We are here today in, It's Relative, Ohio 
for obvious reasons: The Pickle Festival,
and its proximity to Petulance, Pennsylvania.

While 99.99999% of the world’s population never has
any interest in the idea of an individual man 
privately effecting a radical change in his 
operational state of consciousness,
99.99999.% of those who do exhibit such an interest,
are but expressing the same impatience & irritation
common to everyone.
It is easy for a man to adopt the mantle:
"I am asleep; 
my consciousness is living in a 
confused state of dreams,
from which I wish to Awaken, 
and achieve a state of metaphysical Enlightenment,"
and never face the fact that he is simply pissed,
and looking for magical powers 
to use on those responsible for him being so.
 

Men always call it something else;
"Wanting to rectify the injustices of life";
"Wishing to warn others," 
(and the mother of them all),
"The desire to awaken others from their sleep,
and make them see the truth,"
but all they really want is to give vent to their frustration while pointing out that other people’s stupidity is its cause.
 

Everything that lives,
lives in a constant state of dissatisfaction 
to one instant degree, or the other, 
which itself is a hallmark that distinguishes the 
living from the not so,
but man is further differentiated from other creatures
by his non-physical based dissatisfactions.
A lion is dissatisfied when its stomach is empty,
but only man can be physically hungry and simultaneously be mentally fuming about the greed of
bakers as he looks at the price of bread.
The brains of all other animals act only to note 
dissatisfactions of the body which are essential for survival, 
and direct appropriate responses,
while man’s brain has the addition of conscious thoughts 
which registers dissatisfactions that do not appear
directly related to matters of immediate survival,
(in other words): 
Men can be upset over the irrelevant --
men can be mentally dissatisfied about anything.
This could be considered a working definition 
of man,
and certainly one of a, "sleeping man."
 

Everyone, 
even constant smilers,
and purveyors of positive proverbs,
is impatient and irritated with life, and specially –
with human life.
Men are not annoyed by a thunderstorm 
in the way they are by an inattentive waiter,
and people do not get angry at a volcano 
in the way they do at another human being who 
disagrees with them.
 

This irritation that humans experience is unique to them 
in that  it concerns matters that no one can touch.
Only mortals are annoyed with things they cannot eat,
have sex with, or seek shelter in,
and it is this singular mental capacity 
that is responsible for the good physical life
they now experience, 
but it is also at the heart of what makes a few seek 
inner experiences not on the current menu.
To varying degrees at any given instant –
every person on this planet is potentially 
impatient & irritated with everyone else on the planet,
and this, as surely as the food chain itself –
makes the world go ‘round,
but when not fully comprehended,
this plain reality also serves to keep a man who
says that "he’s asleep" -- asleep.
Being righteously irritated by the 
sleeping behavior and ideas of the 
sleepwalking fools by whom you are surrounded 
is to be solidly of their ranks.
If you take your justified impatience with the stupidity
constantly evident in human affairs -- seriously --
-- you are fast asleep.
If you accept your irritation with the inane ideas 
men continually spout as being a signal of your insight --
-- you are mentally living in a world of fantasy.
Everything that bothers the few who seek a new state of awareness comes from:
"Worrying about the irrelevant –
    --  fretting over the frivolous."
 
 

Take a sang froid look at the things ordinary men are 
concerned with: death, social position, reputation, wealth, 
(and to lesser extents, various aspects of his
second reality, such as: politics, religion, nationality, 
art, music, literature etc., 
insofar as how his comments on such matters are received.)
Such affairs are only of secondary concern to all men,
and are certainly not essential for mere physical survival,
but the life of man is obviously one of more than mere
physical survival -- it is also a life of mental survival,
and to accomplish this requires that men be at 
mental odds with other men,
that they be impatient with their uncertainty;
that they be irritated by their clumsiness,
and that they be annoyed that life does not run as 
their thoughts say that it should,
ignoring the fact that it is life that 
put such thoughts in their minds.
 
 

To be a living human is to be annoyed;
to take your annoyance seriously & personally
is to be asleep and without even a suspicion of
what is really going on.
Anyone who tells you that you are asleep 
is pissed because they are.
       Fellow fools recognize one another.
 
 

If you say you seek to Wake-Up,
and become Enlightened,
but all you are is -- annoyed-at-being-alive,
then I remind you of this simple fact:
however you feel about life,
whatever be your attitude toward yourself & others,
it’s all a matter of DNA –

      --   it’s a case of the shoe sole,
           and the gum stuck thereon. 
 
 

"Hello, circumstances. Let me introduce myself:
you are me."
       "Oh -- Hi!  Glad to meet you."
 
 
 

                                        JAN
 
 
 
 

An awakened eye asked an enlightened ear:
“How’s it going?”
       “It’s cold.”
“Yeah, I’m mad too.”