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JAN’S DAILY FRESH REAL NEWS
© 2000: Jan Cox

October 16, 2000. Today’s dispatch is being filed from the ancient city of Wbohvbsc, Czech Republic, a place which claims to actually be twenty miles further up the road than surveys always show it to be. (Its name in fact is a slap in the face of rhetorical reliability……but that is another story……like everything else is in the ever-playful, nonessential world of word and thought.)

The locals are celebrating their annual, "Let’s Get Ahead Day,"  which prompts me to ask that you  picture again my ad hoc model of man as consisting of both a nonverbal, purely physical, "instinctive-self," and a verbal, invisible, "mental-self" so that I may more expediently direct your attention in a certain direction. But also make constant note of the fact that man’s mental-self is not actually separate from his physical, instinctive-self in that the former is entirely dependent on the latter for its survival -- but – his mental-self does have interests that are totally apart from his physical instincts. So within this invented, though operationally accurate verbal framework, we will proceed with today’s news.

To be an ordinary, properly functioning human being is to daily pay homage to, "Let’s Get Ahead Day" -- in your thoughts. When your "mental-self" is not engaged in specific survival related activity at the behest of his "instinctive-self," it will inevitably become involved in the notion of, "Let’s Get Ahead." --- but ---
a man’s, "instinctive-self" cannot, "Get ahead" --
-- at best it can only, "Hold its own."

When a man’s body is hungry it will eat an amount sufficient to satisfy the instant need, and when tired, it will rest an appropriately adequate time. But your instinctively led body cannot, "Get ahead" in either its eating, resting, fucking, or anything else. All that instinct can do is satisfy a present lack, and thus, "Hold its own." Everyone knows that being alive this very moment is simply a matter of temporarily, "Holding your own" against the inevitability of death. There is no, "Ahead" for your physical self to get to. If your stomach is full -- it is full, and upon that condition, no advance or improvement can be made. In fact, after your need for physical nourishment has been met, if you continue to eat, you make yourself sick. You cease doing yourself good, and now by the same act, do yourself ill. 

Everyone knows that what I have just said about their instinctive, physical hungers is true, but people do not account for a similar situation relative to their mental ones.

Your thoughts are hungry, and in one sense more so than your body, inasmuch as your body is not constantly searching for food whereas your thoughts are. Day and night, week in, week out, and no time off for holidays.

The area of the brain that produce conscious thought, while obviously dependent on the same physical nourishment that sustains the other organs of the body, yet has a hunger that no amount of filet mignon will satisfy. No amount of anything physical can fill this lack the mental-self feels and satiate its unique appetite.

And right here, boys & girls, ladies & gentlemen, friends & neighbors –
right here does thought give an absolutely breath-taking display of its universally, unequaled talent, in that while being the source of all reason & logic it is yet able to engage in the zenith of un-reason & ill-logic by assuming the position that says: 
"If we can’t even, ‘Hold our own’ then let's, ‘Get ahead’!"
Which is to say: "Since we fail in all efforts to meet our present needs, let us struggle for even greater progress."

In its most simplistic form the above plays out in the lives of ordinary men by them working to stockpile essential physical goods which are not presently needed. The instinctive-self, (the stomach, the grasshopper), having no thoughts, "Thinks not of tomorrow." It has no concept of stockpiling and, "getting ahead of the game."
Only the mental-self, (thoughts, the ants), have awareness of a future, and from it alone arises the idea that one can, "Get ahead" in life.
Instinct knows that the best it can do is to "hold its present position", and thoughts realizing that they have no position on which to hold, proclaim themselves instead as dedicated to, "Getting ahead." 

Everything I have above described is common knowledge to every sane person on this planet, and 99.8% of them are not troubled by it sufficiently to produce suicide, or to even cause them to give the matter any particular note. (And at any infrequent times of exception to this, they will go to church, take a drink, or look over their bank account.) 

Everything I have above described accounts for the uncommon hunger a decimal-point-few have that is most usually spoken of amongst themselves as, "The desire to awaken." It is in truth a longing for one’s mental-self to go from one state of being to another. 
It is quite simply a man’s mental-self seeking to ACTUALLY -- "get ahead" -- in a realm in which no such thing exists, or is possible.

….(to be continued.)
              Jan