Another scam came to light during my stay in Yosemite. The scam of the Career. "What are you going to do with your life?" "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "How will you support yourself?"

For anyone who has ever strayed outside the jersey barriers on the highway of life, you know that there are as many ways to survive (thrive, even), as there are people on the planet. I know this, but I'm still haunted by the Voice in my head..."get a career...make a difference...make a ton of money..."

More subtle still is the "go into debt" voice. It's not as old, and they haven't found a way to make it sensible. It's too much nonsense. They keep trying - interest-only loans, no-payments till X, etc. - but they haven't succeeded yet.

Anyway, long story short - get happy. Find what makes you happy. Do everything and anything that makes you happy. Find a way to do it and make enough money to support yourself. If you make more than that, great. If not, who cares? Your life is short.

If the idea of "want" is false, so too is the idea of "free will," and "volition." You never "do" anything. Things are done through you. You never "cause" anything. You are an effect that sets into motion other effects.

"Love" is a similar idea. It doesn't really exist. It was created in the Elizabethan novels of Romantic women stuck in towers and whale-bone corsets.

Let's be honest. It's all a scam, isn't it?

I recently went to Yosemite National Park for a little vacation. As usual, when confronted with overwhelming natural beauty, I experienced a moment of clarity out there.

The scales fell from my eyes. Nature, our Mother and Father, our Womb, our True God, sat before me, doing nothing. The trees competed for space and water, as did the undergrowth. The burnt-out pines rotted. Animals searched for food, and played. The rock seemed to sit silent, though I knew it was moving.

Everything moved, without human intervention. I was reminded of Alan Weisman's book "The World Without Us," in which he documents the rebounding of nature in a post-human world (http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html).

But what really brought me back to myself was the sudden realization that the world is already "without us." All of our explanations of things don't change the pines creaking in the wind, speaking their own language. All of our pollution and murder, our unchecked expansion, doesn't change anything fundamental.

Why not return to that state now? Before we're actually gone. Our true predator is ourselves...obesity, cancer, heart disease, depression, AIDS...these are our own doing. We fight them, but in fighting, give them power. Better to stop fighting. To stop doing all the time. All of this doing. Getting us nowhere.