A man who discovers how to see for himself,  what-is-going-on
is like a kid who plays Hide & Seek  --  all by himself  --  and still peeks.

A man really starting to get the hang-of-it is like someone who has already
read a crime novel yet says to himself: “Don’t tell me how it ends.”

One man would play cowboys & indians with himself and periodically cry out:
“Oh! Corporal, I’ve been hit  --  bad!  --  and this time it may be fatal  --   I HOPE!"
 
 

Commonly heard from ecology hobbyists,
regarding an environmental situation they find objectionable,
is that it is the result,  “not of what Nature desires,  --   but of what man wants,”
as though the latter can operate outside the auspices of the former.
It is via thought that man is able to feel himself separate from nature --  an outsider;
yet for all its intelligence, thought seems oblivious to the impossible,
and imaginary situation in which this mentally places man:
this due to the fact that mind finds itself an outsider  --  even to itself;
it cannot gather itself completely into its own arms any more than can man,
using the mind, see clearly himself an inextirpable component of nature.

How bewildering ‘twould sound to fish to hear the water in which they live,
and whose constant flow through them sustains their existence, verbally described,
and how perplexing finds the mind, tellings of what passes though it,
and which in fact is it  --  including the perplexion it feels upon so hearing.

At least fish have gills  --   mind has nothing  --  nothing but itself.
                                 Being enlightened is grasping this.

The secret that every man wants to know is at the end of the mind’s road;
wanting to awake is having the sensation that you are somewhere near
the end of the mind’s road;
being awake is realizing it has none   --   that mind is both fish and water.
 
 

Question:
Who is the least realized & insightful, (stupid, in other words):
the uncivilized man who acts uncontrollably and kills over a verbal insult,
or the solid citizen who willfully allows the words of laws to restrict his behavior?
 

More re: Awakening The Mind:
To feed the hungry --  kill the full.
(Awakening-the-mind, by the way, is the same as clearing it of dead brush.)
 
 

Being morally distraught over the behavior of mankind
is fretting over the conduct of geese.

                                 Don’t be a ninny,
                                                   of room --  give life plenty  --  (it’s going to take it anyway).
 
 
 

Another example of mind operating maximally in one of its possible modes,
(here, neither at its most efficiently rational, nor its antipodal):
a man working the saw at a construction site found himself unable to
meet a request for a board cut into a piece 39 by 4½  inches
since he was not told which figure was the length and which the width.
 
 
 
 
 

Regardless of the cover terms employed, (awakening, enlightenment, liberation),
the realization that birthed such words is not quantitatively gradient,
compared to ordinary knowledge,
but a discreet jump  --   entirely different in quality.
 
 

Father: “Here’s something for you.  Don’t talk while you’re eating.”
Son: “Okay.”
Father: “Don’t talk while you’re cutting wood.”
Son: “Okay.”
Father: “Don’t talk while you’re repairing electrical equipment.”
Son: “Okay.”
Father: “And don’t talk while you’re doing your income taxes.”
Son: “All right.”
Father: “And if you want to really get into it: don’t talk while you’re talking.”
 
 

And how about the fact that the size of the universe,
(16 billion light years across as measured by man),
is something man's mind cannot literally conceive of   ---   and yet,
it was the human mind that conceived of ways to make such a measurement:
developing the idea of a light year; designing instruments capable of giving him
the ability to arrive at such measurements --  (?!)

So once again  --   up against that cool, sensual windowcase of:

One guy says: “Never mind all that, Waking up & Enlightenment stuff --
I’d be happy if I’s just able to shut up when I’m trying to think.”
 
 
 
 
  

“Paw, I want to be sure I have this straight:
just because a man does not say that he is awake does not mean that he is awake,
but if a man does say that he is awake, it definitely means that he is not --   correct?”
  “Yep.”
 
 
 
 
 
 

A man who moans aloud is not one of the few,
(neither is he who moans in silence.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 If the sound of an ordinary human’s voice is becoming almost unbearable,
(including your own  --  when you are being ordinary)  --  you could be nearing enlightenment.