Balance

A balancing act is constantly maintained, both in the collective body of mankind, and in the single one of the individual.  You can call it a “struggle,” or you can call it a “balance.”  The reality of it is insouciant to labels; the result is a never-ending, always-shifting movement of and in man, (from wherever he is at the moment), both physically and mentally, to some other only guessed-at surprising future place.

The journey is made safe by the bus having two drivers, each with their own steering wheel, and their own separate view of travel.  One is extremely cautious, and very hesitant about leaving the main, previously traveled highway for explorations down unknown secondary roads, while the other’s head seems forever lost in dreams of better-times, and far-away-places.

Every person, at one moment in their life, favors first one of the two approaches, then, at another moment, the other; caution vs. excitement; timidity vs. exhilaration; fear vs. bravado; yesterday vs. tomorrow, literally – the known vs. the unknown!  Do you recognize that I am, in fact, really talking about the sport of  individually  trying to aid in your own evolution, for indeed, from one view, the hunger to, “wake up from a dream,”  is exactly that.

By instilling thought in man, life set in motion the ongoing, struggle-cum-balancing-act that is the continuing saga of ever evolving man, by way of the twin bus drivers, one crying out, “It is time for something NEW!” while the other one assures the passengers, “Stick with me; I will only do what I have successfully done before.” Life has thus arranged circumstances whereby humanity as a whole unwittingly aids in its own collective evolution, and wherein a maximum of change is realized with a minimum of risk.

J.

Nothing Beats Experience

In political contests between incumbents, and challengers, the classic sloganeering always pits, “Nothing Beats Experience,” against the opposition’s, “Time for a Change.”  While each candidate’s intention is to distinguish himself from his opponent by drawing attention to his history in elected office, (vis-a-vis the demands of the times), I see both assertions however, as manifestations of a divide that is much broader and timeless, that reflects the nature of man – not campaign slogans.

These shibboleths can be interpreted on a more radical and revealing level.  They also say, (in the first instance), “I am instinct, and trust the lessons of the past.”  The second says: “I am thought; my interest is in new possibilities.”  These statements are also representative of some of my previous models of man as in the sets of: “doers and talkers,” “cortical consciousness, and sub cortical operations,” “instinctive mind and verbal mind,” and the common politically employed one of, “conservatives and liberals.”

At base what you have are overt expressions of the overall nature of life, wherein one part of it is always a defender of the status quo, as a refuge of proven safety.  It in essence says, “We have survived this long, behaving as we have, so what better guide for the future is there than our past actions?!”

From this natural perspective do all Earthly creatures, save man, persist.  Tigers see no need for change in their lives; eagles ponder no other possible existence.  That requires an animal with a brain that produces “thoughts.”
 

Have you ever considered just how downright neat AND ultimately stupefying it is that thoughts are the only thing in the entire universe who get to name and define themselves?  Ultimately stupefying, I tell you, and responsible for all subsequent, “directions-to-the-wrong-bus” – but now back to the main road.

J.

Dreams of Change

Man would be incapable of evolving and effecting the beneficial changes he continues to do, were it left to the animalistic instincts that are the subterranean machinery that keeps his building physically inhabitable.  It requires that thought be present, that ideas be in a man’s brain of how circumstances would be more comfortable, and conducive to survival, if circumstances were different.

Instinct knows no such word as, “different.”  You eat what is right for you – not anything “different,” and you make your home where it is right for you – you do not move to somewhere “different.”

This is simple and obvious enough – our prime real estate is, and should be, governed by stodgy, ultra-cautious and conservative instinct.  Silent, automatic, unthinking instinct brought us this far and “nothing beats experience,” (except for the equally obvious fact that life has never been satisfied to let man remain as he is, at any given time).

Once man’s brain began to turn out thoughts, what came next was inevitable:  change and relentless DREAMS of change.  But by its very definition, change has no history on which to rely.  It is the opponent of history, and all it can do is issue the hopeful cry: “Time for a change!...is anyone paying attention to me?”

Some segment of humanity is always in the process of change compared to some other segment, and within an individual, the same game plays out.  One segment of him, (his thoughts), are attracted to change while another segment, (his instincts), have a natural resistance.

J.

All Aboard!

If you want to criticize something worthwhile, criticize yourself for being moronic enough to pay any attention to the criticism of expressed by the neural squatters in your head.  That criticism is intended for humanity in general.  Man is supposed to feel, accept, and act on it collectively, so as to move things along en masse, with the degree to which each individual labors under being left, apparently, to the chance degree of idiocy and susceptibility OF each individual.

If one of your second reality pleasures is conspiracy theories, consider one worthwhile:  that life conspires to make man – collectively – participate in his own evolution via always thinking about things not as they ARE, but as they COULD be. Thoughts that picture physical reality through the lens of his mental one, witnessed by his ever increasing longevity and health, can, with this present arrangement, find overall fault (but the secret few secretly refuse to be “pushed around” by this collective progress).

They see warts aplenty, although it normally takes a life time, (or several, if you are so cheap that you have made yourself pretend to believe in multiple ones), for a man to get a grip on the real name for such blemishes, (which is):  “Mirror, mirror – blessed reflection – wherefore art thy proper sting?!”

That burgeoning cellular voice in the brains of the few shouts back: “Why I’m right cheer!”  Bing A Bam, first thing you know, one part of your head has woke up, wiped its eyes, blowed its nose and by gawd, is climbing the hell outta bed – first thing you know, one part of your head is leaving behind, under the covers, all the endless dramas destined for the broadways of the mind,  (along with all of the sniveling carpers that are the shills for human consciousness as played out above the cellular level).

Even as you mess around in the collective station of man’s second reality, if you listen to instinct as opposed to vocal thought, you hear cellular reality, which is always announcing your train.  All aboard – ya’ll!

J.
 

The Power of Ideas

The intrinsic and ignored power of ideas is in the fact that, once they have made up a new notion, they can immediately ignore the fact that they just made it up, and instantly start to treat the new, made-up idea as though it is as naturally real and solid as any rock a man might find laying around on the ground.

You can do this if you wanna – you’re supposed to do this – as a human being you’re entitled to do it.  You can Do It If You Wanna, but if you DO, you’re gonna find yourself living partially, (if not largely), in a life filled with explanations, but with no comprehension.

If you go out knowingly to play ball in the rain, don’t play the idiot and later pretend to be astonished at the mud on your shoes.

You play with the sleeping – you sleep.  Kick around ideas with idiots, and idiot ideas kick you around.  Critique hack dramatists, and find yourself the archivist for all of history’s tabloids.

All criticism is criticism of stuff that man’s mind has made up (the second reality).
No one criticizes REAL reality, (dirt being dirty, water being wet).   Only idiots, seriously playing idiots' games, debate the finer points of the rules.  There are no rules other than the ones that men’s minds are forever making up, as the game goes along.

J.

Non-Laying-Around Reality

“An insightfully provocative drama that freshly addresses all the major human conundrums; an unforgettable evening of theatre,” is what the advertisement promised.  “A tediously pretentious rehashing of long discredited sophomoric, mental caterwauling; a complete waste of time,” countered a revered reviewer, and one man who somehow ended up on planet Earth mused: “No doubt I am in for an interesting time to be in a place where criticism passes for intelligence; a comment which,
while contextually comprehensible, is a bit excessive once one recognizes the true quality of those human activities not directly connected to food, sex, or getting in out of the cold.”

To a man with the always-open, cold blooded, impartial view of a fish I, the constructional facts of this planet are plain.  There is the hard reality of what you find already here, stuff just laying around on, and in the ground stuff to eat, stuff to drink, stuff to heat and forge into other more useful stuff.

Then there is another kind of, non-laying-around reality, which was not already here before humans appeared; stuff that now exists only because men’s minds made the stuff up.  Plays, sciences, symphonies, religions, philosophies, and stories of all stripes, all the stuff that humans use to fill up the times between eating, fucking and sleeping.  Stuff that can be quite entertaining, but stuff whose history, ordinary minds ignore.

A man with that non-standard longing permits his thinking to do so at his own severe expense, n that he will waste his energy attempting to blow away smoke dreams of windmills, and correct the voices that speak for made-up stuff.

Dirt is real – all ideas are made up – the ideas that afterward proclaim to be of supreme significance.  (Such as ideas purporting to pinpoint man’s origin, and to describe reality after his death).

J.

The Reasons cum Excuses

Time for: the Reasons cum Excuses, (starting with the first):

1.      The reason these writings seem to lack a systematic coherency is that they are not the work of one man, but of a committee composed of several de-frocked sufis, some disbarred zennists, the stray kabbalist, and a blind taoist usually doing the proofing.

      2.   The reason the style, tone and quality of these writings varies so greatly from day to day, is because the style tone and quality of my thinking varies so greatly from day to day.

      3.   The reason that some days what I write seems familiar to you and on other days it does not, is because some days I have difficulty finding anything suitable to plagiarize.

      4.   The reason that some days you like and understand what I write about, and other days you don’t, is because you’re nuts. 

Oh yeah, the weekly reminder:  Any reference made to me personally in these writings is purely a bit of fiction.

J.

Wash Your Thoughts, Not Your Hands

Wash your thoughts, not your hands, and watch your hands, not your thoughts.

When the behavers and the talkers start choosing up sides, manage not to be there.  (Either that or learn how to make your instincts speak, so that you can hear them talking aloud in your head.)

An awakened man lives with a stranger. 
Everyone lives with a stranger.
An awakened man KNOWS 
that he lives with a stranger.

Fashion Tip for The Few:

If you think you’re ugly – don’t look in the mirror.

Oh, you have to leave so soon?  Well, one more before you go: 

No one knows what “you” is, nor can anyone know; the closest you can come to knowing is, “passing out.”  (Hey, you okay?…You look a bit pale?!)

J.

Nothing Personal

No system can understand itself based on an explanation coming from within the system.  (Don’t drink the water – wherever you are – for it is being polluted simply by your being there.)

Under ordinary conditions, no one has a mind of their own.  Their mind is your mind, and your mind, part of theirs.  Everybody is sharing just one big mind.  (Nothing personal about it.)

Notice Regarding Thinking and the Question of Honesty:  
Everyone’s on the take.

One guys says he now finds only one thing laugh-out-loud-funny: that’s when he is alone and has some thought about, ”how awake he is.”

First Verse:  What you think is not important – only what you think ABOUT. 

Second Verse: What you think about is not important, rather, what you think WITH.

J.

How Life Works

The brain concocted the notion of you having a “self” so as to make a life of habit and redundancy seem more acceptable, in that you can then pretend it is “you”  who decided to
live like that.

One guys says, “If I thought people were really serious in what they say – I’d cut my throat.”

Ordinary consciousness is like a scout
who constantly sends back reports prematurely.

How Life Works:

Everyone stands around staring, until someone moves, then everyone stops staring long enough 
to react, which gives still other starers something to momentarily react to – and on and on doth life so roll… 

One guy says, “The most awake man I ever knew said that he did not know what ‘being asleep’ meant, and if I did, then I was asleep.”  You can never answer the question, “Why does a cube have six sides,” since what causes it is the same thing that causes you to ask.

J.

A Built-In Clock

The reason that men came up with the notion that ideas are either right or wrong is because all ideas are lunacy, but having a perceived choice between two possibilities enables a man to claim a distinction between his right ones and any ideas that oppose his, (which by the process of elimination, would be the wrong ones).  “Lunacy, lunacy – my kingdom for lunacy – would be a bargain at half the price.”

Ordinary consciousness has a built-in clock –
the extraordinary version does not.

After hearing a minister say that the way you can be sure it is the voice of god you hear talking to you is that he is “always consistent,” a man mused, “In that case, my thoughts are god, for if they are anything they are consistent.  JEEZE are they consistent!”  (Okay, boy and girls, can you tell me how to spell “consistency” using only the letters, m,e,a,n,i,n,g.l,e,s,s?)

Ordinary people think of progress as the regaining of their usual health after an illness.  Your sole bumper sticker should be:  “You Can’t NOT Get There From Here.” 

The bio read, “He began to understand that he was not merely selling model trains to young boys, but was selling them a dream.”  This is not so confined, for whenever you buy a book, a CD, a fashionable swimsuit, a movie or sports ticket, you are buying a dream.   No matter the object or event pursued, what you are hoping to purchase is a dream that the object or event will trigger in your thoughts.

J.
  

and Trains that Fly

Look at the batting line up – there is no slot listed for players who don’t want to play; examine the train schedules – there are not any going nowhere.  None of them are actually going anywhere, but with ordinary travelers, at least the pretense is made.

What’s the Few to do?!?!?!?!...Okay; as is always, constantly and forever the case, there are all kinds of things you can do.  Since we are here dealing in words, and since words have to get in line, and present themselves one at a time, here is one of the kinds of things that the would-be extreme traveler, thoroughly unsatisfied with man’s divided state, can do as he awaits the appearance of “The Savior,” (aka trains that fly).

Move your talking part into the behaving camp and vice versa, and once you instantly experience its value and recognize what it reveals about your coherent nature, you can mix it up in various personal combinations.  Until you finally realize that it doesn’t matter anyway; you’ve never ever really been divided into two of anything; you’ve always been just one big lump with part of the lump saying that it is separate from the overall lump.  (What lumpy attempt at humor – Hah!)

Be ye behaver or talker, if you persist in resisting, and thus continually deny reality, it ain’t so damn funny.  If you keep resisting the reality of what you ARE through the lousy trick of taking what the thoughts in your head SAY you are, you will never catch on to the REAL JOKE in life.

All would-be, “waker-uppers” and “enlightened mystics” want to know the truth, (always have),
but none of ‘em wanna know a really good joke...do YOU?!
 

Hi ho from here for today!

This or That and Apple Pie

Those with this interest do not like being trapped.  Oh, both the behavers and the talkers will exclaim distaste for being physically confined.  Neither one feels that special sense of imprisonment so dear to the hearts of The Few.  These people have no natural commitment to being either a full time behaver or talker, and thus without a firm allegiance to either camp, they feel more trapped, and at loose ends than do most homo sapiens.

The Few are not merely people without a country, but people with no interest in one.  They are not simply rebels without a cause, but rebels beyond the reach of causes.  They just are what they are; neither strict behavers, nor committed talkers; not really much of THIS or of THAT.

What these people actually long for, (whether they ever see it like this or not), is release from the common obligation of collective man to pretend to be either like this or like that.  A man who says to himself: “I want to wake up,” is really saying: “I am not satisfied in being part of any distinguishable division.”  And when he says to himself: “I want to know the truth,” he is in fact saying: “I am truly unsettled by having these apparent divisions IN me!”

“It’s as though I have somehow swallowed both a rambunctious behaver, and a pedantic talker.
It seems somehow that I am both asleep and awake, both enlightened yet as dense as a brick.”
For the Few being “asleep” is being internally divided; yet feeling so divided is man’s normal condition.  It is collateral with having a brain that produces thought.  Nothing could be more natural.  Yet nothing, (for the Few), could be more annoying.

A house divided against itself is a distracted structure.  Such a building is driven to constant dreams of remodeling, or “self-improvement.”  A nation torn apart by partisan politics or religion is as wholesome as a warm apple pie, and a man who says one thing and does another probably has the mother who baked the nice pie.

J.
 

Behavers and Talkers

Behavers see life as primarily one of the body, and live a more physically-based existence than do talkers.  They find most of their pleasure in the survival instincts:  eating, screwing, running and resting, with their talking primarily given to gossip.

Talkers, (while of course also living a life of the body), see life mainly as a mental affair, living largely in their heads, and deriving singular pleasure and pain in games of thought.  (Note that to be a talker does not require overt speech; a recluse, continually talking to himself, readily qualifies.)

The behavers and the talkers each have their own cultures, with their own music, art, mythology, religion, heroes, games, sports, literature and dance.  As a whole, they have a vaguely defined, 
separate sense of what constitutes real “intelligence.”

Strict behavers have no interest in the idea that man does not commonly live in as conscious a talking state as he could, (since their specific interest IN that area is minimal).  The more extreme talkers likewise have no fondness for the notion of there being a more enlightened state of talking possible, (since the achieving of same is at the expense of their primary interest in life – their present talking state).

None but the few, (not the righteous, Little Joe), fall adequately outside and inside the two noted extremes, and are thus suited to that anomalously extreme adventure called, “Looking for the Door.”

J.

Dateline: The Great Divide

I am today simultaneously in several different parts of the world, and more specifically, in the particular place that they locally consider to be a dividing line between two discrete, and significantly dissimilar areas.

One of the old timers here notes that the world can be divided into two groups: Those who divide the world into groups, and those who do not, (which actually speaks to the nature of thoughts, rather than the creatures in whom they nest).  But, I’ll say nothing since the elderly do so enjoy their little outbursts of sardonic humor, (which is often the closest they can come to appearing wise).

In that it is thinking alone that distinguishes man from all other Earthly life, it’s no surprise that his thoughts naturally run to making distinctions on every hand.  It is by the mind’s ability to cut up physical reality into pieces of manipulable abstractions, that man is the comfort king of the planet.

Without thought dividing everything it surveys, comparing one theoretical faction to another, its ability to plan tangible changes to the physical environment without first having to put man’s hands on it, would not be feasible.  This is of immense practical value – but when thought turns its attention to matters concerning thought, and follows its natural proclivity of dividing-to-understand, the results are not so pleasant to behold.

From a lifetime spent pursuing the sport of awakening, and from my years of commenting, I have created many pertinent models based upon sundry divisions regarding man.  Some have been found useful.  Here is one for this fine day: 

The world is divided into behavers, and talkers. 
While everyone does a little of both,
most people can easily be seen to favor one or the other
as the focal point of their life.

J.

In The Ballroom

If every time someone shouts, “There is an Existentialist under the bed!” you say, “No there is not!” you are wedged under the bed with an Existentialist.

If every time the thoughts in your head say that you are this or that, and you think, “That’s correct and I have got to stop it!” you have tightened your arms around an imaginary dance-partner-cum-tar-baby. 

You blithely whirl about in a ballroom that floats just off the ground – just above reality – just enough to keep you from seeing it.

Fact:

Out of six billion entranced dancers, no one will notice or care if there is one less.

It could be YOU! 
Hell, why not?!  (Why not indeed!)

J.

The Ultimate Battle

Those who hear about, then embrace, the idea that men are not as conscious as they could be,
and that their mental views of life are images had-in-a-dream – if they are to ever alter the situation in themselves, they must see that by accepting the resistance, the thoughts in their heads relentlessly offer at least half of what goes on and is said in life.  They keep their views of life as through a veil.

+

Ordinary men display their intelligence by resisting ideas they deem unintelligent.  The objective truth is that there is no such thing as an intelligent thought.  Outside of those concerning physical objects, the intelligence of the thought is determined by its faithfulness in its description of the same.  But in the world of thoughts about things intangible, there are none that are either intelligent or not intelligent; neither faithful to the truth about the thing discussed, nor unfaithful to it – since such is not possible regarding matters imaginary.

The thought that describes fire as hot is intelligent.  The thought that describes Cinderella as fair is not, nor is one that calls her dark. When thoughts speak of thoughts no faithfulness is possible. When fictions comment on fictions, the question of faithfulness is absurd.

Each time you stick with a thought that appears in your brain, that resists a thought that has come from another man’s brain, you are directly denying the reality OF Reality.  You are, however directly, supporting the illusion of you; that fiction head-character created by the wandering troops of thoughts who bivouac in your brain.

+

Now the battle really gets interesting, for even after you realize for yourself the unacceptable expense and inanity of resisting other people’s thoughts and mental pictures, you are then confronted with the ultimate challenge:  ceasing to resist the patently fictitious picture of you as presented by your own thoughts.

J.

The Battlefield

We stand today on a field, whereon was once fought a battle that proved most costly to the aggressive party.  And while such physical outbursts are a part of man’s instinctive nature,
it has a mental counterpart where its exercise is always cost prohibitive to a man seeking individual victory, (so to speak), over a humdrum field of consciousness.

Overall Fact:  Being alive is a form of warfare.
Fact for The Few:  Mental resistance denies reality.

Sans melodramaticism, staying alive is a competition between hunters and prey, animals and plants, viruses and hosts; intra-species competition for food, for mates, and space.  Therein animals resist being preyed upon by fleeing.   Plants resist being eaten by making themselves distasteful.  Hosts resist succumbing to viruses by their immune system, and by head-on, physical resistance do members of the same species resist attacks by their kind. 

If your desire is freedom from wearisome, useless combat, then the matter of mental resistance becomes a drama played on a much less probable stage.  Mental resistance denies reality, and is an activity that will forever keep a man internally engaged in warfare, whose substance is but the empty symbolism of its smoke and din.

Physical competition makes the material world go ‘round, and arguing does so for man’s mental one.  Thus, for any man’s thought to survive – some other man’s thought must resist it – must deny it.  No idea springing from the neural womb of one man will get up and walk for a time in the forum unless another man quickly attempts to kick its feet out from under it.

 J.

Resistance

In the physical world, as soon as a colt is dropped, it can stand on its own legs.  But in the world of thought, the purely invented creatures there must be constantly propped up by extrinsic forces of resistance to merely survive.

The real stands on its’ own – the illusionary must be helped.  When your thoughts disagree with someone else’s, yours helps theirs to survive.  Believing that other people’s ideas are false assists in their perpetuation.

Resisting reality denies reality, and denying reality is what keeps you asleep and confused.  It is not a question of whether another person’s thought on a matter is correct or not, the reality is:  That is his thought on the matter.

The thought of not eating glass is correct, the thought of not being an agnostic is neither 
correct, nor incorrect – it is insignificant:  It is simply a thought.

Whether This exists in the lives of others is of no consequence; utilizing an understanding is only of value to the exceptional man here and there who longs to succeed at Whatever the hell This is.

J.

On A Train

There was once a man on a train, and the ride went on, and on, and on, and he finally asked himself:  “How do I ever get off of this train?”  Ah, but there is the catch, for the man did not actually realize that he was ON a train – some of his brain cells just made him say what he did.

And here, (put more bluntly), is the catch in the journey of the few:
The cellular activity in your brain that makes you say that you want another state of mind
already HAS another state of mind, or else it would not be able to even conceive of such a thing. Neat, huh?!  Kinda makes you feel better about home, huh?!  Of course, you gotta see all this for yourself, huh?!

Maybe later we’ll drive over the river to, Wisconsin.  Maybe you’d like that better – you know, a place where you can still wallow in questions, instead of having me slap you around with 
exposés OF “questions.”

Ahhh – naw, you wouldn’t.  Perhaps the cold’s just momentarily addled you and you’ll be all right in a second, (or maybe a third, as circumstances may require).  Stay warm, my little sweet pea, but not at the expense of vigilance.

J.