JAN’S DAILY FRESH NEWS
                     © 2001: Jan Cox
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September 26, 2001.
 

“Constant criticism seems proof sure of the seriousness of life;
would men bother to find fault with the meaningless;
why would anyone complain about matters which do not matter?

Although no one analytically notes this common feature of human life,
nor consistently ponders the direct question of whether being alive is a serious affair, and has some specific purpose,
mankind's history clearly reveals to an interested eye,
actions and words that are direct, unacknowledged results of this
always lurking, tacit puzzle.
After you, a human, are well fed, fucked & sheltered  --
what to do with the rest of the day?  --  the rest of your life?
Were it not for the mortal form of consciousness,
and its ever present, always active thoughts,
there would be no question regarding a purpose to life:
without the presence of thoughts,
being well fed, fucked & sheltered is the sole purpose of life.
There is no proof of this statement as is none to the contrary,
but in having thought available, after men are sensually satisfied
in the essentials, and the rest of their day’s calendar is blank,
as they lay there in the shady, cool high grass their thoughts
can begin to weave dreams of additional, non physical possible
activities they could pursue in their free time,
thus was born the world of the metaphysical
in which rewards were not physical, but mental.

In that mental pleasure cannot be tactually transferred from person to person as can food and sex,
men were forced to describe to one another the joy they
experienced from this or that thought,
a thought which the other person may or may not have had themselves, and thus with knowledge of that particular thought’s power to
evoke passion,
and a thought with which the other person may or may not agree is true, proper and meaningful.
An un detailed, un spoken game was established,
but its rules clearly understood by all:
we will treat each other’s announced mental pleasures as being
substantial whether we subscribe to them or not,
thus did criticism come to be a benchmark of each man’s adherence to the tacit rules of the sport & pastime.
Indeed it came to be that ignoring or totally dismissing another player’s thoughts was judged the worse offense possible;
criticizing another man’s ideas is fair;
denying they even merit same  --  a foul unforgivable,
for it attacks the very foundation of the collective game
which is totally dependent on the participants maintaining the
silently agreed to pretense that it has its own intrinsic significance.
A masquerade ball is no fun unless those in attendance
are faithful to the pretense of their costume.
Since life has not programmed uniform thinking in each person’s consciousness, conflicting ideas is the slang name of the game;
men’s brains do not crave similar ideas as do their stomachs, food stuffs.
Diversity in the thoughts that please each man is the
norm pattern of play and the sound of criticism hangs e’er over the field.
You can almost hear everyone, half-consciously saying to themselves:
‘If this were not serious and did not have some metaphysical purpose, then why would all of these people
go to the trouble of criticizing those plays with which they disagree?'
If the game was not serious,
men would not be engaged in seriously criticizing its play:
this is taken to be proof by man’s thoughts: the inventor of the game.
                   What more need an alert man realize.”
 

The father reached to a plate and momentarily fingered a
bumble biscuit  --   then continued.
“A game of make believe is as real and serious as you want it to be  --
as you pretend it to be, (every child knows this),
but no adult takes note that they play a real life, serious game of
make believe that they did not decide to play;
it is played through them;
primarily through their thoughts & speech,
less so, in their actions, (usually innocuously).

‘But,’ I hear you say: ‘What if I do not want to play?’
WHAT?!        ‘Not Play,’ did you say?!
Zonkers!        What is the world coming to?!

Lots of pretty routine players periodically get momentarily disgusted with the game, and will scream out a desire to be free of the whole go-nowhere-affair,
but as in any ruff & tumble sport,
players get tired; have a finger stepped on; twist an ankle,
and want a time out;
but they are quickly restored to playing shape,
and back in the game --  sans complaints --  before you know it.

No, it requires there be more in your genetic uniform than merely
spasmodic fits of pique for you to ever find your way off of
this playing field, for in truth, there is no natural area in the human mind outside the boundary lines of this field -- you must create you own:
doing so is the path you lay to the goal you seek.

You may presently still find mental pleasure in it,
but you accomplish nothing in denouncing the game,
and proclaiming its players fools;
the game and its pretended seriousness is meaningful
to ordinary men and to standard life on this planet.
If you have no natural affinity for the game  –  stop playing,
but as long as you are criticizing the game – you are still playing.

For the game, it is a win/win game;
and for the routine players it is also,
and for those who criticize the game, it is a lose/lose situation;
only for those who see the game for all&what it is,
does the game release its hypnotizing hold on your consciousness.

So long before you discover how to create your own new turf,
out of nothing, outside the chalk lines of the normal playing field,
you have one infallible secret move that will unfailingly lead you
in the right direction:
the assurance that all criticism of what goes on in this game
is as meaningless, invented & calculated as the game itself,
and if indeed the game is one for fools,
then those who say so  --  yet then still criticize,
are the biggest fools of all.

Other, ordinary people not only must play the mentally contrived,
mentally sustained  --   mental-game-about-non-essential-matters-
which-the-mind-made-up-to-keep-from-going-crazy-
during-times-when-it-had-nothing-important-to-do:
they must also actively engage in criticizing the way other men
play the game, which is through the thoughts they express;
each man has the meaningless thoughts to keep from going crazy,
then those very same thoughts drive everyone else crazy.
          Ah, it is quite a sight, my lad; much grander than the Olympics.”
 

The father paused to look at a picture of his favorite
world champion runner --  who never competed  --
the basis of his success.

“But the closer you get,
the more chaotic initially becomes the scene,
for if you, (let us say),
find you have no real individual taste for the sport, and want out,
the operation of normal consciousness dictates that by this process,
you are finding fault with the game;
‘I am asleep and want to awaken;
I want to awaken because I find fault with being asleep.’
It is inescapable  –  obvious -- and seems so rational as to
need no further consideration,
but the non understood dislike of your present state of consciousness serves only to sustain it,
same as in the routine mental game of collective men.
As long as you cry: ‘Throw the bums out!’ --  the bums stay in;
your expressed criticism of them keeps them present,
as does your blanket dislike for your natural, sleeping-state-of-mind
thereby affix itself in your consciousness.

Being in the dark is no crime --  it is not even a problem,
but as long as you are caught up in a mental wrestling & shouting match with the dark….. well  --  Good luck!
You had better learn to love the dark because
that is where you are going to remain.”

The elder pretended to scratch an imaginary itch,
(which made the younger twitch),
then back to talk, the father switched.

“Merely being disgruntled with your present thought condition
is not sufficient to escape it,
you must understand what it is, and above all else you have to eventually free yourself first from the illusion that you need to study some outside information to gain an understanding of your condition;
many people who believe they seek the great realization
spend their lives reading & heeding the descriptions from other people which purport to reveal to them: the-secret-of-the-mind,
but there is no secret, well of course, save the one,
that what the mind does, doesn’t exist and doesn’t mean anything.

But if you are actively on the playing field --
it does mean something  --  it is serious --
serious enough to deserve your well placed criticism of play,
when the play calls for it.
If you cannot begin to see through the distracting smoke
always arising from the frantic activity on this imaginary playing field,
you will never realize that not only is yours & everyone else’s complaints and criticisms of life meaningless,
but are in fact necessary for such a meaningless game to continue
and be treated as though it is otherwise.

Of course, as you well understand,
all that I have said is true only for us & our bloodline, and no one else.
The rest of humanity is correct in the non essential games they play,
and that is the beginning and the end of that story;
the only alternative tale possible for you is for you to fully recognize
the non characteristically nature of the ordinary game,
and thereby release yourself from its hypnotic grip,
and open up the opportunity for you to simply walk off the field
while simultaneously your un captivated consciousness
now creates entirely new neural ground upon which you can
while away your free time.

There is nothing, my son, in life serious enough to warrant criticism, -- unless you want to include death --
but then you would have to conclude that there is nothing about
being asleep, uncertain & ordinary worthy of criticism,
--  unless you include not being so, and where, may I ask you,
would that line of thinking take you.                       Hummmmmmmmm?”

                                                     J
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

After a quite lengthy pregnancy, one man delivered this conclusion:
"Waking up is merely a matter of --  minding-your-own-business --
                       --  once you realize what your only real business is."