Why, after suffering a personal tragedy
do otherwise intelligent seeming men 
when asked what their first thought was at the time invariably reply; “I thought:  why me?”
For what reason do they never think: 
“Why NOT me?!”
Why, when instantly faced with the
inevitable realities of life 
does a man’s thoughts suddenly claim to have been expecting exemption there from?
What is there about being a homo sapien,
an animal that thinks,
that makes man feel himself to be special?
Quite plainly, the fact that he does think 
does make him special.

Man’s motto could be:
”We are what we are because 
we think so HIGHLY of what we are   --  AND,
the reason we think so highly of what we are 
is because of
what we are.”

Locally, man IS special,
but he who so thinks of himself --  squanders it.
 
 

                                     X X X
 
 
 

Unless you screen out & ignore 
stimuli that is irrelevant to awakening,
doze on, you will.
Forever trapped in your bed  --
and not even yours at that.

Mentally reacting to external randomness
is the nourishment needed for a man’s pretend self 
to survive.
Every time you silently shout to one side: 
“Go get ‘em boys!”
or to the other: “Shame on you guys,”
you pull the pitiful parka of a pretended “you”
just a little tighter around your already stifled,
real self.

Ordinary men do not ordinarily act like their real selves
because, first: such is not required, (contraire),
and second: they do not know what it is since
no one can “know” what it is.
Your real self is not something that you know --
it is what you ARE,
and about that,
there is nothing TO know or be commented on.

At one school for would-be revolutionists,
the entrance exam consisted of the applicant being asked to tell something about himself, 
and if he did,
BAMB! --  he was out the door.
 
 

                                        X X X
 
 
 
 

All of the many complaints that men have about the conditions of life have a common cause: 
Cracked thinking.
A man does not notice it, 
but his thinking regarding the matter 
being complained of 
has been dropped, sat on, or otherwise mishandled,
and has become cracked.
At one time it may have been 
a fine example of thinking --  but not now.
Something quite sad has happened to it,
and sadder still is the fact that 
he seems unaware of what has occurred.
I say that he “seems” unaware of the crack in his thinking for the simple reason that it curdles credulity
to believe that a man cannot notice a crack running thru his thinking --  after all,
your thinking is what you think with;
thinking is like glasses you see life thru,
how could a man not notice a crack therein
since everything he mentally sees about life
he sees thru his glasses-of-thinking?!

The output of this circumstance is that a man’s thinking about life never lines up exactly with the actualities of life;
this thinking produces photographs of life which are always slightly out of focus, 
with the images in your head 
never in perfect registry with the physical realities they
intend to reflect.

A man who has learned how to 
look around these glasses his mind was born wearing
discovers a world --
just a world;
a world in which there is nothing to complain about;
a world needing no praise;
just a world  --  just a place;
the place where humans come in --  and,
humans go out.
No one invited you here,
and you say you didn’t ask to come here -- 
so be it, and  --   so what?!

Even the other six billion people who do not believe,
(will not admit), that man lives in a fuzzy cartoon,
belie their pretension every time they complain.

A man’s complaints about the conditions of life
don’t have a damn thing to do with life,
but about his cracked thinking.
A complaining man is not actually complaining about whatever the matter is that he is complaining about,
but rather he is complaining about the matter of his thinking being cracked, and him not being able to get an exact view of what’s really going on around him. 

An alert person’s self directed mantra should be:
”Hey man! --  either get your glasses fixed, or
shut the hell up!”
 
 

                                        X X X
 
 
 
 
 

No one “knows” what’s going on, and 
what gives religion & the occult their popularity is that 
they are the only ones who seriously pretend to.

A father told a son: 
“To be asleep is to say more than is necessary,”
and he inquired: “Which is?”
”Well, what you just said, for example.”

Only two things can give away the fact to others that 
you’re asleep:  your behavior & your speech,
and only four things give away the fact to yourself:
those two plus the way you feel & the way you think.
Ergo: stick to the basics & keep your mouth shut,
and no one will ever know that you’re asleep --  and,
in addition to that:
ignore the way you feel & think, 
and you won’t know either.

Only the weak & childish cannot see the fact that
you do not have a nose if you are never diagnosed as having one.
No man is Hubert until he stands and declares:
”I am Hubert!”
Fact: No lion is named Hubert.
Fact: No lion has ever been “asleep,"
(leastwise no one’s ever had the nerve to 
tell a lion that he is.)

To be “asleep” in the classical, mystical sense,
(simply put), is to be: stupid,
but believe me it is possible for the would be awakened to be even stupider --
you would like to figure out for yourself  --   how?!…..

A father said to a son:
”If you want to be solidly assured of retaining your 
totally lost status
be sure to always look where 
other people point.”
 
 
 

                                          X X X
 
 
 
 

There was once a ventriloquist who 
sought enlightenment, and 
concluded that his dummy’s ceaseless chatter was keeping him there from.
After finding HIMSELF unable to stop the dummy’s yammer, and devoting much consideration to the problem, he finally eureka-ed the solution:
”Make the DUMMY talk.”

There was once a man who had spent his whole life wanting to awaken,
to whom I told this story,
and after digesting it for a moment, commented:
”Back when I needed and could have used it,
I would have given everything I had 
to have heard that story……….course, 
the way things go is that
if I HAD heard it back then
I was in no position to realize what I needed.”

That’s the great thing about the sport of awakening:
by the time it’s too late -- 
it’s too late to do anything about it 
 
 

More Regarding The Excesses of Conversation:
Anything you say after, “Oh really?”  is unnecessary.
 
 
 
 

If something has practical veracity
then it must be valid from any direction -- 
even the opposite  --   so --
”buy one, get one free” would also be genuinely:
”get one free, buy one.”

The big time waste of talent is in finding anomalies in the second reality rather than trying to comprehend its
essence.
Dolts see a flawed world because of a crack in their glasses;
anti dolts are busy trying to find a home study course
in glasses.
 
 
 
 

And finally:
“Assorted, (and some might say),
Oblique Approaches To Waking Up”:

Talk --  don’t listen;
write --  don’t read;
do – be not done to;
go --  never wait,
and above all:
never plagiarize or quote even from a hero or genius,
be only yourself and original………...even if it’s loopy.

          Make the dummy do his own talking.

…(and I am not at all certain that the above should be called, Obliqued, for they could scarce be less 
pragmatically direct.)
 

Until tomorrow, gang --  be direct  -- 
                                      QUIET and direct.

                                               JAN