KEY TO SYMBOLISM:
the city: man's ordinary mind.
the plains (open plains): area of the brain outside the city.
the mayor, the warlord: the principal spokesman & manifestation of a man's ordinary mind.
the king: the non ordinary part of man's mind   --   the people: the rest.
the collective, the herd: ordinary humanity mentally (non pejorative)
the rebel, the certain man: a person struggling for freedom from the collective city mind (aka: mystic).
the father & son: man's on going, internal conversation: the brain's cortex both speaking and hearing itself speak,
                              with the father representing a mind's rebel.
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One man found himself a prisoner –
he did not know where,
he did not know why,
he did not know how,
and he did not know of whom  --   still he thought: “It’s a start.”

The acting warden said to the assembled:
“Let us be blunt about where we stand in this:
if you are not consistently conscious of consciousness,
you are not truly conscious.”
 
 

The mayor of the city said to a mystic:
“I cannot for the life of me understand why you guys do what you do,
for regardless of your fancy words, the only things that really mean anything in life
are getting rich and being powerful, ‘cause we’re all gonna die the same way  --
I simply cannot see the reason you live as you do” and the mystic replied: “Me either.”

Only local affairs seem serious  --  never universal ones
(which however is evened out by the fact that only local ones can be described).
 

There were once two brothers,
one of whom would consume more than was sufficient,
while the other did so invisibly.
By hook or crooked crook the mind will digest and make sense of all it can take in,
but to progress beyond city measure your mind must become aware of this shortcoming.
 

The local trains running in and around the city are generally safe and reliable,
though they seem to be going no where in particular;
this situation however is periodically interrupted by fears & threats of near wrecks,
which are followed by a return to unexciting normalcy,
a process which the riders take as a form of progress.
Collective Mind’s Health Marker:
“I was normally well for me  --  then I became quite ill,
now I am back in the condition I was before the illness –
basking in the great forward stride I have made.”
(the more expansive heading of this item, for more perceptive readers, could have been:
Collective Mind’s Health Marker For A Man’s Thinking.)
 

Mentally  --
to have a problem
is to name a problem;
and to
name a problem
is to have a problem twice over
(thus does the certain man refuse all diagnoses that do not include instant death).
 

Only ideas in part autobiographical are serious  --   no others
(thus does the certain man..................... oh, you fill in the rest).

The god of one world announced a contest of the inhabitants:
whoever could ask him the best question would win as their prize,
the answer to any question they had other than the one which won them the prize;
he called it the : “Get It?! Challenge".

One man lives in a one room cabin alone;
in earlier times he had lived with himself,
but eventually concluded that he was better off alone.

Everyone is born into mental confinement,
but it is up to you  --  through your own,  faux individual efforts to strengthen it;
it is the Great Work of the collective: shoring up illusions.

The new acting warden said to the contained populace:
“Being conscious of consciousness is comparable to the mind being aware of the body  --   but on a level so much higher as to boost you over the wall.”
In the city, cows need not be fenced in  --   that is the job of bovinian thought.

And reflecting on an earlier story, someone asks:
“But within a closed system,
is not everything that a man thinks, perforce in part, autobiographical?” --  but
what this ignores is that a system can be defined as closed only by one encased in it,
which offers little in the way of an objective observation,
and realizing just this will affect an alert man’s sense of what thinking really is.
 
 

There was once a band of would-be mystical knights
whose interest was the search for the wondrous prize;
they quickly split into two factions:
the first dedicated their efforts to possessing the grail,
while the other decided to make themselves a magnet
to attract it to them.
All who look without are hands grasping at the chalice of illusion
(which is why the certain man packs his bag    ---    then climbs into it.)
 
 

In the city: the simple enjoy gossip:
the more sophisticated change its name to, History;
the more civilized still call the whole thing, Current Events,
insinuating that they are current in their thinking,
and could recognize an actual event if they ever ran into one.
 
 

One day a man stopped and said to himself:
“Which will drive you crazy first: hormones or neurons?”
and his neurons said: “We are at the mercy of hormones”  --
then he and his neurons waited for his hormones to respond  --
they waited..................and waited................and waited in vain.
Then one day, many years later
the man suddenly grasped the lesson of hormones’ failure to reply.

Those seeking the realization are men who want
certain extraneous ephemeralities to become permanent fixtures.

Being conscious of consciousness is like having a time machine  --
--  that doesn’t go anywhere.
 
 

One man’s most recent take on the thoughts in his head:
“Someone else’s unsolicited commentary on my life” –
he admits that he does not know who this someone else is,
but knows it’s damn sure not him.
Consider: why do men never question whether the doings of their lungs,
heart or liver are as per their personal decision,
                         but only regarding things mental?
 

There are two forms of consciousness possible;
every man is born with the first form which operates automatically and effortlessly,
and to which no one gives particular notice;
the other potential form is never activated in a man unless he is caused to become consistently aware of the first  --  his normal mental condition.
 
 
 

One day a man thought:
“It might not be so bad to learn you had a terminal illness,
because then you could live a totally dissipated, disinterested life,
and it wouldn’t matter” --  but suddenly realized that he was doing that now  --
and that indeed  --  it didn’t seem to matter.

City minds believe that life either does or does not have meaning,
and only those who understand what "meaning” means
realize how it really is.

Were it not for man’s collective sense of duty and morality,
supported by his institutional expectations of civilized behavior,
ordinary men could scarcely stand mentally upright and hold themselves together.
Though neurons clearly run the city,
hormones are its infrastructure,
and being conscious of consciousness
is like knowing the answer to a question that no one can ask.
 
 

In the great journey to the secret:
everyone is their place of departure,
and there is no such place as the destination they seek,
so each traveler must continually invent it as he chugs along.

Men cannot be helped  --  only not harmed,
and the only non farming harm possible is imaginary.

Only circumstances are serious  --  never life itself.
 

Being even less conscious than you by nature are
is an inexpensive hobby available to everyone;
the attempt to go in the other direction however,
is so costly as to be nearly impossible;
the cost, in truth however, is less than the first course noted.
Made up paths, concocted stumbling blocks, and invented, disposable shoes  --
the last seeing the certain man through to the end.
 
 

There are two types of mental knights:
those who think of battle,
and those who actually do it;
to become the second, you must first be the first,
but once you are  --   it's damn hard to ever leave.

Being conscious of consciousness is like having a secret map to the most important place that exists,
but one unreachable with a map in your hand.
 
 

‘Tis said that when you are sick,
it is to your advantage to know just how sick you are;
question: does this also apply to your state of consciousness?
(the terminally dull need not bother to reply).
And one man pondered:
“How many days does it take to get used to the rain –
and how many decades to become accustomed to the mold?”
 
 

Today’s Fairy Tale:
Everyone is born into a fairy tale,
and you can either live out your life there (as is the norm),
or you can construct a fairy tale to live out its life in you.
In the neural city: fiction exists outside of men;
in rebel camp, it is inside the certain man;
the conscious pretense of his inner life is his second heart.
(Those who know, don’t let metaphors run loose without a leash.)

A man asked a mystic:
“Does being more conscious make you a happier person?”
and got replied: “Answering questions sure doesn’t.”

And another man asked another mystic:
“How can you be sure that you are talking to a real mystic?”
and was told: “If you are, then you’re not,
and if you’re not, you might be”
(and one man says that stories like these have almost stopped him from talking to himself).
 
 

After some years, deeply involved in a certain obscure activity,
a man stood alone on the edge of a high cliff,
naked and mute before the bluntness of it all and mused:
“Once you have thought:
‘I am alive and able to say to myself that I am’ –
what more is there to say.”
 
 

One day a city man walked up to a rebel and said:
“You don’t fool me: all that stuff about trying to become more conscious is just an excuse for not living an ordinary life” and the rebel thought: “What a great line.”
 
 

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