All You Need To Know About Ordinary Consciousness.
After sentencing a man to be executed five days hence, the king offered him a way out: his life would be spared if he would say the word, “Please” into an intercom
connected to the throne room once every second until the appointed time
without any lapse.  Question: Do you think he will succeed and save his life?
Your response will reveal how much you know about ordinary consciousness,
and what these daily writings are actually all about.
 
 
 

A man with ordinary interests teaching enlightenment is like a stock broker
preaching ethics.
    (“Okay, now I have a question: Can no one asleep profitably speak of awakening?”
To one who needs ask such a question: Probably.
    “By the way: if I get that one, I still don’t like it, no, strike that:
      I REALLY don’t like it!”)
 
 
 

Men who speak publicly on strictly human matters always expect and accept
ad hominem attacks in response thereto;
question: Why?  –  why are they so naturally primed?  –
because they know that what they say is vacuous and utterly undeserving of
any sustained intellectual assault and that they therefore will be the target of abuse.
(Believe it: behind men’s backs, words are constantly breathing sighs of relief.)
 
 
 

In prison: a man cannot be liked if he is not verbally consistent.
 
 
 

After reading gestures explained by the fact that the area in the brain controlling
the hands lies adjacent to that in charge of speech, one man mused:
“Then based on such spatial consideration this would explain why I so easily slip
from a state of reasonably awake consciousness into abject sleep and stupidity.”
(Quicker than a greased sicilian can mutely express his contempt.
Or faster than a metaphorical train set for departure from paris cannot.
And seventeen sweaty passengers clutching questionable tickets said [as a group]
that they didn’t get the point of that comment.)
 
 
 

(While you haven’t been paying close attention):
Everyone who talks  is “fed up” with this or that thing      (if not everything).
 
 
 

Regarding Other Contemporary Collective Concerns.
Only the truly private man doesn’t worry over what are publicly called:
“questions of privacy.”
(Aka: ordinary people do not have anything worth being private about,
[but pretending that they do helps cover up the fact].  As always: neat, huh?!)
 
 
 

There are two kinds of killers:
those who do so from an instinctive reaction, and then forget about it, and those who kill and then read Philosophy wherein they believe they find justification therefor.
(MORE Of What You Need To Know About Consciousness.)
 
 
 

Open-ended thinking is what gives thinking the unique pleasure enjoyed by

After witnessing the rousing reaction received by a speaker who concluded his comments with the roaring exhortation: “Always look on the bright side!”  –
the son of an ole sorehead left the affair thinking:
“Pop was right: life IS a waste of time.”
In the world of endocrine quantum mechanics: up hormones and down ones
do an endless dance that is projected as the tenor of a man’s personality.
    (“But I always wanted to be a baritone,” whines one man.)
 
 
 

Just for fun when things are slow, they call up people at random and whisper:
“We have a file on you a foot thick!”
 
 
 

The definitive temperament of one group in another time zone
may be most aptly reflected in the title of their principal guidebook-to-living:

All You Need To Know About Philosophy (As ‘Tis Pursued In The City).
First man raises his tumbler and declares: “My glass is half full,”
a second hoists his and says: “My glass is half empty,”
while a third thinks: “And I’m about three fourths sick of this sort of verbal twaddle.”
One man’s most stringent private wish is that words become their own worst enemy.
    “If the building at babel had had feet, just imagine to where it might have walked,
      and saved us from much of this irrelevance of noting much of talk’s irrelevance.”
 
 
 

A man with nothing of substance to say, will say it over and over and over,
until someone publicly proclaims him to be an undiscovered genius.
    (Nothing puts out a possum on fire like being told how becoming flames are on him.)
 
 
 

Recently stated a city intellectual:
“Just because you don’t know what you’re doing
doesn’t mean you must stop what you’re doing.”
Myth says that at one time not only was life dying in this universe
(in the physical sense) but was also, employing the show biz use of the word  –  UNTIL  –   it introduced: human consciousness  –  (which cured both of the problems).
 
 
 

Employing his private brand of mock astonishment,
one man slapped his forehead (the resulting pain being sufficient to cause him
to make a mental note not to repeat this act) and exclaimed:
“Ah HAH!  –   now I see it: All of human knowledge was invented  by man!”
He raised his hand to slap himself again (but recalling the lesson earlier learned) slapped his partner instead.
“So! –  if this stuff we call knowledge was just made up by other men....humm....”  –  then suddenly he seemed struck: “But what if there is an alternative!?     Humm......”
 
 
 

One man spent the largest part of his life thinking  –
and when someone pointed this out to him he snarled in reply:
“Oh yeah?  –   about what?”         (Which totally buffaloed the someone.)
 
 
 

                        Things that don’t make sense to ordinary minds
                         often make unsolicited calls to the alert.
                             No rebel’s number is ever restricted;
                             only routine prisoners have their names on a No Call list.
                                 If it can run through the higher ends of the human nervous system,
                                 the certain man wants to hear what it is (at least once).

And yet: P.S. A man who won’t separate from his self will never truly BE himself.
    (“Weird, huh?!”
          “Yeah, but neater’an neon navy beans.”)