I am Deceiving You

Goodness gracious great balls of frozen cranberry juice, what the hell is going on? Imagine how twisted it would be if giant balls of frozen cranberry juice were falling from the sky and you had absolutely no protection. You’re camping in the middle of Pissville, Nowhere and all of a sudden frozen balls of concentrated cranberry start ripping through your tent. You’re thinking… actually you’re not thinking, you’re just in complete shock. You’re in a state of utter dismay and your thoughts are robbed from your noggin due to the absurdity of the circumstances. As you’re getting pelted by baseball sized balls of frozen fruit juice you feel a sense of deep peace and understanding, finally concluding that no thought you’ve ever had has actually improved your moment-to-moment experience. You sustain a concussion. Nobody is on the way, but everything is fine. Everything is finally fine.

We’re very deceptive creatures, us humans. By nature we are deceptive, and also easily deceived. If we think we’re not deceptive, that in itself is a deceptive thought. If we’re simply aware, we will realize how deceptive we are. If we convince ourselves we’re not deceptive, we’re simply deceiving ourselves. So, the difference is being aware that you’re deceiving yourself. When you’re aware of how much you’re deceiving yourself, you’ll be aware how much you are deceiving others, and it won’t happen as often because it will become hard to watch. Nobody wants to watch themselves be deceptive. People who are incredibly deceptive or manipulative always convince themselves that either they’re not that way, or there’s some reason they are that way, and they just can’t help it. They deceive themselves.

Our thoughts are deceptive by nature. They arise out of the ether, and we grant them validity, creating stories around our experience that explain our place in the world. “Well I only did this because this happened.” This is a deceptive thought. We concoct a thought-generated story around our experience in order to place ourselves in some sort of category, be it victim or hero or naïve bystander. Fruit Loop, maybe. Perhaps we convince ourselves we’ve been a Fruit Loop this entire time in order to shirk responsibility for our actions. It sounds absurd, but I wouldn’t put it past myself.

We don’t just deceive ourselves; we deceive others. We try to tell people what we are instead of allowing ourselves to be revealed. “I’m a doctor!” What does that mean? You are a doctor? That’s a character, or a role. Doctor is a role you play during the day when you’re doctoring. But what about when you’re not doctoring? What are you then? Still a doctor? Just another dumbass, perhaps? Knee deep in creatine, keeling over the bosu ball… what are you then?

Constantly searching for a home, we scamper into corners like a cockroach running from the shoe. Skeptical and scared, we feel we must confine ourselves between the walls. We define ourselves to confine ourselves, only moving when directed. Stuck between a scramble and a standstill, we are halted by hesitation. The walls make us feel secure, but still we are crushed.

Our definition of self is out greatest deception yet. A hell of a ploy, boys! We really think we’re somebody! A lot of us spend our entire lives trying to prove we’re really somebody. One example I come across often is people who are lawyers or trying to become lawyers. It’s incredibly rare to meet someone who is genuinely passionate about law, and they can’t help to be fueled by this passion. The more common scenario is that somebody is driven by the title. They want to be respected. They want to be somebody. They want to be defined by the public as “lawyer.” It’s the title they’re after, and they stomp across trails of definitions until they’re beaten and battered, sullen eyes sulking in the late night.

It's the ultimate journey of self-deception. They’ve convinced themselves they really love law, hiding their true ambitions of relegating the self to definition. The last law student I spoke with responded “I don’t know…” when asked why she chose to study law. “Well, my parents are both lawyers, so I chose to study law…” she continued, sadness piercing through the cushioned seats of the moving car. Unable to imagine a life outside of the familial and familiar, the unlimited potential of her essence was reduced to a deflated ball. Instead of finding air and freely rolling down the hill, she sat stuck at the bottom trying harder and harder to climb.

If we’re unaware of our deceptive nature, this may be where we find ourselves. We might be endlessly and recklessly pursuing some goal without actually understanding why we’re doing it. Because we are so deceptive, we will convince ourselves this pursuit is in the name of something admirable. We’ll find other explanations for our sadness, rationalizing our lack of passion to rise in the morning. We’ll blame our environment and really believe our strife is something happening to us, caused by the circumstances or people surrounding us. Then we’re really screwed, because we feel like we can’t control those things, so we’re just destined to be unhappy. Then we define ourselves as someone who is struggling, unconsciously creating a whirlpool of struggle, trapped in a sinking circle of our own torment.

But this is all a story. All of this is a story we’ve created out of thought. We are experiencing something, and we generate this story around our experience in order to make sense of it. If we don’t try to make sense of it, it makes perfect sense. If we do try to make sense of it, we become confused. Thoughts can be fun and interesting, but they are, by nature, deceptive.

This isn’t to say thinking is necessarily bad, or we simply should not have thoughts. It’s not reasonable to expect any human in the modern age to be free of thought for any real length of time. All we can do is be aware of the deceptive nature of thought. If I’m aware that I’m entirely full of shit, then I am awakened to the fact that everyone is entirely full of shit, and the world becomes a lot less confusing. I am much less likely to be deceived if I’m aware of the deceptive nature of human thought.

We are constantly deceiving each other, making crazy claims of virtue and morality, which mask our self-serving need to feel like a good person. If we identify as a good person, this is in contrast to a bad person. There must be bad people in order for good people to know they’re good. Striving to be a good person is an egotistical attempt to pedestalize ourselves over others. Never trust a good person, for they are the most deceptive of all.

Lao Tzu said, “true virtue doesn’t understand itself as virtue.” This is to say that a human who is truly virtuous is only so when they are not conscious of the self. They simply are, same as a flower. One is only virtuous when free of thought, flowing like the stream. Any attempt to try and be virtuous is itself deceptive.

We might be thinking, “well, what about people who do good things? Is that not good?” It can be, yes. The thing to understand is that action is absent of thought. Something happens and we act or react. This is where the virtue lies. If someone is in immediate danger, we do not have time to think about it. We simply jump in and help them. This is the act of virtue, absent of thought.

This is much different than someone claiming they are a good person because of their belief structure, which is oh so common in the world we live in. We are constantly elevating ourselves over others based upon our beliefs and then demonizing anyone who opposes those beliefs. There’s absolutely nothing virtuous about this, no matter what the belief is. It is simply an egotistical attempt to elevate the self over others, only causing more pain and suffering in the world.

As patterns of energy, we carry this energy everywhere we go. If we stand outside and hold a sign that says, “Fuck Nazis!” we aren’t doing anything but releasing negative energy into the world. We would be much better off smiling and complimenting people throughout the day, even if they’re Nazis. If someone is full of hate and then you energize them with hate of your own, this isn’t going to eliminate the hate. It will only supercharge it, and this is the world we live in. We actually believe if we hate the right people that this is good. Very deceptive, indeed.

- Butternut Billycream

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