Jan Cox Talk 2579 - with notes by Cfish
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Jan Cox Talk 2579 Sept 17, 2000
Copyright Jan Cox, Jan’s Legacy 2016
Notes Cfish October 2016
Suggested Title: Useful - Criticism has a Whine To It
Begin: I would not attempt what I am about to say with the public. I recently received an email regarding the daily feature. Quoting something I had written, he was saying “I got what you were saying the first sentence.”
Then saying “Boy, you sure can be long winded.” But they did not get what I was saying or they would not have written. The majority of human speech is criticism, complaining, and whining. But “what’s the point?”
05:00 If you criticize something or the source of something, you didn’t get it. But if you comprehend what someone is saying (maybe shaking your thinking to its foundation) you couldn’t bring yourself to comment.
If it is a deepened understanding, and awakened you a little, it is a fleeting thing, and there is nothing to say to me, to Buddha, or to yourself. Any example of people talking, ninety percent of it, is criticism, whining, and complaining.
10:00 The criticism could be of life or of themselves. The ordinary mind may be able to get a glimpse of this. But the ordinary mind will not comprehend it. The mind is the source of all criticism. Instinct has no criticism of life.
15:00 Our minds say we are imperfect individually and institutions back it up collectively. At the crudest level it makes no sense. It is inconceivable that life would produce something that is critical. But it is more expansive.
20:00 How could life create something that is critical? It is not possible. (I can’t guarantee that). Of course thought comes from the body and instinct, but without thought, there would be no criticism, it would not be possible. And instinctively speaking, it is still not.
At the very least, criticism is a foreign language to instinct. Criticism is endemic to the mind and saying we know that: been over that, and then me pointing it out; we do not know it fully. (example: internal commentary on sleeping humanity)
25:00 It is simple. If you are being critical, you are asleep. Coming back with the comment saying, “Well for the moment I was asleep”, then it is pretty much more widespread than the moment. Just stand away from the noise in your head.
There is hardly a sentence spoken/written on this planet that is not some sort of critical remark. I am still puzzled by how many efforts and methods, (I’ve contributed) to make the mind more alert and stable.
Those who had the anomalistic experience of “waking up” and “being enlightened” know that the description the “mind stops/thought stops” does not cover it And it’s because you are using ordinary thought to describe it to yourself.
30:00 I still find curious what it was like for the first guy who had the experience and tried to talk about it, to himself first. I picture him saying to himself, “What the hell was that, my mind stopped.”
But It is not that it doesn’t stop or does stop. It is that something else happens. If you are not doing something extraordinary, you are in the hands of these criticisms of life. And these criticisms are not yours. If you are criticizing, you are asleep.
So all you have to do is ‘listen” and if you are criticizing, complaining, or whining you are asleep. “Why is that not the “method?” At the very least it will shake you out of that sleep. Every method has its time and place.
35:00 Criticism, complaint, and whining is the way the mind is organized. It is just there, constantly. It is tied in with “Instinct looks at things the way they are, the mind see things as they could be.”
Seeing things as they could be makes technology possible and survival easier. And with a small step sideways it is complaint, criticism, and whining. Criticism has a passion to it, and criticism has a whine to it.
40:00 The exceptions being the research and development yellow circuit, intellectuals. The rest of the time the criticism has a whine to it. And I find that useful. I saw it externally before I saw it internally and that is when it became useful.
45:00 “Everyone is whining but me.” But if you are telling yourself that that is not useless criticism, that it is valid criticism, it is still criticism and if you are criticizing, you are asleep. Even if you acknowledge the criticism, you do not know its extent.
Those who have had the anomalistic experience of “waking up” know that criticism, complaining, and whining do not exist in that state. In that state everything is “just right.” And you hate to even describe it as that.
The mind’s job is misunderstood and people think something is wrong. (ex Jewish Beliefs v. Muslim Beliefs, etc.) Criticism, whining, complaining for no reason. Its worse than that and better than that.
50:00 Criticism, complaining, and whining is like water to a fish. What better way to stay awake than to realize how common, how routine, how dense, how slow witted is where you live.
I don’t see how anyone who gets a glimpse can have any faith in what goes on in their head. Exceptions being what we do on our own.
Ends with description of those in the room squinting their eyes, and trying to agree, or being critical of their own progress.. and then saying “ What are you doing? “
End - 53:22
