Unlightenment: The Power of Not Taking Yourself Too Seriously

It turns out that enlightenment is just having a really good sense of humor. We are all merely punchlines to a terribly funny cosmic joke.

But the real question is this: what do we do about it? Do we have hard feelings about it or do we cultivate a disposition of lightheartedness? Do we take it seriously and tighten our grip or do we take it sincerely and loosen up a little? Do we curl up into a ball of existential angst and cry ourselves to sleep or do we have a sense of humor about it? Do we tremble, tremble, tremble or do we laugh, laugh, laugh?

The path to enlightenment was never meant to be easy. It’s an arduously Herculean task, a painstakingly Nietzschean mission, a laboriously Promethean undertaking.

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Could Drugs Be a Pathway to God?

The New York Times named How to Change Your Mind one of its top 10 books of 2018. Michael Pollan’s title might suggest that his readers will gain insights into self-improvement, but it is not that sort of a book. A more accurate title might have been How I Changed My Mind because the new viewpoint is Mr. Pollan’s own.

The long subtitle, however, accurately lays out the book’s contents: “What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.”

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Would You Sell Your Brain For $397,800?

Source: The Ageless Brain

Guess how much your brain is worth.

$397,800 (and maybe as much as twice this figure).

"My brain?" you may be thinking to yourself.

"My brain is worth that much?"

Not if you are thinking of selling it.

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You Just Lost The Game

Source: Everything Is Infinite

I just lost The Game.

And so did you.

Confused? Read on…

When my son was young he taught me a game kids played, called “The Game”. It goes like this. Everyone is always playing The Game. But you forget. Sometimes you remember that you are playing The Game. And that’s how you lose. When you remember that you are playing The Game, you say to everyone who is listening, “I just lost The Game.” And that reminds them all that they are also playing The Game, and they all lose at once. And everyone groans. It’s hilarious.

But I always like to bend rules. So when I remembered that I was playing The Game, I would say “I just won The Game,” just to be a contrarian.

The Game We Are Playing Is Life Itself

Let’s pretend that The Game we are playing is life itself. Everyone is always playing The Game. Sometimes you remember that life is a game, and that’s when you win the game. When you remember that all of life is a game, and your true purpose is simply to enjoy playing the game, and becoming a better player (that is, a better person) by making mistakes and learning from those mistakes, and by suffering and becoming a more empathetic soul, then in those moments the stress of life melts away. You have won The Game.

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This is an excerpt from the book Everything Is Infinite.