What the US election tells us about the lack of awareness we live in – and how it all relates to information security.

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By Eh’den Biber

To understand the core of the problem of , we need to understand that we are like an iceberg – a majority of what makes us feel, walk, talk, drive, write , see, breath – is under the surface. Most of us don’t notice the fact we are constantly breathing – and yes, you only noticed it right now, and you will admit it if you were honest. What you consider as “you” don’t actually do anything conscious when you walk-and-snapchat-hopefully-not-your-penis, and not in the form of an ASCII art (you welcome, people-who-had-commodore-64). Let’s move on 🙂

The point of the matter is that what we associ`ate ourselves as “me” – that thing which is now speaking and makes comments in your head, you know, “that thing” – is not you even what you experience right now.

Derren Brown, a brilliant magician, illusionist and a very smart guy published a book last week called “happy”. It is a book a practical philosophy type of book about the meaning of happiness. It is a great book, get it.

In the first chapter, he describes what we consider as what we experience right now as
“…neat narratives that allow us to arrange complicated reality into a satisfying and tidy parcel, and move on with our lives. Without them in place, we would see only a mess of details. If we were unable to form meaningful patterns, our lives would become overwhelmed.”

If you want to know more about this thing, read Derren’s new book. Or if you want a kinder, funnier edition grab the book “The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself” by Michel Zinger. Or if you are into slow speaking philosophers with sometimes non-understandable English, hook into Osho. Or, if you’re trying to blow your mind away listen to Terence McKenna.

Or don’t. Most likely, you don’t.

Most people, so it seems, are very happy being who they are. As Oscar Wilde said: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, or else they will kill you”. The subconscious is a big, scary thing to most people, and most people would be scared shit to know they run by powers they have little control or influence on. Similar to icebergs which only 10% of their size is above the water (You welcome, Titanic), your brain is mostly unconscious, with one research showing 7 seconds delay between the time your brain “made up” its mind and the time you realise it. Seven seconds of unconscious thinking, decision making, which you have no clue of, which is controlled by a subconscious mind.

The States of America has chosen via the wisdom of the crowd to have two people who like the truth as much as they like transparency to represent them for the upcoming election. One is doing it most likely because he is trying to compensate on his lack of erection and the other is trying to compensate her husband over-excited sense of erection. These two very-unworthy-people-to-become-president were chosen to represent people who seems to be utterly blind to the fact they could have prevented it – because IT IS A FREAKING DEMOCRACY.

This state of utter lack of awareness to the nature of the system is not surprising. It is easy to and make fun of Americans because they have raised the level of fake-ness into a form of art (AKA Hollywood and Netflix). However, quest for truth was never “the thing” in human civilisations. As John Taylor Gato wrote in “the underground of American education” there were only two occasions in which freedom of individuals was driving society: Athene golden era, and the early days of the united states of America.

There is always a burst of quest for awareness: take for example the Falun Dafa, AKA Falun Gong in , or the drug culture and civil rights movements of the 60s and early 70s in the US and in Europe. When they occur, the authorities do everything they can to cut it, and cut it fast.

The reason why society fears this burst of awareness is because our societies are built on elements of enslavement. Sure, the enslavement we experience in the west do not come close to the enslavement of the people in , or sadly, the state of freedom in most of the countries who represent the (UN). But still, even here in the west, people are not allowed full control on their future. let me explain why:

At the end of the day, there is only ONE freedom that truly counts – it is an inner freedom. When one is experiencing inner freedom, nothing can break it. Nothing. If nothing can break you, you can move the people in power when you don’t like them. As you can see in the current  in the US, that is not happening, because people have no sense of awareness. Ladies and Gentlemen – this is not a simple correlation – it is a rare causation.

So how can we change it? Obviously not how we try to do it, and obviously not by those who supposed to be responsible of it.

Take for example of , group of people who are the main beneficiary of the organisation they lead (AKA – “the board”) are being scrutinised because of security incidents that are caused by cyber-attacks. These people realise the situation is not good, and that the cause to it is their , who seems to be illiterate.

The problem starts when they try to the bloody peasants (or infosec infidels), which usually ends up going nowhere.

It doesn’t go anywhere because in the case of information security a true change requires to make people perform information security related decisions in their unconscious – like driving, or dancing, or snapchatting … ok we already covered that. But the subconscious is already full of the story one has about himself/herself/themselves.

Again, another beautiful quote from Derren Brown book:

We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves. 

Awareness is about moving away from our story, our “me”, in order to give space to wisdom. When the story subsides, wisdom arise. The problem is that the subconscious is untamed by you, and to clean it up is PAINFUL. Do you know how hurt it is to let go of what makes “me” happy, and what makes “me” suffer? A lot. How much? Let me give you a glimpse of my paths (bless all of them) who created a magnificent story: I had to sit down next to our third child, my daughter, and see her die in front of my eyes – that after we lost our second son on the day of my sister wedding. The pain of letting go of that child was horrible, the pain of kissing my daughter forehead and leave her so she could die was HUGE. And still that pain was NOTHING compared to letting go of that story in order to let space be part of me. That story constructed me, I was that story. To let go of everything I used to associate with felt as if I was being torn apart from the inside. That inner sensation, that letting go of the story of myself, was the most painful experience I ever had. It knocked this thing I called “me” down, and I can assure you, most people don’t dare to go as far as I did. Not  nor emotional pain (I had both bless the one), none of them came even close to untangling my subconscious. It is a death experience, and since most humans are driven by fear of death awareness brings up resistance which ends up with suffering (or he’ll, depends when you resist).

What allowed me go via this process? Love, compassion, kindness, happiness, stillness”, which are the gifts of experiences that my teacher given me by being them. These gifts led to a state of gratitude, and peace. They allowed the true “I” to be experienced. My false sense of self took a leap of faith into the abyss, to do the counter intuitive act of “dying” so the true “I” can experience itself. I’m aware this all sounds weird and strange if you truly believe in your story, but that is why awareness is ungrasped and unquantifiable by the mind.

This is the nature of awareness: If you want one, you’re not going to experience it. You become one by letting go of all wants and needs, of letting go of your story.

Next time you hear about information , or when you watch the candidates to the US presidency and think to yourself , realise that unless you will choose to experience an inner space of awareness, you will continue to experience a “reality” in which you let a blind people tell you what light looks like.

Break the Iceberg, discover that you are the endless sea.

Namaste

Eh’den

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