From the unneeded minority perspective, the least serious of all second reality matters is the matter of a man’s presumed self. Oh, this Self is absolutely serious and necessary for a normal, majority-centered life, (and we’re talking, life-in-your-head here), but for those who need to see it and who come to see it, this neural self is but a convenient fiction. In continued fidelity to maximum verbal precision, let it be noted that “fiction” is not the right word, but there is no right word. No matter how honest, sincere and serious he was, if asked, Odysseus could not by any imaginable stretch, accurately describe himself. If the source of the word, “fiction” be itself fictitious, what clarity of definition can you expect there from?
In simple terms, (capable of terribly misleading the sophisticated and complicated), men incessantly talk about themselves in the attempt to create a self. “I” is a verb; self an ongoing, work-in-progress.
In even more direct words: men’s brains have men endlessly talking about what they call their conscious self, in the brain’s struggle to comprehend the nature of its own consciousness.
Blunter still:
Your consciousness is life’s on-going effort to figure out what it is up to. You wanting to be enlightened is life, using your individual brain and asking itself: “What in the hell am I doing?!”
No man knows-himself or what-he-is any better than does life; and life knows neither any better than you do – or else the few would not have the opportunity to do what-they-do…(assuming you finally do it right)!
…..Remember: anything that anyone is urgently trying to sell to you – you don’t need, and if they’re passionately attempting to give it away – it’s even more to be avoided. (And this damn near applies to consciousness…unless of course, your goal is to be a better behaved cow.)
J.