Distinctions are clearly verbalized: “I am working to go from an asleep mind to an awakened mind”; “from a dark mind to an enlightened mind”; “from a captive mind to a liberated mind,” and the descriptions are not unfounded – not initially. (Everyone has to start somewhere, and on a journey that exists solely in the mind…well, you can see the inherent inevitability.)
The endless, unanalyzed acceptance of you thinking that YOU are in a struggle with YOUR mind, (or, consciousness, soul, spirit, self, or whatever), ultimately becomes density-on-the-hoof, and distraction sufficient to disorient-Magellan-in-a-bathtub.
While being super attentive, say to yourself right now, something about, “My mind.” Does not something strike you as strange; does it not sound spooky, irrational, and unreal? If you have the inner ears of a real traveler, it does.
Every semi-viable method men have publicly employed to make this trip has been based on observation of oneself, which is to say, observation of one’s inner self – one’s mind. Known by such sobriquets as “self-remembering,” “self-observation,” “mindfulness,” etc., the few who undertake such ever pursue the tool to its head splitting destination.
After a lifetime involved in the struggle to, “remember himself” a man will freely, (and accurately), admit that he cannot “do it” all of the time, but that progress is gradually being made. Those secured away in mountain top communities, living in silence, dedicated to becoming, “eternally mindful of their mind,” usually never recognize the plain-and-in-sight lesson that is to be learned from the endeavor. They fail to finally face the fact that they cannot achieve such a state permanently.
J.