August 28, 2003                                                                     © 2003: JAN COX
 
 
 
 

To a son a father said:
“A significant breakthrough is realizing that events humanity collectively declares
to affect everyone  --   does not you  --
unless in your nervous system, you are one of them (that is):
if you (as one of the anomalously wired few) nonetheless go limp, and allow your automatically reacting nervous system to agree with everyone else’s assessment,  (which it will do  --   that is its job) at the expense of your mind’s
extraordinary potential to see what occurs in life from an unconventional perspective.”
The lad interrupted: “Does this potential truly deserve to be called extraordinary?”
  “And then some  --  yet in no verbal fashion can it be adequately described,
(of course anything that can be, is not by our special family definition,
really extraordinary);
what makes this potential so exceptional to our scarce blood line is that
our nervous system is somehow wired and programmed as to permit its high end, (thought producing consciousness) to (as it were)
operate with a degree of independence from the rest:
a physiological setup unique in all of life as conceivable by man;
as if the heart had an area that was free to beat at whatever tempo it chose
irrespective of what the heart as a normally functioning whole is doing;
this of course (in a cardiac case) would be disastrous,
and with ordinary men would be equally so, mentally, as t’would render
the conscious area of their brain unable to ever come to a conclusion,
and thus make practical use of thought,
but with the rare ones like us, such an arrangement offers positive possibilities completely unknown and never experienced by the rest of our species;
having a piece of our brain capable of producing thoughts that are not in line with
what is natural to the rest of our nervous system
is nothing less than extraordinary (leastwise to us).
It is like a ship on a plotted, steady course,
(the genetic temperament of your nervous system)
with a sailor aboard who alone is able to have ideas of places not known
as possible destinations to anyone else on the vessel:
that is the extraordinary potential of the few:
exercising this potential consistently for a long period of one’s life
goes beyond extraordinary   --   to enlightening.

Finding for yourself (which is the only finding that will be of practical use to you)
how to exercise your mind’s ability to have/produce/entertain ideas that are not
a natural part of your nervous system’s mental repertoire and model of reality
is the tricky, sticky step; again, no words are sufficient to describe this activity
in that the activity is in its essence, antipodal to verbal structures,
but it is akin to having a rebel, a kind of non-polar contrarian
in your own otherwise conventional nervous system-cum-army,
but this unconventional piece located in your brain does not rebel against
your body’s normal physiological operations,
nor does it act mentally in a manner contrary to your best interests;
it lets the rest of your genetic organization operate as it is intended to,
but sees its operations from an outsider’s perspective;
this bit of outlier consciousness singular to the few can ascertain things about man,
life and consciousness that are completely off-the-books:
that is what it is for, and this alone secretly distinguishes us from our neighbors.

The extraordinary potential is there, my boy,
but you must eventually find how to exercise it in a way beneficial to you personally, and then relentlessly chase this potential ‘til the sonofabitch collapses.
 
 

When your thoughts reflect only the genetic inheritance of your nervous system,
is when the events of life that humanity says affects everyone  --  DO affect you;
when a cloud rolls over: you fall into the dark like everyone else,
and see life as a series of vague shadows;
not because this is how things truly are, but due to the conventional, species wide wiring and programming of the human nervous system;
it is only by the certain man making persistent, controlled use of that unaligned bit
of his brain’s ability to take sightings of what is going on
that are not from his and humanity’s standard, nervous system perspective,
that his consciousness emerges into the light needed to reveal reality faithfully.

Referring to our sort of activity as, mystical, metaphysical,  or even spiritual
is ill fitting, for what we come to see is not anything supernatural,
but rather the everyday natural from an unnatural position;
collective humanity sees everything through the mental eyes OF collective humanity: a species (peacocks for instance) sees all of life as is appropriate for
a peacock’s needs, and no others  --
so too with humans  --   all except the few:
they have standard operating nervous system and mind,
so they are quite aware of what everyone else is seeing,
and what they (quote) should  be seeing, but in addition to that camera angle,
they have the ability to not only be conscious OF that conventional perspective
in themselves, but also of shots outside the range thereof;
they can see not only the limitations of their normal, mental sight,
but areas totally beyond such sight  --  and strange,
but you cannot have one without the other:
men claim they do, and they are the ones commonly identifiable as mystics,
or the spiritually-intoxicated: people whose brains do have the ability to
imagine places that their nervous system does not see, but without the parallel capacity to see where these inner sights stand in relationship to mundane ones:
a drunk man never realizes that he is,
and without the ability to distinguish within your own nervous system,
and consciousness, where you are at any moment,
and particularly in extraordinary ones  --  you are lost  --
even if your thoughts dream that it is in paradise.
There is nowhere for the true few to go in their inner world that is profitable to them that is at the same time,  bewildering to them:
if your consciousness somehow wanders into a area wherein you cannot
comprehend what is happening (the classic, mystical-experience in other words)  --  nothing of value will result; you are simply riding a merry go round  --
perhaps quite entertaining  --  but going nowhere:
you have to be born with that certain clinch in your genes that allows your mind
to not only ride the carrousel like everyone else,
but also to stand off of it and watch you ride;
without the constant exercise of this potential,
nothing extraordinary is possible in any man’s inner life;
you will live a life of consciousness that is no different from everyone else;
you too will mentally live as though the circumstances of life determine
your perception and understanding of life, and never know that there is an
entirely other inner vantage point from which to see what is going on;
and need I mention  --  it is quite an eye opener.”
 

They were silent for bit  --  then the son said:
“I guess this unconventional part of my nervous system is what you are, huh Dad?!”