I started the story in the same way that I always do – in a manner that was both precise and yet vague; a manner that was poignant, edgy and yet at the same time utterly meaningless. ‘Start writing the important story,’ my brain told me crossly, and I scurried to obey. That’s all we can ever do, isn’t it? Scurry frantically to obey the orders that the thinking mind is always giving us. That’s the conditioned life for you in a nutshell – one order after another after another until – finally – we die. We’re hoping for a pat on the head, you see – we’re always hoping for a pat on the head.

I was an ego, I was a self. ‘Do the ego type stuff’, my mind ordered me imperiously, ‘act like a self, and make it convincing!’ That’s how it all began, that’s how it always begins. ‘Be a self’, I told myself, ‘be an ego!’ Some people are criminals and some people aren’t. That’s how it works, you see. I used to be a criminal but then I got caught. I was hauled in front of the magistrate. protesting my innocence loudly. Criminals always protest their innocence loudly when they get caught. All the ones I know do, anyway. It’s on the first page of the Criminal’s Handbook. It’s the first thing you learn. And then – when you’re hauled up in front of the magistrate – you have to protest it all the more. You just have to sound reasonably sincere about it, which is easy enough to learn once you’ve been through it a few times.

I watched this YouTube video last night about a guy who became enlightened by accident. He was just minding his own business, being a good little ego, being a good little self, when all of a sudden his brain got zapped by some cosmic energy (or whatever) and he became spontaneously enlightened. Just like that, he became the Eye that never Closes, he became the Eternal One, the Ancient of Days. Just like that, he became the Pocket Buddha, the Once and Future Messiah. He wasn’t like most people you see; most people become enlightened on purpose, by design, because they want to, and after putting an awful lot of hard work into it too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of dedication and hard work it requires. To just be making yourself a cup of tea or a sandwich or whatever it might be and then – all of a sudden – experience Ultimate Illumination is very unusual. That’s not the usual way it happens at all.

None of that is actually true, of course. I never watched the video – I couldn’t be bothered, to be honest. I just couldn’t be arsed. I’m more interested in those videos that show people making stupid mistakes so that everyone gets to laugh at them. You know the sort of thing – somebody goes to pat a dog but the dog bites the shit out of them, someone goes to jump into a pool but they’re clinically obese and they cause a tidal wave that washes everyone away. Or someone goes to take the piss out of the King’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace and they get slapped in the head for their pains and knocked out cold on the ground. That sort of thing. ‘Idiots at play’ sort of thing, providing richly succulent humour for the rest of us. There’s absolutely no way I could be bothered to watch a video about a person who somehow happens to become enlightened just by accident. I just made it up that I did.

My life’s a mess really. It’s a hell of a mess, in fact. It’s a fuckup pure and simple. I don’t like to think about it, I don’t like to focus on it. I tell so many lies that I can’t remember what is the lie, and what isn’t. I end up contradicting myself in everything I say. I’m my own worst enemy, as they say. I give myself a real hard time on a regular basis. I never let up on myself, I never give myself a break. And there’s a part of me watching on as I do so, in absolute disgust at the mess I’ve managed to make of it all. Dismay and disgust. Not to mention a fair size helping of utter horror. And dread. And other feelings too, feelings that I’m not too clear about. Feelings that I might possibly be the Future Messiah – the Future Messiah who – for whatever reason – just can’t seem to get his shit together.

Image credit – Am I dumb? r/Destiny2, on Reddit.com