Chapter 2: Cognition
Of course, this is not unique to humans.
For example, lions and tigers do not attack other animals after they have eaten their fill, but humans are not just like that.
After humans have eaten their fill, although they create living space for other beings, they still remain unsatisfied and snatch resources to ensure their continued prosperity.
Although everyone knows the saying “you can’t take it with you when you die,” no matter how many resources you fight for, it only solves the simple needs of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation.
However, due to the complexity of human thought, desires continuously expand; having ten thousand makes you want a hundred thousand, and having a hundred thousand makes you want a million.
Seeing others driving cars worth hundreds of thousands makes you envious, and after you get a car worth hundreds of thousands, you start envying those who own cars worth millions.
This is the desire to compare. I can’t say this is bad, because often human ambition and competitiveness are intertwined.
Because you desire something, you strive to do something to achieve that goal.
As I said in the previous chapter, humans are beings who live within their self-perception; sometimes your efforts are called ambition by others, and sometimes they are called competitiveness.
This is not determined by individual self-conviction, but by how others perceive your actions.
If you have a hundred thousand and buy a car worth twenty thousand, people will say it’s normal. If you have a million and buy a car worth two hundred thousand, they will also say it’s normal.
But if you only have a hundred thousand and buy a car worth a hundred thousand, people will call you pretentious.
If you believe these words, then you also become the person they describe.
I think it’s very fortunate to be human and to live in this world, but if you continuously live as others perceive you and not for yourself, then you have truly come for nothing.
Many people live their entire lives in a daze, not knowing how they should live or what they should do. They give to their family and friends, only to be met with the criticism of being incompetent and worthless.
If you say he is incompetent, he supports his family with his physical labor. If you say he is competent, he hasn’t created a particularly good living environment.
To be frank, who is to blame for this? Actually, no one is to blame; everyone’s life has a fixed number.
The environment you are in, the experiences you have, and the cognition you gain all determine the results you will have afterward.
It is said that only those who endure great hardship can become superior to others. Everyone believes that enduring hardship can bring great happiness or a prosperous life.
But little do they know, the so-called enduring hardship doesn’t mean enduring physical labor; rather, it refers to enduring the hardship of learning.
Only by continuously striving to learn and improving one’s cognition can one change certain things.
A saying goes, “People cannot earn wealth beyond their cognition.” Conversely, only by continuously improving cognition can people have the potential to create wealth they have never had at a certain moment.
That saying is “wealth is compensation for cognition,” but this is only for ordinary people, not those with good family backgrounds, because their parents’ cognition is higher than that of ordinary people. Therefore, they were already born in Rome.
Actually, I don’t think this is a good thing, nor do I think it is a bad thing.
It is said that where there is gain, there is loss, and where there is loss, there is gain.
Perhaps we experience more suffering than them and find it difficult to rise up and change our lives, but once we achieve enlightenment, we can see the various patterns of the human world more clearly.
People born in Rome, on the other hand, need to go through a long period of life experience before they can understand these patterns.
For example, yesterday I flipped through a book called “Transcending Life and Death” by the martial arts superstar Mr. Li. I only read a small portion, and I discovered that what he understood after decades of cultivation was the relationship between the heart and temperament.
And I only took less than two years.
You say Mr. Li’s life was amazing, right? Yet, in terms of cultivation, he was pitifully slow.
To the extent that in his book, I even saw things about social graces, such as him going to a certain place, and people, seeing his family’s dedication to cultivation or something, giving him and his family special instruction.
But he didn’t consider that if he didn’t have such great fame and wealth, ordinary people, no matter how devout they were, would still not receive such special attention.
Precisely because of this, I did not continue reading that book. From my individual cognitive perspective, Mr. Li was merely using Buddhist concepts to break worldly perceptions, simply put, borrowing forms to break forms, and he was still within the forms without escaping them.
If he truly understood the relationship between the heart and temperament, perhaps he wouldn’t have needed a magician to give him special tutoring.
The phrase “seek within, naturally complete” fully explains everything.
Many monks and Taoists are at the gates of hell because they are cultivating by borrowing forms and cannot escape the suffering of reincarnation, only gaining temporary liberation.
This is because of dwelling on causes and dwelling on effects. Your desire for liberation is the cause, and your learning from the Master for liberation is the effect. And these two points are also causes for other things.
But within this relationship of cause and effect, this itself is a form of reincarnation.
Therefore, still revolving within reincarnation, from my perspective, he is only one step away, but this single step is as difficult as ascending to heaven.
It requires breaking all his previous cognitions, even those learned from studying Buddhism, because things that are instilled are not innate but acquired. To achieve, one must abandon the acquired and utilize innate power.
Actually, from my cognition, great cultivators can leave this world at any time, or extend their time of existence in this world.
Because everything in this world is a form, and after the continuous improvement of the soul’s consciousness, or rather the primordial spirit, one can selectively return to the origin of consciousness.
That is to say, the so-called cosmic consciousness, or collective unconscious, or the Heavenly Court, Bliss, or other higher-dimensional universes, etc.
But these things are all still within human cognition.
Taking my own experience as an example, when I was a teenager, for a period, I had lucid dreams every day. Lucid dreams are also called clear dreams, or dream control.
It means knowing you are dreaming within the dream and being able to freely control the dreamscape and your state of being able to do anything you please.
Many cultivators enter this state during meditation. They simply believe they are very powerful because they can change the changes within the realm a little.
If you say you can change anything and do anything, they will forcefully explain to you that meditation is different from your dream control.
That’s utter nonsense. I can even hear changes in the surrounding environment and choose to wake up at any time or not, and I can block out various physical sensations or turn off my perception of the surroundings.
Similarly, within the realm, from a scientific perspective, in a state of absolute relaxation, consciousness rests, and the subconscious is activated by instinct. Cultivators practice merging consciousness into the subconscious without the subconscious knowing.
This is also called Primordial Spirit Departure~! That is to say, consciousness is the spiritual sense that cultivators refer to, and the subconscious is the primordial spirit. Cultivation is the process of merging consciousness into the subconscious to enter other realms that are like dreams, which is called Primordial Spirit Departure.
In life, through continuous self-practice, using the combination of self-awareness and the subconscious is actually cultivating innate power.
The power of the subconscious is the power of the innate!
