"What Gives, Eh?"
The unbearable truth can be realized by any ordinary thinking creature, and in any ordinary passing moment, even as one is reading these letters on this screen right now. (Did you see it?) But honestly, it is usually missed, and for the same reason it was just then, a moment ago, and as it has been missed for your entire life, and will most likely continue to be for the rest of your life.
"What Gives, Eh?"
Has nothing been learned after all these many decades? Has nothing been discovered in all this passing time? What has Life done to me (Why has Life made me so) that the unbearable truth remains so hidden that even after finding it, it is quickly lost again? Is it because it is, truly, UNBEARABLE?
"What Gives, Eh?"
This would be similar to believing you have been trudging up a large mountain for all your life, turning left, turning right, stopping, starting, going faster, going slower.... only to discover - like a bolt out of the blue - that in fact you have been sliding down the mountain all this time, and all your movements here and there were simply part of the path you were already on, and still are, even now! Not unlike a slinky falling down the winding, crooked stairs.
"What Gives, Eh?"
Thinking is just like that. People must have the sensation that their thinking is unrestrained in any way. That is, if they want to think about COWS, or the "endless", or the "absolute", they can set upon a path-of-thinking that may take minutes or hours or longer, going here, checking out there, moving this way or that in their mind - to eventually reach the "top of that mountain", or "getting to the bottom of it." If it were not for that belief in unrestrained thinking in all men, his inventions and life-enhancing devices could never have occurred. In the same way out in the world of men, especially in repressive governments all throughout history, advancements in science, technology, and the arts are seriously stifled. When men are made to feel that they do not have the freedom to think whatever they please, they wither.
Even quite basic knowledge of one's own mental activities clearly displays the ever-present sensation that one is free to entertain whatever thoughts might appear at their neural doorstep - "knock, knock, think me." And, no ordinarily sane person will ever dispute this, and if someone does, they are immediately judged by their peers to be "mentally incompetent". For any man or woman to say that their mind is not under their own control is the clearest possible example of them being labeled "insane."
However, upon closer scrutiny (that is, inch by inch, slowly you turned in the right direction to correctly observe the unbearable truth), you do NOT plan in advance what particular thought or set of thoughts or even swarm of thought-evoking feelings you will have next, or next, or in five minutes, or five days. The undeniable - and apparently unbearable - truth is that you do NOT KNOW what thought or feeling will momentarily occupy your mind next.
Here is where all those "pre-planned thoughts"
you didn't actually plan for
you didn't actually plan for
- way back when, just a few short minutes ago -
are now occurring.
Do you know what they are?
Can you see and hear them?
Don't forget it - you can bear it!
Don't forget it - you can bear it!
(Put another way perhaps only Slinkies can perceive: Acquire the capacity to maintain a near-perfect Stillness of Mind, and let the brain work as it will - let it do what it does, sift how it sifts, spin how it spins - but only when something NEW emerges out of the NOISE and CHAOS, will the Stillness of Mind absorb and retain its purity. That is what growth of Being and Consciousness is... at least for a Slinky that can now go UP staircases with ease.)