JAN’S  FRESH REAL NEWS
                         © 2001: Jan Cox
                                           *********************************************
 

August 22, 2001.
 
 

              THE FATHER & SON DRIVE SOME NAILS
                    __________________________
 
 
 
 

The son stared: “A kid at school says his old man told him that much of what you say is so outrageous that its only purpose must be to drive people to think about it, (like that stuff about the mind having no memory of itself),” and the father responded:
“Even if that were true,
I’d still be providing a useful, otherwise rare service.
                                       Hand me some ten pennies.
 
 
 
 

If the conversation would be about the outrageous, (in the sense I’m sure he meant of some idea being, ‘unreasonable & shocking’)
consider that certain matters that fully fit that definition
from any rational, experiential view of a sane human being
are yet a common part of ordinary men’s mental lives.
Constantly the world’s most popular books, documentaries,
and television shows are people talking about their conversations with dead humans, or with live extra terrestrials, and if not them,
with god, or his supernatural minions, and if that not,
then about their promising search for some fantasy city, or icon.
 
 

A historically familiar defense of all such has always been:
‘Well, if there is NOT anything to, “communicating-with-the-dead”
then why do so many intelligent, educated people
believe in it?!’ (and obviously the same with the notion of a
“knowable” deity, and life-after-death).
 
 

This is pretty much child’s play,
and should be well settled in your understanding by now,
but there is an extension of it that you have not considered
which offers fresh insight into that special type of new roofing
so sought after in our family’s tradition.
 
 

If I happen to make any comment around civilians
about that uncommon aim,
wherein a man attempts to alter his thoughts’ operations
for the purpose of seeing things plainly & directly,
without the distorting intermediary OF the thoughts ABOUT the things,
which automatically pass through his mind,
someone will inevitably accuse me of trying to destroy beliefs & ideas that are commonly held & cherished by humanity,
and as my ultimate comeuppance for being perceived as a being a smart-ass, would-be debunker, I will be asked:
“Okay, if you know so much and  can see through the dreams of us
dumb, ’ordinary people’
are you still bothered & forced to reconsider your position
by the fact that so many otherwise sane,
sophisticated & normal people, with a straight face say that they
see and have actual conversations with their dead mother? --
or how about the many people with jobs, families & decent reputations who will not back down from their claims that 
flying saucers land regularly in their backyard? --
or the fact that a billion people believe that a certain man was
once executed to atone for human shortcomings, 
and a few days later, came back to life?!”
Minds composed entirely of such ordinary thoughts believe that
I must --  in the private recesses of my own mind  --
be greatly troubled by the examples raised and that I --  same as them --
must be secretly asking myself, over & over:
‘If there is no substantial reality to these beliefs & claims –
then how can they be so continually & widely held by
humanity in general?
Everyone else is obviously not insane, and only I not’ --
and so (goes their thinking),
I must be in constant mental turmoil trying to rationalize away
the indisputable fact that near one hundred per cent of humanity
claims to believe & have experienced things
that I apparently deny;
I understand fully what is going on in their thoughts,
and I realize that their minds tell them that I must be tormented
by my inability to explain how the rest of the ordinary, sane world
holds to ideas that I seem to reject --
their thoughts are absolutely certain that this (to them) --
--  unanswerable question  of how otherwise normal people
can sincerely believe in über normal things --  must be driving me mad.
                                  Kick that crowbar over here.
 
 
 

Their thoughts attempt to treat me, (and remember,
there is no, 'me' --  and, ‘you’ in all of this:
it is all going on inside of one person’s mind,
and the apparent “me” doing the talking is but
one lobbying-thought in that person’s mental congress;
a single idea, at seeming odds with all the others) --  so:
their thoughts seek to reproach me in this matter
similar as believers often do atheists by proposing:
‘When men are faced with their impending death -
everyone becomes religious’ as though there are certain basic, completely-mental, 
totally, irrational-when-compared-to-physical-experience ideas 
which will eventually -  catch-up-with --  everyone --  
even know-it-alls like the Awakened,
(whenever they are dumb enough to let on).
 

The aspect of this that I initially said should be of fresh interest
to you is that the overall, ordinary collective-thought that
makes-up & fills-up all of ordinary people’s
mental consciousness of itself is not only non substantial compared to 
the reality essential for man’s survival,
but is also incapable of a direct awareness thereof.
 
 

Their thoughts really believe that my thoughts
(at least that one, non mechanical one)
are bothered by the, ‘unanswerable questions’ that arise from
the second reality that their automatic thoughts has created
for man, and which is an inseparable part there of  --  FOR ordinary men.
 
 

A thought (or a man, if you like) who has seen what is going on
no longer has any interest in the thoughts about made-up things
that fill up the lives of others, (much less is bothered by them);
indeed the state of our roof,
(which we so diligently see to on a daily basis),
that normal working of man’s consciousness which our family
has often referred to as: ‘Being-asleep-with-your-eyes-open’
can be deftly defined as: 'Fretting over ghosts & trying to nail them down’ which cannot be done, but which cannot be realized
until that one super sane & normal thought in you that wants to, Wake Up,
does so enough that you are then primarily guided by the
personal ability to distinguish between a hammer & a homily.

The closest there could be to something truly outrageous existing
would be if one of our sort was still pretending to believe that  
certain things accomplish something when they clearly do not.
 
 

The father reached for his track shoes, and said:
“The final hurdle in our family’s 400m is that:
you cannot GET disinterested by THINKING about being disinterested.

                              Let’s go run on tacks  --  no --  nails!”
 

                        (And the son marveled & was thankful that
                     he could never get the old man out of his head).
 
 
 

                                                       J