If we examine human existence and divide it into different categories or levels of functionality, we see the following list of bodies or levels of functionality that encompasses all kinds of human activity:

1. The Physical Body

Our physical bodies are electro biochemical mechanisms, like every other life form. We metabolize other life forms into chemicals and electricity which we use to fuel our mechanisms and actions, same as every other life form. By ingesting a chemical such as a drug, our senses, our emotions, our thoughts, our points of view, our energies and our actions change. Through things that happen to our bodies and various chemical reactions whether through chemicals that are produced by our bodies such as adrenalin and oxytocin, or chemicals ingested from the environment everything that we think, feel and do shifts. We can affect this process through our choices to a large degree, through nutrition, medication and exercise for example, but not to an absolute degree. Sometimes our bodies do what they want, obeying no other part of us. We can control our physical body partially, not fully.

2. The Sensory Body

All of our seven bodies of functionality are interconnected and part of each other. All of our sensory organs, which are many more than just our eyes, ears, skin, noses and taste buds and include gag sensors, chrono sensors and much more are part of our physical bodies but the whole sensory or sensual body is much more than just sensors. Every sensor sends an electrical or chemical signal that pass through filters in the subconscious brain and emerge as new signals, altered according to the filters that we have installed according to our habits, experiences and belief systems, as well as variable filters operating according to conditions in our internal and external environment, such as emotions, thoughts, chemicals, messages from other sensors and our energetic conditions. Our perception of our senses is not the same as the reception from our sensors. Drugs, moods, physical condition, attention, belief of reality, posture and position of the body, energetic levels, thoughts, all alter our perception of our senses and in turn affect our physical, emotional, cognitive, philosophical, energetic and symbolic bodies. When we are having sex for example, our pain thresholds rise exponentially same as when our attention is captivated by something interesting from another part of our existence. We can affect our sense perception through our choices to a large degree, but not to an absolute degree. Sometimes our senses dominate everything; our whole reality can become pain or nausea, for example, uninfluenced by anything else. We can control our sensory body partially, not fully.

3. The Emotional Body

Our emotions and our feelings are obviously affected by the sensations in our bodies and the chemicals running through it, as anyone that has ever indulged in drugs or alcohol would readily testify. But they are also affected by our perceptions of reality at the moment, the energies pervading our bodies and the energies of the people around us, as well as the thoughts that cross our minds and the symbolic actions around us. At the same time, our emotional states affect not only the whole of our existence but also each and every one of our layers of functionality, the layers at which we experience life and operate within it, act and react. Feeling devastated by the betrayal of a loved one may change our whole philosophical approach to relationship, for example, create angry energy and cause the production of hormones, endorphins and other substances as well as lead us to enact symbolic gestures of even life altering proportions. We can affect the state of our emotional bodies through positive thinking, smiling, dancing, growling and many other symbolic actions as well as with meditation, medication, energy work, yoga and a multitude of other ways partially, but never fully. Many times our emotions take us over and make us act irrationally and often self destructively. We cannot fully control them in every occasion, same as with our physical and sensory bodies. We can control our emotional body partially, not fully.

4. The Cognitive Body

Well, if you are human, and you must be to be reading this book, you know full well how your thoughts affect every part of your existence, making you sick, angry, sad, and weak and put you into any possible kind of state. They can also divert or focus your attention and they can shift your energy in milliseconds. And although we can direct our thought processes to a large degree through our choice, medication, meditation, enforcement of beliefs and changes in any and all of the other layers of functionality including our senses and symbolic actions such as putting music or a film on or having a massage or a workout, we are often swamped by involuntary thoughts. We can influence and control our cognitive or intellectual bodies partially, not fully, same with all the above layers. We can control our cognitive body partially, not fully.

5. The Energetic Body

Since we are all electro biochemical mechanisms we have an electrical field produced by the chemical reactions in our bodies. This is measurable scientifically and lots of medical tests work through this principle, but also measured experientially, through processes and practices that are the basis for many eastern practices such as acupuncture, Chinese medicine, reiki, craniosacral, acupressure, shiatsu and other massage techniques, shamanic illuminations and a multitude of other practices, traditional or contemporary from around the world. In these cases our energy fields are called the aura, the meridian system, the wiracocha and many other concepts. Moods, lies, physical ailments and sensations can be detected scientifically and experientially through our energetic bodies and many therapies both mild and extreme such as electroshock successfully affect every other body of functionality and even define their reaction and state of being individually and collectively, often fully defining our whole experience as human beings.

We can affect our energetic bodies to a large degree through all the processes mentioned for the other layers and more, but not always and not fully. Sometimes things happen and our energy changes and there is nothing we can do to change it back, nothing seems to help. We sometimes just wake up in some kind of energy, or are affected by a thought or an event or even just being in a place of particular energy and no kind of intervention can change it until it passes gradually. We can control our energetic body partially, not fully.

6. The Philosophical Body

Our philosophical body is the network of beliefs that are engraved in our conscious and our subconscious minds as well as our chosen points of view, our chosen perception points, the angle at which we look at the world around us and inside us. If we believe that we are sick we can get ourselves sick, for example, and science recognizes this fully by having obligatory placebo tests for any medicine; our beliefs can impair or enhance our physical behavior and capabilities as well illustrated in every sports activity and movies. Our beliefs also influence our senses, often in a simple manner: if you believe an injection is going to hurt you tense your muscles and sensitize your nerves so it hurts more, thus verifying your belief. As for our capabilities, Henry Ford said: “If you think you can and if you think you cannot, you are right!”, because if you think you can you will keep trying until you succeed whereas if you think you cannot you will never even try or give up very easily, therefore in both cases you will prove yourself right. The men who get the most impressive girls, for example, are the ones who do not think they are out of their league. The philosophical defines our thoughts, our physical condition and our sensory perception, our energy and our emotions. The automatic emotions of a Moroccan, a Sicilian or anybody else from a culture with a belief system that adultery offends their masculinity, their family or god at their wife confessing she cheated on them would be totally different to a Scandinavian or any culture where such beliefs do not exist or are moderate. Our philosophical is a permanent filter to everything else and although parts of it can be affected by other layers there are parts of it that can only be influenced temporarily and superficially. There are unconscious beliefs that are so deeply engraved that they are for all intents and purposes untouchable. In contrast to this, our belief system and our chosen point of view define the other layers more effectively than any other, at times creating our whole realities on a permanent rather than a transient manner.

But here comes the interesting part. We can affect our belief system fully, not partially, by simple choice. Our beliefs are changeable by choice and persistence; we all have the option to systematically brainwash ourselves through repetition, perseverance, strong stimuli and powerful and persistent symbolic actions. Beliefs deeply engraved in our subconscious since childhood can also be effectively changed over time. If, for example you believe that motorcycles are dangerous and are terrified every time you climb onto them, by repeatedly doing just that, buying a motorcycle, immersing yourself into an environment full of enthusiastic riders, riding a motorcycle every day and discovering moments of appreciation of the feeling of freedom that a motorcycle offers as well as the benefits of traffic jam avoidance, lower costs than a car and the ease of parking closer to your destination you will eventually be rid of the automatic fear and the sensations and feelings caused by your previous philosophical position. You can achieve a complete reversal of reality on every level of your being, not just your mind.

Similarly, if you were raised by parents and a social circle where sex out of wedlock or the necessity of a predefined career path you can by choice immerse yourself into an environment that totally rejects all of these values and choose to consistently, pervasively and repetitively act accordingly you will manage to engrave deeply different philosophical stances to the ones by which you had been living before on an automatic, subconscious level as well as a conscious one. Simply put, we can control our philosophical fully, given time and persistence.

7. The Symbolic Body

Our symbolic layer of functionality connects us and allows us to communicate with every other being around us and with every part of us. If we lay down and close our eyes we invite sleep and if we jump up and down dancing and tensing our muscles we provoke alertness and high energy levels. If we smile and laugh, we change our emotions and if we are doubled up and groaning we cause concern in others. The examples are endless, and through it we transmit and we receive over 99% of all transmissions and receptions both to the outside world and to our interior world. Only humans transmit and receive on any other spectrum other than the symbolic, through the use of language, whether spoken or written. The rest of the universe communicates on the symbolic, whether by volition or automatic reaction, whether habitual or instinctive. Among human communication, scientists report that over 97% is non-verbal and consists of symbolism through stance, appearance, expression, posture, energy, intonation and other symbols, and out of the 3% that is verbal, 97% is not directly transmitted through the actual words and their literal meaning but through the order and symbolisms of importance and symbols of priority, the words or phrases before and after, choice of syntax and specific words among various alternatives that mean almost the same thing and other symbolic transmissions woven into the message. In addition, the majority of words have no actual literal meaning that is not open to interpretation or different connotations. What are words anyway, other than symbols collectively agreed upon by groups of people to represent objects, conditions, actions etc.  As such, we use many different words to express the same concept, many of them with no explainable difference. The choice of which word to use, however, is also a message by itself, albeit discreet and impossible to pinpoint at times. The issue is, on most occasions we are not conscious of the symbolisms that we transmit to ourselves and to the world. We are surprised and astounded at how people perceive our behavior and our communication, and equally surprised at how we feel inside, unaware that we are the ones that are responsible for everything that we perceive and transmit. However, we can teach ourselves through repetition and consciousness to control our symbolism fully, not partially. We can choose our posture, expressions, language and the symbolism of our actions. It may take time and effort, same as with radical belief changes in the philosophical, but there is no limit to the control we can exert over our symbolic transmissions given practice and awareness as well as no limit to our understanding of the transmissions of others, whether conscious or subconscious. We can be improving constantly and be more and more in control of our symbolic world. Again, simply put, we can control our symbolic fully, given time and persistence.

Now, if we have seven layers of functionality completely interconnected, the state of each one of which influences and on some occasions completely defines the states of the others, and five of these states we have no clear or obvious way to control fully, and two of those we DO have ways of fully controlling, one thing appears as self-evident:

By defining the philosophical through choosing and systematically engraving appropriate to our purposes beliefs, and by choosing the symbolism we transmit accordingly so as to reinforce the new beliefs through our actions and vice versa we can actually fully control every single part of us and around us. We can fully control our bodies, improve our health, stamina, energy, open our hearts, choose our thoughts and emotions, connect with the world and much more. We can choose who we are and our whole realities, including the realities of people around us.

Each one of us can at last know who we are, simply by being the ones who fully choose who we are. Choice is our soul and we can exercise it to define ourselves, no longer by other people’s perceptions, decisions or circumstances, but by our own individual choice.

Choosing and systematically engrave beliefs that serve us becomes the steering wheel of our being; acting accordingly and harnessing symbolism becomes the gas pedal of our motion towards our next evolutionary stage: homo delectus, the choosing human, flying above our stage as homo sapiens, the thinking human.

Since this is supposed to be a step by step manual to homo delectus and happiness/enlightenment in the following chapters we will be exploring exactly, clearly, simply and intuitively how to go about it. Bear in mind though: this manual is about showing you a path, not changing you overnight. The path takes years because it takes months to change beliefs and habits of the mind, the heart and the body, same as it takes months to change any firmly engraved habit. But in the same manner as fighters tie one hand behind them and force themselves to train with their weakest hand in order to make themselves ambidextrous, choosing to have two equally strong hands instead of being right or left handed, we can choose to define every part of who we are if we exercise the same level of perseverance and determination. We need to stretch ourselves millimeter by millimeter same as in yoga becoming bigger and bigger a little bit at a time, resisting complacency and laziness through the power of our intention, changing habits of the mind and the emotions in a similar way that we need to change habits of the body.

By shifting our beliefs, we steer ourselves to the direction we want to take towards our destination, and by acting strongly accordingly, we press the gas pedal of our being to propel ourselves towards the who we choose to be, the how we want to feel and the life we want to live.

What is symbolism, our gas pedal that can propel us on our path to homo delectus, a human being of choice?

Symbolism is the language of the universe and every form of life. It is the main and in most cases only method of every communication available to living beings in order to receive, perceive and transmit information. Only humans communicate verbally, besides life forms such as parrots who mostly mimic and higher intelligences such as dolphins that have a very limited range of verbal communication. Symbolism is how creatures in the wild know which creatures is a predator, a danger or prey. It is also the way they receive information about the weather, another creature’s intention, forest fires and much more.

Even for humans, according to scientists over 97% of actual communication is non-verbal, and the 3% that is actual verbal communication, over 97% the meaning depends on the previous and subsequent words and diverging interpretations of words, since every word can hold multiple connotations.

We all know that words are not enough; when somebody tells you that they are very interested at what you are saying, but also constantly yawning, distracted and have a blank stare, the symbolism of their bodies contradicts their words in the most conclusive way! When somebody tells you that they love your cooking while having an expression of disgust, which piece of information do you actually believe? Posture, tone of voice, body language and other forms of symbolism determine our perceptions and our transmissions. There is the very well-known saying: “Actions speak Louder than words”, and you can promise to yourself or your partner that you will stop drinking and get a job, but if the very next morning you wake up in the afternoon with a massive hangover, which piece of information is reliable? Which is the true transmission?

Another common example  of how even in verbal communication are phrases such as “I appreciate your work but..”, “I love you but..”, “You are doing great but..” and all these buts mean: Please disregard completely the first part of my sentence which I am about to contradict! Symbolism is the language of the universe, the language of our subconscious and the language of our souls. And symbolism is an extremely powerful language, both when we are communicating with others and when we are communicating with ourselves. Symbolism is the ONLY form of communication between our conscious and subconscious minds and the ONLY form of communication between our conscious minds and the subconscious minds of others. Our appearance, our posture, our expressions, our mannerisms and the manner in which we act are the most reliable and valid information offered; our words mean little if anything at all and they are open to a labyrinthine web of different connotations and interpretations.

But symbolism also controls our physical bodies; we can make ourselves healthy, energetic and alert or indisposed, ill, tired and sleepy simply through our body language, and we can also create enthusiasm, courage and elation or grouchiness, dissatisfaction and misery, simply by our facial expressions. There are many Governmental and University research projects with massive amounts of data about this and you can find excellent information and references about this in the bestselling book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. But you know it already, because you experience it in you and in everyone around you.

There are many practices that use symbolism as their main tool, and a very prominent one, that found resurgent popularity during the last few decades, is Shamanism. Neoshamanism is very popular, especially in the growing New Age movement but has also been the subject of wide scientific interest and research, due to its reported effects and benefits. But what exactly is Shamanism? Does anybody know? Let us examine what kinds of definitions you can find if you google it, in order to gain a coherent definition.

Starting with Wikipedia, the open source online library, we find this exotic description: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism Shamanism (/ˈʃɑːmən/ SHAH-men or /ˈʃeɪmən/ SHAY-mən) is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.

Now this seems a little bit like mumbo jumbo, since nowhere is any coherent explanation of the “spirit world” to be found, or any info about what exactly these “transcendental energies” are, or how to channel them!

Next we find the aptly named site www.shamanism.com/what-is-shamanism: Shamanism is an ancient healing tradition and moreover, a way of life. It is a way to connect with nature and all of creation. The word shaman originates from the Tungus tribe in Siberia. Anthropologists coined this term and have used it to refer to the spiritual and ceremonial leaders among indigenous cultures worldwide. The word shamanism can be used to describe the ancient spiritual practices of these indigenous cultures. Clearly the countless similarities between various ancient traditions played a role in the continual generalization of the word. Over the past few decades the term “shamanism” has been popularized throughout the western world, especially in new-age circles. Today, it can be difficult to distinguish between traditional forms of shamanism and modernized, often esoteric practices that utilize the term. One could view shamanism as the universal spiritual wisdom inherent to all indigenous tribes. As all ancient spiritual practices are rooted in nature, shamanism is the method by which we as human beings can strengthen that natural connection.

Again, no word about how to go about it and what Shamanism actually is besides fuzzy platitudes that people pretend to understand! What exactly is the method through which we can “strengthen this natural connection”?

In the first article of  http://www.shamanism.org/ , the site of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Dr.Michael Harner PHd, an anthropologist and founder of the foundation explains: The word “shaman” in the original Tungus language refers to a person who makes journeys to nonordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness. Adopting the term in the West was useful because people didn’t know what it meant. Terms like “wizard,” “witch,” “sorcerer,” and “witch doctor” have their own connotations, ambiguities, and preconceptions associated with them. Although the term is from Siberia, the practice of shamanism existed on all inhabited continents. He also states that the practice of shamanism is a method, not a religion. It coexists with established religions in many cultures. He is contradicted by most dictionaries, including Cambridge, Merriam-Webster and freedictionary.com, which define shamanism as a religion characterized by belief in an unseen world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits responsive only to the shamans. It certainly sounds more and more as mumbo jumbo, doesn’t it?

Again, what kind of method is it, and how does it work, and in which way do shamans gain access to this unseen world of spirits?

Another Medical Anthropologist with a PHd, Dr. Alberto Villoldo, arguably the father of research into NeoShamanism, states through his personal site http://albertovilloldophd.com/what-is-a-shaman/ : For thousands of years,” shamanism” has been wrapped in a cloak of mystery and magic. Its practice entails an immense body of knowledge and spiritual practice passed down through the ages, on every continent around the world, grandfather to grandson … grandmother to granddaughter. The actual term, “shaman” refers to medicine men or women who are the healers, teachers and sages. It is an ancient spiritual and healing practice found throughout the Americas and all traditional cultures in the world – India, Tibet, Russian, Central Europe and practiced most actively today in the Americas. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that even 5,000 years ago, shamans walked this earth with no means of communication or connection with other medicine men or women on other continents, yet still they all practice very similar spiritual and healing traditions?

Shamanism is not a course but a life journey. It is a schooling which focuses on experience, not knowledge.” What normally happens when modern science asks, “What is a Shaman?” While modern science might be tempted to reject shamanism as archaic, primitive or unscientific, it is, in fact, a spiritual discipline that relies on the never-changing foundations of Nature and Energy. As a medicine man, the shaman operates between the worlds of matter and energy and, while these entities might not always be visible, they are indisputably the building blocks of all creation.

Once more, despite credible scientists promoting the value of Shamanism, there is no reference to what these “healing traditions” are based on, and apparently, after thousands of years, Shamanism is still very much “wrapped in a cloak of mystery and magic”. One more example of “the Emperor has no clothes” that pervades human knowledge where we all pretend that we understand things and nod to each other, lest we be considered ignorant or stupid!

Like every other piece of knowledge where we collectively agree to never understand or explain it, all it takes is a trust that there is nothing that cannot be explained with clarity to a five year old and the perseverance to figure it out.

Shamanism is not mumbo jumbo, and it actually works on many occasions based on simple, intuitive principles, the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, same as the placebo effect. Magic is science yet to be explored, so let us explore magic in a way that does not defy or confound science:

Our brains are our most complex organs, and comprised of many different parts, but both elementary science and shamanism divide it into three major parts, the fore brain, the mid brain and the hind brain (in shamanic traditions the human or higher brain, the mammal brain and the reptile or primitive brain accordingly). The fore brain contains the cerebral cortex, and includes the neo cortex and the pre neo cortex, enlarged in humans compared with other animals and responsible for higher thought, reasoning and decision making. The mid brain regulates sensory inputs and functionality in an automatic function and the hind brain regulates deeply engraved instincts, habits and the most basic of functions in a fully automatic, almost completely disconnected from our fore brain manner (all of the above is scientifically accurate, albeit simplified for the layman).

Our decision making brain, our conscious brain thinks, evaluates and communicates with words- our mid and hind brains do not think, they obey hard or soft wired instructions, are habitual rather than volitional and house our subconscious functionality, perceiving and transmitting symbolically. This description, again, albeit simplistic since many functions of the brain share various geographic locations within our sculls, is accepted as scientifically valid by conventional science. In other life forms, not sufficiently evolved to think in words (meaning consciously constructed symbols vs. unconsciously engraved symbols), alignment and communication between conscious and subconscious brains is continuous and fluid because it is done through the same language: symbolism.

In us humans, however, our thinking and making choices brains speak in words, a language that our subconscious brains are incapable of understanding, since they are too simple and come from an earlier evolutionary age. So, we decide one thing with our fore brains, we declare it to ourselves with words, and our bodies shrug in misunderstanding. If you want to teach a dog to sit, for example, the word “Sit down!” means nothing until we have pushed the dog’s butt to the ground, pulled on the leash and given them encouragement and treats enough times to engrave the symbolic meaning of the command “Sit down!” If we then try to use another word, say in Greek, “Katse kato!” it will take almost as long and as much coercion and encouragement to teach it the same trick, and it may still get confused. We humans may use many different words to express generally the same thing but animals can only understand clear cut symbols with no fudging and ambiguity.

Our conscious minds learn through reading, discussions, thinking etc. but our subconscious minds learn only the way animals learn: Through insistent repetition and emphasis, punishment and reward, consistent habit engraving. The word consistent is the key, because if you reward the dog one time for action A and scold it another, it will be confused and do whatever it feels like at the moment, same as our subconscious.

Constantly confused through our paradoxical beliefs and actions and the incoherent mode of communication with our conscious brains, our subconscious brains are not sure of anything unless it is engraved with enough repetition and emphasis and enough punishment and reward symbols, a language it can understand.

Our subconscious brains control 100% of our internal functionality, including our immune systems, our lymphatic system, our nervous systems, our sensory systems, our glands and all our organs, so they control our health, our senses our energy levels, our physiology, our chemistry and therefore our emotions and thoughts.

What is Shamanism? Simply the creation and engraving of a symbolic language so that our conscious minds can communicate to our subconscious minds what we want, speaking to it not in words, a language that the subconscious is as incapable of comprehending as a dog or an insect, but in the symbolic, the only language it understands. Shamanic healing works because it transmits our wishes to our subconscious and therefore to our immune system, activating the secretion of substances and the initiation of homeostatic, metabolical and other changes and actions in order to achieve the task required.

Shamanism harnesses the same functions as the placebo effect, which is often more effective than most treatments with prescription medication. In the placebo a strong belief in conjunction with the symbolism of taking the pill activates the body to heal itself and to activate the organs to produce the necessary drugs and physiological actions to combat the illness. No drug works on a human unless we possess the chemical receptors for it (this is why certain drugs work better with one genetic race than with another and why drugs that work with lab animals often do not work with humans). When do we possess the receptor for a particular substance? If we already produce it ourselves or habitually receive it through eating, drinking or breathing. So any substance that has any effect on us is one we already have, albeit in small quantities, but our bodies can boost production or collect the tiny quantities inside every nook and cranny of our bodies and direct it to the appropriate place.

Shamanism is just a symbolic language for internal communication. A language to communicate with our subconscious, the master of the symbolic like every life form. And when we are in cooperation and mutual understanding with our subconscious, miracles happen. Since our subconscious can communicate with the whole universe, in contrast to our conscious brains who can communicate only with other humans and not very clearly, we are effectively creating a communication bridge with everything, and voila! We have magic!

Since we have lost all credibility with our subconscious due to the paradoxical belief systems under which we try to operate and the constant conflicts and contradictions (including our self-hatred and our insane efforts to eradicate our egos as well as our self-destructive tendencies that confuse our subconscious as much as a dog is confused when punished for something that it was previously praised for), we need to teach it in the same manner as you would train a dog: Through clear, consistent and repetitive symbolism; through our persistence, our strong intention, through intensive and congruent repetition.

Each and every instruction of our new, chosen operating system must be systematically engraved in the same manner as any habit is engraved: through precise and strong symbolism and by determined effort and perseverance. If we wish to engrave diametrically opposed beliefs to the ones embedded inside us since a few decades, beliefs that are beyond the dogmatic, beliefs that act as powerful, controlling, debilitating taboos, and we are not willing to wait an equal number of years for the installation to be complete and our paradoxes reversed, we need an exponentially higher intensity.

The saying goes “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks” but actually if you are persistent and methodical you can!

Well, this whole site is about being happy since, as Aristotle declared 2300 years ago, happiness is the only possible purpose of life since it is the only goal that is an end by itself. Every other thing, enlightenment, recognition, love, power, resources and material goods we want them in order to be happy. They are means to an end, whereas happiness is by default the only conceivable end.

Since the feeling that characterizes any kind of experience of happiness is the feeling that everything is exactly as it should be, the obvious objective is to find ways to create this delicious feeling inside us by choice, rather than by circumstance. To go a step further, what we need to do is to make this feeling the default, automatic feeling that our bodies and minds gravitate towards automatically, regardless of what is happening.

Now, it is important to understand that this actually is the default position used by nature for all living beings (including a theoretical human free of the universal paradox- growing up in nature, for example, with no human contact). It is the disruption of the state of everything being as it should be that causes life forms to act; the driving force of life. If a lion dozing under a shade gets hungry, horny, wants to urinate, is bothered by flies or is attacked by a foe, it moves. If not, it luxuriates in happy “as it shouldbeness”. We are not unhappy when we are acting or contemplating to act to correct something that is not as it should be. This is just life: if we are hungry, we go and eat, if it is raining, we go find cover. It is only when there are things that are not as they should be, but we are powerless and have no clue of how we can make them as they should be that we are miserable.

If I need to pee and there is a toilet, zero cognitive dissonance, zero distress. If, however, I am waiting in line for some precious concert tickets and I need to pee but I cannot unless I relinquish my spot in the line and thus my chances of getting the tickets, let alone the wasting of all the time I have already been standing in waiting, then I am in internal conflict between two choices neither of which is as it should be, I experience cognitive dissonance and thus distress!

Animals, insects, fish, plants, birds, worms, amoebas, every life form basically addresses any disruption of their happiness, their state where everything is as it should be and within the range of tolerance they have set for themselves to be satisfied, with action and full priority and until the effort versus gain equation reaches their personal, individual limits of the law of diminishing returns. This is a law of economics and general productivity, easily explainable through many examples. For example, if you have never skated before, every hour spent practicing produces huge results, because you know nothing and everything is a huge incremental improvement. When however, you have become an accomplished skater it takes dedication and huge effort to achieve an ever smaller improvement. To get from a great skater to Olympic level requires years of total dedication and practice, evermore expert trainers until improvements are minute but require a whole new level of dedication and time to achieve. The same applies to music or any other skill or sport, as well as practically any activity: you can achieve a 50% goal with initial strong effort quickly whereas to get to 80% takes relatively much longer and more effort and when you are at 99%, the last percentile, the extra fraction of speed or capacity takes more and more, the effort multiplied for each extra little bit and the benefits become slimmer and slimmer. Everybody encounters this phenomenon, and it is a personal choice when enough is enough. The closer one gets to perfection, the harder it gets for a smaller incremental improvement. If I am overweight by 50 kilos, 10 can be lost in a couple of weeks with a rigorous change in eating habits and exercise. A kilo or two can be lost in the first couple of days but when you get to be just 5 kilos overweight a kilo or two require a lot of time and way more stringent dietary regimes. A completely inefficient business with no records, no processes, no motivation etc. can have a 50% improvement in efficiency with just simple changes in organization, whereas an already supremely efficient business or production process needs huge efforts in fine tuning and innovation to achieve a 1% further improvement. The examples are countless and are encountered in every activity of life

Simply put, a falcon, like any other living being, will keep flying and searching for nourishment through prey continuously with minimal rest periods and will not stop unless it at least gets partial feeding or if the conditions make it more dangerous than hunger or until nightfall, for example, when most types of falcons cannot hunt. Whatever the result of their hunt, even if it is nothing, they will then proceed to sleep relaxed until they are hungry again or the circumstances have improved. If they half feed, for example, they will keep flying until they are full, but they may also make a choice to stop, if their internal “thermostat” of sufficient satisfaction is altered to fall within the “as it should be” setting by the possibility of another source of happiness such as the appearance of a potential mate or any other kind of alternative gratification. Their understanding of the law of diminishing returns is part of their nature and evaluated constantly. “Is what I am going to achieve worth the increased effort and energy?”

The internal thermostat of “as it shouldbeness” of all beings is changeable and often does change, albeit in a different manner than it does on human beings. It changes through the process of adaptation; if the most desirable source for nutrition or the perfect temperature are not available or possible any more, both humans and every other life form will adapt and be happy and used to the new temperature or energy source. If chocolate mousse makes you happy but you are on top of a mountain then a snickers bar becomes an equal or even bigger source of happiness. If a king sized bed is required for you to have a comfortable bed, being moved up to the business class seats from economy in the middle of a long, packed flight may provide unprecedented delight and gratitude. Actually I mentioned “most” in the falcon example above, because some peregrine falcons near urban areas have turned into night hunters because of the glare of city lights and are now happy in hunting habits totally different than their ancestors, having a newly found availability of nocturnal prey. We adapt, same as every other life form, in order to experience our default state of happiness but we also shift the settings of our “thermostat” of “as it shouldbeness” through an additional mechanism. And this additional mechanism is the source of our inability to be happy for more than some transitory moments.

We need to be methodical, you see, because the more clarity we have about our destination and our journey there, the simpler and clearer our path will be. We have established our destination, the only possible purpose of life according to the great philosopher Aristotle, happiness, the only goal that is an end by itself; to establish our course, our path, we need to understand our departure point. We need to understand who we are (human), what makes us tick, envision where we want to be (happy and in control of our thoughts, actions, transmissions, emotions, senses, beliefs, energies and our physical bodies) and use these two points to draw a line that connects them; to draw our course towards Homo delectus, human being of choice. And this extra mechanism of internal thermostat settings modification holds the key to where and who we are, why we react the way we do and what is happening inside us.

Interestingly enough, this particular and exclusive to the Homo sapiens species mechanism works in the exact opposite way to adaptation: the more we have, the more we achieve, enjoy and obtain, the more unsatisfied, anxious and unhappy we become. Our thermostat shifts, but not towards accommodating circumstances and adjusting our thermostat to achieve happiness. Our thermostat shifts towards avoidance of happiness, moving the satisfaction range like a moving target, making it impossible to stay within the as it should be range for any amount of time other than fleetingly. The moment we realize that we have accidentally found ourselves within the settings that we had decided would make us happy we change the settings violently to a different scale or introduce new, often imaginary sources of “not-as it shouldbeness”, misery, anxiety, dissatisfaction, anger, victimhood and general distress.

So, on the one hand we have the natural, programmed by nature built-in inclination to adapt to conditions and be relaxed and happy, stretching in leisurely bliss like a cat on a sofa, and on the other hand we have an unnatural, programmed by human civilization built-in inclination to do the exact opposite! 

The reasons for this were explored in the previous chapters (See UNIVERSAL PARADOXES and  WHY DO UNIVERSAL PARADOXES EXIST?), and they are a direct reflection of the universal paradoxes. How can everything be exactly, deliciously as it should be, if we are not as we should be, both individually and in our perspective of humanity and civilization as a whole is that we, as humans are absolutely not as we should be?

Our bodies, our instincts, our very nature, our egos, our natural tendencies, our sexuality, everything we are is not as it should be and if we are happy we are callous, hedonistic, insensitive, irresponsible, immoral, shameful, selfish and egotistical! How do you beat this infernal trap: being ourselves, loving who we are and what we feel, enjoying life and striving to be happy means we need to be ashamed and guilty and miserable to boot?

If you are not sacrificing enough, if you are not completely selfless, if you are not asexual or mildly and properly sexual at most, if you are not miserable enough in solidarity with all the suffering around you, if you are not incessantly trying to prove to everybody that you have no ego and that your main concern is serving others, you are not accepted by other humans, you are low and despicable, and they in turn are low and despicable to you, sharing your “atrocious” human traits.

To not be alone you need to be alone even from yourself, hiding and denying what you feel and think, betraying yourself as a Judas to your Jesus for the thirty pieces of silver of human acceptance and belonging. To be loved by others, you must not love yourself.

It is obvious that this belief system does not serve our happiness, so let us take a look at some of its origins. The majority of the population on earth subscribes, either actively or passively, to one of the Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, the Islam and Judaism or one of their variations.

If you google Adam and Eve, you will find in Wikipedia the following, with very similar quotes in every other encyclopedia as well:

“Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman and the ancestors of all humans. The story of Adam and Eve is central to the belief that God created human beings to live in a paradise on earth, although they fell away from that state and formed the present world full of suffering and injustice. It provides the basis for the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. It also provides much of the scriptural basis for the doctrines of the fall of man and original sin that are important beliefs in Christianity, but which are not generally held in Judaism or Islam.

In the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, chapters one through five, there are two creation narratives with two distinct perspectives. In the first, Adam and Eve are not mentioned (at least not mentioned by name). Instead, God created humankind in God’s image and instructed them to multiply and to be stewards over everything else that God had made. In the second narrative, God fashions Adam from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden. Adam is told that he can till the ground and eat freely of all the trees in the garden, except for a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Subsequently, Eve is created from one of Adam’s ribs to be Adam’s companion. They are innocent and unashamed about their nakedness. However, a serpent deceives Eve into eating fruit from the forbidden tree, and she gives some of the fruit to Adam. These acts give them additional knowledge, but it gives them the ability to conjure negative and destructive concepts such as shame, guilt and evil. God later curses the serpent and the ground. God prophetically tells the woman and the man what will be the consequences of their sin of disobeying God. Then he banishes them from the Garden of Eden.

The story underwent extensive elaboration in later Abrahamic traditions, and it has been extensively analyzed by modern biblical scholars. Interpretations and beliefs regarding Adam and Eve and the story revolving around them vary across religions and sects; for example, the Islamic version of the story holds that Adam and Eve were equally responsible for their sins of hubris, instead of Eve being the first one to be unfaithful.”

Let us now look at the sentences in bold in this text. The first one, “The story of Adam and Eve is central to the belief that God created human beings to live in a paradise on earth, although they fell away from that state and formed the present world full of suffering and injustice” declares as a belief that God created human beings to live in a paradise on earth, so since earth is as god intended it, exactly and deliciously as it should be, a paradise, humans are responsible for the present world “full of suffering and injustice”. So, suffering as well as injustice are manmade; we define the threshold for suffering, which could range from: “I have nothing to eat although I work all day, I have no home and my children have to work all day to eat” to “my favorite hairdresser is unavailable this Saturday and my new curtains are late and I have to wait three months for my BMW in the color I want plus that bitch Cindy bought a better dress than mine”. Each person chooses the positioning of their thermostat for happiness anywhere they choose and are free to revise it upwards the moment they feel the intense danger of actually feeling happy. The same applies for injustice where one century it is an injustice to be executed without a trial because of a whim of the lord and another an injustice to get a ticket for parking in a not clearly enough designated no parking zone. It is an injustice that the free education in a sub Saharan country is not to the same standard as in Britain when neither Britain nor any other country in the world had any concept of free education less than two hundred years ago. Again, we can choose to up the ante for justice constantly so that we are never satisfied for the world we live in. Slavery was still legal in Europe as recently as 200 years ago and as recently as 151 years ago in the US, and debates about whether aborigines had souls, let alone legal rights, were hot and controversial. Legal segregation of schools in the US according to race ended in 1954, just over 60 years ago! By now, there have been a black president, secretary of state, several CEO’s of fortune 500 companies, huge celebrities, Supreme Court justices and billionaires, affirmative action and much more, but we are enraged at racism and discrimination in the US! Can we ever as human beings be satisfied with the progress and achievements of our civilization or will we be forever unsatisfied, discontent and enraged, unhappy, guilty and ashamed? Who decides whether this world is full of suffering and injustice? Compared to what? A theoretical world of no material form, no desires, no disruptions, no need for change, no need for evolution, a “perfect”, inanimate world? Not the polar opposite of life, death, which is a beautiful part of the same cycle and necessary for any spark to exist, but no life, lack of life. How can that be desirable, a goal to achieve?

The second quote that I put in bold, “God created humankind in God’s image and instructed them to multiply and to be stewards over everything else that God had made”, referring to the first of two versions of the story, is exactly what humanity has actually done and is doing: We have multiplied from hundreds and thousands to over 7 billion souls today, and are estimated to reach 10 billion by 2050. We are becoming more and more in the image of god, more and more responsible stewards of the earth. The very concept of environmental laws did not even exist before 1960, while the first permanent law of protection (in the most “civilized”, rich and powerful country in the world at the time, the British empire) came with the “Great Stink” of 1858, when the dumping of sewerage into the River Thames began to smell so ghastly in the summer heat that Parliament had to be evacuated which led to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers Act 1848 closing cesspits around the city and creating the sewer system. Today there are many countries in the world where protective regulation is so pervasive that it often hinders development and economic activity, however we are still enraged at the horribleness of human civilization and its “insane and greedy destructiveness”!

In the second perspective of the story and the third piece of text put in bold, “They are innocent and unashamed about their nakedness. However, a serpent deceives Eve into eating fruit from the forbidden tree, and she gives some of the fruit to Adam. These acts give them additional knowledge, but it gives them the ability to conjure negative and destructive concepts such as shame and evil.” we see how being innocent and unashamed about our nakedness is a good thing and something god intended as well as the belief that shame and guilt are negative and destructive concepts. Now this is really crazy because every one of those religions (as well as every government in the world through indecency and morality laws) is trying to make us ashamed of our nakedness, guilty and ashamed of who and how we are! Is this a paradox or what?

PARADISE IS A PLACE WHERE WE LIVE WITH NO GUILT OR SHAME, SO IN ORDER TO GO TO PARADISE WE MUST BE GUILTY AND ASHAMED.

So, all Abrahamic religions forbid nudity, with the Islam, Catholicism and other Christian religions as well as orthodox Jews going as far as total coverage for women as a way to ascend to paradise, a place of no shame for nakedness! Are we all insane that we cannot see the rampant contradiction? Which neatly takes us to our fourth text in bold, “the Islamic version of the story holds that Adam and Eve were equally responsible for their sins of hubris, instead of Eve being the first one to be unfaithful.” Hubris, an insult through wanting to have the knowledge, wisdom, comprehension, clarity and other qualities god possesses, is a common theme in most religions, mythologies and cultures. Why should not humans aspire to be better, by being more godlike? And why not put men as well in a headscarf for modesty and maybe a head to toe burka?

The same intrinsic spectacular contradictions exist in Buddhism, Hinduism and all other religions in the world and form the belief systems of every single human being to a larger or lesser degree. What is the solution to achieve our purpose of happiness? To consciously walk a path  of ferocious reduction of the paradoxes to an ultimate goal of total resolution of all paradoxes: The end to all organized religion, and the creation of personal, individual religions, working collectively and constructively as an open source operating system for a happy humanity, each individual experimenting with themselves, sharing results, each human being customizing the best version of the software for their happiness, creating infinite artfully individual versions of the happiness software out of a wide selection of functioning templates, same as numerous different websites emerge through the use of a multitude of tested, correctly functioning standard templates each one allowing the creation of something unique.

In order for each one of us to escape the distressing paradoxes that make us ashamed and guilty about our own nature and miserable about the state of the world and the people around us we need to create this open source religion, a common set of beliefs that are constantly tested by all users of this software with the absolute compass and fail-safe of happiness. Happiness, the feeling that everything is exactly as it should be starts with love, being one with. Everything wants to be one with: chemical elements, celestial bodies, humans, animals, insects, plants, water, earth, everything. And the only fully fulfilling way to be one with is love. Devouring, assimilating, dominating, subjugating, integrating or destroying are just the only seemingly available alternatives because love seems impossible and incomprehensible.

Furthermore loving, being one with, starts with oneself, with the person or object closest to us, our bodies, our thoughts, our choices, our soul and then extends progressively outwards to our lovers, our families, our friends, the people, animals, birds, buildings, environment, objects and souls in our lives that we associate with, then the neighborhood, the city, the country, earth, humankind, nature, our solar system, the universe.

So, our brand new religion, albeit a belief system preceding human civilization and absolutely prevailing in every single other non-human paradoxless life form, is a religion that starts with self-love; a religion based on pride and proud selfishness.

To start with, let us examine the advantages and disadvantages presented by the concept of a personal religion, a personal operating system of beliefs versus an organized religion, a proprietary operating system shared by masses and directed by a central authority, a church, a political party, a company or a conglomerate.

Advantages of personal vs. organized belief system, open source customization vs. proprietary mass OS

1. Freedom of choice , custom made for the individual instead of “one size fits all” packaged beliefs systems whereby everybody deviates in their own way from the doctrine but at the same time all followers also often feel guilty, ashamed and occasionally find themselves needing to repent for this inevitable reality. Even those rare fanatics who adhere to the views, doctrines and dogmas of the religion, each one puts emphasis on particular parts and bend the rest elastically to accommodate their individual focuses. In an open source customizable religion each one could believe guilt free in anything that they deemed served their happiness and no peer could judge them, because the truth would be evidently in the pudding: If a belief makes you happy, it is good for you! If someone else has strong arguments and stories to illustrate how theirs would serve your happiness more, you could try it for a few months, live it and see what it does to your life, choose to keep it or engrave your previous belief, or maybe discuss your issues openly and get advice on how other people around the world that tried this particular belief on for size did with it. You could also modify it according to your findings, try the version 2.0, and, if it worked partially you could publish your experiences and get help in forming a version 2.1, maybe then somebody would publish 2.3 and more until the belief in a particular area was proven to serve people’s happiness in a concrete way. If for example a great number of people were convinced to try a new version of an already tested, proven effective and trusted belief on something and after a year of engraving had a potential collective mountain of information and experiences this would inevitably lead to a much better result for all human beings. A real time voluntary research on the effectiveness of particular beliefs on happiness would be leading us collectively towards a human operating system that would allow us to indeed live constantly in the Garden of Eden. In addition, our belief systems which determine what we feel, think and how we react would be purely the individual’s choice and not predetermined to a large degree before birth by the family, ethnic group, culture, country and social environment a baby happens to be born in. Nowadays, whatever god and cosmic theory you believe in and the moral code you live by is determined by where you were born. Of course you can change it while growing up and denounce the belief systems of your environment but this comes at a high cost and anguish: betrayal, disapproval, guilt, shame, conflict, struggle, anger. Choosing personal open source, you are not betraying anything in favor of anything else, you do not need to take sides or resort in abject disappointment, agnosticism, nihilism, cynicism or ideological confusion. Open source plays no favorites: whatever makes you truly happy, whatever makes your reality deliciously as it should be, you choose. There can be no further argument, if you want to be happy as your purpose in life.

2. Universal benefit. Since everything wants to be one with, all organized religions and ideologies want to grow, to include more and more people and thus steer humanity to their own brand of oneness. Because of this natural proclivity, they are forced to compete and often impose strict rules of adherence, at times even necessitating open conflict with other religions, invoking fear, hatred and disdain in their followers lest they even consider one of the alternative belief systems.

The wider an organized belief system becomes, the more funds and resources it gathers but at the same time the more funds and resources it absolutely requires to exist and sustain itself, let alone to expand. The same applies also to computer operating systems such as Windows OS, Apple OS, Android OS and their endless variations, same as the sects and different versions of each organized religion. For one to be winning, another belief system must be losing in every possible way: in numbers, in resources, in acceptance, in power, in influence, in everything.

In an open source customizable personal religion however, everybody involved wins. Everybody ends with a way more beneficial for them and foolproof belief system, and the more people subscribing to the open source the more evolved options everybody has. If people start deciding to be happy and proud, to love themselves and take care of their own happiness first guilt free, to be selfish and proud for it, to stop being ashamed for their humanity. If people decided that since we can’t help being humans and there is absolutely no reason to be ashamed and guilty for our gift of choice, that our humanity is our divinity, then more people would see the paradoxes in their own lives.

This would naturally occur purely by seeing that each individual daring to commit the grave hubris of actually believing that they deserve happiness, not despite of their humanity but because of it, would bring forth more instantaneous research by an even wider, ever increasing test group which would help elevate the collective and personal operating systems for themselves and every other human being.

Who would lose? Nobody if they didn’t choose to! Organized religions would lose followers, but this is happening in many cases already anyway and the only way for them to avoid eventual decay as organizations lies in oppression and fanaticism. The open source operating system of the religion of pride in our humanity would need no funds, no organization further than a well administered website that would even become redundant at a certain point, no power, no influence so it would be competing for nothing; any success could be secret and individual or shared openly.

There is always choice, but basically, why would anybody keep something that makes them open hearted, inspired, powerful and happy secret? Being selfish after all includes those you love, your family, lovers, friends and community. The happier you are, the more one with you become since everything wants to be one with. Most people would be ecstatic to share. So, with the advent of open source customized religion, all organized religion would wither and eventually disappear but the result would be free religion, no money spent on places of worship such as churches, cathedrals, mosques, synagogues and temples (a temple or church is just a place of congregation of believers) because the temple would be online anywhere people chose, controlled by nobody, needing no priests, just a forum for people to discuss their beliefs, their confusions and ambiguities and find clarity.

Everybody benefits including the now powerful controllers of various faiths because they would finally have a chance to be happy rather than be the prime perpetrators of the universal collective paradox. Everybody wins by everybody else winning.

3. Zero cost to believers, to governments and to society in general. In the US, just the tax exemption for religious activity amounts to about 80 billion US dollars a year. Not the money spent, just the tax exemptions for it! The actual money spent on religion worldwide in total is impossible to calculate, but with a Gross World Product of over 80 trillion according to World Bank figures, it would be in the trillions of dollars, especially if you include military and policing costs due to religious conflict, fanaticism and discrimination. Health costs worldwide are 6,5 trillion according to WHO. Open source religion could liberate a similar amount for other beneficial purposes.

Actually, if most of the resources spent to support organized religion were directed towards social care, education, health and art the effects on the general well-being would be huge. Organized religion is prevalent in our world because everybody needs a set of beliefs to orient and direct themselves, a sense of belonging, comfort and guidance when we are confused and a set of rules to direct our behavior. But why buy it if you can have it for free?

4. Constant lightning speed evolution. One of the main characteristics of all religion is a resistance to change. They are based on the preservation of old traditions, customs, rituals, beliefs and morals that often no longer reflect contemporary realities. Although many variations of organized belief systems try to modernize and adapt to different societal, cultural, physical and political conditions they are usually frowned upon by the core of the general religious group because any need for change would insinuate that the initial doctrine is not absolute and god given; a dangerous crack in the wall holding believers together.

Contrary to the very nature of any mass religion or ideology to resist change, personal customized open source belief systems are by design a constantly evolving tool. New versions would be mirroring needs and solutions that have appeared through the general evolution of society, emerging as antivirus and debugging software to solve issues that appear that were not there before.

If a new technology arises, for example, that allows full gene manipulation, new variations on existing beliefs would be proposed to provide the moral codes whereby this new technology would maximize its potential for offering well-being and minimize possible pitfalls; this process would be continuous until a certain universal belief system emerged that covered every hole and every bug, better with every trial and each consecutive version. The system is self-correcting, because if a new Linux version appears that doesn’t work properly and has bugs, fine, somebody just found out that a routine doesn’t improve the software or it needs to be better. The first few people that were convinced by the proposed benefits and would invest time and effort to install and run it would discover the issues and would either uninstall it or correct it. Either way everybody wins and the software keeps evolving to universal benefit.

Linux by the way, a free open source Unix like operating system, was first released in 1991 by Linus Torvalds as a freely redistributable and modifiable for any use OS, despite being only used in 2.3% of home computers is the leading OS for big servers and supercomputers, has been ported to more platforms than any proprietary OS and is the most used operating system through Android (based on the Linux kernel) with its myriad variations customized by each mobile phone producer and provided to their special needs and through thousands of other uses. The concept of open source software is universally recognized for its tremendous rate of evolution and the whole of humanity has been hugely benefiting since its inception.

Why not use the same, proven spectacularly successful concepts to our own beliefs, our own operating system if it works so well for computers? Why rely on the efforts of small groups of software engineers or spiritual “cognoscenti” who basically want to remain entrenched with as little change as possible in order to preserve the benefits in power and wealth that their “copyright” provides and not trust the collective brains and hearts of humanity?

5. Universal sense of belonging. Since absolutely everything wants to be one with, a big part of adhering to a proprietary organized belief system, whether religious, political, cultural or any other kind is a sense of belonging; we want to belong.

If someone is a Christian living with a community of Christians, they have a big part of their social life through religious festivities, church, gatherings and other activities and they identify themselves as part of that group. The same applies to political, economic, scientific or any other kind of belief system. In Manchester, being a Manchester United fan makes you part of a group and can provide a big part of your social life.

Of course, the tighter bound you are to the group’s collective belief system, the more you believe it and the closer you adhere to it, the more excluded you make yourself to all the other groups around. You make a choice to be closer to one part of the population and automatically you make the choice and the choice is made for you to be apart, distant, even despised and attacked by the rest of the human population, the ones believing according to competing belief systems.

There is also a sense of safety in numbers and a sense of power that is derived from the collective power and influence of the group. Every single one of us has the tendency to want to belong to the winning or dominant side. As far as religions are concerned, each and every religion’s power has fluctuated from that of an obscure cult to even total dictatorial political and economic power over absolutely every aspect of people’s lives for long historic periods in huge regions of the world, such as the Catholic Church which dominated everything for hundreds of years in Europe, the decades of communist ideology in eastern Europe and China, in ancient Egypt, the Roman empire and so much more.

All belief systems rise and fall and many become big and strong enough to reproduce endless generations of followers for thousands of years. But always it is an “us or them” type of belonging, and geopolitical events, mostly beyond our individual control, determine whether we are part of a feeble, persecuted minority or a dominant, powerful majority. With an open source religion with the sole aim happiness we belong to a group comprised of anyone who wants to be happy and are willing to do something about it. Everybody can choose their version of the open source software and be at the same time in tune with everybody else trying some other version because we would all share one common objective. We would have real things to discuss with each other since the bulk of our belief systems would be identical with only the specific parts that each one would choose to experiment with differing.

Why would we share over 90% of our belief systems with no discord or different sides? Because as humans, what makes us happy is the same. We feel the same emotions, we encounter the same questions, we are all the same. A successful vaccine works with every human and in cases like the smallpox vaccine, for example, can totally eradicate a disease. Because we are the same. All humans are different from each other but our similarities, the things we have in common, are way over 97% in genetics (99.9% identical dna to all humans irrespective of race or gender), culture, way of life and everything else. And happiness is for everyone represented by the amazingly beautiful feeling that everything, absolutely everything is oh so deliciously as it should be.

And like countries in tropical areas in South America that look almost identical to tropical areas in Asia where inevitably people living in similar environments end up finding the same solutions and way of life, despite their huge differences in race, culture, language, religion and history. Human beings from every culture or environment on earth will find that the solutions to happiness are similar and practically universal: the eradication of the universal paradoxes and the end to guilt, shame and endless obligation. The return to agreeing with nature and the divine that everything, as is, is as it should be and the pride for our leading part in the ecosystem’s path to divinity and thus, oneness.

6. Self-love, pride, rather than self-loathing and deprecation, humility. Belief systems that advocate humility as a version create self-loathing instead of self-love. If each one of us were to choose a belief system designed to make us happy and thus to love ourselves, the people around us and our very lives, why wouldn’t every single person choose a philosophy of pride? Pride after all is the measure of conditionality of love, so why wouldn’t everybody choose to love themselves if they were able?

Why would anyone choose a belief system that made them feel bad about themselves, incomplete, impure, sinful, weak, bad and dysfunctional if they had no longer a survival imperative to do so? Why would anybody of sound mind choose Christianity, the Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism or any other organized religion? Why would they choose to feel guilty, tainted and ashamed for their sexuality, their egos, their selfishness, their bodily functions, needs or desires?

The only real value of humility is the pride we acquire when we act more humbly than the rest, once it is no longer necessary as a survival tool.

7. Fun versus Suffering. As Wikipedia reports, suffering, sacrifice and their usefulness are an integral part of all organized religions and spiritual ideologies. But no sane person would choose to value suffering as a cornerstone of their ideology if it was not a survival tool for the achievement of social acceptance and approval. Life is about having fun, and what could be more fun than each one being the architects of themselves, their lives, how they feel, behave, react? What bigger creative fun can one have than creating their own persona, their own existence? Inevitably, a life guided by an operating system designed for pride, love and ultimately happiness would be great fun. And it sure as heck is!

Disadvantages of personal vs organized belief system, open source customization vs proprietary mass OS

1. Loss of beautiful traditions and cultures. Admittedly, world religions have provided us with beautiful traditions, customs, rituals, temples, objects, celebrations, ceremonies and a wealth of art, despite the fact that they have also acted restrictively and even destructively such as in the prohibition of depiction of human forms in the Islam or the destruction of native temples, the destruction of precious cultural objects and art pieces and the persecution of indigenous traditions by the conquistadores in the Americas. Everything that is would be preserved to the degree of its cultural value same as all archaeological relics, and it would be integrated into the new cultures that constantly develop. The only loss would be their active use as proponents of paradoxical belief systems. No big deal, and if people want them, they can keep using them. In a happy planet, they will all be tourist attractions and objects of study. This is inevitable anyway. New traditions would evolve, incorporating all the nice parts from all our heritage as humanity as happens anyway. Nobody stops people observing and enjoying native American Indian traditions and rituals although the actual religions no longer exist in any real form and wield no power over society.
2. The decadence and eventual disintegration of the power and influence centers wielded by fiat of the devout followers of all major religions and ideologies of any kind. So? Should you mind?
3. Do you have any ideas? I cannot find any other disadvantage.

The arguments are obvious and clear for the creation of and conversion to a personally customizable open source belief system, your personal custom made religion, your own cult where you are the cult leader and the follower at the same time. And each and every other person can have their personal cult as well.  Does the word cult scare you? It shouldn’t if you own it, can choose to change any aspect of it that does not serve your happiness, if you personally hold all the power, if you are your own Pope and Ayatollah. Do we need to wait for it to happen? Absolutely not, because in this manual I shall present to you the main kernels, the backbone of just such a personal religion, tried and tested with huge success by a small number of participants and ready to be used as a reliable template leading to happiness.

What is happening to all of us, is the internal conflict caused by cognitive dissonance, our paradoxes, our contradictory beliefs. But an obvious question arises: which parts of us are fighting with each other, which are the two or more sides coming to battle for dominance and control over our beings? Are we all split, are we all hopelessly bipolar?

To find out the answers we need to take a look at our brains and how they operate. And I use the plural “brains”, because our brain operations are differentiated by the conscious and the non-conscious, referring to the subconscious, the unconscious, the preconscious and many other categories that have been theorized and explored since Freud. We will call the non-conscious simply the subconscious and bunch everything together, not to disagree with all the theories, but to agree and simplify.

So, Let us explore the differences between conscious and sub conscious (or all the categories that are not fully conscious). There are several ways to approach this, so let us start with functionality:

Functionality of the Conscious mind:

1. Awareness of thoughts, sensations and emotions.
2. Processing and evaluation of all such stimuli. Basically the secondary filtering of all perception.
3. Decision making, directed action and reaction to stimuli and rationalization of actions.
4. Direction of thoughts for the purposes of analysis, evaluation of actions and results and for second level interpretation of stimuli.
5. Direction of visualizations, memory retention and recall.
6. Planning and directed training and learning.
7. Processing and perception of time related concepts, from the past or the future.

Functionality of the subconscious mind:

1. Initial processing and reaction to stimuli, generation of internal stimuli and thus the actual source of all information to the conscious brain such as thoughts, sensations and emotions. Basically the primary filtering of all perception.
2. Execution and regulation of 99% of any action and automatic supervision and activation of all automatic functionality of our physical body including the immune system, the adrenal system that provides the driving chemicals and everything else.
3. Undirected visualizations and memory recall.

Functionality is what we choose to do or what we automatically or instinctively do, and capability is what we are able to choose to do or what we automatically or instinctively are capable of doing, so:

Capability of the Conscious mind:

1. Choice, decision making.
2. Abstract thought and perception, such as ideas, humor etc.
3. Directed visualizations, thoughts, memory recollection, memory retention prioritization and short term memory.
4. Perception of past and future events or probabilities.
5. New, unprecedented thought and perception and volitional change.
6. Processing of up to 40 bits of information per second and control of 1-5 events simultaneously.

Capability of the Subconscious mind:

1. Habit, fully automatic reaction or behavior and habit formation as well as habitual interpretation of stimuli.
2. Literal thought and perception.
3. Absolute memory retention, infinitely long memory retention, undirected visualization, thoughts, emotions and memory recall.
4. Timeless perception; past perceptions as well as future concerns are felt in the present. Everything is NOW.
5. Filtering, perception and modification of all stimuli.
6. Control of all human functionality.
7. Processing of up to 20,000,000 bits of information per second and control of thousands of events simultaneously.

Having not only the control of what kind of information the conscious mind will receive to process as well as the control of 99% of our actions, but also being able to process and react up to half a million times faster, our subconscious mind is like the staff of a big corporation. The CEO, the conscious mind, decides upon the information given to them by their staff and relies upon their staff to actually execute their decisions, their choices and to not lie, distort or hide information. The staff of a company actually runs the company and any manager in disagreement with their staff is impotent, same as the head of a government is impotent if the ministers and the governmental staff and all public servants are uncooperative, providing tainted information and doing the opposite of what the “head” decides.

Now, since all disagreeable thoughts and feelings are due to paradoxes, contradictions in our beliefs, actions and perceptions, who is contradicting whom? Are we not one person?

Well, out of the labyrinthine web of beliefs that comprise our belief systems, we can only hold, process and evaluate a maximum of five in our conscious minds at the same time, and only for highly skilled multi-tasking minds. Since our conscious mind is the only mind that is capable of rationalization and choice, direct contradiction is impossible. The only paradoxes possible are between beliefs held in the subconscious contradicting a belief or perception that enters the conscious mind or between contradictory beliefs and perceptions within the subconscious mind. Contradictions between habitual, deeply engraved beliefs and chosen beliefs are the source of cognitive dissonance.

When there is conflict between managers, they can either be resolved through discussion, compromise and agreement or through domination of one, hierarchically superior authority, assuming all managers have the same goals.  However, when there is conflict between management and all of the employees with divergent or even totally opposed goals, if it is impossible to fire and change the workforce, then the staff will always win, sometimes even to the point of closing the company down. The same will happen if the head of a government has opposing goals than all the government employees. It is inevitable that the government and the country will be malfunctioning until the government falls.

But if you consider our internal government as humans, the head of the government or company would be our conscious mind and the subconscious mind would be everybody else. In this case, not only is it impossible for the CEO or President to fire anybody, but also it is impossible for the people to fire the manager or head of government. Our conscious and subconscious parts are stuck with each other for the duration of our lives, like it or not!

Since all the power is naturally held by the subconscious, the one performing all the automatic actions necessary for us to function, all that the management can do is be angry, disappointed, evidently mistrustful and not much else. For example, you may choose to sing or speak in front of an audience, but if your subconscious mind does not think it is a good idea it may leave you speechless, stuttering, unable to remember even what you were going to say or forgetting the song or even give you a headache or diarrhea in order to stop you and it will succeed! Regardless of how hard you try, your body will fill you with stress hormones and incapacitate you or maybe change your mind with an avalanche of conflicting beliefs, thoughts, fears, anxieties and sensations and there is very little you can do about it!

But our subconscious is not really in cross purposes with our conscious, choosing mind. It is just habitually obeying and automatically reacting accordingly to earlier instructions that created the habits in the first place. Since the subconscious cannot differentiate between the past, the present and the future, it thinks that the earlier perception is the current and provides the habitual response, because it only deals in the now. If, for example, someone tried to perform in public in the past and was ridiculed, therefore instructing their subconscious with the conscious at the moment choice “I will never expose myself this way again”, thus creating an instruction to the subconscious for an automatic, protective reaction, for the subconscious, unable of rationalization, that habitual, most deeply engraved response (being the earliest, commonest or loudest) is the default response, one it is incapable of changing since the subconscious does not actually make choices, it obeys choices already made in the past.

We do not find ourselves in conflict with our subconscious, we find ourselves in conflict with our previous choices, our previous selves. Our conscious minds want change, and our subconscious minds are comfortable only in the familiar, resisting change tooth and nail.

Therein springs our primary paradox, the one superseding even our collective paradoxes: Having a sense of self, a sense of being one unit separated from everything else, a function essential for life, we find ourselves in conflict with ourselves, since we are supposed to be selfless. We are one and not one at the same time!

Remember the famous story of castaway Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, where Robinson finds himself shipwrecked on a deserted island and not only manages to survive but also to create an infrastructure for his wellbeing and safety, but experiencing loneliness and distress. One Friday (he religiously records the days to keep his sanity) he saves an indigenous man, brought by savage cannibals with canoes to his island to be cooked and eaten. He calls him my man Friday and teaches him many things, finding both a helper and a friend to share his life and they do very well together.

Imagine now, that Robinson is constantly disappointed and angry at Friday, calling him lazy, stupid and incompetent, angry at him because he messes up many jobs, forgets things or sleeps when he is supposed to be helping him. Imagine now that one day, Friday, while receiving the judgment and admonitions of Robinson, turns to him and says:

Hey Robinson, please tell me, I am lazy, stupid and incompetent compared to whom? Do you have a better choice?  Do you see anybody else here? I am the only one you have, either send me away or stop demeaning me, attacking me and accusing me! I need to be happy with you, because you are the only one I´ve got, and I am the only one you´ve got!

Well, you and your subconscious are the only ones you have got, and furthermore you are one and the same person. How does it serve you being constantly disappointed and angry at yourself, in view of the inescapable reality that cannot get rid of yourself? I am guessing not very well, because it has never served me or anyone that I have ever met. We are angry at our subconscious, which is also housing the “wretched” Ego, we try to punish, admonish and eradicate it, but it is not possible because it is us, it is all we´ve got, like it or not!

Why are our conscious minds, the ones making all our choices, in conflict with our subconscious minds, the ones who control 99% of us?

Because we have different, often contradictory and opposite goals:

Our conscious mind wants us to be happy and our subconscious mind wants us to be safe.

This is what our internal struggle is about, and not about two opposing armies trying to destroy each other, as we commonly perceive our internal conflict. Merely two governments, both wishing the best for the entity, unable of communication, one dutifully administering our being as instructed and the other unable to successfully communicate new decisions to the administrator, both trying to guide the entity that is us as best they can, frustrated at the resistance from the other side.

METHODOLOGY FOR DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING THE MAIN KERNEL OF CHOICE OS:

Like any method, certain crucial instructions and rules need to be followed in order for the method to work.

INSTRUCTION 1: BUILD YOUR FOUNDATION FROM THE BOTTOM UP.

The order of the instructions is crucial. The main kernel works like a chain of instructions, each one dependent on the previous one to exist. In order to help you visualize it, imagine that they all reside on an outward going spiral, with primary instruction, “I know who I am because I choose who I am!” followed by the second, “I choose Happiness” and then the third, and so on and so forth. In the image below we see a graphic of how it works:

PRIMARY INSTRUCTIONS OF MAIN KERNEL: 1-18

CUSTOMIZABLE INSTRUCTIONS OF CHOICE OS: 19 ONWARDS

Infinite, personalized versions of the software to prioritize instructions that deal with specific issues that each user may choose to put emphasis and priority on, according to their life circumstances at the moment, may be freely experimented with, but it is not advisable to mess with the core instructions without full understanding and experience with the OS.

To explain further, Choice OS absolutely depends on the very first belief to be engraved with ferocity, for anything else to work. Unless we believe dogmatically that we are beings of Choice, and that everything that concerns us is our choice 100%, we remain in the mentality of powerlessness, anger and victimhood that is our default belief under our current, paradoxical belief systems. Since there are things that are not our choice, such as who we are, we are powerless to change anything, since “This is how I am, this is what I usually do, I can’t help being who I am or what I feel or think” is one of our most dogmatic beliefs. The second belief, that Happiness is the feeling that everything is exactly, deliciously as it should be, and that we want, choose as our number one purpose and aim in life and deserve happiness, can never work as long as we do not fully believe that we are able to choose happiness and attain it. The third instruction, Trust, now comes into play to reinforce instructions no 1 & 2, turning them into beliefs based on trust rather than circumstantial evidence or popular opinion exactly because it serves our happiness which we have chosen as our number one priority.

Primary instruction No 1 sets the ground, No 2 decides what will be built on it and for what purpose, No 3 creates the foundation for every single further belief, No 4 sets the parameters and specifications for the build, No 5 defines the style of the building, what we want it to look like, No 6 acts as a filter to all input, No 7 gives my choices drive, oomph and determination, No 8 gives us an effective measuring tool to evaluate our progress, No 9 creates an automatic prioritization system, No 10 disqualifies disappointment and gives us perseverance and hope as well as offering anti losing protection, since you cannot fail unless you quit.

No 11 connects our rationality and logic (Conscious minds) to our emotional bodies (Subconscious minds) thus allowing us to receive guiding messages from our subconscious, No 12 not only reinforces the concept that everything is our choice, including other people’s perceptions and actions and protects us from anger and victimhood, but also super boosts our power in a simple and effective way: By taking responsibility for what happens to us, around us and in our relationships with others.

No 13 reinforces and expands choice beyond ourselves, to our resources, No 14 gives us a simple intuitive methodology to being one with, the universal law that governs everything, starting with being one with, loving ourselves. No 15 even further expands our choice to the difficulty or ease of everything we strive for and can turn a near impossible task into a piece of cake and No 16 gives us a precise and powerful diagnostic tool for any disagreeable thought or feeling, as well as the methodology about how to resolve it. No 17 connects our belief system with our spirituality and with the divine from a non-organized religion aspect, by simply agreeing with any kind of divine or creator force you choose to believe in and finally, the last for now instruction of the kernel, No 18, provides an effective methodology for the attainment of wisdom, rather than information, opinions or knowledge.

All together, they build our happiness, each one depending on the previous like buildings where the floor and columns rise from the foundations, become the supports for the brick walls, each brick on top of the previous layer and the roof supported by the whole of the infrastructure.

*detailed explanations of code instructions in the main kernel page

1. WHO AM I? I KNOW WHO I AM BECAUSE I CHOOSE WHO I AM.
2. WHAT DO I CHOOSE? I CHOOSE HAPPINESS.
3. WHAT IS TRUST? I CHOOSE TRUST.
4. WHAT IS TRUTH? TRUTH IS WHAT SERVES MY HAPPINESS.
5. WHAT IS MY TRUTH? ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE IDENTICAL.
6. WHICH ADVICE SHOULD I LISTEN TO? IT DOES NOT SERVE ME TO LISTEN TO VOICES, FROM INSIDE ME OR FROM OUTSIDE THAT TELL ME WHO I CANNOT BE OR WHAT I CANNOT DO.
7. WHAT IS INTENTION? INTENTION IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN, NO MATTER WHAT!!!
8. HOW WELL AM I DOING? IT IS NOT ABOUT THE POSITION, IT IS ABOUT THE DIRECTION.
9. WHAT IS IMPORTANT? IF IT DOESN’T SERVE MY HAPPINESS, I DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
10. HOW CAN I FIND WHAT I AM SEEKING? YOU CANNOT FIND SOMETHING THAT IS HARD TO FIND UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE IT IS THERE, THAT IT EXISTS.
11. WHICH IS THE RIGHT ANSWER? THE RIGHT ANSWER IS NOT THE ONE THAT FEELS RIGHT, BUT THE ONE THAT MAKES ME FEEL LOVE.
12. WHOSE FAULT IS IT? IF IT’S MY FAULT, I AM POWERFUL!
13. HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? FEELING ABUNDANCE IS A CHOICE, FEELING SCARCITY IS A CHOICE AS WELL.
14. HOW CAN I LOVE MYSELF, AND HOW CAN I MEASURE MY LOVE TOWARDS OTHERS? PRIDE IS THE KEY..
15. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT? IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, BUT WHO DEFINES WHAT IS EASY AND WHAT IS DIFFICULT?
16. WHAT MAKES ME FEEL BAD? EVERY DISAGREABLE FEELING IS DUE TO A PARADOX.
17. WHAT IS TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT? ENLIGHTENMENT IS AGREEING WITH THE CREATING FORCE.
18. IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE ALWAYS RIGHT? AND IS IT EVEN DESIRABLE, OR WILL IT MAKE ME A FANATIC? TO BE ALWAYS RIGHT, I MUST LOVE BEING WRONG!

INSTRUCTION 2: GO OVERBOARD AND EXAGGERATE.

Repetition, consistency and perseverance are essential, as well as exaggeration. Habits of the mind are as time consuming to engrave as habits of the mind, and if a new habit needs to override a previous one that is completely different or even the complete polar opposite, engraving it is exponentially more time consuming and requires much greater effort and intensity. To override paradoxes that are supported by everyone and everything around us, including our own bodies 24/7 we need to effect extreme symbolic repetitive actions to even have a chance to peck at the paradoxes a little bit at a time. For example, the paradox of the ego is a particularly hard paradox to overcome. The belief that selfishness is the worst possible characteristic and the most heinous crime is universal and holds taboo like powers over everyone. In order to override it, we need to proclaim to ourselves and others our selfishness with pride! And beware, it will make everybody you know enraged at you. When I first started doing this, the reactions where phenomenal. I would offer a very rational explanation for my selfishness as follows:

If I do something for somebody else, then that person owes me an energetic, moral debt. So when that person does not treat me in a way that I like, I am angry, hurt and disappointed. So if you help your girlfriend paint her apartment, help her move, repair her car, help her brother get a job, take her on a beautiful vacation, help her with her tax returns, cook for her when she had the flu etc. and then, after five years of relationship she dumps you and dates somebody else you are likely to say: “the ungrateful bitch, after all I did for her!” because according to you, since you have done all these things for her and so she owes you. As if you had made a contract with her “I will do all these things for you and you will love me forever” which she is now welching on. The same applies often to your parents who may expect you to live the life they want you to live, behave and act the way they want you to behave and be who they want you to be.

Have you heard the phrase “after all the sacrifices I have done to raise you, after I nursed you and cleaned your nappies and worked two jobs for you to go to the best school, after I stayed awake by your side when you were sick… this is how you repay me?” Well, apparently you had signed a contract in the womb that you were not aware of to repay for your whole upbringing through lifetime indenture!

I, in contrast, being immensely selfish, when I help my girlfriend paint her apartment, when I help her move, repair her car, help her brother get a job, take her on a beautiful vacation, help her with her tax returns, cook for her when she had the flu etc. it is because I want her to like me and I also want to impress her with my skills and abilities and what a nice guy I am, because then she will be likely to give me an enthusiastic blowjob, plus I like to see her smile and be happy, I like to spend time with her and because I feel like it. Thus she owes me nothing.

As for my kids, I had them because I wanted children, and I did not even know them at the time. I raised them and tried to offer them the best I could because it made me happy to see my children happy, because it was what was socially acceptable for me so people would approve of me as a parent and also after my divorce because I was competing with their mother for their affections. They owe me nothing for anything in their lives and everything that I will offer them in the future it will be because it makes ME feel good and for no other reason.

Plus, it makes me proud to be selfish, because then I hold no resentment towards anyone, because nobody owes me anything, whereas being selfless and constantly reminding people of my sacrifices and the things I have done for them makes me feel like a hypocritical, judgmental, close hearted weasel! In addition, I am usually the only one around who dares not to be fake and has no guilt and shame for my natural proclivities, which makes me the happiest guy around. Our dog, Perlita, feels no guilt or shame by wanting to eat the best bits instead of Lobo, her son, and Lobo feels no guilt and shame in stealing them and running away to eat them himself, willing to bite her if she comes near. Both of them find it absolutely obvious and natural to want to take care of their own needs first, and yet they love each other and will defend each other to death and spend all day playing together. But, you may say, we are not animals, or not supposed to be animals. Well, we are, and we are supposed to be living beings, subject to all the laws of nature. It is not our nature that is the problem, it is our shame and guilt for our nature that is the problem because it forces us to constantly hide it and pretend, drenched in shame for what we are and our deceit.

Being consciously and proudly selfish has not made me a bad, uncaring, uncompassionate man. It has made me the opposite, it has dissipated the anger and pain in my heart for everybody around me but has made me way more compassionate. But now, I have full choice about what I will do and what I will not do. If I have chocolate and wish to offer some to you from my heart, I do, and if I feel like eating it all myself, I do that as well. If I offer you chocolate five times and the sixth I don’t, you may be offended and judge me. But since I don’t give a fuck about anything that does not serve my happiness, I do not give a fuck about your reaction either. I am a free man, because the list of things that I HAD TO DO lest I be condemned as selfish is humongous and the weight of duty that has been lifted from my shoulders equally so. I even used to have to go to funerals of people that I didn’t even like, attend social events that I hated, “voluntarily” offer things to others that made me upset when they accepted and even more upset at needing to hide the fact that I was upset. And I wasted over half my daily energy in trying to prove that I was not selfish, as well as in trying to walk the tightrope of showing off and taking credit while giving credit to others and appearing humble, often filled with resentment. And I never won!

Practicing saying no with an open heart was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do in my life, as well as practicing consciously being openly proud when I felt it was well deserved.

Every single one of the core instructions needs extreme behavior and action to install: for example, feeling that everything is as it should be needed to include my sexuality, a place of deep shame, feelings of inadequacy, filth, guilt and self-hatred. I needed to start talking openly about sexuality and go against of every instinct of my body: I started using “dirty” words in every day conversation, shocking everybody, discussing intimate parts sexuality in full detail, even declaring to my partner that everything I do in life is in order to impress her so that she would suck my dick (that is a small lie, it is not everything I do but rather 90% of the things that I do, but it helps to exaggerate for added emphasis).

Exaggeration is a great tool, this is why when you feel suffocated from social or moral requirements and obligations, you have to really exaggerate your reaction in order to dislodge yourself from the swamp of duty and guilt. If something does not serve my happiness, I don’t give a fuck, applies both to freeing yourself from what you are being “obliged” to do, because if you do not do it you will face not only other people’s judgment and condemnation, but also your own, and to deal with people’s opinion of you when you stop complying. This is very hard because we have learned to associate with social acceptance as the measuring tool of how well we are doing. This replaces the fear of physical death with social death and rejection, leading many Japanese, for example to commit seppuku or hara-kiri, ritual suicide, to cleanse their shame. Your beliefs make you dependent on social acceptance as much as oxygen, and put you in constant anxiety. To get rid of this enormous bundle of chains that restrict your choice you need to tear away with ferocity and exaggeration “I DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK!”

And nothing is as difficult and guilt ridden as exhibiting pride openly, and exaggeration there will make everybody judge you and will also make you feel ashamed and guilty at your own pride. Ashamed to be proud! What a paradox! Showing off, a hugely pleasurable pursuit for all humans will bring an avalanche of judgment and gossip. There is a saying that everything enjoyable in life is either illegal, immoral, bad for your health or fattening.

Actually there is one extra category: Everything pleasurable in life, if indulged even a little more or not secretively enough will bring you social condemnation!

But, if you wish to be happy, you shouldn’t give a fuck and be proud of your achievements anyway. Pride is self-love after all, so go on, enjoy, exaggerate away!!!

Exaggeration in the polar opposite direction to the paradoxes is essential, because they are so deeply embedded in our subconscious that they are basically our masters; they command everything we feel, think and do. To engrave new instructions over old, deeply entrenched ones that have been in you for decades takes huge emphasis in the opposite direction.

INSTRUCTION NO 3: USE CHOICE OS AS YOUR PERSONAL DIAGNOSTIC TOOL AS WELL AS YOUR EMERGENCY RECOVERY TOOL.

The core instructions of the kernel of Choice OS have been developed, tested for any paradox or side effect and refined over the last seven years. They are very powerful tools, and if used correctly, can help you pinpoint the contradictory beliefs or actions that are causing you to not feel well, and also provide a method for resolving them. In 90% of the occasions, you will not have to go beyond primary belief 3, or at most 5 to resolve most issues. Let us examine how this works:

The main kernel as a diagnostic and recovery tool:

The primary instructions of Choice OS, until they are fully engraved at which time they operate automatically through the subconscious by constantly self-correcting our perception, can be used as an amazing diagnostic tool. How? Well since every disagreeable thought or emotion is because of cognitive dissonance, an internal conflict, a paradox (and we can provide endless examples of this and demonstrate it in every single case), what we need to do is find the paradoxes in every occasion and correct them by choosing one reality instead of conflicting ones, and then acting as symbolically powerfully as possible to establish and engrave the chosen perception on ourselves and those that are good willed towards us. For the rest, we don’t give a flying fuck!

Let us explore some examples of truly distressful situations and see how we can use Choice OS to diagnose the paradoxes:

A. Miserable over being called lazy, incompetent, dirty, rude, callous, dishonest, a bad person, liar, loser, selfish, entitled, arrogant, boastful, talentless, useless, showoff, bitch, pig, bigmouth, fat, ugly, stupid, illiterate, naïve, uncultured, bad mannered, mean, faggot, dyke, nigger (and all the rest of racial slurs), cunt, ass kisser, cocksucker, motherfucker etc…

I just start with code no.1, I KNOW WHO I AM BECAUSE I CHOOSE WHO I AM. By exploring with code instruction no.1, the paradox becomes obvious instantly. If somebody called me lazy, incompetent etc., I can only be in distress if deep down I believe it, because I am choosing to behave in a way that would allow them to call me lazy. I am choosing to be lazy. The problem in this case is not that I am a victim, it is just that I got caught. Instead of wasting energy in being miserable, I can put energy into my work. If this is not the case and I am putting my heart in the work and I am either misunderstood, picked on for no reason or the requirements of the job are higher than I am willing to give. The paradox in most of these cases is that I am a victim and guilty at the same time. All I have to do to resolve the issue is make a choice, victim or guilty and act accordingly.

In derogatory terms such as selfish, entitled, arrogant, boastful, showoff, ass kisser, fat, bad mannered, faggot or dyke, mean, liar, cocksucker etc., things are even simpler. Again with code no.1, I need to ask myself if the accusations are true and whether I am choosing them consciously. If I am choosing to be an ass kisser because it promotes my career and I feel it is an expedient way to move ahead, why am I upset? Same with accusations such as liar, boastful, selfish, arrogant, entitled, if they are true and I am choosing them, fine, no problem, I can smile and say yes, I am, thank you for the observation. If I choose to suck cock, if I choose to be a homosexual, I should be proud of my choices, and if it is not true, what is the problem?

If I am called a spic, a nigger or a wop, it is either true or not. If it is true, it is who I am genetically and if I want to love myself I want to be proud of my race. If I am a black man and I am offended when being called a nigger by a white man but not by a member of my own race, that is because deep down I am ashamed of who I am, and this is my personal choice and nobody else’s.

If what we are accused of is not true, what is the problem? If I have not had sex with my mother, why would it bother me if someone calls me a motherfucker? If I am called uneducated, uninformed, ignorant or illiterate, it is either true (in my mind because either way all these terms are relative- who am I being compared to?) or not. If it is, it is my choice and I can either change things and be grateful for the remark that brought me awareness, or be happy with my choice to not spend resources on this particular dimension of life. If it is not true, what is the problem? That some person has a wrong perception of me? If this particular person’s opinion is important to me, I can take the necessary measures to use the right approaches to change their perceptions using language, symbolic or verbal that touches them and they can digest. Either way with any derogatory term, it is either true and I can make a choice to be proud or take action to change, or it is not. Making either choice resolves cognitive dissonance, thus happiness is restored. Any kind of distress due to someone’s judgment against us is discharged simply by believing that the only way to know who I am is by choosing who I am. Any other opinion is based on perception, a mostly subconscious tool, rather than conscious choice.

B. Miserable because of a breakup of a romantic or business relationship or a friendship.

Here we find no issue with our identity, as perceived by ourselves or others so we move to code no.2, WHAT DO I CHOOSE? I CHOOSE HAPPINESS, Happiness being the feeling that everything is deliciously as it should be.

This piece of code needs to be used correctly because it can be easily misunderstood and misused ending up in more confusion and paradox rather than less.

Everything is as it should be does not mean that I am a passive person succumbing to whatever is going around with no reaction, a victim to my Karma. If there is a situation I do not like, I will do my best to change it and I will try to promote the outcomes that I like most and avert the outcomes that I do not like in any situation. But there are realistically things that I can do nothing about; if there is too much traffic and I am losing my plane, I will do my best to get there on time, but if it is obvious that I cannot make it, if I am powerless to achieve the objective previously chosen, I will book a later or next day flight or alternative transport, maybe rent a car, and this new reality becomes exactly, deliciously as it should be for more and more reasons in my mind: I have a chance to rest, enjoy a show, see a friend or find the opportunity to enjoy a great road trip, see a few sights along the way, chill out, enjoy this unexpected sliver of extra life awarded me through missing the plane. My priority is my happiness and I pursue it according to what I choose, but when my choices cannot be fulfilled due to things outside my control, the one thing I do not sacrifice is my happiness

In a breakup, the end of a relationship of some kind that we consider precious, we have to consider whether we have done our best to retain it, and most times we will recognize that there are changes that we are not willing to make and compromises that we do not accept, because they would make us unhappy. There is always a reason for any breakup, and it invariably is that we are not willing to conform to what the other people want from us, whether we accept them as reasonable or not.

A friend of mine was complaining about his partner every time I met him. He complained about trivial things like her not putting the cap back on the toothpaste and causing it to ooze out on the tiles, not cleaning the milk off the cappuccino frothing machine so that he would find it with rotten stuff when he wanted to use it. He would also complain about her sexuality or lack thereof incessantly. After 15 years of complaining, she left him and he became instantly super depressed, lamenting the loss of his beloved. When asked why he is so miserable since he has been declaring for years that she pisses him off and does not satisfy him sexually, he took it all back: Sex was great after all, he did not mind it anymore if she smeared toothpaste everywhere and he would buy her own milk frother!

After months of misery trying to convince her to come back, he succeeded, promising her monumental changes in their relationship that he still was not willing to make, so after a couple of months back, she left for good. She loved him, but the relationship was making her unhappy for many reasons besides his complaints, because he never took her complaints seriously, only his own. She wanted to be happy, things were as they should be for her, she moved on and created a new relationship. He is still miserable. The end of something is the beginning of new opportunities, starting fresh, and letting go is freedom for both parties, especially if you can split up in love and remain dear friends for life.

So, ask yourself: What is not as it should be? The breakup or your paradox where you don’t value something enough to do what it takes and then are miserable over your own decision? Or the paradox of her being a frigid bitch and the greatest person in the world depending on the day you are having?

C. Miserable because I am full of fear and anxiety about things that may happen in the future.

In this case, after deciding firmly that I can be anyone I want and having chosen happiness, the feeling that everything, absolutely everything is exactly, deliciously as it should be I need to face Trust. For me to be afraid or anxious it means I am not believing code no.2, I am not trusting that whatever happens or will happen is exactly as it should be. I have to trust this in order to be happy, I need to trust myself and the universe that I can handle anything and turn it into an opportunity, steering myself towards a happier future. Trusting is very difficult and takes time, because trust is a muscle that atrophies when not used. The more I trust, the more the odds work for me since trust pays off in 75% of the cases mathematically, so the more I trust the more life will be proving to me what a great choice trust is.

Most of the horrors we worry about never materialize and if they do, they are less horrible than we thought. People learn to survive and adapt in prison, wars, famines, disabilities, bankruptcy etc. but only those who do not descend into despair and move on with their lives.

If you are faced with dreaded outcomes, ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen, and then figure out what you would do to be happy if the absolute worse happened. Do not avoid your fears, explore them and realize no outcome is a big deal. Life is an adventure and always the worst possible thing that could happen is if nothing happened; if you spent your life the next thirty years with no changes, if everything was stagnant, stable, predictable, boring, and unexciting. We have been taught to dread and change and any kind of death, but life IS change. Trust that every possible change can be more lessons, more experience, more wisdom, more adventure, more exciting, unimaginable gifts!

D. I am miserable because nobody loves me, nobody cares for me, I am not worthy, I am a loser, unattractive, stupid, I am a failure, my partner never truly loved me, they were just using me, I am not worthy, everybody hates me and is disgusted by me, the world is a horrible place, there are no ideals, no truly good people etc.

It is now time to employ code no.4, WHAT IS TRUTH? TRUTH IS WHAT SERVES MY HAPPINESS. There have probably been times in your life when you believe all or some of the above as well as other, similar beliefs full of cynicism, disappointment, dejection. But there have also been times when you believed the opposite. Which one is the truth? Truth is arbitrary according to most philosophers since the beginning of time, so which truth made you happy? Choose the truth that serves your happiness and trust it. And the best truth you can choose about friends, family, lovers, bosses, opponents, enemies and all other human beings is code no. 5, WHAT IS MY TRUTH? ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE IDENTICAL. They all want the same as me, to be one with, because this is the universal law governing all existence. If they do not believe they can achieve it through love, they will try to attack, devour, dominate and assimilate me. But as myths from every culture, from Beauty and the Beast to Quasimodo in Notre Dame to King Kong, Scrooge and the Phantom of the Opera, the most hardened criminals given a sliver of hope for love will take it and give a hundredfold back. If you can fully trust in this, you can find a way to approach anybody. It doesn’t mean you have to love disagreeable aggressive people in your life, of course you make choices on who you associate with and decide which people are worth investing in and winning over and which you don’t wish to bother.

But for those you do not wish to make the effort, do not be hurt because YOU are making the choice. If you try hard but cannot find or see a person’s heart, when you get to code no.10, HOW CAN I FIND WHAT I AM SEEKING? YOU CANNOT FIND SOMETHING THAT IS HARD TO FIND UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE IT IS THERE, THAT IT EXISTS you will realize that the reason you are not finding it is being you are doubting it is there. Trust and ye shall find!

E. I am miserable because of social anxiety, will people like me, approve of me, will I be accepted, what do they think of me? Social anxiety is Hell on Earth for most people since social ostracism is equated subliminally with death. Not just equated, actually it is perceived as a fate worse than death and we will go to any lengths to avoid it.

First of all, join the club. Everybody you know or will know suffers often from the same anxiety, whether they admit and show it or not. Here we start with pillar No. 5, all human beings are identical, which means that everybody, even the ones that seem socially confident and self-assured suffer from the same anxiety as you, and it takes very little to sink their self-assuredness and submerge them in the same kind of anxiety that you are facing. All it takes is for the admiring crowd to suddenly turn on them, encouraged by just one or two slip-ups and a show of weakness, and the once popular and cool become the outcasts, in a never ending cruel game of musical chairs. Somebody needs to be left standing when the music stops, expelled from the game and laughed at, and we will do anything to avoid it being us. Including identifying the weakest link and turning on them as viciously as others sometimes turn on us.

Then, of course, you turn to pillar No. 9, “If it doesn’t serve my happiness, I don’t give a fuck.” Actually, contrary to popular belief, the ones that least give a fuck about social acceptance are the “cool” people, the trendsetters and the social leaders, the ones who set the pace. Deciding to not give a fuck flusters people, because most of us are like needy puppies begging for approval and make other people’s perception and acceptance their master. Not giving a fuck is the prime way to get it, but only if you believe it, otherwise people can see through you and demolish you. Use pillar belief No. 14, and if you choose every time you are in a dilemma to act in the way that makes you more proud, rather than what makes you safe or comfortable, you will achieve loving yourself and thus become irresistible to people. And of course, happy people are very attractive to be around, despite the envy and anger that they paradoxically produce in others.

F. I am miserable for no reason at all. Everything seems to be fine, but I am feeling dissatisfied, uninspired, unmotivated and I have a feeling that something is wrong, but I cannot think of anything serious enough. Everything just feels flat and uninteresting.

Well, you need to go to pillar No. 2 and ask yourself: “What is not as it should be right now?” Using your body as a gauge, ask yourself “Is it this? Is it that?” Remember pillar No 10, “You cannot find something that is hard to find unless you are absolutely sure it is there.” Reinforce yourself with pillar No. 3 and trust beyond doubt that there is something there and ask about every single aspect of your life, and the minute you feel a reaction in your body, a strong one, according to pillar No. 11, which states that the right answer is not the one that feels right, but the one that makes you feel. Once you have diagnosed the issue, find out your beliefs about the issue, pillar No. 4. Are you believing something that does not serve your happiness? If you want to be happy, it is not true. Maybe you are just believing that “it is too good to be true” that you have no serious issues and everything in your life is just fine! This is not only untrue, but idiotic! Things that are very good are true and free of the universal paradoxes! Or, are you listening to voices that tell you what you cannot do or who you cannot be? (Pillar belief No. 6)

As you see, the more you delve into Choice OS the more you realize that all the code instructions of the main kernel are interconnected and complement each other, working together, one reinforcing the next, as well as they are used in the right order and not randomly.