#97  September  2002  

ALONG THE WAY:

Spirit is our Partner. I, the awareness, gets to live with it, experience it, watch it, work with it, constantly.

THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT:

We don’t like to give up the idea that someone else or something else is to blame for our state of being.

LIVING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: 

School talk #51. (Excerpts of a talk given by Dr. Bob Gibson.  Continued from last month)

We talk about spirit and the spiritual life.  Possibly we don’t really accept that there is spirit.  We say, “Yes, life is this and life is that.”   And we talk about it. But when it gets down to it, do we experience that there is something called “life” within me?  So a great man tried to get across to me once time that the only way you would really know about spirit is that you made it real to you.  You make spirit very real.  Otherwise it is only an academic thought or an academic idea.  It does exist, but it’s really not experienced.  It’s not part of my being.  I can read all sorts of things. I can study many books.  I can analyze a lot of things.  But until such time that I really come up with something and I’ve really experienced it and it’s within me, it’s really isn’t mine.  I  know about it.  I can believe in it.  I hear people say they believe in various religious ideas.  They believe it but they have never experienced it.  Obviously they don’t believe it very much or they wouldn’t be in such a panic.

Let’s see how one would go about making the idea of spirit within, Life, real.  If you would want to experience a certain feeling you first begin to think, “How would I like to feel?  How would I act if I already felt that way?”  Then begin to act that way and you will begin to feel that way.  Now we can say, “If I want to be experiencing spirit, how would I be feeling if I had already experienced it?”  “How would I be acting?”  So, we will start acting that way.  If you knew you had a wonderful spirit that went with you everywheres and could take care of about everything that you’ve always wanted, (not give you the four dual basic urges), but could bring about the spiritual life in a natural way, then you begin to act that way.  You act like you had this friend, this real friend that goes with you everywheres. You wouldn’t experience boredom because you had a friend with you. You would have a loving state with all the time.  You wouldn’t know about boredom or burn-out.  You might talk to it a little bit.  If I have a very wonderful friend. I talk to him now and then.  You would tell it about things. Act the part. You’d tell you friend.  So first begin to see that spirit was the friend.  When you begin to do this, you begin experiencing this friendship and making real spirit within yourself.  If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not real to you.  Only by making it real to you does it have any meaning.  One of our most useful exercises is to make spirit real to me–Life, whatever life is.  It is a spirit of some sort.  It’s not so hard.  It’s not so difficult.  You can see it exists.  You see that as long as it inhabits a form that it gives that form all of its properties and actions and everything.  But it does seem to act upon the information it receives.  Now if you’re giving it an entirely different bunch of information than you formerly did, you get a different attitude and feeling within yourself.  You begin to have the loving attitude.  You begin to have a tendency to serve life rather than exploit it.  There would be forgiving and understanding that life was always doing the appropriate thing for the information received from all the misconceptions that were loaded on people as they went along the way while they were trying to gain the four dual basic urges.  There would be a reference for life.  We begin to see it as something very holy and complete and it was a friend and I would like to be acquainted with that friend.  So there would be a certain amount of consideration, of thinking, exploring, getting to know that friend that lives in the very depths of this being which gives this being all of its properties, all of its attributes.  It’s the one that takes a sandwich and makes living flesh and blood out of it in a little while.  It takes a glass of water and does all sorts of nice things with it.  It’s a marvel to watch.   You see a cow eat green grass and produces red hair, white hair, full-fledged little calf, and make white milk, all out of green grass.  Can you take green grass and do any of those things with it?  Life does it.  It’s worthwhile being a friend with.  It does all the miracles and marvels we can look at. It knows how to take a tiny, little infant and grow it to be a big guy or a big lady.  It knows how to make arrangements for things that won’t be used for a long time.  Here is a tiny baby born.  It has only a potential a reproducing and it may be 15 years before it is capable of it. The baby is conceived in darkness and developed in darkness, but has eyes that only see in light.  It can only breathe air, but it’s living under water.  There are some pretty marvelous things there.  So I want to be acquainted with that.  I want to know it.  I want to experience it, not just have some theories about it.

If we begin to act like we are already its friend, pretty shortly we will begin to experience its friendship.  The way it works to communicate with the usual human being is not in voices, but in intuition.  You have a sudden knowing of how to do this, or what to do about something or not to do something.  Sometimes its better not to do something.  This intuitive understanding begins to be a reality in the persons life.  An intuitive individual is far ahead of the person with all the logic and reason there is.  The one with one bit of intuition is way out in front of the person with the most perfect logic and reasoning.  Nothing wrong with logic and reason, but it’s not the ultimate. After you know what to do, you use a little logic and reason on which step comes first.  But it’s not the thing to decide the course.  It’s the best you’ve got until one begins to actualize spiritual understanding and spiritual knowledge.  And we start with that by acting.  We say we have to be to the point where that begins to look like it is of great value.  As long as I see the four dual basic urges as top value, any effort I have or talk about spiritual things is still with the idea of gaining or escaping.  If you would go to the usual church or etc., it’s all concerned with gaining or escaping.  You’re going to gain a heaven and escape a hell.

There’s a prayer that says “If I serve you, Oh Life, to gain a heaven, deny it to me.  If I serve you to escape a hell, throw me in.”  That will kind of get you down to know what you’re working on.  If you’re still on gaining or escaping, you better not say it.  Don’t say it unless you mean it.  If you’re really working at being a spiritual individual, I think you could say that prayer with the greatest of ease.  But if you’re going to use it to do a little sly stunt on it and hope you’re going to get the four dual basic urges as a by-product, I would suggest you don’t say it.   It is the one prayer that I assure you is answered—right away. So be sure you mean or don’t bother with it.

QUESTION:   How do you have reverence for life when there is impending danger?  When it would appear that life is out to get me?

ANSWER: Life is never out to get you. But misconceptions and the Not-I’s are out to get us all the time.  So the person who is indulging in mind-bending chemicals and gets in a car is considered to be dangerous.  But so is a tiger.  So is a bull and especially a mad, boar hog.  You can have reverence for life and you’re aware of it.  Spirit has the ability to handle it. I have run into most of these situations you’re talking about and I’m still here only because life responded long before I could have ever figured out a course of action.  I can be very reverent for life within me and others, because it keeps us going through some very tedious situations.

QUESTION:  Talking about spirit being a friend, a companion and someone who is always with you.  Isn’t the aim of all this is to achieve unity with spirit.  Isn’t that still creating a separation a little bit?

  ANSWER:  No.  I think the idea is to recognize spirit is all there is and all this so-called self, which is made up of a bunch of Not-I’s, does not exist.  THOU, life, is all there is.  The so-called self, the personality, is only a recording, made up here, yon, and elsewhere, a lot of suggestions, a lot of this and a lot of the other things.  There is nothing real about it.  When that is recognized and there is nothing real at all there, you’re beginning to be inside the house and spirit is all that does exist. I expect that’s where we’re headed.  There are people who do live this way.  They are almost invisible in the world in which we live.  They cast a very low profile.  They are not in step. They don’t quite fit here.

A STORY:

The observer influences the observed.

Is that a true statement?  Well, I can only experiment with this idea and see if it’s true for me.

In a sense, this is what I have been doing with the coons.  These bright, tricky, destructive animals seemed intent on picking on me.  They destroyed everything on the deck and used the upper deck as their own private bathroom.

Two months ago in this newsletter I talked about running an experiment.  I did.  The coons and I had a chat.  I dropped all negativity toward them and welcomed them as my friend.  Lo and behold, they have not pooped on my deck since. I cannot prove that this conversation changed their behavior.  It could be that they had eaten so much of my bird feed that they were too heavy to climb to the upper deck.

I run another experiment on my car.  Everytime I start the car, I am so thankful for it.  I caress it, love it, praise it and take good care of it.   Its performance is outstanding.  I cannot prove that my attitude affects the car.  I can prove that my attitude affects my performance.

I also know that my attitude affects others.  If I’m cranky and out-of-sorts, their guard goes up, as if protecting themselves from my negative energy.  Of course, I put on my armor when I’m around someone who is touchy and grouchy.  I want to stay out of their energy field.

Then maybe it’s true.  The observer influences the observed.  In that case I must be very mindful of what energy I putting out on that which I observe. I am creating the world in which I live.

For that I am responsible.