Socrates sat up upon his bed, and began to bend his leg as he rubbed it with his hand. As he rubbed his leg, he said the following. “How strange it seems to be, men, this thing human beings call pleasure, in that it naturally grows in the direction of its apparent opposite, pain. Yet, the two don’t want to be present at the same time in a human being: whenever someone pursues and takes one, they are always required to take the other as well. It’s as if both, though two, are bound together from one head. It seems to me…that if Aesop had noticed this, he would have put together a story like this: The god, in being unable to make the two enemies friendly with each other, attached both of their heads to the same thing. This is why, when one is produced in a human being, the other will shortly follow, like what is happening to me now: there appeared to be pain in my leg from the shackles, and now pleasure, following from behind, appears to have arrived.”
Plato, Phaedo, 59e
Natural Pain and Pleasure
Pain and pleasure are natural experiences on this planet. They are here as messengers or guides. They were messaging systems before instant messaging and they will continue to be messaging systems after. Without them, we wouldn’t survive, as we would overstress our bodies, even destroying them. We wouldn’t feel the pain of knife, and we wouldn’t know when to stop eating. So, when pain or pleasure show up in our consciousness, we are experiencing a message regarding imbalance. Usually, we prefer pleasure, as it is a sign that we should continue doing something. However, it is important to notice that pleasure and pain are not attached to or located within anything outside of you. For example, you can experience pleasure resting after a hard work out in the gym. However, if you kept resting for days on end, that pleasure would quickly turn into some form of pain. Pain and pleasure are simply messages for you. They are not the things outside of you. Money doesn’t have pleasure. Sex doesn’t have pleasure. Food doesn’t have pleasure. You can experience a message of pleasure – indicating clearly that something is good for you right now. But an oracular mind, connected to the body in a natural way, will know when to stop an activity before it turns to pain. That is why some people are able to regulate their eating more effectively than others, and why some people can drink moderately without fear of excess. Addiction is always an indication of an imbalance that is located in a disconnection from our natural oracular mind and body.
In our natural state, as we are, as long as we have bodies, we are always experiencing pleasure and pain at every moment. Our consciousness however is not overburdened with all these experiences. We are only notified when there is something that needs to be brought to our attention, like when we notice that our hand pulls away from the fire, or that we are no longer hungry and should stop eating. We are made to be acutely aware of these mild forms of discomfort or pain, and our body responds before we mentally process that pain. You just know when you are no longer hungry. You don’t need to justify it, analyze it, or defend your decision to stop eating. Pain and pleasure are always being regulated naturally through our body and we can respond to both without having to think about it. The optimal state for the human being is to be in this state of balance and neutrality. That balance and neutrality is what prevents us from falling into extreme states of pain and pleasure, both of which are extremely deadly to the human equilibrium.\
Synthetic Manipulation
Unfortunately, most of the human beings on the planet have not been in a state of equilibrium. Instead, most of the planet has been in a state of some form of addiction, either to substances, ideas, habits, modes of thought, or certain activities. Most addictions have been normalized to the extent that people regard believe them to be natural behaviors, like spending too much time on the internet, consuming too much data and information, watching too much television or listening to too much music. All addictions are related to obsessive compulsive behaviors that distract us from our internal messaging and guidance system. We no longer feel organic messages of pain and pleasure. Instead, we live inside of what I call Synthetic Pain and Pleasure systems that are completely unrelated to our body, our planet, and our true nature.
These synthetic systems are intentional manipulation. They serve two main purposes. The first purpose is to remove or weaken your natural ability to self-regulate as an autonomous being on planet earth. The second person is to control you through addiction and obsession or distraction. In this Synthetic environment, the intention is to make you fearful of pain, and addicted to pleasure. Notice that excessive pleasure always leads to pain. The end result is that you feel pain most of the time. This is why the addict seeks more and more pleasure. The pleasure turns to pain, so they seek more of the pleasure. This is a cycle of abuse that has been perpetrated against the humans of planet earth.
Synthetic Pain
Let’s take a deeper look at Synthetic Pain. Synthetic Pain is based on a recurring and persistent understanding of who we are and what the world is. Synthetic pain is rooted in a very comprehensive Synthetic World inside which the mind lives and believes it cannot live without. The mind inside of a Synthetic World sees its own pain as being essential to that world, through characters, stories, and justifications. It’s no different from being inside of a dream world from which, while you are in the dream, you cannot awaken. This is why the news on TV has always been filled with darkness and despair. Bad news sells only in a world that sees its essence as being one of Pain. The news becomes something we relate to. Happy news, in contrast, doesn’t sell in a society that doesn’t relate to happiness and joy.
In this strange Synthetic World, the victim, which is you, sees the pain as being caused outside of yourself. This projection and externalization results in the creation of even more pain, because the perceived causes become triggers of pain, and so objects of fear, hate, avoidance, and even shame.
Consider how many people suffer from various forms of pain and trauma that do not heal: a heart break that will not subside after many years, fear that never seems to subside, or a deep sadness that never gives up its assertion that all is lost. With Synthetic pain, unlike natural pain, we tend to justify the pain through mental arguments, justifications, and self defense mechanisms. These behaviors mental states are not a result to natural experiences of pain. With Synthetic Pain, we are attached in various ways to the experience of that pain. We are addicted to the pain, and the pleasures that might arise from it. There is a part of us – usually within the subconscious – that doesn’t want to let go of them at all, and that is why we don’t let them go. Experts tell us that these are a result of a certain situation or event in our past, and so they help us to create even more powerful stories around pain, cementing their reality in our consciousness. This is completely unproductive and harmful, as it prevents us from dismantling what is essentially a Synthetic universe constructed out of pain and misery.
Synthetic Pleasure
Unlike natural pain and pleasure messages that indicate imbalance and balancing processes in the natural organic body, Synthetic Pleasure, like Synthetic Pain, is a structure inside the Synthetic Universe. It is actually, in essence, the same thing as the Synthetic Pain, just the other side of the coin. Pleasures are usually located in things, people, events, or experiences, all of which are seen to be located outside the self. Synthetic Pleasure is something we think we need to have more of in order to help us deal with the painful Synthetic reality we find ourselves in. You can see the conundrum. By chasing the Synthetic pleasures, we prevent ourselves from seeing that the entire Structure of our pain is Synthetic in the first place. These pleasure never heal our pain, but only demand that we expend more and more of our energy into finding them, attaining them, and keeping ourselves filled with them. Synthetic pleasures seem to solve our experience of of Synthetic Pain for a while. These however are always temporary. It doesn’t matter whether you name these pleasant experiences as being love, happiness, joy, etc. Their ephemeral nature is enough to demonstrate that they are not an experience of true love.
Synthetic Shame
Shame and fear is the results of this Pain/Pleasure Synthetic structure. The reason for this is that, deep down, we have an inner knowing that our life and our way of living is not real and cannot be sustained. Your soul, which still retains its connection to the natural body and planet, is still trying, with the physical body and by means of it, to reach you. It is still trying to tell you that you are out of balance. It will not stop doing that. Unfortunately, the Synthetic Structure has within it, the ability to block these messages, or to create some sort of fear around them. This works to provoke fear, shame and guilt. The reason is that the Synthetic World has become your LIFE, and as a result, any threat to it is shown to be a threat to your very existence. That is the lie, and that is what keeps everything stacked against you. What you believe to be your life is actually draining your life, and is death. What is truly your life, you are ignoring, shutting out, and blocking. You are led to fear your inner being, your inner messaging system. You are sometimes even lead to feel shame around it, because it is contrary to the Synthetic World that you have created and have convinced others you are a part of.
The Synthetic World
Ultimately, the Synthetic World you inhabit does not only include yourself. The people in your life when you are immersed in a Synthetic World also are bound to that world, in addition to their own. You have created through it, people who support your pleasure/pain addictions in that world. They are there to remind you of your false stories about yourself, your false understandings about who you are and what the world is, and what you are capable of. They are there, these participants in your dream, to keep you away from your true and natural guidance and messaging system.
The Synthetic World is a structure that is interrelated to the Synthetic Worlds of others. They overlap and join together, supporting each other. It can get very complex to unravel these worlds, and there are many challenges that we face when we want to evolve in harmony with our own true nature, and the nature of the earth, and our soul. These worlds begin locally with the individual and extend out into the family, the community, the nation, the world and beyond. We are truly intergalactic beings, but our Synthetic absorption prevents us from experiencing the true magic and connection we have to the universe and beyond.
Soul in the machine 