competition… what is it. idolatry? trying to beat the best? dominance. alpha monkey. its status, honour, sex, prowess, security. but it’s not really we don’t live in that world any more.
trying to beat someone at whatever game you get into. first in school - beat them in tests and beat them in the playground. then business. then athletics. then enlightenment.
at some point it stopped being about beating others - they were too easy or not satisfying enough. they were just caricatures of the self and you were trying to beat the self so you turned in on the whole
then it was all about self improvement and beating the old - becoming bigger and better every day and never stopping growing. applauded by all those around and trying to become the idol that you used to idolise; to beat even your heroes and acquire more and more accolades
and what does that breed but resentment? the others will try to beat you then; the idolatry they suffer from will be turned on you and the same old process will start anew. you will try to cling to your place or to step ever higher and eventually you will crumble and turn to dust as all things will
the climb to the top of the mountain which can never be scaled; the ever-building peak like those fucking lemmings just laying brick after brick after brick until clink, clink, clink, shrug, walk over the edge and hope the fall wasn’t too high
so you get to the top of this self-constructed bridge of bricks and what’s there? nothing. empty space. a drop commensurate with how high you have built
and the only thing you were building is a self-reinforcing bridge of perception. you keep looking at these bricks and putting them down and checking the guy next to you and racing to the top and all the while you are just training the mental muscles to lay brick after brick after brick and there can never be an end; you never learn how to turn around and look at the view which is all around you because all you can see is those damned bricks
idolatry
that’s what it is
competition is idolatry
you place someone on a pedestal and say you will beat them. then you are on the pedestal but all you know is how to lay bricks so you say you will beat yourself and you keep building fucking ladders to the stars while other people have stopped and said ‘this will do’ and built a house and a life instead.
so what is competition but a mirror? it’s a mirror and you can only ever see yourself in it. you can only ever see yourself as inadequate.
you beat them in one domain you move to the other. you love that feeling of inadequacy. this is what computer games are built around. the feeling of progression. the feeling of a narrative loop and a self and a start and an end and a final boss which you beat before going into the endgame and then what?
life isn’t a narrative arc… it’s a choose your own filter on random events but the filter isn’t even yours to choose
it’s a dissolve your own filter on a cross section of random events which gave you a filter that said ‘fight’ and ‘succeed’ and ‘improve’ and what… kill yourself? where does this end? there is no end.
that book the guy we got this house from which was called ‘people who kill themselves do so because they want to live’. that’s so wrong but so right. i think it’s the craving for completion. i am at my peak i am at my a-game i want this to stay forever but it will not so i will end it now rather than slide down the unavoidable slide and lose these ‘things’ i have acquired.
but you never acquired anything you just put on more fucking coloured glasses and made the tint so extreme that you could only see three shades of red instead of all the green and yellow and blue.
this competition. this idolatry.
and then people selling awakening as though it’s something to be idolised but it’s not - it’s just a release from this fucking filter that things need to be idolised. or… a release from having to wear the glasses. they’re still there and your perceptual framework is still the framework but you learn to see it and see it as not you
oh im wearing the red glasses again haha silly me; those people are wearing purple glasses and we are arguing over what shade of green the sky is.
ridiculous
this is nice
i can look at these filters now and just… remove them gradually. they’ll always be there - im an animal and we evolved in a social hierarchy. but being able to see them for the absurd filters they are sure is nice
back to the sword polishing? 1000 breaths? might only be 2 but who gives a fuck. this is just me working on me now im free to alter the build
idolatry indeed, j-man. idolatry indeed.
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