I saw how much you enjoyed our earlier visit to the, 
“Great southwest,”
and I am sure you know 
that in New Mexico 
is a town named, Truth Or Consequences,
and since I get the sense that 
you do not want to go there
allow me to remind you that in ordinary human life,
there is no such place as the, “Truth,” 
and even if there is,
not going there has no consequences.

So --  let’s just sit here by the side of the highway,
and delve into that most delectable of subjects
that brought the two of us together 
on this stretch of road.
 
 
 
 
 

Everyone has a favorite toy from childhood
from which they continue to derive pleasure.

Everyone is under the impression that the plaything
has matured, (via aging), along with them.

Everyone is mistaken.

Fact: Life does not encourage ordinary people
to see their lives for what they are,
but rather prods them to overlook their real one,
and talk among themselves about pretend ones.

Fact: this is the nature of routine human life,
and it works just as well as it does.
To complain about the arrangement,
and criticize the way other people live their lives
is to double the intensity of 
the pretension in which you live. 

At the solely-significant, cellular level,
everyone KNOWS what is going on,
but man’s collective neurons,
(which constitute the Big Mind,
which force-furnishes each individual with 
the thoughts that mechanically 
pass through his mind),
are obviously not yet prepared to 
allow this awareness to be spoken aloud by 
ordinary men’s tongues,
nor same heard by his mental ears.

If an everyday person hears of the notion that,
“Man mentally lives in a kind of dream world, 
and is not as conscious as he could be, 
but that through certain efforts he can awaken to 
a more enlightening state of mind,”
he will pretend to either dismiss the idea,
or else will feign no interest therein.
Many among the would-be awakened have 
always been perplexed by this, 
and say they cannot understand why 
something so obvious to them 
cannot be seen by everyone else. 

I say that everyone DOES realize the 
mental situation man is in, and are 
just COERCED by life to pretend that they do not,
(same as the few are driven to grapple with it -- 
--head-on --  in its objective form).

One way this obligatory, life-of-pretension 
manifests itself in an everyday man 
is the sensation he feels of being,
“the center-of-the universe,” 
(which is to say), the center of the life he experiences.
This has nothing to do with vanity, 
and it is not an example of pathological self-delusion;
all ordinary, sane people on this planet are force fed 
chemical combinations in their brains which 
produce in its operations of conscious thought,
an irrepressible feeling that the 
universe-of-reality as perceived of by that mind
revolves around the thoughts of that mind.

It is only by this arrangement in each man’s thinking 
that the imaginary world of thinking is sustained.
This is how half the world’s population at any instant
sees the other half as embracing 
quite erroneous ideas,
and commonly expresses bafflement about how 
ostensibly intelligent people can be so 
mentally mistaken.
(The position of individual players/minds in this game
is continually shifting, second by second,
with pros becoming cons,
and opponents from a minute ago
now being momentary allies.
Fluidity is the name of the game,
and lack of conclusiveness, 
its method of keeping score.)

A man satisfied with his thoughts’ judgement of
other people being “phony” does nothing but
nourish his own inauthentic mental life.

Only man’s purely instinctive, 
animalistic, physical existence can validly be termed,
“real,”
although this is no longer adequate for a life
of a true human being, 
(nor is such acceptable to the majority).
A constantly increasing percentage of men’s lives 
is spent in activities that are not immediately, 
survival essential,
but are manifestations of thought:
games, hobbies, entertaining pastimes 
that do not appear in the natural world 
like water and soil, 
but must be created by men’s minds.
Compared to the physical world upon which we 
totally depend for every breath we take,
and every additional moment we survive,
this mentally created world is simply, “unreal,”
but is obviously how life wants things, 
presently arranged, 
as witnessed by the fact that,
that is how they are
presently arranged.
But this bleeds over into a man’s 
mental conception of himself, 
and the same cellular activity,
(notorious to the cortical badlands),
that with a straight face can make men,
(with a likewise poker countenance),
profess, (for example),
to believe in the existence of 
supernatural beings that 
the cellular activity knows full well that it concocted,
will also cause a man to believe in a similarly
imaginary being that his neurons make him
call --  his SELF.

You are certainly your physical body, 
along with all of its individual, 
instinctive temperaments, tastes, and proclivities,
but, 
comparably speaking,
everything else about you is only what you are
coerced into pretending it is.

To “wake up” is to no longer 
take your thoughts’ pretending --  seriously,
(nor perforce, that of others.)

The second reality of mankind’s mentally based pastimes
is taken seriously only by the dead  -- 
--  and those who are working on it.

If you accept the mechanical mental sensation of
your thoughts, views and opinions as being the center, 
and focal point OF reality, 
then forever will you snooze and dream,
and forever will you be confused, uncertain, and
thoroughly dissatisfied with you and everyone else.

But --  Hey! That’s okay,
just look around --  it’s okay with everybody else.

…is it “okay” by you?!

                                    JAN