There is a peculiar exhaustion that comes from maintaining a reality some deeper part of you no longer believes. You can learn to live with the contradictions, explain away the inconsistencies, and keep moving through the machinery of everyday life, but the questions remain. Perhaps the greater discomfort isn’t discovering that something you believed was untrue. Perhaps it’s realizing how much of yourself you invested in believing it.

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The world around you is false.

Everything about the reality that you think you know relies on maintaining massive illusions, perpetuating delusions, repeating ad nauseam deceptive narratives and stories to keep you in line, to keep you under control, to keep you forever wondering and guessing and never actually knowing what is real and true about this realm or this plane on which you live out your life.

Modern science is maintained by a plethora of fictions and distortions of reality, paradigms that fall apart under any meaningful scrutiny. The market economy and governance rely entirely on massive inefficiency and the perpetuation of endless problems created by the same systems that purport to be solving said problems and working toward a better future for everyone. We never get that.

And yet no one questions. They continue voting, arguing and bickering, whining and complaining about politicians and how, if we could only get this party or that political leader in office, things would finally change for the better. It’s stupidity. It’s childish and ridiculous on the face of it. You’re not asking the right questions, you’re not questioning the right people, and you’re most certainly not willing to let the entire system crumble under the weight of its own lies. Why?

Because it is your entire identity. It is your foundational reality. If you were to let that die, what would be left of you? What would you have to hold on to? If all the stories were proven to be false, fallacious, manufactured fictions, what would be left for you, of you, underneath you? What would you be standing on? Nothing.

Therefore, you will fight unconsciously and to the point of exhaustion, defending to the death an unfit paradigm in order to maintain a modicum of stability within the framework of the lies. I think it’s fair to suggest that this isn’t a healthy way to live.

To question the nature of reality to such a degree is too unsettling, too terrifying, and honestly, who has the time to do that kind of research or investigation, save the so-called conspiracy theorists, those jobless, opinionated truth researchers, autodidactic dissidents, self-taught chronologists and the like? Who has the time? You’ve got bills to pay. The car needs repairs. Taxes are overdue. Rent is due again. You need to feed yourself, your family, take care of the mortgage and utilities and all the rest of it. Life is already overwhelming, intimidating, frustrating and confusing. It should come as no surprise that most will simply go along with the lies because that’s all they can manage.

And that is the point.

You’re constantly under threat from the system, and more specifically, from governance. There may have been a time when a republic or democracy stood for something meaningful. But that’s not what we see playing out in the world today. In truth, governments are the most prolific murderers of humans in history. They steal the most resources, be they monetary or material, psychological or emotional. And yet we continue to support their existence, just the way they are. They perpetuate the biggest lies about nearly everything and reinforce them with indoctrination through institutions, public education, narrative management, and mainstream entertainment.

Because big government steals so much of what you create and produce, how could it be anything but a control mechanism to keep you from ever really delving deeply into anything meaningful? What would be the point of going into any depth and trying to pick apart the lies at the foundations of our reality, what life is really all about, what we really and truly desire and find meaningful and purposeful? We’re just trying to get through the day. Now we need to be expanding our minds, protecting our hearts, and heeding the whispers of our spirits too?

Those fortunate enough to be unschooled or homeschooled, or educated by and through the natural world, and by people, parents, and guardians who are awake and aware and understand the deceptions and distortions of reality being perpetuated by these systems and institutions, would arguably have a far better chance. The trouble is, they then have to contend with the vast majority of humanity, many of whom will never question anything about this grand illusion, nor anything about the ground upon which they stand.

Why would they lie? Considering what has just been laid out here, why wouldn’t they lie? And if they are lying about any of the fundamental ideas, paradigms, and foundational beliefs that we’ve all relied on and been philosophically beholden to for our entire lives, what else are they lying about?

We already know they are lying about virtually everything about human history. Especially recent history. We know they’re lying about the nature of this realm, its shape and size and dimensionality. We know they’re lying about wars and nuclear weapons and borders and cultural differences, about how humans are constantly and inevitably going to be fighting each other and that we, as independent nations, must protect ourselves with armed forces, ever more surveillance and weapons and defense systems… conveniently forgetting that transnational and banking interests fund, support, and arm all sides of every conflict. All of that epistemic noise is based on fiction. It is then embodied as learned helplessness. We are one human family, certainly with differences, certainly with our share of bad actors, psychopaths, and even a few who cannot and should not be left to do as they please, but the idea of war and international conflict is entirely fabricated. Essentially every historical account has been curated, repurposed, and reshaped to maintain a grand and pervasive fiction about the truer nature of the human family, our shared history, and the nature of our realm. We’ve all bought into some variation of those lies at one time or another.

Ignorance is a very powerful weapon that is routinely weaponized against us, and that, combined with shame, is essentially all the parasitic system needs to keep us in line, never questioning anything beyond the basic, everyday and common, primarily low-minded things. We’re never going to dare to question beyond that which can be solved in a simple and calm conversation, for we’ve lost the ability to argue and debate, comprehend and contemplate in any considerate or adult manner. We’re rarely, if ever, going to question the nature of reality, the nature of our world, of our realm, what came before and what may come after.

If you truly knew whereupon you stood, if you could comprehend the greater picture and were able to perceive and grow your perspective beyond that which has been handed to you and beaten into your head since even before you were born, what might reveal itself as to the nature of who and what you really are? What might exist beyond the boundaries that have been forced upon us, that have over time become largely self-imposed, based on programming and conditioning, ideas and paradigms inculcated into you or borrowed from those around with whom you were creating your reality?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it isn’t important. Maybe your priorities lie elsewhere. That’s fine. But as we well know, we cannot lie to ourselves. Eventually that stuck energy will show up in some way, shape, or form. It will show up in our bodies, in our minds, in our hearts, in our restless spirit, and especially in our relationships. Can we truly believe it possible to maintain that illusion for life? Is that really good enough?

Why would they lie? Because fear. Because confusion. Because powerlessness. Because guilt and shame and worry and paranoia. That makes for an all-encompassing cloak of epistemic blindness and perpetual confusion.

Some would argue that you came here to grow and evolve your soul. I don’t know about that. It reeks of spiritual bypassing. How could a soul ever be in any way lacking, broken, or incomplete? Do you see how easy it is to capture the story? What would seem to be true is that someone or something is aware of that inherent forgetfulness we adopt through birth into this realm, and that apparent loss of connection, and “they” know how to take full advantage of it in every possible and conceivable way. And it’s allowed to happen.

Why? Is it we who asked for that counterforce, that opposition, that ontological cloud and persistent epistemic fog that keeps us from knowing what we are, where we came from? If that’s true, how can circumstances ever really improve for the collective when everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, there is something or someone apparently working against us, ensuring that we’re looking in the wrong direction, at the wrong things, asking the wrong questions, listening to the wrong experts and diagnosticians and prognosticators?

We’re listening to experts and pundits, gurus and politicians as opposed to listening to ourselves, that quiet voice that is only ever heard from within. The loudest and the most calamitous of our world are constantly stealing our gaze, our attention, keeping us engaged in all things fractious, fictitious, and futile (that’s their job), only too happy to contribute to an unmistakable inertia of civilizational proportions, and that stuckness has us all on edge these days, though we can’t quite put our fingers on just what it is.

And yet one could fairly argue that we always have choice in every one of these moments, in every one of these circumstances.

But until you know whereupon you stand, what you stand for, what your actual standing is, how can you decide what represents an offer, or whether it presents a good offer or a bad one? How can you discern the good from the evil if virtually everything you’ve been told and conditioned to believe is untrue?

It isn’t about growing and evolving your soul. That’s already a done deal. It’s about aligning with it, acknowledging it, heeding its nudges and insights, again and again, with every step we take, and then doing it again every day, until the end of your days. If we can allow ourselves to let the old, borrowed or manufactured stories crumble into rubble, we immediately stop exerting excessive amounts of energy, and our limited amounts of time, into maintaining that which some part of us has always known to simply be untrue and unloving.

Then, after the dust settles, we may begin laying new bricks fashioned not from belief, but from a better knowing.

Solvitur ambulando