School Talk 59 - Traps

(Attention inward)
Motion reaction or response

We are going to talk today about traps. It seems that most everybody can manage to get themselves in a trap when they start studying……not i’s are real good at setting traps and hypnotizing us. They do their job well; and so they get people caught up.

So the first one we’ll talk about of one of these little traps occurs when one has begun self knowing. We say to observe “self”. I have mentioned, which nobody seems to notice, that two to three months is plenty of time to observe and see the fallacy of the not I’s ability to hypnotize us because the not i’s are going to go on constantly—but we can reach a place where they don’t control our actions. So in two to three months, you ought to be well aware of how they operate.

Now if you keep it on past that, all you do is get ingrown attention. Ingrown attention means you become the only person you ever think of--the only person you ever see--the only person you ever consider has a feeling-- the only person that needs anything is Number 1. And, oh man, does that get tangled up and the not i’s use that opportunity and say, “Goody, goody, we got him.” “We don’t care how much he reads and how much he talks, and how much he thinks from now on; we got him because he’s totally involved with self now.”

So, possibly if you ever looked around and noticed a wee bit that all your senses are directed outwardly except the brain. You see to the outside. You don’t see the back of your head—thank goodness. You don’t taste your mouth--you taste things you put in it. You don’t smell yourself--you smell other things out there. That’s why people can have B.O. (body odor) and have to be reminded of it by advertising. They never know it. You can go on checking it out. When you touch something, you don’t feel your own, you feel the table. You feel the pencil or whatever you’re touching. You don’t feel your bones. And when you hear, you don’t hear your blood rushing through your head very often unless you happen to be far out in the woods on a lake, and sometimes it gets quiet enough so you can hear it—but very seldom. Most of the time you hear sounds of airplanes, automobiles, people, music, whatever, and most people are certain that most of the time they are bombarded with sound of some sort or other. So if you notice that all the senses are directed outwardly except pain.

Pain you have on the inside. It’s not on the outside. Very few of us are capable of feeling other people’s pain, and it’s not a blessing when you can. So you can feel emotional pain. So basically, when you have pain, it tells you something is a little haywire. Some adaptation or more likely something’s going on that you could get away from. So whenever you have inner misery, pain, much as anger, guilt, fear, insecurity, etc, it only tells you that you’ve got your attention turned inwardly. You’re picking up sensations in there that you really don’t have to have.

If you’re attention is turned outwardly, you don’t have any psychological pain. Now if you’re attention is turned inwardly, you have great gobs of it. If you’re attention is turned outward, you can still have a physical pain. If you touch something hot, it will burn. If you get out in a very cold weather here in Scottsdale, you will fell chilly, right David?

(Yes sir.)

You can always feel the physical pain. Stump your toe and break your toes and break your toenails or bend them back upward or something, you feel that physical pain which alerts you to physical danger; but you don’t have to have internal psychological misery--that is the most common thing I hear of.

Most of you know that I’m on the phone daily with calls from everywhere. Now I hear enough about the physical pains from around over the country. I could tell you about everybody’s physical pain from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but its minor compared to the agony of what I hear about the internal turmoil of anger, guilt, fear and insecurity.

Today I’ve had emotional pain from Eastern Europe, Central Europe and the United States. I haven’t missed too many states so far today. Some of them haven’t reported in. I’ve been from Alaska to Mexico. Now all these are internal misery because one’s attention is on self. “He didn’t treat me right--so now I have a miserable pain.” “I have an ideal of how you ought to treat me.” “You should give me nothing but pats on the back and tell me how wonderful I am and how sweet and how delightful I am and how you couldn’t exist without me, and all that good jazz.” And that usually wasn’t enough; or if I have my attention turned inwardly real well, I say they were just doing that to make me feel real good.

But we rarely attribute other people to have any physical or emotional pain. I’m the only one that has all this. We have people who call about how terrible they are feeling; and we talk to them about the people they are associating with that’s involved in it; and it’s unbelievable to them that other person has any feelings--other people are just like that steel box sitting there.

They don’t have any feeling anymore than that. Now they’re functioning a little bit, but they don’t have any feeling. Now they can find fault with the behavior of other people quite well because if they are not doing something that makes me feel wonderful, it must be something they’re doing that’s resulting in me not feeling wonderful. So you don’t talk right, or you talk too much or you don’t talk enough. You have the wrong expression on your face, or you know a whole jillion of other things--you can observe what all you can find fault about. You comb your hair and part it on the wrong side, or you frizz it, or you don’t frizz it. You wear clothes that are too big for you, or you wear clothes that are too little for you. You don’t say the right things, or you do say things that would just as well be left unsaid.

Now if you’re attention is totally upon self, you attribute nobody else having any taste, any feeling, anything other than that they’re a mechanical thing out there walking around.

Now then, of course, we don’t come up very much with how we’re going to establish a harmonious mood. We don’t do much to make a contribution. Why should I contribute to those people that don’t have any feelings, any thoughts? They are just mechanical monsters. Why, you know, I don’t go down the street trying to make the cars parked on the curb feel better—hardly ever dust them off, do you? Just don’t bother with them because they’re motors, they’re machines. They don’t have any feeling. They don’t’ have any thoughts. They don’t have any behavior. They’re just sitting there—until somebody makes them go.

Now if I see all people as something—if I see them at all—they’re just machines out there. But the one that’s really important is me—my feelings, my thoughts, my income, my situation—my everything else.

Now having been working with people for a number of years, I can assure you that everybody out there that you see has feelings. They have emotions. They probably have problems that they see as problems anyway. They’re probably all doing the best they know how to do with what light they have.

And you can’t expect anybody to have any more light than they’re already got—any more than if you’re in a dark room and the only thing you got is a gopher match. Well then, that’s how much light you got when you strike it—you don’t have enough to turn on the big wattage to see and understand more of what’s going on. So knowing about “self” is one thing. To know about it very quickly is to check up on it, and I would say two months, three months is a plenty of time to get acquainted with the not i’s. I can get acquainted with everybody around me in that length of time and these not i’s are inside—they’re with me 24 hours a day. So certainly we can get acquainted with them, and we can begin to recognize and devalue them.

Now somebody asked me how do you know it was a not I or, “How do you know that wasn’t a not I talking?” A not I always says derogatory things. Now repeat that three or four times to yourself. Not i’s always say derogatory things. Now you remember that we have a little thing called the picture of man which I consider the most valuable picture around. In that picture we see a not I that tells “the whole purpose of living is to be non-disturbed”—but that’s just a conditioned purpose--that’s not really the not i.

The first not I says that the way to get things is to complain. Now you don’t have to listen to long to that not I before you observe yourself complaining. You don’t have to listen too long before you hear other people complain, right? Just not hard at all. Now if I complain about—say I complain about Bonnie. I am complaining, period, because she’s not making me feel wonderful at this moment. She’s sitting there making somebody else feel good, or she’s worrying about her own feelings. If I look somewhere’s else, I can always see that there is a complaint going on. If I find fault with anything, I’m complaining about it, is that right? If I find fault with the weather, I’m complaining about it. If I find fault with anybody’s red sweater over there, I’m complaining about it, you know. If I complain because somebody doesn’t talk to me, I’m complaining. If I find fault with a person for being too skinny, too fat, or any other thing, I’m finding fault with them. If I do it about me, I’m finding fault. I don’t know how to put a person together. I don’t know how we’re supposed to look. I think the way they are is all right with me. I haven’t figured out if I put two heads on anybody or another arm—I’ve had times I wished I had another one for a minute or two—but just for a minute or two. So any complaining or judging is faultfinding. That’s old Number 1 decision in the picture of man that says “It’s important to be non-disturbed and the way to gain it is to complain.” So when I’m faultfinding or judging, I am complaining, and it goes on about anywhere I am.

Now I don’t care how much other people complain, I’m only interested in me. If I’m faultfinding with somebody, I’m complaining about them--is that simple enough to see. So a not I is always derogatory. It’s finding fault, judging them as being bad or wrong and any number of adjectives.

The second one is “I’ve got to stick up for my rights.” Now if I’m sticking up for my rights, I’m complaining because I don’t have my rights. I’m faultfinding. I’m saying that it’s bad. It’s a derogatory statement that I don’t have my rights. Now I have never figured out what our rights are. I don’t think we have a one in spite of what I hear frequently said that everybody has rights to do about anything they please. Is that about what you read every day? So one of the ways they use is to get other people to join with them. This morning I saw in the paper that they’re trying to get a rights movement for smokers to smoke wherever they jolly-well please. David, you want to join? Huh? You want to join?

(Sure.)

So you see, we can go out there and have a group of it. But right now, you are decidedly looked down on if you should have a cigarette, much less if you smoke it—just having it alone will get you some pretty derogatory looks and comments. So again, it’s derogatory, ok?

The next one over here is we got to please everybody. Now I’m saying you’re very hard to please, and it’s necessary or you will cause me pain with disapproval or whatever. So I must please you. Now if I have that, am I finding fault? Is it a derogatory statement? I’m saying you’re hard to please, and I got to go out of my way to please you; and if I don’t, you’re going to cause me untold agony. So again, t’s derogatory.

Next one says “believe and do as you’re told by your authorities”. Now obviously the authorities are extremely demanding. They want more than they’re entitled to and far more than there is any reason for me to do. So anytime we are maintaining that we have to do what the authority says, we are stating a derogatory statement.

Next one says, I must improve myself. Now if I say I need to be improved, it’s a derogatory statement about me as I am at this moment, is that right? I’m in a bad way—I just don’t measure up to my ideal, and I need to be improved. Now that’s a derogatory statement.

The next one over here is obviously pretty derogatory. It says, “If you, and she, and it, and them, would all be and do what I think is right or what I want, then I wouldn’t be having all this trouble--in other words blaming. So all blaming, of course, is derogatory, is that right? I’m derogatory—I’m making a derogatory statement about something whether it’s the weather or it’s people or situations or the government—and all the other things. I’m having something to lay on it, is that right?

Now how long does it take you to hear a derogatory statement silently in your head or out? I find it didn’t take very long because that’s basically everything that’s going through there. You don’t have to catch something like hunting up a fox in a hole. It’s not something hard to catch. It’s being laid out there in front anywhere you want to look, is that right—they’re there.

So now after a couple of months of that, we can say I finally know about that. I can turn my attention outwardly. When we turn our attention outwardly, we can begin to put forth a bit of effort to make all those other people out there feel a wee bit better. If everybody in this room is feeling real good, it’s pretty nice, is that right? I’d have a hard time saying “aaaahhh” if everybody in here is feeling good, because a good mood is highly contagious, just like feeling “grumpy” is.

Now if you are in a room full of “grumpy” people, you’ll find that it’s a little difficult to raise the mood level, but at that moment I can decide that I have the conscious ability to raise the mood--none of the rest of the people are being conscious if they’re going to keep they’re mood down.

So consciously I can raise the mood for the whole room. But even unconsciously—if you begin to raise the mood--a whole roomful can raise those other few people. So if the world is not like you want it today; and I do read lots of things that I think most people have decided the world is going to Hades in a hand, thereby picturing an illusion that they are worse off.

So let’s raise the mood to see how far I can reach out. Now I know a few people. You know a few people. Everybody else knows a few people; and if every one of us was in the mood raising business today—and that’s a pretty good business to be in –I wonder how far out it could go and what effect it would have? It doesn’t sound like much; but if you were just raising the mood a notch of everybody you came in contact with today, enough of it is going to run over--then they, possibly, will raise the mood a little bit of the next person they meet. Can you see that it wouldn’t take too long for it to cover the whole world? Where does it start—with two or three people raising the mood?

Now you can do it whether you’re running a business, or whether you work for someone else or even if you are staying home by yourself. Wherever you are, it’s nicer if the mood is up—even if you’re at home by yourself—have you ever tried that? It’s an interesting and experiment of value.

(Precisely)

Precisely. If you’re driving in your car by yourself on the street, isn’t it nicer to have your mood up, that it is wondering where that “plough jockey” came from. That guy must have got his license in a crap game, blap, blap, blap. What are they all doing out here in the road. Don’t they know this is my road, and here they are on it? You know, you can scream and holler all you want to, but you can sit there and have a good time watching everybody make things important. That is kind of interesting and you can think of it as entertainment. They all have clown suits on.

I have found that one of the favorite indoor sports of people is to make about everything important—no mater what it is.

Now I think it’s a great big lot of fun to sit around and watch people make things that are totally irrelevant important. A man called me from LA the other day and said, “I finally caught on to something, and I’m saving a lot of money.” “I used to go to the movies all the time to see a show.” “Now I just go stop on any corner, and there’s a far better one going on—much better show going on with no admission fee.”

So I don’t know if that’s good for the movie industry, but it was good for him. So here he was just having a ball because you can sit anywhere,, and if you do look at a movie, you see that what makes it a story is that practically all the people in it are making every insignificant thing important, and they have one person called the “hero” or the “heroine” that comes along and kind of sees through the whole show and gets it around to not being important. That’s the great Savior of the crowd—the hero of the show, the heroine or whatever it is. Now you can see that on any corner—only usually there’s nobody there to quit making it important. Just more and more people make more and more things important, and it is funny! That alone can get your mood up if you’re objective about it.

You know they have clowns in circuses; and the clown’s act is to make anything and everything extremely important--some totally irrelevant nothing. You know I saw a clown one time that had everybody—4,000 people, were just screaming with laughter. He was trying to pick up a broom, but he had his feet on the straw of the broom, and he’d try to pick it up and it’d flop back to the ground and all these good things. Finally he ran and grabbed it real hard and knocked himself over with it. So he was making picking up a broom important, and people were having fits of laughter all over the place.

Well, if you stop and look, I don’t imagine he was a lot different from most of the people on the street. The only thing different is that he had on the proper costume, and people knew they were supposed to laugh. I think if most everybody put on a clown suit and went down the street and did the usual thing they do without the clown suit, they, one day, would draw a big audience—might even be lots of coins and dollar bills thrown at them—who knows. They might think they were street entertainers. If you really want to do an experiment, think of the clown suit being on you.

[From Marsha…….When I was with a fellow student one time we started a little game. If he got in the car and had some seemingly important thing going on, he’d say, “Do you want to see how a really anxious person acts?” Then he’d proceed to act out how he was feeling. In truth it was a way to dis-identify from what the not i’s were laying on him. It also meant that we were going with the emotion instead of fighting or hiding it. After a few moments we both started laughing. It’s an excellent exercise to take the importance out of the emotion and hopefully out of the thing that is being made important.]

So possibly, as long as we mechanically choose to live by all the not i’s (which is to make everything important), maybe we should all buy a clown suit. It might be interesting. At least it would entertain a few other people, and who knows—it might raise their mood. They might start laughing.

There is considerable amount of literature today that says, if you laugh enough, you will heal most of you’re terrible diseases like cancer and all the other terrible degenerative conditions. If you laugh enough, it seems to get all right.

The man named Norman Cousins kind of brought that out to everybody’s attention that you better do a little laughing if you like to feel good. So maybe we could aid and abet in other people laughing a little bit now and then—wouldn’t hurt too much.

But you know while you’re laughing and putting on a show, you can’t keep your attention on yourself very well. Now if you’re a victim, it is very easy to keep 100% of your attention on yourself. When you feel victimized, put upon, mistreated, horribly put down then it is very automatic to be absorbed in the self, is that right? It’s automatic that your attention is totally on yourself.

Over the years, we’ve had a great number of people who are diagnosed as being psychotic. They call me frequently. We try to change addresses and phone numbers every once in a while to get away from some of it, but it doesn’t work very well. We still have a lot of people who are literally—I’m not talking about mild folks running on the street--I’m talking about incapacitated people that are considered to be psychotic. They have diagnoses like manic depressive. They have diagnoses as like schizophrenia, paranoia and what-have-you So every one of these people can only talk about one thing; and you cannot get one word in that they hear about anything else. It’s always number one. There’s not another subject that you can even remotely say to them. You can hear it bounce back in your ear—it will not go into their head—it bounces back. They got a total barrier to any information except about them.

Now I would say that anybody who comes to the extent that they’re attention is totally on themselves is at the moment having insanity—that’s a legal term, but you can call it psychotic. We’ll get along with both terms all right. If they can keep it in and out, in and out, in and out, they get along all right with it, but it’s like so many other things, they get addicted to paying total attention to themselves. They get addicted to the chemicals in their body when they feel victimized; and so they cave in to this whole situation so that now they’re a total psychotic. So we have many valuable reasons for turning our attention outwardly.

Number one, it’s a lot of fun. You see a lot of interesting things going on out there. You see a lot of interesting people. You see a lot of comedy. It is also saving your sanity. In other words, it’s a necessity. Like I tell people, you cannot afford emotions. You can’t afford insanity; and therefore, you cannot afford to have your attention on yourself all the time. Now let the rest of us pay attention to you. We haven’t totally ignored you yet. Everybody gets some attention. Now nobody gets enough, we know that. We’re well aware of that. But you get enough to get by on--let’s put it like that; and you can’t give yourself enough attention no matter how much you destroy yourself in the attempt--you still never have enough. It just doesn’t work.

Now long ago I had a letter come in from a woman who has been so intent upon self that she’s considered to be a chronic invalid. She stays in bed all the time. She hasn’t been out of her bedroom now probably in about seven or eight years. She wrote a letter full of venom from one end to the other. In fact, when I opened it up, it just dripped out—a little bit, you know. You wanted to shake the thing off a little bit. The thing that had happened that so ticked her off was a woman came to visit her. You know, you’re supposed to go visit the—what do you call ‘em?

(Shut in’s.)

Shut in’s. That’s a lovely word. You’re supposed to do your Christian duty and go visit the shut in’s.

Well, this nice lady came over to visit this “shut in”, and she had the audacity to play her own “organ recital” of which all her organs were messed up and how she’d been to the doctor and she had this ailment. You talk about somebody getting upset. The “shut in” was fit to be tied. She was thinking murderous thoughts. She was having every kind of anger—the very audacity that somebody came in and talked about themselves. You just can’t imagine how horrible a state of affairs this was. This lady came in and talked about her own ailments when she didn’t know anything about really being sick. Other people don’t have aches and pains and miseries—just her.

So she was just having a fit and I’m sure she got much worse. I’d say she might have gotten over being “shut in” and got herself to be in a hospital or nursing home because, I mean, she was wound up against this nice lady that came in and talked about herself. You see, you put two of these people that are totally involved in themselves together and you got a war. You got something violent ready to go. If you carry it out to a larger extent and you look at political systems, each one only thinks about themselves, they don’t consider how that other country over there is feeling and the people there and what’s going on. And if you insist enough only thinking of your own advantage, your own likes, your own dislikes, it’s a good way to start a war. And a great number of wars have been started that very way.

So I think it’s very interesting that every now and then we could—at least now and then—look over and see how all those other people feel, how they are justifying everything they do, or how they feel it’s right, proper and justifiable. It’s not real hard to see that everybody’s doing what they feel right, proper, or justifiable to them; and I could easily justify about everything I wanted to. If I want to do it, I can justify it, but that’s all it does.

Of course, the justification may break down every now and then, but I can still justify it. And it’s easy enough to see how other people are justifying everything they are doing, and that they would keep on doing it. And if we can turn around and get our attention off of Number 1 and get it turned outwardly, we find we have moved to a very wonderful world.

Now most of us have had the occasion of going on a vacation somewhere different that where we live—especially a foreign country and did you notice that you feel so good there. It’s because you’re looking around. It’s strange and it attracts your attention a bit, and you begin to feel wonderful. Maybe you want to move there.

That’s where a bunch of real estate people I know make excellent money in some little “off-beat” joint—it’s easier to sell to them when people come there, they went around and looked at it with new attention. And so they want to buy a place there—that is until they stay there four weeks, and then they get bored and want to sell it. So every house and every little cabin and everything else gets sold on an average of ten to twelve times a year. Can you imagine a more glorious place for a real estate person to be? He can afford to pay people’s trips to come there and sit around a day or two because they get this wonderful feeling of “look there.” “Look at those trees!” “Look at those cactus!’ “Look at that mountain up there!” “Look at that river!” And they got something to look at because it’s new and their attention is outward.

Now when we’re home, we don’t usually see anything, like on the way to work. You get in your car, and you get there. After work, you get in your car and you go home. You know the way there and you don’t see anything in between after the second week, you just go.

There’s a McDonalds on that corner and Wendy’s over there and Jack-in-the-box over there. There’s a Safeway on that corner and you know where they all are, but you never look at them. It’s just all there, and it’s taken for granted—it’s gone.

Now we also get to taking for granted the people we’re around. At first they’re a very delightful, beautiful, wonderful interesting people; and then after we get to know them for a while, they get very boring because you never see them anymore. You only see the picture you have of them like the landscape from here to the other side of town. You know where it all is. Do you know how many Circle K’s are between here and you’re house Randy?

(Not exactly.)

You couldn’t begin to tell. You just see them here and there…..(end of tape)

(beginning of other side)…but you don’t know where it is. Somebody asks you where they are and you don’t know. You see them every day and you come and you go, and you don’t really see anything. Now when you first come to Phoenix, Tina, there was lots of pretty things here wasn’t there?

(Beautiful.)

Now it’s ho hum. It looks like Houston now. Give you another week or two, you’ll know where the Circle K is, and just go bumbling along. That’s the way it is.

But we begin to take everything for granted outside of ourselves. So the self becomes the interesting and delightful '”what is” along with the “whole value”—the main concern is “How do I feel about this or that.” Someone called yesterday having a fit. He gets X number of dollars for certain tasks, but was told he had to attend a meeting or lose his income. He, under no uncertain terms, did not want to go to the meeting. I said “Well, you lose you’re income—which would you rather have no income or go to the meeting?” “What’s to your advantage?”

He said, “Well, I don’t give a damn, I’m not going to put up with that!”

Well, I talked for quite a while and finally the he said, “Well, whose side are you on.” I said common sense.

I’m not rattling out of school about this lack of common sense. I’ve had the same conversation about four different times this week and this is only Tuesday a little after noon--that because I’ve been asked to do something extra, I’m going to throw a fit, or I’m not going to do this or I’m not going to do that.

One person probably makes $70,000 a year, and one person is probably making $1,000 a month, but what’s the difference. It’s what you’re used to living on is how you get along, is that right? If you’re living on $70,000 it takes $70,000 to get by. If you’re getting by on $1,000, you get by on $1,000. A guy with $70,000 would think he’s totally broke—the other one thinks he’s doing pretty good. But for such insignificant little thing, this person is going to “stick up for my rights” with the unconscious goal that nobody’s going to tell me what to do.

You don’t have to do anything, but, you know, you might just lose you’re income. Now somebody tells me they will pay me X number of dollars to go to meetings—as much as I dislike meetings, I’ll be there. If it’s my livelihood, I’m going to be at that meeting, I don’t care what. I don’t care what they’re going to talk about; they can talk about the sex life of a red snail for all I care about. It’s totally irrelevant to me. I’ll sit there and listen. They’re paying me my income for the year; and if the meeting depends on it, I’ll be there. How about you David?

(Yes sir.)

I have rights that I can’t locate, but I do know what side the bread is buttered on. So why even go into all this emotional turmoil unless you simply like being emotional. You like being emotional?

(No.)

No getting doesn’t do anything except tears you up. But did you notice that an awful lot of people never go two hours without them. Now it tears them up along with everyone around them, but they’re hooked on it. It’s the only way they can get along is that they get a “new fix” every little bit.

It’s like when David and I go out—we don’t want to be without cigarettes. We want to find us some cigarettes around. Now when I have to talk all day without a break, I never think of a cigarette. So really, I’m not too addicted because once in a blue moon, I lie down and sleep six to eight hours, and you know something; I don’t need a cigarette all that time. Isn’t that funny. But through the day, if I had to go six hours without a cigarette, why man, I’d be searching everywhere--up in the attic or in every desk drawer and through my pockets. Would you do that David?

(Yes, I would.)

Isn’t that funny, we can sleep for several hours and never think of it, huh? If I go on an airplane; I can go to sleep from here to Dallas, doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t need a cigarette. Now isn’t that funny—how ridiculous can we get that we don’t need a cigarette for eight hours through the night, but I got to have two packs for that same eight hours through the day? Now, you know, when you look at that, you have to say, “Well, I’m addicted; but I’m not addicted while I’m sleeping.” I never did put that together. Now my friend, Glen Lewis, said he’d probably smoke in his sleep if someone would hold ‘em, but he never could get anybody around to do that for him, so he never did get hooked during that time of day.

I think I’ve talked long enough about the little traps we fall in of “getting all our attention on Number 1”. And the idea that it’s so much more fun to have your attention everywhere and anywhere else--but truly, it’s what we’re all doing here. Why, on this earth planet, we get divided up and have many of us instead of one is that there is plenty of interesting things out there. That’s the only way we learn something is to get it from another person--more than likely.

Incidentally, for those of you that come fairly often, I’d like to pass this along. The people that receive the tapes all over the country say you’re wonderful, so get to talking, ok? They like the questions and statements you provide very much. They never say anything about what I talk about, but they do like what you talk about, so let’s have it go, ok?

(Bob, it looks like through the day that’s all there is—just more and more traps?)

Well yeah, but you don’t have to step in it. You can be a fox. Through the ages, the fox has been considered to be the most difficult animal to catch in a trap. It’s also been used in all kinds of myths and fables and teaching stories as being the “sly” one.

So we can be a sly person and not get caught in a trap. A sly person learns how to do it—keep your attention on other people out there, they’re more fun anyway. So the sly person knows where to keep their attention—out—and you don’t get caught in a trap.

But if you check on “you” and feel of your own “self” for a little while, you’ll probably get caught in a trap. So be a sly person and stay out of the traps that say—the easiest way is you don’t take the “bait” of “feeling sorry for yourself”. When you bait a trap, you’re usually baiting it with a little reason to feel victimized, and if you walk by it or change the focus of your attention outward, you don’t get caught, ok? Thank you for that one.

Ok, who goes next here? Yes John?

(Bob, isn’t it true that if you’re not watching what’s going on inside you, then the not i’s going to take over and be running the show?)

I’m sorry, but the not I never has a chance. The not I is the one that takes a mind turned in upon itself and begins to use all sorts of ways to promote anger, guilt, fear and insecurity. If I am very interested out there, the not i' doesn’t have a chance because he can only take—so to speak—an idle mind, one that’s sitting here thinking about “me” Then it can begin to put “what if” this and “what if” that. But the not i' never has a chance as long as my attention is out there.

David, if you were busy drawing a design, we’ll say, for something, do you find your mind floating all over the place or are you very interested in that design—the not I doesn’t get a chance? So that’s the reason we say get interested in something—enthusiastic about something even if it’s just something we consider unimportant--whatever it may be, I don’t care. It could be race horses. It could be clowning. It could be boats. It can be growing flowers. It can be designing something.

If I am fairly interested in something outside myself, the not I is choked out. And that’s the best way in the world to get totally rid of them--keep yourself totally interested in something on the outside. Ok? It’s a good experiment to run. Don’t take my word for it, but try it. If you’re really interested in something, even if you went to a movie; and you’re really interested in the movie, getting involved in it, you don’t have a thought one—not i’s don’t get in.

Linda? (………that is unless the thing you’re interested in somehow triggers off your stuff and there you are.)

Only if you get identified with it--then you’re thinking about yourself, that’s right? Only when you’re interest is on yourself do you get all caught with the not i’s running the show. If you’re attention is turned outwardly, you’ll find the not i has far gone over yon hill—let’s say over Niagara Falls in a barrel somewhere.

Yes Perry. (Is this what I've heard you call in reference to expressing life?)

Yeah, you can express it if you’re not consumed with yourself. You can only do it when you’re out there looking and responding to life on a big scale, not within.

(That’s what I mean.)

Right on. You’re doing good so far. Let’s keep going here.

Anybody got a comment here? Well, Leland, we’ll go to you. Always Leland will have a comment.

(This connects to everything you’re talking about. We’ve understood that sin is to miss the mark.)

I heard that. I read it in a book too.

(What then is the mark?)

The mark is to be a fully conscious being which is aware of everything that’s going on around it and not get identified with it, ok. It is to be conscious instead of mechanically react. It is to be a responder that you can respond or that you can initiate, but you don’t react.

The mark is to be able to initiate and respond to stimuli you want to and not to the ones you don’t want to.

(By initiate, you mean to…)

Originate something new and different.

(Create?)

Creativity I guess would be one word along with it. You create something that ordinarily wouldn’t have been done. You see a relationship that nobody else has ever seen and put it to work, ok? If you’ve seen a relationship between one investment and another; and you could really see it working--then you could come up with something very few people have, is that right? Might make us all a dollar or get us to lose an extra one, I don’t know—but the experiment is to find out whether you’ve really seen a relationship or not. So this is the way initiation comes in is to originate something.

We sometimes talk about motion. Say you put everything in the idea of motion. So motion is the common denominator of living, is that right. I don’t know whether life moves or not, but living things all move, right?

Four responses to motion

1. So if a motion comes to you, there is four possible ways you can handle it. You can return it. In other words if something comes in to you, you can kick it back, is that right? And if you return it against somebody bigger than you are, you’re liable to get really plopped down, is that correct, huh? You can return.

2. Now you can hold it. That means you get resentful, but you don’t say a word about it--you get a deaf grin on your face and go on, huh? Is that right? You’ve done that, no doubt. Somebody has said some real obnoxious thing to you or bumped you and you’re first impulse is to knock him down, but you looked up and he was bigger than you are and you hold it. That’s very detrimental.
Now if somebody comes up and gives me a motion of a big hug—well, that’s fine--I’ll return that motion, and it’s quite all right. It’s quite different when somebody comes up and bops me, and I bop him back. Mama told me not to get in fights because it’s hard on my clothes, so I didn’t have too many fights. So I think one might want to think twice before I bop him back, ok? It’s not to my advantage to return It—it becomes a competition to see who’s the strongest physically.

Now I also wouldn’t want to hold it—but this is what most people in the world do with motion coming to them. To hold the motion isn’t to my advantage either because the energy not used has to be adapted to and then we have uncomfortable symptoms.

3. The other thing that you could possibly do is to, shall we say, destroy it. Now if somebody sends me a motion that I don’t want, I would prefer to destroy the motion.
Say somebody calls me a dirty name, huh? They say I am—what would be a good dirty name for me—a “dirty old man” or “quack” would be one of them. So I can destroy it by saying, “Yes, I’ve always prided myself on being the biggest “quack” and the most ‘believable quack’ in this part of the country.” Ok? Now what’s he going to say next? I’ve destroyed his whole pitch, you know. I’ve destroyed it. He has nothing else more to say. If I start defending myself, I set up a competition and he becomes more and more offensive in his derogatory opinion of me of the moment. [See “Motion” under “definitions” on the web page where he goes into other ways of destroying motion physically and with imagination.]

4. Now the other thing I can do is originate motion. That’s initiation. I can originate. So even if there is no earthly reason for it, I can originate a good mood. Nobody’s keeping me from doing that. I can originate making a little contribution to the group or to the people I’m around or to individuals, huh? So you might say I’ve made some little contribution to Life there. I’ve originated it. I just didn’t react mechanically because some guy did something and I said, “Me too, me too”. I went on to originate something else.

Now these are the four possible ways you can deal with motion.

Now if you’re attention is totally upon yourself, I’ll guarantee you I’ll use one or the other of those. I’ll guarantee you’ll either hold it or return it and both of those are kind of dangerous in most situations. Now if somebody comes up and gives you a big hug or a big wet kiss, return it as soon as possible—immediately, ok? But that’s not going to hurt you very much. But those are the only two options you have if you’re attention is on yourself is to return or hold.

If you’re attention is turned outwardly, you can destroy and originate motion all day long, ok? And that is possibly the “mark” we talk about—that you can be in charge of your own existence rather than you are subject to what happens out there.

Now a car sitting out here on the street is subject o whatever—if it rains it gets wet, huh?--it gets mud all over it. Somebody comes along and bangs into it, it bends the fender, and twists the bumper up and so forth—right? Some vandal comes along and throws a rock through the windshield, it just gets broke. The car cannot do anything about motion—only humans can. Animal can, of course, but they only do these first to two if you go out and observe. They can only do those two and their whole instinctive set up is to respond to the right time of the season. If the season is right, they build a nest, or they dig a tunnel, or they gather nuts, or they hide away and hibernate because that’s all already taken care of—they just have to return motion according to the external stimuli of the weather. We don’t have to do any one of those.

So a human being has a choice of what it does with motion if he’s conscious. If he is unconscious, he doesn’t have any more thing to do about it then to return or hold it in reaction.

If somebody’s sweet to you, all right—return or hold the motion. If they’re grumpy, all right, give them a hard way to go—fight—contend—but there’s very little destroying of motion in that case. When I come across a grumpy person I can see the course of giving them a hard way to so, and so why bother. I can destroy motion coming in all day long. You get so you finally just turn it off. It’s like getting a Plexiglas shield around you. So somebody’s grumping away. Somebody sits and “rah, rah, rah, rah,” just build you a Plexiglas shield and read a book, write an article and it just passes away in time.

But if you are all involved with the grump, you get caught in his stuff, don’t you see. And when you’re really doing some inner work, you get so that an awful lot of stuff just bounces off. It’s like water off a duck’s back so to speak. It just—psst—off there and it doesn’t bother you one way or the other.

So somebody is hollering or screaming and making big noise—what difference does it make, huh? Now there’s probably somebody will come along and say, “You’re cold as an old iceberg.” So I laugh about that too. I think it’s all right. But I don’t see any reason to get all upset.

Somebody came in the other day with all the tears and agony about the space shuttle blowing up. I said there was seven people just got killed out here on the west side of Phoenix in a car accident. That’s the one I’m worrying over. Now what difference does it make which seven people—those folks out there had people that loved them just as much as those people did up there, is that right? Now the same day, I read in the paper there was 32 people got killed in a bus crash down in South America. Nobody even bats an eye over that because they don’t know those “spic's” down there. You know, they don’t mean a thing to them, huh? They mean just as much to me as the other ones did, ok?

But you see we have our emotions pre-determined by the media and by others. Somebody else takes charge of our inner state—what do you do? You return. So you’re under a suggestion from anywhere, and everybody gets upset—so do you want to let those suggestions be in charge of how you feel? In that case, you don’t have a chance to destroy or originate. Sure, I don’t want to hear about anybody getting clobbered. So basically, when I hear about somebody getting clobbered, I destroy the motion, pray for the serenity of their souls and go on about my business. What else is there? I can’t get all involved in every little thing that everybody tells me to get upset about.

I asked if you can control everybody’s emotions in the country. I don’t want to. I’d rather destroy motion and create the kind I want rather than to just react to unpleasant motions coming into me or holding it for a given length of time—it’s usually something over a week. Then they come up with a new one.

You can hold one emotion for approximately a week, ok? All right next comment, question. Who’s got one around here? We see what you can do with motion here. It’s a good one to know about. I prefer to be in a position of destroying and originating motion. That way I won’t get caught too often.

So somebody comes along and says, “I’m rejecting you.” Fine, who cares? I’m not going to go commit suicide. I know all sorts of people who do themselves in because somebody rejects them and in reality they didn’t even like. It doesn’t have to be somebody they cared anything about; they just can’t stand rejection, huh?

I know a guy that mistreats girls all over the place—not one—whole slews of them. He was complaining about one saying, “Get her gone, Bob.” Well, she rejected him last week, so everything else is stopped. All the rest of them are dropped until he gets that one back in the “fold” again.

Rejection is a very expensive thing to some people, you know. So who cares about that? If somebody wants to reject me, that is just one less that’s around to bother with, ok? Reject me? Fine—I’ve been rejected by people that had better taste than they did, right?

Ok, next comment, next question. Yes George.

(Holding motion—would that be the same thing as mobilized and unreleased energy.)

Well, that’s just one way of saying it, yes; but also it’s immobilized. You’re holding motion—it’s holding it all in; and you know most people only have two alternatives—hold it in, which is destructive or return it, which is also destructive. So you either hold it in, or you go out and raise hell. Which one do you want to do? It makes no difference. Usually the person does one or the other because they feel that is the only option they have.

Somebody calls up and says so and so said something terrible to them. I say, so what. Go find somebody else to go talk to. Well, you mean I should go hit him. No, I didn’t say anything like that—I didn’t say shoot him or sue him or anything else. You see, most people only use the option of holding or returning motion. They never dreamed that they could destroy motion—it takes all of his value, all of his punch out, and then you can go and originate a brand new motion all on your own because you’re not carrying around all this other stuff, see?

Practically the only alternative most people that haven’t had time to study—including a lot of those that have studied—the only alternative they know is to hold or return motion—both of which are deadly, ok?

(Synonyms for that would be fight or flight.)

That’s correct.

(Holding would be fleeing and returning would be fighting.)

Right, that’s correct—flight or fight syndrome and that’s about all most people know how to do; but that’s considered to be physical and we’re putting holding motion in the psychological realm, ok? It’s still the same thing. Its psychological fight or run—and either one of them is deadly.

So you can’t run long enough that you finally don’t get tired and then they catch up with you, and you can’t fight so long that they finally don’t overpower you, ok.

All right—one time, let’s go, say a word.

(It’s clear, Bob, that the aim of our spiritual work is not to live forever in one physical body--so that must not be what eternal life is.)

That’s correct.

(So the question is—what is it?)

What is eternal life? Well, you tell me what the eternal is, and I’ll tell you what the eternal life does, ok? I’ll throw one half of it back to you.

(Well, the eternal part would be a quality of clarity as I would understand it. It would be the absence of…)

Confusion.

(Confusion, guilt, fear.)

So eternal life is life without all that junk, ok. So you told me yourself, did you not?

All right dear ones; Have a lovely afternoon. We have enjoyed you being here and thank you for you’re input and you’re contributions.

Have fun and I’ll see you.