Enjoy the Reality of Reality

As Sandy Nelson put it in in the 1961 hit “Let There Be Drums,” there’s reality and there’s the reality of reality.

Reality is the beat. It’s the world as you see it. It’s not real in the dictionary sense of “occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed” because we each see the world a bit differently based on how we think about it.

For example: A couple stops to look at cows. One person is a sweet city woman (like the song). She says, “Cows! Aren’t they cute?” The second person has cow experience and says, “Yeah, they’re cute until one steps on your foot.” Same cows, different reality.

One person sees potato salad and salivates, another sees it and cringes. Same potato salad, different reality.

It’s because we each see through a mental window of our own making. From this self-window the world is negotiated. We look for advantages. We envy. We see faults. We worry. Our world is decorated with self-created irritations and we feel different and alone within our self-made, self-identity.

But it’s easy to break that self-window. Just slip off that self-made identity with a shrug of your shoulders. Let self-concern and opinion go quiet and you’ll look around like a baby and feel that subtle feeling. It’s a feeling of awe. You notice colours and textures more. Silence sounds more silent. You feel ecologically aware when you enter a reality that’s all too beautiful.

Shift from thinking about the world as self-interest sees it to experiencing it with your five senses plus one more: Amazement. The games Mel Tormé sang about can continue, but you don’t care (see related post: Horizons, Games, Connections & Enjoyment) because you see through the games and enjoy them for what they are.

Reality “As Is”.

Most of the time we take what we see for granted, but then, in an emergency or during a profound moment of awareness, when reality isn’t resisted or judged and it’s taken “as is,” the reality of reality hits you like a beautiful dream.

With this gentle shift in looking, you enjoy beauty, pathos and humour. You love almost everything and you enjoy humility because “you,” as you normally think of yourself in a competitive world, are gone.

But wait! There’s more!

This can be tested. Prove it to yourself with direct experience. Every now and then stop what you’re doing and look up. Look around. Listen. That’s it. Don’t do anything. Go perfectly still like a show room dummy. Take a deep breath and observe. See yourself seeing. Notice thoughts thoughting. Watch what happens. Look at where you are and say to yourself, “I am aware.”

And you are.

Because it isn’t what you see, it’s how you see. That’s what unshaven mystics, romantics and drummers have been sayings for years. Perceiving the reality of reality is like being in a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving at the same time.

In quantum theory there’s a phenomenon known as “superposition” from which it’s possible for the same particle to be doing two contradictory things simultaneously (Scientists supersize quantum mechanics).

You’re like that particle. A particle can be moving and stationary at the same time until an outside force acts on it and then in an instant the particle chooses one of two contradictory positions. Similarly, reality is perceived by you as it affects you AND you are a reality perceiving. The trick is to go into “superposition.”

Think of a time when you felt a feeling of love, of beauty, of understanding, of oneness with everything and everyone.

Sublime feelings like this come out of the blue like the sky above when you enjoy the reality of reality.

Maybe you’ve felt it while sitting alone beside a lake or while walking in a forest or while eating ice cream that you found. It’s when your senses are heightened and worries vanish.

It’s like we’ve been hypnotized by a magician (our self). He snaps his fingers and says, “Wake up. Look around.” And you do. No longer is reality filtered by fear and desire. It’s direct. What you see blows your mind.

In a state of intense consciousness everything is poignantly lovely. There’s a beautiful ordinariness to everything.

Separations dissolve. There are no faults and no thoughts of self. You understand. You are free and unafraid. You do your best without thought for result and let what happens, happen.

It’s like going into a trance while walking in a forest or driving in a car at night. It’s a total presence in a moment of heightened awareness without expectation or want.

In a self-perceived reality one must be smart, tough or lucky. In this self-created reality there are sharks and dragons glorified on TV by their dollars, possessions and arrogance and there are self-righteous people looking down on others from a vantage point of belief.

The sky may be blue, but it’s not impressive to you if you’re like the old man who sees fireworks on the fourth of July in Fort Collins Colorado and says, “If you’ve seen fireworks once, you’ve seen them all.”

We let our senses go dull and interpret the world like a movie rated from one to five based on convenience and comfort, but if you want to feel something beautiful, watch opinions come and go without clinging to them like a creeper to a gate.

Enjoy the reality of reality by getting out of your way. Breathe into what is and go swimming away into the reality of reality because you already know how it ends.

Knee Deep In Flowers We’ll Stray

Have you ever felt dull? The kind of dull that washes away beauty? Most people have. Some people have.

The mood could be described as a blah sort of feeling. It’s the feeling that drives lottery ticket sales and drug and booze industries – as if money or oblivion could make a difference to indifference.

At such times, when we feel dull, we may wonder where is my mind without realizing that’s what’s wrong. We’ve been sucked into the vacuum of our light-bulb heads.

When someone is stuck doing something that numbs the senses, when someone is stuck like an egg in an in an egg-carton world, it’s easy to forget how amazing it is to be alive here and now. If we’re reminded of the mystery of life while in such a mood, we get annoyed. We think, Yeah. I know. I know. Smell the roses. Blah. Blah. Big deal. Go away. Leave me alone. Smelling the roses feels like a vapid platitude. To see another person happy is to feel resentment. To hear advice from an optimistic fathead is reason for murder.

At such times we’re reminded that we’re social creatures so people push themselves to be with others and then feel irritated. There isn’t anything anybody can do to alter our mood. This is a project for the self. Solitude may be necessary, but then, even if alone, we don’t enjoy ourselves. We are lost in ourselves. The outside world doesn’t exist or we find fault with it.

Humans are plagued by a dry-rot of unhappiness. It’s not because of poverty, unemployment, sickness or death. It isn’t for lack of health care or education. Unhappiness of the kind described has a definite cause. Few people realize that it can be removed with the power of one’s will. It’s so easy that it isn’t.

Because we don electronic blinders and plug our ears with noise, we feel separated, but what if – what if – the world outside our bodies didn’t start at the edge of our skin?

Try this experiment. Stop what you’re doing and go outside or look out a window and imagine that the outside world is not separate from you. Imagine that the air in your lungs is the same air outside your lungs and that you are permeable. Imagine that what you’re made of is the same thing that makes up rocks, trees, and flowers. Imagine a flower, a rock, a blade of grass is as much you as your fingernail or hair. You don’t have to believe it or tell anyone. It sounds crazy. Just enjoy the notion without over-thinking it.

Moments of unhappiness come when we don’t notice anything outside ourselves. We get into a vicious circle of immediate thoughts and practicalities.

When you forget to lose yourself in the contemplation of the outside world – the not-you, or all that stuff all around – that’s when unhappiness strikes. We go on a head-trip. There will always be a part of yourself that can’t get out of thinking about itself and yet, only by losing yourself in the absorption of the world outside can you grow happy.

Madness comes when inward visions lose their imaginative outwardness. The more you can concentrate on the outside world, the more your real identity grows. You are an earth-creature just like other earth-creatures.

The next time you feel dull, take a break from what you’re thinking and look outside. Concentrate on the mystery of your being alive at all. Imagine the world outside your body is your outward vision. What’s outside is going inside. Call yourself a lonely soul with a sense of relief. Only the lonely soul can go into the outside world day by day.

With a calm and prolonged satisfaction, drink in your surroundings as if it were a mirror of yourself. Imagine tip toeing through tulips. Hear that song. Imagine being knee deep in flowers and you are.

Cloud Hovering

Imagine that you are a lonely cloud hovering. Can you do that?

Imagine your thoughts are projected onto a cloud that is detached and free-floating above you. As a cloud, you can look down and see everything.

If your imagination is rusty, go back to a time in your childhood when the things you imagined felt real. You’re a lonely cloud hovering. Note: This goes well with the earlier post entitled “Sky Watching.”

Imagine you’re a lonely cloud during a business meeting, stuck in traffic or some other unpleasant experience. As you hover above yourself – without worry, without care – imagine that you are immune to insults. You are immune to attacks. You are immune to anger.In lonely cloud form nothing anybody can say or do will irritate you. You are impervious to annoyance! In your lonely cloud essence, you can make some interesting observations about the nature of enjoyment.

First, you notice that it’s just you up there hovering. No one can join you. It’s your cloud. That’s why it’s lonely, but, it’s the good kind of lonely. It’s lonely because it’s just you, but you like it. If someone tried to get onto your cloud, you’d say, ‘Hey! You! “Get Off of My Cloud“!’

As a cloud hovering, you can see a connection between your feelings of enjoyment and your feelings of being alone inside. Your thoughts can be untethered. You can use your imagination to feel enjoyment.

If you contemplate yourself as a cloud hovering, you can be like Joni Mitchell seeing from “Both Sides” now.

Being alone is what you know. Unless you have a split personality disorder, being alone is the only way you can be. You are alone and have always been ever since your eyes adjusted to the light and you came to know yourself outside your mother.You are alone, but this isn’t sad. Far from it. You have yourself. You are not unhappily alone or lonely. There is really no other way to be.

You can share a connection with other clouds, but only you can know your cloud from the inside. You’re like a hummingbird, humming the song that is your life.

As a lonely cloud hovering, you realize that enjoyment is a personal experience. When other clouds crowd together, there’s static. It can be energizing, but clouds can rub each other the wrong way and when that happens, there are explosions until someone cries and then everyone cries and you’ve got a storm on your hands.

Second, as you hover like a lonely cloud, you notice the absence of extreme pain. You realize that extreme pain counteracts enjoyment. It could even be said that a day without extreme pain is enjoyable. If you remember feeling extreme pain, you probably don’t remember there being anything funny about it. One is less likely to laugh when feeling extreme pain.

In your imagination, as you hover like a cloud or a hummingbird (if you are tired of being a cloud), you know that in whatever bad situation you might be in, it could be worse.It has been said that there is no beauty equal to life. It would certainly be more difficult to know beauty if there wasn’t a you to perceive it. As a person who has found the secret thrilling life of intense happiness, you do not need a lot of stuff or acquaintances because you can contemplate any time you want.

Find out what you know then hum the tune before you are “Out of Time.

Sky Watching

Have you looked at the sky lately? Of course you have. People do, but have you looked for a minute or more? Have you lingered? We’re talking a good long, long look, like a kid on a lawn staring straight up on a summer’s day. When’s the last time you did something like that?

Try this: Step 1) Go outside or look out a window; Step 2) Look at the sky.

If you can’t find a sky, pick something else: a parking space, chain-link fence, puddle of gasoline. If you can’t see the sky, listen to it. If you can’t listen to it, smell it. If you’re worried about time, count elephants or set a timer. If you’re worried about what people will think, don’t. They’ll look in the direction you’re looking to see what’s there. They’ll be confused and think, “I don’t see anything.” But you’ll know better.

If someone asks you what you’re looking at, you can point at the sky and say, “Look. Sky.”

Look at the sky for no other reason than to look. This isn’t for science. This isn’t a study in blue. Don’t try to relax. How do you do that? If someone says, “Relax!” people usually do the opposite. Don’t look for shapes. Don’t think about how the sky is infinity right there above your head.

You can breathe if you want to, that’s up to you. The point is that there is no point. Lose yourself in looking. Let your eyes take the sky into your brain for processing. The more you look, the more you disappear into it. You could even make sky watching part of your daily day-dreaming regime (see: Art of Day-Dreaming), but you don’t have to.

Imagine you’re a human or an American Robin – doesn’t matter. Imagine what you want. The trick is to look at the sky without getting bored. Do the best you can. Switch to brooding over a plant if you have to.This isn’t what most people would call exciting, but you’re not most people. You’re you.

You know how they have moments of silence for fallen soldiers? You could have your own moment of silence. Just you and the sky. And if you’re lucky, you could feel quietly thrilled by the life that’s all around you – or not, the thrill is what you will it to be.

Sky watching isn’t something normal people do, but then, who’s normal? Is anybody normal? You could be normal because you’re not.

As you look at the sky, you’ll probably have thoughts like, “This is stupid. What am I looking at? I’ve got things to do! Why am I doing this?” You might expect something special to happen, but nothing does. Nothing special happening is something special happening. This is it. This is the sky. This is you meeting the sky. The sky’s been there a long, long time and it’ll be there a long, long time after you’re gone, but you can forget all that. Just look. That’s all. Consider thoughts that deter you from looking the mental equivalent of buzzing flies around your food.

Whatever the politics or economics of the world, whatever good luck and bad luck gets thrown at you, it doesn’t matter because there’s a sky up there and there’s a you who’s aware. Feel yourself between. Realize that you are the one looking and feeling. No one else. Your life will continue on its merry way through thick and thin, good and bad, comfort and poverty and the sky will be there.

There’s enjoyment in looking at the sky, but you don’t need someone to tell you that. You know that you can enjoy the enchantment of the sky any time, day or night.

The Art of Day-dreaming

The Philosophy of Enjoyment combines the sensibilities of a Walt Whitman or Leonard Cohen – poetical – with a Charlie Chaplin or Jerry Seinfeld – comical. The basic idea is to experience life sensuously (like a poet) and lightly (like a comic). Life and enjoyment are synonymous, but just because you’re alive doesn’t mean you’re enjoying it. For some people death isn’t hard: life is.

But if you practice the art of day-dreaming, even when life is hard, it’s still enjoyable. With a poet-comic sensibility, you can have ecstatic moments without having to do anything but relax, observe and chill. It’s a matter of practicing a few mental tricks.

The first trick is to focus on your senses. This goes back to earlier posts like “Getting Small: Concentrate” and “The Will To Enjoy: How to be more conscious“. Stop what you’re doing and ask yourself: What am I seeing? What’s that smell? (Is it me?) What am I hearing? tasting? touching?

Look from the periphery of your eyes. Go discreetly into a zone where you meet your surroundings. Beyond everything that you think you are, you’re still just a sensuous organic unit. People get a false sense of superiority. They let their senses get dull through lack of attention. Life becomes an abstract affair.

Look to the animals

Watch the way a dog or a cat sniffs the air (ignore how they sniff each other). Watch their ears. Watch the way a sparrow looks around and listens. Compare that to how people stare straight ahead or at electronic devices.Go outside or look out the window. Slip out of a miserable mock-reality into a real reality of secret thoughts that only you can have. Allow yourself to day-dream about nothing in particular.

You’ve had lovely sensations wafted upon you in the past. Remember those. Create those again. Feel yourself somewhere between boredom and bliss. Enjoy a thousand vague and delicious impressions.

Relish every morsel of food and drop of drink that enters your mouth. Relish every idle, dreamy and carefree thought that you have.

Work so you have time for leisure. Make introversion and loneliness your strength. Make weakness your strength. Experience every nuance of country-roads, gardens, old walls, leafy lanes, wood paths and twilight harbours.

Devour life and defy it to get in your way of enjoyment.

In situations with difficult people, study them from your observation post (yourself). Experiment with yourself. Imagine seeing out of their eyes. You don’t have to love them or like them, just be kind to them. Sympathize with them.

Everyone is doing their best to feel enjoyment. It’s just that some people don’t get it. They can’t laugh at themselves. Enjoyment eludes them. Help them. If you feel annoyed, ask: What’s funny about this?

Look at people with a comedian’s eye, not to be mean, vulgar or glib, but to help yourself enjoy them and yourself with them and they you.

Picture yourself as the Good Humor Ice cream man. Switch from serious to good humorous. Alter your default settings by first focusing on your senses and then tell yourself to lighten up. Do something silly. Be free. People really are quite funny especially when they’re not trying.

The grand trick is to never have a single day without impressing into your memory stuff like a particular road, a specific tree, a particular treat, flights of birds, gusts of wind, interconnecting rain-rings in a puddle, hot afternoon fragrances… whatever!

Don’t worry if annoying things happen. Of course they happen! Annoying things are always bound to happen. Train yourself to get beyond them and be amused by them.

Beyond your five senses, humour could be your sixth. There’s nothing unseen about it. It’s available to everyone. You can’t help seeing what you see, but you can shape how you see. Combine your Walt Whitman Song of Myself with your Charlie Chaplin A Dog’s Life.In an annoying situation, you have two options: You can get all serious and feel ill-treated (not enjoyable) or you can be light without care. Ill-treatment is nothing to you. What do you expect? Who are you anyway?

Nobody. You are just another body envelope. Why not be the light?

The trick is to be absolutely determined to enjoy yourself. Don’t take yourself or life too serious. You know how it will end. Force yourself to enjoy. Will it to happen. Play music that gives you a charge of courage to forge ahead.

Go Buster Keaton on everybody and sing, “Don’t Bring Me Down!” to yourself without caring if anyone hears. Let “Enjoyment!” be your battle cry. Plunge into the experience of living. The water’s fine, even when it isn’t, and when it isn’t: It’s even better.

Enjoy.

Getting Small: Concentrate

Sometimes people who are philosophical get rather analytical. They over-think. Enjoyment shouldn’t really be critiqued.

The focus should be upon using one’s senses to enjoy one’s surroundings – whatever they are.

The secret to enjoyment is in a special kind of concentration. It’s special because it’s forced. It’s the will to concentrate. It’s the face of someone trying in vain to think of a name. It’s the look on the face of a child who doesn’t understand as a parent yells, “Concentrate!”

It’s a thought without something in it. It’s sleeping in a tent when someone whispers, “Did you hear that?” and you wake up to concentrate. “I don’t hear anything,” you say as you peer out your tent flap. “See anything?” “No. All I see are trees and snow geese.”

And yet, are snow geese and trees not the most obvious things to see? Why aren’t you incredulous? “Snow geese? Really?” Your surroundings are more incredible than you realize. It could be that your sense of things is limited by your desire to get back to sleep or back to work or back to whatever it is you think you should be doing.

Rarely do people stop and stare like sheep or cows. For most of the industrialized people alive today one’s ability to sensuously experience is impaired by rationality. We don’t really notice ourselves and the world we’re in. If we did, we’d see that in the moon light there are translucent clouds reminiscent of a long lost girl’s nightgown.

A special kind of concentration is a key to enjoyment. It’s more than a matter of being alive to survive another day of survival. Look up from reading. Right now! Gaze and gaze and gaze! Gaze into the distance. Select an object to contemplate. Forget that you know what it is. Imagine that you’re a snow goose sitting in your kitchen. Gaze at your snow goose feet. Aren’t they amazing? Try them out and go for a gander.

With your your new and improved human-snow goose concentration, a sound, a taste, a touch, a smell can start a secret reverie that only you can know. It is in this lonely self of yours that you can secretly thrill to the tiniest of things. A special concentration is yours alone. Enjoy flashes of living memories strung on a wire of hours, days and nights like multicoloured Christmas lights.

People who see you concentrating will think that you’re either thinking – which you are, in a way – or that you’re an idiot. Either way is fine with you. You’re not so easily insulted. You’re getting small after all. Idiots know contentment better than most. Idiots under-think. In egolessness they live small, easily fascinated by nothing much at all. With new-found goose concentration, you can thrill to sensuous ecstatic experiences. Only you can enjoy. No one will enjoy for you.

Have you ever heard people say, “It’s the little things”? It’s meant to be about embracing a simplistic non-materialistic lifestyle and noticing the little things. Most people don’t get it. They pay lip-service to this bit of sage advice.

Back in the day Steve Martin, the comedian, used to do a bit he called “Get small“. It was funny. In the context of the time it alluded to doing drugs. The idea to get small relates to the Philosophy of Enjoyment.

There is enjoyment available that is not drug induced. There is enjoyment in your own particular smallness. Be humble. Above your head there is infinity. You are small.

For where does happiness dwell? As we struggle to make contact with life through a philosophy for one, keep in mind that it is not a sign of superiority, but a sign of inferiority to others that we are thus occupied. You there in your man’s body! You there in your woman’s body! You there in your body!

Whatever shape it’s in, you are crouching to spring at the greatest thing in the world: Enjoyment! Turn tedium into pleasure and dreariness into lovely sensations. Start from scratch and get small.

Will, Day-dreams & Selective Memory

Unless you’re dead, you’re a living organism. Like a bear, you react to living. You wake up in the morning and react to your surroundings. You have secret thoughts. They’re secret because no one else but you thinks them.

Your purpose is to enjoy living, but unlike bears, most humans substitute the lowest and most unimportant things for the real purpose of life. They get caught up in things like money, politics, religion and life-styles. They get so caught up in humanity, they lose their individuality.

Except for rare moments of personal peace, lots of people miss the real purpose of living which is to live and enjoy it. Not to do. Not to strive. Not to achieve. The purpose of a flower is to flower. The purpose of a bear is to bear. You’re like every other flower and bear. You’re purpose is to you. Enjoy it. Why not? What do you have to lose?

Imagine: Its a peaceful sunrise. A man wakes up. He looks at the sunlight spilling into his room. He hears birds outside. He sees a fragment of gray sky out the window.

He feels happy as he contemplates cozy sheets, birds, skies and trees, but then it happens. He gets bombarded by mental troubles and jobs to do. Demon-like thoughts attack his enjoyment. It’s an assault.

He worries about the past and the future, he worries about the state of his finances and his health and his relationships – good, bad and ugly. He worries about things he did or didn’t do. He’s no longer a cozy island of solitude lulled by sensuous feelings and thoughts of trees, birds and sunshine.

Our poor sod who’s enjoyment has been so robbed needs to take the Philosophy of Enjoyment‘s three-pronged approach. First, he needs to engage his fighting spirit and will to enjoy. Second, he needs to go seriously into day-dreaming. This isn’t a time for half-hearted measures. Third, he should grab hold of little fond memories.

It’s a trick of one’s will to have the thoughts that you think so use your will to expunge unpleasantries. Defiantly will yourself to oppose misery. Focus on your surroundings. You are here. You are alone inside your head. What are you going to do? Nothing.

Slip into those long thoughts called day-dreams. Go blank for a bit. A life revolving around “work” and “pleasure” is not a life. Unless work implies freedom of mind and pleasure lets you slip into lazy day-dreams, you’re wasting your time by not wasting time.

Rationality, efficiency and human practicality ruins the magical happiness felt in being alive and geared to enjoyment. Get back to that magical happiness. Day-dream with abandon like a kid would. Imagine what you want. It’s your world. Go ahead and fly if you want. Wishful thinking isn’t a bad thing!In the midst of willing, day-dreaming and sense-experiencing, chew the cud of happy memories. Go cow for awhile. Imagine your face is a cow face. It shouldn’t be hard to do. Stare out of yourself. Don’t soil the flooring, but observe your surroundings as a cow would. Literally make yourself forget the cares and annoyances that crowd waking hours. Say, “Forgetaboutit” like a New York gangster-cow would.

Go into a secret trance and convert computer screens into fields of green, turn cement walls into pastures. Your supposed jailers are airy nothings.

Humour is critical here. Don’t be afraid to smile at yourself and secretly laugh at the silly things people do – including yourself.

The Philosophy of Enjoyment is perfect for weaklings. People who are idle, eccentric, lazy and neurotic love it. They can live a personal life that defies the modern command to turn humans into metal-jacketed electronic ants. An escape from the horrors lies in yourself. When you dive into a gregarious practical chatty-filled life, your soul temporarily commits suicide.

Your purpose is to experience a peculiar sort of happiness. Have an attitude that gathers itself together and never ceases from enjoying life. Endure the blows of fate and thrill in the pleasure of simple things. Look around. It’s good to be you, even when it isn’t.

The Beginning of Wisdom: Just a Bowl of Cherries

The beginning of wisdom is to keep up your spirits in spite of everybody and everything.

The trick is to find a comfortable observation post within easy reach – yourself – and to watch.

Think of yourself as a Great Blue Heron on the look out. You’re on the look out for enjoyment.

There’s only two parts to the Philosophy of Enjoyment: a self and an object to be felt. Make it a habit to enjoy. It is your secret priority. No one else needs to know. Don’t boast about it. Don’t be a cheerful phony or give advice. You’ll annoy everyone. You know that enjoyment is what life’s about. It’s why people do what they do. On this little blue dot filled with natural wonders – blue skies and sunshine – you are here to enjoy.

Why suffer? Have a philosophic mind so that whatever you’re doing and wherever you are, no matter how nice or difficult, at least you can think in the right way.

Imagine you’re attending an event that is tedious. You’re at a table with strange people in a hot and ugly room. You think the people are petty and pompous, but there’s nothing you can do. It’s a work function and part of your job to be here. It’s the price you have to pay for food in your belly. In such a trying situation, what can your Philosophy of Enjoyment do to help?

First, your philosophy reminds you that you are dedicated to enjoyment. Why shouldn’t you enjoy yourself? Why feel miserable when you can feel happy despite these annoying people? Life is short. This ugly scene is an opportunity to wrestle with life. Are you going to let these people get to you? Of course not! Use your will to fight for your right to enjoy yourself.Remember your dedication. Become sensually aware. Look around. Where are you? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? Imagine you’ve just arrived from another planet. Notice something small like your glass of water. Pick it up and take a drink. It tastes bad, but it’s so bad that it’s good! Look at the glass. Do you see the tiny fruit fly floating in it? Priceless. Now look at the people. Study them. Don’t be afraid to secretly stare. They’re too self-absorbed to notice you.

Imagine putting on a hat. It has a blue heron feather stuck in it. The imaginary hat reminds you to not take yourself so seriously. Who are you to judge these people? Are they not here to enjoy themselves too? Maybe you can help them out and in so doing, enhance your own enjoyment. There’s nothing quite like helping someone else to enjoy life. It is its own reward.

With your imaginary Philosophy of Enjoyment hat on, remind yourself that, although there’s no need to love these annoying people, it is equally unnecessary for you to despise them.

Force yourself to enjoy them.

Repeat: Force yourself to enjoy them!

See the humour in their annoyingness! Enjoy their pettiness! Enjoy their pomposity! Enjoy the humour in the situation. They’re perfectly pompous! Isn’t it great? Enjoy exquisite moments of perseverance. Enjoy the colours that you see. Enjoy the humorous absurdities of it all as if it were a show. The chief thing to do is to be forever losing yourself in the enjoyment of embracing it all. Life is just like a bowl of cherries, but don’t be surprised to see a few rotten ones.

That is as it should be. Enjoy yourself.

Only the Lonely

Sometimes it feels like almost everybody is stupid, pompous and malicious. Of course you know they’re not… are they? Maybe it’s you. Never mind.

You can learn to smile secretly at all the weird and obnoxious people and think of each one as an exotic flower. You can know that each person is alone inside. Each one is basically the same as you. You don’t have to love them, but you can force yourself, however reluctantly, to be kind to them.

You can practice a special kind of self-control so that nothing – however infuriating it may be and however it gets on your nerves – nothing can make you angry. The trick? Just watch and watch and watch. Take it all in and watch like a lone little lizard on a leaf. Remember that you are alone and so is everybody else.

Everybody is alone inside their own individual self. To appreciate being alone in your solitary self takes a special kind of loneliness. It’s to be lonely without feeling lonely in the sad sense. This isn’t a poor little me, all alone, I’m so lonely attitude. No. This is a call to action! It’s a funny kind of lonely.

You know you are alone inside. The philosopher of enjoyment asks, What are you going to do about it?

Only the lonely can make the most out of an inner self. Anyone can take refuge in themselves with their five senses. Anyone and everyone who is motivated to step out of the rat race can cultivate idleness. Anyone can contemplate contemplations like an observation post.

Anyone can live a secret existence in one long intoxicated life-trance like a lizard on a leaf soaking up the sun. All delicious sensuous moments occur within the solitude and silence of yourself. Lonely ones like you are not bound to reveal secret thoughts to casual friends. For a lonely soul, having fussy, gregarious friendships isn’t necessary. Acquaintances can be like being with ants in an ant-heap filled with chatter.

The trick is to embrace every form, every colour, every curve, every single little thing with all your senses! Reduce yourself to its airiest, lightest, humblest, least personal and least self-conscious self to escape issues of hurt feelings. Have no expectations.

Treat every living creature as if it has the same sensitivity as you, as if it has a self within its body not so very different in its consciousness of itself as you have of yourself. Feel a unique kind of happiness in simple things experienced significantly.

This unique kind of happiness includes feeling the glow of battle. Not only are you happy because you are thrilled by the contemplation of a leaf against the sky or by a meadow lark against the horizon or a cup of coffee and a biscuit, you are happy because you get the glow of Victory! In these moments of attention, life overcomes death, good overcomes bad, friendship overcomes malice, peace overcomes agitation and pleasure overcomes pain.

The purpose of life is to live a special kind of happiness. It’s not based on feeling excitement or just pleasure. It’s deeper than that. The purpose of life is to enjoy it and in order to enjoy, the thing to do is to be forever losing yourself in delicious physical sensations. Lose yourself in your own particular enjoyment. Picture yourself as a gecko on a leaf. Enjoy gecko contemplations in a gecko world.

Yes, We Have No Bananas: Humility is the word

Alone. Alone. Alone. You are alone. As much as you might love another person, you are not that person. Nobody but you is you. Only you have access to your particular experiences, feelings and surroundings. Throughout all time and space there will only be one you. This is it. You can be proud of yourself as a unique living creature, but don’t feel superior.

No matter who you think you are, you’re not superior – just different. Pride, vanity and conceit kill enjoyment.

Humility is the word.

The Philosophy of Enjoyment maintains that life is subjective. It’s just you and the rest of the world which is not-you. You have to put up with irritations, but you can practice a special kind of self-control to keep anger at bay. You can be kind. You can see the humour in people. To feel the enjoyment of a lasting kind you can feel proud of yourself like a duck is of his plumage, but don’t feel superior. You’re not superior. You’re just another duck.

You are an observation post. Your senses and contemplations colour everything. Enjoyment is not dependent upon circumstances, belief or class. People who find a source of real lasting enjoyment don’t need acquaintances or admiration. They don’t need good times. Life can throw catastrophes, but you can find enjoyment even in the bad times. Dedicate yourself to enjoyment like a duck. Ducks enjoy themselves. Enjoyment is not rational. Rationality can squash enjoyment as much as the craziest superstition. Enjoyment comes through you. You are the conduit of enjoyment.

Imagine that you are walking home from work in the late afternoon in April. You are just another two-legged-human-animal-vegetable walking on the earth. You can appreciate the creatures you see. You can imagine yourself as if from above. You can feel the magic of being alive at this time, in this body, in this place. No worries. No pain. No hurt feelings because of pride, vanity or conceit.

As you enjoy going along, you forget who you are. You’re just an observation post. You look up at the blue light filling the sky. You look at a wood duck perched on a branch. You look up over your head and what do you see? Infinity. Not that that it matters. It’s just interesting. You’re getting small – and that’s a good thing. You’re firmly in this body on this earth as it is and as you are.

At such moments: alone with your thoughts, as you feel a light breeze on your face, hear a duck’s song and a distant piston-engine, smell burning leaves and someone’s supper unsure of which is which, you can step away from the modern age of machines and misery. You’re not a slave. Leave the ant-hill mentality of the city behind. Enjoy yourself in this world. Not striving – just experiencing. Such a delicious flash of time can be filed away for later use when you need it like when you’re back in the office or stuck in traffic. At unpleasant times, you can smile and remember the details of this April late-afternoon walk home. You can relive, secretly smile and say, “Yes, we have no bananas.”

No reason. It’s just enjoyment. There’s nothing to explain.