WHAT’S GOING ON?                                                                    

#128  APRIL  2005 

ALONG THE WAY:

We have been given a tremendously valuable gift but we have never opened the package.  The gift is that we can choose how we will see all that we sense.

THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT:

What irritates us most about others is often what we dislike about ourselves.

CREATIVITY:

(School Talk #3 by Dr. Bob Gibson continued)

Now if we’re highly conditioned to be that we have to be so good, good, good, we’ll probably be upset by what we find.  But we’re free to feel about anyway.  That’s the first thing you have to start off with is freedom.  I’m free to experience anything that may arise in me today.  That stuff’s going to come up and if we’re free to experience it, very shortly you can have it all up and the intellect takes it, absorbs it and we don’t have a whole unconscious area anymore.  And conflict comes to an end.  Now with conflict within ourselves, sooner or later we’re going to be in conflict with those around us.  And that’s kind of a tedious chore all day long, to be in conflict with this person or that person or another person.  I don’t see any reason to be in conflict with them.   But if we’re not very conscious of it and get it up there we do get that.  It’s just the natural outcome.  We’re in conflict with the environment, with other people, with situations we find ourselves in, whatever it may be.   But we’re free to experience whatever may arise today, I don’t care if it arises within or comes from without.  Frequently somebody calls me up and calls me very dirty names.   But I’m free to experience those because I recognize they’re all true, potentially, at least.  So what.  It’s the way they see me and it’s what they’re projecting.  It’s the way they feel about themselves.  Why should I allow it to come to me?  They project that on to me. I used to do day-in and day-out private appointments all day long with people.  You start off with somebody and they would go along real well for a few weeks and then they began to accuse you of having every conceivable attribute of derogatory things you could come up with.  So you accept that.  That’s the way it is.  You agree with them.  Some of you were in Fountain Valley the last time we had a talk out there.  There was a young man who made a long dissertation as to a way to put me down that I had made a big boo-boo in some of the written material back down the road.  Well I let him run all the way through it and then I asked him if we would please repeat the question.  He couldn’t quite do that because it was too long and complicated.  Incidentally, I got a letter from him today.  He sounded quite different.  He’s back in the mental hospital.  So he’s doing better.  They always do better in the mental hospital. But in that case the feeling thing is run rampant all over the intellect.  It just chomped it down.  Beat it up.

So the intellect has to gain a little strength and the only way it can do that is, again, to be free to experience whatever goes on there.  Now have you ever had a feeling arise in you that you didn’t want to feel?  Like guilt?  Anger?  Frustration?  What did you do about it?  Tried to get rid of it just as quick as possible.  Right?  May I highly recommend you don’t do that.  Leave it stay up there.  It’s not going to hurt you.  Just look at it.  And if you look at it and allow it to be there, very shortly the intellect makes it over into a very creative, useful thing to do.  Every invention that has ever been made in the world came because that aspect of the man was free to work.  That’s why very few people make inventions because very few of them allow it to ever get there.  The minute you have it what do you want to do to it?  Get rid of it.  Right.  It’s unpleasant.  We’re not free to experience whatever may arise today.

So the first step toward creativeness is to assume a freedom.  I am free to experience whatever may arise in my way today.  I don’t care what it is.  Inside, outside, what have you.  The purpose of a School and working together and etc. is to be free to experience whatever may arise in you way today.  I don’t have to arrange things to happen.  I could but I don’t have to because Nature, Life, brings along enough of them anyway.  So there are enough incidents come up that challenges everybody to be free to experience it.  Now that includes physical discomforts, mental anguish, turmoil, thoughts that come in your head, feelings and attitudes that you don’t approve of and situations in our everyday existence. It’s there and we usually try to get rid of it.  Now all I’m suggesting is that we be conscious that it’s there.  We find no fault with it.  We let it come up.  Take a look at it.  And we can check it out pretty well by seeing what attributes and what fault finding and etc. we lay off on everybody else.  That’s the best way in the world I know how to look at it.  Because it does do a fair-you-well job of projecting.  (To be continued next month)

INTUITION:

(Excerpts from a talk by Dr. Bob Gibson)

The most important thing any of us can have is a delightful inner feeling.  When you feel peace and joy, you have intuition.  Intuition is something that is naturally there but when we’re anxious, we don’t hear it.  Intuition tells you exactly what to do.  You don’t have to think about it.  So, who wants to be the first one to not make anything important?

We make things important because we have an idea we know what ought to be and we try to arrange everything like we think it ought to be and we’re anxious about it.

I may not like it, but I can stand a few things I don’t like.  So, if I simply way to myself, “I don’t like this.” So what.  I can tolerate it for a while.   But if I really don’t make it important, it’s not tolerating it.  There was no guarantee that I would like everything when I got here.

So what is it that you would make important? When we make things important we make ourselves anxious.

Health?  Does worrying about your health get you more healthy?  No.  Does it make you less healthy?  Yes. So why worry about your health.  If worrying would cure you, we would all sit and worry about it for an hour and we’re be fine.  It’s a habit.  Just stop.  Do you ever practice at that or do you just keep on with it?  Can you see that well enough so you could just stop.  When you find yourself worrying, just stop.  When you see it—QUIT!  Let’s just get it quiet and then we will have intuition.

Question:  Is it surrendering when you don’t let your thinking take over?

Dr. Bob:  That’s correct.  That’s what surrender is all about.  You don’t let the ‘Not-I’s” rattle away.  So get serene then intuition works.  Then you do what intuition says.  Intuition is an internal teaching.  You suddenly know exactly what to do when you’re serene and quiet.  It’s an internal state, not something you’ve heard or anything else.  You can’t force it.  To force it is to make it important.  You let it go.  It works when you are NOT anxious.  It never works when you’re anxious.  If you can get quiet you will know exactly what to do.  You can’t get quiet when you’re making things important.  That’s the whole point I’m trying to make.  Just keep quiet and it All comes about.  And you can be quiet any time you’re not making anything important.  Then you’re serene and when you’re serene, your intuition works.  It’s not something you learn.  It’s something

that happens.

Question:  Is the intuition a little bit of wisdom?

Dr. Bob:  That’s the wisdom (intuition).  It will tell you really what needs to be done.  You get quiet and let it work and you will find yourself doing it without sitting and thinking about it.

Question:  Is that in every situation, Bob?

Dr. Bob:  Anything that you put value on you would do this.

Question:  What if sometimes it says it doesn’t matter either way.

Dr. Bob:  It won’t say that.  If it doesn’t really matter, leave it alone.

Question:  What if someone keeps complaining to you that they’re not feeling well?

Dr. Bob:  Quit asking them how they’re feeling.

 A STORY:

Now and then I eat breakfast with friends and order cocoanut cream pie.  This prompted an interesting conversation.  One person said she had always wanted pie for breakfast, but had never been brave enough to order it. With a bit of prodding, we discovered she was afraid of her mother, who had been dead for 30 years.  Another friend said it was not good to eat pie a 9:00 a.m.  We tossed this around and concluded that pie at 9:00 a.m. was just the same as pie a 6:00 p.m.  Someone else volunteered that pie could only be eaten as dessert and then only if she had cleaned up her plate.

Writing this down made me realize how funny we all are.  I found it hilarious that conditioning controls when we eat pie.  It is very possible that thousands of other beliefs and actions are also mechanical and thoughtless, keeping me in bondage.  It might be interesting to observe how many situations I react to mechanically and how many I respond to consciously.

Conditioning is a powerful force and controls my behavior until I start watching it.  The Teaching Material suggests I write down my conditioned behavior.  When I do I can re-evaluate that reaction.  I can check and see if it is right and/or proper.  With re-evaluation I can discard useless ideas from which I have lived.  For instance, that I am a victim or that people know what is right and go on and do wrong anyway.  Armed with this new information, my behavior changes.  I can then have a different state of being.

For today, however, I’m free to eat pie for breakfast.

THINGS THAT HALLMARK CARDS DON’T SAY:

My tire was thumping. I thought it was flat.

When I looked at the tire…I noticed your cat.  Sorry.

Heard your wife left you.  How upset you must be.

But don’t fret about it.  She moved in with me.

Congratulations on your wedding day!  Too bad no one likes your husband.

I’ve always wanted to have someone to hold, someone to love.  After having met you, I’ve changed my mind.

Congratulations on your promotion.

Before you go…Would like to take this knife out of my back?

You’ll probably need it again.