CATHY HUANG

I have a serious obsession with skulls, hence making this shirt today. So much cutting and the teeth are so hard especially with giant scissors. Nonetheless, the results are here :)

I want to start off by saying that I've always been a reactive individual that has been focusing my entire life through making "ends meet." That is, whatever was challenging to me I either severely rejected or dismissed as being useless. My driving force that led to all my actions had been one of search for outer pleasures and approval from others.  I know this sounds extremely Cliche, but I feel like over the course of these few months I've reached an epiphany of how people in the world LIVE and why the majority of us are unhappy or always in a state of restlessness and endless wanting.  It is only now I realized a majority of people are unconscious to their true being. 
This realization began with the enrollment of my humanities class. I was ready reasoning to drop out of this class after a few classes as my mind was not able to handle all the complex analytic reasonings arising from unknown sources of books I've never read before.  To tell the truth, I have not read a novel since high school.  I simply thought it was a waste of time and boredom, all that mattered was mastered the surface material and successfully "winging it" for the A+. That is how people have been mentally shaped to believe all throughout their educational years, go through to get the best mark that leads to a degree of recognition, that leads to a job, that leads to approval, that leads to getting what you want and so forth.  When was the last time people have been taught the socially constructed nature of the world we live in as of now? Concepts such as "success" and "getting a degree" as a means to making ends meet have been so prevalent and commonly accepted that the underlying force and motives are hardly questioned. 


Today in Humanities lecture, we discussed a novel called "Hard Boiled Wonderland and End of the World" for 2 hours. I think it was the first time I realized what true possession of critical thinking and importance of obtaining knowledge meant. In summary, the author emphasizes people's habituation and blind acceptance of the World. Yes, the world. If you really think about it, humans are no better than machines that seek salvation in the future and derive identities from the past. They are constantly in a state of survival mode, school and then jobs and then kids and then financial maintenance for a family and than retirement and than death. Must get this, Must get that, must be this, must not become that. In this perspective, humans are no better than animals in terms of only looking to satisfy their ID and egos. Some people never reach that full state of consciousness, always living in fear of losing all the surface "goals" to be achieved.


Than I came across Tolle Echkart's book the "Power of NOW" I pieced that book with all I learned from humanities and law of attraction along with the power of gratitude and looked at my life situation in this context. Everything I've attracted into my life until this point have been based on everything materialistic, I often worried myself sick deciding which bag I had to get, how well off my boyfriend and friends had to be in order to keep my reputation up, what kind of restaurants I ate at- all superficial comparison after comparison. 


1. This habit probably exists in everyone, because thinking and creation of needs and wants as well as problems become an addiction. It simply BECOMES you and deludes you to thinking it is part of your identity- This is the ego.  This is the reason what makes you feel bad when people criticize you and look down on your outer appearance. The ego wants you to retaliate and feel bad, as well as defend and justify why others might think this or that about you. The ego survives by forcing your mind into this repetitive pattern. That's why depression exists all around us and why suffering prevails. People are kept in the unconscious from being able to experience prevailing joy and positivism because moving into consciousness would mean the death of the ego. Nothing wants to die, the ego wants you to continue caring about life situations, anxieties of present and future and problems to keep survival. It is one of jealousy and attachment to outer forms and failure of fear and loss. In summary, it is the OPPOSITE of joy, peace, and love. 


2. People's negative emotions and depressive conditions are the workings of pain bodies. Take the fear of loss for example. You attach yourself to a man or woman in an attempt to seek approval and salvation from them, to seek the continuation of good. Your life than becomes revolved around whether this source of salvation will end either today or tommorow. In reality, this is the outer pleasure you seek for yourself thus experiencing negative emotions when it is gone because nothing is everlasting if seeked out by the ego. Pain-body is NOT you, it may be a life situation temporarily but you are the being of NOW.


3. To seek true inner peace, joy and love: the ego and polluting mind must be eliminated. Remember that is not a easy thing to do because the ego fears death, it needs you to keep worrying and suffering to survive. To eliminate it you must step in the presence of NOW. It's the realization of being, no past or future as they are all an illusion. Everything happens in the presence- this is the key to inner peace.