The other day I posted on Facebook what I thought was a funny observation from my wife about a mutual acquaintance. I wrote:
Carol says, “You know, she better hope this New Age movement never ends, or that’s it for her. You can be really dumb and people think you’re really deep.”
And we laugh and laugh and laugh… and then cry.
Innocuous enough, right? Kinda cute. Kinda true. Most of us know the type she’s referring to. And apparently, most of us are the type she’s referring to because every comment came in defense of the dumb, one person going so far as to say that we are all both dumb and deep.
Couldn’t they just… you know… have a laugh?
Well, no. Not if it was at their expense. Not if it cut close to the bone. Not if they thought this song was about them, about them, didn’t they, didn’t they?
And this is why they cannot afford to laugh. Laughing is a judgment. A judgment against themselves. And laughing at themselves would take the kind of self awareness they tend to block out to believe in the nonsense that temporarily alleviates their pain in the first place. These are the people most likely to claim that life is a learning experience and so they are “open to anything.” They claim to be nonjudgmental. Laughter requires judgment. Talking about how much they enjoy humor doesn’t and they do that all the time. Some of the least funny people on the planet have told me how much they love to laugh right before seriously reading their fortunes in angel cards.
Learning implies growth. Expansion. That’s where the “open to anything” comes in handy. But it also requires discernment. Judgments. The ability to decipher correct from incorrect information. Defending dummies because we’re all stupid and smart, shallow and deep, is defending your lack of change in a world you claim to be an ever-evolving learning experience.
Is acquiring knowledge without the ability to either apply it or stop applying it when it doesn’t work learning? Isn’t that what Google Search is for? How did spiritual search become synonymous in depth with a search engine? Isn’t that exactly the frame of mind con artists need you to be in?
In our quest to escape thought, to find that transcendent mind or self or god we are told is higher, some of us become mere idea collectors. We believe in the idea of the red pill/blue pill dichotomy. When someone comes along and points out they’re both sugar pills, the pill poppers say, “Don’t judge me.”
Everyone needs their fix. Everyone needs their reality to be true. Don’t judge. Don’t discern. Just do everything in the hopes of achieving No-Thing.
And funny enough, what they achieve is nothing. But don’t tell them that; they won’t find it funny, and besides, you shouldn’t be talking in the library. They’re busy studying. You’re throwing off their concentration.
This has been a lesson about Trickster.