No human act nor desire is of itself harmful to the person or to Life;
men’s minds are filled with desires they find unacceptable & over which they suffer, but all desires, along with their corollary guilt, are natural & necessary for
Life’s purposes via man.
The ordinary are driven to look for excuses  –
the certain-man seeks only personal understanding.
 
 
 

If there is a world-wide conspiracy that controls everything
then everyone toils therefor  (including those who appear to expose same).
  If there is an all controlling conspiracy its name is Life.
 
 
 

Mused a man with a potentially fatal ill: “What could be more serious than life,”
then thought: “Yet what could be less so.”
 
 
 

How To Know That You Are Still Ordinary (Part 12).
You continue to feel that “I” is somehow separate from the environment.
 
 
 

Conversation.
“The dumber you are the greater your need for cosmetic surgery.”
     “I don’t believe that.”
“No wonder you’re so ugly.”
 
 
 

Says a guy: “The reason I don’t like gangsta rappers is they wanna appear tougher
than they really are  –  same as how I don’t like me for trying to appear
smarter than I are.”
 
 
 

On average, twelve times a week does the average person want to be taken especially seriously --  as an insightful commentator on life and man.
 
 
 

Should it not be a significant indication of something that no matter how vicious or nasty they may be, humans do not feel a revulsion about any animal
like they do about other humans.
 
 
 

Country music, soap operas, serious dramas all reflect man’s view of his life being determined by circumstances & environment.
  There is some medicine that makes you ill if you take it  –
   because doing so creates the illusion that it is outside of you.
     The only jonah who gets away is he who swallows only his self.
       (“The great thing about this sea is that you also get to be the whale.”)
 
 
 

In spite of all the talk about not getting what you deserve and proverbs concerning what men do deserve, no one actually knows what they or anyone else deserves  –  and in fact do not even know if men deserve anything  –
indeed they do not even know what deserve means.
 
 
 

Having lost a leg, an eye, a lung and half his stomach to illness, one man
(after recouping from the most recent surgery) while looking at himself in a mirror
was struck by a strange thought:
“I feel perfectly fine –  yet am physically but a partial person,”
which was followed shortly with: “But then again, not so strange,
all of those not trying to awaken are intellectually but partial people,
and as far as they are concerned, they feel fine.”
 
 

To act-spontaneously requires planning; what the ordinary call same
would be for them only mechanical acts;
only the man who knows how to carefully plan in a certain manner can be spontaneous.
 
 
 

The more you begin to see, smell & suspect, the closer you draw to the possibility of –  nay, even the necessity for: The-do-or-die-approach.
   (“Okay, I may not get out of here alive, but neither will you --
      and that’s all that matters.”)
 
 
 

Everyday humans have no interest in going-over-the-falls  –
all they want from their view is to just hold-back-the-waters.

How To Know That You Are Still Ordinary (Part 13).
You continue to feel that “I” speaks for you in toto;
that the voice forever inhabiting your head is your fully authorized
personal representative.
 
 
 

One stage of the journey is seeing Life as being basically inalterable,
and close beyond that: where the notion no longer has any effect on your thinking.
  On one world, skunks don’t stink who never identify themselves as being skunks.
      (“That can't be all there is to cracking-the-case.”
Yeah, you wouldn’t think so.)
 
 
 

One man finally realized that he wasn’t drowning  –
except on those occasions when he seemed to be   –   and MENTIONED it.
 
 
 

Pondered a guy: “Can you be so stupid that you don’t even realize you’re dying?.....
…………..or might such not be stupidity at all.”
 
 
 

Once you begin to see for yourself what this case is really about,
the only form of suffering left to you is in recognizing same and not saying hello.
   (“Wait! –  I’m getting confused: Is or is not silence always the order-of-the-day?”)
For the special investigator: There is no standard fare;
one thing alone can solve the mystery  –  improvisation.
The clues ordinary men believe they perceive are the same thing as the mystery;
they stare bewildered at bread crumbs they find,
not realizing that bread is the perpetrator  --  bread is behind it all;
‘tis bread they unknowingly forever seek.........and never suspecting for a second.
What makes the certain-man the master sleuth is that when he finally locates
bigfoot’s tracks  –  he instantly locates bigfoot.
 
 
 

How To Know That You Are Still Ordinary (Part 14).
You bristle at the previous two descriptions of the condition.
 
 
 

The Equation: I + Not-I = Everything would seem to clearly identify man and non-man (his environment) as two separate entities, but the nervous-system-rebel understands that the formula exists as a whole, entirely in man’s mind.
Solving-the-case could be described as realizing that the concept of separateness exists solely in the consciousness of man and not in what he calls the environment,
(the world outside of him.)
    (“See, Johnny: If you would just come in the house, you’d be awake.”)