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

November 8, 2001.
 
 
 
 

The oldest stories men tell about themselves concern forced relocations;
of people being driven from their homeland to a new place
whereby their way of life is dramatically changed.

These tales are taken to represent an external event,
but their impetus was an internal one:
the move of man in his nervous system from the brain stem to the cortex;
from a place of silent instinct to one of verbal consciousness:
this is the forced relocation that radically changed the life of man.

These myths cum current events were soon adopted as a basis of a particular criticism, (to wit): that man is living an un natural life,
and praise for a previous, simpler way of life will still today find a sympathetic world wide audience (albeit momentary).

The move of man’s visible center of gravity from the jungle brain stem
to the city of consciousness has left in him a lingering sense of loss;
a continued longing for his original homeland;
even though life in the city, (a life of conscious awareness & thought),
has given him an extended, more comfortable existence,
the idea that it is somehow un natural yet resonates.

When those in the city (both externally & internally) look at people still living nearer man’s old homeland (lives little changed by consciousness’ technology
and by civilization in general),
they commonly feel envious --  even homesick;
when confronted with their picture, a man living an up to date,
sophisticated, successful life in the midst of an exciting metropolis will,
for a brief, though quite sincere moment, express a belief that such people
are probably closer to living the life that is proper and natural for man;
then will, (as he should), blink his eyes, shrug,
and be quickly back to his city affairs.

The point thus far of the story is that while built into human life was a forced relocation of man in his nervous system from a non conscious,
strictly instinctive, simpler, more peaceful, jungle homeland
(now fondly remembered as Eden)
to an internal city of noise, excitement, constant uncertainty and stress,
(Babel perhaps?);
also built into him is (when the matter comes to his attention)
a propensity to long for the previous way of life, and to condemn the present one;
truly not unlike the feeling you would expect from people driven from their
peaceable, agreeable homeland to a foreign place of foreign habits,
but none of this has any practical significance in that life does not go backwards;
men are not ever going to, “go back home” --  not to THAT home,
no matter that to many it feels like their natural home,
which is simply due to the fact that it was their first home,
along with thought’s tendency to nostalgia.

As witnessed by the commonality of social criticism of all varieties,
men do believe that the train can be backed up;
that the circumstances in which a people now live can be abandoned
in favor of previous ones:
almost every human on this planet, if asked,
will say that this is certainly within the realm of possibility --  but they are incorrect,
and the proof is everywhere they look (if they were actually seeing when they look).

The few people who feel an innate need for a more personally satisfying picture of what life is about than is ever available from any city analysis, or jungle legend, likewise experience this longing,
(which the ordinary identify as being for “things past”),
and also the troubling sense that the life they are leading is some how, not-quite-right, (labeled by routine men, “un natural”),
but they differ from everyday people in that their awareness of these twin sensations
is not periodic & momentary  --   but persistent.

If they are one of the sane few
amongst the general population of the few,
they quickly move past ordinary people’s perception that the problem is in
man’s behavior;
that his unshakable sense of living an un natural life comes from his over use of technology; from eating chemically treated food;
from depending on electricity;
from wearing synthetic clothing;
from establishing nation-states & competing religions, and from the
unequal distribution of the excess in goods that civilization has made possible.
All of these activities, (and others, variously labeled), do routine minds
identify as the source of even well pampered man’s continuing sense of being somehow alien to his present environment;
a man in a strange land, being forced (it seems)
to live a life that is not the one he should be naturally pursuing.
But what would be this longed for, more “natural” existence;
no one knows, but everybody guesses,
(and to help keep things relatively calm in face of this unsettling ignorance)
men have written down their speculations and then attributed them to supernatural sources so as to lend them apparent authority which they in reality lack,
(this is bolstered also by clearly secular sources via laws and customs).

But still, each man knows perfectly well that he personally has no idea of what is a natural or un natural life, or how he should be living his,
other than how he seems already destined to do.
 

The few, (with their non standardly wired nervous system),
easily conclude that the answer to this apparently inherent human problem
is being kept from man,
for if there is a question built into man, then there is surely an answer –
--  some where.
Thus was born, The Mystery Schools; Magick: Occultism: Mysticism, and all their kin:
invented  --   then presumed repositories of, The Great Secret;
the true description of the life man should be living;
a life, that when lived, relieves a man of the insatiable hunger for something gone,
and the belief that the life he has been leading is not the one proper to him:
this is the few’s predictable, initial assumption --  and:
off-they-go;
out-they-look  --  for The Secret Info
which will finally let them live in peace  --   where they are now.
                                But off and out do not the secret reveal;
                                no visits to mysterious sites;
                                no conversations with enigmatics;
                                no reading of incomprehensible texts produce the prize.
 
 

The best can be conveyed in words along this avenue could be:
you feel yourself to be out of your element;
non native to your present residency; some how a stranger to the place;
forced here, long ago for some unknown reason, and now unable to return home,
or even remember clearly where home was;
physically making your way okay, but in your private inner world,
you  feel lost and out of place;
but the “problem” (since we must put some word around it)
is not in where you and humanity prosecute the physical life that IS life-on-this-planet, and ‘tis not grounded in the technology that has  flowed from man’s consciousness,
and has not arisen from his forced abandonment of a simpler,
less mentally driven rustic existence;
the disquiet which you and all men feel is from the fact that
man’s internal home is not a finished structure;
in his nervous system, man was not driven from a fully completed homeland
to an equally completed place of exile:
he went from a fully finished and functioning Eden-of-instinct,
but then to areas of the brain that are constantly still-under-construction;
places which seem open ended --  where anything is possible and
                                                everything is up for grabs.
 

Everybody wishes that their inner, mental home was finished;
everything nailed down; rough corners smoothed out:
doors hung and opening onto the right rooms;
entry and exit ways clearly marked,
and the whole place furnished with just the right furniture to provide a life of
peace and quiet

But such is not fated for man,
and there is but one way to achieve anything remotely resembling this description:
by realizing  --   life as it is;
not how your thoughts say it once was;
not how they say life could be;
and certainly not how thought says life should be. 
 

There is but one pill you can take for the human ache:
Clearasocraphil-Sightamongranous.

 The only treatment for being human is  --   to understand what that means,
and the sole cure for feeling lost & displaced is to realize that
there is no place but here  --   so being lost & displaced is not possible.

Where ever he may be  --  when the light finally hits his eyes,
a man will think: “Ahhhh  --   welcome home”  --

                then walk outside  --  and silently drift away into the peaceful darkness.
 

                                                                     J