ALONG THE WAY:

I remember that the living being cannot afford emotions.

THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT: 

To be enlightened, don’t make anything important, not even enlightenment.

 EMOTIONS: 

(Excerpts from School Talk #5 by Dr. Bob Gibson)

This week my major effort has been to work with people on one fundamental idea:  I simply cannot afford emotions.  Just can’t afford them.  So now we’ll define emotions.  To us emotions are anger, guilt, fear and insecurity.  These are emotions.  Now we have a lot of other things going on with us.  We’ll call those feelings.  I can have feelings of gratitude.  I can have feelings of appreciation.  I can have feelings of joy.  I can have feelings of love.  I can have feelings of beauty, etc.  Those are feelings.

Now the reason we simply can’t afford emotions is that they set off something we call the vicious cycle.  The vicious cycle starts off with a misconception.  A misconception is something very important or that it’s worthy of being angry about or it’s worthy of being upset over.  So, when you have the false feeling of emergency, the whole person is seeing something as being very necessary to fight with or to run from or to do some drastic procedure on.  Preferably to run.  So then when we do that we are mobilizing energy to fight or run.  Now we’ve got the energy mobilized but we do don’t do either one.  So, the energy is just held.  So that results in held, mobilized and unreleased energy.  When you get in that state there is neuromuscular tension and chemical imbalance in the body.  So X, in It’s wisdom, prepares an adaptation.  But if you think you can afford emotions and believe that they are necessary and that you can’t keep from having them.  You pat yourself on the back at what a terrible temper you have and what a good worrier you are and how often you feel so guilty about every little mundane thing that comes along, you are believing that you can afford emotions.  And I’ll guarantee you, you’ll pay for them with your life.

So, I simply cannot afford emotions.  I can’t afford to feel guilty.  I can’t afford to feel fear.  I can’t afford to feel insecure or any of their synonyms.  Each one of them has hundreds and hundreds of other names that we use.  Once you have determined that you cannot afford something you leave it alone.  Now if you see you cannot afford to be angry, you really see that is a literal fact—you can’t afford it and you would pay for it with your life, you won’t get angry anymore.  You have made a conclusion.  The Teaching material says, “Once a decision has been made you have come to a conclusion.  That is the rule of attitude/action for that individual from now on”.  So one time I decided I could not afford to be angry.  And I haven’t been angry since.  I certainly can’t afford to feel guilty.  I don’t know what I would feel guilty about anyway.  How about fear?  I can’t afford it.  I can’t afford to sit and worry over things and think how terrible it is and wonder if I’m doing the right things, and oh, what is the right thing to do, and etc.  Insecurity is feeling that I need to know the future in order to survive today.

Now, can anybody here feel you can really afford to have anger, fear, guilt and insecurity or any of their synonyms that could include jealousy, revenge, greed, envy and a few thousand other things.  Does anybody here think they could afford them?  You could come to a conclusion right now that I cannot afford emotions.  I’m not going to have any because I can’t afford them. You would find they end.  Now then you can deal with feeling.  Feeling is regenerating.  It brings you alive.  It keeps you vital.  All feelings are pretty nice and wonderful things.  A feeling of joy.  A feeling of appreciation.  A feeling of gratitude.  A feeling beauty all around us, the beauty of life and the people and all the things we see.  A feeling of freedom.  The body thrives on these.  This is the living cycle.  The living cycle is perception.  We see what’s going on.  We have a true feeling.  We have chemical balance and neuromuscular tone.  And instead of adaptation (which we call illness) we have creative action.  Creating a human soul is the only creativity there is.  And that is when you have consciously chosen the decisions and the ideas of which you are going to live by.  And this would be one of them—that I can’t afford emotions.  I think that would almost be the foundation of creating a soul.  You don’t have souls to begin with.  You’ve just got some reactions. So if you build a frame of reference yourself, I think almost the first fundamental  in that frame of reference would be that I simply cannot afford emotions.

A STORY:  

There are times when I feel, oh, unsettled.  I have an uneasy feeling.  I usually blame this on age, the weather, lack of sleep, too much sleep, hunger, too much food, not enough exercise, too much exercise, tired, etc.

When I look closely, I usually find that this unsettled feeling comes from having something before me to do that I don’t know how to do and I’m afraid to do.  Or maybe I don’t know what the outcome will be.  The self does not like to ‘not know.’  When the self thinks it know, it feels safe, or we could say more comfortable.  If my purpose for living is to be comfortable, that is, regain the non-disturbed state, I can easily fall for the suggestion from self that it is important to KNOW.  The reality is that we cannot know the outcome of anything.  Nor do we know HOW to do anything.  These are illusions.

Only as I, the observer, sees some idea of the self as an illusion is it free of the tendency to identify with that idea…to see an illusion for what it is, is to see the truth.  (Science of Man, Lesson Ten)

The awareness function is responsible for reporting accurately (free of conditioning) to Spirit what is going on.  Spirit knows how to do all the work.  Not only know how to do it, but does it.  What a deal! How could I ever feel anxious or afraid if I really knew this to be true?  I just forget.

I have a Partner who does all the work.

I don’t have to ever feel unsettled, anxious or afraid.

I will remember…..

WHERE TO FIND TRUTH:  

• When you see a misconception (mis-information or lack of information) for what it is, you have seen TRUTH
• The most firmly planted misconception we have lived by is: I’m a victim of; how you treat me; circumstances, the economy, the system, the weather, etc.  Circumstances undergo transformation when this misconception is recognized.  We can then become self-determining.
• Another misconception we have is that people know what is right, proper and justifiable but go on and do wrong anyway. This justifies anger, resentment, turmoil, self-pity and misery.  Try to do something that is wrong, improper and unjustifiable.  We simply cannot do it.  When we understand this and apply it to others, we can then find NO fault with anyone.
• When we see that we don’t have any rights (something that cannot be taken away) we have many privileges, which we retain by simple good manners.
• When we recognize these three misconceptions, which can be stated in about 300 different ways, we are liberated and experience the living cycle rather than the vicious cycle. We are in charge of what we do.  We report straight to Spirit and are a living expression of Truth.  There is union of Spirit and awareness.

IDEALS: 

(Taken from What’s Going on Here? Vol. 1 by Dr. Bob Gibson)

We have all been conditioned to hold ideals in high regard, thus we all believe that we know “What ought to be” for ourselves and others and all circumstances.  Reality or “what is” is usually much different than our idea of “what ought to be,” so we feel frustrated and have the need to struggle and to resist what is.

One can drop the ideal by seeing that it is merely a fantasy and that we could not know what ought to be unless we knew the future, knew the outcome of every situation a week from now, a month from now and so on.

When we concentrate on the idea of the ideal for a little while, we can drop all belief in the ideal.  We then find self in the present and quite capable of dealing with the present moment.  We will find we are free to experience what  is from moment to moment and to respond instead of react because things are not as we fancied they ought to be.

Being free to experience whatever comes our way today is to be free of conflict, struggle and resistance.  Conflict, struggle and resistance is the ONLY human problem.

One cannot believe in their ideals and be free at the same time.

One starts with being free to experience whatever arises in ones way today, then one is free of conflict, struggle and resistance.  Freedom is real being, now.

BLAME: 

If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he blames the restaurant.

If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family blames the tobacco company.

If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he blames the bartender.

If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you blame television.

If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you blame the gun manufacturer.

If a crazed person breaks into the cockpit and tries to kill the pilot at 35,000 feet and the passengers kills him instead, the mother of the deceased blames the airline.

I must have lived too long to understand the world as it is anymore.  If I die while I’m parked in front of this computer, I want you to blame Bill Gates!

 (I couldn’t  help but highlight this one…Our Donna J.  What a hoot!  Sure do miss her ~ In Joy, Tanya )