Recently, I happened upon an interesting concept that I’d forgotten about a few years back. If you’ve never heard the term, indigo people are super intriguing. Basically, unless I’m wrong (I’m probably wrong), indigo folks deem themselves different than others down to their souls, believing that their sort of consciousness originated on another world some time ago. While I see the soothing implications of such a terminology (I’ve seen people find solace in their differences), the basic premise urges me to remind everyone:

We are sacks of meat on a floating rock. Don’t fret!

Consciously Conscious of Consciousness

Before I encountered indigos, I was taught a decent amount about Buddhism and meditation. And before that, I considered myself a (barely) passable student of Judaism. And even before that, a family friend convinced my child brain she was from Mars (I’ll never be quite sure). My one conclusion from all of this, assisted in grand part by one professor’s detailed application of Ernest Becker (he’ll wreck your poor brain), was that feeling different is a powerful tool of consciousness, and can account for a whole lot of sadness, madness, and individual/cultural fisticuffs.

Many systems of perceiving oneself are faulty because of the desire to identify with difference. Consciousness, most likely when bored and lonely (let’s treat consciousness as an autonomous subject, like a dude or lady in a sci-fi brain cockpit), or threatened, individualizes and constructs your feelings as variant. This is unscientific and crazy, but makes sense when you think about the ego (or whatever you call it) and its need to individuate. Everyone gets singled out for something, the error becomes identifying with it and riding that rainbow of suffering (sometimes to redemption and happiness, sure, but far away by definition). Difference is seemingly unique meaning.

Said difference leads to one of my least favorite phenomena in any counterculture or spiritual movement, and that’s the counterattack. Folks who believe themselves different often believe themselves at the top of the see-saw, finding negative terminology for the “normal” folks occupying some “mainstream” culture. I’ve heard that the society I inhabit is a lie a few too many times, and although I believe that society needs a good, hard tweak, calling it and the people operating within it a fallacy doesn’t do any favors for your campaign or a pleasant, clean soul. While being different can be amazing once you’ve found peers, it’s still dangerous because having everything else a lie means you’re putting too much pressure on your own identity to hold steady.

Consciously Conscious of Consciousness

Folks seem to fear the idea that we are meat sacks, using all kinds of symbolism to scaffold identities and attack/turn away from (not actively, on the part of indigos, of course, they are super pleasant) societies that are purportedly terrible, soul killing constructs of a lying authority something. But it’s actually liberating, discovering one’s true inner meat sack. I don’t mean go use the “I’m an animal!” defense to go do unspeakable things. I’m merely suggesting that instead of identifying souls and energies and things that are most likely human inventions (if they’re symbolic, in all likelihood it originated from us animals), identify with the meat and guts that make you up. Your body gives a lot of information, and I bet it’s the same weird confusion and nervousness of being in a body that every other human creature has and tries to rework as symbolic individuation. We’re all highly similar, and as creatures there are really no lies to be had. It’s all just a still-to-be-finished-evolving-consciousness (impossible!) trying to make sense of THIS; let’s dig the fact we’re meat sacks and connect with one another on that startlingly huge, all encompassing similarity.

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