The Cage
Commentary
Consciousness is caged by the mind. The bars of the cage are built of belief.
Consciousness is the willful witness of the mind’s productions. What the mind outputs depends upon biology and strength.
Purely biological perception is coremind. In making sense of sensation, coremind manages raw perception. Analytic by nature, coremind also solves problems.
Coremind works subconsciously: mentation which does not rise to overt awareness. Nothing passing through coremind is conscious. Coremind itself provokes no thought, no emotion.
Numerous adaptations crafted the human ape. This altricial animal is naturally social, but also willful and individualistic.
As a counterbalance to its independent streak, the hominin ape gained greater gullibility in its descent. Easy trust abets sociality: fostering group cohesion and somewhat lessening aggression, especially in uppity males.
Gullibility eases deceit. People are poor lie detectors. Humans are literally worse than dogs when it comes to trusting known liars.
To lend vividness to its renderings, the mind liberally mixes memory and imagination into its construals. This inspires belief in those of low awareness.
Belief is reification: the mental habit of treating abstractions as true. “Concepts that have proven useful easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens,” observed Albert Einstein.
The Collective are immersed in their beliefs. American psychologist William James noted, “Belief creates the actual fact.” German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe saw, “Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”
Wile is a nattermind forte. Nattermind compellingly touts its troublesome fabrications, invoking worry, anxiety, and other negativity.
Credulity gives nattermind an advantage in instilling its deceitful sway. Innate gullibility levels the battlefield between willmind and nattermind.
Nattermind fortifies beliefs by making them self-reinforcing. “The more we examine our beliefs and explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to challenging information,” observed American psychologist David Myers.
Belief is an instrument of suffering and symptomatic of slavery to nattermind. Belief forges the chains that binds one to iğnorance.
Consciousness seeks its freedom.
Willmind is the mental expression of consciousness. Consciousness wants a pure view without nattermind corruption.
This intent is commonly called “spirituality.” The desire for pure awareness arms willmind in its war on nattermind. When the will to freedom is steeled into resolve, spirituality is weaponized.
One may try experience as the key to the cage. But doing is not key.
One may experience much and know little. Curiosity is the spark that lights learning, not doing per se. More saliently, doing does not necessarily affect quality of beĩng.
One may try reason as the key to the cage. But logic is not key.
Reason is logic which pleases. Philosophy is a system of reason. A philosophy comprises a set of consistent definitions: consistent in the sense of not having contradictions within the system.
For a philosophy to be valid, the terms which delineate that philosophy must correspond with each other and holistically explain the system to which the philosophy pertains. Otherwise, a philosophy is either incomplete (lacking comprehensive explanation) or invalid (lacking consistency among terms in the philosophy).
Concepts are abstractions. While useful for skill or comprehension, concepts cannot elevate awareness.
The key to the cage is will.
Exercising resolute will is the only way to escape the cage that monkey-mind builds to keep a consciousness iğnorant. The will is to quietude: to silence nattermind.
