What’s Going On? #88
Written by Donna in May 2002
ALONG THE WAY:
Embrace resistance
THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT:
Everything that happens is a gift.
EXPECTATIONS: SCHOOL TALK #16
(Excerpts from a talk by Dr. Bob Gibson)
We said we would talk about expectation today. I usually let the major part of the telephone calls through the week determine what I am going to talk about on Friday. This week has been heavy on what people expected.
Now most expectations, dealing with mechanical things, can reasonably be depended on. Not always does the car start. Sometimes the battery is dead. But most of the time all of the expectations we have about our mechanical things work. But when we go to put expectations on human situations, they become in doubt very quickly. The other person may have a totally different viewpoint.
So an expectation starts off based on an ideal in people of ‘what ought to be’ or ‘that it will be totally non-disturbing to me’ or ‘it will give me my way right now’. This is an expectation based on an ideal. Usually the first thing we have is a disappointment. Most people don’t handle disappointments very well. They immediately feel hurt when they’re disappointed. And when they feel hurt they look for blame. And when they look for blame they usually find it. Now we’re talking about a process that takes about a microsecond to happen in the mind and so nobody notices it because anything that goes by that fast, we don’t see it. But if we could slow it down, we would see this is the sequence. An expectation based on an ideal frequently leads to disappointment. Disappointment is followed immediately by hurt. And hurt is followed by looking for blame. Now all of these, we said, happen in a microsecond. When we look for blame we find it, almost instantly. If it was somebody else, other than number one, you feel can angry. Now an emotion has arisen and the whole body is filled with adrenaline, Thyroxin, and everything to do mayhem at least, if not murder, on the person blamed. If I should find that maybe I did something, then I would feel guilty. I would begin to pick on me. If I can’t find what to blame it on immediately, we experience fear. Fear is a very powerful emotion, which loads the body down with tremendous things. Emotions are all damaging, whether it is anger, guilt or fear.
Now when you’ve been around this way a good many times, the person begins to feel very insecure. Now we maintain that all the feelings of anger, guilt, fear and insecurity are what we would call emotions, the rest of the things we call feelings. Now when we use those four words we didn’t go through all their synonyms. You could put in a few thousand more like jealously, worry, etc. The body is immediately loaded with all the hormones that it takes to run or fight. Adrenaline, thyroxin, pituitary extract, sugar is shot out of the liver to give quick energy and the whole thing goes on in high speed and there is not a thing we do. So we don’t burn up all that mobilized and unreleased energy. It is just hung up there. Then we have a lot of mobilized and unreleased energy that requires adaptation. Adaptation takes place in two different forms. Good people hold it in and then the body has to do the adaptation. X puts a bunch of cells to do something they don’t ordinarily do in order to use the tremendous amount of energy that was mobilized and not used. That produces an unusual sensation, which we usually refer to as pain. That is the first symptom we have. You now have 2 symptoms. One is unusual cellular activity in the body. The other one you have some decided discomfort. We don’t expect to feel that way, so immediately expect it should go away. Now we develop the sense of fear again. No doubt I have cancer. It could even be something more serious. So we go around the whole cycle again. And this time it is more severe. And if we keep that cycle up over a period of time, we have a change in tissue cell. It either breaks down or is altered. Now we have a pathology. Now it can be named. We have a disease of one sort or another. All the symptoms you’re ever experienced physically was a change in the function of the cell, a change in sensation, and finally a change in the tissue cell. Now according to where it is and the degree of it as to the name it gets. There are books with great gobs of names in them.
Another way we adapt to this mobilized and unreleased energy is by unusual behavior. Unusual behavior can go anywheres from throwing an anger fit, to throwing an emotional tantrum, to a kid holding his breath and beating his head on the floor, or a shooting spree. If we stop to look most of us have been involved in the last few weeks we had a little frustration and got a wee bit annoyed and we sounded off a little bit or adapted to the feeling of frustration. Annoyance is a mild anger We can do this as long as we want, but the point is do we have to expect that the ideal, or even a reasonable degree of it, will exist wherever we show up?
We have a sign on the wall that says: The world is populated with infants, many of whom have grown-up bodies and technical educations. If you realize this you don’t expect too much out of them, then there is no reason to feel disappointed. Every now and then I have a pleasant surprise. Have you ever been upset over having a pleasant surprise? This seems to be a safety valve, necessary in the present time, place and circumstance to keep one’s attention on what the world’s populated with. You’re not a 100% correct, but when you’re not, it’s a pleasant surprise.
Knowing about ourselves and the conditioning within ourselves and knowing what is going on in our selves is the best kept secret in the world. So we react very violently. The other people are not the only ones. We do it to. As long as we can see that, we have a starting place to first knowing ourselves. Then we can have self-remembering and begin to practice it. And if we practice it we find that we can begin to live without all the emotional turmoil that most of the people in the world are very much involved in. Very few people in the world have ever had a chance to see what’s going on here.
The reason we’re all here is because we’re trying to find out what’s going on here. The more we can do that the more we can see ‘what is’. When we can see ‘what is’ we can take very decided steps to protect ourselves from the terrible side effects of emotions, which makes all these adaptations necessary. And if continued over long enough time, they’re fatal. Some of these days we’re going to talk about how it would be to change enough that we wouldn’t have those at all. And we might even see that the body would regenerate.
A STORY:
Life continues to offer me opportunities to check out my conditioned, mechanical reactions. The Teachings say it is the spontaneous responses that reflect the inner state.
The day started with raccoons stealing the hummingbird feeder, leaving sticky sugar water all over the deck I did okay with that situation. I tightened the loop at the top of a new feeder, filled it with nectar and replaced it. The next morning it was gone leaving little raccoon footprints all over the deck. I could feel an account building against raccoons. Then I drove 60 miles to Cleburne to pick up a pair of boots. I had left them last week for new soles. When I got to the shoe shop he told me the boots would not be ready until the next day. This situation took a few minutes to resolve. I made sure he knew this was not what I had in mind. He would mail them to me.
That afternoon the man painting the deck ran out of paint. I went to the hardware store. They mixed a gallon of paint, assuring me it would match. It didn’t. Back at the store, the only paint close was flat instead of satin. I took it, anyway. By this time it was too late for the painter to start up again.
So. I finished a document I had been working on in the computer for the next two hours. When I went to retrieve it, it was gone. (Inadvertently is a computer word). We did it over.
I didn’t throw a fit, scream or yell. Disappointment, frustration, irritation, anger, etc. are obvious signs that I’m asleep and reacting mechanically. My emotions were more subtle annoyances, letting me know that I still want my way and continue to make things important. These situations were tests to allow me to see my state of consciousness. The conditioned state continues to operate and run this one.
I am grateful Life loves me so much it gives me this valuable information.
Oh, well, all I can do is observe and report.
IDEAS TO WORK WITH:
(Excerpts from The Science of Man Teacher’s Course #1)
- In order to learn, it is necessary to break down Vanity and Pride. Vanity is, “I am always RIGHT. It is a blindness or sleep. Blindness is that “I” only see a very small aspect, and assume that it is the WHOLE. In this state, it is impossible to see that ideals are being set up continuously about almost everything. One can only learn that ideals are ILLUSIONS, UNREAL. One cannot learn this as long as there is the darkness of VANITY AND PRIDE.
- The ultimate expression of vanity and pride is the belief that I can figure out what is right, what is good, what ought to be, what I need and what you need. This opens the door for every demon (all the NOT-I’s) to give you the answers to what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what ought to be, what I need, what you need, what the future will be and why it is that way. The only catch is that they give two answers, directly opposing each other. This is experienced as confusion, depression, worry, anxiety, anger, guilt, fear, insecurity, and leads one to look under rocks trying to find the ultimate answer. When one continuously gets two answers, this is experiencing Hell.
- A higher type of mind exists than the logical scientific mind of man. This mind is not just better, but is of a different type. It is possible to contact this higher mind and experience its being to some degree. For the usual logical scientific mind, this contact is impossible. A transformation must take place for the usual mind to be the type of mind that can make this contact. There are indications that by diligent effort and the help of Teachings originating from this higher mind, I can make this contact. I see that making this contact is the true purpose of living.
- Can you do something about tomorrow? Can you undo something yesterday? Have you ever known it to be tomorrow? Can a person have feelings of emergency about yesterday, tomorrow? Would this feeling be based on reality? Could the feelings about yesterday and tomorrow be called FALSE feelings of emergency?
- Does a person feel different about the effort expended when he says, “I have to do this,” or when he says, “I am getting to do this?” What is forcing him to do whatever it is that he HAS to do? What is LETTING him do whatever it is that he is GETTING to do? How would one feel when one says, “I am doing this?”
- As long as I cannot make up my mind, I have no originating center, therefore no faith. I am incomplete, imperfect.
- There is only one problem. There are thousand of signs of problems. The usual approach is to find a solution to the sign which is believed to be the problem. THERE IS ONLY ONE PROBLEM AND THAT IS RESISTANCE TO WHAT IS. It produces thousands upon thousands of side effects. Our work is to see our resistance.
- It is to our advantage to see and be aware of the accumulated beliefs without resistance or judgment. We are not interested in looking for TRUTH, only in finding misconceptions. When the false is seen, TRUTH IS. We are interested in seeing conflict, misconception and stress. We have a special mirror to see conflict and misconceptions. By seeing these, one can bring an end to them by bringing into consciousness the misconceptions and seeing what a comic-tragic joke we have been living; with what grim seriousness we have played the comic-tragic clown.
