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2686_052101
Audio of Jan Cox 21 May 2001
Notes by CF August 2014
Suggested Title: “When, concerning his internal life, a man says:
”I feel imprisoned,”
the thing calling itself “I” in the statement — is the prison:
the one and only,
and the only one from which a man can walk away.” Jan’s Daily News 18 May 2001
Begin: Something continually interesting, entertaining, and useful to ask yourself (The thing in your head) is “What the hell do you want?” You may have pictures or verbal descriptions of what you want. (ex. relief from what annoys you, being awake, enlightenment, etc.)
Everyone from the President of the United States to an ordinary person just trying to make his rent payment feel they are being held back. People may have a captive feeling of being on a treadmill. Even the ‘Attila the Huns’ live among the collective and no one lives among the collective on the basis of “one man rule. “
05:00 Religious people who believe in good and evil may have the feeling they are being held back by their physical passions. (ex. sloth, sex, adultery, etc.) So people of all types believe they are being held back. The reasons can be the mundane (paying rent), religious (good and evil simplifies the reason), and folks like us who want to “wake up.”
10:00 Some mystical schools have a metaphysical story such as Plato’s “shadows on the wall.” The shadows on the wall represent a shadow life (asleep) and to live a valid life (being awake-having understanding) we need to find the fire that produces the shadows.
So what is holding us back. No one really asks. But its not evil forces. When you ask “that thing” “what do you want?” “What can I do to make (That thing-the running commentary) happy?” “That thing” will hardly answer the questions.
And there is a reason for it. Because it turns the question into a question. “That thing” in us that does the running commentary (should of beens, what might have beens) – try and catch “that thing” (running commentary) and ask “What do you want?”
And of course it will tell you. On the individual level it may say it wants to wake up. Stop all this useless noise. So then it asks “What is stopping you?” And its then, if you keeping looking around, you understand you do not have the least idea.
15:00 If you discount pretending it is laziness or some other variation, it is simple. Whatever thoughts you have, about the reasons (stupidity, laziness) you have, that are holding you back, its just a variation of my original question “What do ‘you’ ( useless noise ) want?”
Do you realize that “ordinary mind and thought” is the only form of captivity – wherein the only way the captivity stays alive is due to the continual and generous contributions of the captors. (And captivity would like to thank you.)
When “the mind” is continually asked “what do you want?” and “whats holding you back?” and the only answers it may have are variations of it being stupid or lazy it ceases to argue the point. And when the mind will not argue a point – there is nothing more extraordinary than that.
20:00 The obvious physical exceptions (wanting to fly by flapping your arms, etc.) apply of course. But if the desire is non-physical (awakening, enlightenment, etc.) and you are being held back then the only thing holding you back is “I’m asleep, I want to wake up, I am a prisoner.”
What is holding you back is the kind and generous support of the prisoner. Captivity is held in place by thoughts of being held back. No prisoner – no prison metaphorically speaking. How can anything hold you back in such a place?
Sometimes when trying to describe to you guys and everyone is serious, I act serious to keep from laughing. I understand the “serious” and if I was in the audience and I did not understand it I would be crawling through glass to listen to me talk.
If I put myself back a few years it would be serious but I am saying there is nothing serious. The only thing holding you back is “that thing” that wants to be free. “That thing” that says “I could do better but there are things holding me back.
“That thing” that said its being held back is “that thing” holding you back. Metaphorically the prison exists only because the prisoners identify themselves as prisoners. I am not saying you are asleep and I am not saying I am asleep.
What I am saying is do this to yourself. Laying in bed tonight or in the morning ask yourself “what is holding me back?” Here I am and I will be getting up soon, I will be frustrated, not being awake, and not being satisfied. So “what is holding me back?”
25:00 What is it specifically keeping me from my goal? It is in me. Its not in my boss and not in my mother. Its just me laying in bed asking “what is holding me back?” You cannot come up with an answer for that and not be awake. Its not possible.
You will not come up with an answer for that and say “OK, what is next?”
25:59
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
May 21, 200l.
IF THE TOURS STILL ON SCHEDULE, THIS MUST BE LUXEMBURG,
IF NOT, IT LOOKS A LOT LIKE ALCATRAZ.
___________________________
Continued conversations with prisoners will in no way
aid in your escape.
* * *
The fragile-acting & apprehensive believe that only they are
truly civilized.
Day be incorrect.
* * *
Curious: Ultimately, independent, non-solemn minds often start out
even more serious than their mundane peers.
What happened to me, Mario?
I coulda been a commonly recognized contender.
Where’d I go right?
* * *
Everyone begins their search for freedom
with metaphors and symbols,
but twenty years later
only the threadbare are still trapped in language.
* * *
It is trickier to keep neurons young & vigorous,
than it is to keep hormones horny in a saltpeter mine.
* * *
Ignorance wants for much;
a little understanding — everything.
“You were better off when you had no idea
about what is going on
said something in the same room with him;
Yeah — well its just like you to
say something like that,
he replied to the something.
You’ve got to know who your friends are, (better yet):
in any situation you need to know which part of your nervous system you are talking to.
* * *
No one understands how dumb a man is but himself;
others may speculate regarding quantity,
but they never quite grasp the quality.
Reason: only a man’s own foot (brain) has the true perspective of his toes (brain) — and even then it chokes & gags,
and makes comments it knows are not error free.
(Maybe that is why some say a mans mind IS his best friend.)
* * *
All of life is a metaphor — except the being alive part.
* * *
How Conventional Wisdom Leads The Few Askew:
Forget the idea that says:
Things are not as they seem —
everything is always EXACTLY as it seems,
(including, [if you like],
you saying that things are not as they seem.)
* * *
To be in prison, and clutching an ideology, is to be doubly confined.
A rat in a maze with elections on his mind has more trouble than
the lab originally had planned for him.
Leave idiocy to those who obviously enjoy idiocy;
(they should even thank you later since that’ll mean
more to go around for them.)
A warrior who is successful always refers to adequate maps & plans before choosing his battle;
a would be escapee with a relatively neat upper bunk will
rely only on those ideas that normally pass thru his head
which are to his personal, mental advantage, (in other woirds)
— rely on none of them.
Its really relieving to finally realize your cellmates true identity.
Hey Bubba! — its me! Don’t you recognize me?
Friction Stranger Than Fact: On one planet there is a widespread
echo canyon in which the reflected sounds conceive of themselves
as their own source.
Hey mind! — don’t you recognize me?
We share the same lack of parentage?!
Convicts say that it is a wise child who knows his own father,
while those who’ve fled the neural work camp discovered that
no idea has a father.
What so commonly disorients would-be escapees,
and keeps them from seeing what is going on
is the fact that some ideas do have a solid ancestry:
those ideas from men’s minds that deal directly with physical
matters in the world outside the mind.
The idea that first conceived of laying out some sort of bridge
across a dangerous river — had a father:
the survival related need for men of that time & place
to safely cross that water — however:
the original idea for having gods to worship
had not in quality, a similar ancestry;
mental fear of the unknown & uncontrollable is not the same
as that experienced by the body when confronted with
the prospect of fording a raging river.
Without question, everything that man does can be
ultimately seen as arising from life’s need to survive,
but some needs are direct, and others not so,
and all that are not so are always ideas about things that
no one can produce and sit on a table for inspection;
they are ideas that alone constitute the walls of the inner prison
which so annoy the few — so:
they are ideas that are of indisputable usefulness to life,
and humanity-the-collective,
but ideas that merely bamboozle a few individuals here & there
whose inborn neural schematics are such that these ideas continually verge on the short-circuiting, (or at least, the extremely irritating),
in that these people clearly sense that something phony-baloney
is going on in them and everyone else,
but no one else seems to notice it,
thus there is no one readily available to talk to about it.
The prisoner who learns the way to,
suffer the non-physical in useful silence
will finally have his eyes pop open
and have such suffering cease altogether.
Everyone begins their search for freedom
with metaphors and symbols,
but twenty years later,
only the hopeless are still trapped in thought & language.
J
A boy asked his father: “If as you say, thinking about other people’s ideas is not real thinking,
then how would you describe real thinking? “
“That is its beauty — it cannot be described,
for as soon as it is, it becomes an ordinary idea about which you would think —
— which we have just established is not real thinking.”