I'm here to debate you on whether or not Ron Jeremy is as important as Jesus Christ. I believe it's true. My job is to at least give you my view, its defendable position, and why I hold this certain ideology.

The first step is to not stop reading just because of that opening line. Are things ever truly as they seem at first glance? Do you think this article will be any different? For those of you still reading, congrats; you've passed the first mental test.

This article's goal will be to stretch your mind wider than before. I will both encourage and rebuke your most deeply held beliefs. You are wrong in everything you believe, and you are smarter than you give yourself credit for. Your life is a sham, and God is in every action, thought, and breath that comes from your body. This is about spiritual consciousness. Enlightenment.

About consciousness and enlightenment. Those are synonyms. They both describe the process of cleansing and releasing your mind from everything that does not matter and holds you down.

The first step towards this is with distinctions. Abolishing these is first and hardest. Look at someone in the room with you. Or, if you're alone, watch someone through a window from a distance as they are walking. As long as they're in your field of vision, take them in visually. Gaze at them. Notice their walking pattern, hair-style, mannerisms, voice if possible; everything at first glance. Then think. What possible sequence of events could have brought them to this campus? Be either as imaginative or stale as you like in the life you make for them. Then, realize that since they are not you, that means they must have experienced something in their lives that made them different from you.

Now this is the tricky part. Since they have experienced things that you haven't, that means that both of you have experienced different parts of the world. You each have a small part of the whole of existence in you. Good, bad, pure, evil, happy, sad, depressing, euphoric, and everything else I have no room to explain because I would die before I could list everything that has ever happened. Everything = Existence. You each have felt, in your lives, a small piece of everything. The next person, same thing. And on, on, on, on, on.

We are all one piece. Mass equality in the measurement of existence. All other measurements are false. Black, white, short, girl, racist, boy, goth, tennis player, singer, junkie, carpenter and everything else ever done are all simply a part of existence. Because of this, humans are holy beings. We are shared. We are one. We are experiencing each other, and no one can get off this rock without being affected by others at various times in their lives.

This concludes the first step. Seeing people not as arguments or tension, but as chances for another part of existence to be shown to you.

The second is experience. This is easier to find and understand than human beings, since everything you do is considered experience. However, it does carry with it more risk for permanent harm than simply talking with people.

What benefit does a cocaine addict have over a suburban husband? A Republican over an environmentalist? I don't know. I've never been a drug addict, nor a suburban husband, environmentalist, or card-carrying Republican. I can't speak of what it's like to be any of these. But if I were to experience any of these, it would add another part of existence that I could speak of to other holy beings.

But returning to the cocaine-addict example: the information on cocaine seems to lean towards the possibility that I could die from it. Thereby ending my role in existence, which I wouldn't suggest to anyone. So between either becoming an addict, or simply asking an addict what his life is like, which one will preserve me longer, thereby increasing the amount of existence I come in contact with later? The second option, most likely. But, what wisdom could one miss out on if they never became an addict? Is there anything someone like that may have tapped into that simply isn't expressible in words? I don't know. I've never been an addict. Neither have I been a suburban husband, environmentalist, or Republican. But I would be remiss if I expected the same standards and beliefs of everyone else as I did myself.

So this is the second step to accept; the ratio of personal experience as opposed to second-hand accounts is up to each person to decide for themselves.

But the mind. This is the endless field. And each person is the farmer that decides for themself what new seeds of thought they wish either to cultivate or to discard. Your heart will not seize and your nose will not bleed if you open your mind to possibilities you had not considered before. Encountering new ideas is not dangerous. Why a person would fulfill an idea through dangerous action is a different question. But that is not the fault of the idea, simply the person. A religious book whose whole thesis is contained in the words "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" has been the impetus for a large number of acts of violence throughout history. Is this the book's fault? Is this love's fault? No. It is the fault of those who performed the actions themselves. Nothing more.

This mantra applies to all ideas. All of existence includes ideas, thought, and imagination. All of existence means "all things at all possible." To gain a deeper understanding of everything that is around you is consciousness. To see all as truly all, that is enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the process of removing everything from your mind that prevents it from breathing. If you feel the need to get on your knees and moan or pray to Jesus Christ, enlightenment allows that, by allowing one to see Christianity as a piece of existence, just as pornography is another piece. There is no true contradiction of thought or action.

If the mind one day moves its preference from evangelism to atheism, consciousness allows the mind to make this leap, and back again if need be, because at the core they are seen as equal, combinable, and interconnected.

To be fully conscious, to progress in the evolutionary, spiritual, and mental sense of the word, one must open one's ears and mind to all views of hate, love, and all points in between. One must open all their senses to all smells, sounds, feelings, and visions, and treasure them as that which they had not yet experienced up to that point. A flower, a cigarette. Sunny day, a pitch black room, or visible moonbeams. Police lights, fireworks, and flamethrowers.

All things. Until the one final experience. And when you learn to anticipate death while also living life, you have reached the balance in the only seeming contradiction that matters. Using death as a reason towards life.

Phil has decided to take sabbatical for the next year, exploring this world which, against all our worries and doubt, surpasses eternally what we expect and what we dread and what we hope to find. Godspeed Phil. We'll miss you.

Darkness! - Staff