long but beautiful

You don’t think philosophy has relevance to you, your life, or your
career? Are you sure you’re listening? You who drive a car, you who
have accidents, you who get dumped by boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses,
you who get robbed, you who find out your father is not your real
father, you who get into abusive relationships, you who can only find
comfort in eating, you who get diagnosed with cancer or another illness,
you who are getting older, you who are dying.

I really like my philosophy teacher a whole lot. This is an email he sent to us. I am dumb for reposting it, but my sanity relies a lot on correspondences like this.

Having read your journals I ask myself the question:

What is the main thing about Transpersonal Solipsism that students are
failing to understand?

They are failing to understand the distinction between oneself
considered empirically as a particular human person, or persona, or
avatar, and oneself considered transcendentally as the transpersonal
creator and player of all the avatars. Hence they keep asking questions
like: “Why would I have created the world (dream, virtual reality
game) to be as it is rather than something more to my liking?” *
i.e., the ego’s liking, the persona’s liking. They are assuming that
the preferences of oneself as transpersonal creator Self should be
exactly the same as the preferences of oneself as personal self or
avatar.

But this does not follow. There is no reason to suppose that the
various personas or avatars will have the same preferences as the
transpersonal Self. Indeed, there are a couple of excellent reasons to
expect otherwise. First, there are billions of persons/personas/avatars
of the one creator Self in the virtual reality game called the world,
each with its own unique perspective on things and set of likes and
dislikes * from Genghis Khan to Mother Teresa to Apache Indians to
Pygmies to Victorian cockneys to Vikings to monastic flagellants to
modern Melbournians, etc. Obviously they cannot all have the same
perspective and set of likes and dislikes as the one creator Self that
has created and is playing all these different avatars.

Second, remember the idea is that the creator Self has deliberately
deceived itself into forgetting within the game its own status as
creator of the game, all the better to play fully its avatars. One would
not expect the avatars to remember who they really are or their real
perspective and values (unless perhaps they have some kind of mystical
experience and momentarily transcend the game, or there is a glitch in
the dream matrix, or perhaps they meet a local philosopher avatar *
some crazy Morpheus-like character * who attempts to remind them who
they really are: the One).

As avatars within the game, each person will naturally play out that
persona and hence like and approve of certain aspects of life and
reality while vehemently disliking and disapproving of other aspects of
life and reality. Each will be different regarding what aspects they
like or dislike and none (or only a very few) will realise that they are
the One, the creator of the whole game, playing every avatar.

In short: there is no reason to expect that yourself (as creator Self)
will create a gameworld that yourself (as person/persona self) likes in
all respects. That you vehemently dislike many aspects of life and
reality is perfectly in order: it is what you yourself, as creator of
the gameworld, wants in its personas. To put it boldly: you want
yourself to dislike (or be fearful of or depressed about, or be
horrified by) some aspects of this life and reality. That is why you
dislike them.

That would explain why “Man” is so frequently in disagreement with
“God”. That is: individual human beings very rarely feel in accord
with or at peace with “God’s will” * i.e., the unfolding of fate
(game destiny) from moment to moment. That is: we are very rarely at
peace with ourselves (considered transcendentally as God, creator of
this world and of our fate/destiny within it).

If you think about it, there is only one way for a non-servile sort of
person to be at peace with God, life, reality, fate: see yourself as the
sole creator of it * i.e., that no other being is imposing anything on
you against your will. Hence: you as the transpersonal playmaker Self
are the creator of you and your fate as a personal player self. Hence:
you are the author of all your dislikes and limitations. Hence: you are
the creator of the fact that you are fearful or horrified by this or
that in life or that you are a weak and fragile being (in short, a
normal human avatar).

Realising this you might come to like that you dislike some things.
That is your personality/persona to play out. So play it. “Play out
the play” * as Shakespeare said. It is perfectly in order that you
get angry or anxious at this or that, or that you sometimes get
depressed, or that life seems so tragic at times, or you get horrified
at some things (war, earthquakes, bushfires, etc).

Be honest with yourself about how you feel and feel what you feel *
it is okay to have those feelings. Be at peace with the fact that you
are not at peace with it. Hence, if you are angry, be at peace with that
anger. And so on.

What happens? Paradoxically, what tends to happen when you are at peace
with not being at peace about something (angry, fearful, depressed, etc)
is that these un-peaceful emotions start to weaken and wither by
themselves (setting their own pace). Why? * Because you are not
feeding them with further divisiveness and hostile agitation (eg,
getting angry about being angry is just more anger).

In short, let everything be as an integral whole as it currently is in
this moment, including yourself as you currently are. It is perfectly in
order that it is as it is * including that you don’t personally like
this or that much (that you yourself as transcendental playmaker have
created).

Being able to be at peace in life * it all depends on which self and
its values you identify with most. If you identify most with your
personal ego and its values then you will rarely be at peace. You will
be at the mercy of every changing wind that blows. For your personal
self or ego is very fragile and has so many likes and dislikes. Fate
seldom gratifies your personal likes and dislikes * as you may have
noticed by now. On the other hand, if you identify most with your
transcendental transpersonal Self and its values, then you will be able
to let go of your personal ego and its various likes and dislikes more
easily and so be at one with change and fate and death * i.e., God’s
will * i.e., your own higher will. No matter what happens in life you
will always have that sanctuary within.

Ancient Greek philosophers called it eudemonia: the capacity to be
intelligently untroubled and freely happy from within yourself and
thereby relatively immune to the changing flux of fate and fortune. This
is also widely reckoned to be a kind of wisdom * which is what
philosophy is all about. For as we said in week one, philosophy is the
love of wisdom.