WHAT’S GOING ON? #74 OCTOBER 2000
ALONG THE WAY: EVERYTHING that happens is a gift.
THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT: Live with uncertainty and be happy about it.
THE HORSE AND BUGGY : (Excepts from a talk by Dr. Bob Gibson in Salt Lake City October 1970)
The discussion this morning will be relationships. When everything is in its proper relationship it works real conveniently. Let’s take a buggy, a cart, and you have a horse and you have a driver sitting on the seat. So you have the vehicle. You have the motive power. You have the driver. If you put them in the proper relationship you have transportation. You have a function. Now you have heard of putting the cart before the horse. You tie the horse behind the cart, the driver gets on the seat and hollers “Gitty-up”, and nothing much happens. He hasn’t got it in proper relationship. If he puts the buggy behind the horse and the driver is sound asleep, the horse usually doesn’t go very far in any particular direction. If the driver gets drunk and falls off the buggy, not much goes on. Now if the driver got up on the seat and said, “I’m going to sit here and wait to see the will of the motive power here and then we will go”. Now the horse could care less which way he goes. His nature is to provide power. So who is responsible for the direction the motive power takes? The driver. Now when we use this as ourselves and our various aspects, when all of this works as a unit, everything works smoothly. We have transportation. The driver is going where he wants to. The horse is furnishing the motive power. The vehicle is given the comfort to ride in. And we have the transportation to the desired destination. However, does the driver take on the responsibility or does it sit down and whine and want to be told what to do and where to drive the horse. He waits for the horse to tell him where he wants to go and what to do?
The horse really could care less. His nature is Power. The nature of X is to express energy. Where would It express it without an intelligence, the driver here, to decide what to do with it? Let’s put the driver to sleep with an anesthetic, maybe ether. What does the motive power do then? Nothing. Its nature is the expression of energy. What would you say then is the “will of the horse”? To please the driver! Now the driver is trying to get the horse to tell him what to do. Stays up all night trying to get the horse to tell him what do. And what happens? Nothing. And the horse is sitting there with all the power of the universe ready to go. And what are we doing? We don’t want to be responsible for directing the pony down the road. So we sit and say we want to find out the will of the Power. The Power loves the driver very dearly. The horse loves the driver very much or he would have already left the driver and the buggy. But he has only one thing, “You tell me what you want”. And it’s up to you. And if you don’t do it, it won’t get done. Now the will of the horse is for you to make up your cotton-picking mind, then we’ll do it. Now usually the driver doesn’t know what he wants. He pleads with the horse to tell him what to do. The horse will do anything the driver directs him to do. It will be happy to work with you as long as you drive. But when you don’t drive everything comes to a stand-still or never starts. We have a responsibility and we avoid this responsibility. Because if something happens and we’re criticized. We can blame the horse and say the horse did it. It was the will of the horse.
All our limitations have been chosen because we don’t want to be responsible for the outcome. Who is the director of the motive power? We are. Now with all this conditioning in the awareness we have how many drivers sitting on the driver’s seat? But when the driver (awareness) tells all these Not-I’s to shut up and he’s driving the horse everything goes well. It is a matter of making up the mind and giving the command to the motive power. We are through with conditioning, right there. We are of the driver of this most wonderful steed who loves us dearly. But we like to have something not to be responsible. It there any excuse not to be the driver?
Do you see where you fit in the Picture of Man? Do you see what your portion is? We not just going along for the ride, even though that’s what we try to do. There is only one thing that keeps us in eternal bondage. We don’t want to be responsible. “Now you just tell me what do and I’ll do it beautifully”, we say. But we have all the Power of the universe at our direction. The driver is always with the horse. That is the most perfect union in relationship there is. That is when the motive power and the direction are ONE. That is real marriage.
A STORY:
Many years ago my world had fallen apart. It seemed that I was sinking in a morass of self-pity. I remember lying on the couch crying for God to tell me what to do. This went on for so long that I became almost inert. There was no joy, no peace, no motion. Finally, sick to death of this state of being, I rose from this bed of self-inflicted misery. I crawled to the phone. Lifted the receiver which must have weighed 50 pounds and called Hill College in Hillsboro. I asked about enrolling in a computer course, which I did.
Now, I doubt much would have happened if I had waited for Hill College to call me to enroll in their computer class. It would have been a long wait. But this tiny bit of motion started a series of wonderful events that changed everything. It was not that X wanted me to take a computer course especially. But the power was there waiting for me to direct it. It had become all plugged up in my self-absorbed state.
I still have a day now and then when it seems the energy is low. I blame it on the weather or my age. Usually two cups of coffee takes care of it. But when it becomes obvious that I’m sinking below the water line, I wake up, once more, and take charge of directing the energy. The pull of the non-disturbed state is powerful and can suck me under if I’m not paying attention.
Dr. Bob stated it quite simply. THINK, ACT, FEEL. Action produces the desired feeling. The awareness decides the feeling it wants (joy, gratitude, etc,), the physical body takes the appropriate action and the feelings follow. Granted it is not easy to take the actions necessary to feel gratitude when I’m in apathy, the resistance is incredible. But this is THE TRUTH. And the Truth sets me free, free to express this beautiful gift of Energy.
It is so easy to forget the things that will liberate me.
I will remember to remember.
IDEAS TO WORK WITH :
- One would be grateful when one is uncomfortable because it is X speaking to one. Pain is X telling us we are goofing up.
- Misery is when we make ANYTHING important. We do not have a problem unless we have made something important.
- The conditioned self is the victim and the victimizer. Feeling like a victim has nothing to do with anything outside ourselves.
- Illness (adaptation) is not the problem, only a sign that a problem exists.
- Inner conflict is dangerous and fatal.
- What is the ideal we base our expectations on?
- We accumulate to be free from future pain and have future comfort.
- Integration is any moment when there is no conflict. It is only moment by moment, not a permanent state.
- Sticking up for rights is hooked into self-pity.
- Never give advice.
- Whenever we want to change something we have judged it.
- The human mind is the maker of problems. A problem is something we want to change to get along based on conditioning.
- To sympathize with a person harms them.
- Until we have earnestly recognized and re-evaluated the basic decision we made as infants to “regain the non-disturbed state”, we will continue to stick up for our rights, complain, blame, self-improve, believe and do as told by authorities, and please for effect.
- When we begin to dis-identify we begin to be a person. This is the WORK and it is WORK!
- It is not what has happened to us or not what has been done to us, but what we decided about those things. And for those decisions, we are responsible.
KEEP THE MOOD UP
AND
DON’T MAKE ANYTHING
IMPORTANT
