WHAT’S GOING ON?
#138 JANUARY 2006
ALONG THE WAY
We have been given a tremendously valuable gift—Essence.
THIS MONTH’S THOUGHT
We have the privilege of choosing how we will see all that we sense.
MAKING UP THE MIND School Talk #25
(Continued from last month)
Now whenever we’re going to figure what we want, it has to be singly, it can’t be a whole bunch of things. Write this down and see that it is concise like an attorney would write a piece of paper. It is a statement that this is what I’m going to do. Just one. It has to be single. It can’t be multiple. You could make up many in a day if you wanted to. You can make up your mind about many things.
In as much as most of us have a set of Not-I’s around with us, we generally complicate everything by making it almost mutually exclusive, like the man who wants to have a good business and a fine income but don’t bother me with working. This is where very few people truly can make a single statement, especially without writing it down. And it is why we do recommend that you write anything that is the least unusual to you.
You might be surprised how easy it would be if you wrote several of these down, even about the simpler things you do every day, like having the oil changed in the car, like go to the laundry today, or go to the dry cleaners. You see, most of the time we qualify these. I’m going to the dry cleaners, if I have time today. I’m going to have the oil changed if I can get there today. I’ll get my tired changed if I can get off work, etc.
The Not-I’s are so busy telling us we can’t do anything except that which we have been doing since infancy, that we have now taken these for granted. If somebody came up to you and said cousin Joe is very ill and asks you do to what you could for him. What would you say? The first Not-I jumps up and says, “You don’t know how to do anything for cousin Joe. If you could make up your mind that cousin Joe would be feeling fine by tomorrow morning, and you didn’t have any doubts, that you’re very confident that whatever you made up your mind to would happen, cousin Joe will get up feeling fine tomorrow morning. That is unless cousin Joe is intent on not feeling fine. But he ask for you to do it. If you made up your mind, he’ll get well.
So, are you a healer? No. But Life is. I’m not. Life is. I can talk to Life and Life so loves each of us, each of these little awareness functions. It so loves us It will do whatever we say singly. It is not going to figure out some complicated stuff. It is very powerful, but very simple. It has to be a single asking, not a whole bunch of complicated rattling around over things. So each of us can do anything we want .
Now I’ll make another suggestion. Basically when you make up your mind for somebody else you’re not emotionally involved in it. Let’s say you have a pain in your knee and you want to make up your mind it would be gone, you would probably make it important that you get it gone. Consequently, all you would be reporting to X would be anxiety and your knee would probably be worse tomorrow morning. Until you get kind of used to it, it is always well to ask somebody else to make up their mind for the things that relate closely to you.
Now, just saying the words is not making up your mind. You’re saying the words with a feeling of confidence. Or otherwise you are not being confident, which is another way of saying you’re anxious. If you’re not confident, you’re anxious. X, no doubt, responds to the feeling as well as the words. If we say, “I’m making up my mind,” whatever if may be and I’m not putting any anxiety in it, I would have a feeling of confidence on it.
When you’re trying to do it for yourself, most often, you would make it important and therefore you would be anxious. Whenever we make anything important we are anxious about it. Let’s get somebody else to work with us when there’s something very close to us, at least for the first few months, until be get more confident. You see, the more times you see it does work exactly as you say, the more confident you become. At first get somebody who you consider has a reasonable degree of confidence to sign your paper with you, your little note, so to speak, your little co-signer. If the co-signer has a feeling of confidence, even if you don’t, it will still happen. That’s the reason for having two or more to work on it.
Anything that you would choose to make up your mind singly, with confidence, is going to happen. This is what has been called faith in certain books that been written through the ages and says it’s the most powerful force is human faith. Faith is the ability to make up the mind. It is the most valuable asset you will have in everyday life all your years. The ability to make up your mind singly is the most valuable asset you can have. It will work whether you’re shipwrecked on an island or out in the water. It would be the only thing that would survive and you wouldn’t need anything else, the ability to make up the mind singly.
When we talk about Not-I’s, – where there’s the complainer, the sticker-up-for-rights, the blamer, pleaser, improver, believer of authorities- the reason we study those is to get conflict out of the way so it might be possible we could make up our minds singly. Knowing we have very little ability to make up our mind singly is why we give you the technique of writing it down and having someone you like, someone who is around and you trust a little bit, to co-sign with you. This is what we have our mind made up to. It’s an excellent little technique in order to get where we can make up our mind singly.
We also show you about “what we are, where we are, what is going on, and what we can do.” The ultimate in what you can do is whatever you can make up your mind to do. So, if I make up my mind to be what to me is a good guest I have used faith that I can do that and I can do it consistently. If I’ve made up my mind that I can contribute to a pleasant harmonious mood at all times, I’ll find that I can do it. I make up my mind then X carries it out.
So we are involved in the ‘what’. X takes care of the ‘how.’ And the one thing we can have that will survive the shipwreck would be the ability to make up our mind singly.
STATE OF BEING
(Little America Workshop – April 1974)
This is ordinarily called a persons health. It can include finances, relationships and everything we are involved in.
- The environment: Where we live. We can look after the environment and keep it in a non-stressful state.
- Inner feeling: this refers to how we choose to see things, or if I don’t choose to see, the Not-I’s will see things as less than desirable. How do you feel when you hear that flu is doing to arrive? A lot of people have the flu when it’s announced ahead of time. Anxiety is the basic emotion. Man was never designed to have emotions. You’re not equipped to handle them. They are stressful. Now every feeling you have is not an emotion. Emotion is a definition of anger, guilt, fear, insecurity or one of their many synonyms. These destructive emotions come whenever we make anything important. Joy is not an emotion. It is the natural state of man.
- Nutrition and activity: The pretty well covers everything the human is involved in. These can be considered without making them important, but interesting. Activity and nutrition account for about 3% of our state of being. Inner feeling about 97%.
If each of these is going toward optimum, the state of being is toward optimum. Usually inner feeling is far from optimum.
A STORY
The Teaching Material is designed to enable us to have a spiritual body. This spiritual body is a frame of reference made up of the Teaching ideas through which we perceive all that is. One of the basic ideas that can be incorporated into this spiritual body is: The living being cannot afford emotions—fear, guilt anger, insecurity and all their many synonyms.
Fear seems to be a big one for everyone. All advertising is suggestion directed to activating this fear. I heard that fear is ‘False Information Appearing Real.’ If I’m afraid, I’m operating from a misconception.
I was leaving a meeting late one night to drive the 120 miles home. I told my friends that I was not going to spend the night and started toward the car. Immediately they offered off kinds of suggestions, such as, “There are always a lot of drunks (or deer) on the highways late on Saturday night or what if you have car trouble? As I opened the car door one friend said to me, “You’re not afraid, are you?” Without thinking, I said, “No, I can’t afford it.”
I refuse to be in bondage to fear. It will rob me of the many delightful experiences that Life has for me to enjoy. Of course the fear comes from the basic decision that the purpose for living is to regain the non-disturbed state. The self wants to know how things are going to work out before taking a risk. To “not know” is threatening to the self. It wants to be safe and comfortable. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?
So, what is there to be afraid of? Nothing that I can think of. I have it all! A car to drive, a house to live in, clothes to wear, food to eat, interesting things to do and interesting people to be around.
I choose to live fearlessly and the Work is there to remind me when I slide into being anxious, worried, tense—all synonyms of fear—all symptoms of falling asleep.
WAKE UP!
- Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
- Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing
- In the 60’s people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal
- What is a “free” gift? Aren’t all gifts free?
