July 10, 2001.
Man experiences few true dichotomies:
dark & light, life & death;
most everything else he perceives
to exist in graduated degrees.
When a person first hears that
man is asleep, but can awaken,
it is a genuine dichotomous
situation:
they either instantly Get
it, or they do not;
not instantly awaken, but instantly
recognize its validity -- to them.
Pagans can be turned religious;
meat eaters made vegetarians,
liberals converted to conservatism,
but those who do not initially,
Get
the idea of, waking-up
can never be made to do so
-- yet still:
most of those who say they do
get it -- do not, never have & never will.
At any moment in human history,
the vast majority of those who say they are actively involved in some activity
devoted to, waking-up
never got it and never will;
this does not mean that they
cannot enjoy the activity they pursue,
and this will not keep them
from believing that they are making progress and gradually becoming “more
awake,”
but they are never actually
going to make it,
and understand what is really
going on.
In the lives of those who do
instantly & instinctively,
Get
the idea of waking-up
there exists a parody of the
above situation:
even though these people alone
have the potential,
before it is realized, they
too feel they make incremental progress,
but just as is true at the outset,
so it be at the end:
you are either awake, (which
is to say):
you know what’s going on
-- or you do not.
It is that clear cut.
Ergo, in the lives of the few
wanting to awaken,
there exists another true dichotomy
that is theirs alone, (which is):
in the beginning you either
Get
it or not,
and in the end, you either Get
it or not, and there is no middle;
this is certainly not how it
seems when you are in the middle,
for your thoughts during that
time cannot perceive it to be otherwise.
(Do not get disheartened by what
you have thus far read
for that is not the purpose
of this piece,
indeed before it is over you
will have the opportunity to
extract there from, new insights
into the nature of what it is that
you are trying to accomplish
that are both practical and encouraging.)
So, we have a number of people
on this planet at any given time who say/believe that they want to wake
up; are involved in efforts to do so,
and are making gradual progress,
but most, (almost all), of them
did not originally Get
it, and never will.
Then we have the few who through
nothing they ever did,
Got
the idea of waking up the instant they first encountered it,
and they too claim to be making
pertinent efforts,
and experiencing collateral
progress toward that end,
and even though they alone have
the possibility of ever achieving the goal, they are not making, “progress”
for at the end -- at the
goal line -- it is still the matter of:
you either get it or you do
not,
(to use the classic mystical
terminology: you are either awake,
or you are not, and there is
no middle ground),
and if you can somehow get your
mental hands around this fact
it will be of great benefit
and expediency.
If your ordinary, sleeping state
is on the Atlantic coastline
of North Africa, and the longed-for,
awakened state,
across the continent at the
Red Sea,
then to get there you must transverse
the bleak, lonely and challenging, Sahara Desert,
(and for today’s purpose, this
is not an ill appropriate allegory).
Let us say that your place of
origin is the western port city of Dakhla,
and your destination is Halaib
on the east coast,
so you begin your solitary trek
through the sands of the vast Sahara.
Years, and years you plod along,
and thus are assuredly making
progress,
but because of the featureless
landscape,
and because it is an internal
journey where you are forever alone,
you can never be sure of where
precisely you are
between the two locales, and
thus the rate of your advance,
but since you have been on the
journey for some time,
you most certainly have made
some headway…......most certainly.
Those who will eventually reach
Halaib, and those who never will,
both feel the above;
they both believe that they
make gradual progress toward the goal,
but in a quite valid sense --
neither do,
for only the end game counts,
and at the end:
you either know what is going
on, or you do not,
and there is no in between;
no, partial-knowing.
As for all the years you have
spent trudging through the desert --
-- you have never set
foot out of Dakhla,
and you unwittingly embarrass
yourself to talk as though you have.
A dead-on, unintended public
admission of your know-nothing-state
is to speak of what you do or
do not know.
Those who did not instantly,
originally Get
it when they first heard of it
are the ones most anxious to
discuss their progress,
and present degree of awakening;
this is completely understandable
& expected in that,
talking about it is an enormous
part of the whole fun of being involved in it: (comparing notes:
comparing books;
comparing gurus & their
proffered maps of that North African desert).
By almost everything an ordinary
man says,
he reveals himself to be a fool,
but when he speaks specifically
of how much he knows about life,
and how awake he is
-- his admission of foolishness is compounded.
Those who Get
it as
soon as they hear about,
and who will one day finally
-- wake-up-in-Halaib,
will suddenly just find themselves
there, and realize at that blazing instant that they arrived there directly
from Dakhla;
that they never were, gradually-trudging-through-the-Sahara;
that is what is meant by:
Even at the end, you either
Get
it
or you do not.
No one knows how you go from
the Dakhla city of obscurity
to Halaib, the place of clarity,
and anyone who tells you that
they do know --
knows even less than you do.
Without doubt you must do something:
from things you initially hear
about,
you must select and try whatever
at the time seems right for you,
while never forgetting that
whatever it is is just something that
some other man made up to entertain
himself & pass the time,
even though he may have believed
himself that it was much more than that -- but there is no, “Much-more-than-that”
when it comes to the methods that will eventually, Awaken
& Enlighten you;
there are no such methods --
or, if there are,
no one knows what they are;
if you are one of those who
instinctively Got
it
when you first heard about it,
all you can do is -- do
something
--
but do not let the temporary,
something
seduce you;
do not fall in mystical love
with the something;
do not become addicted to the
something,
(which is easier to happen than
with any drug).
All good methods to awaken
are a trick, and they are all intended to be disposable --
for the few who naturally Get
it.
Only a man who did not originally
Get
it and who never will,
will proclaim himself a follower,
a student, a proponent of,
this-or-that school of awakening
& enlightenment:
such people enjoy what they
are doing, and a large part of their pleasure is in identifying themselves
with the whole idea of
such activity.
On their death bed they may
freely admit that they never did actually, “Wake up”
yet they express no ill will,
and will say that they would not
trade their experiences in trying
to, for anything.
But this is not the suitable
end for one who instantly Got
the idea of,
man-waking-up as soon as they heard about it,
and if you have at least reached
a place,
(through no direct intention
of your own, it might be noted),
wherein you are no longer uncontrollably
driven by a need to:
talk about what you know;
ask questions which sound impressive,
but mean nothing to you,
and argue with people even more
asleep than you are,
then you are ready to ponder
and face what has been today herein noted, (to wit):
from one quite valid view, (in
the exclusive realm of the few),
you do not make gradual progress
in this,
and there is no special way
to achieve the goal;
you are either born instinctively
able to catch
the idea of another
state of mental comprehension
being possible, or you are not,
and if you are, there is nothing
to stop you but your own lack of effort to follow through on it to the
very end -- and,
there is no particular effort
to make,
other than those that seem right
to you in the beginning -- when you have absolutely no
idea what you are doing --
but just as soon as you begin
to have some -- even slight
--
private feel for what this is
really about,
turn loose your frantic grip
of whatever teachings, systems, schools,
or heroes you have had that
sustained you this far,
and turn totally within yourself;
stop reading about it;
stop talking about it;
stop listening to talk about
it;
seal yourself up tight;
become a silent hermit amidst
the noisy bustle of everyday life;
pay no attention to anyone else’s
life, words, or ideas;
look and listen only at yourself;
it is not that you know
anything,
but if you keep watching and
listening you will finally realize it,
and -- Boom! --
there you suddenly are in:
Ah! now-I-see-what’s-going-on
city.
If you are one of those who did
not really Get
it when you heard the idea about,
waking-up,
you will never realize it;
you will always think that you
Get
it, and that you are making progress
toward achieving the state,
so nothing that anyone ever
says to the contrary will affect you;
you can enjoy your participation
in whatever activity you choose
in complete safety,
but if you did actually Get
it when you first heard about it,
you have the capacity to comprehend
what has been today noted,
and the ability to use it to
your own immediate & practical ends.
Do not spend more of your life
than is necessary shuffling around the sleepy town of Dakhla, peering at
maps in your hands that you have collected over the years, mumbling to
yourself about how close or distant you are from being in Halaib and awake;
face up to plain reality --
you are still in Dakhla;
you have never really
set foot out of the place;
you have not yet gone anywhere
-- BUT –
waking up to what is going on
is constantly just an eye blink away:
it is indeed four thousand miles
of desert from here to there,
and you must make efforts of
some sort that will provide the sensation that you are making progress,
but when the end game comes,
you are transported from place-of-origin
-- instantly to the destination,
and no one knows why or what
caused it…........other than the fact that:
you were one of those born to
instinctively recognize the idea of
being reborn after you were
once normally alive,
and you were one of those who
never gave up the struggle –
-- the entirely private,
entirely internal, struggle.
It is good to know where you
actually are
even if it is not where you
once wanted to imagine that you were;
if this does not sit well with
you,
then your reading of the above
was a waste.
Always face up to where you are
and what you know:
it doesn’t hurt, once you try
it, and will do the true few a world of good.
J
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