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THE SYSTEM CANNOT CURE ITSELF
The paradox is that the system cannot ever cure itself, because
the system is itself the sickness that it wants to cure itself from. I try to
solve the problem, but the problem is me - the problem is me trying to
solve the problem.
What is the system? If I make sense to you, then that is the
system. If you make sense to me, then that it the system. The system is
the maker of reality, the decider of 'what is true'. The system is the
'meaning controller'. If something makes sense to the system, then it
gets to be real, it gets to be true. If something doesn't make sense to the
system, then it doesn't get to be real, it doesn't get to be true.
The system is scary when we can see it. The system determines
what we can see, and it determines what we can know, and it also
determines the fact that we cannot see how it determines what we can
see and know. The system is scary because it is invisible to itself,
because it thinks that it is the true reality and not made up. It is scary
because it wants to make us it. It wants to swallow us up, to take us
over, so that we will think it is the true reality.
When the system takes us over, so that we are the system and the
system is us, everything we see makes perfect sense to us. It makes
such perfect sense that we never doubt it for a moment, and yet it is all
a lie. The system is the judge of reality, the final, unquestionable
standard that we apply to everything, and yet it is itself not real at all. The
system is only real to itself, it only makes sense in its own terms. It is
real only if we agree to pretend it is real, and then agree to forget that we
have pretended. This is the reality of the lie, which can stand up only if
we continue to support it, only if we continue to say that it is standing up
by itself.
The system cannot ever be happy, it can only ever pretend to be
happy, and then pretend that it is not pretending. Sometimes, however,
we get too tired to continue pretending that we are not pretending, and
then we know that we are sad. We look around and see that everyone
else seems to be happy. We think that it is only us that is sad. Other
people don't like to see our sadness, because it threatens to remind
them that they are sad too, so they try to fix us so that we become
'happy' again. If we stay sad, then we are said to be 'depressed', or
'mentally ill', and we are given chemicals to try to block out the sadness.
We too try to do our best to block out the sadness, to pretend that the
sadness isn't there. This is called 'therapy'.
The therapy isn't real, however, it is just a theatre that we all pretend to believe in, and then pretend that we aren't pretending. The system cannot ever cure itself, for it is itself the sickness.