Category Archives: Emotions

The Broken-Hearted, Heartless Medical Industry

Many psychiatrists and psychologists now realize that a disturbed client cannot be helped sufficiently unless the individual is considered along with his or her relationship to the family, and also in relation to the environment. Old-time family doctors understood the patient’s sensitivity to family members and to the environment, of course, and they often felt a lively sympathy and understanding that the practitioners of modern medicine often seem to have forgotten.

I am speaking of a deeper relationship to the environment, however, and of the environment’s symbolic as well as practical aspects in relation to health and illness. Our ideas about our own body, our mind, the universe, and our part in it, and our state of health, to our sense of well-being, or our feelings of dis-ease.

In my next blog, I would like to look more specifically at the importance of symbolism in our minds, our body, and our environment.

Modern medical science largely considers the human body to be a kind of mechanical model, a sort of vehicle like a car that needs to be checked by a garage every so often.

As an automobile is put together at an assembly line, so the body is simply seen as a very efficient machine put together in nature’s “factory.” If all the parts are in their proper places, and functioning smoothly, then the machine should give as excellent service as any well-running automobile — or so it seems.

All of the automobile’s parts, however, are alone responsible for its operation as long as it has a responsible driver. There are, however, hidden relationships that exist between various parts of the body — and the parts themselves are hardly mechanical. They change in every moment.

With the latest developments in medical technology, there are all kinds of heart treatments and operations that can be performed. Healthy hearts will maintain a consistent heartbeat, whereas unhealthy hearts may experience some irregularity in their rhythm. There are supplements like lypo spheric vitamin c that can help lower the risk of heart-related issues like heart disease and lower blood pressure. The risks can also be prevented by consuming different types of plums and other such fruits/vegetables that contain the phytochemicals and nutrients required to reduce inflammation. Still, just like with anything health-related, if these issues continue despite taking necessary measures, it would be beneficial to visit a doctor to get checked professionally. Anything related to the heart can be dangerous, but can sometimes be treated by some medical equipment, such as the Philips Heart start and m5070a battery which can help to shock the heart into a normal rhythm. There is some heart equipment that is small, and there are also more serious treatments that can be used, such as heart transplants. In many cases, even when hearts are repaired through medical technology, the same trouble recurs at a later date, or the patient recovers only to fall prey to a different, nearly fatal or fatal, disease. This is not always the case, by any means, but when such a person does recover fully and maintains good health, it is because beliefs, attitudes, and feelings have changed for the better and because the person “has a heart” again, in other words, because the patient himself or herself has regulated the will to live.

Many people who have heart trouble feel that they have “lost the heart” for life. They may feel broken-hearted for any of many reasons. They may feel heartless or imagine themselves to be so cold-hearted that they punish themselves literally by trying to lose their hearts.

With many people having such difficulties, the addition of love in the environment may work far better than any heart operation. A new pet given to a bereaved individual has saved more people from needing heart operations than any physical. In other words, “a love transplant” in the environment may work far better overall than a heart-transplant operation, or a bypass, or whatever; in such ways, the heart is allowed to heal itself.

In later blogs, we will discuss more thoroughly distorted ideas about the self and the body in particular that stand in the way of natural exuberance and good health.

Without going more deeply into the reasons for such beliefs until later, let me discuss several of the ways in which they impede general well-being. Right now it is socially fashionable to take up some kind of exercise, gym work, or strenuous sport, so it seems obvious that the general populace must have great regard for the physical body. Unfortunately, large segments of the population feel uncomfortable with their bodies and do not trust the body’s spontaneity, strength, or overall dependability. They have been taught that medical science knows more about bodies than any private individual knows about their own bodies and their ways and workings.

People have been taught to trust X-rays for a picture of what is happening within their bodies and cautioned not to trust their own feelings. Some public-service announcements stress the “fact” that the individual can be gravely threatened by high blood pressure, for example, even though he or she feels in excellent physical health.

The populace has embarked upon this strong exercise program because of a mixture of very unfortunate beliefs. Since they feel divorced from their bodies, many people suspect what is going on inside. Some religious beliefs suggest that the body is impure, and the heir to disease and infirmity. Often people exercise over-zealously to punish their bodies, or to force the body to respond at its best since they do not trust it to do otherwise.

In many instances, people exercise and clean their teeth quite simply because they are afraid of what will happen if they do not. Professionals at McCrae Dental Surgery or places similar know that poor oral health can contribute to heart disease and often suggest these actions to reduce the likelihood of this eventuality. They may run or brush to avoid heart disease, for example, while their own fear can help to promote the very eventuality they fear.

The body’s health is the expression of inner well-being. Poor health is an expression also, and it may serve many purposes. It goes without saying that some people become ill rather than change their activities and their environments. They may also become ill, of course, to force themselves to make changes.

I do not mean to imply that exercise is detrimental to good health. It is true, however, that the reason that we exercise is actually more important than the exercises that we do perform. The reason can promote our good health or actually impede it.

Thus far in my blogs, we have begun to touch upon the multitudinous issues involved in good health or in its absence. Before we are finished we hope to give a far greater framework in which to consider our own well-being and the many options that are open to any individual. We will discuss the species connected with a long, healthy, fairly happy lifetime, and those involved with early death, severe illnesses, and suicide — particular with the suicides of fairly young persons.

Earlier we spoke about the incredible impulse on the part of all of nature toward exuberance and well-being. It is as if nature always tries to exceed itself, and certainly to increase the quality of its existence. The individual person is also involved in an ever-continuing process to increase the quality of life as it exists at all levels of personal experience. Reality is so constructed that each individual seeking fulfillment does so not at the expense of others, but in such a way that the quality of life is increased for all.

Each person impulsively tries to grow into his or her sensed potentials — even when they are not immediately apparent.

In one way or another, each segment of consciousness is aware of each other segment, through an instantaneous communication that exists on many levels. It is important that our ideas circulate freely, and that the ideas of the peoples of the world circulate freely, just as it is important that our individual body has good circulation. Our ideas about our own health are even more important than those steps we take to promote it.

Our ideas about foreign countries, allies, and enemies, also have a vital role to play in how we handle our own bodily defenses. People who are afraid that their nation will be invaded by an enemy will often also consider viruses or diseases to be enemies, ever about to threaten their personal survival. Such attitudes will, of course, be detrimental to feelings of well-being, health, and exuberance. While it is true that medical technology has many serious defects, it is also true that many people believe in the medical profession to such a degree that it would be nearly impossible for them to survive in good health without it.

In later blogs, we will also discuss the ways in which we can use our own beliefs about the medical profession to reinforce our overall sense of health, rather than to undermine it.

The Human Consciousness And Relationship To The Body

We know that we have a conscious mind, of course. We also possess what is often called the subconscious, and this merely consists of feelings, thoughts or experiences that are connected to our conscious mind, but would be considered excess baggage if we had to be aware of them all of the time. Otherwise they would vie for our attention, and interfere with the present decisions that are so important.

If we tried to hold all of those subconscious memories uppermost in our mind all of the time, then we would literally be unable to think or act in the present moment at all. We do more or less have a certain access to our own subconscious mind, however. It is perhaps easier to imagine a continuum of consciousness, for we have a body consciousness also, and that body consciousness is itself made up of the individual consciousness of each molecule that forms all parts of the body itself.

It is sometimes fashionable to say that men and women have conscious minds, subconscious minds, and unconscious minds — but there is no such thing as an unconscious mind. The body consciousness is highly conscious. We are simply not usually conscious of it. Reasoning takes time. It deals with problem-solving — it forms an hypothesis, and then seeks to prove it by trial and error.

If we had to use that kind of process before we could move a muscle, we would get nowhere at all, of course. The other portions of our consciousness, then, deal with a kind of automatic thinking, and operate with a kind of knowledge that takes no time in our terms.

We might say that the varying portions of our own consciousness operate at several different speeds. Translations between one portion of consciousness and another goes on constantly, so that in formation is translated from one “speed” to another. Perhaps we can begin to understand, then, that the whole picture of health or illness must be considered from many more viewpoints than we might earlier have supposed. Many of us have been saturated by conventional, distorted ideas concerning health and illness in general. We might think, for example, of the body being invaded by viruses, or attacked by a particular disease, and these ideas, then, may make us question. We might well wonder why the body consciousness does not simply rise up and cast off any threatening diseases: why would the body allow certain cells to go berserk, or outgrow themselves? The very concept of the immunity system suggests, at least, the disease invader against which the body’s immunity system must or should surely defend itself.

We usually think of our conscious mind as our ego. It is directed toward action in physical life. Many schools of thought seem to have the curious ideas that the ego is inferior to other portions of the self, or “selfish,” and imagine it to be definitely of a lower quality than the inner self, of the soul.

In the first place, it is really impossible to separate portions of the self, and we make such distinctions only in an effort to explain the many facets of the personality. It is generally understood, then, that we do have an ego, directed toward exterior activity, and in those terms we also have an inner ego. It is also conscious, and is the director of all automatic interior activity.

Most people do not realize that they can indeed have access to this inner awareness. This inner ego or inner self should not be thought of as superior to our ordinary mind. It should not be thought of, really, as something separate from our ordinary mind. Our ego and our ordinary consciousness bring into focus all of our physical experiences, and make possible the brilliant preciseness of physical experience.

It is true that physical life represents only one condition of being. We have other kinds of existence, then. The conscious mind is one brilliant segment of our larger consciousness, but it is composed of the same universal energy and vitality that composes all consciousness. There are ways of communicating with the inner ego or inner self, however, and we will discuss some of these in future blogs. It is important, again, to remember that this inner ego or inner self uses a process that is far swifter than reasoning.

When such communications are made, therefore, they often consist of inspiration, intuition, impulses, and deal with feeling far more than with usual logical thinking.

Each person is a vital, conscious portion of the universe. Each person, simply by being, fits into the universe and into universal purposes in a way no one else can. Each person’s existence sends its own ripples throughout time. The universe is conscious at every conceivable point of itself. Each being is an individualized segment of the universe; then, in human terms, each person is a beloved individual, formed with infinite care and love, uniquely gifted with a life like no other.

No animal considers itself a failure, obviously. People, however, often identify with their seeming mistakes, forgetting their abilities in other directions, so that it seems that they are misfits in the universe, or in the world. The conscious mind can indeed have such thoughts because it so often tries to solve all problems on its own, until it begins to feel frightened, overburdened, and a failure in its own eyes.

The inner ego, however, always identifies with its source-identity as a beloved, individualized portions of the universe. It is aware of the universal love that is its heritage.

It is also aware of the infinite power and strength that composes the very fabric of its being. Through being made aware of these facts, the exterior ego can begin to feel a quicker sense of support and nourishment. The knowledge can let it relax, let go, so that it feels its life couched and safe, and knows itself to be indeed a beloved child of the universe, both ancient and young at once, with an identity far beyond the annals of time.

 

It is a great value, then, that each person remember this universal affiliation. Such a reminder can often allow the inner self to send needed messages of strength and love through the various levels, appearing as inspiration, dreams, or simply pure bursts of feeling. The inner ego draws instant and continuous support from the universal consciousness, and the more the exterior ego keeps that fact in mind, the greater its own sense of stability, safety, and self-esteem.

One of the attitudes detrimental to good health is that of self-condemnation, or dislike of the self. Such attitudes are unfortunately sometimes fostered by parents, schools, and religions. Feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and pleasure with one’s abilities promote feelings of well-being, health, and exuberance.

The universe actively loves itself and all of its parts. The world loves itself and all of its parts. It is not true that energy is neutral or indifferent. Energy is active, positive, propelled by what can almost be called an instantaneous pleasure with itself and its characteristics.

Despite all concepts to the contrary, energy is indeed at its basis, love. It is also composed of highly charged consciousness that operates almost in a leapfrog fashion, with great bursts of exuberance and vitality. The great — the greatest creative force — that force that is the origin for all physical life — did not suddenly appear once in some distant past, sparking the birth of or reality, endowing it with an energy that could only then run down, or dissipate. Instead at every conceivable point within our universal system.

Each new rose in the springtime is in truth a new rose, composed of completely new and unique energy, utterly itself, innocent, alive in the world.

In the deepest of terms, while each body has a history each moment in the body’s existence is also new, freshly emerging into the world, innocent and unique. While there is indeed pain in the world, it is the miraculous principle of pleasure that propels life itself.

Those who look upon physical life as inferior to some other more perfect spiritual existence do a great injustice to physical existence in general. Physical life is everywhere filled with the universal energy that is its source, so it can hardly be inferior to it’s own composition.

Again, corporeal reality is a brilliant segment of existence. It cannot be inferior to existence. It is because we so often view our world through a system of highly limited beliefs that we so often misread the implications of temporal life.

Such beliefs serve to limit our comprehension, until it seems often that physical life consists of a frantic struggle for survival at every level of consciousness. Such ideas certainly do not foster feelings of security, health, or well-being, and they distort the nature of our physical environment.

That environment is not something separate from ourselves, for us to control. Instead, us and the environment support, strengthen, and fortify each other in ways that often escapes us. All portions of the environment contain their own conditions, but of their relationships to all other portions of the world. They add to the world’s health in other words, and our own vitality — and that of our environment — are everywhere interrelated.

 

The Inborn Leanings and Attitudes

These inborn leanings or attitudes can roughly be translated as follows.

  1. I am an excellent creature, a valuable part of the universe in which I exist.
  2.  My existence enriches all other portions of life, even as my own being is enhanced by the rest of creation.
  3. It is good, natural, and safe for me to grow and develop and use my abilities, and by so doing I also enrich all other portions of life.

Next: I am eternally couched and supported by the universe of which I am a part, and I exist whether or not that existence is physically expressed.

Next: By nature I am a good deserving creature, and all of life’s elements and parts are also of good intent.

And next: All of my imperfections, and all of the imperfections of other creatures, are redeemed in the greater scheme of the universe in which I have my being.

Those attitudes are inbred in the smallest microscopic portions of the body — a part of each atom and cell and organ, and they serve to trigger all of the body’s responses that promote growth and fulfillment. Infants are not born with an inbred fear of their environment, or of the other creatures. They are instead immersed in feelings of well-being, vitality, and exuberance. They take it for granted that their needs will be met, and that the universe is well-disposed toward them. They feel a part of their environment.

They do not come into life with feelings of rage, or anger, and basically they do not experience doubts or fears. Birth is experienced in terms of self-discovery, and includes the sensation of selfhood gently rising and unfolding from the secret heart of the universe.

Many people believe that birth, to the contrary, is a time of trauma, or even of rage, as the infant leaves its mother’s womb. Birth is life’s most precious natural process. Even in births that are thought of as not “normal,” there is on the infant’s part a sense of discovery and joy.

We will have more to say about the process of birth in later blogs. For now, I simply want to make the point that in the most basic of terms the human birth is as orderly and spontaneous as the birth of any of nature’s creatures — and a child opens its selfhood even as a flower opens its petals.

The inborn leanings and attitudes that we have been discussing should ideally remain with us for the rest of our lives, leading us to express our abilities, and finding fulfillment as our knowledge expands through experience. The same feelings and beliefs should also ideally help us die with a sense of safety, support and assurance. While these inbred psychological supports never leave us entirely, they are often diminished by beliefs encountered later in life, that serve to undermine the individual’s sense of safety and well-being.

All of this talk about exuberance, health and vitality may seem quite beside the point to many. It may seem instead that the world is filled with unhappiness and disease.

 

I admit that this certainly seems to be the case. It may also strike you, my blog readers, as quite shocking when I tell you that there is no such thing, basically, as disease. There are instead only processes. What we think of as disease is instead the result of an exaggeration or overextension of perfectly normal body processes. We are not attacked by viruses, for instance, for all kinds of viruses exist normally in the body. There are no killer viruses, then, but viruses that go beyond their usual bounds. We will have more to say about such issues in later blogs — for I hope to show how certain feelings and beliefs do indeed promote health, while others promote an unfortunate extension or exaggeration of perfectly normal bodily processes, or viral activity.

This means, of course, that we do not fall victim to a disease, or catch a virus, but that for one reason or another our own feelings, thoughts, and beliefs lead us to seek bouts of illness.

Certainly, such ideas will sound like medical heresy to many of my blog readers, but the sooner we begin to look at health and “disease” in these new terms, the healthier and happier we will become. We are not one thing and illness another, for our thoughts and emotions are the triggers that lead to bouts of poor health. Once we know this, we can begin to take steps that will serve to promote exuberance and vitality instead of fear, doubts, and “disease.”

We will discover that so-called diseases perform certain services. They fulfill purposes for us that we may believe we can achieve in  no other way. The reasons for such illnesses are not deeply buried in the subconscious, as we may think. They are much closer to the conscious mind, and usually consist of a series of seemingly innocuous decisions that we have made through the years. Other illnesses, of course, may be caused by sudden decisions that are a  response to a particular event in our life.

People have been taught that their bodies are a kind of battleground, and that they must be in a constant state of readiness lest they be attacked or invaded by alien germs or viruses or diseases that can strike without warning.

Soon, in future blogs, we will begin to discuss other negative beliefs that cause poor health. For now, however, we will concentrate upon those inbred, positive attitudes, feelings, and beliefs that constantly improve our sense of well-being, strength, and fulfillment.

 

 

 

Biologically Valid Thoughts, Attitudes, and Beliefs

When we are born we possess a group of attitudes toward oneself and toward life. These allow us to grow with the greatest possible impetus into childhood. They are also important in every period of our life. We can see the results in life all about us, though in animals or plants these are experienced as a matter of feelings rather than, say, as thoughts or attitudes.

It may sound very simplistic to tell one that we must have sunny thoughts as well as rays of the physical sun in order to be healthy — but sunny thoughts are as biologically necessary to our well-being as are the rays of sun that shines in the sky. Even as infants, then, we are predisposed naturally toward certain feelings, thoughts and attitudes that are meant to insure our healthy survival and emergence into adulthood. These are actually composed of inbred psychological information as necessary and vital to our life as the data transmitted by our genes and chromosomes. Indeed, these inbred, inner psychological predispositions are all-important if the information carried by our genes and chromosomes is to be faithfully followed.

It is difficult to translate such biological and psychological material into the words of any language, even though these inbred psychological prerequisites form a kind of language of their own. It is a language that promotes growth, exuberance and fulfillment, and stimulates the entire organism of the body –signaling the proper responses that are required for health and growth.

In later blogs we will discuss contrary feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I want to substitute beliefs for emotions that greatly curtail the natural progression of health and vitality. Here, however, we will deal primarily with those inner predispositions that encourage life and vitality.

I look in a puddle

and what should I see

but the stars in

the heavens looking back at me….

Misdirected Good Intent

If any of my blog readers, are in poor health, or generally unhappy, no one is asking you to pretend that those conditions do not exist. I hope to show you that even those unfortunate situations were created out of a misdirected good intent. In these blogs we will keep reminding you, however, that exuberance and high spirits are a natural part of our heritage.

We also hope to allow you to recapture those feelings, if you have lost them, and to give other ways of keeping those emotions fresh and intact. Blog readers will benefit in various fashions, according to their own conditions and intents, but every blog reader will benefit to some degree or another — and each blog reader will become reacquainted with those inner springs of vitality and wellbeing that are so important in human experience.

Concentrate upon the joys that you possess, keep your goals in mind, and trust the infinite intelligence within you to bring about the desired results. This frees your mind and allows improvements to continue without interruptions.

It’s our version of worrying that desired effects may not be brought into the present — that is, will not come into your close vision. When you feel that way, close your eyes, of only for a moment, reassure yourself that you can trust your vision — mental and physical — and that indeed your goals will be brought into clear focus.

Secondary Personalities

People who have epilepsy are afraid of their own energy.

They do not trust it, nor do they trust the spontaneous portions of the self. They are afraid that left alone their energy might strike out against others, and so they short-circuit its use, having attacks that momentarily render themselves helpless.

People with so-called secondary personalities also fear their own energy. They divide it up so that it seems to belong to different personalities, and is therefore effectively, divided. In basic terms, true amnesia does not exist in such cases, though it appears to. The people involved are quite aware of their activity at all times, but they behave in a fashion that is not continuous — that is, the main personality does not seem to behave in a continual manner, but is broken up, or again, seemingly divided. This psychological ploy neatly prevents the so-called main personality from using all of its energy at any one time.

The individuals concerned pretend to themselves that they have no memory of the other personalities’ existences or activities. These personalities, however, store up their energy so that one personality often exhibits explosive behavior, or makes certain decisions that seem to go against the wishes of the main entity. In this way, different kinds of behavior may be exhibited, and while it would seem that many decisions are made by one portion of the self, without another portion of the self knowing anything about it, such usually is not the case. In fact, the main personality is able to express many different kinds of probable action, but the entire personality is prevented from acting with its full energy or power. Instead the energy is diverted into other channels.

All portions of the self are indeed conscious, and they are also basically conscious of each other, though for working purposes they may seem to be separate or isolated.

The idea of the sinful self will not be predominant in my blogs, but I certainly will delve into the many unfavorable concepts that are held by the various religions — concepts that certainly make many people feel that the self is indeed sinful rather than blessed.

The self is indeed blessed, and just the reminder of that fact can often short-circuit negative beliefs, particularly if they are not too deep-seated.

The Daily Hypothesis

It would help all if we remind ourselves that our creative mind is at work whether or not we are aware of it, and regardless of what we are doing, and that such periods of dead time have the potential, at least, of accelerating creativity, if we allow our intellect to go into a kind of free drive at such times.

Each person has such a daily hypothesis — one that might be quite different for say, Friday than it is for Monday. We build our daily experience partially by such working hypotheses.

Many of the beliefs  that we have individually and jointly are somewhat relieved in the evening, in that they so often apply to the day’s activities, when the rest of the world seems to be engaged in the nine-to-five assembly-line world experience.

We do not project as many negative ideas upon the evening hours, and to same applies to most people to varying degrees. We are jointly free of limitations that might hamper us at other times of the day. We are  less visited by preconceptions of what we are supposed to do in any given hour of the day.

The natural, magical flows of our own rhythms are more often broken up in the daytime. This applies to many people as well, because of our ideas of what we should be doing at any given time, or what is socially respectable, proper, upright, even moral in limited terms.

We have settled upon a system that seems to be naturally based, the exclusive results of our historic past, one in which our main activities are daytime ones. It seems only natural that early man and woman, for example, carried on all of his and her main activities in the day, hiding after dark. As a matter of fact, however, early man and woman were a natural night dweller, and early developed the uses of fire for illumination, carrying on many activities after dark, when many natural predators slept. He and she also hunted very well in the dark, cleverly using all of his and her senses with high accuracy — the result of learning processes that are now quite lost.

In any case, man and woman were not by any means exclusively a daytime creature, and fires within caves extended activities far into the night. It was agriculture that turned him and her more into a daytime rhythm, and for some time many beliefs lingered that resulted from earlier nighttime agricultural practices.

Many people’s natural rhythms, then, still do incline in those directions, and they are always kept operable as alternate rhythms for the species as a whole.

I have some inclinations in that direction, as do many creative people, but these rhythms are often nearly completely overlaid by culturally-learned ones. Cultures that were night-oriented appreciated the night in a different fashion, of course, and actually utilized their consciousnesses in ways that are almost nearly forgotten. I believe there are ancient fairy tales and myths still surviving that speak of these underworlds, or worlds of darkness — but they do not mean worlds of death, as is usually interpreted.

 

In a fashion, the intellect goes hand-in-hand with the imagination under such conditions. It is not that man and woman stressed physical data less, but he and she put it together differently — that in the darkness he and she relied upon his and her inner and outer senses in a more unified fashion. The night portions of our personalities have become strangers to us — for as we identify with what we think of a our rational intellect, then we identify it further with the daytime hours, with the objective world that becomes visible in the morning, with the clear-cut physical objects that are then before our view.

In those times, however, man and woman identified more with his and her intuitive selves, and with his and her imagination, and these to some extent more than now, directed the uses to which he and she put his or her intellect.

This meant, of course, a language that was in its way more precise than our own, for concepts were routinely expressed that described the vast complexity of subjective as well as objective events. There were myriad relationships, for example, impossible now to describe, between a person and his of her dream selves, and between the dream selves of all the members of the tribe. Particularly in warmer climates, man and woman were naturally nocturnal, and did a good deal of his and her sleeping and dreaming in the daytime.

We must remember, of course, that the use of clocks is a fairly recent phenomenon. Men and women thought in terms of rhythms of the time, of flowing time, not of time in sections that were arbitrary. So as far as creature-hood is concerned, we have adapted to a time environment that we ourselves have formed. Creative people, again, are often aware of those connections, at least at certain levels, and I have in particular always felt this way to some extent. We have largely buried our own natural feelings in that direction.

These rhythms are also more natural to us than we suspect. We often have freedoms, then, that we do not use — a 24-hour period that we use quite arbitrarily, one that is already sectioned for us by society — but only if we allow it to be. It can be used in any fashion that we wish.

Relaxation and Effortlessness

It is true, of course, that before the time of modern psychology man and woman had a concept of himself and herself that dealt with conscious exterior aspects only, although it has been written that until that time man and woman thought of themselves as a kind of flat-surfaced self-minus, for example, subconscious or unconscious complexity.

Instead, previous to psychology’s entrance, before psychology mapped the acceptable or forbidden, the dangerous or safe compartments of the self, man and woman used the word “soul” to  include his or her own entire complexity. The word was large enough to contain man’s and woman’s experience. It was large enough to provide room for conventional and unconventional, bizarre and ordinary states of mind and experience. It was roomy enough to hold images of reality that were physically perceived or psychologically perceived.

Now the church finally placed all of the condemnation of its religious laws against certain psychological and mystical experiences — not because it did not consider them realities, of course, but precisely because it recognized too well the disruptive influence that, say, revelationary experience could have upon a world order that was based upon a uniform dogma.

“Witches” were not considered insane, for example, or deranged, for their psychological beliefs fit in only too well with those of the general populace. They were considered evil instead. The vast range of psychological expression, however, had some kind of framework to contain it. The saint and the sinner each had access to great depths of possible heroism or despair. Psychological reality, for all of the religious dangers placed upon it, was anything but a flat-surfaced experience. It was in fact because the church so believe in the great range of psychological activity possible that it was so dogmatic and tireless in trying to maintain order.

Unfortunately, with the development of scientific era, a development occurred that need not have happened. As I have mentioned before, science’s determination to be objective almost immediately brought about a certain artificial shrinking of psychological reality. What could not be proven in laboratory was presumed not to exist at all.

Anyone who experienced “something that could not exist” was therefore to some extent or another deluded or deranged. There is no doubt that the accepted dimensions of psychological reality began to shrink precisely at the time that modern psychology began. Modern psychology was an attempt to make man and woman conform to the new scientific world view.

It was an attempt to fit man within the picture of evolution, and to manufacture a creature whose very existence was somehow pitted against itself. Evolutionary man and woman, with Darwinian roots, could not be a creature with a soul. It had to have hidden in its psychological roots the bloody remnants of the struggle for survival that now cast the soul in a position of stress, caught as it was between its heavenly source and original sin — but there was a sense of psychological mobility involved, one that saw continued existence after death.

The new psychology shut off mobility after death, while giving each individual an unsavory primitive past heritage — a heritage genetically carried, that led finally only to the grave. Psychological activity was scaled down in between life and death, then, even while the possibility of any after-death experience was considered the most unreasonable and unintellectual of speculations.

Any man or woman might rise in our democracy from a poor peasant’s son to be the President. Outcasts might become the socially prominent. The unlettered might become highly educated. The idea of achieving greatness, however, was considered highly suspect. The self was kept in bounds. Great passion, or desire or intent — or genius — did not fit the picture.

Now some peoples would not fit into that mold. They would take what they could from our technology, but in conscious and spontaneous ways they retaliated — and still do — by exaggerating all of those human tendencies that our society has held down so well. If we can have reason without faith, then indeed, for example, we will see that there can be faith without reason. When human experience becomes shrunken in such a fashion — compressed — then in a fashion it also explodes at both ends, one might say.

We have atrocious acts committed, along with great heroisms, but each are explosive, representing sudden releases of withheld energies that have in other ways been forbidden, and so man’s and woman’s mass psyche expresses itself sometimes like explosive fireworks, simply because the release of pressure is necessary.

Even our poor misguided moral/religious organization is saying in it’s fashion to the scientifically-oriented society: “How is faith not real, then? We’ll change your laws with it. We”ll turn it into power — political power. What will you say then? We have been laughed at for so long. We will see who laughs now.”

Fanaticism abounds, of course, because the human tendencies and experiences that have been denied by the mainline society erupt with explosive force, where the tendencies themselves must be accepted as characteristics of human experience. Iran is an example for the world, in explosive capsule form, complete with historical background and a modern political one. Modern psychology does not have a concept of the self to begin to explain such realities.

Now, in the world we early formed our own beliefs and strategies. In midlife we are presented with a recognized overall vitality of materials. This is mean to reorient our attitudes. Some don’t realize, that we are not merely being presented with an alternate view of reality, but with the closet approximation we could get of what reality is, and how it worked, and what it meant.

I have been very gentle in my treatment of our mores and institutions — for I do not want to be against our world, but for a more fulfilling one. In future blogs I will be discussing how our ideas can be applied by the individual in terms of value fulfillment, so that individuals can begin to reclaim those dimensions of experience that are indeed our right heritage.

For my blog readers, I want them to remember the idea of effortlessness, because with the best of intentions some have been trying too hard. I want them to remember that relaxation is one of creativity’s greatest champions — not its enemy. He or she is naturally gifted with the quickness of body and mind. Remind oneself that it is safe to express his or her natural rhythms, to remember the natural person. Our most vital inspirations are effortlessly ours. I want us to see how many of our beliefs are the result of the old framework, for in that way we will find ourselves releasing ourselves ore and more, so the our own strengths come to our support.

 

The Magical Precognition Approach

In our terms, whether a minute or 10 minutes, or an hour or two hours were involved, we react ahead of time to a headline that have not as yet physically encountered. We react creatively, using the precognitive story as a basis for a fictional endeavor. We turn it into art’s purposes.

The idea, then, of the my blogs came from past and future events, though I were to catch up with those future events very quickly. My mind intuitively organized all of that material, and put it together in a completely new fashion. Sometimes when such events occur, the precognitive trigger is not recognized when it is encountered physically, because it happens too far ahead of time. We organize mental and physical events in a creative manner. In this case my blogs were involved because the concept, while strongly involving images, carries a time span that would make narrative necessary.

I used the magical approach. I caught myself in the act of acting naturally, of demonstrating abilities that our society to a large degree does not admit. That same kind of lighting-swift organization goes on within the body itself constantly, as it deals with probable scenarios to which we may or may not end up reacting to.

The events themselves discussed in any newspaper article point up the same kind of magical affiliations. We live personally in a world of lush creative ideas. Our intellect is aware of that. It is used to working creatively. The focused intellect can indeed activate the intuitive abilities — and the healing abilities. We get what we concentrate upon.

The intellect is a vital organizer even if it is not aware of the magical levels of activity from which often it’s best ideas emerge.

When we look at world events, however, the present world situation for example ( wars in the Middle East), try to enlarge the scope of our intellectual reach, so that we consider world events as living multidimensional “blogs” being formed in the present in response to both future and past triggers. The impact of the future on the past, in our terms — or rather, the implications of the future on the present — are highly important, and such precognitive reactions are as vital, numerous, and real as we ordinarily think that the reactions to past events are.

This puts present world events in an entirely different perspective. Men and women act, then, in relationship to events happening, say, in the future, in certain terms cast their shadows back into the present, or illuminate the past according to the events’ characteristics. There is always more going on than ordinary sense data show.

In our comparatively simple experience, we can see, however, the implications of such activities. Men and women react to future events by unconsciously translating them into art, or motion pictures. They may react by unconsciously taking certain steps of a political nature that seem at the time either unreasonable, or even incomprehensible — steps whose logic appears only in hindsight.

The same occurs, of course, in all areas of human behavior, as well as in the behavior of animals and even of plants. This future shadowing the presents, or future illuminating the present, represents a vital elements in the formation of events as they are perceived in time. In a fashion triplets are reacting in their past to a future event that now can catch up with them, so that each of their actions in any moment of that past happened as a result of a tension — a creative tension — between the event of their original separation and the event of their future reunion.

I do not mean that the reunion is inevitable or predestined, but the vigor of that probabilities, we might say, magnified the original tension. I want to apply all of this to my own situation, both in terms of creative endeavors and my physical situation, so that I begin to understand that I can start to react in the present to a future change.

I can see how important periods of letting go are. My experience happens where I am nearly asleep, but merely relaxed, not worrying, with my intellect in a kind of free flow. I am not hampering it. It is momentarily free of limiting beliefs, and it naturally used — and chose to use — the magical approach to answer what is very simple, now-forgotten intellectual question: What might be in today’s news?

The usual answer, or the usual method of obtaining an answer, is at times inconvenient: I was not about to get up , go to the TV or computer and get the news, so on it’s own the intellect pressed the magical-approach button, I might say, getting the information the quickest and easiest way possible.

It did not give me the bare headline, however — even though that and the blog story were perceived far too quickly for me to follow. What I was aware of was my own creative reveries in response to that information.

Now left alone, the intellect will often solve problems in just such a fashion, when it is allowed to, when we forget what is supposed to be possible and what is not, when we forget that our mind is supposed to be pedestrian and parochial.

The Natural Person’s Education and Culture

The body is constantly repairing itself at an ex excellent rate.

It is doing so because we are giving it different “orders.” We are giving it a different picture of the world, and when doing that we have finally changed many of our old beliefs.

In actuality, the body’s response to such information is always instantaneous, whether or not the results show at once.  We are beginning to hold a more “realistic” picture of how overall reality works. We are managing to disentangle ourselves from many disadvantageous cultural beliefs — beliefs that all of us for years took for granted.

 

We might combat those beliefs, struggle against them, but they still carry great weight. We will still believe them to an important degree. The entire idea, of fear, that had at one time of leading people down the garden path, was based upon those old beliefs. Those ideas have vanished. We are approaching a state of mind, individually and jointly, that represents far more closely one that is natural, with which the natural person is innately equipped.

Education in our culture is a mixed bag — and education comes not from schools alone, but from computers and television, magazines and books, from art and from culture’s own feedback. Generally speaking, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two kinds of education — one focused toward teaching the child to deal with the natural world, and one focused toward teaching the child to deal with the cultural world. Obviously, these are usually combined. It is impossible to separate them.

Our educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. It became more important, then for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. Its own characteristic ways of dealing with nature were frowned upon, so that education does not work with the child’s abilities, but against them. Education then often goes against the grain of the natural person.

This does not mean that some children do not do very well under our system. I do not mean to imply, either, that children do not need an education, or that some discipline and direction are not beneficial. Children, however, will concentrate for hours at a time on subject matters and questions that interest  them. They are often taken from such pursuits, and their natural habits of concentration suffer as a result.

We are unlearning right now, and discovering that this particular unlearning process is indeed highly educational. We are encountering our own natural knowledge.

In many instances, of course, we learned too well . The natural person that is ourselves loves to create. We did this apart from what we had to do in school as a child. These blogs, in that regard, came naturally, as the expression of natural abilities and tendencies, finally emerging despite my official views at any time.

My blog discussions brought about, however, a new kind of education that often seem in direct conflict with the old, and with the official views of contemporary society.

Whether or not these blog discussions happened as they did, however, once written online, the probability brought about by our relationships, meaning that in one way or another we would seek out a larger context of consciousness — a context, because of our talents, that would not remain private, but attract others.

The natural person is to be found, now, not in the past or in the present, but beneath layers and layers of official beliefs, so we are dealing with an archeology of beliefs to find the person who creates beliefs to begin with. As I have said often, evidence of clairvoyance, telepathy, or whatever, are not eccentric, isolated instances occurring in man’s and woman’s experience, but are representative of natural patterns of everyday behavior that become invisible in our world because of the official picture of behavior and reality.

The body’s natural healing processes each day rid people of diseases, repair emotional or bodily illnesses — and such instances go largely unrecorded.

Many of the ideas I have given in previous blogs have indeed, become alive now. In the same way, many other concepts and ideas already given will also assume a new significance and meaning, and add to the richness of our experience, because we will be open to them more than we were before, to ideas having to do with reincarnation, life after death, other spheres of activity.

Instinctively my paintings represent a certain state of consciousness — an in between threshold dimension of awareness, in which the imagination and the senses are almost caught in the act of putting an object together, or of bringing the world into a sensed reality, brand-new, from the realm of the inner mind: a very evocative state of consciousness, and one that could be used in connection with faces.

The body is then magically and naturally repairing itself in a function just as creative, of course, as inner work that goes on in the production of a blog, book or a poem — a fact I am finally getting through my head.

 

The Body’s Magical Reasoning

The body reasons so quickly, so clearly and concisely, that its deductions, its logic, are far too fast for the intellect to follow. The body reasons directly. The body’s reasoning transforms itself into action, with nothing to stand between its elegant logic and the logic’s brilliant execution. Humans could not possibly follow all of the manipulations necessary so improvements can take place. Again, bodily efforts are as magical, as creative, certainly, as the writing of a blog or a poem — but I have in the past trusted my creative abilities as if they were something I had to guard from my physical self.

My change of attitudes has allowed, and changed physical habits: the encouragement of motion, the expanded feeling of identity, which now includes the physical body rather than trying to exclude it.

The body is not a tool, to do our mental bidding. Our body is a mental expression physically materialized. More improvements are indeed even now occurring, and as long as attitudes continue to improve we can expect such progress — for again, the body is quite capable of healing itself completely, and with far greater ease than we give it credit for. However, at times when the body is not able to heal itself, external aid is required to give the body a push to do its work. Take, for example, digestive disorders. Although our bodies can heal such mundane matters, sometimes dietary supplements like Bio X4 (interested people can have a glance at the Bio X4 reviews online) are needed to help the body recuperate faster.

Nevertheless, it is true that we don’t have to do anything in particular, for example, of a conscious nature, except to state our intentions, and the body’s healing mechanisms immediately quickened. This is because we began to take the pressure off, so to speak, and really began to understand the abilities and limitations of the rational mind in its relationship to the body.

Some people believe it is quite possible to have clairvoyant dreams, out-of-body experiences, creative adventures in the arts — but to some of us doubt in the physical power or energy could be directed effectively in the physical realm, so-called, of bodily health, or situations of the nitty-gritty. Again, the material is indeed dealing with a far more valid explanation for the working ways of reality than the old official beliefs — and again, we are not just dealing with evocative, creative hypotheses.

There is no need, to be surprised if some of our ideas frighten people.

If our ideas were already accepted in the world, there would be no need for my blog. That is, some disapproval is acceptable. To attack medical corruption, or medical errors, or particular clinics, for example, is within bounds, but to attack the belief systems of the entire structure is something else again.

Some people’s objections should simply show us why our blog work is so important. We must not forget, again, that we chose these challenges. We wanted to be involved with the initiation of new thematic material. We want the experience of getting it for ourselves, so to speak — the exhilaration of discovery.

The implications are here in my blogs, but our belief systems must be allowed to mellow and change in the light of new knowledge, rather than to be booted aside with an angry foot.