[This “Individuality and Absurd Rebellion” series of posts introduces you to ideas you’ll find in Eric Maisel’s most recent book Redesign Your Mind. You can learn more about Redesign Your Mind here.]
What are you rebelling against? For one thing, the universe deeming you trivial. Yes, it has done that to you. But you say, “I am something, in my human way, and when it comes to speaking up, pointing a finger, and of all that, I will make my presence known.”
What are you rebelling against? The hypnotic trance that afflicts all of us, causing us to sit there, watching yet another episode of a beautifully crafted television show about nothing. We rebel by snapping our fingers and waking up.
What are you rebelling against? The mountains of humbug piled in every corner of the kingdom, where deodorant is sold to make poverty smell good and holes in the ozone layer are called windows on the universe. We rebel against liars.
What are you rebelling against? You rebel against the inertia produced by living, the inertia that makes sitting on the couch seem like your next best option. You heroically create your own momentum to fight the terrible weight of inertia.
What are you rebelling against? You rebel against meanness, even if you are feeling mean yourself, because you know that meanness wounds and that you are not here to do harm or let others do harm. You take a stand against meanness.
What are you rebelling against? You rebel against your own modesty and your own meekness, qualities drilled into you by your family and your society. You roar like a lion even if you have been trained to squeak like a mouse.
What are you rebelling against? You rebel against your own disinclination to rebel. How comical that you are in mortal combat with yourself about rebelling! Imagine a squirrel fighting with itself about whether or not to crack open a nut.
Squirrels are not built that way. No squirrel can find itself in so absurd a situation as we find ourselves. We find ourselves built with the good sense to avoid conflict and with the good sense to invite conflict for the sake of righteousness. How trying!
How are you rebelling? By speaking up rather than keeping silent. Your vocal chords are instruments of goodness. You are that child who says, in a small voice but one so distinct that everyone can hear him, “Look, the Emperor has no clothes!”
How are you rebelling? By navigating your personal way through the mine fields of custom and ordinariness, building what you need as you go, creating the tools, the methods, the systems, the visions, the world of you.
How are you rebelling? By announcing, “I will not buy religions and philosophies that do not speak to me and that do not make sense to me. That a billion people believe something signifies nothing. Not a billion or a trillion. It has to make sense to me!”
How are you rebelling?
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