Among other prominent (and for the few, pertinent) matters to which
man acts oblivious is how his thinking is in continual conflict with itself;
ordinary minds do not see what is occurring thus, but rather are programmed
to hold the position that commonly are their thoughts (the correct ones)
in conflict with the incorrect ones of other men,
but for a person wanting to get to the bottom of things, this is a captivating mirage,
a subterfuge which helps keep the wheels of man’s intangible, cultural reality rolling, but in the process, clouds the technical reality of what is really going on,
which is that human thought, by its normal nature, is,
in all matters lacking tangible substance  --  in continual conflict with itself,
but is wired to fallaciously perceive the source of same
to be in the thoughts of others, and not itself.

A man hears and reads an endless number of thoughts from external sources,
but his mind only responds (overtly or silently) to a select few; out of the hundreds, thousands to which a sophisticated man is daily exposed with which his thinking
could find fault, his mind chooses but one here and another there with which to argue, either vocally or mentally,
and if questioned about this, an ordinary mind would say that it simply
singles out the most egregious thoughts with which to do righteous mental combat, and with a routine man with no extraordinary goal,
there is no rebuttal possible to this reply  --  it makes sense  --  the explanation will fly.
But the certain man with that special hunger must peer deeper,
and look through this species wide enforced profession,
and see within his own normal mental activity the clear fact that
the thoughts that automatically appear ceaselessly in his consciousness
are constantly in conflict with themselves;
that a man’s mind entertains no thoughts that seem meaningful to it for which it does not also host ones in direct conflict therewith.

This is what life provides for men’s normally functioning minds,
and which easy observation shows, serves him well (at least from his view,
compared to pigs, cows and dung beetles for instance),
and establishes a situation wherein there is an infinite friction produced,
in the physical reality: man apparently vs. Nature,
and in the intangible one: right thoughts vs. wrong ones;
in the former, resulting in technology which makes life more comfortable,
and survivable;
in the latter, in culture, which gives men something to occupy their minds in the
ever increasing time they have free from the physical struggle to daily survive;
no technology  --  no time to be mentally bored; culture of miniscule importance;
with technology  --  mind has much free time, and culture becomes of
specific significance in keeping men’s underemployed consciousness
turned on matters which do not threaten the civilized order of their milieu.
Advances are made in technology via conflicting thoughts;
one man has an idea to improve a present piece of life benefiting technology  --
an idea clearly in conflict with the one on which the current machinery is based,
(or else he cannot even obtain a patent therefore);
all changes men make in their manipulation of their physical environment arise solely from conflict of ideas which eventually have a tangible manifestation;
all changes men make in the cultural world (art, music, literature, religion,
political and social fashion) come also from someone having a conflicting thought,
in this case though, the thought is a matter a taste,
as opposed to an improved way of making technology work;
in both instances --  a facet significant to man’s overall, civilized existence is altered through the conflict of thought, and in the first case, thought that represents tangibly measurable change in the physical conditions in which man lives,
and in the second instance, conflict of thought that reflects incalculable alteration in
the intangible world which lives in man;
it is not a matter of one being proper and the other not;
both are necessary for the collective life of man as now present on this planet --
but they are different, and the distinction of the conflict of thought from which they separately issue is a most informative and useful piece of the puzzle for the intrepid, minority investigator trying to solve the case
that the majority does not even recognize as being such.

For the certain man, what is of immediate and practical interest in this area is the realization that the thinking which normally goes on in his head (when he is not engaged in his kind of willful and unnatural activity that disrupts same)
is replete-with  --  is fully-populated-by  --   conflicting thoughts,
and it is from this that comes the continual cacophony which the ordinary accept as their consciousness, but which the few find to bother their consciousness --
quite a distinction:  meaningless to the many  --   definitive for the few  --
their lives rotate around the effort to cleanse their consciousness of this natural
neural noise (although most of them never have anything close to a precise understanding of what it is they are actually involved in).

The mind housing conflicting thoughts is equal to consciousness having a roommate, when what the certain man in truth is seeking is to be alone in his mind;
the desire for a state of mind wherein there is no conflict –
none of the useless conflict regarding man’s intangible, other reality,
(it being meaningless perforce the fact that from a radical perspective
the realm itself is not literally de rigueur for existence).
The certain man wants free of everything not essential, or else not entertaining to him, and at the top of the list (indeed it IS the list) is a mind that seems not under his control, and which runs primarily on the friction power of conflicting thoughts,
and thoughts of the variety that are irrelevant in and of themselves,
the situation being compounded by the added nonsensical weight of them
being in conflict with themselves;
bad enough the noise of fairies dancing on your ceiling, but way-too-much
the additional din of them having shouting matches over who is the best hoofer.

All in all, one of the describable approaches to getting to the bottom of things
is in recognizing fully  --  for yourself  --  the incessant, mechanical reactions
in yours and everyone else’s mind between conflicting thoughts
that are inherently in each person’s consciousness --
then employing the special investigator’s basic technique of asking yourself:
”What’s going on here?”  --  not: “Why am I (why is he/them) like this?” --
nor: “What is wrong here?” or “What causes this?”  but: “What’s going on here?”
an inquiry for which there is no answer for the certain man --
but getting to the bottom of: “What’s-going-on-here?” eradicates all question, doubts, and confusion about everything concerning you, other humans and life in general.

Conflicting thoughts is what props up ordinary men’s ludicrous sense-of-their-self,
and what keeps civilization itself (the total collection of all ordinary men) running;
all the certain man wants is  --    out of it –
to be home alone  --   conscious, but without the usual noise of meaningless,
mental conflict going on upstairs,
(“Jeeze!”  says one guy, “It's bad enough your stomach sometimes rumbles,
but your brain?!  --    gimmie a break!”)

Using classical mystic terminology: without conflicting thoughts there is no: being-asleep and living-in-a-dream; no being-in-the-dark and unenlightened;
no living in inner-captivity;
conflicting thoughts (for the few) is the source of all that rubs you raw,
and robs you of clear sight and understanding.