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2664_033001
Audio of Jan Cox 30 March 2001
Notes by CF
Suggested Title: Questions About Questions ( What’s Bothering Me? )
Begin: I suggest most strongly that a man ask himself questions about questions. It is the most profitable way to approach the nebulous question of What’s bothering me? ( We are not talking about the physical ailments but about what goes on in the privacy of your own head.)
It is almost impossible to take this approach because the mind looks for something to study. (Systems or Teachings such as zen, yoga, or Sufism.) It is like your mind says look over here at this teaching when you should be looking at your finger.
The question of “what’s bothering me?” is not the hardest part to put your finger on (though some do not get this far), but the question just below that of “how can something be bothering me?” I can see this, but I have no faith that I am conveying it to you folks.
05:00 If you ask someone what is bothering them (in the privacy of their own head) they will give you an answer according to the system they may be studying. (ex. I am asleep and I want to awaken) If you ask someone what it means to be asleep and their lips start to move they do not understand it/
People do not ask themselves “what is bothering me?” I could say the benefit of all systems to awaken (zen, Sufism, etc.) is to give a word or name for the question “what is bothering me?”
10:00 When someone reads all the writings of an awakened master to awaken he is generating thought. When someone meditates he is trying to calm the mind. But if you do not consider or know what is bothering you, how can you have any faith in the system and the cure?
Consider the question below what ‘s bothering me. How can something be bothering me? You are suddenly alive in this universe, in this reality, and in this life and you have never been in any other condition, so how can you compare it to anything else? But yet the mind does.
We are not talking physical aches and pains but we are talking about how asleep you feel yourself to be in the privacy of your own head and how you cannot stand it anymore. Nobody knows what is bothering them and nobody asks.
It is time saving not to ask what is bothering you, but I am saying you should ask “what is bothering me?”
15:00 A specific example of “what is bothering me? is the contemporary view of man being divided into his essence and false personality. (opposed to the old view of good and evil) The idea is that we have an unchangeable essence and that once we are born we develop a false personality.
False personality develops because of our peers, parents, and society. False personality is like a shell around your essence. This dissatisfies you and you want to “escape” false personality. You want to develop essence and let it bloom so you can awaken.
20:00 But no one considers which one (Essence or false personality) wants to awaken. Is false personality upset or is essence upset? If essence is upset and it is what you really are, how come essence can’t stop false personality?
Everyone’s answer is “well, I am trying” but I am asking you folks? If essence can make a man give up his life and join a group and if it can continue to spring to life once an hour or every two or three minutes then essence is not a dormant doormat.
25:00 False personality is as strong as it was when you started to work on yourself. (In the privacy of your own head where essences and false personality exists, false personality bothers you just as much as when you started,)
Consider for a moment false personality wants to awaken and that it cannot be essence. Which one wants to change? The teaching is essence is dormant and encrusted by false personality but if essence can spring to life once an hour why can’t essence tell false personality when it shows up to get the hell out of here.
If false personality is doing its job we would not be upset. You would be one big sham. Of course most of the six billion people don’t mind being a sham or egotistical. Of course some of us do not like to be egotistical , but who is it being egotistical?
30:00 If it is not essence being upset with false personality, then it must be false personality being upset with false personality. And if is not false personality and if it is not essence who is upset? Just go back and look at life, the universe, and the reality in which you have lived.
How can you compare life, the universe, and the reality in which you live to anything else? There is only this one thing. If you are dissatisfied, things have to be dualistic. If there is no dissatisfaction you would not know if you were dissatisfied or not.
Ordinary people know they are dissatisfied and they think something physical will fix it. (being rich, better love life, better job) But when you take the question what is bothering me internally there are no words to formulate it.
You are not bleeding and it is nothing physical but something is bothering you. How can it be? You are just here in this universe, and in this life, and in this reality and one day you will be gone. There is nothing to compare it to, so how can you be dissatisfied?
The answer is behind the question “what is bothering me?” The universe is sixteen billion light years across. The conscious part of the brain is four to six inches across and it is where the whole universe exists for me and I don’t like it.
How can that be? How can a man know they are dissatisfied? How did man come up with the word dissatisfied? Could a man, instead of saying “I am dissatisfied”, have said, ” I do not exist? “
35:00 Subtly below all of this I am saying you cannot be dissatisfied. There is no answer. It is the pursuit of the question. How can one part of you be dissatisfied with another part of you.? You can’t prove or argue it out. If you look you will see it.
37:01
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
March 30, 2001.
YEAH —
EVERYBODY WANTS IT DELIVERED ALREADY ASSEMBLED,
BUT YOU HAVE TO PUT IT TOGETHER YOURSELF.
(YEAH, YEAH — SOME OF THE PIECES ARE MISSING —
……..OKAY — ALL OF THEM. SATISFIED?!)
_______________
All You Need To Know Concerning Reality:
When you are quiet — reality speaks,
and when you talk about it — it becomes unreal.
This is called: Pissing away your electrical budget.”
*
When the suitcase is full — you’re off to dream land;
endless travel in a vacuum, just this side of death.
At least a man with a migraine knows that hes alive.
Throw out those old clothes —
— no one can see them but you anyway.
*
There is a surface that only shines when
something is reflected in it,
and when there is nothing to be reflected,
it will provide something on its own.
To realize that mind has no depth,
only a reflective surface,
is to have half of all the realization necessary.
To even say that depthless thoughts are simply reflections of other thoughts
gives thoughts a patina of depth that is undeserved.
A mirror should not be tense.
*
To entertain the words of others is to offer yourself up, constructively saying:
May I become as confused as you?
And one should in particular avoid heeding anything heard said in their own head.
Words can certainly make you deaf, dumb and blind,
but they can also raise you from a bed of invalidism.
You gotta know when to flap em,
you gotta know when to wrap em.
Lips away — lips away, Hoy!. (Whew! Oh boy.)
On the isle of alert, everyday is bundle-day.
*
NOT MERELY A ROUND ROBIN,
BUT AN OBSCENELY PLUMP ONE, SOME WOULD SAY.
You only have it when you seek it;
you only seek it when you remember it;
you only have it when you remember it,
then you have it but for a moment — only to lose it,
a loss you would not be aware of
had you not wanted to have it in the first place.
Those with a wired-in longing-to-understand
have a natural pleasure in the mind,
but the joys you experience after you
get-the-understanding
makes your present ones seem amateurish.
*
ALTO! WHO DOESN’T GO THERE?
With every change of conditions
consciousness is born;
being more life-like in consciousness
is in being less affected by these shifts.
(Can you spell:
Impossibility-passing-for-a-school-bus?)
In the beginning a man seeks to discover reality.
In the end he seeks to become a man about whom
there is no reality.
Men tend to treat life as though they are living inside a big padded suit;
handling normal affairs as though they are wearing kitchen mitts.
Life makes men treat themselves,
and the second reality that they have created,
as being extremely delicate.
You will never get to the bottom of things
being delicate;
be delicate with others,
but treat yourself hamfistedly.
*
Drop all second & third person references from your
mental vocabulary, and first person ones
at least from your verbal one.
Stripped Version: Don’t think about anyone but yourself —
— and do that without using the word I.
*
YOU CAN FLOG AN INVISIBLE HORSE,
BUT YOU CANT FORCE YOURSELF TO HEAR IT WHINNY.
Anyone who says that he sees the truth
has cataracts, and deceives himself.
Leave the truth be, and it speaks eloquently for itself –
— to those who can hear.
Whether literally apparent or not,
all ordinary sentences are compound,
and contain the words, will & but:
a perfect reflection of how mind operates.
Not only cannot how-things-are be explained,
it can’t even be explained why it cant be explained.
A man partially awake can no longer explain
how-things-are;
one fully aroused won’t even try to explain why
how-things-are
can’t be explained.
The mind holds but one erroneous belief:
That it knows something about a non-physical realm.
Be a sieve; let all the parts run right thru you,
and they will eventually assemble themselves;
just don’t let words stick to you.
The power is not in grasping — but in letting go.
Being asleep is the mind lying about what it believes;
ergo, waking up must also be a form of lying.
Being awake is all an act.
If you pretend to be awake
you no longer care whether you are awake or not.
The Sudden vs. Gradual view of Awakening:
Pretending is after all, something done instantly:
you are either pretending, or else you’re not;
either pretending to be awake, or asleep,
or else you’re not pretending to be either.
Surfaces cant believe in anything anyway — so:
holding on is not the trick — letting it all slide, is.
When you discover that
the mirror is reflective on both sides
its uncovered slickness
cures all that ails you.
J
A father advised a son: “Go not in search of the truth,
seek instead, the false,
for when you finally realize that no such exists,
you will have discovered the truth.”
…amidst all the ceaseless changes — nothing changes — and that is the secret.