![philly-ninja.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQXcxM5qZcoXVeCkdq5eHowzFuqrZxcUCYG69pwvHTrAB/philly-ninja.jpg)
_This umbrella has a katana handle, enabling me to goose around as if I was a ninja_

## I don't know what I am

but I do know that I can express myself, I can be who I am. When I express myself I get feedback from life, my reality shifts and talks to me based on what I said to it. So there's a conversation going on, between me and life, I have figured that much out. And when I figured that much out I slowed down a little bit and started to pay attention.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

 When I paid attention a bit more, it seemed as if life was always sending messages and guidance, it was always making statments and embodying various states. There's a whole play of life going on, and I seem to be involved, I have little to no control of the flow of life - aside from how I choose to percieve it or interact with it. We could say that our actions and interactions with life are the strongest statement that we can make. If thoughts and feelings were a whisper, actions and repetitions are shouts.

__I heard a cool clip on a snoop dogg track once that said:__
> It's easy to talk about doing something, but when it comes to doing it, most folks take a little light vacation.

Changing our actions is a powerful thing we can do to change the conversation. Changing our thoughts and our habits is a way to change the topic of conversation. I've been listening to a lot of people who seem to know that we need to change the inside first, otherwise the outside cannot really be changed. If a person comes up to us on the street and goes to introduce themselves; but we have a continual 'babbling' coming out of our mouths, then we can hardly hear what that person says or experience who they are. There's no space, there's no opening.

This is what life is like for many human beings, it's just that the babbling happens on an internal level. There's no judgement in this observation, it's just an attempt to be accurate. At some point during all of this technological and economic advancement we lost our ability to be quiet.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

How valuable do you think this commodity is? What would you give for peace and quiet? To feel that you could truly relax and let your heart rest? Do you live or have you ever lived in a continual state of doubt, or a continual state of uneasiness? I sure have, it seemed to be a non negotiable part of signing up for project Planet Earth. Heck I didn't even realise I even signed up for planet earth, not until much later when I realised that no being would refuse the chance to be here - because no being would give up the chance to know themselves again.

We want to finally let go of this game, even the best games become tiresome when there's no log out button. Would you be happy scrolling Steemit for the rest of eternity? I would be in tears after about the 13th hour. 

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

So there's an ingrained quality which is innate to us - a subtle knowing that is looking for something. It's looking for some way to be satisfied. We would do a lot to find some kind of resolution of peace with ourselves. Yet strangely we aim all of our striving into the outer world, as if we had some control of that. Somehow the outer world is not actually who I am, it's more just a conversation that I am having. Surely there is pauses in every conversation? A pause to reflect and disconnect from what is being said.

> Did you ever feel while talking to someone that there was no room for the image that you wanted to conjure? Because that person was so insistent on conveying something that there was no space for anything else.

That is a little bit what it is like with life. We don't actually have to do anything for the mysteries of life to come to us, because life is a willing speaker. It's the listening that is the elusive part of the conversation. It's a lost art really. From the onset of adulthood a systematic program makes the being focus on just a handful of very set conventions for what this conversation with life is. So we walk around repeating these mental constraints to ourselves, and it sets the tone of the conversation.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

It's a bit of a trip when the being comes to realize that they can change the topic of conversation. So let's flick the auto pilot switch from ON to OFF and see what the hell happens! There's definitely no guarantee of what will happen, but I think that's the whole fun of it. It's in the not knowing!

Our life will be the result of what we talk about, fixate on, and live through actions. From these simple things grows a forest of life, the most fit ecosystem to live within those environmental conditions. What kind of life thrives in an ancient forest? What kind of life thrives in the sewer?

You are an ecosystem on many levels, let's stop pretending that you're not. Biologically on a macro and micro level, socially, economically, informationally, chemically, vibrationally, and inexplicably.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

So when I saw that all that had grown inside me was the concrete walls and social expectations that I had been raised in, then I developed a kind of chainsaw attitude. Is destruction really such a bad thing? In order for the universe to find equilibrium then something had to be added every time we take away. That's a really beautiful thing, but in my experience it's not particularly easy to just cut out the nonsense.

There's a potential to be seen as crazy, there's also a potential to be perceived as a direct threat to keeping everything humming along the way it is. And when you threaten peoples (virtual) safety, they can be inclined to react with survival mechanisms. These include, fear, blame, aggression and all those kind of things. This might happen in the external world, or this might happen as a dialogue within you. All I know, you get to choose how you respond to these clashes and that will determine a lot.

The potential I am most excited by, exceeds and nullifies those other ones. And this is the ability to be a bright spark in a dim room. When we chop away all our programming then we seem so unquestionably fresh, so fresh that it tends to inspire a very open and enjoyable passage of life. I feel that this is really the purpose for even coming down this dark alley of uncertainty, because somehow there is a knowing that it leads to a pot of gold.

You are that pot of gold (or diamonds), covered in coal dust or plain and sparkling.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

The jungle of our programming and constraints must be cleared for a fresh and innocent conversation to take place.

It seems a lot to do with our inner child, and the capacity to be free and innocent. Children have an amazing trust that everything will work out fine, and childhood has the capacity to be a time when you are free to dream and say whatever you want. You fully believe in yourself, there's not a voice that comes in to tell you are deluded, or that you need to be making better use of your time.

Where the hell did that voice come from? Why is everyone paying such close attention to this voice that tells us to be hurried? Hurry up and go and make transactions, hurry up and don't look around, just keep moving and consuming and planning and strategizing, keep busy and something will come through for you. What is this coming through for me? It never seems to get any closer, and what about right now? I want to be happy and abundant right now, because in truth that future is never going to get here if I am always moving toward it.

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

Can I embody my life with passion and joy and abundance? Can I embody my life like a tree embodies life, fully and strongly, yet without any kind of question or assumption. It just is, and it sits there as the sole evidence of what it is. Ceaselessly interacting with all things around it gross and subtle. It is life, and it creates life, it is a conduit for air and water and prana, it is a connection of so many different worlds.

All of this and the tree has no need to refer to its self, it has no need to take a history of its life and why it does what it does - it just does it. The fascination for explanation is a human phenomenon, we have various criteria for how we want to explain everything.

The most embedded criteria seem to be:
* How can I make this consistent with what I already know? (my own personal bias)
* What does this mean for my personal survival? (physical, economic, social, intellectual, emotional)

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

Naturally I wont want to talk to you about something that reminds me of a painful experience. It's a survival mechanism to be averse to pain, but we can transcend that too. Suffering is a thing that molds our reality tunnel (shout out Robert Anton Wilson), and it's helpful to recognize that. This is at the heart of all self inquiry and self healing. We recognize that the lack of love in our past has made us react in certain ways and develop patterns.

And we seem to live these patterns out, and then call it life. We call it freedom - when more or less it's reaction. How does a person react when it really hits home for them, that everything is more or less a joke? Just a programmed response to a play of information and tendency that had little to do with our own agency?

I guess there can be a whole variety of responses. One could be a massive increase of intensity, and a deep yearning to live life in a way that aligns with our true yearnings and knowings. I have seen a lot of this on the Steemit and it makes my heart glad.

Another response seems to be a huge 'mellowing out' where the immense pressure of trying to achieve something dissolves. To be replaced with a quiet acceptance that everything is doing just fine, and as a part of that exercise your individual node is also doing fine. So are we getting this joke? Or is the joke on us? Who are we? And who is telling the joke?

![katana-01.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPqToNzkq4V7VgaPu6ZAyGxT3xEEMULoFJDWEki38RLpm/katana-01.png)

So that's a whole line of inquiry, generated by my mind, about what my mind is, trying somehow in vain to explain the unexplainable. It is deeply satisfying to attempt to understand what I am. Yet I know on some level I will never find it. Is that what we are supposed to get? Is there really nothing to get?

Life may or not actually make sense, but I have kind of stopped caring.

Much Love Steem Fam

Taking it easy and breezy, way down in Wellington, New Zealand