December
6, 2001.
Unless
you get just-the-right-take on it,
the
waking up thing will leave you forever frustrated.
It
does not matter whether you think of what you are doing as trying to achieve
enlightenment, awakening, liberation,
to
discover: The Truth, The Secret, inner peace, inter alia,
all
such activity is and always has been driven by the same, single,
simple
physiological urge, which seems mental (even if called spiritual),
because
it occurs in the verbal conscious operations of man’s brain
as
opposed to say, his quiet liver or non commenting kidneys.
The
urge is extant and observable in all men,
but
only in a few does it appear with an intensity sufficient to move them
to action --
...even
if it only be of the intellectual variety --
...which as it were, is the only variety it comes in -- but hey!
who
the hell realizes that in the beginning -- in matter
of exact fact:
who
the hell ever
realizes it?! (damn few, dear friends, scant few – but,
back
to today’s ostensible subject, [which was also yesterday’s & tomorrow’s
-- but, as ‘twas being noted]),
only
in a few people does this natural, species-wide urge
surge
sufficiently to drive them to seek its fulfillment.
These
people in earlier times were called, Philosophers -- then,
Mystics,
and
that is nominally about where it stands today
from
the general public’s view of the matter.
But
there is not nor never has been any description of this urge that is adequate,
since
the throat of the urge is the same as the sounds which
try
to describe it and those whose mouths normally utter such sounds in the
attempt to describe it -- fail totally to ever catch on to
what is happening.
The
numerous ancient and contemporary attempts to describe what:
“wanting
to wake up” or to “achieve enlightenment, or liberation,
or
inner
peace; or to discover the meaning of life, or the hidden knowledge;
or
the great secret, or simply -- the truth” means
-- all catastrophically fail to do so,
because
there can be no adequately useful description of that quite real urge
present
in all men (and active in the few), and until you realize strictly on your
own
and
for yourself the fact that you do not really understand at all what any
of these terms actually mean, (or any others your thoughts may employ in
this regard),
you
are stymied and do not know why.
People
attempting to satisfy this urge predictably begin to believe that either
the
method/teaching/approach they are following is faulty,
or
else they are simply not up to the task:
either
the system they are using to try and wake-up is a fraud,
or
else perhaps they are simply too stupid to ever achieve it,
but
neither is a real world response nor possibility
in
that no approach or system to fulfilling the urge is the right one,
and
withal, there is no wrong way to meet it and be enlightened,
and
also, you do not have to be smart to wake-up,
thus:
if you are to this born, and you have the interest and strength
to
not give up prematurely and the wherewithal to study in solitude,
there
is no material, objective reason that you cannot succeed in
seeing
the matter through to a satisfactory understanding.
Anyone
with the natural, originally, irrepressible,
wanna-jump-up-in-the-air-&-shout-with-excitement
fascination with the whole notions of:
“waking
up from a dream”
“going
from a world of shadows & distorted images to one of clarity &
light”
“escaping
from an inner captivity to a place of glorious freedom”
has
NO excuse for not going somewhere real with their original hunger;
the only reason for stopping is that you stop --
............and most people stop from frustration.
They
work at waking up for decades, and still find themselves mostly dozing;
only
those who fall into even deeper states of dreams from the frustration
will
claim to be an exception to this (the same old annoying fact that:
anyone
who tells you that they are awake -- aren’t),
everyone
who struggles to wake-up, (and who stays sane) -- stays
frustrated.
You
certainly have train loads of private fun throughout the years,
and
you certainly cannot say that you wish you had not become
involved
with the affair,
but
the bottom line with everyone is that,
until
they see all of the way through the matter of wanting-to-wake-up,
they
feel frustrated overall in their efforts.
It
is almost impossible to get a person’s thoughts to even hear, much
less
seriously
entertain the very idea which would help lead them out of their frustration.
The
way things are arranged, a man’s mind has what can only be described as
a “natural aversion” to the particular idea,
(not
unlike positive & negative ends of magnets);
men
can hear and understand the sentence in which the thought can be couched,
and
yet (use your own mind as a test & example)
the
idea will pass right through and leave no trace it was ever there.
The
thought bewilders all other thoughts;
the
idea disorients all other ideas;
the
possibility BLINDS all of the faux possibilities on which
your
standard conscious state depends -- but:
pursuing
it doggedly is the key to getting beyond the frustration
your
mind will forever feel in your struggle to wake-up
if
you do determine yourself to see all of the way through it,
no
matter your thoughts’ natural disinclination to do so.
You
start by considering this statement -- or this possibility,
(if
you must think of it in that term),
that
you have no real idea at all what, “wanting to wake-up” means –
even
though you have been sincerely trying to do so for forty years.
Working
this finally out in the privacy of your own head will --
in
a split second -- change everything;
the
forty previous years of struggle, discovery & frustration
are
gone in flash: gone and forgotten,
and
you are free then to begin your even more rewarding and exciting
investigation
of the question: Exactly what IS
the urge to awaken? –
a
question you can only confront once you realize (in a most pleasing,
joyously
staggering & fuzzy fashion) that you have no earthly idea in the first
place what those oh-so-important-words-to-you --
even mean.
Quite
simply and totally non mystically, it is the everyday fact that:
Until you recognize that you are ignorant in a certain matter,
you cannot cure the ignorance.
And
be fully confident: if you believe that you really do know what your,
“wanting
to wake-up” IS
-- you do not.
This
is literal, and unconditional,
and
the heartburn of frustration you continue to feel --
in
spite of your burning desire and interest in becoming enlightened
and
seeing the truth about everything for yourself --
comes
from the simple fact of you not realizing that you have no idea whatsoever
what
“wanting to be awake and enlightened” means --
none.
Work
this out for yourself, and the instant you suddenly see it through,
will
be a moment you will never forget.
For the few who ever take it that far -- it is their first day of freedom ---
-- freedom from totally meaningless & needless frustration.
J