"It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World"

"This is a mans world,

This is a mans world

But it would be nothing, nothing

Without a woman or a girl..." Mr. J. B.

The body is a great and wonderful thing, 

but it is nothing, 

NOTHING, 

without a brain and a mind. 

This planet, Earth, the third rock from Sol, has been around for four and half billion years or so, and Life has been populating and repopulating for three and a half billion years or so, and Man has been walking and talking for the last hundred thousand years or so, but only in the last few thousand have things really taken off.

In the last few hundred years or so - while accelerating decade by decade, such that in only a couple hundred years or so - life expectancy has more than doubled, technology has put men on the moon, and has produced smart wireless devices that can wrap around your ears and eyes, while your car drives itself - with humans as the passengers - to wherever you like. 

BUT, the brain and the mind is made for much more than just altering the look and feel of this planet, increasing the number of objects that are mostly useless, and generating wealth for the fewest of the few, while the rest remain nearly in poverty. This extremely obvious fact, for some, has all but escaped most everyone such that their main examples of "personal achievement" has mostly to do with physical pursuits - building things, accumulating things, playing with things... things, Things and more THINGS!

The body is a great and wonderful thing, but it is nothing, NOTHING, without an Aim and a Wish. The body has been around for about 4 to 7 decades or so, give or take, and has been wandering around a VERY small patch of land for most, if not all of that time, but ask yourself, honestly, what do you have to "show for it" intellectually, spiritually? Do you spend most of your time thinking about yourself, your issues, your concerns, your irritations, OR are you actually beginning to investigate, and explore, and discover, and create that which only the Brain and Mind, governed by Aim and Wish can DO, even more than anything else you do, physically?

The Aim and the Wish were not "designed" (by D(esigne)r Who) for altering the planet, or the body, but for experiencing Higher Mind, which everyone has direct access to (by virtue of having been born of woman, as a result of the sperm & egg hookup sequence) even this instant, as you are reading these words, and thinking your thoughts about them.

Ask yourself, what do you have to "show for it," intellectually, spiritually, that you can demonstrate not only to yourself, but to others if asked, that ADVANCES your CHANCES of SUCCESS at This Thing you have embarked upon so many years or decades ago?

Because, remember 

Success is NOT Assured

(#3 of three links)

Anomaly - Glorious, or Horribilis?

Recently overheard at my local 

caffeine-imbibing establishment,

(slightly edited for content from "True Detective, S1") 

"I consider myself a realist, or in philosophical terms a pessimist - it means I'm bad at parties. I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature, but separate from itself. 

"We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are "things" that labor under the illusion of having a "self", but it's really just a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each SOME-body, when in fact everybody is NO-body. 

"I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming, stop reproducing, and walk hand-in-hand into extinction. One last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. (Obvious question then: what's the point of getting out of bed every morning?) I tell myself I bear witness. But, the real answer is that it's obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide."

The Speaker continues...

"The common good has got to make up fairy tales, and fairy tales are not good for anybody. (Referring to religion in general:) If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then that person is a piece of shit. What does it say about life, huh? You've got to get together, tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the day? (Obvious question: you figure it's all a scam right?) Yeah, it's been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey: (pointing up) 'He said... for You... to give me YOUR share.'"

"People. They're so frail they'd rather put a coin in a wishing well, rather than buy dinner! As for the preachers, it is all just the transference of fear and self-loathing to an Authoritarian Vessel - catharsis. The preacher absorbs their followers dread with his narrative, and because of this he is effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, that dulls critical thinking. (But, having none,) at least I am not racing to a red light."

The Speaker continues...

"You see, we've been caught in what I call "a life trap", a gene-deep certainty that things will be different... that you'll move to another city and meet the people that'll be your friends for the rest of your life; that you'll fall in love and be fulfilled. Fuckin' fullfillment, and closure: just empty jars to hold this shit-storm. Nothing is ever fulfilled until the very end. And closure?...?...? No, no, no... nothing is ever over.

"The ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of a tunnel, that's what the preacher sells, same as a shrink. You see, the preacher encourages your capacity for illusion, and then he tells you it's a virtue. It's such a sense of entitlement, isn't it? "All of this is for me, Me, ME!" We are so fuckin' important, right, right? 

"People. I have seen the finale of thousands of lives, young, old, each one so sure of their realness, and that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual, with purpose and meaning, so certain that they were more than just a biological puppet. But... truth wills out, and everybody sees - once the strings are cut, all fall down. These still bodies each so certain they were more than the sum of their urges. All that useless spinning, tired mind collisions, so full of desire and ignorance."

The Speaker summarizes...

"This - THIS - is what I'm talking about: Time, and Death, and Futility. There are broader ideas at work here... in that last nanosecond before their inevitable death they saw what they were. That you, your self, it's all a big drama. It was never anything but a jury-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go, finally knowing that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that in all your life - all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain - it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream that you had inside that locked room up here, between the ears. Just a dream about being... a 'person'... a 'self'... a 'me'... an 'I'."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glorious or Horribilus or Both?

Transcending Beliefs

It doesn't take genius-level intelligence to look around, out there, and even in here sometimes, and believe "things are seriously AMISS, god damnit!" Even young people believe that! Some seem to be driven to madness, taking out their frustrations about the world-at-large on those near and dear to them... from family members, to school-mates, to teachers, and even to anyone else within automatic rifle-shot or rented truck-collision. "Killing others" seems to be the fractured thought circulating in many minds world over these days, though most humans do not have the nerve to activate their body to the degree necessary to pull it off, so they just stew in their own juices.

Almost everyone - even here, on this group of readers if you can believe that - thinks things in the world, including themselves at times, are going "straight to hell, or 'the Bad Place'" and have been for a long, long time. But, seriously, can these beliefs even be believed? Or more importantly, can they be transcended?

Too many people take the ostrich approach. 

You know that one, right? 

Turning AWAY from the world-at-large, so as to avoid DEALING with it, and all the complex issues associated with it (like moving to the back-country and living in a one-room shack so as to "meditate" all day long) is never a solution to anything. One could even suggest that A Reason the world-at-large is so screwed up (apparently), is because most people (way more than half, probably 95%) turn AWAY from what is going on out there (and even - you guessed it - in here), rather than activating the mind in order to Transcend their own firmly-held Beliefs.

What could that actually mean, anyway?

How about this: Discovering the forces involved, both out there and especially IN HERE (between the ears, and up and down the entire nervous system) that precede your belief-creating processes. Thinking and believing wrongly about the world and oneself CAUSES the world to seem worse than it is. Fact is, there is nothing at all "amiss" out there in the world or in oneself (surprise, surprise), and things are operating "Juuuust Riiiight" - i.e., in the only way they CAN operate - because... remember... we're talking about HUMANS and the world they populate. 

Who in their "right-mind" can suggest, even for a moment,

that the NATURAL WORLD is amiss in any way?

Cats sleeping with DOGS?

Lions resting with LAMBS?

Consider for a moment (or more if necessary): How is it that PEOPLE started "screwing up" the world-at-large in all its possible aspects - which was in the beginning, remember...  THE Garden? It had to do with satisfying the basic survival needs - food, and shelter - including sexual needs, and property needs, and only became more and more dangerous to other people, as the mind became more and more complex and sophisticated. The more sophisticated the mind became, the more clever, convoluted and even "crazy" did the supposed solutions to those needs become. I.E., Rather than operating at their inherently genius-level intelligence (which is possible in ALL men, from their beginning of what might be called, "working with others")...

...they began operating from the lowest-levels of intelligence,
like GANGS, MOBS, HORDES, ARMIES.

The New Rule - which is many thousands of years old - is Bash the other guys over the head, or just kill them, then take their food, their women, their tools, their homes, and for entertainment, rape, pillage and plunder what's left if anything.  

That always works, right human?

Certainly, it is not so easy to move from ordinary, low-level thinking and belief-making, to high-level intelligence and reason, and humans can not generally achieve this SHIFT on their own, no matter what some who've only read books might try to tell you. Someone must be a LIVING example to those who can learn by example (and not like an ape or dog learns - no way), and that's how civilization grows and matures. Same is true between the ears. Some thought(s) and/or idea(s) must take charge in one, in order to put things right. The obvious clue that more work is necessary - then and today - is observing negativity of any kind arise and take hold of one, because once such negativity arises it generally continues until the energy is expended, and a certain calm ensues, when the person can attempt to investigate the reality of the situation. Wrong thinking and Faulty beliefs are most often the cause of one's negativity, and energy depletion. Reason and Objectivity may result by Transcending Negativity. But, good luck with that, right human? Well, at least until Genghis, or Gurdjieff, or God, or Real I takes control of the hordes of "i's"... but that is for another day, okay?

Lest anyone actually believes "Hey, I'm already in a transcendent state!" answer yourself this: What's up with Trump - or Drumpf, as some like to demean him - being in the White House? Huh? What do you REALLY think about that, and HIM? Don't hold back from yourself ("real I" is watching).

And what about the Las Vegas open concert assault-rifle major-massacre, and the New York bike path rental-truck mini-massacre? What's that all about? And what do you really think about the alleged perpetrators? Don't hold back from yourself ("real I" is watching).

Fact repeated for emphasis: there is nothing at all "amiss" out there, or in oneself. Thinking & Saying that with real conviction, and real understanding, is what may be called Transcendence, or at least reliably "leading to it."