JAN’S: IF LIFE IS A METAPHOR -- WHAT IS THE CURE?
             IF LIFE IS A PROVERB  --- WHAT IS THE FULL ESSAY?
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 June 18, 2002                                                                        © 2002: JAN COX
 
 
 

In areas where civilization has taken firm root  --  there is a stability and consistency,
which makes overall existence safer and more comfortable,
but which annoys the young and other malcontents.
In locales which are still relatively behind the civilized times,
life is dangerous, chaotic and unpredictable,
which can be deadly to the young and make everyone malcontents;
it is either one or the other --  there is no sustainable middle ground.
 

The origins of this situation is in each man’s brain,
and the above noted societal settings, external reflections thereof;
part of every person’s brain is feral and completely self centered,
while another manifests the magnanimity necessary for communal living.
All of this is readily obvious, but not near so seeable is how this
physiological constant plays in a person’s attempt to perceive the workings of life outside the commonly accepted paradigms.
 

If your mind’s view is too stable and consistent  --  no fresh sight is possible,
and if it is overly sloppy and undisciplined  --  nothing valid will be gained:
these are the brain’s natural twin potentials,
but to ever see through the exhorting distortion normal to human beings
requires you position yourself in a middle ground –
a neural spot that does not naturally exist  --  one you must create.
 

The dreamy moat that a few feel separates them from a more intimate,
and revealing relationship to things rests on the two noted brain attitudes;
a man’s thinking is either stable and consistent (adult & civilized),
or else chaotic and unpredictable (childish and undisciplined),
and while everyone’s head contains both, individuals are prone primarily to one.
 

For the purposes of getting to the bottom of things, neither of these is worse or better than the other, but relying on either is a one legged moron running a marathon.
To ever free up and ignite your brain in such a way as to give it new I’s/eyes
involves treading a tight rope strung between the two buttes of:
normal, predictable thinking, and the jumbled and unfocused,
but no such rope is found laying around in the mind,
and indeed if men were commonly intended to span the space between the two
attitudes they would not naturally exist as separate neural characters.
                     He who walks this tight rope must the rope himself weave.
 

While everyone who uses their head for more than a place to park their hair
will say that they sincerely want to know more of the truth regarding
what is really going on in life and in them,
the natural mind does not want more truth, but rather more  --  proof that
what they already think is correct,
and this, the two attitudes normal to the brain, provide.

If your aim is to see clearly for yourself, then any support or opposition
your thoughts offer to any idea which humanity commonly considers significant,
is a direct stick in your eye;
the inaccurate mental concepts of what is going on held by collective mankind
cannot be corrected by the application of either: stable, predictable thought,
nor by that merely rebellious and rambunctious;
both in fact simply add to the distortion;
a situation wherein any comment, pro or con concerning a septic tank’s aroma,
increases its pungency.

A distinct sensation that often besets a man trying to mentally cut through the goo
is a fungus type frustration that gradually creeps up from his feet
wherein he feels trapped inside his own mind;
his thinking feels caged inside itself;
men commonly encourage one another to: “Think outside the envelope”
but ordinary men do not realize that their thoughts are the envelope;
a constantly created impression in the brain which expands, shrinks,
and reconfigures itself in an endless variety of ways, so that under
normal neural conditions, a man can no more “Think outside the envelope”
than a sack can increase its size to hold itself.
To get past this irritation point in the search, a person must come to realize
for their self that nothing at either end of their ordinary mental spectrum
is of any explanatory use whatsoever;
cheering on any of humanity’s concepts of reality --  or giving them the raspberry,
both merely add to the frustration and make you dumber than before
(except feeling for the moment, actually a bit more cocksure in your ignorance –
due to the burst of enthusiasm just expressed for one of the two meaningless sides).
 

In the secret privacy of your own mind you can profitably be neither a
stodgy, stick-in-the-mud, conservative professor, nor a wild-eyed rebel,
who is one merely out of despairing of knowing what else to be;
both these roles are already filled with billions of actors adequately playing the parts;
they certainly do not need you, and you sure don’t need those roles.
 
 

With the constant awareness that the world outside of you,
and the one inside are not of the same quality,
and that the former is where you eat delicious food; have scrumptious sex;
run exhilarating races, and take luxurious naps,
note that the inner world seems always, and distinctly either:
too calm and predictable, or too frantic and annoying,
with either condition barring you from any new realizations and understanding.
In a sense, the mind is worse than the body in wanting always to be either:
doing something really exciting  --  or doing absolutely nothing at all;
this is the situation natural to the brains of man,
and those seeking to get to the bottom of things are unknowingly trying to
establish a new arrangement in this most slippery and vaporous of realms.

Even without hearing of such a description,
they attempt to create within their own thinking a non indigenous middle-ground wherein the thoughts that are possible are neither too stable and predictable,
nor are they so chaotic and unstructured as to be of no value.
You will never see what is going on if your thinking is either of these.
 

Though verbally put, is irrational:
you do not, discover-the-truth-of-what-is-going-on   --   you make it up:
you first must be able to make it up  --  then you see what it is --

....and speaking of geniis (as one of yesterday's stories was),
one man says he once found a bottle with one therein, and when he offered to help him get out
the genii said that he’d just as soon stay where he was --
....yeah, does seem curious..........................‘course the man didn’t say what kind of bottle it was.