School Talk 16 - Expectations

Emotions of: anger, guilt, fear and insecurity
Difference between feelings and emotions
A safety valve in dealing with others
(Audience Participation in parenthesis)

We said we would talk about expectations today. I usually let the major part of phone calls through the week determine what I'm going to talk about on Friday. This week has been heavy on people expectant.

Now most expectations of dealing with mechanical things like turning on lights and turning off lights, pushing the dishwasher and so forth-our expectations are reasonably all right because it's in what can be reasonably depended upon. Now, not always does the car start. Sometimes the battery is dead, right? But most of the time, all the expectations we have about mechanical things work.

But when we start to put expectations on human situations, the expectations become in doubt, very quickly, because the other person may have a totally different viewpoint-may have something entirely different. May not be thinking about it -- what-have-you.

I just finished talking a little while ago to a person over on the east coast that had a piece of s surgery done recently; and the expectation was that it would be utterly beautiful and totally all right by the next morning; however, of course, surgery is a trauma and does require a length of time to repair. So this person is having all sorts of fits, blaming everything in sight.

So an expectation starts off;

1. an ideal in the person
2. of "what ought to be"
3. that it will be totally non-disturbing to me
4. or that it will give me my way right now.

It's usually an expectation, we would say, based on an ideal; and when that happens, usually the first thing we have is a disappointment. Now most people don't handle disappointments too well. They immediately feel hurt when they're disappointed; and when they feel hurt, they look for blame. And when they look for blame, they usually find it.

NOW WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A PROCESS THAT TAKES A MICROSECOND TO HAPPEN IN THE MIND; AND SO NOBODY NOTICES IT BECAUSE ANYTHING THAT GOES BY THAT FAST, WE DON'T SEE IT; BUT IF WE COULD SLOW IT DOWN, WE WOULD SEE THAT THIS IS THE SEQUENCE. And expectation based on an "ideal" frequently leads to disappointment. Disappointment is followed immediately by hurt, and hurt is followed by looking for blame. Now all this, we said, happens in a microsecond. Now when we look for blame, we find it almost instantly. If it was somebody else other than #1, you can feel ANGRY. Now an emotion has arisen very quickly and the whole body is filled with adrenalin, thyroxin, every thing to fight with-mayhem at least, if not murder on the person blamed.

If I should find that maybe I did something a little squirrely, then I would feel GUILTY, and I would begin to pick on me. I don't know what guilt is-somewhat of an anger at self.

Now we have two sides to the self as we all know; [link to picture of man] and so one side is blaming the other one for having done it; and if we can't find what to blame it on immediately, we experience FEAR.

Fear is a very powerful emotion, which loads the body down with tremendous things. One of our very dear friends recently had a fear episode; and no matter how much I talked or how much I explained that no fear was necessary in the situation, the person continued with the fear.

He felt I was just trying to pacify him. The not "I's" in him were obviously saying, "Well, he was trying to pacify you because you're dying and you're gonna die real quick"; and "He's just trying to keep you from knowing how suddenly you're gonna die."

Well, we tried a little stunt. I got away from him and talked to somebody else so he could still overhear. When he overheard me describing the situation, then he didn't feel so frightened anymore because now he believed everything would be all right--since I was telling the other person the truth. He didn't think I would possibly tell him the truth-everybody knows I lie all the time; but, you know, that was the end of the fear. He thought that I just try to pamper people and try to keep them good-so he couldn't believe that. But when it was overheard, it was accepted--and the change was quite dramatic in just a matter of hours because when the fears are let go, it begins to do.

Fear is a very powerful emotion and emotions all are damaging whether it's anger, guilt or fear. Now when you've been around this way a good many times, the person begins to feel very INSECURE. When you have found what or who to blame somebody else, and you can't do much about it-only think bad thoughts, and when you feel guilty and you can't do anything about it except hopefully that the good Lord will forget it, or that you begin to have all these horrible fears that go on and on, and on, day and night and PANIC.

A person called us a little while ago from the east coast and was in a horrible state of fear that obviously the results from the surgery that had been performed would never be all right; and the doctor was beyond suing because everybody said he did a good job except the person who did the calling and so forth and so on. And so always the person begins to have the powerful sense of INSECURITY. So now, we maintain that all feelings of anger, guilt and fear and insecurity are what we would call emotions-the rest of the things we call feelings. Now, of course, when we used those four words, we didn't go through all their synonyms. You could put in a few thousand more like JEALOUSY and like WORRY and, you know some people "just think about things a lot". One man told me he didn't worry hardly at all, but he sure did think about things a lot.

And so all of these things would still be anger, guilt, fear, and insecurity, except that they have many, many synonyms which we experience. Of course, "I never get angry"-"I have righteous indignations" and things like that. "I don't feel insecure, it's just that it is a dangerous world we live in; and so you have to take it serious, and you can't just get by with it".

But immediately when we have those; the body, of course, is immediately loaded with all the hormones that it takes to run or fight-adrenalin, thyroxin, pituitary extract, a big gob of sugar shot out of the liver to give quick energy; and the whole process goes on in high speed and there's not a thing in the world, at that moment, to do--so that we can burn all that mobilized and unreleased energy up immediately. Now, all that unreleased energy is just hung up there.

Two forms of Adaptation
Adaptation within

Now when we have a lot of mobilized and unreleased energy, that requires adaptation. Adaptation takes place in two different forms-good people hold it in, and so the body has to begin to do the adaptation. X puts a bunch of cells to doing something they don't ordinarily do in order to use up the tremendous amounts of energy that was mobilized and not used; and of course, that produces an unusual sensation. Now unusual sensations we usually refer to as pain; and of course, that is the first symptom we have. That pain we feel more than we do the unusual activity in the cells, but you now have two symptoms-one you have unusual cellular activity in the body and the other one, you have some decided discomfort.

Now obviously we don't expect to feel that way, and so we immediately expect that it should go away immediately, especially if I take two aspirin and go to bed. That's the first order of business; and that didn't work because the mobilized energy wasn't used up. But now we develop the SENSE OF FEAR again. Now we got fear that it won't ever get well; and no doubt, I have nothing less than cancer--maybe it could be even something more serious you know; but at least I have cancer or something like that. And so then we go around the whole vicious cycle again and come back.

Well, this time it is more severe; and if we keep that cycle up over a period of time, finally it is necessary to have a change in tissue cells. They cannot continue indefinitely in unusual sensation without finally a change in the tissue cells. It either breaks down or is altered.

Now we have pathology. The doctor can look at it and say here it is--we can cut it out or what-have-you -- unless we require the whole head being taken off. We found you can't live without that, so obviously, when you can't pay the bill, you leave it on there and try to medicate it a bit; but still there is pathology--a change in the tissue cell--and now we have all kinds of things we can name it and get all sorts of terrible symptoms. We have a disease of one sort or another at this point. Now all the symptoms you've ever experienced physically was a change in sensation, a change first in the function of a cell or cells-the cells do something that they don't ordinarily do. It is a change or an alteration in function, then there's a change in sensation; and finally there's a change in the tissue cell; and can you conceive of any disorder that you could physically have (that had a physical body involved in) that wasn't a change in function, a change in sensation, finally a change in the tissue cell-there is no others.

Now, it's according to where it is and the degree of it as to the name it gets such as cancer, ulcers, etc.; and of course, there are books with great gobs of names in them. Most of us are fearful, and if we've even heard of one of them, we've had it, and we come up with it.

Adaptation without

Now the other way that we can adapt to the mobilized and unreleased energy is by unusual behavior. Now this used to be very uncommon; but as more of the human race feels liberated, the more common unusual behavior becomes. More people used to be considered "good" than they are today-today we're liberated. We don't have to be so "good". So now we can go do all sorts of unusual behavior. Unusual behavior can go from anywhere of throwing an anger fit--to throwing an emotion tantrum--to a kid holding his breath and beating his head on the floor-we can go the extreme route.

We all read about the man walked into a McDonalds and had a shooting spree; and it wound up with about thirty people dead, and more injured. Now that was unusual behavior. He was full of mobilized and unreleased energy; and he didn't have to be "good", so he could just go do whatever he needed to get to feeling good; and of course, he wound up totally non-disturbed at the end of it. I understand somebody put a bullet through him to stop him. But he was doing everything he could to get over his feeling of total frustration or whatever he was involved with that produced his anger, guilt, fear or insecurity or whatever level you might want to talk about-he was doing extreme unusual behavior.

Now that was an utter extreme I would say, but if we stop to look, most of us have been involved in some emotions in the last few weeks. I will be nice about it, I don't say in the last few days--I won't even say in the last few hours that we've had a little frustration somewhere and got a wee bit annoyed; so we sounded off a little bit here and there or another place? Did you get upset---maybe at work this week if something didn't go just right?

So we can be angry, or we can be very annoyed which is a small degree of anger; but nevertheless it's a form of trying to adapt to the feeling of disappointment, frustration or what-have-you in it. So we can be annoyed-that's one of the synonyms for anger, isn't it? It's a mild anger, I guess-something on that order.

So we could do this for as long as we want; but the point is, do we have to expect that the "ideal", or even a reasonable degree of it will exist wherever we show up? Now as long as we're dealing with people…….we have a sign on the wall in here that has a grown man sitting in a perambulator with a sign underneath that says, "The world is populated with infants, many of which have grown bodies and technical educations."

Now if we remember that, (it may sound like we're being very egotistical, but nevertheless) it's the greatest safety valve I know of. If I remember that when I look around, I think, "Well, they're going to behave like an infant"; and if an infant doesn't get his way, it's going to stomp it's feet and cry--it's going to do something right quick. If it can get out of doing it, it's not going to do it--it's going to follow the line of the least resistance, and expect to have its way at all times. And we find that people do that. So if you recognize that the world is populated with infants, many of which have grown bodies and technical educations, you don't expect to much out of them except what I refer to as second force. When things don't come out like I expect them to, that's second force applying itself around; and when we expect second force that way, then there is no reason to feel disappointed.

Now when we expect to meet infants then every now and then--not too frequently--but every now and then, I have a pleasant surprise. Somebody behaves like they were grown up in what they were doing; but have you ever got upset over having a pleasant surprise? Have you ever got upset over having a pleasant surprise John?

(Not at all.)

But you sure have been upset when your expectation was that they would behave like an adult, is that right?

(Yes.)

Ok, so it seems to be a rather a "safety valve", necessary in the present time, place, and circumstance, to keep one's attention as to what the world is populated with. Now you're not 100% correct; but when you're not, you have a pleasant surprise. And I sure do like those pleasant surprises. I'm not overloaded with them by any means--have to admit--I have just a reasonable number of them every week; but we do have some every week--that there is a pleasant surprise. Not every day by any means, because every day there is plenty of evidence that the world is populated with infants, many of which have grown bodies and technical educations; and that's not looking down on the person--it is seeing the simple fact that knowing about ourselves, and about the conditioning within ourselves and about what's going on in "self" is the best kept secret in the world. None of us know, so we react very violently; and we're not the only ones. The other people are not the only ones because we do it too-if we notice. Now as long as we can see that, we have a starting place to begin the task at first knowing ourselves, second of being aware of WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON. Then we can move onto self remembering and then that we could begin to practice it. If we begin to practice it, we will find that we can live without all this emotional turmoil that most people in the world are involved in.

Obviously I hear from a very small segment of the population; but the phone rings all day long and sometimes most of the night with people who are upset. As you go about you're everyday affairs, do you meet more people upset than you do serene and peaceful? How about you Mary?

(That's correct.)

So it's not because they are "bad people" or because they are "degenerate" or anything of the sort--it's because they've never had the remotest chance to find out WHAT'S GOING ON.

We put out a little piece of paper every week or so here that says, "What's going on here?" And very few people in the world have had a chance to see what's going on here. We put a little hint in there every now and then; and maybe one day we will make it more than a hint--we will be very blunt about it; but you can't just start off too suddenly with being very blunt or you alienate people because they don't like to think of themselves as not being totally conscious. But the fact is, we are conscious; but on a level of almost reaction-not of really seeing what's going on; and the reason we're all here is because we're trying to find out what's going on here. The more we can do that, the more we can see WHAT IS and when we can see "what is", the more we can take very decided steps to protect ourselves from the terrible side affects of emotions which makes all these adaptations necessary. If they're continued over a long enough time, they're fatal.

And so some of these days pretty soon, we're going to talk about how it would be to change enough that we wouldn't have those at all; and we might even see the body would regenerate, but today we'll stop off there.

I've talked more than long enough. Let's have some comments from our round table here? What about it Mary, you got anything to go on here?

(Humm.)

Humm, we'll be back in a minute. John, you got any? Everybody's been working on John to make him very grown up lately, and I'm very proud of him. He's probably making more effort at it than most of us do; and I'm very proud of John. He' showing me that he's grabbing on to it--very hard--and he's young enough that maybe he won't destroy himself before he gets around to really looking at it.

Tom, how about you?

(Well, I certainly have enough experience with…)

……..With emotions to know what comes out of them.

(But it still occurs.)

That's right. You, at least, begin to know what's going on a little, yet is it right that you can somewhat "take charge of it" so that you don't just totally disintegrate? And when you let it run wild, it scares the hell out of you?

(I know at home…)

It scares you.

(Very much so.)

Judy, what about you, you got any comments to add in here?

(Yes, all of it this week.)

You had it all?

(Yes, I had it all.)

Well, Dick was on vacation, so he had a good time; but did anything go haywire out in California, Dick?

(Everything goes haywire every day.)

Well, that's par for the course, but if you look at it, you can see you don't have to get all upset about it, is that right?

Mary, what's happening with you?

(I try to remember it, but I'll tell you one thing. I come to the classes and do a little reading-it's certainly helping me to be aware of things and trying to change--and all for the better.)

Trying to change to be a little more conscious of what's going on? And do you see that you don't have to get all upset about it, is that right?

(Right.)

So have you thought of it yet?

(Well, I just haven't been upset lately.)

Well good, I'm glad.

(I think the biggest thing is yesterday I saw, like you say, the "ideal" I expected and wanted which was definitely good common sense; but I still got upset.)

Right, and if all these people….

(………….And any fool would choose what I chose.)

Any joker that had good common sense would see in your way-anybody-everybody.

(It happened like that.)

Why sure, I don't care what it is. You thought, if anybody was anything except one of those "stupid B's"; why obviously, they would see it my way. Obviously, I have it correct--that's the only way to see it.

If I talk to a guy who's drunk, it's obvious he should be perfectly sane and sober and tell me what I want to hear, and do it the way it "should be done".

(Well, it was all for a good cause.)

Right! But you see it as he's just one of those "terrible people" that's just "bad", and of course,--in reaction--they accuse you of being "bad" because you didn't see it exactly like "they saw it" And do you know what they thought? The same thing--if you had any common sense, you'd see it "their way".

(But I was getting angry with the whole thing--really pissed off.)

What did that do for you?

(Well, at least I didn't hold it in.)

Well, you got it out and blew off. And you found a good excuse for it.

(He paid for it.)

I would imagine he paid a little bit for it because I'm sure he didn't get it all out --he's still grumping a half an hour later over it--or maybe even the next day a wee bit?

And probably if you thought about it--it's still digging around a little bit in you too, is that right

(Yes, it is.)

Ok, that kind of aptly covers what we talked about today about what goes on. We will have another conversation next Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm Have a real good evening.