Materialism

By - Andrew Rutajit

Yesterday, my blog came from information put forth by Jordan Maxwell. Today, I'd like to regurgitate some Terence McKenna (at least in the first few paragraphs) and talk about materialism. As Christmas comes screaming around the corner, I thought it was appropriate to rant a little. Like many of my blog posts, this was taken from one of my websites. I'm slowly moving my articles from my website to my blog and in doing so, I'm adding some additional thoughts here and there.

It is becoming more and more apparent that our American culture is dangerously obsessed with materialism; and all that glitter and gold that we seek comes the philosophy that the world is exactly as it appears to be. It only takes a moment to meditate on that statement to realize that this is a tremendously naive perspective - it denies imperceptible connections, anticipation of the future, out of body experiences, prophetic dreams, all kinds of possibilities that our western culture shrugs off of its anti-philosophical shoulders. This leaves room for things which are apparently more important; such as the 6-hours of television that the average American watches each and every day.

It seems as if ignorance truly is bliss. I like to call it - Self-Inflicted Ignorance; most people are very comfortable going about their day with the assumption that things are much simpler than they truly are; that everyday waking consciousness is the essence of the human experience. In other words, today’s culture denies spiritual experience and encourages spiritual dogma. Although most everyone has had or will have some kind of spiritual experience, lucid dream, unexplainable intimation, or even hallucinations. These are all experiences that although the individual cannot personally deny, it seems politically correct to write them off as mundane and hum drum…like déjà vu.

On one side of the coin, materialism has brought us: fast cars, the railroad, airplanes, global economies, television, communication, space travel, fashion, etc. But that still is no argument for fact that we continue to refuse the exploration of our own minds. It’s similar to the old Medicine Show; "If the juggler is good, then the medicine must be even better!" Setting you up with the right and knocking you out with the left, so to speak. Because on the other side of the coin, materialism has delivered us directly into a world where the majority of people rush home from work to watch advertisements on television, struggle to keep up with the Jones’, willingly receive a placebo at church instead of the true sacrament, and work like a slave until they die. It’s no wonder that the people in this country are so miserable; but materialism has also gifted us with mood altering drugs (like Prozac), which are conveniently advertised during those must-see television shows.

The magnificent dream of the American civilization will fail if we continue to ignore the role that ceremonial usage of entheogens have played in our history. Without the proper opportunity to scientifically test and check these substances, it was decided that they were too hot to handle, most sacred plants were made unavailable to not only the common people for spiritual practices, but they were taken off of the scientific agenda as well. These techniques of our ancient masters are becoming lost in a world of beings too afraid to evolve. Sacred plants have been a part of human history for as long as we can trace human history, only these past few hundred years have they been made taboo. I'm not suggesting that we should all go do drugs or that we pick and eat random plants...What I'm suggesting is that we take a serious look at what we call a "Holy Sacrament" and demand that it be the real deal.

One of the things that has spawned from this materialistic mindset is boundary disillusion and like many things in this article, Terence McKenna talked about this quite often. We seem to create boundaries as if we are building up to some sort of comfort level; this seems to be necessary in order for our egos to survive in this product-pedaling world. It seems that the name of the game in our society is to build up boundaries and sustain them. Boundaries such as the black and the white, the gay and the straight, the rich and poor, the foreign and the familiar...this list could take up and entire book; although each side of every yin yang boundary exists separately, the reality of the situation is that they (we) are ALL seamlessly connected on the molecular level.

You are not separate from God, you are God. How can God be omnipresent without actually being the "what is" that everything is. God is everything…period; and that includes you and everything that you come in contact with. The atoms that make the air that you breathe into your lungs are the same make and model of the atoms of the lungs that are doing the breathing. The atoms that make up my fingers are the same make and model of the atoms that construct the keys on my computer. These same atoms, all molded and shaped into different things, are literally the framework of our reality. How can anything be separate when every single thing is connected at the molecular level? When you understand this, you will understand that you are God discovering that you are God. This can be the most beautiful experience in the world and it can change the way that you look at and treat everything.

Meditation, yoga, and controlled breathing combined with sacred plants and other shamanic techniques, break down these boundaries that have been built up between you and your past, between you and your partner, between you and that part of your unconscious that you don’t want to look at, between you and…the world. It is within your own power to dissolve all of the boundaries that we build up to keep our Selves from feeling our true circumstances, the boundaries that allow us to experience ourselves as our Selves.

Materialism is pointless. We have been groomed (some call it brainwashed) into the mindset of "my stuff represents me", and this is horrible. This mindset is why so many people drive (lease) fancy cars while they live in tiny apartments...living out of their means while trying to appear to others that they are not. "This Corvette is who I am...fast, sexy, smooth, and curvy". The same goes with fashion, "This outfit costs more than your car, my suit is who I am...expensive, flawless, polished, and with out error". You've heard the saying - The one who dies with the most toys wins...the one who dies with the most toys is not the winner, he's a big looser. That mean's that he was duped into believing that he needed all those toys, meanwhile the person who sold him all of those toys is laughing all the way to the bank.

During the course of a year, the average American will see approximately 25,000 commercials. 25-thousand times every year, you are told what to watch, wear, eat, sleep on, brush your teeth with, drive, what pills to ask your doctor to give you, etc. And it works...very well. These commercials are much more than advertisements for products; they are highly sophisticated corporate tools of promoting materialistic values and attitudes and a materialistic way of living in the world. These advertisers even put their ads on your clothing AND charge you extra for doing so! Which is more expensive: a regular sweatshirt, or a regular sweatshirt with the words Ralph Lauren across the chest? One is about 20 bucks, the other is about 200. That way, everyone knows that you paid way too much for a shirt, therefore, you must be rich, and smart, and attractive, and fun to be around, and even more fun to be seen with. Marilyn Monroe told us that diamonds are a girls best friend and Madonna confirmed that with "Material Girl". Now Madonna is selling blue jeans for the Gap on television. She is greasing the corporate machine just like Rosie O'Donnell and Penny Marshall...something tells me that those two don't shop at K-Mart for their clothes, although the television tells me that they do. Watch enough of it and you begin to believe what you see.

You are groomed from birth to be a consumer. Just like the programs on your computer tell the computer what to do, the programs on your television are telling you what to to. Your purpose in live as a consumer (or rather, your purpose in the lives of certain others) is to feel compelled to buy things that you don’t necessarily need or even want. It is the media's job to convince you that you actually do want those things…or better yet, that you need those things. An advertising agency or a public relations agency would call those things "fancy needs" and their job is to make you feel as though there is no choice but to buy these things (and that theirs is the only one worth owning). Your roll as a consumer is to buy things that you don't need and maintain the status quo.

One is left with the feeling that anything above and beyond your roll as a consumer is none of your business. You go to work so that you can buy "stuff" and that's just about it. The goings on behind the scenes of your government or church is simply to be none of your concern. And this is reinforced by the bombardment of mindless activities that seem to make you feel "normal"; things like professional sports and must see TV that give you something to talk about and look forward to. If that doesn't keep you programmed; "Sweeps Week", Super Bowls, Reality television and Extreme TV will. Extreme TV falls under the category of pushing the boundaries of censorship. Or another example would be something (that only appears to be) taboo or dangerous, such as listening to Howard Stern or watching Jerry Springer…getting your excitement fix before you sit in your cubical all day, dosed up on caffeine, making someone else rich.

It's a shame...99% of the American population is caught in the same rut: work at a job that you hate, buy things that you don’t need, and vote the person into office that you dislike the least. This is why I say that ignorance must be bliss, because there are so many people caught in the same rut when something could easily be done. But nothing will be done about it...not when there is a new episode of Everybody Loves Raymond on tonight, or football season is about to start, or the last episode of Friends...who could miss that! There will always be a program; programming you to be slow, docile, and ignorant. I shouldn't even need to mention how alcohol is promoted on these programs and how that contributes to the dumbing down of our species.

I once read that two decades ago, Gene Youngblood warned us of the possibility that the mass media could lock-in a materialistic mindset and actually hold back human evolution, simply by controlling the perception of alternatives. Controlling the perception of alternatives; controlling the awareness that there are alternative techniques. Techniques that promote the understanding that we don’t need a priest or anyone standing behind a camera or a pulpit filling us full of guilt, dogma, creeds, wine, and crackers. I wouldn’t say that this is a case of the blind leading the blind, but rather the blindfolded leading the blindfolded in a society where it is taboo to remove your blindfold. Maybe this 21st century will act as a 21st birthday, maybe we as a species are reaching adulthood and these materialistic toys will soon fall to the waste-side.

We will reach the Golden Age only by removing our blindfolds and leaving this Age of Gold.