JAN’S FRESH REAL NEWS
                      © 2001: Jan Cox
                                      ***************************************************

October 25, 2001.
 
 
 
 

When men are not in conflict over land & material possessions,
what do they fight over?  The answer appears to be --  ideas,
but here, appearances misinform,
for the source of all such disquiet is every man's consciousness trying to see itself.

Consciousness sees two areas most clearly: the body it is in,
and the physical world outside that body;
its sight and comprehension of these two is precise and certain,
but when it undertakes a third view of seeing and understanding itself,
certainty and precision are absent.

Sophisticated, educated and otherwise sane people throughout the world and history get angry enough over ideas to do
physical combat, arguing over whether God is Polynesian or Norwegian,
or whether He wants men to be socialists or democrats, and so on,
and those not entangled in a particular such dispute may proclaim
its basis meaningless, but the next day they and their group will be so involved
in a different but equally foolish seeming fray --
and thus is the continuing record of man.
Man's questioning of the meaning and sanity of quarreling over ideas and words
is not without foundation, but the extent of his natural interest in the matter
limits him to merely looking at its ready appearance;
if both sides in a war say that they are fighting over the correct interpretation of
some document or scripture, then, as foolish as it may seem to one not involved,
that still is accepted as the cause of the conflict, (and similarly between individuals;
the two men in an altercation agree that it was started over something one of them said about a sports team);
those outside all such clashes may subjectively denounce or ridicule
the asserted causes thereof,
but the thoughts of routine men never pry deeper there into.

Yes, the reasons men's consciousness always gives for all hostilities over
words and ideas can seem  irrational; unsustainable; childish, and, shouldn't-be,
but there they constantly are nonetheless, and ordinary consciousness never offers to look into the matter in greater detail --  and do you know why consciousness makes no such offer, nor shows any such more detailed interest in this eternal,
world wide disruptive curiosity? --
because consciousness itself is at the bottom of it.

When primary, routine consciousness is not engaged in its primary responsibility of helping keep you alive through its consciousness of the two areas noted:
(your body --  and: the physical world surrounding your body),
it has but one interest: wanting to understand itself,
and this --  unrecognized  --  is what is behind all intangibly motivated human conflicts;
a man is not mad because his neighbor does not believe in reincarnation like he does;
he is angry because his consciousness is frustrated in its attempt to comprehend itself;
ordinary minds can debate this through eternity,
but that is the beginning, middle and end of the matter.

Those men whose consciousness has always expressed the greatest respect for
the mind, (consciousness' pretense of humility by referring to itself
in the third person, as though, "the mind" is something different from it),
are the most vocal supporters of the idea that man's highest responsibility is to:
"Know himself" (consciousness' way of saying that it burns to understand itself,
[but as always, having men say the words: "I, me, self"
where the word: "consciousness" should actually be]).

Under momentary neural lucidity, all men (if asked),
will agree to the importance (if not necessity) of people: "Knowing themselves"
for it seems silly for a person not to, "Know who they are" --
what kind of reasonable, predictable life can you lead
if you do not even know who you are?!
It is preposterous to assert the contrary  --   but,
(and here is the threshold past which ordinary consciousness ventures not),
remember: it is consciousness, (not your foot, or liver), that is really saying that
it should "Know itself,"
and it is indeed consciousness alone which wants to "know itself;"
but even while it naturally knows the body in which it resides,
and instinctively knows the physical world in which it helps its host body
navigate and survive,
primary consciousness -- in spite of its interest in the matter --
has no facility to therein succeed;
ordinary consciousness cannot "know" itself;
cannot comprehend itself, cannot understand what it is,
and for a simple, yet unacceptable to consciousness, reason:
consciousness does not exist outside of what it does,
and what it does is be conscious of your body and the world around your body;
it has no consciousness beyond those two areas,
and thus consciousness, or knowledge of itself is not possible;
consciousness says this is not so,
and when you are in primary consciousness,  it certainly feels untrue --
but that is merely consciousness' own irrefutable, unilateral judgment of the situation.

To believe that it can know, understand and comprehend itself,
consciousness must perforce conceive of itself as a noun;
a thing that can somehow be studied,
but consciousness is a verb,
a process that assists the noun-thing of the body to do things,
but consciousness itself can do nothing, for it is nothing,
and no matter the sincerity: no amount of nothing attempting to study nothing
will result in anything.

This is quite frustrating to consciousness;
to have come up with a perfectly splendid way to pass the time when it is not being called on to be specifically conscious of its host body, or of some threat in the physical world outside that body,
and then to find this hobby fatally hobbled is irritating beyond tolerable limits:
and consciousness is constantly trying to figure itself out --
constantly, and when men are totally unaware of it, such as when they are discussing movies, politics, sports, morality,
their consciousnesses are not really interested-in or talking-about such
meaningless matters --  no,
what consciousness is actually thinking about is itself;
when consciousness speculates on what would be the true nature of God,
it is thinking about itself; it is trying to ponder: "What is my true nature?" --
and no satisfying answer has ever come to any man's consciousness;
they all know it --  but they all fail to learn from the failure.

If a man is angry --  and not because his land or useful possessions have been taken,
then he is mad because his primary consciousness cannot comprehend itself;
it is always that;
there is no other possibility beyond that;
trying to get-a-handle-on-itself is the only thing your consciousness does when it is not actively engaged in survival surveys and suggestions to help keep you alive;
it talks to itself about everything but that, (the general stupidity of mankind),
but what it is always thinking about is its own stupidity of itself.

Regardless of what it is called, ("seeking-enlightenment:  attempting to wake-up,"
or just trying to understand the continuing perplexing behavior of man),
it is all the same simple thing:
it is man's consciousness wanting to comprehend itself:
to see itself wholly and to finally understand what it is and the role it really plays;
it, by gawd! simply wants to know who it is  --
but it is nobody;
it is a process;
it pictures itself as a train, whose workings it seeks to understand,
but consciousness is not a train --  it is the mechanics which move a train.
Force cannot be bottled, and most certainly cannot study and comprehend itself;
it is what it is  --  except with man's consciousness,
it has the ability to think that it  --   thinks-about-itself,
and thus that it can eventually have full knowledge and understanding of itself;
but there is no "self" for it to understand;
there is only consciousness: an uncatchable process;
an unstoppable or examinable verb;
a butterfly that --  if grabbed in flight --  instantly dies & vanishes.

Being really "Enlightened" about what is going on in life amounts to this:
your consciousness is already fully enlightened as to what is going on in your body,
(or you wouldn't be reading this) --  and:
your consciousness is totally enlightened concerning what is going on in the
physical world around you (or you wouldn't be alive reading this),
and to complete your enlightenment all you need do is to realize that
this is all the consciousness there is,
but this one final little piece of realizing that,
is what makes all the difference in the universe.

It is simple, but staggeringly difficult to see because you have a thing
trying to understand itself  --  which continually insists it is doing something else;
a thing which is not actually a thing trying to do something  --  but a "doing;"
a desire struggling to comprehend, desire.
 

It is as simple as can be,
and almost too simple to ever see.
 

...........................(but if you enjoy a good laugh, it's worth the effort.)

                                                         J