Consider: Were it not for the thoughts in man’s brain,
Man made dams would not exist.
Neither would the equipment required to build same,
and neither would the controllable electrical energy that is their purpose.

Ergo: The world’s largest construction project
is a product of something so small that it can be 
held in your hand,
in fact, so compact that it fits inside your head.

No question about it: The grandest schemes and physical accomplishments of man are due solely
to his thoughts.

But just as ordinary minds at this point will acknowledge the above, 
and turn their attention else where,
it is right here that it just starts to get  interesting 
to the few,
for neither the Yangtze River Dam, 
nor any other past, or future physical enterprise will ever truly be, "The largest construction project ever undertaken by man",
that title rests with the, "Struggle to Awaken" –
the effort by a man’s brain, in an intangible realm,
to construct something greater than itself
using only itself as material.

This presents a double-whammied challenge that dismissively dwarfs any that will ever arise in any physical building project man will ever be able to imagine in his wildest dreams,(which is): in seeking to, "raise," or to "expand"
your level of consciousness"  --
not raise a river  --
not expand a warehouse,
but raise your own level of consciousness --
a man undertakes a construction project in which
there exists no physical building materials,
and thus the goal of the enterprise in inherently dictated by present conditions.
 

How is progress in the project to be measured?
How can you tell if work is even going on?

That is the first facet of the whammy.
The second aspect is that 
whatever may be the intangible " building materials"
that you attempt to employ to expand, or raise your present level of consciousness
they can come from only one place:
your present structure of consciousness.

Thus you are in a situation of living in Structure A,
with a dream of building next to it, 
the improved, and larger, Superstructure B, 
but the only building materials available are those which make up Structure A,
so all that is possible is to either demolish Structure A,
or scavenge material from it,
but no matter what you do,
the materials that constitute Structure A 
can never be somehow assembled in some new way
to make a structure that is larger,
or different in its essential nature than it was
in its original form.

What a project!
Publicly vocal would-be mystics for centuries have moaned about 
the extreme difficulty of ever achieving a new,
more awakened level of consciousness,
but such as they never realize even a fraction of it.

Few of the few who initially stick their hands in the dirt of this 
colossal inner construction project 
ever gain a clear picture of what they are actually involved in,
and as long as you are engaged in an 
imaginary activity 
you can imagine anything you like.
You can imagine that you are making progress;
you can imagine that your lack of progress is due to
some fatalistic flaw in you;
you can imagine that some other human/guru some where has the,
"Secret knowledge" you so desperately need,
and above all  –
you can imagine that if, "Waking up" actually exists,
then it can surely be achieved some where in the future.
In other words; if you do not understand the true nature of this construction project
then even when you presently glance around the inner site, and see no apparent results,
your thoughts, (being the reasonable, temporally logical entities that they are),
remind you that regardless of today’s 
lack of progress --  there is always tomorrow.

My friends: there is always tomorrow in China, 
regarding the building of the Yangtze River Dam -- 
but not in your brain regarding the construction of a new consciousness.

Without the brain’s unique ability to think in terms of its own invented concept of, "time"
it could not produce the many benefits we enjoy,
but this self-same most useful sense of time
also bamboozles its thoughts when they become involved in any attempt at self-improvement.
Since they have nothing to work with but themselves,
and since there is no one to help them or offer useful instructions but themselves,
to keep from falling into a stinky funk they distract themselves with the ever-present, 
(if silent) cry: "There is always tomorrow!
I may be more awake tomorrow, (or even later today
after I read that new mystical book I just bought).
Neither Rome nor the Yangtze Dam were built overnight.
I’m working on it.
Sure,  progress is some times slow, 
and I go through periods of experiencing 
personal problems in my life,
and I get temporarily bogged down.
But I have the whole future ahead of me. 
I am much better than I used to be;
I remember much more often that I am, ‘asleep;’
I know for a fact,
I can just ‘feel’ it,
I CAN be more awake in the future."

Nice try; I’m sure you could get work in China,
but here is my interpretation for you today
regarding what is actually going on all the time
behind the visible scenes of dams being built,
and entire realms of unseen reality being
continually constructed in the minds of men.

In his thoughts,
a man instinctively sees a me as the overseer of things,
while it is an overseer that oversees the me.

The brain pushes to the front of consciousness
the sensation of one’s conscious self,
which then feels itself to be in a leading position of authority --  but it is not.
Both externally and internally,
true power is always hidden behind the visible façade.

You believe that "you" want to raise & expand  your level of consciousness,
but it is the brain that wants it,
and it uses the thoughts that produce your sensation of "you"
to go about it.

The sensation in your head of, "you"
is a by product of the brain’s overall production of
consciousness,
which it employs, (when conditions permit), 
to pursue its sideline activity
of trying to raise its own operations to a higher level.

In their thoughts,
ordinary men believe that their brains toil for them;
ordinary men have it backwards –

that is why the mental world in which 
ordinary men live is not fully based on 
physical reality.

….in large part, ‘tis as unreal as a dream. 

                            Watch it, the water’s rising.
 
                    Jan