Where Do You Live?

A cornerstone of the Darkhorse philosophy, at least as I understand it, is Influence. We recognize that we are either influencing events around us, or being influenced. We are either active, or passive. In this, we are also one or the other to a particular degree. The word “superficial” means “being at, or near, the surface”, and while it is commonly used as an insult, it simply suggests having a focus on the external or most immediate events, impressions, or influences in our lives. The superficial is where most of us place our focus, it is where we have been trained to exist, where our society directs our attention, and where it appears that most activity occurs in our culture. All seems to be artifice.

And for most, this is true.

The Darkhorse recognizes this, and uses this to his advantage. In order to do so, however, he must first recognize it and be on guard against it within himself. He must recognize the difference between external and internal influences, understand how those agents operate, and cultivate a strong sense of his true relationship with those agents. This requires observation and intentional effort.

The model describing these relationships is surprisingly simple, often overstated, and easy to misunderstand. We each have a physical body, and we have been trained to consider this physical form as “I”. Your internal dialogue does not issue from the totality of your body, however. You do not hear your voice in your toes. Instead, your internal dialogue emanates from a place between your ears and behind your eyes, often slightly to the right or left depending on how your brain has developed. Your body is a vehicle and tool for your mind, a means for the mental you to interact with the environment. If you loose a finger or toe, the vehicle is diminished, but the mind remains intact.

The mind, however, is not “I”, just as the body is not “I”. You “hear” your internal dialogue in the space I described because that is where the speech-centers and audio-centers of the brain are located. Your brain is simply mimicking the function of your audio sense sans actual input from the environment. That should give one pause. We take this for granted, but this is an example of the mind creating its own reality. The argument of whether or not reality is a consistent and external event or an almost exclusive product of the mind creating it will have to rage on for the moment, but suffice it to say that the mind is as capable of creating a reality as it is of observing and reacting to a reality. In fact, there are numerous instances where the mind cannot distinguish between the two, because ultimately both are interpretations of influence, either external or internal. The medium of interpretation is the same, regardless of the source.

Like the body, the brain and the mind are themselves a vehicle for something else. If damaged, the function of the brain may be diminished, but there remains something consistent in the person which can be observed by others. The being continues to be, continues to have distinct and observable characteristics. It is this other, this seemingly ambiguous self, neither mind nor body, which a Darkhorse recognizes as the True-Self, the core being.

In most, this self is woefully underdeveloped. The mind is like a computer-system (a fair analogy, since computers are designed to mimic the function of the mind). Imagine building a computer to supplement your own functions. Your computer, or mind, has some base-routines to maintain your autonomous systems; breathing, digestion, circulation, etc. It has information gathering nodes, input-output ports, and programs for organizing and interpreting data. As your computer/mind becomes more developed and complex, you begin adding subroutines for handling and interpreting the data with predetermined responses. You don’t need to actively involve yourself in responding to the dangers of a hot cooking element, for example. Experience has lead you to create a program which avoids contact with such a danger with no real thought or attention applied.

These pre-programmed responses are learned from those you observe or your own experiences, and your begin making your computer/mind more sophisticated at an early age. By five or six years old, you have a very good mechanism for observing, sampling, and mimicking the behaviors of others. Coincidentally, this is also about the time our society drops you into the meat-grinder to receive new and socially approved programming for alignment with all the other computer/minds. More and more functions are added, subroutines are written, programs for managing programs, until the mind becomes so complex that the operator need not participate in the activity. Our institutions are designed to create this kind of mind, one that operates within parameters defined not by the self, but by the needs of the society which has honed it. Self-development and self-interest are not a part of the equation.

The Darkhorse recognizes this, and understands that everything emanates from their own center. The reality may be that reality and everything in it is itself consistent and distinct from the observer, but the observer lacks the faculty to make that distinction in any meaningful way. For most people, the idea of self is abstract. The Darkhorse strives to make that idea, at least in his own mind, concrete. Self-preservation and development hinges on the ability to influence, rather than being influenced. This process begins with recognizing that the most immediate tool, the mind, is not your own. Its design has been co-opted and subverted by external influences. It must be studied, carefully deconstructed and re-constructed for the benefit of the self. Some of the programs and subroutines will be deleted outright, while others will be re-written or just re-directed to serve the self, rather than define the self.

The mind is far more sophisticated than the average computer, and re-writing the superfluous programming that has been built up over the many years we have been alive is not as simple as “copy, paste, and delete”. It requires an effort to remember as consistently as possible that there is an operator behind even your “own” thoughts who must evaluate whether or not these thoughts, feelings, and responses are originated internally or the reactions of a predefined and externally applied program. When we recognize a programmed response, we can then make an effort to resist it. Re-writing such programs requires continuous resistance and alternative behaviors, leading eventually to our own self-determined sub-routines. The mind that has been sufficiently evaluated and re-written internally brings us closer to an Awakened state.

While time and effort are required to achieve lasting results, the benefits from under-going this self-initiated process come more quickly. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. We are all walking in a predetermined line. Most simply shuffle along their preset course, oblivious to all else. What power does a person have who can step out of line at will, who can reverse course, who can even take steps to influence the course of others, simply because he is aware of the line while others are not? This is the power of the Darkhorse, the ability to see the system and be distinct from it, and from this position take action which creates change. We are all set to receive transmissions, to obey instructions. The person who has defined the self becomes a transmitter, exuding influence, to which those trained to receive and obey are susceptible.

To some, the suggestion of using a relatively greater level of awareness to influence and control others may seem immoral. The effort to influence made by the Self-Aware is anything but immoral… in fact it is an absolute necessity. In an Awakened Being, the observation of self and the environment are continuous. As we influence in our own self-interest, we observe and come to a particular conclusion based on observation. It is a conclusion which has been taught to us since ancient times, one which the system has tried to either deny or to corrupt in order to keep us dormant. Influence can only happen if you are connected in some manner to the thing you would manipulate. The mind is a vehicle for the self, the body a vehicle for the mind… and reality a vehicle for the body. If you live in your head and call your mind “I”, and your mind in your body is “I”, then your environment, even your reality, and everything in it, is “I”. Regardless of whether or not the source of an emanation you encounter is external and distinct, you interpret it internally. It is therefore more you than anything outside of you.

This would suggest that every emanation, opinion, perspective, quirk, person, is ourselves. Like the programming of our minds which had to be resolved, each iteration of reality is simply a part of the overall program which we must either accept or resolve. We encounter other minds, but rarely do we have exchanges with other Beings. Every mind we encounter is simply our interpretation of a part of the over-all program. Another Being, however, is able to express its own distinctiveness and assert its own definition in the mind of any it encounters. When we manipulate the minds of others and influence reality, we are making changes in our own Being. When we encounter other Beings, we will find that since they are distinct from us, they cannot be manipulated.

Furthermore, the State of Being is like an infectious virus. When a mind encounters a Being, or the work of a Being, the internal and often dormant spark of self within begins to stir. With sufficient and repeated encounters, the Being within begins to try to assert itself. That person becomes infected with the idea of Self. It begins to question, just as we question, and to struggle to discover the truth. Encountering a Being is like seeing the slight split in the curtain and catching a glimpse of the man beyond manipulating the levers and pulleys. Once we see it, the illusion will never hold us in thrall as it once had. Thus, it is necessary for us to engage and manipulate those who are less aware. Our example will begin to stir others. As more Beings stir, the artificial system will begin to diminish, its power weakened by each Being who is able to resist the program through self-definition. Those who succumb to the program and deny themselves are lost. Those of us who choose to resist, to define ourselves and through that definition the reality around us… they have a chance.

So, ask yourself; where do you live? Do you live within the artifice and external influences of the system, or do you live inside your head, a psychonautic Darkhorse exploring and defining reality?