Jan Cox

All pleasures available to man come in two distinct flavors: ones which require physical contact with the thing being enjoyed, (the essential ones: eating, sex), and others whose pleasure does not depend on tactual contact with the subject of attention (movies, reading, conversation, prayer).  The pleasure is in the mind, not in something physically experienced.

Men are not wired to recognize this clearly obvious distinction, but are indeed viciously encouraged to ignore it.  An arrangement, (as with all arrangements), that demonstratively serves man’s collective needs well, but does nothing to lead an individual mind into the valley of: “Well I’ll be damned.”

Everything men do is either for survival or entertainment.  Both being pleasurable and every activity in which they engage either requires that they be in physical contact with something outside themselves, or it does not.  These two pleasures, (from a minority view), could not be more disparate – while from the majority, more entangled and misread.  Incautiously confusing the two does ordinary minds no harm, (since ‘tis their norm), but for the few born chaffing at the glass-walled confines of routine consciousness, the failure to recognize the situation full-monty is most unfortunate.

As starkly simple as this matter may first sound, it is one of those secret rava-avis whose penetrating consideration can cause a man inherently inclined, and experientially primed, to finally go: over-the-edge; around-the-bend; through-the-cracks, and under-the-radar. It is to suddenly break through that invisible wall that stands between your ordinary condition of consciousness and that dreamed-of something else, which in unwitting fact is what drives all of men’s pursuits of the non-tactual pleasures.

A constant consideration of this concept:
All of men’s pleasures are of two distinct varieties.  They either require physical contact with something, or they do not.  They can alone, carried far enough and deep enough, suddenly thrust a suitable person through that frustrating, unseen wall present in human consciousness.

J.

As is the nature of human consciousness, it operationally monitors life, not as an indivisible whole that is wholly beyond the comprehension of any of its components, but rather, to make any attempted study of it even remotely possible, and promising.  It breaks life’s seamless endlessness into what it finds to be manageable, mental pieces.

Since this posture meets practical needs, consciousness observably then ignores this bit of self-created, laboratory fiction.  The end result being, (for ordinary men, under routine conditions), that consciousness treats life itself as though it is a noun – a thing composed entirely of discreet, stable things.

Consciousness is then confronted, (via its own, normally forgotten, doing), with a reality composed of pieces-of-fiction.  Ordinary men conceive of living in a world composed of such things as patriotism, spirituality, truth, justice, the right and wrong ways of doing things, thinking about things, and every other subject that no waiter can lay on your table to eat.

This arrangement certainly serves man well.  Just look around at how much better off you are, by your worst definition, than any other earthly creature, but if you attempt to employ only these naturally provided facilities of consciousness to STUDY consciousness, (and thus get to the very rock bottom of everything conceivable), you must extend yourself in a way not known, taught, nor discussed in city labs and circumstances.

Every time you accept consciousness’ talking about some matter that no one can touch as though it is a thing – a noun, you have momentarily made certain that you will understand nothing about the matter.  In its fictional place-and-laboratory of “The Mind,” consciousness will produce thoughts about the “thing.”  Just as consciousness in other men will produce in their minds other thoughts about the matter-cum-apparent “thing,” (often conflicting with the thoughts in your mind about it), but always at some variance.

J.

Every realization you get on your own is worth a thousand from someone else.
 

Knowing what is going on and not caring what is going on are two different things, but no one understands how so.
 


By story-telling do men’s brains become conscious.
By story-telling do men become civilized.
By story-telling do men take control of their physical world.
By story-telling do men come to believe they have such control over their inner one.
Compared to all other creatures, by story-telling does man wake-up from the animal dream, and then go to sleep mortally.
By story-telling impossible to hear, do the few secretly slip out of bed.
 

The axis mundi of everyone is the place within them that might ask:
                                          “Where is my axis mundi?”

 
 
“The Distinguishing Mark Of Man” Update: What distinguishes man from every other creature is his desire to resist his desires.
 
 

J.

There is a Certain Quirk to human life that everyone recognizes and is disturbed by, but which no one will truthfully name.

Man’s oldest told tales are stories of The Quirk, indeed, the history of man is the history of The Quirk.

Save physical transgressions, all complaints men register against one another are due to The Quirk.  Whenever you hear angry, accusatory words – The Quirk is responsible, also with defensive, exculpatory ones.

At the heart of all culture is The Quirk.  Without it there would be no refinement of emotions, manners and tastes.  Nor would the mind have the ceaseless impetus to expand.  Were it not for The Quirk there would be no Civilized Man.

If everyone is aware of its inescapable presence and sees what it is, why is The Quirk never called what it is?  From earliest times it has not been The Quirk, and is still not today.

J.

The few, in their variously named attempts, approaches and disciplines to achieve something extraordinary and far removed from everyday existence, have a wiring anomaly in their brain that causes their consciousness to be dissatisfied with its natural, impermanent nature.  What they, (usually unwittingly), are attempting to do is hammer out in their consciousness something that is permanent.  It is this longed for something that is being called:  awakening; enlightenment; liberation.

Maneuvering your awareness to see the situation thus can be of great help.  No way to prove it, you have to try it.  Just hold the idea as consistently as possible.

“My wanting to awaken is a desire to produce something permanent in my consciousness finally!  And for the first time, something permanent in consciousness.”
 

This is presented with the highest recommendation.  You might further enjoy noting that it is this lack of anything permanent in man’s consciousness that accounts for his irrational love of memories, (even irrelevant, embarrassing and painful ones).  They represent an approximation of something permanent in the mind.

J.

Of concern here is the few – not the majority.  It is a quite small number of people, with an innate dissatisfaction and the lack of permanency, in consciousness.  They have applied to it, many strange and grasping names, since what they are disturbed about in consciousness, everyone else accepts to be the natural state of consciousness.  The majority, if they hear of the few’s interest, find it perfectly bewildering.

 
Seldom do even the few put their fingers-of-mind directly on the spot that is bothering them. But this is what it is:  consciousness produces nothing permanent in the mind – it endlessly produces thoughts, but the thoughts are not permanent.  The few’s ancient and ongoing, so-called struggle to awaken-from-a-dream-in-which-man-normally-lives; to find-enlightenment-amidst-a-world-of-ignorance-and-confusion; to achieve-liberation-from-a deadening-inner-captivity, are all expressions of the same desire – to produce something permanent in consciousness.
 
 

The stories the liver tells are all the same.  The kidneys have but one story to tell.  In any given area within man, the story-telling taking place is consistent and therein is its permanency. Deviation therefrom, equals illness.  The brain’s consciousness is the exception.  It consistently produces thoughts, but the thoughts are not consistent.  They lack permanency and are just minimally dependable.

Consciousness is most reliable and consistent in matters in the physical world.  At its peak, when they relate to survival, (consciousness will permanently remember the way to plant corn; start a fire; find water).  But in the non-physical world of man’s second reality, consciousness lacks anything resembling permanency.  The health of his cultural world in fact depends on a lack of permanency.

All humans eat the same food, drink the same water; breathe the same air, but all worship different gods; follow different customs; call different things art.  The only thing permanent about man’s second reality is the permanent sensation within each man that there is a permanent him inside of him who is experiencing it.  (You might note that this constitutes a closed-system whose nature cannot be recognized by anything within the system.)

J.

Every time a man utters an opinion on any matter – it is his brain trying to get a grip on the nature of consciousness.  Indirectly, a man’s neural illusion of his self struggling to find and clearly see itself; acting as though endless talking about what it says is its self will accomplish that.  As if inner life will eventually make it fully aware of what it is; which is like a man who has no knowledge of mathematics believing that if he keeps randomly repeating meaningless strings of numbers he will someday understand algebra; or a person who can speak no Japanese believing that if he spouts oriental sounding gibberish long enough, one day the language will suddenly become comprehensible to him; or the fabled Lancelot thinking that if he tells sufficient tales of invented exploits, he will someday magically emerge from the page and into actual existence.

Men do not speak interminably of themselves because they are vain, and self-centered, and not in an attempt to promote-themselves, nor in an effort to heal a poor self-image.  An ordinary, normal, sane person talks about their self, their ideas, their dreams, their fears, their beliefs, their opinions, their past, their future, their failures, their successes, what they like, what they don’t like, what they approve of and what they disapprove of, in the never-satisfying, never-ending struggle to reveal: the-kind-of-person-they-are.

Every time a man makes a critical comment about anything, he is not actually talking about the thing he refers to, but about himself.  “Country music is just noise.” “Republicans are crooks.” “Basketball is not a real sport.”  These are not examples of a speaker commenting on the subjects noted, but are the speaker saying that he is not the type of person you should associate in your mind with that form of music, politics, or popular culture.
 

Men speak seriously only about physical matters of survival.  They are not able to speak so regarding affairs in their second reality.  They appear to do so, but they do not and cannot, for there is nothing that in truth can be seriously said about non-serious matters.  It is an enforced game of collective pretend among men.  To appear to be talking quite seriously about some qualitative aspect of some second reality matter, (abstract art, movies, morality), but everyone understands that you are actually talking about yourself.  Well, you are attempting to talk about yourself; to identify who you are by the expressing of the tastes and preferences that the “you” you are looking for has; but it is all a façade, for neither you nor anyone else has any serious interest, or preference in matters that are by their own nature – non serious. 

J.