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 can’t 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 couldn’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 I’s’ 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! -- it’s 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.
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