School Talk 5 - Emotions

(audience participation in parenthesis)

Through the week, we usually have lots of private appointments and sometimes I use the material that we worked on in private appointments all through the week which comes out pretty good for a talk on Saturday because I’m acquainted with it then.

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 our emotions for a. To us, emotion is anger, guilt, fear and insecurity, and a feeling of insecurity. Now those we see as emotions.

Now over here is a lot of other things that goes on within us and we call those feelings. I can have feelings of gratitude. I can have feelings of appreciation. I can have feelings of joy. I could have feelings of love. I could have feelings of beauty, etc. Those are feelings. This is technical terminology and if you want to mix them up all week, you have fun; but you’re still not talking accurately. We’re not talking accurate, ok? So we’ll try to say that these are emotions—anger, guilt, fear and insecurity.

The reason we simply can’t afford them is that they set off something we call the vicious cycle. The vicious cycle starts off with a misconception. A misconception that something is very important of that it’s worthy of being angry about, or it’s worthy of being upset over. It’s worthy of—what kind of emotion were you having the other night when I came by to visit.

(I don’t know.)

Great sense of insecurity, I would say. You didn’t know what to do. So you had a great feeling of insecurity that always brings about a false feeling of emergency. You felt there was all sorts of things that “ought to be done right away” and really there wasn’t anything needed to be done except calm down. That’s all that needed to be done. So when you have the false feeling of emergency which means that the body has changed, the whole person is seeing something as being very necessary to fight with or run from or to do “some drastic procedure” from, but preferably run, is that right?

So then when we do that we’re mobilizing energy to fight or run. Now we got the energy mobilized, but we don’t do either one, so the energy is just held. So that results in mobilized and unreleased energy. The way we mobilize this energy the body always does the appropriate thing--X does the appropriate thing for the information received. So X has the body produce adrenalin, thyroxin, pituitary extract, all these powerful energizers so that we can go out and whip three times our weight in wildcats, or we could climb mountains and all sorts of other things--but we don’t do anything—we’re civilized. We set there and we stew and we stew and we stew, so we have this mobilized and unreleased energy which we could say you are a nervous wreck--that’s the way you’d probably describe it.

So when you get in that state, there is neuromuscular tension and chemical imbalance in the body. You are all screwed up. Now then something has to happen—you can’t survive doing that because you’d blow up in a little while. So X in his Wisdom prepares an adaptation—so we begin to adapt.

Adaptation takes place to burn this stuff up--eliminate it--so the body can return to its proper chemical balance and its neuromuscular tone instead of all the tension. Now the way it does that is twofold.

So we’ll talk about the one we do most common. Good people use this method. You know good people don’t sound off and they don’t go screaming around. They don’t go throw drunks and all that kind of stuff; and they don’t get in fights in bars.

(They cry.)

Yeah, they sit around and simmer a little bit. So first there is unusual cellular activity starts. That’s the first thing.

X in its Wisdom used a given group of cells to do something unusual with those cells to burn this energy up. It’s not a normal function. Unusual cellular activity. Now that’s a change in function, and that always produces an unusual sensation, we experience as pain, soreness, stiffness, pain in one form or another.

Now, immediately all our information about pain is not that it’s a sign that we’re restoring balance to the body, but that something terrible has attacked us, so we have a misconception about it. We get more false feelings of emergency over the pain, plus we probably throw some chemicals in the body which are detrimental to it which brings about more neuromuscular tension and chemical imbalance and requires more of this going on. So the pain gets more severe and the function gets more interfered with, and we know we got terrible pains. I’m chronically constipated and I have pain in my back all the time. That’s what the good doctor told me was the definition of a woman one time--not a lady—of a woman. A definition was a constipated bipedal (walks on two legs) with a pain in her back. So, I don’t know whether that fits or not, but you know that’s what he laid out in class one day, and I had to take notes on it. So, I used that in an exam later.

So this goes around the vicious cycle for a long time. Now you go to the doctor with all of this, and he’ll only give you tranquilizers and pain killers because he cannot find any tissue that needs to be cut out yet. So he will tell you that you only have psycho-neurotic disorder or that you have functional disorder or that you’re run down and that you need to take a rest or a vacation.

But eventually, if you keep going around this vicious cycle, and there will be tissue cell alteration or the tissues will break down. The tissue cells can’t keep up doing this forever, so now you have a lesion. When you have a lesion, you can get a proper diagnosis because the doctor can find some tissue that’s not just the way it’s supposed to be, and he can highly recommend taking it out. The tissue has been doing a good job, but cut it out--it’s not supposed to be doing that. It’s doing it’s thing, but cut it out; and of course, that will require more of this adaptation; and so the good people that “hold in” all their violence die young; and, in the meantime, they keep the doctors up. The doctors are quite proud because they have build a practice. It means you’ve accumulated enough of these on your list that comes to see you every week or two, that you have a very nice steady income.

I didn’t like to do that, and I used to move when I got 300 of them, but then it only took a while to accumulate 300 more, so you had to move again. So I did lots of moving.

But now there’s another way that people adapt and this one is not so popular’ but it’s used a lot. It’s called “unusual behavior”. In other words, you go on a binge of some sort. You go on a big drunk. or you go out and kill a couple of people up and down the street on a shooting binge Some beat up the wife and throw the kids out in the street--it doesn’t matter--just so a lot of violence goes on.

Now that uses up the mobilized energy, so all these people become violent—some of them also become psychotic-- that’s when you can really behave peculiarly and be excused for it—you’re psychotic. So anytime you can use violent unusual behavior to burn up this mobilized and unreleased energy, the chemical imbalance and the neuromuscular tension, you don’t get sick.

I interned in a mental hospital and none of those people ever had arthritis or measles or heart attacks or anything else. They just did unusual behavior all day--they sit down and tell me they get their mules in out of the rain when it was a hot sunny day and a lot of other things. They tell you these stories all day long or they go in and shake some guy and say “Get up, it’s time to get up and brush your teeth,” “No, I don’t want to get up”. “What are you doing?” “I’m here talking to Lana Turner.” “Go away, and let me alone.” And so they live theirs off in a fantasy land. So they don’t need all this bunch of symptoms—they are burning it up with their unusual behavior.

But now it’s not respectable to have that—people in mental hospitals don’t get “get-well” cards, and they don’t get flowers. Nobody comes to visit them very often.

Those that use other violent ways of unusual behavior are libel to end up in jail, and certainly you don’t get big bunches of flowers that says, “Hope you get out soon”--you don’t get a card that tells you all the pretty things. Everybody tries to ignore and forget when you use this method. Actually it leaves fewer scars on the body. I don’t highly recommend either one. I’d say get along without both, but if you got to have one or the other, might as well have this one. You don’t wind up with so many scars.

I’ve seen bellies that looked like somebody had been playing tick, tack, toe on them because of the mobilized and unreleased energy. The unusual behavior, you don’t get many scars, but also you’re not very popular. Now either one of these will work; and if you’re going to indulge in these emotions which I say you cannot afford, you’re going to have all of this stuff. And if you’re gonna have all of that, you don’t live too long—either side of it—you won’t live too long. Somebody kills you with violent unusual behavior, and you’ll die over here with mobilized unreleased energy which adapts in all the illness. It doesn’t make much difference. You don’t get to “stick around” too long. So you can’t afford it, you’re paying for believing that you can afford these emotions. You pay for it with your life, and I think that’s kind of a high price to pay.

I can’t afford it. I like to be alive, and I simply cannot afford emotions. Now I’ve noticed that in the ordinary mundane things of everyday life that when I discover that I cannot afford something, I don’t get it. I can’t afford a Mercedes 45 SL, so I’m not driving one. If I could afford it, I probably would have one because I think they’re kind of cute; but I can’t afford it, so I don’t even think about it. I don’t even go look at it. I can’t afford a jaunt around the world this week because I need to work, and I like to be here rather that somewhere on the far side of the world anyway. So I can’t afford that and what I can’t afford, I don’t buy.

But now if you think you can afford emotions--believe that they’re necessary, and that you can’t keep from having them--brag about “what a terrible temper you have” and “what a good worrier your are”, or “how often you feel guilty” in about every little mundane thing that comes along, you are believing that you can afford emotions. I’ll guarantee you, you’re gonna pay for it with your life.

Now I don’t think any of us is in a big hurry to get out of here. We may tell ourselves about these great and wondrous places you go when you “get dead’; but I’ve noticed that everybody likes to stick around here where they’re better acquainted for as long as possible. You want to stick around a bit because you’re better acquainted here.

Now there might be some great things in the celestial kingdom, but there’s so damn few people who know--is that right? And you’re not real sure it’s there. So you better stick around. I don’t see any value in attempting to pay for having emotions. I would hate very much to pay for a Mercedes 450 SL and not have it, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t like that at all. So I simply cannot afford emotions. I can’t afford to feel angry. I can’t afford to feel guilty. I can’t afford to feel fear. I can’t afford to feel insecure nor any of the synonyms. Now each one of them, you recognize, has hundreds and hundreds of other names that we use which is a synonym for it, but we’re not going into all those endless number of emotions.

Once you have determined that you cannot afford something, you can leave it alone. Now if you’d seen that you could not afford to be angry--you really saw that as a literal fact--you can’t afford it--and if you did thought you’d pay for it with your life, you wouldn’t get angry anymore. You have made a discovery. Some of you know some of the ideas in the Teaching material that says,

“Once a decision has been made, you have come to a conclusion—that, then, 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—a few times I’ve put on a “good show” when I thought it would pay off; but I was laughing inside. I certainly can’t afford to feel guilty. I don’t know what I would feel guilty about anyway.

You know anything to feel guilty about? I don’t. You know anything to feel guilty about?

(Not very often anymore.)

They taught you that you should if you were going to be a “good” person. I can’t afford it.

How about fear? Can’t afford it. I can’t afford to sit and worry over things and think how terrible it is--wonder if I’m doing the “right thing”--ask “what is the right thing to do”.

And insecurity is, of course, feeling that I need to know the future in order to survive today. None of us know the future, of course, so we could be very upset by it—overly concerned, but it doesn’t change anything

Now I get up every day and work—whatever I see to do and avoid as much as possible--we get along some way or other. Look—I’ve been fed and clothed and housed and sheltered and romanced for-- (I don’t like to talk about how many years), but a good many years. I don’t see any reason why it should come to an end today, do you? It’s like it’s pretty well set, the system has been working all these years, and I’m not any dumber now than I was ten years ago, I’ll guarantee you that. I’m not any dumber. So I think if I could survive then, I can probably survive now, is that right?

Now can anybody here feel that you can really afford to have anger, guilt, fear and insecurity? Think you can have it, or any of their synonyms?--that includes jealousy and revenge and greed and envy and a few other thousand things that we could think up. Anybody here think they can afford it?

Ok. Then you could make up your mind right now. You could come to a conclusion that—I cannot afford emotions--right now, is that right? And therefore, I’m not going to have any because I can’t afford them.

(I know that part.)

The price is too great, I can’t afford them. So now then, you would find the end. You can deal with feeling—feeling is regeneration. 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 of beauty all around us—the beauty of Life and the people and all the things one sees. I can have a feeling of opportunity, a feeling of freedom and all these. Now all these the body thrives on. You might say that is the living cycle—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, we have creative action and that one goes on. In that you don’t see the person falling apart at the seams and getting decrepit and everything because their getting a few years older. They don’t have to do all that stuff.

It’s a lot easier to live on the living cycle than it is the vicious cycle; however, some 90% of more of the people on the planet earth today are living on the vicious cycle.

Some dear lady asked me, “Well,” she said, “I know all that, but why do I keep on doing it?” I said, “I assume you call it laziness or inertia—whichever one you want” Not wishing to take up the bother to even come to the conclusion that I cannot afford emotion because that’s all it really takes. It really is all it takes—it doesn’t take any effort. You don’t have to think on it every minute. You don’t have to tie a red string around your little finger to watch it to see—yeah—that reminds me to not get angry or fearful and so forth. It’s simply now you have a frame of reference that says, “I cannot afford it; and therefore, I’m not going to have it.” And so we don’t have it and then the body can begin to live on a totally different cycle--the living cycle instead of the vicious cycle.

Now, does anybody think they can afford emotions?

(No, No!)

…can’t afford them, you can’t afford to feel guilty?

(No!)

So then you don’t have so many things to worry about, to avoid being guilty later. You know how much time you have spent in your life trying to avoid this or that because you might feel guilty later if you didn’t do it. Been through that this week a bit? I guess it’s about time, you can’t feel guilty anyway, and so what’s the difference, ok?

I made the comments, now we’ll have conversation. Anybody got a point to refute me or tell me how wrong I am or that emotions are absolutely essential.

Over a year ago I was working in a place and there was a great big blackboard on the wall and inasmuch as emotions were so thick around the place that it was difficult to get very much of anything done…(it felt like you were being bombarded by tremendous sounds all the time), I went to the blackboard, got me a piece of chalk and wrote “A human being--I put on it, not “I” of anger guilt, fear and insecurity--cannot afford emotions. Well, nobody read it, but one guy came in all in a thither and he looked at it and said, “Hey, live without them.”

Fine—it’s still on the board, I hear--I haven’t been there; but I heard it was still up there the other day. But nobody has paid any attention to it. I’ve talked to a lot of people for longer than a year; and they haven’t paid any attention either, but I’m wondering if maybe we could catch on today, huh?

(You can think, act, and feel.)

You don’t have to think, act, feel,, you just decide you’re not going to have it………………and then you can think, act, feel to have any feeling you want—not get rid of an emotion. That is to have any feeling you want to have. Have fun down there tonight. You leaving too, sweetie. OK, any other comments?

(I was listening to the tape on creativity. I only heard it once—the statement about allowing it to come up instead of being stuffed all the time. How does that really help at all?)

Probably not at all. We’re talking about a different subject, but you sure wouldn’t be creative if you were angry, guilty, fearful and insecure. We said creativity was something considerably different than what people generally thought of—what did it say it was on the tape?

(I don’t know.)

Yeah, it said so, or you didn’t hear it, honey. Well, go listen to it again, and it’ll tell you what creativity is. An awful lot of people think if they paint one of these pictures, why, they’d be creative. I don’t know whether that’s creative or not.

(Creating.)

Creating a human soul is the only real creativity there is, and that is when you have consciously chosen the decision and the ideas of which you’re going to live by, and this would be one of them, and I can’t afford emotions.

I think that’s almost be the foundation of creating a soul, ok? You know you don’t have souls to begin with, you just got some reactions. So if you build a frame of reference yourself, and I think almost the first fundamental in that frame of reference would be that I simply cannot afford emotions. Then we can put a whole bunch of things on it. But without that, it would just keep blowing up anyway--no matter what you put together. Ok? Another question or comment?

You got anything Mary?

(I used to be involved in some of those, but I’m not now.)

Well, that’s good, you don’t need to. Do you get along a lot better without them? I think I’ve covered a lot of good material;and maybe it’s condensed form, but if you listen and use it, it will be extremely worthwhile. It doesn’t have to be so much quantity as it does the quality of it, and I think the quality is excellent today, if I do say so. Ok, call it a day.