Chapter 3
What Do We Believe About Life?
It is related that once upon a time a witch cast a spell on all the water in a certain village such that all who drank of it would be driven mad.
There was one man in the village -- which was quite isolated from the rest of the world -- who learned of the witch's intention.
He stored a great quantity of water in a special way that would protect it from the spell.
This man also warned everyone else in the village about what would soon take place.
He attempted to instruct them in the method that would protect a store of water from her spell.
But no one paid him any attention -- they all thought that he was being silly for believing in such nonsense.
Then, on a certain day, all the streams that ran through the village stopped running.
Since the villagers relied on the streams for their water, they quickly ran out of water.
When the last bit of water had been drunk, the streams began to run again.
The villagers were overjoyed, and rushed to drink.
About this time, the man came down from where he had stored his water to see what had happened.
Sure enough, he found that they were all talking, and apparently thinking, entirely differently than they had before.
But they didn't know it.
They had no memory of the way things were before, so they thought that the way they were thinking and acting now was perfectly sane.
When he tried to talk with them, he realized that they thought that he was the one who was crazy.
They either treated him with compassion or hostility, depending on their point of view.
But no one understood anything that he said or did.
At first he kept returning to his carefully hoarded water to drink, not wanting to join them in their madness.
But after a while, he started to feel lonely.
There was no one that he could talk to, or do anything with, because no one understood anything that he said or did.
Finally he decided that he could no longer bear the burden of living all alone, acting and thinking differently from everyone else.
So he drank the cursed water and became like everyone else in the village.
And he forgot all about his own special store of water.
And the others in the village welcomed him, as a madman who had somehow been miraculously restored to sanity.
Before we look any further at life's purpose, let's look at some beliefs we may already have about living, and see if we can determine whether they are true or not.
By looking at our beliefs, and finding out for ourself whether they are true, we begin to build a frame of reference that we can use to actually answer questions about living.
As we consider these beliefs and disbeliefs, we may see that they are obstructions to seeing what life is.
How can I possibly see a purpose for something, if I don't even know what it is?
It may be that by understanding life accurately and technically, we may find that life's purpose sort of pops out at us without any great work at answering that question.
Most of the work may be in preparing ourselves to be able to answer the question by working with -- while observing our daily living -- accurate descriptions of ourselves and our world.
There are four aspects of living that we have certain beliefs and feelings about that it would be interesting to understand as part of an adult's frame of reference rather than having ideas about them that are really beliefs and disbeliefs.
It may well be that what we already believe about these four aspects of living is simply wrong.
I am not saying that these are the only four misconceptions that we have about life.
It's just that these four misconceptions -- that most of us have -- create a frame of reference for experiencing and thinking about living that makes it almost impossible to understand life's purpose: because they make understanding life just about impossible.
And since almost everyone shares them, they are very difficult to see, because they seem to be everywhere that we look -- because we all agree to see life using these misconceptions as if they were facts.
Some of these four misconceptions are based on feelings that just about every human being experiences.
So of course, we had to come up with explanations for why we feel this way -- and the explanations are the misconceptions.
It is possible that these feelings are so common because they are about something real.
Maybe we have just never bothered to look beyond the explanations to discover the facts.
In this chapter we will not make much of an attempt to see what the truth is behind these misconceptions: that will be taken up primarily in chapter 5.
Right now, let's just see if we can look at the ideas themselves, and see if we can start to question whether our current explanations are true.
Now, of course, some of us may have already heard about these misconceptions.
So they will already have ideas about them that they may not have actually experienced for themselves, but that they have just heard about as ideas.
But, for now, we'll just list each individual misconception and investigate them afterwards to see if we truly understand or just believe.
It's easy to tell if they are still in the frame of reference as beliefs.
All we need to do is ask ourself while reading about them if we are still trying to live by the explanation given in the list no matter what thoughts we have on the subject.
Let's find out.
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We believe that the creation is finished: after all here it is and here we are in it, right?
And our idea of how creation happens is not based on experience, because we believe that there are only two forces required to create something: cause and effect.
Yet the information that comes from an intelligent investigation based on actual experience (such as from the study called physics) tells us that there are four forces that make the creation possible.
Just as the senses once misled humanity into believing that the world was flat, further investigation by intelligent inquiry suggested otherwise.
When some of us looked for a universal law that applied to all events, it was not found; but we did eventually find the four forces that are the implementation of that universal law, not the two forces that we would have expected.
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We have a feeling much of time that we are incomplete, that something vital is missing from our lives.
Most of us are not sure just what is missing, though, and the feeling is intermittent.
But we all know the story that explains it, without necessarily being true: its meaning, in other words.
So we spend our time looking for our ``other'' or ``better half,'' our ``soul mate,'' who will complete us.
Now if only we could just find the needle in a stack of hay with only 5½ billion stalks...
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We feel unreal, at least some of the time.
This sense of ourselves is very well covered up, and also doesn't happen all the time.
When we were young we felt powerless.
Now we look for ways to control our world, and ourselves -- so that we can overcome that feeling of powerlessness that still lives on in our inner world of feeling -- and stop feeling like a victim.
With enough power and control we would see our effect on the world: and then we could finally say with certainty that we are no longer a helpless infant who is the victim of self and others and circumstances.
For most of us, this search for the power to improve and control ourselves and our world completely obscures the sense of our own unreality, which we don't know how to deal with, anyway.
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We believe that humanity's -- mankind as a whole's -- evolution is over, or if it is continuing then it will be more of the same, not something radically different than physical evolution as we know it.
Some of us speculate that there is a mental or spiritual evolution that is still in process, but we don't really know anything about it for sure.
Still others of us believe that our job is to create a pleasant and harmonious world for human beings to live in as comfortably as possible, for the greater good of all humanity.
According to this belief, we must continue expanding and improving upon our technical knowledge about the supposedly created world (the physical world) that we live in -- and ourselves -- so that we can build this perfect new world order.
Then each must simply conform to the utopian ideal, be good little consumers and producers in the perfectly organized society; and then humanity will live happily ever after.
This satisfies the feeling that we all have to some degree or other that there is some big task that each of us should be about -- except that we don't know what it is, exactly.
It is impossible to understand creation without an understanding of the forces of creation.
Before we can really understand anything that is created, or being created, we must know how these forces of creation work in the realm of human action.
So let's first consider the idea that there are two forces of creation, and see if it makes any sense as an idea; see if it matches reality as we experience it.
In this physical world, anything that does any work at all must be balanced, or it is destroyed.
This is easy to see in machines, because they are not self-repairing like living beings are: they do not adapt to change or damage.
If a wheel on your car becomes unbalanced, the tire no longer wears evenly.
Eventually, the wear from normal use becomes so excessive in some spots that the tire can spring a leak even though it looks and is perfectly okay everywhere else.
When one wheel is unbalanced, the entire car tends to be hard to brake and steer.
The car seems to want to veer one way or another, or one wheel will brake better than another.
Then other parts of the car to start to wear excessively; and eventually you may have some very costly repairs to make just because a wheel became unbalanced.
This is a simple example of a very pervasive fact.
The same concept can be applied to living bodies: when the forces that keep them working properly become out of balance, they begin to show signs of damage: of being destroyed.
The difference is that they adapt to the destruction and begin to repair the damage.
Yet we do not really know what it means for a human body to be in balance.
So we consider the signs of a body that is out of balance to be a disease: the symptom of being out of balance is considered the problem itself.
And the symptoms are treated -- and somehow the body is balanced again, even though we do not know how -- and we say that we understand what happened as cause and effect.
Consider cause and effect, and imagine how difficult it would be to keep the universe going if it were only made up of two forces!
Every time something changed, the other force that it was balanced with would have to compensate exactly to move things back into balance.
Otherwise, the entire universe would eventually destroy itself because one little thing became out of balance, and pushed something else out of balance, and pushed another thing out, which eventually would put the whole thing out of balance; and that would be it.
Universal Law -- Balance using Four Forces
The simplest design that allows for dynamic balancing uses four forces as shown in above.
This design allows any of the four to change, and any one or more of the other three forces can shift to compensate.
Or two forces can change together in an unbalanced way, yet either one or both of the other two can shift to compensate and move things back into balance.
You get the point.
This is called Universal Law.
In English, this Law can be called, simply, Balance.
In other words, all things are accomplished by one unbreakable, constant, natural Law -- Universal Law -- which always brings everything back towards Balance by using four forces in relationship.
All these forces are in relationship with other groups of four forces -- because everything that is created is made up of these four forces -- and all created physical objects are in relationship with other created physical objects or processes in creation.
And each created object is made up of conglomerations of smaller creations that are also each made from these four forces.
And so on.
So each time a force acts in one set of relationships that make up a creation, the action affects a force in some other creation that it is in relationship with, and there is a compensatory change which affects another force -- and it gets quite complicated doesn't it?
Out of this simple idea a very complex universe has been designed and is maintained in a state close enough to (or always in motion towards) Balance that things work quite nicely.
This would be much more difficult (more likely impossible) if there were only two forces, wouldn't it?
Out of ignorance (we have never been taught about Universal Law) we simply don't pay attention to these forces.
We have made up an explanation called cause and effect to try and explain what we experience.
But none of these four forces can be called the cause nor the effect.
So we can't see how to explain the fact that a cause doesn't always have the same effect.
Certain people who are studying these forces on a very small scale are having a tremendous difficulty with this idea, right now as you read this.
Everything that happens in the physical universe is brought about as the action of Universal Law.
So with some effort, we can see and understand everything that happens as the action of these four forces.
We have a tremendously difficult time dealing with the way that these forces work in our daily lives, because we believe in cause and effect.
| Definitions
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| First Force: Initiative
Before I can make anything, or do anything, I first picture in the mind what I want to be the result.
Then I supply first force to start the process -- I take an action, or put some effort into motion, that I believe is appropriate for the desired result -- based on my understanding and frame of reference.
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| Second Force: Resistance
Second force is supplied for me, from without, by the action of Universal Law.
Simply stated, it is some force that is equal and opposite to the first force, the initiative.
At this point in time, nothing is created, and it appears as though it will never come to be.
Second force can be either active or passive.
Active resistance works against the initiative or first force.
Passive second force counters first force simply by being there, as an event over which I have no control.
Natural second force can always be worked with.
All growth and development comes from working with second force.
Much of our second force comes from within as: self doubts; thinking; shoulds and should nots; good and bad; right and wrong; ideals and ideas about self and others; trying to figure out how to stop second force; etc.
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| Third Force: Form
After first and second force have interacted for a period of time (how much time depends on many, many factors), a third force comes into existence: form.
Without a form, nothing else can take place.
Third force is always a result of the interaction of the first two forces.
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| Fourth Force: Result
After the first three forces have interacted for a period of time, a fourth force comes into existence: result.
This force is what I do with the form, the result; and (hopefully) is what I had in mind all along.
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A description of the four forces in the realm of action is not the same as a description of these four forces would be on other levels.
And the words we are using to describe the forces are imprecise, because they are in English.
But they do get the idea across.
Each reader must experiment with them to find out for themselves what these forces are, beyond the description in words.
Because we do not understand these four forces, we try to call first force cause and fourth force effect.
We do not pay any attention to the other, equally necessary, two forces: resistance and form.
Yet everything that has ever been created or is being created is made up of these four forces: and none of them are truly cause or effect.
You see, if we truly consider the cause of anything, we quickly discover that we must explain the entire universe before the cause of one simple event can be discovered.
It's like a child's endless why questions -- every cause asks the question: what caused that?
Eventually we find that there is only one cause.
Today we believe that the cause of everything may have been a big explosion that took place a very long time ago.
And everything since then has been effect, if we believe in cause and effect.
There are certain creations where seeing these four forces is easy: molded objects come to mind.
If you wanted to make a vase by using a mold, you would first make the mold (this would entail its own set of four forces, even though it is part of the first force in making a vase).
This would be part of the first force.
Then you would make some liquid that, when cooled, would be a solid (like plastic or metal or glass).
This is still part of the first force.
The you pour the liquid into the mold.
Now you have both first and second force.
First force is the mold, the liquid, and the liquid poured into the mold.
The mold and gravity and cooling are second force.
Without second force, the vase would never acquire a form or shape, would it?
You would just have a blob of liquid that would never even form into a solid.
As the liquid cools, it takes on the shape of the mold, and with time you have the form, which is the vase.
The you remove the mold (continuing the initiative while working with the resistance) and do whatever you wanted to do with the vase: sell it; put flowers in it; display it for its beauty; whatever you had in mind when you decided to make a vase.
This is fourth force: the result of all your labors, and the other three forces.
There would be no creation without all these four forces.
But now fourth force has probably become a new first force as well.
If you wanted to display the vase for its beauty, that is now the first force for something else: perhaps wanting recognition and appreciation for the beauty of the vase.
And there will be plenty of second force to that: some others will like it and others won't; it may be bumped into and ``destroyed'' (changing its second, third and fourth forces); and so on.
So the third and fourth forces in the vase become first force in some other creation.
If someone lives with you who doesn't like the vase, then your fourth force has become their second force: they would like to get rid of it and you want to keep it around.
So we can begin to see how complex these relationships of forces become in the physical universe.
When we look at the universe, we can see that it is still in the process of creation, that is, it has not stabilized into one vast, unchanging force.
We believe that to be the eventual outcome of this story that we are still smack dab in the middle of; and have even given it a name: entropy.
However, our current predictions have been made without an understanding of Universal Law, because we have not yet been able to put that Universal Law into mathematics.
So our vision of the story itself is still incomplete: making it very hard to predict the outcome.
The forces of creation are still quite active if we take a look; the creation is still in process -- the story is not over yet -- the final fourth force (if there is such a thing) is not here yet.
Each of us uses these four forces all the time, whether we are aware of them or not.
| Experiment -- Balance Using Four Forces of Creation |
Place a seed in a glass jar on top of some absorbent material like cotton.
Punch holes in the jar's lid so it can get air, but not lose too much water.
Put water in the material at the bottom of the jar.
Leave it where it gets sunlight for a period of time, keeping the seed moist and warm but not hot.
Questions to Consider:
What happens to a seed with initiative (first force supplied by the presence of the seed's requirements and its own biological imperative to grow) -- but very little second force (resistance from having been planted beneath the soil)?
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Another example: when we decide to go to another city and do something, we initiate by taking transportation.
Then comes the second force: distance (both in time and space), traffic (other people initiating going somewhere), possibly weather.
Eventually we have the form (third force) of arrival at our destination.
And then we finally see fourth force -- we do whatever was to be done there.
Notice that in populated areas, much of the second force is other people's first force, and that our first force is second force to their desire to be where they are going: it's called traffic.
Thus we begin to see the complex interrelationships created by balancing with four forces.
We may also begin to see that second force is a part of creation -- a necessary part of living -- not something to be resented as the source of all our problems.
Many things that we do are second force to someone else.
We are always doing our best to do what we're supposed to do: could it be that everyone else is also doing their best to do what they're supposed to do, as well?
Then our resentment of them for being second force to our efforts -- and pity for ourselves for having all this second force -- means that they must resent our efforts as second force to theirs, too, doesn't it?
Could this all just be a misconception about the way that things work?
Quite often as we go about our daily lives, we get the feeling that something vital is missing from our lives.
We also frequently feel that there is something wrong with us.
These two feelings sort of merge together into one big feeling of something being wrong with the way that we are living.
Modern psychology has spent a lot of time dealing with the feeling that there is something wrong with us, and has convinced most of us that vanity (which is now called ``a positive self-image'', or simply ``self-respect'') will take care of that.
But what if this feeling is misunderstood?
What if there is absolutely nothing wrong with us?
Then, would all the search for what is wrong, and what to do about it -- all the attempts at self-improvement, all the books on self-help and how to be better -- simply be a waste of time -- or worse yet, a sure-fire way to feel really miserable?
Everyone has an opinion about what human beings need to do to be better.
But the question comes up: better at what?
Better for what?
Do we not need to know what something does before we know whether it is doing it better or not?
For a living being, this means understanding the person's purpose.
We can only say that we are better if we are better able to bring about the purpose for our living.
If we are not accomplishing our purpose, and then something comes along that makes it easier to accomplish that purpose, then perhaps we could say that we have improved, that we are better.
But what is our purpose?
Each of us has been struggling to bring it into our life for many years now.
Yet most of us don't know what it is.
If you ask someone what the purpose of their life is, they will give you an answer, usually after a bit of thought.
The very fact that we have to consider the question for a moment shows us something very interesting about that purpose: we don't remember what it is most of the time.
And yet, we must have a purpose to act.
Everything that we do is done to bring about a purpose.
There is no other way to act.
Everything that we do is an attempt to bring us closer to our purpose, or to avoid something that is seen to be detrimental to our purpose.
And we don't really know, at least with a conscious awareness, what that purpose is any more: we simply act on it unconsciously.
Many believe that a living being doesn't need a purpose: that we can just have a momentary goal that can change every so often.
Yet what makes that goal so attractive?
If we had no purpose, why would this goal be interesting, instead of some other goal?
Goals are only seen as valuable if they look like they might bring about our purpose of living.
In other words, it is the purpose for our life that allows us to determine the value of every experience.
Experiences don't come with a price tag that you can just read, and it will tell you its value.
We have to determine the value of experiences from within ourselves.
Besides, it would need to be a special, magical tag, wouldn't it?
The value for you would not be the same as the value for me, so it would have to be a tag that would be read differently by everyone who looked at it.
What's so wrong with the current method: of trying it out for ourselves and finding out for ourselves by experimentation?
Valuing is always determined by our purpose: if we believe that this experience will take us closer to our purpose then it is good; if we believe that it will take us away from our purpose then it is bad.
When you do get an answer from someone about their purpose (perhaps from self), it is interesting to then ask: why?
Why do you want that?
You will get another answer.
For instance, someone will say, ``I want to make a lot of money.''
And you ask them, ``Why?
Why do you want money?''
Perhaps they want to buy many expensive things.
So their real purpose is not to make money -- it is to buy or own expensive things.
Why do they want those things?
Because it would provide them with a better life than the one they have now.
Why would the life be better?
Because they would feel better if they had those things or the people around them who appreciate those things.
Or perhaps someone says they want to be very knowledgeable, and teach that knowledge to others.
Why do they want to do that?
Would it make them feel good if they could answer lots of questions, and teach others what they have learned?
Then isn't their real purpose to feel good: being knowledgeable and teaching is a means to that end; or a method.
The real purpose is to feel good -- in other words, to be happy.
So many today want to live an artistic life.
Whether they have any talent in that area or not, they want appreciation and approval for their creative expression.
Again, if we want to be appreciated and approved of, then that is our real purpose, not the desire to express ourselves creatively.
But it is interesting to see how many feel this way.
Could it be that the world that we have built for our living is so narrow that we all feel that we have no outlet for creative expression: artistic or not?
Again, we must wonder if it is really our lifestyle that is so unpleasant to us, not the way that things are -- but rather the way that we live with the way that things are.
But if being knowledgeable and teaching or having enough money to buy everything we ever want or expressing artistically doesn't make me feel good -- doesn't make me happy -- then we will try some other method.
Our purpose for living hasn't changed: just the method for going about getting that purpose has changed.
If we understand this, then we can see what's really ``wrong'' with us, if we must call it that.
It's not our self-image or self-respect: we do not need to paint a prettier imaginary picture of ourselves called vanity.
We do not need to improve ourselves so that we can have more respect from ourselves or anyone else.
It's just that we don't really know how to get what we want, what we know would make us happy.
And often when we do get what we just knew would make us happy, we quickly find that it doesn't work -- we still need something else to make us happy -- possibly to get rid of what we just got, because it now makes me unhappy.
But, of course, we still know what would make us happy, don't we?
And we believe that we really do know how to get it: it's just that there are all those others (people and circumstances) who keep preventing me from actually achieving happiness.
When I was younger a friend introduced me to a man who claimed that he was the guy who ran the show here on planet Earth.
I never really understood his claims very well, so I may be misrepresenting him: you can ask John Rogers yourself if you ever run into him.
I understand that he has made it pretty big these days.
At one time he ran a little exercise that I've never forgotten.
He set up a strange game of musical chairs like this: he told us that the chairs were symbols for what we wanted and needed out of life; what would make us happy, in other words.
So for a room of perhaps fifty people, he put forty chairs at the front of the room.
And everyone was to grab a chair.
Then the ten people who didn't get a chair were told to lie on the floor and be dead: because they hadn't gotten what they needed so they were now dead.
As more chairs were removed and the game continued, they were to lie there and consider their miserable lives, because they didn't try very hard to fight for what they needed out of living.
I've never seen the point to competition, because it's all based on the fear of lack: that there won't be enough for me unless I take it from someone else.
So I stood outside the mêlée and watched everyone fighting for a chair, and then dutifully lay down on the floor like I was told: but I forgot to consider that I was dead.
All I could think of was the room down the hall in the hotel (where all this was taking place) that was full of chairs.
At that time I didn't have the guts to leave the room and go to that other storage room and bring back a chair.
As soon as we take responsibility for being happy without needing it to be provided for us by something else, the idea of competing for what we need seems ridiculous.
I already have what I need: now I'm looking for something interesting to do.
But now we know what is the ``cause'' of the foolishness that passes for wisdom on planet Earth, don't we: there's a fool running the show, if you can believe Mr. Rogers.
So perhaps we can see that this sense of there being something wrong with us is a different feeling from the sense that we are incomplete.
We feel that something is wrong with us because we don't seem to be able to find or achieve the happiness that we all crave, because we expect it to be provided by something outside of ourselves.
We are just certain that we know what happiness is.
And we believe that we know what we need in order to finally achieve that happiness.
Whether it is the right things and people in our life; the right job and hobbies and toys
that would fulfill us; or the right method of improvement that would bring about happiness as an inner state.
It just isn't working: so there must be something wrong with each who is honest about its work-ability.
It couldn't be the methods that we're using; it must be something wrong with us.
After all, others have used those same methods and achieved happiness -- what's wrong with me?
A dear friend used to tell a story that he said reminded him of the way most people on planet Earth live.
He said that the way people live reminded him of a children's game: pin the tail on the donkey.
When we play the game with children, we are very safe about it.
We blindfold and spin one child around until they are disoriented.
Then we give them a donkey's tail with velcro or tape these days, and tell them to find the donkey's ass -- as we all stand around and laugh at the antics.
The child who puts their tail closest to the donkey's ass gets a prize.
But he said that the way we grown-ups play it is real different.
We all arrive on planet Earth blind and disoriented.
We have forgotten the game itself.
But we all believe unconsciously or unknown to ourselves most of the time that there is a ``donkey's ass'' somewhere.
If we want the prize for living here (happiness), then each of us must find it and we must stick our pin into it before we leave.
And now there is just one big brawl, as those who are looking for the donkey keep poking the others who are also blind and looking.
So everyone is constantly afraid and angry and insecure, because they can't find the donkey's ass -- but they are getting poked an awful lot as they all look for it.
And every time that we poke someone else, we blame them for being in the way.
And every time that we are poked, we blame them for poking us.
And no one seems to be finding the prize.
This game is only fun if you take off the blindfold.
Then you can at least dodge everyone else's pins.
And the donkey is a lot easier to find when you can see.
Once this is understood, we can see that there's nothing wrong with anyone.
Either the purpose that we are working for is extremely difficult or impossible to achieve; or we just haven't yet found the method that actually works to bring it about.
No amount of lying by acquiring a better self-image, or more self-respect, will change this fact.
We are still faced with this sense that we are incomplete, that something vital is missing from our lives.
Whether it be the right method for achieving happiness, or the right purpose for living.
At the same time, there is a part of life that brings us as close as possible to happiness as we have ever felt.
It's called romance.
When another person cares about us and understand us -- and shows us that they care and understand -- then we feel like the most wonderful person in the world.
We don't need a perfect self-image: that other person apparently finds us okay just the way we are.
And then we consummate our feelings for each other with that most pleasurable of acts: sexual union.
Sometimes, in the midst of sexual congress, we approach a feeling of being one with the other person.
All of our feelings of missing something, or being incomplete, or not feeling good enough about ourselves, about not being happy with the ways things are, just vanish.
We feel at one with self and with the person we're with.
But, of course, it wears off pretty quickly, doesn't it?
And we're right back where we started.
But, if we can just hold onto that romantic feeling, that wonderful feeling that comes from another person looking at us as the best thing that ever happened in their world, maybe it will be all right to feel separate from them again.
We can feel that we are important and needed and wonderful for that other person, and feel the same way about them, and then we can experience that joy of oneness all over again tonight, when we're alone -- together.
Except that somehow, it doesn't seem to last, does it?
And after a while we start to notice that the other person isn't as perfect and wonderful as we thought they were -- and they, of course, are seeing the same thing about us.
So we don't have that wonderful feeling around them very often any more.
And even when things are feeling pretty good between us, the sense of union during sexual congress doesn't always happen.
It's an occasional thing, and we don't know why.
These days the thing to do is to simply move on; to find someone else -- that person just wasn't the one -- the one who would make that wonderful feeling more or less permanent or constant.
But there must be someone out there who could do that for us -- and us for them -- at least most of the time.
We'll just have to keep looking.
Or, maybe a new life decided to drop in on us.
So now we need to take on the obligation (and joy) of caring for -- and educating -- that new being.
So we'll do the best we can to stay together.
For a while, having that new person around is the most wonderful feeling there is.
Until the little one grows into someone who can talk to us, and remind us that they don't always see us as the most wonderful thing that ever happened in their life, either.
And then we'll need another little one, so we can get that good feeling of being needed again.
But they all insist on growing up and changing, too -- so the feeling just doesn't last.
I know that some people do actually stay in love.
I'm not trying to be cynical and say that these partnerships never work out.
That's not the point.
It's just interesting to see the stories that mankind has come up with to explain these feelings that we all have.
If the stories were true, then they would work out pretty well, wouldn't they?
We would find someone who we could feel good with, and that would be a pretty good thing.
There would always be the occasional sexual peaks that would keep us in that wonderful state of union with the other person.
And in between, we would enjoy being with them, and the way they feel about us, so much that we would feel pretty wonderful about them, too.
And the purpose of life would be to live until we could pair up and bring a new life into the world so that we could teach them to pair up and bring a new life into the world...
So true happiness would be for all human beings to mate and perhaps reproduce.
Thus the true secret to happiness lies in the fact that the species has a strong drive to perpetuate itself.
All we need to do is to find that in our own lives (whether it results in actual reproduction or not) and find the mate who makes us happy, and who we can make happy, and then life will be happy for all.
| Experiment -- Incomplete |
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Look at the couples around you.
How many do you know well enough to tell whether they are happy?
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Questions to Consider:
What percentage of couples who have been together for more than a few years are happy?
How many are actually trying to get their partner to give them a pretty picture of themselves, and call this romance?
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Could it be that we have been wrong about the story that explains this feeling?
What if loving, and feeling loved, and possibly raising children, are a wonderful part of living -- but not that which completes us?
Perhaps the ideas in this story are truly wonderful experiences, but they do not actually explain or tell us what to do about feeling incomplete.
If that is so, then continuing to try and feel complete by chasing after these things will never work.
But it will probably keep the human race around for a while.
But we can also see where a lot of problems that we have in relationships come from, can't we?
If we believe that a relationship is the thing that will overcome this feeling of being incomplete by getting us such a good feeling from someone else, then what kind of relationships do we get into?
Do we expect the other person to provide us with something that we do not have already?
Yet, don't they probably feel the same way?
If neither of us have it, which of us will provide it for the other?
Do we expect the other person to keep us feeling good about ourselves, because vanity (or a positive self-image as it is called today) just doesn't work?
Every time we start to get that wonderful belief in ourselves going, something insists on coming along and showing us that it is not quite an accurate picture of self, doesn't it?
Something that we might consider: do we feel good because the people we are with make us feel that way?
Or do we feel good because of the way we feel about them?
In other words, are we actually providing the feeling ourselves by the way that we relate to them and see them?
And that works fine until we start to see that they don't exactly fit their inner image of vanity any more than we do, much less our picture of them.
Then we don't feel so good about them any more -- and we say that things are not working out.
Of course, the same thing is going on with them.
So both split up and look for someone else to make them feel good about themselves, and so it goes.
As long as we believe that someone else can make me feel good, we will not see that it is the way that we feel while we are with them that we actually want.
Sure, we feel good when someone else likes us and likes the way we are.
We want that other person to see us in a light that makes us feel more masculine or more feminine, as the case may be.
Someone who makes us feel more the way we want to be -- but that we just can't seem to feel by ourselves -- because living keeps insisting on butting in and showing us that we are not always that ``way,'' whatever it may be.
But part of the joy of the experience of romance is how we feel about them, isn't it?
And the fact is, we don't really need someone else for either of these two feelings, if we were willing to be responsible for the way we feel.
But as long as we accept this story that someone else must provide me with a good feeling -- that a certain feeling is what is missing from our lives -- then we will not be responsible for our own inner feeling -- or even believe that it is possible to be responsible for our own inner feeling.
And we will never find out what is really behind that sense of being incomplete.
So we will continue to glorify reproduction as the highest ideal the human race can achieve.
And then the wonderful experience of two people coming together in a romantic relationship will be a hell for most human beings, because it is supposed to be the solution to a problem that it has nothing to do with.
Relationships are no longer just relationships: they are now a solution to a problem.
And when the problem persists, because romance cannot solve it, we will continue looking for the right relationship that will provide a permanent solution.
One of the most interesting aspects of being human is that our personalities are formed in infancy and childhood.
By the time that we are five or six, our personalities have been formed.
They change a little as time goes on, but more by growing than by developing.
In other words, things are added onto the personality as we continue living.
But the personality does not really change very much -- it simply grows more and more complex and sophisticated, more or less along the same lines that were established in childhood.
As infants and children, one of the biggest aspect of our lives is our helplessness.
The human body is so complex that it cannot be fully developed in the womb.
The human brain is developed as much as possible in the womb -- but if it were any more fully formed the fetus would not be able to leave.
So we are not able to be fully responsible for ourselves until we are somewhere around the age of twelve or so.
It is not a question of lack of experience: until that age we do not have all the physical equipment that makes responsibility actually possible.
Then we must experience living a bit more as a responsible being to understand what this new ability is all about: what it means to accept the consequences of action when the outcome of everything is always unknown.
With enough experience, we can often make a pretty good guess about the outcome of an action: but still, we are often surprised by unexpected consequences of some of the simplest things, aren't we?
Yet we must still be responsible for those consequences.
So, even though we are (as grown-ups) now able to be responsible, the personality was formed while we were not, while we were truly helpless and without the ability to respond with intelligence and the ability to accept the consequences of every action.
During much of our childhood, most of us felt that we were the victim of something or someone else: that we were being mistreated from time to time.
And the personality developed a craving for the ability or power to never let that happen to us again.
By the time that we are a grown-up who no longer needs that power, the personality has developed such a complex of strivings for power that we feel like the victim for most of the rest of our lives.
Or we become the one who wields power, to overcome the feeling of being the victim.
Powerful people do not lose the sense of being a victim -- they simply overwhelm it most of the time by wielding power over self, circumstances and others to the best of their ability.
But you still hear them talking about what they're going to do to those who victimize then (or even think about victimizing them).
Today it is pretty clear that we live in a world of victims.
Everywhere we turn we hear about victims.
The lawyers fill the courts with the complaints and pleas of victims.
And the psychologists tell us that the victimizers are also the victims, and that the victims will need years of help to get over it, if at all.
And now you can hardly turn on the television without hearing an infomercial that will tell you how to get the power to improve yourself so that you will no longer be the victim of: the signs of old-age; your bad memory; your rotten relationship; your loss of hair; your bad diet; your weight (too much or too little or in the wrong places); your lack of understanding and knowledge; your lack of money; your lack of knowing the future; etc., etc., etc.
All this search for power.
All based on an experience that has been dead and gone for many years: but that lives on in our personalities where it will never die and be decently buried.
Which does a pretty good job of preventing us from accepting responsibility for our actions and their usually unknowable consequences.
Rather than understand the personality, and what it takes to develop it beyond childhood into a true loving adult, we struggle for the power to control ourselves and others and circumstances.
If we only could see the signs that we can affect reality, and get what we want from life, then we would know that we are truly real.
But when everyone makes us feel something -- whether we like it or not, whether it's good or bad -- then how can we feel real?
You are always doing it to me.
Most of us have noticed that the only power that we really know about doesn't actually work: it's called will-power.
And it only works for a short time; but we don't know why that is.
So we look for other, more reliable, powers.
There's always hypnosis: have someone else reprogram our personalities so that they do what we want without any need for power of our own.
Or there's always knowledge: having someone else give me the information about how to do something, or what the future consequence of our actions will be, and then we will be able to get what we want without any need for power of our own.
Or we can go to a theologian (priest, healer, minister, psychologist, counselor, therapist) and let them tell us what's wrong and how to gain the power to deal with the things that are inside of us that we don't understand or know how to control.
All this search for power is the attempt to find something outside of us that we can add onto ourselves something that we don't already have.
So we spend our lives on the pursuit of self-improvement.
It rarely occurs to us that what we need is to get rid of some things that are inside of us that are no longer appropriate.
They are defenses and ways to work with being helpless as a child -- but we are no longer physically a child, nor are we helpless.
So they don't work any more.
We don't really need to improve -- we could instead find out what is in our personalities that prevent us from further development.
Then we could (rather than adding another power onto this thing called the personality) remove the obstructions that would allow us to develop naturally into a new kind of person.
A person who is responsible for themselves.
A person who no longer sees them self as a victim.
A person who no longer needs to control self or circumstances or anything or anyone else.
A person whose power comes from being, not from personality.
Of course, we know that we are no longer helpless.
But knowing that doesn't reshape the personality, does it?
We are still trying to solve the problems that were set up in childhood.
We are still trying to get people to love us for the right things, because we were misunderstood in childhood.
So the lifestyle that we are living would be appropriate for a child, not for an adult -- which is to be out of balance.
And a part of us knows this, but doesn't want to admit it most of the time.
Because we do not have the power to stop the personality from doing what it does.
So what good does it do to admit that our lifestyle isn't working for us now?
In fact, we feel that those who point these things out to us are just torturers.
We already know it, we just don't like to think about it, because what we don't know is what to do about it.
And most of us are busy looking for that, aren't we?
The rest seem to be occupied selling it to those who are looking, whether they actually have it or not.
| Experiment -- Power |
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Spend a few days looking at the different types of power that your personality craves.
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Questions to Consider:
What kinds of power am I looking for?
Have I ever really been able to use the power that the personality has found to accomplish anything for very long?
When will the personality ever say it's enough: I have what I need to no longer feel like a victim?
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Maybe if someone could just give us the knowledge and power we need, then we would be all right.
And there are those who will offer that, aren't there?
There are some guru types who offer exactly that.
They'll just perform some ceremony and you will receive the knowledge that it takes to get by in this world, while walking around full of joy.
There are others out there who will offer everything that anyone can conceive of.
But all the wonderful things in the world added onto a personality formed around the feeling of helplessness and a need for defenses against that helplessness will never solve our real problem: we need a personality that was formed by an adult to live as an adult.
And yet, most of us would need to spend quite a bit of time to even imagine what that might be like.
But a personality formed to live as a child will never feel comfortable living life as a grown-up.
Our lifestyle (based on a child's needs) will always be out of balance with our reality (as a grown-up with adult needs but a child's lifestyle).
Now that we've set up this amusing and wonderful way of looking at living -- full of errors in perception -- we of course think that we know what to do.
Given that human beings develop personalities that grow but never develop into something new, into a soul fit for an adult, living, being.
Given that the glorification of the sexual act will provide us with the joy that we crave.
Given that everything that we will ever need has been set up already, that there is nothing new to bring into the world.
The way to go with this situation -- with all these givens -- is obvious: mankind's purpose is to build a perfect world that will allow everyone to be happy, just as they are.
It is not mankind that needs to be evolved or developed.
In fact we really do not even believe that is possible.
Rather it is circumstances that must be changed to fit man as he or she is.
So we are searching for the power to change the world into a perfect place for humans to live, just as they are, now.
And we are getting very close.
We have most of the technology required to do this, right now.
And we are working on developing the seeds of that technology into something that will actually give us the power to create the perfect utopia for all.
We now not only know that human beings are easily brainwashed.
We now have a pretty good understanding of human psychology, so we know something about how it works, not just that it works.
Hitler taught us how to do this for an entire society.
How he found out, most of us do not know.
But we are working very hard to do it much more subtly than he did, and for the right reasons, of course.
We are not going to do the terrible things that Hitler did, we are just going to train everyone (brainwash) and add a few modifications onto human personality: just enough so that we can all be happy in this perfect new world we're building.
Medicine is providing most of the answers.
It is providing understanding of human psychology.
It is providing the means for changing the human form if it won't live well enough in the perfect world.
One day soon we will have it all figured out, and everyone will be happy.
There is an old legend that we might consider.
I don't know whether it's true or not, but it does contain a point of view that would be worthwhile considering, regardless.
According to this legend, mankind is not the first effort to create a form of life that could be conscious, aware, and express intelligence and creativity on planet Earth.
The story goes that long before mankind was on Earth, there was a race of beings that were given the same opportunity as mankind is being offered now.
They were given the potential to evolve, and to be consciously aware of, and one with, Spirit.
But, they missed the point of their evolution: they didn't see the purpose for their existence.
They chose to develop a great society, a perfectly organized society, where there would be security and happiness for all, from the cradle to the grave.
They didn't like having so much second force in their lives: it disturbed them that they were given the forces required to continue their growth and development as living beings.
They wanted to find out how to be happy just as they were, without the second force and ideas that would have allowed them to self-evolve.
So they continued with their efforts to create the perfect organization for their existence over many, many centuries.
And they finally devised the perfect, socialistic, society.
There were no classes.
Everything was owned in common.
Everything was perfectly organized -- everyone knew their place from birth to death.
They were great builders, but they were also very warlike.
So they built most of their cities underground, so they wouldn't have to worry about atomic fallout if anyone ever was stupid enough to use those weapons.
It is said that one day the gods came down and said to themselves, let's take a look and see what these beings are doing.
And they were not pleased.
They said, these people will organize the whole thing until it has no meaning: just security from the cradle to the grave.
They have missed the purpose, so let's give them what they want.
So suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, those large beings were shrunk to tiny little creatures a half an inch or less in length: and today we call them ants.
They now have exactly what they wanted, so many years ago.
They have their great cities, called ant hills.
They still are great builders.
They still have full employment.
Everything is still owned in common by an almost classless society of workers.
They still have their wars: which is about the only second force that their existence provides other than natural second force from weather and so on.
And they have the security that they so craved: because every day will be exactly the same type of existence for them.
Whatever they did yesterday is what they will do today and for all the tomorrows of their endlessly tedious, yet perfect, existence.
They work, they scurry about, they run around gathering food.
They tear up rocks and they make great buildings and underground cities.
And every single ant is fully employed doing the same thing, year in and year out -- keeping on -- until planet Earth no longer supports their type of ``living,'' if it can be graced with that name.
Every single ant has security from birth to death.
But each one always knows what's going to happen next: tomorrow's going to be like yesterday.
And like today.
And like the next day: forever.
Now can you imaging a worse hell?
Can you imagine a hell that would be worse than a place where you could go about your normal affairs, but you always know everything that is going to happen from the day you are born until the day you die?
It would be an existence utterly without any meaning -- or with only one meaning that is no meaning at all -- to live for this moment's pleasure and to escape all pain until one dies.
And it says that this was what happened to the ant folks.
They were given exactly what they wanted; what they worked so hard for.
They live as tiny little creatures, with an endless, meaningless, existence.
Nothing can be changed.
Everything has already been set up: they have the perfectly organized society.
Now it just runs, and runs, and runs, and runs...
It is possible that this is not just a legend.
Now that we are seeing what mankind is doing with our chance at creation -- with our chance at evolving into a new kind of being who can actualize their potential -- it is very easy to believe in the possibility that there is some fact behind this legend.
Are we not working very hard to do the same thing?
Are we not trying to find the ultimate philosophy, that will allow us to build the perfect, classless society where everybody has security for their entire meaningless lives?
Where everything is run by the state, which will be everyone's mother, and make sure that we are all taken care of, provided for, and protected from all second force?
The second force that could develop us into a fully actualized human being from a potential human being?
The only argument that we seem to be having now is which state is going to run the whole show.
And the contenders are getting fewer all the time, aren't they?
Then the legend continues to say that there was another wave of beings who were given a chance at self-evolving.
And they, too, fiddled around for a while.
Some of them worked towards evolving.
But most paid little attention to the efforts of those few.
They didn't value the ideas that would have allowed them to work on their self-evolution.
So they, too, set out to build the perfect society.
They, too, knew that all good was to gain pleasure.
And that all evil was to fail to escape pain and second force.
And so they began to organize.
These beings were great chemists and biologists.
They weren't as interested in the physical sciences as we are and the ants were.
So in their search for the perfect society, they decided to make all the workers sterile so they wouldn't have all the second force that comes from other distracting organizations such as families.
They wanted to remove all but the absolutely essential natural second force from their lives by creating only one organization that would provide no second force at all: or as little as could be achieved while still allowing for the creation of the perfect society.
So they put a chemical (more or less a tranquilizer) into the food supply of their children, who were all produced by the state and raised by the state, because they had learned to fear overpopulation.
This tranquilizer kept the children so doped up and lacking in incentive that they were not even capable of thinking for themselves while they were being brainwashed into becoming perfect citizens in their perfect social organization.
They were merely trained to become armed workers for the good of the whole.
And, like the ants, they had learned how to put the right chemicals into the food supplies so that everyone but a few were born sterile.
And the children were so brainwashed that all they wanted was to work for the good of the whole for their entire, endless, meaningless, lives.
So they had an undisputed dictatorship, run by the only females who were special, who were allowed to reproduce.
These beings made themselves so completely mechanical that their whole society was really one living organism.
Each individual was only a cell in that organism, that was totally and completely organized.
Again the gods came to check out what these beings had accomplished with their opportunity to evolve into conscious, creative expressions of Spirit.
And these beings, too, were given what they really wanted: and we know of them as bees today.
Perhaps there is still time for mankind to reconsider where we are going.
Whether this legend is true or not, it contains a perspective that is very valuable for man, right now, doesn't it?
Do we really want the perfect society, which robs us of the most wonderful thing there is -- the second force that would allow each of us to grow and develop into all that we could each potentially be?
Has mankind missed the point of our creation in our struggle to create a world where all will be safe and happy?
Are we all working to bring about a world that no one in their right mind would want to inhabit?
Do we really crave safety and security so much that we are willing to give up everything that is truly human to achieve it?
Would that truly be happiness for all human beings?
| Experiment -- What's Going On Here? |
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Read a bit on the lives of ants and bees.
Go stand over an ant hill and watch the ants at work.
Go watch a bee hive and see how bees live.
Now go to the top of a large building in a big city and see what you see.
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Questions to Consider:
How badly do you want safety and security?
How much will you pay?
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Table of Contents
Chapter 2
Chapter 5
Copyright © 1996 by inX.
Finished January 10, 1996.
Science of Man's Conscious Self-Evolution
View from the Real World