The Fantasy of $700

We are moist machines – emotional minerals that move about.

If being raised fundamentalist charismatic has taught me nothing else, it is that one has the ability to create an internal emotional state that has no actual external cause. I did actually feel the “presence of God” in those Praise and Worship services, not because God was actually present (technically, I believed that God was always “present,” still do, if in a different way), but because I endowed the service with emotional potency. I can recreate that feeling of “the presence” at any time now, if I can focus my mind on it, without attributing that feeling to anything other than the wish to feel it. The praise and worship service is just an “icon,” if we use the Orthodox Church’s metaphor, a “single-point” if we use a Buddhist metaphor. Perhaps we are graced with an encounter of some mystical state outside of the realm of external senses; perhaps we tap into some internal mystical state that anyone can reach with the right amount of desire and focus. We can’t really know. A small electrical shock to the right part of the brain can be indistinguishable from an experience of falling from a tall building, and that’s only playing with the mechanics of the machine. Who knows what a powerful, if undetected, ghost is capable of? I have spent too much of my life in fantasy. Not the good kind, where one learns, but the other kind that merely distracts. I have endowed all of my fantasies with a potency that is quite beyond the grasp of mere reality. The She, God, the Cottage, Life without the Burden of Another Man’s Watch – all of these, possible or impossible, are just emotional fantasies to sink into when the drabness of mere reality overwhelms. I overslept today. I was supposed to wake up at 6, shower and find a job. I need to raise at least $700 dollars by the end of April. Will it be possible? Yes. Will it be easy? No. And so I sit here typing, knowing full well that what I am doing is something that should be done, but should have been done around 6 hours ago. The problem arises from knowing that what I crave is not material but emotional. I don’t really want my own place. I don’t even really want my cottage, my she, my god. I want the emotional experience that my fantasy of these things give me, and if I can find that with a little desire and focusing of the mind, why bother with the hard work of attaining the mere fact when it will be a shabby bit of rubbish compared to the fantasy of it? Why? Because no one wants joy to be a fraud. According to St. Anselm, God is “something greater than which cannot be thought.” But if I have emotion that wells up from focusing on the greatest thought, what need do I have of God? The problem arises from the fact that I am not able to concede that God is nothing more than the emotion that arises from contemplating “something greater than which cannot be thought.” Why? That is the second part of Anselm’s proof: “that which exists is greater than that which does not exist.” That, of course, is my problem with the ontological argument. Why is that which exists greater than that which does not exist? In my experience, that which does not exist is often greater than that which does exist. But. But I always hope that that which does not exist will someday prove to exist. We can’t help it. For some reason, we value that which does exist greater than we value that which does not exist. Would I gain that emotional high from contemplating my Cottage, my She, my God, if I thought it impossible for them to exist? No. I wouldn’t. The fantasy has no power if we don’t think that it is, in some way, possible. Unfortunately, my fantasy of personal damnation has just as much data as my fantasy of universal salvation – none, and both have great emotional potency. Honestly though, in reality, I’ve chosen this moment to worry about it to avoid worrying about $700. If I had the $700 in hand at the moment, I’d be playing Super Mario 64. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. I’m collecting data from the “sixth” sense – the mind. Fuck it. Into Your hands I commit my immortal soul. My ass is going out to find a job. Existence exists without permission. On this plane of existence, God helps those who help themselves. Fantasy is for those with enough savings in the bank to sit around and worry.