Jan Cox Talk 3168 - Notes by Cfish " The Grand Distraction"
/Jan Cox Talk 3168 - 02 July 2004
Copyright Jan Cox, Jan’s Legacy 2017
Notes by Cfish June 2017
Suggested Title: The Grand Distraction
Begin: If you find the way - in your position - to do what I have been trying to describe - you free yourself from “the grand distraction.” That is the feeling that consciousness in us, in everybody, has produced in us that there is an internal opposition.
The internal opposition could be religious (ex. evil v. good), psychological (ex. subconscious trauma), historically (ex. demons), and at the very least that there could be a “you” and your thoughts.
Ordinary thoughts may not agree until the feeling, the realization, hits you of what an overwhelming “grand distraction” and illusion it has been for you and everyone. Once you see it, you can see it in everyone.
It’s as though people are translating their thoughts into words. The “grand distraction” keeps you from realizing that there is only one thing you are conscious of - and that is consciousness.
05:00 There are two states of consciousness. The ordinary, non conscious consciousness. (the grand distraction) where one is submerged in “my thoughts” and ”my opinions” and the other state “conscious of consciousness.”
In the non conscious consciousness (ex. my thoughts) you can understand nothing. Everyone is full of things they think they know. (Last time I mentioned “consciousness spends most of its time not knowing what to do.”)
09:00 Your consciousness is full of threats (ex. climate change based on science, terrorism, etc.) It gives consciousness something to be concerned about. But your consciousness is full of worries and threats it can do nothing about.
Assuming you are not at work, figuring out an intellectual problem, “your consciousness” spends most of its time not knowing what to do. So what does consciousness do? It looks outside itself to other people’s ideas.
13:00 Consciousness shares the same instinct as the rest of the body, so consciousness wants to do something about “climate change” for example, but climate change is not the direct physical threat a rabid dog or flood waters could be. You can for example google climate change.
15:00 Your consciousness is aware of indirect threats that from an individual’s view “it does not know what to do.” There is the basis for human culture. There is the basis of all writing. There is the basis of all literature, art, painting, movies, songs and religion and whatever I am leaving out.
Climate change is an example of a problem only human consciousness or culture is aware of. That’s why a few years ago I started splitting technology and culture. When consciousness sees an external problem it often finds a cure.
20:00 If not a permanent cure, then a remedial treatment, or it could be the circular route of the X-ray machine. (ex. discovering radiation, X-rays, seeing a tumor) I hope you are enjoying this picture. Consciousness figured something out the rest of the body couldn’t.
25:00 But if you look at any problem that is not physical, not technological, that is intangible, something that has no physical cure, (ex. religion, etc.) consciousness doesn’t know what to do about it. ( no exceptions )
30:00 But does consciousness give up just because “it does not know what to do about it,” No, it looks to others. It can get kind of vague but looking to others, that is what religion, culture, literature, movies, etc., is.
35:00 Some folks may say they know what to do about these intangible problems, (ex. priests, psychologists) but they don’t know and they can’t cure an intangible problem. Here is the point.
You have got to see it to enjoy it fully. Ordinary consciousness, the part of the brain you call “you” what it is doing almost full time in civilized people, spends most of it’s time “not knowing what to do.”
And then it does everything it can to keep from having to face it. (ex. talk to people, read, watch TV, Google, etc.) If you are ordinary, under ordinary conditions, alone, and looking up at consciousness, consciousness is doing anything other than “simply being conscious.”
40:00 If consciousness were “simply being conscious” it could be aware of what I am describing. Consciousness is filled with problems, dangers, and threats that only consciousness knows about and does not know what to do.
Maybe the problem is that your wife is falling out of love with you. And consciousness cannot call upon any resource in the body to cure the problem. And consciousness does not know what to do.
And it will do almost anything to keep from facing that.
It is so obvious that it is almost impossible to see. Your ordinary consciousness is so busy keeping yourself distracted from facing it that it becomes impossible to discover.
End 40:42
