Everyone’s brain believes there is a better person in there
than the one now showing;
the religiously wired see the situation as there being a more spiritual self
hidden under their sensual ones;
the civilly programmed see it as there being a more cultured version of
their uncouth persona waiting to be developed,
and the few’s view is that there is a more stable,
insightful and individual form of consciousness laying dormant within
the din of their ordinary state, (which is also man’s natural one).
 

In practice, men believe that the discovery, activation and nurturing of this better self requires outside assistance:
the teachings of a church; formal education;  lessons from the arts;
the guiding influence of social norms.
 

Man alone is programmed in his neural wiring to believe that he can be better than
he perceives himself to be,
(none of the other purely instinctive creatures are made to consider that
they could in any way be different from how they are),
but with consciousness comes thought and civilization,
and the more civilized a man becomes, the stronger becomes the thought that says
he should be that better person the thought says is within him.
 

The operational perspective is that ,
although the better self is private and personal,
it can only be realized via public, collective enterprises.
 

A man’s natural, genetically/temperamentally tied consciousness
produces thoughts that are not individually his;
his brain is the medium for thoughts that all of humanity share;
there are variations from man to man, but the major themes are the same for all.
Each man believes that the better self somewhere inside of him is unique,
and will have views of life that are totally different from their prevailing ones:
the religiously wired believe that their realized, spiritual self
will totally repudiate the routine life of the flesh, i.e.
the thinking of a Religious Person (the better person)
will be the complete opposite of mundane thinking,
and the culturally inclined conclude that the consciousness of a sophisticated man
will be the antithesis of a less civilized one,
and the would-be mystical expect that enlightened perception will see white --
where everyone else sees black.
The brain’s overall message (without it going into detail) is that:
the better person within you & it will more or less be the opposite of
the person you are now, with a corresponding change in consciousness and thought.

 
Men never achieve this goal of the mind:
no one can actually be a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, etc,
just as no man can be totally Civilized;
the programming in man’s brain to believe it should and can be achieved
is nothing less than the energy propelling the dual, interlocking realities of
the physical and the non physical which, combined, make up the life of man.

It is the striving that matters --  not the achieving;
the irrepressible striving to bring forth the better person in your brain,
or equally acceptable, the thinking-about-striving
with the awareness of when you are not and the subsequent mental regret:
this too is the-striving.
 

No one’s brain knows what the better person it believes is in it is like;
thus do men turn to sources outside themselves and accept their descriptions,
(life somehow managing to keep their brains from facing the  fact that the extrinsic institutions to which they look, [religions, universities, the arts, society]
are creations of their own brains --
the same brains that did not know what the better person is like in the first place),
but since men never achieve the realization of the better person, this does not matter:
if in truth you are never going to be able to leave town then it makes no difference whether your dream is to go to Siberia or to Santiago.
So men’s brains are allowed to imagine that the better person within them is
whatever their brain imagines it to be --  
and no one is ever disappointed or disillusioned
since no one’s brain ever actually produces this NewMan.
 

Without you comprehend this, even the illustrious, insightful few waste
energy and mental time, occupied in a dream-endeavor;
consider the situation fully and frankly:
there is a thought inherent in your brain that says,
and to which your brain seriously listens,
there is a better person in you, which is to say --  in it,
(although it does not note this specifically),
but it does not know what this better version of you/it might be,
and, (as proven by human history and your own life), it cannot produce;
and yet life forces almost everyone to ignore these realities,
and pay lip-service-acceptance to the original sensation cum theory.
 

Your pancreas does not believe there is a better you,
nor does your liver, your lungs, knuckles or spleen --  only your brain --
and only one particular part of it --  the only part you can hear talking,
(life having conveniently arranged for that part to provide the sensation of
there being a “you” in there to hear it;
[what would be the point in having Willie Tyler without Lester, and versa vice]);
only in your head --  in what ordinarily passes for, “fully conscious thought”
do you have any notion that there is another you in you, either repressed or quiescent,
and since this is the norm, there is no basis for believing anything to be amiss in man --  not with ordinary men,

but for the select few born with that CertainHunger,
falling prey to this world wide game-of-pretend will prevent the nourishment desired;
you will forever attempt to feed a nascent mouth which does not exist;
you will attempt to discover and quicken a body that is not there,
you try to uncover the other side of a moon which has no other side.
 
 

The special better-you of the few is not the antithesis of your present you,
but is your present you experiencing the totally unnatural realization of:
where the feeling of “you” comes from:
what its purpose is; what its capacity is,
and why the Dodgers have such trouble with right fielders.

The few do have a better person in them --  in their brain  --
in their consciousness --  somewhere amidst all the thoughts –
and this better-person is the person reading these words this very instant,
and who is thinking: “Well, where IS this person?!”
 
 

                                                             J