“What if the world is… made out of bullshit stories that have been sold to us as reality by our institutions, by our parents, our teachers, our press, our religious leaders our politicians or presidents. Stories that have left us cynical and jaded, spiritually starved and culturally catatonic?”
Audio clip from podcast “Trickster: The Many Lives of Carlos Castaneda, Part III”
Transcription
From the moment we’re born we’re told that the world just is the way that it is.
We are told that it is something solid, and fixed and unbending.
And to get along in it, to succeed, to have a family, a house, a car, or some other prize of material success, we just need to get used to it, adjust to it, accept it.
Sure, it’s a deflating fact but there’s a sense of safety and comfort in knowing there’s an underlying certainty to the nature of things.
But what if the world as we know it isn’t as solid as we think it is?
What if it’s made out of something much more pliable, much more manipulatable?
What if it’s made out of bullshit: bullshit stories that have been sold to us as reality by our institutions, by our parents, our teachers, our press, our religious leaders our politicians or presidents?
Stories that have left us cynical and jaded, spiritually starved and culturally catatonic?
Stories that have nothing to do with who we are and what’s going on all around us?
But now, what if there is something beyond the cave wall shadows of their culture, beyond the limited bounds of their story world?
What if there’s a way to unchain ourselves, unshack our shackles, and directly experience it?