For today’s expedient internal expedition, a map could be limned
listing two intangible, inner realities in man: the mental reality
(the one that exists in your thoughts),
and the temperamental reality (the one that exists in your emotions),
and while (for specific study purposes) what drives the few can be said to be
the mind/brain striving to comprehend itself, and to bring its non essential thinking activities under its control, at a more fundamental level it can be pictured as the brain/mind wanting to change the body’s genetic temperament --
the desire in the nervous system’s high end to alter that inner reality that is
reflective of how the organism feels at any given instant,
as opposed to whatever thoughts may be present.
 

As elusive as thoughts can seem to be, this approach is even slipperier;
as elusive as thoughts can be for thoughts to objectively discuss,
dispassionately descriptions of feelings are more elusive still.
A man can say that he feels depressed, or apprehensive, or agitated, or angry,
but anything he offers as an explanation for same is at root, vacuous;
if asked, people’s thoughts will SAY that they are angry because of this or that event
in the external world, with similar explanations for all other human emotions,
and as per the dictates of the Great Conversation,
men pretend to accept one another’s explanations for the way they feel,
and in turn expect others to quietly accept theirs.
 

If a man says he is depressed due to gloomy economic forecasts, or threats of war,
or the termination of a love affair,
there is no creditable outside contradiction possible;
you can tell a man that he is not really depressed because of the
current political climate, but if thoughts in his mind say that is the reason  --
then the final word on the matter has been said.
You cannot usefully tell a man that he is not actually depressed for the reason he gives any more than you can insist that he is not really depressed to begin with  --
that it is just his imagination (this being the last stand of the mind in such situations, and a gambit most infantile despite its common, and even professional usage).
If you wake up in the morning feeling depressed,
any thought-based, verbal insistence by others that it is just-your-imagination  --
is ridiculous to you  --  useless and nonsensical.
If your nervous system feels (as men’s thoughts have named it): depressed  --
then you feel depressed, and anything else said about it is irrelevant   --   but:
this is not how man’s nervous system is programmed in its conscious area;
men are fed thoughts which say that talking and thinking about how one feels
CAN effect change thereto, and again: when thoughts so say  --
there is no persuasive counter voice.
If a man says that his feeling of depression is vanquished, or substantially lessened
by the powers of the mind (thinking and talking the depression and the causes
thereof as presented BY thoughts) then someone telling him this is not so is foolish;
if he says the way he feels is improved by his mind talking about how he feels,
and reflecting on the probable causes thereof  –  then that’s it for him,
whether the non conscious genetic forces responsible for his emotional state
at every given moment have been altered or not is beside the mortal point  --
if the thoughts that genetically appear in his brain say the lower genetic forces responsible for his emotional discomfort have shifted,
then from thought’s reflexive perspective, they have  --  whether they have or not.
 

Such is ordinary man’s condition  --  not realized by him  --  but is nonetheless.
Life’s routine mechanics look after ordinary men –
the few with that special interest (and only of interest to us here)
must look after themselves, and in light thereof,
let us consider the supra situation from their minority perspective.
 

The persistent, fringe idea (as old as man’s self recorded history) that he can somehow effect, or undergo a drastic, intangible transformation
(experience Enlightenment, Awaken-From-A-Dream, achieve A Great Liberation)
can be more succinctly expressed as:
the brain’s belief that it can change the genetic temperament of the body;
(in its watered down manifestations it reads):
Enlightenment puts an end to a man’s suffering  --  his emotional suffering that is;
Awakening stops self destructive feelings;
the Great Liberation frees one from all inner negativity.
There are mental versions of this which say that this non standard permutation
in a man’s nervous system results in him gaining extraordinary knowledge not perceptible to him when his thinking is confined to his brain’s natural born condition;
it is the indirect idea that there is a Secret,
the knowing of which will permanently alter the way one feels.
 

It is easier to talk and think about ways of possibly achieving this transformation
in mental terms than emotional ones;
to theorize and discuss how a man might alter his thinking rather than
change the way he wakes up feeling in the morning;
the mind by nature believes that it can affect and control the thoughts for which
it acts as a medium (and with ordinarily wired men, forget evidence to the contrary),
a feat that clearly to the mind seems more immediately probable than
getting down into the seemingly less well delineated area of the feelings
running throughout the nervous system.
 

Thoughts can apparently analyze themselves directly, but with emotions,
they seem stuck with looking at the thoughts which accompany the emotions,
and from them, attempting to ascertain the "cause” of the feelings.
Certain thoughts do not cause certain emotions -- but the reverse;
but thoughts are programmed to perceive emotions as being somehow results of certain thoughts (the old: “As a man thinketh --  so he be” axiom),
and from mind’s normal perspective, this makes sense,
for if the situation WAS the opposite, thoughts could make no useful sense of
the situation  --   they would have no place to get a grip.
 

Thoughts, to make any sense to themselves about any intangible matter,
must initially approach it from the basis of asking:
“What thoughts seem to always accompany this affair?”  --
and then try to delve into how one is feeling in conjunction to the experience.
Thoughts by nature think themselves to be, if not always of supreme importance,
at least compared to feelings, the only practical measurement of man’s inner life;
once a man has declared that he feels depressed, there is nothing else he can usefully say about his emotional state;
what his nervous system then turns to is his mind’s commentary on what he is thinking parallel to his feeling of depression
(usually offered and passed off as causal analysis thereof).
 

The would-be enlightened and liberated must see for themselves,
from their own individual vantage point, the reality of this nervous system,
operational schematic, then the actuality behind their unique hunger for
some non standard state of their inner reality can be finally realized.
 

The brains/minds of all men want to change the genetic temperament
of the body in which they reside;
that in essence is the ongoing process of being civilized:
religions exist to encourage it, courts to enforce it,
and the guilt common to mankind’s consciousness serves to harangue him individually thereabout.
To be human and normal is to have a brain atop your nervous system that wants to change the acting temperament genetically built into that nervous system;
in ordinary people, the desire is weak enough that some combination of guilt, fear,
and external censure is sufficient to keep them on track, and the entire matter outside their conscious awareness or concern,
but in those few men whose forefather’s brain conceived of the notion of:
awakening-from-a-dream, and:
going-from-a-life-of-shadows-and-confusion-to-one-of-enlightenment-and-confidence, nothing commonly available satisfies  --  and nothing ever WILL satisfy them except their comprehension of what is going on with man’s mind in regard to his feelings.
 

What the would-be rebel is really after is for his conscious mind to have control over his non conscious feelings;
wanting to achieve the Great Liberation is your brain wanting to actually change
the genetic temperament of your nervous system,
and thus how you wake up feeling in the morning.
For any “progress” to be made in this matter, ordinary men have as many lifetimes as their minds may dream they have (in other words): there is no hurry or urgency;
the movement of collective humanity operates at its own tempo,
but the certain man has no other life  --  no other time  --  it is now or never,
and as long as you are not totally clear in what you are attempting  --
it is always never.
 

You do not want to Wake-up, or achieve Enlightenment to be a better person,
or to know a Great Secret, or to please some divinity --
the conscious part of your brain is wanting to change the temperament of
your nervous system;
your mind wants to be able to control your feelings,
and the history of man is a history of gradual, mass movement in this direction;
mass activity and the life of humanity collectively means nothing to the certain man --
nothing therein is of any assistance to him in his most individualistic of endeavors.
 
 

A machine that thinks like a machine is supposed to, will think that it is not mechanical.