"No suffering...absolutely no suffering; I will protect you. I will protect you...from suffering".
It is so easy to do harm to others, so easy. We must be extremely careful, all the time. We must put great care into everything we think, say and do. Existence is suffering, and to exist is to cause suffering to others as well, even without meaning to. I find that looking at very cute pictures, like a cartoon penguin in a bow tie, to be a very useful tool. I am hyperphantasic*; if I imagine every other living thing to be a cute cartoon penguin in a bow tie, then the urgency towards the abolition of suffering and it's achievement is then felt far more viscerally to me. It has overwhelmed me and brought me to tears. Cute things really make me very emotional; sometimes I well up and feel on the brink of tears. Tears of joy or tears of remorse? It could even be both. A mixture of: 1) wanting to care and protect that which is cute (which, when using one's power of imagination and visualisation, can be everything), 2) what happens to it or them if I don’t, 3) how there is so much suffering felt and caused by people who were once children too, and 4) remorse over my own actions and for hurting others, as well as hurting myself.
The imagination is written off as fanciful sometimes (or most of the time, actually), a folly that should not be indulged in too seriously, like juvenilia, when it is actually a very powerful tool for altering one's own consciousness with. The "cute penguin visualisation" exercise is so simple; it is such an easy little exercise, and yet it inspires me to become a better person by trying to minimise my "footprint of suffering" that every person leaves behind in not only the living beings around them, but themselves too. What one does NOT do is just as important as what one DOES do. Not consuming drugs can be just as important to oneself (and the people around one, for drugs pose such a threat to one's mental health that other people are at risk if a drug taker has, say, a psychotic break) as eating the healthiest food. Not hurting others (or yourself) is just as important as actually doing good deeds (some people have done both, using those good deeds as a cover-up, or distraction). There is nothing more urgent than the deliverance of all living things from suffering...
"...and may I be forgiven for hurting so many people before. It was not my intention; I will try harder, until the day I die. I do not want to die, though."
I wonder, is there a word in the English language that describes getting teary-eyed when faced with something really cute and sweet like what I described above? A feeling, almost like a broken-heartedness, very much like one actually, as if watching something cute just instantly reminds oneself of all the moments throughout one's own past and life involving incidents when others were hurt by one's own hand, even if they were all accidental. This then escalates to the point of nearly getting down on your knees, clasping your hands, with head tilted upwards, saying and crying out, "Sorry!" to the universe, "Sorry! Please forgive me, I didn't mean it, I'm sorry..."
If there actually is such a word (a word I have obviously missed all this time!), then I imagine it to be like many of the obscure terms and conditions as described on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows YouTube channel.
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Another really interesting way to alter consciousness is to cultivate feelings and empathy for inanimate objects. I have rice puddings and white chocolate mousses in nearly identical-looking pots. I went in, getting what I thought was a white chocolate mousse, and then ripped off the seal to discover that it was a rice pudding! Oh no, I thought! But then I started to feel bad for rejecting it, like it was a living thing, or a cute living thing to be specific; as if it was a cute animal looking at me with pleading eyes that said, “please eat me!”. I cultivated this interesting feeling, until it became too much to bear, so I saved it for later. To cultivate feelings for inanimate objects as if they were sensitive, living things could motivate one to practice on musical instruments that most people neglect, to play records that would otherwise gather dust, to read books that are 'desperate' to be opened up and read, or even to clean one's own room if one thinks that a clean room is a happy room, but a messy one is a sad one. That is motivation enough for ultra-sensitive personalities such as myself to help reduce one's footprint of suffering.
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The Abolition of Suffering: level 1 - suffering is abolished throughout the entire living world on Earth; level 2 - suffering is abolished throughout our Solar System; level 3 - suffering is abolished throughout the Milky Way galaxy; level 4 - suffering is abolished throughout the Local Group galaxy group; level 5 - suffering is abolished throughout the Local Supercluster; level 6 - suffering is abolished throughout the entire Universe; level 7 - suffering is abolished throughout the entirety of the Universe’s past; level 8 - suffering is abolished throughout the entire Multiverse; level 9 - suffering is abolished throughout all historical pasts in every other Universe in the Multiverse; level 10 - using quantum archaeology, every living being that ever lived/lived and died in the Universe across the entirety of its timeline is resurrected into Heavenly Bliss with all other beings; level 11 - using quantum archaeology, every living being that ever lived/lived and died in the Multiverse across the entirety of ALL timelines in EVERY universe is resurrected into Heavenly Bliss with all other beings; level 12 - entropy is halted and reversed everywhere; (level 13/0 - begin the cycle again for fun, novelty, adventure).
"Avantgarde Thought of the Day: I must use technological, scientific, philosophical and even mystical and esoteric means to transcend myself into a god so that I can abolish all involuntary suffering everywhere, both in the past and the future, for all time - or should I say, "for all time"! I must try and achieve this on my own, as all other humans will just be liabilities that could irreparably compromise the success of the mission along every step of the way." ~ extract from my personal 'imagination' diary
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How can suffering be abolished across infinity? How can suffering be abolished across all infinities; infinite infinities? Quantum Archaeology was the most "far out" hypothetical technology in my head for a long time (resurrecting long dead beings; the Afterlife is simply the Far Future, a paradisiacal cosmic apotheosis?). But there could be an even crazier technology waiting to be developed after Quantum Archaeology; Trans-Paradoxical technology. Trans-Paradoxical technology could be used by intelligent life (our descendants) to abolish suffering across not only infinity, but across infinite infinities too. Infinities both large and small. To us, that is paradoxical, so it's impossible. Trans-Paradoxical technology could permit it though. Try and imagine a living being creating itself, giving birth to itself out of a vacuum of not-being. We cannot do this, because creating, building yourself/giving birth to yourself is impossible because it is paradoxical. Trans-Paradoxical technology, however, could permit this also. Resolving paradoxes and sailing across infinities like a ship on water...
Trigger Warning! The following paragraph was written in response to a video circulating around on Facebook of both a frog and a mouse walking into the maw of a Venus fly trap: I am a human being. Obviously I am not post-human...yet, because maybe I will live long enough to become a post-human. If I do, I will go back in time and rescue both this mouse and this frog. Shame on the camera-people for simply filming it and letting it happen. End all involuntary suffering...even in the past. Invent technology that can break temporal paradoxes so that we can abolish suffering that happened even in the past. Some people can tolerate the saying "go vegan!". But when you start talking about wildlife suffering, people get very defensive..."THAT'S JUST NATURE!!!". The abolition of wildlife suffering is a taboo; wanting to use technology (alot of which hasn't even been invented yet) to retrofit the ecosystem so that all of nature effectively "goes vegan" is a taboo. But I don't care. I'm proud to be able to even consider such ideas without working myself up into a fluster of cognitive dissonance. I actually support the idea. There, I've written it. I don't need to keep watching videos of slaughterhouses and factory farms. This video single-handedly re-inspires my passion for the abolition of involuntary suffering through future technology...and this is just with nature; not a machine or artificial torture device in sight. Nature all by herself causes quite enough suffering to deal with, and that is before the addition of that caused by the hands of men and the countless instruments of horror that those hands also operate...
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*Hyperphantasia: “Some humans, like artists, writers, creatively-inclined characters, are designed to be a kind of experiential probe, where they are engineered to have a condition called ‘hyperphantasia’; this is where people are equipped with multiple internal dialogues and vivid imaginations more rich and detailed than what most normal folk have. They are assigned here to live out their lives, where their senses and thoughts stimulate their hyperphantasia to the point where entire worlds are created one after the other, in parallel or mixed together. All of these fantasies and epic flights of imagination are transmitted and stored in a cosmic library somewhere, where those who built it can enjoy incredible and immersive environments sourced from these fertile imaginariums and never-before-experienced novelties. Further still, some of these beings even used these visions as bases and models for paradise-engineered worlds and the Eden-esque terraforming of planets.”
