Category Archives: Emotions

Life’s conditions need no justification

Our beliefs close us off from much otherwise quite-available knowledge concerning man’s and woman’s psychology — knowledge that would serve to answer many questions usually asked about the reasons for suffering. Other questions, it is true, are more difficult to answer. Men and women are born, however, with curiosity about all sensations, and about all possible  life experiences. They are thirsty for experience of all kinds. Their curiosity is not limited to the pretty or the mundane.

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Men and women are born with a desire to push beyond the limits : to “explore where no man or woman has ever gone before” — a bastard version of the introduction [to a famous television program], I believe men and women are born with a sense of drama, a need of excitement. Life itself is excitement. The quietest mood rides the thrust of spectacular molecular activity.

We forget many of our quite natural inclinations, feelings, and inner fantasies as we mature into adults, because they do not fit into the picture of the kind of people, or experience, or species we have been taught to believe we are. As a result, many of the events of our lives that are the natural extensions of those feelings appear alien, against our deepest wishes, or thrust upon us, either by outside agencies or by a mischievous subconscious.

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The thoughts of children give excellent clues as to mankind’s and womankind’s nature, but many adults do not remember any childhood thoughts except those that fit, or seem to fit, in with their beliefs about childhood.

Children play at getting killed. They try to imagine what death is like. They imagine what it would be like to fall from a wall like Humpty-Dumpty, or to break their necks. They imagine tragic roles with as much creative abandon as they imagine roles of which adults might approve. They are often quite aware of “willing” themselves sick to get out of difficult situations — and of willing themselves well again.

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As i said, there are all ranges of suffering. In times past in particular, though the custom is not dead, men and women purged themselves or otherwise deprived themselves. They suffered, in other words, for religion’s sake. It was not just that they believed suffering was good for the soul — a statement which can or cannot be true, incidentally, and I will go into that later — but they understood something else: The body will only take so much suffering when it releases consciousness. So they hoped to achieve religious ecstasy.

Religious ecstasy does not need physical suffering as a stimulus, and such a means in the overall will work against religious understanding. Those episodes, however, represent one of the ways in which man and woman can actively seek suffering as a means to another end, and it is beside the point to say that such activity is not natural, since it exists within nature’s framework.

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Discipline is a form of applied suffering, as discipline is usually used. People are not taught to understand the great dimensions of their own capacity for experience. It is natural for a child to be curious about suffering, to want to know what it is, to see it — and by doing so he or she learns to avoid the suffering he or she does not want, to help others avoid suffering that they do not want, and to understand, more importantly, the gradations of emotion and sensation that are his and her heritage. As an adult he or she will not inflict pain upon others if he or she understands this, for he or she will allow himself or herself to feel the validity of his or her own emotions.

If we deny ourselves the direct experience of our own emotions, but muffle them, say, through too-strict discipline, then we can hurt others much more easily, for we project our deadened emotional state upon them — as in the Nazi war camps, men and women followed orders, torturing other people — and we do that first of all by deadening our own sensitivity to pain, and by repressing our emotions.

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Man’s and woman’s vulnerability to pain helps sympathize with others, and therefore helps him or her to more actively alleviate whatever unnecessary causes of pain exist in society.

Each person’s experience of a painful nature is also registered on the part of what we will call the world’s mind. Each, say, failure, or disappointment, or unresolved problem that results in suffering, becomes a part of the world’s experience: This way or that way does not work, or this way or that way has been tried, with poor results. So in that way even weaknesses of failures of suffering are resolved, or rather redeemed as adjustments are made in the light of those data.

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In that regard, each person lives his or her life privately, and yet for all of humanity. Each person tries out new challenges, new circumstances, new achievements from a unique viewpoint, for himself or herself, and for the entire mass of humanity as well.

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The idea that in their play children “try to imagine what death is like” certainly adds an intuitive dimension to my own activities as a child. “Cowboys and Indians” was our gang’s favorite game, and we roamed the nearby fields all of us made believe we killed our enemies and/ or were killed ourselves. We had great fun, and used to play such games to the point of exhaustion.

Children “are often quite aware of willing themselves sick to get out of difficult situations.” I remember very well doing that on certain occasions — usually to avoid some school activity — and that even then I was surprised because my parents didn’t catch on to what I was up to. ( Getting well after the danger period had passed was no problem!)

Dreamers subjective actions form the phenomena of “the self.”

During this period that we have labeled as belonging to the dreamers, certain subjective actions take place as the “structure’ of earthly tuned consciousness formed the phenomena of “the self.”

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What was needed is a highly focused, precisely tuned physical self that could operate efficiently in a space and time scheme that is being formed along with physical creatures — a self, however, that in one way or another must be supported by realms of information and knowledge of a kind that was basically independent of time and space. A knowledge indispensable, and yet a knowledge that could not be allowed to distract the physical focus.

In one way or another, that inner information had to connect each consciousness on the face of the planet. Earthly creatures must be able to react in a moment, yet the inner mechanisms that made such reactions possible were based upon calculations that could not be consciously kept in mind. In our time scheme, for example, we could never move as quickly as we do if we had to consciously work all the muscles involved in motion — or in speech, or in any such bodily performance. We certainly could not communicate on such a physical level if we first had to be aware of all of speech’s mechanisms, working them consciously before a word was uttered. Yet we had to have that kind of knowledge, and we had to have it in a way that did not intrude upon our conscious thoughts.

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Basically there are no real divisions to the self, but for the sake of explanation we must speak of them in those terms. First of all we had the inner self, the creative dreaming self — composed, of units of consciousness, awareized energy that forms our identity, and that formed the identities of the earliest earth inhabitants. These inner selves formed their own dream bodies about them, as previously explained, but the dream bodies did not have to have physical reactions. They were free of gravity and space, and of time.

As the body became physical, however, the inner self formed the body consciousness so that the physical body became more aware of itself, of the environment, and of its relationship within the environment. Before this could happen, though, the body consciousness was taught to become aware of its own inner environment. The body was lovingly formed from electromagnetic energy units through all the stages to atoms, cells, organs, and so forth. The body’s pattern came from the inner self, as all of the units of consciousness involved in this venture together formed this fabric of environment and creatures, each suited to the other.

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So far in our discussion, then, we have an inner self, dwelling primarily in a mental or psychic dimension, dreaming itself into physical form, and finally forming a body consciousness. To that body consciousness the inner self gives “its own body of physical knowledge,” the vast reservoir of physical achievement that it has triumphantly produced. The body consciousness is not “unconscious,” but for working purposes in our terms, the body possesses its own system of consciousness that to some extent, now, it separated from what we think of as our own normal consciousness. The body’s consciousness is hardly to be considered less than our own, or as inferior to that of our inner self, since it represents knowledge from the inner self, and is a part of the inner self’s own consciousness — the part delegated to the body.

Each cell, then operates so well in time because it is, in those terms, precognitive. It is aware of the position, health, vitality, of other cells of the face of the planet. It is aware of the position of each grain of sand on the shores of each ocean, and in those terms it forms a portion of the earth’s consciousness.

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At that level environment, creatures, and the elements of the natural world are all united — a point we will return to quite often. Our intellect as we think of it operates so clearly and precisely, so logically, sometimes so arrogantly, because the intellect rides that great thrust of codified,  “ancient,” “unconscious” power — the power of instant knowing that is a characteristic of the body consciousness.

Thus far in our discussion, we still have only an inner self and a body consciousness. As the body consciousness developed itself, perfected its organization, the inner self and the body consciousness together performed a kind of psychological double-entendre.

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The best analogy I can think of is that up to that time the self was like a psychological rubber band, snapping inward and outward with great force and vitality, but without any kind of rigid-enough psychological framework to maintain a physical stance. The inner self still related to dream reality, while the body’s orientation and the body consciousness attained, as was intended, a great sense of physical adventure, curiosity, speculation, wonder — and so once again the inner self put a portion of its consciousness in a different parcel, so to speak. As once it had formed the body consciousness, now it formed a physically attuned consciousness, a self whose desires and intents would be oriented in a way that, alone, the inner self could not be.

The inner self was too aware of its own multidimensionality, so in our terms it gave psychological birth to itself through the body in space and time. It knew itself as a physical creature. That portion of the self is the portion we recognize as our usual conscious self, alive within the scheme of seasons, aware within the designs of time, caught transfixed in moments of brilliant awareness, with civilizations that seem to come and go. That is the self that is alert in the dear preciseness of the moments, whose physical senses are bound to light and darkness, sound and touch. that is the self that lives the life of the body.

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It is the self that looks outward. It is the self that we call egotistically aware. The inner self became what I refer to as the inner ego. It looks into that inner reality, that psychic dimension of awareness from which both our own consciousness and our body consciousness emerged.

We are one self, then, but for operating purposes we will say that we have three parts: the inner self or inner ego, the body consciousness, and the consciousness that we know.

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These portions, however, are intimately connected. They are like three different systems of consciousness operating together to form the whole. The divisions — the seeming divisions — are not stationary, but change constantly.

To one extent or another, these three systems of consciousness operate in one way or another in all of the species, and in all particles, in the physical universe. In our terms, this means that the proportions of the three systems might vary, but they are always in operation, whether we are speaking of a man or a woman, a rock or a fly, a star or an atom. The inner self represent our prime identity, the self we really are.

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“Earth is a nice place, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” a twist on an old quote, I believe — but the fact is we are physical creatures because we do not like to live on earth, we do like the conditions, we do enjoy overall the particular kind of challenge and the particular kind of perception, knowledge and understanding that the earthly environment provides.

That environment, in our terms, certainly includes suffering. If joy has always been one of the characteristics of earth experience, so has suffering, and the subject will be covered in future blogs. Here, however, I only want to mention one facet, and that is the importance of physical sensation, of whatever kind — for the life of the body provides us, among all things, with a life of sensation, of feeling, a spectrum that must include the experience of all possible sensations within its overall range.

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Now as we will see, all creatures, regardless of their degree, can and do choose, within their spheres of reality, those sensations that they will experience — but to one extent or another all sensations are felt. We will later discuss the part of the mind and its interpretation, for example, of painful stimuli, but I want to make the point that those attracted to physical life are first and foremost tasters of sensation. Outside of that, basically, there are all kinds of mental distinctions made among stimuli. The body is made to react. It is made to feel life and vitality by reacting to an environment that is not itself, by encountering what we might call natural stress. The body maintains its equilibrium by reacting against gravity, by coming in contact with other bodies, by changing its own sensations, by glorifying in the balance between balance and off-balance.

The body consciousness is therefore given a superb sense of its own reality, a sureness of identity, a sense of innate safety and security, that allows it to not only function but to grow in the physical world. It is endowed with a sense of boldness, daring, a sense of natural power. It is perfectly formed to fit into its environment — and the environment is perfectly formed to have such creatures.

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The entities, or units of consciousness — those ancient fragments that burst into objectivity from the vast and infinite psychological realms of All That Is — dared all, for they joyfully abandoned themselves in space and time. They created new psychological entities, opened up an area of divine creativity that “until then” had been closed, and therefore to that degree extended the experience and immense existence of All That Is. For in so abandoning themselves they were not of course abandoned, since they contained within themselves their inherent relationship with All that Is. In those terms All That Is became physical also, aroused at its divine depth by the thrusting of each grass blade through the soil into the air, aroused by each birth and by each moment of each creature’s existence.

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All That Is, therefore, is immersed within our world, present in each hypothetical point, and forms the very fabric from which each portion of matter is created.

For eons men and women where in the dreaming state

Men and women slept long hours, as did the animals — awakening, so to speak, to exercise their bodies, obtain sustenance, and later, to mate. It was indeed a dreamlike world, but a highly charming and vital one, in which dreaming imaginations played rambunctiously with all the probabilities entailed in this new venture: imagining the various forms of language and communication possible, spinning great dream tales of future civilizations replete with their own built-in histories — building, because they were now allied with time, mental edifices that automatically created pasts as well as futures.

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These ancient dreams were shared to some extent by each consciousness that was embarked upon the earthly venture, so that creatures and environment together formed great environmental realities. Valleys and mountains, and their inhabitants, together dreamed themselves into being and coexistence.

The species — from our viewpoint — lived at a much slower pace in those terms. The blood, for example, did not need to course so quickly through the veins and arteries, the heart did not need to beat as fast. And in an important fashion the coordination of the creature in its environment did not need to be as precise, since there was an elastic give-and-take of consciousness between the two.

In ways almost impossible to describe, the ground rules were not as firmly established. Gravity itself did not carry its all-pervasive sway, so that the air was more buoyant. Man and woman was aware of its support in a luxurious, intimate fashion. He/she was aware of himself or herself in a different way, so that, for example, his and her identification with the self did not stop where his or her skin stopped. He and she could follow it outward into the space about his or her form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that we have forgotten.

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During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge man and woman gained was imprinted upon the physical brain: what is now completely unconscious activity involving the functions of the body, its relationship with the environment, its balance and temperature, its constant inner alterations. All of these highly intricate activities were learned and practiced in the dream state as the conscious units translated their inner knowledge through the state of dreaming into physical form.

Then in our terms man and woman began, with the other species, to waken more fully into the physical world, to develop the exterior senses, to intersect delicately and precisely with space and time. Yet man and woman still sleeps and dreams, and that state is still a firm connective with his or her own origins, and with the origins of the universe as he or she knows it as well.

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Man and woman dreamed his or her languages. He and she dreamed how to use his or her tongue to form the words. In his or her dreams he/she practiced stringing the words together to form their meanings, so that finally he or she could consciously begin a sentence without actually knowing how it was begun, yet in the faith that he/she could and would complete it.

All languages have as their basis the language that was spoken in dreams. The need for language arose, however, as man woman became less a dreamer and more immersed in the specifics of space and time, for in the dream state his/her communications with his or her fellows and other species was instantaneous. Language arose to take the place of that inner communication, then. There is a great underlying unity in all of man’s and woman’s so-called early cultures — cave drawings and religions — because they were all fed by that common source, as man and woman tired to transpose inner knowledge into physical actuality.

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The body learned to maintain its stability, its strength and agility, to achieve a state of balance in complementary response to the weather and elements, to dream computations that the conscious mind alone could not hold. The body learned to heal itself in sleep in its dreams — and at certain levels in that state even now each portion of consciousness contributes to the health and stability of all other portions. Far from the claw-and dagger universe, we have one whose very foundation is based upon the loving cooperation of all its parts. That is given — the gift of life brings along with it the actualization of that cooperation, for the body’s parts exist as a unit because of inner relationships of a cooperative nature: and those exist at our birth when we are innocent of any cultural beliefs that may be to the contrary.

If it were not for this most basic, initial loving cooperation, that is a given quality in life itself, life would not have continued. Each individual of each species takes that initial zest and joy of life as its own yardstick. Each individual of whatever species, and each consciousness, whatever its degree, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself — not only for itself but for all of reality as well.

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This is a given characteristic of life, regardless of the beliefs that may lead us to misinterpret the actions of nature, casting some of its creatures in a reprehensible light.

In a fashion those ancient dreamers, through their immense creativity, dreamed all of life’s creatures in all of their pasts, presents, and futures — that is, their dreams opened up the doors of space and time to entities that otherwise would not have been released into actualization, even as, for example, the units of consciousness were once released from the mind of All That Is.

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All possible entities that can ever be actualized always exist. They have always existed and they always will exist. All That Is must, by its characteristics, be all that it can ever be, and so there can be no end to existence — and, in those terms, no beginning. But in terms of our world the units of consciousness, acting both as forces and as psychological entities of massive power, planted the seeds of our world in a dimension of imaginative power that gave birth to physical form. In our terms those entities are our ancestors — and yet they are not ours alone, but the ancestors of all the consciousnesses that make up our world.

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It is easy to live — so easy that although we live, rest, create, respond, feel, touch, see, sleep and wake, we do not really have to try to do any of those things. From our viewpoint they are done for us.

They are done for us in Framed-Mind-2 — and further discussions of Framed-Mind-2, incidentally, will be inter-wound throughout my blogs. Our beliefs often tell us that life is hard, however, that living is difficult, that the universe, again, is unsafe, and that we must use all of our resources — not to meet life with anything like joyful abandon, or course, but to protect ourselves against its implied threats; threats that we have been taught to expect.

But our beliefs do not stop there. Because of both scientific and religious ones, in Western civilization we believe that there are threats from within also. As a result we forget our natural selves, and become involved in a secondary, largely imaginary culture: beliefs that are projected negatively into the future, individually and en masse. People respond with illnesses of one kind or another, or through exaggerated behavior.

Living is easy. It is safe and reliable because it is easy.

The year 2022 exists now!

The year 2022 exists in all of its potential versions, now in this moment. Because mass events are concerned there is not a completely different year, of course, for each individual on the face of the planet — but there are literally an endless number of mass-shared worlds of 2022 “in the wings,” so to speak.

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It is not quite as simple a matter as just deciding what events we want to materialize as reality, since we have, in our terms, a body of probabilities of one kind or another already established as the raw materials for the coming year. It would be quite improbable for us, to suddenly turn into a tailor, for example, for none of our choices with probabilities have led toward such an action.

In like manner, England in all probability next year will not suddenly turn into a Mohammedan nation. But within the range of workable probabilities, private and mass choices, the people of the world are choosing their probable 2022.

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I am taking my time here, for there are some issues that I would like to clear up, that are difficult to explain.

Any of the probable actions that a person considers are a part of that person’s conscious thought. Just underneath, however, people also consider other sets of probabilities that may or may not reach conscious level, simply because they are shunted aside, or because they seem to meet with no conscious recognition. I want us to try and imagine actual events, as we think of them, to be the vitalized representations of probabilities — that is, as the physical versions of mental probabilities. The probabilities with which we are not consciously concerned remain psychologically peripheral: They are there but not there, so to speak.

Our conscious mind can only accept a certain sequence of probabilities as recognized experience. As I have said, the choices among probabilities go on constantly, both on conscious and unconscious levels. Events that we do not perceive as conscious experience are a part of our unconscious experience, however, to some extent. This applies to the individual, and of course en masse the same applies to world events. Each action seeks all of its own possible fulfillments. All That IS seeks all possible experience, but in such a larger framework in this case that questions of, say, pain or death simply do not apply, though certainly they do on the physical level.

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Great expectations, basically, have nothing to do with degree, for a grass blade is filled with great expectations. Great expectations are built upon a faith in the nature of reality, a faith in nature itself, a faith in the life we are given, whatever its degree — and all children, for example, are born with those expectations. Fairy tales are indeed often — though not always — carriers of a kind of underground knowledge, as per Cinderella, and the greatest fairy tales are always those in which the greatest expectations win out: The elements of the physical world that are unfortunate can be changed in the twinkling of an eye through great expectations.

Our education tells us that all of that is nonsense, that the world is defined by its physical aspects alone. When we think of power we think of, say, nuclear energy, or solar energy — but power is the creative energy within men’s and women’s minds that allows them to use such powers, such energies, such forces.

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The true power is in the imagination which dares to speculate upon that which is not yet. The imagination, backed by great expectations, can bring about almost any reality within the range of probabilities. All of the possible versions of 2022 will remain psychologically peripheral, in the background of our conscious experience — but all of those possible versions will be connected in one way or another.

The important lessons have never really appeared in our societies: the most beneficial use of the directed will, with great expectations, and that coupled with the knowledge of Framed-minds-1 and 2 activities. Very simply: We want something, we dwell upon it consciously for a while, we consciously imagine it coming to the forefront of probabilities, closer to our actually. Then we drop it like a pebble into Framed-mind-2, forget about it as much as possible for a fortnight, and do this in a certain rhythm.

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Resolutions help focus both mind and imagination. that focusing helps us act, to be.

In the most basic of terms, as 2022 happens the energy that comes into our universe is as new as if( in our terms) the world were created yesterday — a point that will be rather difficult to explain. All of the probable versions of 2022 spin off their own probable pasts as well as their own probable futures, and any consciousness that exists in 2022 was, (again in those terms) a part of what we think of as the beginning of the world.

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Like the entire 911 affair, any physical event serves as a focus that attracts all of its probable versions and outcomes. The situation was a materialized mass dream, meant to be important and vital on political and religious platforms of reality, meant to dramatize a conflict of beliefs, and to project that conflict outward into the realm of public knowledge. Everyone involved was consciously and unconsciously a willing participant at the most basic levels of human behavior, and it is of course no coincidence that today is foreshadowed by the event. What will the world do wit it?

Our TV and news systems of communication are a part of the event itself, of course. It is in a way far better that these events occurred now, and in the way that they have, so that the problems appear clearly in the world arena.

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Religious beliefs will be examined as they have not been before, and their connections and political affiliations. The Arab world still needs the West, and again, it is better that those issues come to light now, while they must to some extent consider the rest of the world.

Do not personally give any more conscious consideration, each human being, to events that we do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties us in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what we want, and as far as public events are concerned, take it for granted that sometimes even men and women are wiser than they know.

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EFFECTIVE RESOLUTIONS:

1: I will approve of myself, my characteristics, my abilities, my likes and dislikes, my inclinations and dis-inclinations, realizing that these form my unique individuality. They are given me for a reason.

2: I will approve of and rejoice in my accomplishments, and I will be as vigorous in listing these — as rigorous in remembering them — as I have ever been in remembering and enumerating my failures or lacks of accomplishment.

3: I will remember the creative framework of existence, in which I have my being. Therefore the possibilities, potentials, seeming miracles, and joyful spontaneity of Framed-mind-2 will be in my mind, so that the doors to creative living are open.

4: I will realize that the future is a probability. In terms of ordinary experience, nothing exists there yet. It is virgin territory, planted by my feelings and thoughts in the present. Therefore I will plant accomplishments and successes, and I will do this by remembering that nothing can exist in the future that I do not want to be there.

The Inner Gestalt

The inner universe is a gestalt formed by fields of awareized energy that contains what we will call “information” for now — but we will have some comments later in this blog, for this is not the kind of information we are used to.

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Each unit of consciousness inherently possesses within itself all of the information available to the whole, and its specific nature when it operates as a particle rests upon that great “body” of inner knowledge. Any one such particle can be where it “is,” be what it is, and be when it is only because the positions, relative positions, and situations of all other such particles are known.

In the deepest terms, our physical world is beginning at each point at which these units of consciousness assert themselves to form physical reality. Otherwise, life would not be “handed down” through the generations. Each unit of consciousness intensifies, magnifies its own intent to be — and, we might say, works up from within itself an explosive spark of primal desire that “explodes” into a process that causes physical materialization. It turns into Electromagnetic Energy unit, in which case it is embarked upon its own kind of physical experience.

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These electromagnetic energy units also operate as fields, as waves, or as particles, as the units of consciousness do — but in our terms they are closer to physical orientation. Their die is cast, so to speak: They have already begun the special kind of screening process necessary that will bring about physical form. They begin to deal with the kinds of information that will help form our world. There are literally numberless steps taken before electromagnetic energy units combine in their own fashion to form the most microscopic physical particles, and even here the greatest, gentlest sorting-out process takes place as these units disentangle themselves at certain operational levels from their own greater fields of “information,” to specialize in the various elements that will allow for the production of atoms and molecules impeccably suited to our kind of world.

First, we have various stages of, say, pseudo-matter, of dream images, that only gradually — in those terms — coalesce and become physically viable, for there are endless varieties of “matte” between the matter that we recognize and the anti-matter of physicists’ theories.

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Form exists at many other levels than those we recognize, in other words. Our dream forms are quite as real as our physical ones. They simply fit into their own environment at another level of activity, and they are quite reminiscent of the kinds of forms that we had in the beginning of our world.

While we and all of the other species were what I call sleepwalkers, our bodies by then were physically capable. In a manner of speaking, we did not know how to use them properly as yet. Now, from a waking state, we do not understand how our dream bodies can seem to fly through the air, defy space and even time, converse with strangers and so forth. In the same way, however, once, we had to learn to deal with gravity, to deal with space and time, to manipulate in a world of objects, to simply breathe, to digest our food, and to perform all of the biological manipulations that now we take for granted.

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We could not afford to identify too completely with such bodies until we learned how to survive within them, so in the dream state the true processes of life began as their new bodies and earth-tuned consciousnesses saw themselves mentally exercising all portions of the body. Behind all that was the brilliant comprehension and cooperation of all of the units of consciousness that go to compose the body, each adding its own information and specific knowledge to the overall bodily organizations, and each involved in the most intricate fields of relationships, for the miracle of the body’s efficiency is the result of relationships that exist among all of its parts, connecting it to other levels of existence that do not physical appear.

Units of consciousness, transforming themselves into electromagnetic energy units, formed the environment and all of its inhabitants in the same process, in what we might call a circular manner rather than a serial one. And in those terms, of course, there are only various physical manifestations of consciousness, not a planet and its inhabitants, but an entire gestalt of awareized consciousness. In those terms, each portion of physically oriented consciousness sees reality and experience from its own privileged viewpoint, about which it seems all else revolves, even though this may involve a larger generalized field than our own, or a smaller one.

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So to rocks, say, we can be considered a portion of their environment, while we may consider them merely a portion of our environment. We simply do not tune into the range of rock consciousness. Actually, many other kinds of consciousness, while focused in their own specific ways, are more aware than man and woman is of the earth’s unified nature — but man and woman, if following his or her own ways, also adds to the value fulfillment of all other consciousness in ways that are quite outside of usual systems of knowledge.

If we remember that beneath all, each unit of consciousness is aware of the position of each other unit, and that these units form all physical matter, then perhaps we can intuitively follow what I mean, for whatever knowledge man and woman attains, whatever experience any one person accumulates, whatever arts or sciences we produce, all such information is instantly perceived at other levels of activity by each other units of consciousness that compose physical reality — whether those units form the shape of rock, a raindrop, an apple, a cat, a frog or a shoe. manufactured products are also composed of atoms and molecules that ride upon units of consciousness transformed into electromagnetic energy units, and hence into physical elements.

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What we have, really, is a manifested and an un-manifested consciousness, but only relatively speaking. We do not perceive the consciousness of objects. It is not manifest to us because our range of activities requires boundaries to frame our picture of reality.

All of our manufactured objects also originated in the realm of dreams, first obviously being conceived of mentally, and in the same way man and woman produced his and her first tools. He /she was born with all of those abilities — abilities by which he is now characterized — and with other abilities that in our terms still wait for development. Not that he or she has not used them so far, but that her or she has not focused upon them in what we consider the main line of civilized continuity. Hints of those abilities are always present in the dream state, and in the arts, in the religions, and even in the sciences. They appear in politics and business, but as the largely un-manifest intuitive background, which is largely ignored.

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Men’s and women’s dreams have always provided him or her with a sense of impetus, purpose, meaning, and given him or her the raw material from which to form his and her civilizations. The true history of the world is the history of man’s and woman’s dreams, for they have been responsible in one way or another for all historic developments. They were responsible for the birth of agriculture, as well as industry, the rise and fall of nations, the “glory” that was Rome, and Rome’s destruction. Our present technological advances can almost be dated from the invention of the printing press, to Edison’s inventions, which were flashes of intuition, dream-inspired. But if what I am telling you is true, then it is obvious that when I say that our physical world originated in the world of dreams, I must mean something far different from the usual definition of dream reality. Again, I could choose another term, but I want to emphasize each person’s intimate contact with that other reality that does occur in what we think of as the state of dreaming.

That analogy will help us at least intuitively understand the existence of situations such as suffering, and poverty, that otherwise seem to have no adequate explanations. I hope also to imply the survival of the fittest in a tooth-and-claw fashion, or the punishing acts of a vengeful God on the one hand and the triumph of an evil force on the other.

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For now in our tale of beginnings, however, we still have a spasmodic universe that appears and disappears — that gradually, in those terms, manifest for longer periods of time. What we really had in the beginning were images without form, slowly adopting form, blinking on and off, then stabilizing into forms that were as yet not completely physical. These then took on all of the characteristics that we now consider forward physical matter.

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As all of this occurred, consciousness took on more and more specific orientations, greater organizations at our end. At the “other end,” it disentangled itself from vaster fields of activity to allow for this specific behavior. All of these units of consciousness again, operate as entities (or particles, or as waves or forces). In those terms, consciousness formed the experience of time — and not, of course, the other way around.

Desire to create out of joy, not from a sense of responsibility

Many if the ideas in my blogs will be accepted by scientists most dubiously, though some, of course, will grasp what I will be saying. It is of course very difficult for the deepest truths cannot be physically proven. Science is used to asking quite specific questions, and it usually comes up with very specific answers — even if those answers are wrong.

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“Wrong” answers can fit together, however, to present a perfect picture, an excellent construct of its own — and why not? For any answers that do not fit the construct are simply thrown away and never appear. So in a fashion we are dealing with what science has thrown away. The picture we will end up presenting, will certainly not fit that of established science.

However, if objective proof of that nature is considered the priority for facts, then as we know science cannot prove its version of the universe’s origin either. It only sets up an hypothesis, which collects about it all data that agree, and again ignores what does not fit. Moreover, science’s thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart — and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his or her heart man or woman well knows his/her own worth, and realizes that his/her own consciousness is no accident. The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his/her own mental edifices.

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There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man’s or woman’s consciousness by which he/she ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his/her time, and even if his/her intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity knows. That is the portion of him/her, of course, that is born and grows to maturity even while the lungs or digestive processes do not read learned treatises on the body’s “machinery,” so in my blog we will hope to arouse within the reader, of whatever persuasion, a kind of subjective evidence, a resonance between ideas and being. Many people comment, saying that they feel as if somehow they have always been acquainted with our material — and of course they have, for it represents the inner knowing within each individual. In a fashion, creative play is our human version of far greater characteristics from which our universe itself was formed. There are all kinds of definite, even specific, subjective evidence for the nature of our own reality — evidence that is readily apparent once we really begin to look for it, particularly by comparing the world of our dreams with our daily life.

In other words, subjective play is the basis for all creativity, of course — but far more, it is responsible for the great inner play of subjective and objective reality.

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With all due respect, psychologists, with the best of intentions, are barking up the wrong psychological tree. He/she are very enthusiastic about his or her value tests, and his or her enthusiasm is what is important. The nature of the subjective mind, however, will never open itself to such tests, which represent, more than anything else, a kind of mechanical psychology, as if we could break down human values to a kind of logical alphabet of psychic atoms and molecules. A good try, but representative of psychology’s best attempt to make sense of a poor hypothesis.

We may do what we wish ourselves (about taking the tests), of course, but our main purpose is to drive beyond psychology’s boundaries, and not play pussyfoot among the current psychological lilies of the field.

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Our body’s are responding, so let us remember that creativity is playful, and that it always surfaces when we allow our mind to drop its worries.

Whenever a blog is translated, it is almost impossible, of course, to say the same thing in the same way. My blog will always be expressed through those invisible national characteristics that are so intimately involved with language — and obviously, were that not so, no blog could be understood by someone of a foreign language. There are bound to be distortions, but the distortions themselves are meaningful.

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Now, a number of the world’s leading scientists in the physical disciplines have publicly stated their beliefs that basically consciousness plays the primary role in our world and/or universe. For reasons too complicated to go into here, this attitude prevails even with some mathematicians who seek to penetrate to the core of our reality as they understand it.

However, for every scientist bold enough to think this way, there are scores of others who vehemently disagree. For most scientific materialists only physical matter is real. For them consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon, the passive by-product of the brain’s physiology and chemical events. They believe that physical death is the end of everything, that ultimately all if pointless. They derisively call their rebellious colleagues “animists” — those who believe that all life forms and natural phenomena have a spiritual origin independent of physical matter. (Such heretics are called “Vitalists,” a term related to animism, and one which also has a long history of scientific contempt behind it.)

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What can the materialistic scientists use other than mind — or consciousness, that poor epiphenomenon — to study and dissect matter? (Not to mention that innumerable experiments have proven that “physical matter” isn’t solid or objective at all, but “only” energy!) We have, then, the paradox of mind denying its own reality, let alone its importance. As far as we know, human beings are the only creatures on earth who would seriously engage in such learned futile behavior. It’s also very ironic, I think, that the materialists spend years acquiring their eclipsed education and prestige, both of which they then use to inform us of the ultimate futility of all of our endeavors (including their own, or course). But for the materialists, the mind-brain duality isn’t scientific in the orthodox sense. It isn’t falsifiable; that is, it cannot be stated under what precise conditions the mind-brain duality could be proven false. To which, understandably enough, those scientists who do accept the reality of mind reply that neither can the idea be falsified that only what is “physical” is real.

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I think is most risky at this stage in history for anyone — scientist or not — to dogmatically state that life has no meaning, of is a farce, or that attributes of our reality of which we can only mentally conceive at this time do not really exist. Discoveries in the “future” are quite apt to prove such limited viewpoints wrong. The history of science itself contains many examples of theories and “facts” gone awry. Moreover, why would our species want to depend upon as fragile a conception as epiphenomenalism through which to comprehend our reality? Or better yet, why does it in large part? Truly, our individual and collective ignorance of just our own probable reality is most profound at this time in our linear history (in those terms). I would be surprised is ultimately, as a result of mankind’s or womankind’s restless search for meaning, we didn’t end up returning in a new official way to our ancient concepts of spirit within everything, animate and inanimate. Such an updated animistic/vitalistic view would take into account discoveries ranging from sub-nuclear events to the largest imaginable astronomical processes in our observable universe. Human beings do know their own worth.

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There is no doubt that we need to believe that life has meaning. That belief may well be biological imperative. If we were as science maintains — only creatures formed by elements combining mindlessly in a universe itself created by chance, surrounded everywhere by chaos — then how could we even conceive of the idea of meaning or order?

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Science would say that the idea of meaning itself is simply a reflection of the state of the brain, as is the illusion of our consciousness. But a science that disregards consciousness must necessarily end up creating its own illusion. It ignores the reality of experience, the evidence of being, and in so doing it denies rather than reinforces life’s values.

 

The Now Beginning

In terms of our equations, energy and consciousness and matter are one. And in those terms (the qualifications are necessary) — consciousness is the agent that directs the transformation of energy into form and if form into energy. All possible visible or invisible particles that we discover or imagine — meaning hypothesized particles — possess consciousness. They are energized consciousness.

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There are certain characteristics inherent in energy itself, quite aside from any that we ascribe to it, since of course to date we do not consider energy conscious.

Energy is above all things infinitely creative, innovative, original. Energy is imaginative. (Any scientists who might be reading this blog may as well stop here.) I am not assigning human traits to energy. Instead, our human traits are the result of energy’s characteristics — a rather important difference. Space as we think of it is, in our terms, filled with invisible particles. They are the unstated portion of physical reality, the un-manifest medium in which our world exists. In that regard, however, atoms and molecules are stated, though we cannot see them with our [ unaided ] eye. The smaller particles that make them up become “smaller and smaller,” finally disappearing from the examination of any kind of physical instrument, and these help bridge the gap between un-manifest and manifest reality.

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For the terms of this discussion of the beginning of our world, I will deal with known qualities for now — the atoms and molecules. In the beginning they imagined the myriad of forms that were physically possible. They imagined the numberless cells that could arise from their own cooperative creation. Energy is boundless. It is exuberant. It knows no limits. In those terms, the atoms dreamed the cells into physical being — and from that new threshold of physical activity cellular consciousness dreamed of the myriad organizations that could emerge from this indescribable venture.

Again, in actuality all of this took place at once, yet the depth of psychological experience contained therein can never be measured, for it involved a kind of value fulfillment with which each consciousness is involved. That characteristic of value fulfillment is perhaps the most important element in the being of All That Is, and it it a part of the heritage of all species.

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Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence — a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity — with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all variations — and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.

In those terms, then, there was in the beginning an almost unimaginable time in which energized consciousness, using its own creative abilities, its own imagination, experimented with triumphant rambunctiousness, trying out one form after another. In those terms we are used to thinking of, nothing was stable. Consciousness as we think of it turned into matter, and then into pure energy and back again.

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Subjectivity still largely ruled. Like an adolescent leaving home for the first time, individualized consciousness was also somewhat homesick, and returned often to the family homestead — but gradually gained confidence and left finally to form a universe.

Now because All That IS contains within itself such omnipotent, fertile, divine creative characteristics, all portions of its subjective experience attained dimensions of actuality impossible to describe. The thoughts, for example, of All That Is were not simply thoughts as we might have, but multidimensional mental events of superlative nature. Those events soon found that a transformation must occur, if they were to journey into objectivity — for no objectivity of itself could contain the entire reality of subjective events that existed within divine subjectivity. Only in that context could their relative perfection be maintained. Yet they had yearned before the beginning for other experiences, and even for fulfillment of a different nature. They sensed a kind of value fulfillment that required of them the utilization of their own creative abilities. They yearned to create as they had been created, and All That Is, in a kind of divine perplexity, nevertheless realized that his had always been its own intent.

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All That IS realized that such a separation would also allow us to bring about a different kind of divine art, in which the creators themselves created, and their creations created, bringing into actuality existences that were possible precisely because there would seem to be a difference between the creator and the creations. All That Is is, therefore, within each smallest portion of consciousness.

Yet each smallest portion of consciousness can uniquely create, bring into being, eccentric versions of All That Is, that in certain terms All That Is, without that separation, could not otherwise create. The loving support, the loving encouragement of the slightest probable consciousness and manifestation — that is the intent of All That Is.

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All That Is knows that even this purpose is a portion of a larger purpose. In terms of time, the realization of that purpose will emerge with another momentous explosion of subjective inspiration into objectivity, or into another form. In deeper terms, however, that purpose is also known now, and to one extent or another the entire universe dreams of it, as once cellular consciousness dreamed of the organs that it might “form.”

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I want to stress that I am speaking here not so much about a kind of spiritual evolution as I am about an expansion. We will for now, however, confine ourselves to discussion of consciousness in the beginning of the world, stressing that the first basis of physical life was largely subjective, and that the state of dreaming not only helped shape the consciousness of our species, but also in those terms served to provide a steady source of information to man and woman about his/her physical environment, and served as an inner web of communication among all species.

 

Imagine a body with a fully operating body consciousness

A body not diseased or defective, but without the overriding ego-directed consciousness that we have. The sleepwalker’s physical abilities surpassed ours. They were as agile as animals, their purpose simply to be. Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, their primary focuses scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. Yet they learned ‘through experience,’ and began to ‘awaken,’ to become aware of themselves, to discover time, or to create it.

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The sleepwalkers were not asleep to themselves, only from our viewpoint. There were several such races of human beings. To them the real was the dream life, which contained the highest stimuli. This is the other side of our own experience. Such races left the physical earth much as they found it. In what we would call the physical waking state, these individuals slept, yet they behaved with great natural physical grace. They did not saddle the body with negative beliefs of disease or limitation. They did not age to the extent that we do.

The universe began tomorrow

The universe will begin yesterday. The universe began tomorrow. Both of these statements are quite meaningless. The tenses are wrong, and perhaps our time sense is completely outraged. Yet the statement: “The universe began in some distant past, ” is, in basic terms, just as meaningless.

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In fact, the first two statements, while making no logical sense, do indeed hint of phenomena that show time itself to be no more than a creative construct. Time and space are in a fashion part of the furniture of our universe.

The very experience of passing moments belongs to our psychological rooms in the same way that clocks are attached to our walls. Whenever science or religion seeks the origin of the universe, they search for it in the past. The universe is being created now. Creation occurs in each moment, in our terms. The illusion of time is being created now. It is therefore somewhat futile to look for the origins of the universe by using a time scheme that is in itself, at the very least, highly relative.

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Our now, or present moment, is a psychological platform. It seems that the universe began with an initial burst of energy of some kind. Evolutionists cannot account for its cause. Many religious people believe that a god exists in a larger dimension of reality, and that he or she created the universe while being himself or herself outside of it. He or she set it into motion. Many individuals, following either persuasion, believe that regardless of its source, the universe must run out of energy. Established science is quite certain that no energy can now be created or destroyed, but only transformed (as stated in the first laws of thermodynamics). Science sees energy and matter as being basically the same thing, appearing differently under varying circumstances.

In certain terms, science and religion are both dealing with the idea of an objectively created universe. Either God “made it,” or physical matter, in some unexplained manner, was formed after an initial explosion of energy, and consciousness emerged from that initially dead matter in a way yet to be explained.

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Instead, consciousness formed matter. Each atom and molecule has its own consciousness. Consciousness and matter and energy are one, but consciousness initiates the transformation of energy into matter. In those terms, the “beginning” of our universe was a triumph in the expansion of consciousness, as it learned to translate itself into physical form. The universe emerged into actuality in the same way, but to a different degree, that any idea emerges from what we think of as subjectivity into physical expression.

The consciousness of each reader of this blog existed before the universe was formed: — but that consciousness was un-manifest. Our closest approximation — and its is an approximation only — of the state of being that existed before the universe was formed is the dream state. In that state before the beginning, our consciousness existed free of space and time, aware of immense probabilities. This is extremely difficult to verbalize, yet it is very important that such an attempt be made. Our consciousness is a part of an infinitely original creative process.

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I will purposely avoid the word “God” because of the connotations placed upon it by conventional religion. I will make an attempt to explain the characteristics of this divine process throughout this blog. I call the process “All That Is.” All That Is is so much a part of its creations,” for each creation also carries indelibly within it the characteristics of its source.

If we have thought that the universe followed a mechanistic model, then we would have to say that each portion of this “cosmic machine” created itself, knowing its position in the entire “future construction.” We would have to say further that each portion came gladly out of its own source individually, neatly tailored to its position, while at the same time that individual source was also as intimately the source of each other individual portion.

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I am not saying that the universe is the result of some “psychological machine,” either, but that each portion of consciousness is a part of All That Is, and that the universe falls together in a spontaneous, divine order — and that each portion of consciousness carries within it indelibly the knowledge of the whole.

The birth of the world represented a divine psychological awakening. Each consciousness that take a part in the physical universe dreamed of such a physical existence, in our terms before the earth was formed. In greater terms than ours, it is quite true to say that the universe is not formed yet, or that the universe has vanished. In still vaster terms, however, the fact is that in one state or another of the universe has always existed.

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Our closest approximation of the purpose of the universe can be found in those loving emotions that we have toward the development of our children, in our intent to have them develop their fullest capacities.

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Our finest aspirations can give us some dim clue as to the great creative thrust that is behind our own smallest act, for our own smallest act is possible only because our body has already been provided for in the physical world. Our life is given. In each moment it is renewed. So smoothly and effortlessly do we ride that thrust of life’s energy that we are sometimes scarcely aware of it. We are not equipped with a certain amount of energy that then wears out and dies. Instead we are, again, newly created in each moment.

Be a practicing idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long

We must take small practical steps, often when we would prefer to take giant ones — but we must move in the direction of our ideals through action. Otherwise we will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given state or situation.

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Life at all levels of activity is propelled to seek ideals, whether of a biological or mental nature. That pursuit automatically gives life its zest and natural sense of excitement and drama. Developing our own abilities, whatever they may be, exploring and expanding, our experience of selfhood, gives life a sense of purpose, meaning, and creative excitement — and also adds to the understanding and development of the society and the species.

It is not enough to meditate, or to imagine in our mind some desired goal being accomplished, if we are afraid to act upon the very impulses to which our meditations and imaginings give rise. When we do not take any steps toward an ideal position then our life does lack excitement. We become depressed. We might become an idealist in reverse, so that we find a certain excitement in contemplating the occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes.

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We may begin to concentrate our attention on such activities. We may contemplate the end of the world instead, but in either case we are propelled by a sense of personal frustration, and perhaps by some degree of vengeance, seeing in our mind the destruction of a world that fell so far beneath our idealized expectations.

None of the unfortunate situations discussed in my blog, have any power over us, if we understand that events do not exist by themselves. All events and situations exist first within the mind. At the deepest levels of communication no news is secret, whether or not we receive it by way of our technological gadgets.

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Our thoughts and beliefs and desires form the events that we view on television. If we want to change our world, we must first change our thoughts, expectations, and beliefs. If every reader of this blog changed his or her attitudes, even though not one law was rewritten, tomorrow the world would have changed for the better. The new laws would follow.

Any new law always follows the change in belief. It is not the other way around.

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There is no civilization, no system of science, art, or philosophy, that did not originate in the mind. When we give lip service to ideas with which we do not agree, we are betraying our own ideals, harming oneself to some extent, and society as well, insofar as we are denying oneself and society that benefit of our own understanding. Each person is an idealist. I simply want to help us practice our idealism in the acts of our daily life.

Each person alive helps paint the living picture of civilization as it exists at any given time, in our terms. “Be your own best artist”. Our thoughts, feelings and expectations are like the living brush strokes with which we paint our corner of life’s landscape. If we do our best in our own life, then we are indeed helping to improve the quality of all life. Our thoughts are as real as snowflakes or raindrops or clouds. They mix and merge with the thoughts of others, to form man’s and woman’s livingscape, providing the vast mental elements from which physical events will be formed.

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As we learn to allow our impulses some freedom, we will discover their connection with our own idealized version of what life should be. We will begin to discover that those spontaneous urges are as basically good and life-giving as the physical elements of the earth that provide the impetus for all biological life.

Beyond that, however, those impulses, connect us with the original impulses from which all life emerges.

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We will discover the natural, cooperative of our impulses, and we will no longer believe that they exist as contradictory or disruptive influences. Our impulses are part of the great multi-action of being. At deeper levels, the impulse portion of the personality is aware of all actions upon the earth’s surface. We are involved in a cooperative venture, in which our slightest impulse has a greater meaning, and is intimately connected with all other actions. We have the power to change our life and the world for the better, but the methods that are worthy of them. Science and religion have each contributed much to man’s and woman’s development. They must also reevaluate their ideals and methods, however.

In larger terms, there are really only scientific and religious men and women, however, and fields of science and religion would be meaningless without those individuals who believe in their positions. As those men and women enlarge their definitions of reckless in pursuit of the ideal — reckless enough to insist that each step we take along the way is worthy of that ideal.

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We will understand, if we are a practicing idealist, that we cannot kill in the name of peace, for if we do so our methods will automatically undermine our ideal. The sacredness of life and spirit are one and the same. We cannot condemn the body without ultimately condemning the soul. We cannot condemn the soul without ultimately condemning the body.

I would like each of my Blog readers to be practicing idealist, and if you are then you will automatically be tolerant of the beliefs of others. You will not be unkind in the pursuit of your own ideals. You will look upon the world with a sane compassion, with some humor, and you will look for man’s and woman’s basic good intent. You will find it. It has always been there. You will discover your own basic good intent, and see that it has always been behind all of your actions — even in those least fitted to the pursuit of your private ideals.

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The end does not justify the means. If we learn that lesson, then our good intent will allow us to act effectively and creatively in our private experience, and in our relationships with others. Our changed beliefs will affect the mental atmosphere of our nation and the world.

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We must encounter the selves that we are now. Acknowledge our impulses. Explore their meanings. Rely upon ourselves. We will find far greater power, achievement, and virtue than we suppose.

Very few people really act from an evil intent

Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the “idea,”” but instead happen because men and women often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

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When science seems to betray us, in our society, it does so because its methods are unworthy of its intent — so unworthy and so out of line with science’s prime purpose that the methods themselves almost amount to an insidious anti-scientific attitude that goes all unrecognized. The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation, so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. On the surface level, such methods appear sometimes regrettable but necessary, but the deeper implications far outdo any temporary benefits, for through such methods men and women lose sight of life’s sacredness, and begin to treat it contemptuously.

We will often condone quite reprehensible acts if we think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. We have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of “the powers of good and evil,” and I am quite sure that many are convinced of evil’s force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

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That is why fanatics feel justified in their actions. When we indulge in such black-and-white thinking, we treat our ideals shabbily. Each act that is not keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. If we feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if we are idealistic, we may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps we might not otherwise take to achieve it. And when this happens, the ideal is always eroded. If we want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that we take along the way must be worthy of our goal.

In our country, the free enterprise system is immersed in strange origins. It is based upon the democratic belief in each individual’s right to pursue a worthy and equitable life. But that also became bound up, with Darwinian ideas of the survival of the fittest, and with the belief, then, that each individual must seek his or her own good at the expense of others, and by the quite erroneous conception that all of the members of a given species are in competition with each other, and that each species is in further competition with each other species.

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The “laws” of supply and demand are misconceptions based upon a quite uncomplimentary belief in man’s and woman’s basic greedy nature. In the past we treated the land in our country as if our species being the “fittest,” had the right to survive at the expense of all other species, and at the expense of the land itself. The ideal of the country was and is an excellent one: the right of each individual to pursue an equitable, worthy existence, with dignity. The means, however, have helped erode that ideal, and the public interpretation of Darwin’s principles was, quite unfortunately, transferred to the economic area, and to the image of man and woman as a political animal.

Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. When man and woman spoke of the sacredness of life — in his or her more expansive moods — he or she she referred to human life alone. We are not in competition with other species, nor are we in any natural competition with ourselves. Nor in the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case we would have no world at all.

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Individually, we exist physically because of the unsurpassed cooperation that exists just biologically between our species and all others, and on deeper levels because of the cellular affiliations that exist among the cells of all species. Value fulfillment is a psychological and physical propensity that exists in each unit of consciousness, propelling it toward its own greatest fulfillment in such a way that its individual fulfillment also adds to best possible development on the part of each other such unit of consciousness. This propensity operates below and within the framework of matter. It operates above as well, but I am here concerned with the cooperative nature with which value fulfillment endows all units of consciousness within our physical world.

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While we believed in competition, then competition became not only a reality but an ideal. Children are taught to compete against each other. The child naturally “competes” against herself or himself in an urge to outdo old performance with new. Competition, however, has been promoted as the ideal at all levels of activity. It is as if we must look at others to see how we are doing — and when we are taught not to trust our own abilities, then of course we need the opinions of others overmuch. I am not speaking of any playful competition, obviously, but of a determined, rigorous, desperate, sometimes almost deadly competition, in which a person’s value is determined according to the number of individuals he or she has shunted aside.

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This is carried through in economics, politics, medicine, the sciences, and even the religions. So I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting.

People often respond to the seasons in individualistic fashion, of course, using certain elements to spur them on or hold them back. No season is itself only. It exists in relationship to all the people within its boundaries.