THE ENEMY?!
 

No one makes any effort to achieve a goal
without the perceived presence of opposition thereto.
After all, if there was nothing standing between you and the desired end, it would already be realized.
No one undertakes to change what they are unless they also have resistance to making any such effort. 
Everything any creature is instinctively driven to do has its natural resistance;
all that is viable remains so through the conflict of opposing forces.
Men eat to combat hunger;
rest to overcome tiredness;
fuck to defeat arousal;
even life itself has its enemy of death.
Simply: if there is no opposition to what is desired --  there will be no desire in the first place,
so whatever it is that a man wants 
he can be assured of resistance to him obtaining it.
                 Everything has its enemy.

                  From a physically-based view  -- 
                  this is unquestionably true,
                  but even an eyelash, there beyond, 
                  and it becomes laughable.
 
 
 
 

The religious speak directly of, “The Enemy” --
Satan, Lucifer; The Devil,
the personification of all The Forces Of Evil
which oppose all of their desires for goodness,
and Godliness; 
philosophers and Humanists see it as a never ending battle between truth & error -- propriety & incivility,
and everyone perceives it at their personal level as
a ceaseless struggle between themselves, 
and their wants, and the rest of humanity, 
which for the most part --  is in their way.
                 No matter what you want to do --
                  somebody’s always trying to stop you.
    
                  Thus be the simple view of things.
 
 
 
 
 

The undercover outlaws pursuing their own 
private prize outside the city views supra specified
do so with a non personalized sense of the opposition to their goal; they picture it in such terms as: 
”Man’s mechanical state of consciousness” --
the mind’s natural inclination to run on autopilot.
They do not believe that this is the result of 
divine retribution for some earlier mortal faux pas,
and they do not see other humans as being the 
cause of the condition --  nay, 
they recognize that everyone is in the same fix – 
but that other people do not realize it.
These individual wanderers-from-the-herd 
perceive their sole enemy to be --  their own mind,
(in its present, unsatisfactory condition, of course,
and with the goal plainly being to:
”Increase its consciousness; 
Awaken it from its sleep;
Bring it from the dark, into Enlightenment”),
and from involvement in such a conceived effort,
do few of these rebel adventurers ever emerge.
 

But do now consider the “laughability factor” --
that your own mind is your enemy?!?!
Forget for a moment all of the negatively connotated modifiers that can be attached to the word mind, such as:
asleep, mechanical, subjective, unenlightened,
and ask yourself simply:
is there not something completely ludicrous about 
me picturing my mind as my enemy?!
In me thinking that my mind  --  for some reason -- 
opposes my efforts to improve its operation?!?
You might be tempted to say that the idea is not silly, 
that your mind opposes your efforts to change it 
because of its low level of consciousness, 
and mechanical nature….. which sounds plausible until you remember that it is your mind giving this response, and that its own “ mechanical nature” --  operating at a low level of consciousness  --
was the original source of the desire to overcome this mechanical nature, and increase the level of consciousness.

How has it now become the very thing 
opposing this effort that it alone motivated?!
For what possible reason has it become 
its own enemy?! 
No one but an ordinary man can answer that;
only a person with no understanding.

Do you understand?
If you WANT to understand, 
and you sincerely ponder the above words,
and what they say about the mind, 
you will eventually HAVE to understand!
 
 

…(either that or your mind will explode like a rotten cumquat in the sun
     ….which is about the same thing as, “understanding”.)

                                      J