this pyramid work for this paper to buy food and water and shelter, in a never ending cycle. Never coming up for air. Never really catching their breath. Never paying attention to what is being done in their name across the globe. Like zombies…or wage slaves. Those at the top benefit greatly. Inflation and deflation have increased greatly with The Fed, as have many economic bubbles they help pump.

    2. Rick Pipkin Avatar
      Rick Pipkin

      Economies are at their root, simply thoughts that people agree to abide by, They are not material constructs. A dollar is worth a dollar because people agree to agree that a dollar represents 100 pennies. Therefore the eco army is a delusion or illusion the mass majority agree to abide by.
      In the late 60’s, I live for a while in Korea. The nation at that time was facing hyper inflation. Over night, the government had a lock down, all banks were closed and all currency that was just 24 hours prior to the lock down was considered good, was declared by the government as no longer good. New currency was distributed, different size and different color than the “old” currency that was in play just 24 hours earlier. This is my example of how the currency we now have is an illusion we all agree to. .

      1. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        “Economies are at their root, simply thoughts that people agree to abide by”
        I disagree entirely. Our systems of production and distribution are backed up by armed force. Try paying taxes or fines with currency the government doesn’t accept, or try not paying them at all. Try collectively deciding land and capital belong to the people and see how far you get.
        Democratic Kampuchea abolished money for domestic use, but that hardly made the economy illusory or delusional. People were forced to work, frequently with death for anyone who refused. They didn’t have to accept narratives about building a glorious future, though doing so, or pretending to, helped them avoid ‘re-education’. The economy was real enough, distributing rice and assigning work, with an actual, physical legacy of dams and irrigation infrastructure to show for it – and hundreds of thousands dead because the all too real economy denied them food. Some illusion.

        1. Ian Perkins Avatar
          Ian Perkins

          A shopkeeper can change the price of something overnight, and people now have to pay the new price if they want it. Or they can steal it, in which case they’ll find themselves up against the armed might of the state. (They might get away with it, but they’re usually well aware of the dangers of being caught.) Either way, the new price is no more illusory than the old one. It’s a hard, physical reality, as those who lack money in modern societies will tell you. The example you gave, of South Korea declaring its currency null and void overnight, isn’t fundamentally different. The new currency was no illusion; it was necessary for survival.

    3. Ian Perkins Avatar
      Ian Perkins

      Hunter-gatherer economies assign work, food, and so on. People can break the rules by eating food they’re not entitled to, or feigning illness or injury to avoid work, but only up to a point. And the rules can change, allowing or forbidding different people to hunt or take care of children or defend the community, decreeing that houses be bigger or smaller or constructed or used in new ways, etc. None of that makes the economy delusory or illusory so far as I can see. It’s the reality for anyone living in such a social group. It forms the sum of their real, physical daily activities. The food they eat, or don’t eat, the work they do, or don’t do, the structures they live in – all these are the result of their economy, which is no less real for being the product of their collective decisions.
      Our modern economies are vastly more complex and differentiated, with class structures unknown to our ancestors, but I still can’t see how they’re delusions or illusions.

      1. Ian Perkins Avatar
        Ian Perkins

        GIMMEABREAK, STARRY GORDON, and RICK PIPKIN all write as if money were the defining and essential characteristic of any economy.
        Hunter-gatherer economies typically lack money.
        Demoocratic Kampuchea abolished money for internal use. And when it collapsed, for years, many people used rice for their transactions, whether directly or on credit.
        Are any of those economies somehow more real or less of a delusion for not using money as we know it?
        Whether a future socialist or communist society uses money or not, surely the important thing is who has to work, what work they have to do, and who gets the product of that work – not the precise way these decisions are communicated, which in our current economies, is often via money?

        1. Pap-a-lap Avatar
          Pap-a-lap

          If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
          – George Bernard Shaw

          1. Stuart H Avatar
            Stuart H

            True, and you could say the same thing about lawyers. Practicing law is considered an art, not a science. And the law is basically always in flux thanks to law schools and their Socratic style of arguing both sides of each position. So there never is a right or wrong answer.

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