The Cortical Badlands

Compared to the physical world upon which we totally depend for every breath we take and every additional moment we survive, this mentally created world is simply “unreal.”  This is obviously how life wants things presently arranged, as witnessed by the fact that is how they are presently arranged.

This bleeds over into a man’s mental conception of himself, and the same cellular activity,
(notorious to the cortical badlands), that with a straight face can make men profess to believe in the existence of supernatural beings. 

The cellular activity knows full well that it is concocted, and will also cause a man to believe in a similarly imaginary being that his neurons make and call – himSELF.

You are certainly your physical body, along with all of its individual, instinctive temperaments, tastes, and proclivities, but comparably speaking, everything else about you is only what you are
coerced into pretending it is.

To “wake up” is to no longer take your thoughts’ pretending – seriously.  The second reality of mankind’s mentally based pastimes is taken seriously only by the dead and those who are working on it.

If you accept the mechanical mental sensation of your thoughts, views and opinions as being the center and focal point of reality, then forever will you snooze and dream, and forever will you be confused, uncertain, and thoroughly dissatisfied with you and everyone else. 

But hey, that’s okay – just look around –
it’s okay with everybody else…
is it “okay” by you?!  

J.                           

The Created World

Half the world’s population, at any instant, sees the other half as embracing quite erroneous ideas, and commonly expresses bafflement about how ostensibly intelligent people can be so mentally mistaken.  The position of individual players/minds in this game is continually shifting, second by second, with pros becoming cons, and opponents from a minute ago now being momentary allies. 

Fluidity is the name of the game,
and lack of conclusiveness, 
its method of keeping score.

A man satisfied with his thoughts’ judgement of other people being “phony,” does nothing but
nourish his own inauthentic mental life.

Only man’s purely instinctive, animalistic, physical existence can validly be termed “real.”
This is no longer adequate for a life of a true human being, nor is such acceptable to the majority.

A constantly increasing percentage of men’s lives are spent in activities that are not immediately essential to survival, but are manifestations of thought.  Games, hobbies and entertaining pastimes do not appear in the natural world like water and soil do, and must be created by men’s minds.

J.

The Big Mind

At the solely significant, cellular level, everyone KNOWS what is going on, but man’s collective neurons, (which constitute the Big Mind…which force-furnishes each individual with the thoughts that mechanically pass through his mind), are obviously not prepared to allow this awareness to be spoken aloud by ordinary men’s tongues, nor be heard by his mental ears.

When an everyday person hears of the notion, “Man mentally lives in a kind of dream world, and is not as conscious as he could be, but through certain efforts he can awaken to a more enlightened state of mind,”  he will pretend to either dismiss the idea, or else will feign no interest.

Many among the would-be awakened have always been perplexed by this, and say they cannot understand why something so obvious to them, cannot be seen by everyone else. 

I say that everyone DOES realize the mental situation man is in, and are just COERCED by life to pretend that they do not.  One way this obligatory, life-of-pretension manifests itself in an everyday man, is the sensation he feels of being, “the center-of-the universe,” (which is to say), the center of the life he experiences.

This has nothing to do with vanity, and it is not an example of pathological self-delusion.  All ordinary, sane people on this planet are force-fed chemical combinations, (in their brains), which produce, in its operations of conscious thought, an irrepressible feeling that the universe-of-reality as perceived of by that mind, revolves around the thoughts of that mind.  It is only by this arrangement in each man’s thinking that the imaginary world of thinking is sustained.

J.

Truth or Consequences

In New Mexico is a town named “Truth or Consequences.”  Since I get the sense that you do not want to go there, allow me to remind you that in ordinary human life, there is no such place as the, “Truth,” and even if there is, not going there has no consequences.  So, let’s just sit here by the side of the highway, and delve into that most delectable of subjects that brought us together on this stretch of road.

Everyone has a favorite toy from childhood from which they continue to derive pleasure.

Everyone is under the impression that the plaything has matured, (via aging), along with them.

Everyone is mistaken.

Fact:
Life does not encourage ordinary people to see their lives for what they are, but rather prods them to overlook their real one, and talk among themselves about pretend ones.

Fact:
This is the nature of routine human life, and it works just as well as it does.  To complain about the arrangement, and criticize the way other people live their lives, is to double the intensity of 
the pretension in which you live. 

J.

Where Passengers Never Get Where They're Going

At the airport on one star, when you step to the door of a plane, and they ask if you are on your way somewhere.  If you say, “Yes” – they won’t let you on.

Why would a man go to the trouble of renting a car, then never drive it off the lot?
(Oh, all right: “And never TRY to drive it off the lot?”)

And finally, for all of you die-hard, “stay-at-homers,” remember this: 
You can either look out the windows, and at your hands – OR, you can stare at the carpet and mildew.  “Just a second there, sir, before you leave I’d like some clarification of what you said.
Do you mean that I can look at carpet that is mildewed, or that I, myself, may become so by staring at my indoors so much?”

A man rented a room to a sailor and his parrot. The sailor never spoke; the parrot did all of their talking. The man grew sick of the parrot, and one day shot him…and the sailor dropped dead.

Second Ending: “But the parrot kept on talking.”
Third Ending:    “Then realized it was actually the sailor he hated.” 
Fourth Ending:  “But discovered he’d shot himself.” 
Fifth Ending:     “And as he lay dying, couldn’t remember why he’d been upset to begin with
…and thus died “enlightened,” I mean, “satisfied.”

J.

More Stories from the Universe

In one canyon, if you hold a mirror up in front of you, and look back over your shoulder, everything that you don’t see is precisely what you’re searching for.

 

In one country, there are two political parties:  Those Who Stand Up, and, Those Who Lie Down.  (And only the latter believe that their position needs be discussed and explained.)

There was once an agent who represented a ventriloquist and his dummy.  The ventriloquist never said much, but the dummy almost drove him crazy—always talkin’ show biz, and wantin’ to know when they’d get work.  He wished he could dump the dummy, but what’s a ventriloquist act without a dummy?!
 
 

One solar system was invaded by pirates, who stole the voices of anyone who wasn’t staring at the furniture.

There is a difference between a “hobby” and, “levitating.”   One is impossible, and the other, meaningless, (and of course what I meant to say is that there is a common denominator between them.)
 

Over by the coast are Siamese twins T. & S., who you can hire to give you directions; but be forewarned:  when T. points in some direction and tells you that “over there” is where you want to go, it means you are already there at that exact instant.  (Oh yeah, S. never says anything—that’s how you recognize him.  And one more thing:  don’t bother asking, you can’t hire just him.) 

J.

More Stories from the Universe

In one village, everyone who lived East of the town square spoke, while everyone who lived West never did.  Both groups lived identical lives, yet the Eastern group didn’t realize it.

On one planet:
A belief in tomorrow
 erases today.

On another world:
Looking over there,
wrecks right here.

And on a third orb:
Listening to voices
 makes you go blind.

(The platforms where the trains leave for Magicville are always filled with awaiting passengers.)

J.

Stories from the Universe Behind this One

On a certain island is a large Off/On switch,
that legend says was once of some significance. 
The current inhabitants mostly ignore it.

Achieving expertise in any activity involving the mind is always a gradual process.
There is one exception.

In one universe, schools for, “Getting A Leg Up,” all employ the same approach.  First, they tell a prospective student to stand on one leg; then they ask him, “How does that feel?”  If he replies “Great!” they then say to him, “Do you realize that during your normal day you never willfully stand on one leg?” 

If, after thinking about this for a moment, the applicant indicates he is so aware, they then tell him that that condition is called, “Being flatfooted.”  If the neophyte’s face then drops, they inform him that through certain methods they teach, that a person can learn to stand on one foot, and, “Get a leg up.” 

If this news returns him to cheerfulness, he is accepted as a student, and thus commences a schooling that, once so begun, never comes to end.

(The problem is not the result of anything the school teaches, but is due to the way the mind works.)

J.

Surprise Your Neural Pants Off

As regards the ideas over which other men wrangle: neither a supporter, nor critic be. If you undertake this course of action, what you can quickly realize is that what the thoughts in your brain say they believe and don’t believe is of no interest to you personally.

This may sound squirrely, for how can you have a certain thought or belief about a matter that you don’t have an interest in?  If you didn’t have an interest in the subject, you wouldn’t have any opinion or belief about it!

Yeah, I know that sounds right—but without the “benefit” of your own thought’s running commentary, you can joyously surprise your own neural pants off, and unexpectedly find yourself mentally cut loose from a gigantic, invisible stick ball of meaningless mimicry and wearisome plagiarism.

Rather than thinking of the goal as, “I am trying to wake-up,” or, “I am seeking Enlightenment,” say to yourself instead:  “I long to be original-of-mind, but I live in a realm run by mimicry and plagiarism.” 

This is what past, unoriginal men have called, “Man’s state of sleep,” but you can now see it for what it is.  This, to you, is my very best recommendation for the day.

J.

Take No Seat At The Table

If you are thinking about the things that everyone else is thinking about—pro or con—you are asleep and your intellectual life is merely part of man’s collective dream.  That covers it—there is nowhere else to look, and nothing else to say about the matter.

If you are thinking about things that the rest of humanity thinks about, you are not individually thinking.  There is nothing at all creative going on in your mind, and none of your ideas are original.

Ordinary life operates quite well under these conditions, but if your hunger is to get-to-the-bottom-of-things, leaving your mind totally in the hands of the mimicking, plagiarizing thoughts that magically appear there, will keep you forever traipsing along the tinfoil plated path without ever getting backstage and seeing the real Wiz who’s been paving the road.

Having an original thought is close to impossible, but what you can do immediately, that will take you nearer than humans are meant to be, is to not entertain the thoughts that are already out there.

When it comes to the ideas upon which mankind dines—
take no seat at the table. 

J.

Original Thought—Not!

During normal operations and conversations, men go along with the pretense that they are capable of original thought.  After all, under normal conditions, what choice do they have?

Men do not ordinarily take note that no individual creative thinking is involved in them saying, for example, that they do not believe in Jack Frost, to someone who does.

There is no plate for originality when you dine at the table of collective cannibalism. What creative response is possible to that which itself is mere impersonation?

Neither agreeing nor dissenting with ideas that were not original with their source, is in any way a form of originality on the part of the one doing the agreeing or dissenting.  By engaging in such behavior;  you reinforce your glutinous seating at the common table of spurious, intellectual cannibalism. 

P.S. You can’t keep debating the color of Santa Claus’ eyes without it supporting a haunting suspicion that he may exist.

J.

Walls of a Closed Room

The routine intellectual world and life of mankind is one of nothing but mimicry and cannibalism.  In the overall picture, individual originality of thought has no place and has no value.

When the intellectual, second reality of man undergoes change, it does so in the medium of mankind collectively, (or in some sizable segment thereof).

Men have an inexpressible, yet irrepressible, awareness that their normal intellectual life is confined to one of duplication, quotation, and plagiarism.  They in fact indirectly struggle by attempting to display some originality in the form of acceptable rebellion in the physical realm, through such modes as the clothes they wear; their manner of walking, talking, standing; all told, their so-called “life style.”  “Since I have no freedom in the way I think, I will exercise some in the way I dress; the drugs I take, the customs I flaunt.”

This is the appeal of, “The life of the artist.”  Men long for the actual mental freedom that thought has always promised, but never delivers on.

Thought’s inherent difficulty in directly comprehending itself presents a situation almost beyond its ability to realize.  How can you make the walls that comprise a closed room aware that they are the confined area?!

J.

Knots on a Rope

Men accept the fact that the functioning of their heart, lungs and liver is habitual, but with the brain’s consciousness, it seems to be otherwise.  There seems to be at least some room for movement; some room for originality and deviation from strictly automatic operations.

In practice, this proves to be much more a matter of, “seems-to-be,” than “is.”  For even though the mental world of man does morph, it does so on a most leisurely and collective level, affording no actual, real-time, freedom of thought to the individual. 

I would waste my time attempting to preach this to ordinary minds, for they cannot be converted to its reality.  I say this to you, and you either realize it or you don’t.

Under the ordinary, commonly experienced conditions of being a conscious human, the thoughts that endlessly appear in your mind are not original with you.  They are not products of your independent thinking; they are in no wise examples of your creativity, and are merely a few knots out of a billion-trillion others, tied on a rope of infinite length.

As is always the case, the truth of a situation never troubles the minds of the few, but you do need to clearly realize for yourself that what is accepted as, “thinking for yourself,” in the everyday world, is patently no such thing. 

J.

"Sleep Walking"

Although never described as such, a man’s desire for the conscious part of his brain to, “wake up” from a state of “lethargy and dreams,” can been seen as a longing to be original-of-mind while living in a world of total mimicry and plagiarism.

Life has arranged that habit is the most efficient approach to physical survival for all creatures, and has chosen the same as its method of sustaining man’s mental world as well.

Ordinary men are made to brag about the originality of their ideas, but not allowed to notice that their intellectual activity consists of nothing more than either sycophantic support, or vacuous criticism of ideas already expressed by others.  As an additional insult, they are coerced into offering as proof of their intellectual prowess, their ability to quote the thoughts of others.

Physical life on this planet obviously changes in a quite gradual and coherent manner; so too does mental life, but this is not so apparent to the creatures who are its medium.

From a mortal perspective you would conclude that such a conservative approach must be the safest course, physically speaking—but it is this same caution of habitual, mental behavior that infuriates the few, and causes them to give this dull repetitious operation of consciousness such names as, “sleep walking,” and “living in a dream.”

J.

On The Verbal Dance Floor

The reality of what I am verbally dancing with here is totally beyond the scope of any verbal dance floor.  If from these words you derive only the idea that all I am saying is that there is nothing wrong with you or life, then you miss entirely the ultimately inescapable inner reality regarding the nature of ideas; your ignorance of which is all that being asleep is.

While your thoughts and attention are focused on what is wrong in you, as explained and justified by your little piece of the great collective mind, (which, I assure you is totally without any personal significance), you not only waste your time, but if your aim is to come out of the cave, something worse takes place.

The sense of something-being-wrong blinds you, deafens you, and wraps up all of your other senses.  It is like the brain washing technique of isolating a man from all sensory input until his mind begins to hallucinate and create its own reality. Again, what better description of, living in a dream while not in a bed sleeping?!

An alert man who can just barely detect the aroma-of-reality in what I am saying, can begin to turn his instant attention directly on the question of: 
“Where, inside of me, is this feeling that something is going on in a way that is wrong?”

To one day suddenly see what I am pointing to, which is constantly taking place in you and not in some faraway secret school, or in some dusty, obscure manuscript, is to know first-hand the reality behind the fine sounding phrases of, “being Awake,” or, “being Enlightened.”

There is nothing wrong with being Awake, but neither is there anything wrong with being asleep, and until that is understood – you cannot wake up.  Neat arrangement, huh?!  Keeps out the riff raff – hell, it damn near keeps out EVERYBODY!

J.

The Verbal Dance Floor

Those who have achieved a mental separation from the involuntary collective mind of man,   have spoken of this is as a gift.  While understandable, the picturization is less accurate than it could be.

Waking-up is not a gift, but is the box it came in. What is wrong is not what your thoughts say is wrong, but the box the wrong came in.

You are asleep because something about you is wrong.  What is wrong in you is not what the wrong so clearly seems to be, but rather the medium for the wrong, which is anything but obvious.

To your ordinary thinking, (drained from the large and impersonal collective mind of man), what is wrong in you is the same thing as the medium by which you are made aware of the wrong-ness.  When something is wrong in your stomach, your consciousness of the problem is quite obvious and specific, but when the sensation is that there is something wrong in your consciousness itself, the brain provides no such clear information.

The operation of your brain that produces thought, does not produce thought that can think about itself objectively. Thus, your thoughts can say to you in your head that something in there is not right about how they are operating, but they cannot tell you specifically what is wrong, or how to change it.  Everyone’s thoughts pretend to TRY, theory after theory, notion after notion, to have correctly diagnosed the problem; to have the solution.  But anyone with even one sane eye, recognizes all of these claims for the harmless foolishness that they be.

No thought knows what is wrong in the world of thought.  All your thoughts can offer is their observation that something-is-wrong, but anything beyond that – forget about it.

J.

The Box Thought Came In

Those who have achieved a mental separation from the involuntary collective mind of man,   have spoken of this is as a gift.  While understandable, the picturization is less accurate than it could be.

Waking-up is not a gift, but is the box it came in. What is wrong is not what your thoughts say is wrong, but the box the wrong came in.

You are asleep because something about you is wrong.  What is wrong in you is not what the wrong so clearly seems to be, but rather the medium for the wrong, which is anything but obvious.

To your ordinary thinking, (drained from the large and impersonal collective mind of man), what is wrong in you is the same thing as the medium by which you are made aware of the wrong-ness.  When something is wrong in your stomach, your consciousness of the problem is quite obvious and specific, but when the sensation is that there is something wrong in your consciousness itself, the brain provides no such clear information.

The operation of your brain that produces thought, does not produce thought that can think about itself objectively. Thus, your thoughts can say to you in your head that something in there is not right about how they are operating, but they cannot tell you specifically what is wrong, or how to change it.  Everyone’s thoughts pretend to TRY, theory after theory, notion after notion, to have correctly diagnosed the problem; to have the solution.  But anyone with even one sane eye, recognizes all of these claims for the harmless foolishness that they be.

No thought knows what is wrong in the world of thought.  All your thoughts can offer is their observation that something-is-wrong, but anything beyond that – forget about it.

J.

Investigate With Three Eyes

Human thought inherently thinks that, “Something is wrong.”  This is a readily observable fact, in both you, and everyone else. 

Realize it and forget about it – regarding everyone else.  As regards you – investigate the matter with all three eyes.

In a more advanced universe, this inquiry should take all of five or ten minutes, but in this one, the time required is longer.  If you never start, well you know the finish to that sentence.

The reason that so few people ever get past, or even realize, the barrier of the something-is-wrong phenomenon, is that no description of it even comes close to describing it.  The only means we have FOR describing, (thought), is what is wrong.

A man whose goal in life now is to wake up, has no doubt that his present condition is wrong. This is inarguable, beyond question – a felt certainty.  It is from this position that everyone does, and must, begin.  But it is from this neural quagmire, in which a swamp is up to its knees in a swamp, that few men’s minds ever emerge.

I repeat: investigate the matter with all three eyes.

J.

A Species Specific Phenomenon

A few people throughout history have become so fascinated and entangled in thinking something-is-wrong, that their whole existence is affected thereby.   These are the men and women who, once they hear of the idea of, “waking-up,” or “being Enlightened,” are instantly addicted.

In spite of their specialized interest, most of such people still never get beyond the something-is-wrong stage.  To them, what is wrong with other people is that they are asleep and living in a dream, and what is wrong with themselves is that they also are asleep and given to passing delusions.

None of this is either so, or not so – or not not so.  It is simply how things seem to be to ordinary men, whose minds are but a part of the gigantic, collective One; but it is a view that has no individual relevance.

The pertinence for the Few is in the fact that as long as you think that something is wrong inside of you, you can never wake-up to that other state of mind, wherein your mind is, in large part, cut free from the purely automatic, collective One.  Your own sight becomes an original view.

No matter the joyous circumstances, if you stop and look at this matter for just an instant, you will always find that something inside of you still feels that something is, nevertheless, wrong.

To ever come out of the shadows, you must simply recognize that this is a natural part of being a human: a creature with thoughts-in-the-brain.  It is a species-specific phenomenon, and has nothing to do with you, or anyone else, personally.

J.

The Collective Delusion

As long as your investigation of the waking-up thing is based on the assumption that a crime has been committed – and that something is definitely WRONG – you will never wake up and see what is really going on.

Assume such, and your thinking will forever be captivated by this collective delusion, and all of your efforts will be automatically channeled into go-nowhere ruts.

There is one gigantic mortal mind, through which life carries on all of man’s thinking, and from which is each man parceled out a share, based on his genetics.   Yet all minds are invisibly tied together in a world-wide bundle.

There is a force-fed thought, in all humans, that says a crime has occurred on planet Earth, from which men continue to suffer.  Everyone attempts to explain it – but no one can.  All they know is that – something is WRONG.

A man is certain that something is wrong in the way other people think and behave, and that something is similarly wrong in him.  Ordinary men generally accept this situation as simply being how life is, and go on about whatever business they have.

J.