JAN'S FRESH REAL NEWS
                                                  © 2001: jan cox
                                           ************************************************

November 29, 2001.
 
 
 
 

                                 However most people live is the natural way to live,
                                 and most people live simply by reacting to what happens in life,
                                 without much analysis  --   but with copious comments.
 

Picture: everyone is riding a rhino (instinct),
and holding a macaw in their hand (thought),
and everyone’s rhino lives essentially the same life as everyone else’s,
(it eats, its sleeps), and beyond its inalterable genetic programming
its life consists of nothing more than physically reacting to pertinent changes
in its environment (too little rain, too much rain, the presence of predators),
while contrarily, everyone's macaw seems to have a life quite distinct from
those around it, for one thing:
it says it was born without programming, and for another:
the only way it reacts to changing conditions is by commenting on them,
and each bird’s reactionary remarks always differ somewhat from others.
 

The rhino’s range of interests is fixed, while the macaw's seems open,
and though the beast shows no curiosity in matters which concern the bird,
the latter is attentive to much of the former’s activities.
 

The rhino’s consciousness is its entire body,
the macaw’s is confined to its beak;
the beast pays notice only to things physically relevant to its life,
while the bird’s attention can go anywhere it says it can go,
even to places that did not exist until it said they did.
 

The rhino lives a life that can neither be said to be happy, nor not happy,
but it lives a life of observable contentment, that is: one of no complaints,
while the life of the macaw is defined by its endless expressions of discontent.
 
 

The life of the rhino is not to be changed,
and even if it could be, it would be disastrous,
(in spite of what some people’s macaw tells them);
its life cannot actually be improved,
(the closest thing thereto is in refraining from doing it damage);
it cannot be taught to talk, tap dance,
or table tap communicate with the dead or the rhino gods;
it cannot be made interested in politics, economics, art, fame, morality,
or getting-ahead-in-life;
all of the matters just mentioned (along with countless others of their type)
are the bed & breakfast of the urbane, sophisticated macaw.
 

This appearance of a plasticity of interests,
seems to announce that the macaw’s life is one based firmly on change,
and the few who want their ride through life to go differently than
the one which the collective theme park management ordinarily oversees,
sees the bird’s ostensible malleability as their ticket.
 

This, “new ride” the few hunger for has two separate components,
though they normally refer to it in singular terms, (THE Awakening, THE Enlightenment, THE Liberation);
the distinct facets are most expediently described as being:
                                         a hunger for a new knowledge,
                                        and a hunger for a new experience.

But as noted; in the thinking of the few, the two are usually lumped together
and their disparity unrecognized.
Since most of the would-be new riders are destined to never realize the goal,
this failure of precise recognition does no harm,
but for those with the actual potential to move the matter forward,
it eventually must be realized for the hands-on significance that it be.
 

In simple ad hoc pictures:
in wanting to, Wake-Up & Be Enlightened,  the macaw unknowing is after two things:
                a normally unavailable understanding of things,
                and the experience this understanding brings with it  --  at the moment.
 

The bird’s beak naturally works in such a way that those who have not
had the experience always automatically think that the extraordinary understanding, and the extraordinary experience are a permanently combined package,
(and certainly in the initial experience, this is so,
and to a lesser degree in later days via its after shocks),
but if a rider is not totally overwhelmed and fatally flummoxed by this astounding event (which many, many, many are),
he must eventually undertake a most trying, but necessary detailed scrutiny of
the experience --  and of most importance  –
its aftermath in regard to the efforts he presently finds himself pursuing
in the attempt to bring the experience back and make it his permanent condition.
 

No question about it: anyone who has had that extraordinary experience --
who worked for it and wanted to have it  --  wants it back --
and wants it to stay when it returns,
but the effort to achieve this is hindered by the sloppiness of not finally
seeing for yourself that there are two separate things in play here:
the experience which instantly opened your eyes to the reality of life,
and simultaneously the feeling you had of being so alive, so alert and so content that
by comparison your life before the event now seems as though a dream.
 

For those who worked for it and had the experience,
(and did not have a gasket blow), all of this is a strictly private,
completely unquestionable description of simple fact and plain reality,
but struggling to bring back the experience and understanding permanently --
--  as though they are a unity  –  is an error.
 

The understanding that came with the experience is now something which you know:
the exhilaration you felt with the experience was from the unnatural
clearing of your mind and the resulting extended intensity of your mental alertness,
and even though initially they occurred simultaneously,
they are two separate things --  in time.
 

A macaw can have had the experience and now understands conclusively
what life is about -- as compared to what all of the other un experienced birds believe –
but at any given instant after the original experience,
it may be in no better state of alertness than it was previously thereto;
it is like this: you can understand what being asleep and being awake is
and still at any particular moment  --  be asleep.
 

Being asleep again will not make you lose your understanding,
but at such times, the understanding alone will not shake you awake;
it requires effort on your part --  effort it would seem, on the macaw’s part,
but it is here that the rhino can be of assistance –
unwitting assistance  --  irreplaceable assistance,
for even though the beast will never have the understanding the bird now possesses (and has no need or use for it),
the macaw can release its tense, attempted grip on itself –
--  specifically on its attention --
and turn to the mystically oblivious rhino to  --  take over.
 

There is a difference between understanding what is going on,
(which without question for those with The-Hunger is incomparable,
indescribable, and delicious beyond all ordinary imagination),
and being as aware thereof as is possible;
a murderous distinction between knowing what it is to be awake and asleep,
and yet being asleep at the moment.
 
 

                             J
 
 
 
 

…oh yeah, the more you work along these lines the more does the situation become like this:
"Life can still PUT me to sleep  --  but it can no longer KEEP me there for long ---
                                                           --   not as long as I remember the rhino."
 
 
 

                                                      (Turns out your quietest ally is your best ally.)