Horse, IllinoisIn rural Illinois.

The ego is a built-in blind spot. A Trojan horse for all types of propaganda. Rigid convictions about identity create a backdoor pipeline to the mindscape. The storied identity is isolated, reinforced, reflected, and indulged until it becomes besotted with whatever is pandered to it. It doesn't matter if the pandering is done by advertisers, politicians, priests, therapists, lovers, or ourselves. It doesn't even matter what the story is—as long as a very familiar someone is in the starring role, we are enamored with the project. Victor or victim or villain—doesn't matter the avatar. In this hyperdriven age, the identity is commodified into concepts and sold back to the identity holder in order to populate a given ideological team. Team face cream? Team self-help? Team savior? Team saved? We do not see the space behind the mirror when we are entrenched in the reflection. What better subscriber to an onboarding ideology than one who does see the onboarding process?

Better instead to give it nowhere to land.

Divest from the realm of notions. Divest from the static identity. Step out from the membrane of concepts that seek to broker experience. Renounce the hallucination of prayer, manifestation, communion, origin myth, heaven and whatever other opulence the ego indulges itself in. Abandon the Trojan horses of name and title and purpose which has been utilized to engender chaos and ignorance in the shared realm of organisms. Decommission the backdoor pipeline of conviction. Forget this bullshit. Let the empire fall. Who is so special?