If you have any serious business reading this, then you have serious dissatisfaction; and if you have any serious idea what these words are really about, then you are past thinking that your dissatisfaction is caused by anything outside of you, and that is where a person must eventually be standing to ever get actually started in this grand internal adventure. But even when a man comes to the above noted realization, he still has a formidable hurdle to pass – a dazzling puzzle to unravel and an almost impossible problem to solve.
The sole cause of the dissatisfaction that motivates readers of such as this is their mind – the routine workings of the human mind. You will save yourself a lifetime of frustrating, (though perhaps, entertaining), mental effort if you realize as soon as possible that the ongoing activity in your head that men commonly call “the mind,” is the one and only source of your dissatisfaction.
It is not caused by evil forces, nor by the stupidity of others, nor is man under a curse from the gods from some past misdeed. To believe that you have progressed past notions such as these, and think of your dissatisfaction in terms of it being caused by your being, “asleep,” or, “unenlightened,” still does not reach peak efficiency, in that, at best, such mental images keep you still one serious, but unnecessary, step removed from the simple reality of the situation.
If, for a period of time, you take quick, periodic, and honest note of what will go on in your head regarding what was just said, you will readily discover that your mind has a built-in, automatic rejection of any idea that identifies it as the source of the dissatisfaction that plainly takes place in its bailiwick. Your mind will even lay claim to being nothing other than an objective observer and impartial recorder of what it witnesses, and thus the undeniable turmoil that goes on in its area is certainly not caused by it, but clearly, instead, by the disturbing events it merely records.
The mind presents itself to be like a television set – a passive entity that can only display the pictures and sounds sent to it by outside sources. Your own experience will show that it verges on being literally “impossible” for the mind in your head to see the situation in any way other than this. But should you not see beyond this – you will never come to the end of this and see what, so clearly, being a human being living on this planet, with a brain that continually produces thoughts, is actually all about.
J.