Adam’s First Thought
Summary = None
Condensed News = See below
News Item Gallery = None
Transcript = None
Key Words = How little interest there is in This Thing
Adam’s first thought – What happened ?
Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
July 2, 2001.
What is the hardest part of learning to ride a bicycle?
the father asked the son — then answered:
Getting rid of the superfluous second wheel.
What is the most difficult feature of giving the Invisible Man
a physical exam? — what to do after he takes his clothes off.
Perhaps the slickest trick the brain has ever pulled,
and the aspect of trying to understand its conscious operation
that is the most elusive
is its invention of — The Mind — as a thing.
Every reasonably lucid system ever devised for enlarging
an interested man’s consciousness
is based one way or the other on efforts to do this-or-that to his mind:
to: calm-his-mind;
to: quiet-his mind;
to: make-his-mind-ever-mindful-of-itself;
to: cause-his-mind-to-live-only-in-the-present-time-&-place;
all in all, to: enlighten his mind,
and to: awaken his mind from its ordinary, dull, dream world.
To those naturally attracted to this kind of activity,
some variation of the above will instantly strike them as
un debatably valid, and a totally accurate description of
their quandary, and its solution:
every person herein involved,
with a sound perspective of what is going on,
eventually realizes that the desire to, awaken-from-the-dream is,
a capite ad calcem — in their mind:
it is their mind that is asleep & living in a dream,
(not their lungs, or liver, or love of sunsets),
and perforce it will be their mind that will, awaken & see-the-light,
(and such rhetoric has even been common in our conversations),
but from a more advanced scouting position,
the concept of the mind as a noun a thing —
adds a normally unaccounted-for, near-disastrous misdirection
to the expedition.
You believe you are making your way steadily toward
the neo discovery of: The Lost City Of The Mind, (or: Consciousness),
so as to liberate it; to hack away the overgrowth; to clean it up,
and return it to its original splendor, etc,
when such a thing & destination does not exist.
I have mentioned this matter before, but am aware of how
little attention you have given thereto, (or I should say:
how little your, thoughts have given thereto),
and this is not post facto criticism of you,
for such lack of interest by your thoughts was predictable
as per dictated by the routine neural operations that are at the core
of what drives the lives of the few.
In his efforts to awaken himself from his too-usual torpid state by,
(let us say), the method of, Remembering-Yourself,
(or: Being-Ever-Mindful, or any number of other well known variations thereof),
it seems immediately obvious that, The mind is the problem;
that, the mind, as it is now, is what keeps you from being able to,
Remember-Yourself, or be, Ever-Mindful,
for it constantly — wanders-away;
staying continually involved in all sorts of meaningless matters:
off rehashing yesterday’s defeats, (which cant be re-done),
or off somewhere planning fresh assaults for tomorrow,
(which will never be executed),
the mind indeed seems like an unruly dog that simply will not stay
in its own yard, but is always running off, as a canine after cars,
but herein — the-mind-after-the-meaningless.
The oldest, most frequently employed directions on how to prepare oneself to achieve a more informative state of consciousness are to:
calm the mind, and to that end men have adopted certain
physical postures & exercises, diets, prayers, chants,
and other mental gymnastics —
all predictable, all understandable, all acceptable entry ways,
but not the main hall way through the Lost Mansion.
The father walked to the sink for a glass of water,
and as he returned to the table, continued his comments to the son:
The brain presenting to us,
(that is: creating-it-as-a-reality-in-consciousness),
the concept of us/it having a, thing called, the mind
serves a distinct & expedient purpose pursuant to its position as
the highest level monitor & decision maker in the physical business of being alive, (which you can see for yourself),
but what it thereby also does is make it extremely tricky for the few
to understand accurately what they are looking for,
and thus precisely — Where to look.
You believe that you are looking for AND at, the mind
in your efforts to calm it; to, remember-yourself, or even to BE, mindful,
but the mind is The Invisible Man with his clothes off —
— with his thoughts removed,
and now that I begin to bore in on the core of the matter
you must be super alert or you will completely miss seeing that
to which my utterances point,
for your so-called, mind will dismiss them as sophistry & word-games,
which is childishly simple to predict,
based upon understanding the specious nature OF the mind.
The elder paused for another sip, then back to it he went:
There is no such thing as — the mind,
a fact that is plain & apparent, but almost impossible to grasp;
your brain obviously has, thoughts, (or we wouldn’t be talking like this), but it has no such thing as, the mind:
one of its thoughts however, is that you have a mind —
a mind that has thoughts,
and until you can see & deal with this simple fact for yourself,
your efforts to change the affairs-in-your-head
will reach a stymied-point, and you’ll become frustrated enough
to shoot Confucius the bird.
As long as your thoughts believe that they are
looking-at & working-on, the mind, they will never look at themselves;
the I, the, self in your head that says it wants to, wake-up,
and be-free-from all the other, sleeping Is in you,
is but one thought your brain periodically produces,
and when that I that, thought — says it is,
‘working-on-your-mind’ — it is speaking sheer nonsense,
for you have no mind other than whatever thought you’re having at that
very instant.
In, wanting-to-wake-up,
you are experiencing one thought denouncing all thoughts but itself —
and finally realizing this fact alone is sufficient to shake you from
your neural nap-time,
but it can never do so as long as you ignore the fact that
the thought you are having at this very instant
is the totality OF your so-called, mind.
Back when you were smaller I told you that the desire to, wake-up
was in fact the mind’s desire to comprehend itself,
but now that you are not that small, I tell it to you larger:
the urge to, wake up is thoughts hunger to understand themselves,
and if you ever become even less confined, I could say that it is actually the brain itself trying to figure out where the hell thoughts come from —
but, hey! — its Monday,
why put you under such pressure so early in the week?!
— but you can go ahead and start remembering this:
if you keep looking for nouns instead of examining verbs —
— Enlightenment will remain your Angkor Wat,
and as long as the thought you are experiencing at this moment
makes you believe that it is ever dealing with anything other than itself,
you will never see thoughts for what they are,
and you may rest assured that your sleep will never be disturbed.
They then got up & went off for a leisurely walk in the jungle.
J
Before you understand what wanting to, wake up is really about,
you are like a rat hole trying to grasp its comings & goings.