Category Archives: Inner universe

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.

The tree of life, of reptiles turning into birds….

If science wants to talk about the tree of life, then we have certainly got the right to see all — or at least most — of the leaves on the tree, not just those at the tips of the branches. Meaning of course, that many of those invisible leaves would represent the missing, physical, intermediate forms demanded by evolutionary theory.

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Some of us keep searching for some remote spiritual inner self that we can trust and look to for help and support, but all the while we distrust the familiar self with which we have such intimate contact. We set up divisions between portions of the self that are unnecessary.

There are many schools for spiritual advancement that teach us to “get rid of the clutter of our impulses and desires,” to show aside the self that we are in search of a greater idealized version. First of, the self that we are is ever-changing and never static. There is an inner self in the terms of those definitions, but that inner self, which is the source of our present being, speaks through our impulses. They provide in-built spiritual and biological impetuses toward our most ideal development. We must trust the self that we are , now.

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If we would know oneself in deepest terms, we must start with our own feelings, emotions, desires, intent and impulses. Spiritual knowledge and psychic wisdom are the natural result of a sense of self-unity.

Impulses are inherently good, both spiritually and biologically. They emerge from Framed-mind-2, from the inner self, and they are based on the great inner web-work of communication that exists among all species on our planet. Impulses also provide the natural impetus toward those patterns of behavior that serve us best, so that while certain impulses may bunch up toward physical activity, say, others, seemingly contradictory, will lead toward quiet contemplation, so that overall certain balances are maintained.

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Some people are only aware of — or largely aware of — impulses toward anger, because they have inhibited those natural impulses toward love that would otherwise temper what seemed to be aggressive desires. When we begin trusting ourselves, we start by taking it for granted that to some extent at least we have not trusted oneself or our impulses in the past: We have thought that impulses were dangerous, disruptive, or even evil. So as we begin to learn self-trust, we acknowledge our impulses. We try them on for size. We see where they lead us by allowing them some freedom. We do not follow urges through that would hurt others physically, or that seem in direct contradiction to our present beliefs — but we do acknowledge them. We do try to discover their source. Behind them we will almost always find an inhibited impulse — or many of them — that motivated us to move in some ideal direction, to seek a love or understanding so idealized in our mind that it seemed impossible to achieve. We are left with the impulse to strike out.

If we examine such troublesome stimuli, we will always find that they originally rose after a long process, a process in which we were afraid to take small positive steps toward some ideal. Our own impulses naturally lead us to seek creative fulfillment, the expansion of our consciousness, psychic excursions, and the conscious knowledge and manipulation of our dreams.

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No methods will work if we are afraid of our own impulses, or of the nature of our own being. Most of us understand that All That Is is within us, that God is within creation, within physical matter, and that “He” or “She” does not simply operate as some cosmic director on the outside of reality. We must understand that the spiritual self also exists within the physical self in the same fashion. The inner self is not remote, either — not divorced from our most intimate desires and affairs, but instead communicates through our own smallest gesture, through our smallest ideal.

This sense of division within the self forces us to think that there is a remote, spiritual, wise, intuitive inner self, and a bewildered, put-upon, spiritually ignorant, inferior physical self, which happens to be the one we identify with. Many of us believe, moreover, that the physical self’s very nature is evil, that its impulses, left alone, will run in direct opposition to the good of the physical world and society, and fly in the face of the deeper spiritual truths of inner reality. The inner self then becomes so idealized and so remote that by contrast the physical self seems only the more ignorant and flawed. In the face of such beliefs the ideal of psychic development, or astral travel, or spiritual knowledge, or even of sane living, seems so remote as to be impossible. We must, therefore, begin to celebrate our own beings, to look to our own impulses as being the natural connectors between the physical and the nonphysical self. Children trusting their impulses learn to walk, and trusting our impulses, we can find ourselves again.

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Consciousness predates physical forms. Consciousness predates the physical universe. Consciousness predates all of its manifestations.

The impulse to be, in any terms that we understand, is without beginning or end. What we have in our physical species are the manifestations of inner species of being, or creative groupings originated by consciousness as material patterns into which consciousness then flows. In those terms, the world came into being and the species appeared in a completely different framework of activity than is imagined, and one that cannot be scientifically established — particularly within those boundaries with which science has protected itself.

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The patterns for the earth and for its creatures were as real before their physical appearances, and far more real than, say, the plan for a painting that we might have in our mind. The universe always was innately objective in our terms, with its planets and creatures. The patterns for all of the species always existed without any before or after arrangement.

I am not pleased with those analogies, but sometimes they are all I can use to express issues so outside of normal channels of knowledge. It is as if, then, the earth, with all of its species, existed in complete form as a fully dimensioned cosmic underpainting, which gradually came alive all at once. Birds did not come from reptiles. They were always birds. They expressed a certain kind of consciousness that sought a certain kind of form. Physically the species appeared — all species appeared — in the same way that we might imagine all of the elements of a highly complicated dream suddenly coming alive with physical properties. Mental images — in those terms, now — existed that “in a flash of cosmic inspiration” were suddenly endowed with full physical manifestation.

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To that extent, the Bible’s interpretation is correct. Life was given, was free to develop according to its characteristic conditions. The planet was prepared, and endowed with life. Consciousness built the forms, so life existed within consciousness for all eternity. There was no point in which chemicals or atoms suddenly acquired life, for they always possessed consciousness, which is life’s requirement.

In the terms that we can understand, all species that we are aware of appeared more or less at once, because the mental patterns had peaked. Their vitality was strong enough to form differentiation and cooperation within the framework of matter.

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I understand that it appears that species have vanished, but again we must remember probabilities, and that those species simply “developed” along the patterns of probable earths. We are not just dealing with a one-line development of matter, but of an unimaginable creativity, in which all versions of our physical world exist, each one quite convinced of its physical nature. There are ramifications quite unspeakable, although in certain states of trance, or with the aid of educated dreaming, we might be able to glimpse the inner complications, the web-works of communications that connect our official earth with other probable ones. We choose our time and focus in physical reality again and again, and the mind holds an inner comprehension of many seemingly mysterious developments involving the species.

Even the cells are free enough of time and space to hold an intimate framework of being within the present, while being surrounded by this greater knowledge of what we think of a the earth’s past. In greater terms, the earth and all of its species are created in each moment. We wonder what gave life to the first egg or seed, or whatever, and think that an answer to that question would answer most others; for life, we say, was simply passed on from that point.

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But what give life to the egg or the seed now, keeping it going, provides that energy? Imagining some great big-bang theory (to explain the creation of the universe) gives us an immense explosion of energy, that somehow turns into life but must wear out somewhere along the line — and if that were the case, life would be getting weaker all the time, but it is not. The child is as new and fresh today as a child was 5,000 years ago, and each spring is as new.

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What gives life to chemicals now? That is the most proper question. All energy is not only awarized but the source of all organizations of consciousness, and all physical forms. These represent frameworks of consciousness. There was a day when the dreaming world, in our terms, suddenly awakened to full reality as far as physical materialization is concerned. The planet was visited by desire. There were ghost excursions there — mental buildings, dream civilizations which then became actualized.

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There is much left unsaid.

Physically death gives life

All biological organisms know that physical life depends upon a constant transformation of consciousness and form. This biological knowledge is intimately acknowledged at microscopic levels. Even our cells know that their deaths are necessary for the continuation of our physical form.

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The entire orientation is strange or alien only to our conscious belief systems. in one way or another, most people are aware of a desire for death before they die — a desire they usually do not consciously acknowledge. To a large measure, the sensations of pain are also the results of our beliefs, so that even diseases that are indeed accompanied, now, by great pain, need not be. Obviously, I am saying that “deadly” viruses do not “think of themselves” as killers, and more than a cat does when it devours a mouse. The mouse may die, and a cell might die as a result of the virus, but the connotations applied to such events are also the result of beliefs. In the greater sphere of spiritual and biological activity, the viruses are protecting life at their level, and in the capacity given them.

In one way or another, they are always invited in response to that greater rhythm of existence in which physical life is dependent upon constant transformation of consciousness and form.

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The phase of death is, then, a part of life’s cycle. I have mentioned evolutionary experiments, as we think of evolution. There is a disease that I have read about recently, where the skin turns leathery after intense itching — a fascinating development in which the human body tries to form a leathery-like skin that would, if the experiment continued, be flexible enough for, say, seat pose and normal locomotion, yet tough enough to protect itself in jungle environments from the bites of many “still more dangerous” insects and snakes. Many such experiments appear in certain stages as diseases, since the conditions are obviously not normal physical ones. To some extent, cancer also represents a kind of evolutionary experiment. But all such instances escape us because we think of so-called evolution as finished.

Some varieties of our own species were considered by the animals as diseased animal species, so I want to broaden our concepts there. In the entire natural scheme, and at all levels — even social or economic ones — disease always has its own creative basis. Abnormalities of any kind in birth always represent probable versions itself — and they are kept in the gene pool to provide a never-ending bank of alternates.

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There are all kinds of interrelationships. So-called Mongoloid children, for example, are reminders of man’s and woman’s purely emotional heritage, as separate from his or her intellectual achievements. They often appear more numerously in industrialized civilizations for that reason

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The disease I referred to is Onchocerciasis, which is caused by a filarial parasite spread by the bite of the blackfly. Beside producing the gruesome leathery skin, Onchocerciasis can cause blindness — hence its common name, river blindness. This most serious affliction appears to be centered in West Africa, and infects many millions of people there. Four centuries ago, it was carried to the Western Hemisphere by slaves, and is now found in certain areas of Mexico, south to Brazil.

Onchocerciasis doesn’t kill, and the percentage of victims who lose their sight varies according to location. Perhaps in this biological experiment, the blindness represents an evolutionary dead end, in those terms.

Combine the idea of a disease with the idea of creativity

Both disease and creativity are related.

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Compare the analogy of the landscape of physical experience to the painter’s landscape — which may be dark, gloomy, filled with portents of disaster, and yet still be a work of art. In that regard, every person paints his or her own portrait in living color — a portrait that does not simply sit in a tranquil pose at a table, but one that has the full capacity for action. Those of us now living, say, are in the same life class. We look about to see how our contemporaries are getting along with their portraits, and we find multitudinous varieties: tragic self-portraits, heroic self-portraits, comic self-portraits. And all of these portraits are alive and interacting, and as they interact they form the planetary, mass social and political events of our world.

These portraits obviously have a biological reality. In a manner or speaking, now, each person dips into the same supplies of paint, and so forth — which are the elements out of which our likenesses emerge. There must be great creative leeway allowed for such portraits. Each one interacting with each other one helps form the psychological and physical reality of the species, so we are somehow involved in the formation of a multitudinous number of portraits. I simply want you to keep that analogy in the background.

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These portraits, however, are the result of creativity so inborn and miraculous that they are created automatically — an automatic art. At certain levels the species is always creatively embarked upon alternative versions of itself. The overall patterns will remain. Biological integrity is everywhere sustained. What we think of as diseases, however, are quite creative elements working at different levels, and at many levels at once.

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Many viruses are vital to physical existence, and in our terms there are gradations of activity, so that only under certain conditions do viruses turn into, say, what we think of as deadly ones. The healthiest body contains within it many so-called deadly viruses in what we may call an inactive form — inactive from our viewpoint, in that they are not causing disease. They are, however, helping to maintain the body’s overall balance. In a way in each body, the species settles upon a known status quo, and yet experiments creatively at many levels with cellular alterations, chromosomal variations, so that of course each body is unique. There are kinds of gradations, say, in the lines and kinds of disease. Certain diseases can actually strengthen the body from a prior weaker state, by calling upon the body’s full defenses. Under certain conditions, some so-called disease states could insure the species’ survival.

In a way, some disease states help to insure the survival of the species — not by weeding out the sickly but by introducing into large numbers of individuals the conditions needed to stabilize other strains within the species that need to be checked, or to “naturally inoculate” the species against a sensed greater danger.

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At the minute levels — microscopic levels — there are always some biological experiments being carried out, in a creative effort to give the species as much leeway as possible for effective action. Our body is changed biologically by our thoughts.

Our culture has its biological effect upon the species. I am not speaking of obvious connections in a derogatory manner, such as pollution and so forth. If we were thinking in old terms of evolution, then I would be saying that our cultures and civilizations actually alter the chromosomal messages. Our thoughts affect our cells, again, and they can change what are thought of as hereditary factors. Our imaginations are intimately connected with our diseases, just as our imaginations are so important in all other areas of our lives. We form our being by imaginatively considering such-and-such a possibility, and our thoughts affect our body in that regard. In a way, illness is a tool used on behalf of life, for people have given it social, economic, psychological, and religious connotations. It becomes another area of activity and of expression.

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At microscopic level there is no rigid self-structure like our own. There is identity. A cell does not fear its own death. Its identity has traveled back and forth from physical to nonphysical reality too often as a matter of course.

It “sings” with the quality of its own life. It cooperates with other cells. It affiliates itself with the body of which it is part, but in way it lends itself to that formation. The dreams of the species are highly important to its survival — not just because dreaming is a biological necessity, but because in dreams the species is immersed in deeper levels of creativity, so that those actions, inventions, ideas that will be needed in the future will appear in their proper times and places. In the old terms of evolution. I am saying that man’s and woman’s evolutionary progress was also dependent upon his or her dreams.

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Now many of the characteristics we consider human — in fact, most of them — appear to one extent or another in all other species. It was the nature of man’s and woman’s dreams, however, that was largely responsible for what we like to think of as the evolution of our species. We learned to dream differently than other creatures.

We dreamed we spoke languages before their physical invention, of course. It was the nature of our dreams, and our dreams’ creativity, that made us what we are, for otherwise we would have developed a mechanical-like language — had we developed one at all — that named designations, locations, and dealt with the most simple, objective reality: “I walked there. He walks there. The sun is hot.” We would not have had any way of conceiving of objects that did not already exist. We would not have had any way of imagining ourselves in novel situations. We would not have any overall picture of the seasons, for dreaming educated the memory and lengthened man’s and woman’s attention span. It reinforced the lessons of daily life, and was highly important in man’s and woman’s progress.

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Using the intellect alone, man and woman did not simply learn through daily experience over the generations, say, that one season followed the other. He or she lived too much in the moment for that. In one season he or she dreamed of the others, however, and in dreams he or she saw himself or herself spreading the seeds of fruits as he or she had seen the wind do in daily life.

His or her dreams reminded him or her that a cold season had come, and would come again. Most of our inventions cane in dreams, and again, it is the nature of our dreams that makes us so different from other species.

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The creativity of the species is also the result of our particular kind of dream specialization. It amounts to — a unique state of existence by itself, in which we combine the elements of physical and nonphysical reality. It is almost a threshold between the two realities, and we learned to hold our physical intent long enough at that threshold so that we have a kind of brief attention span there, and use it to draw from nonphysical reality precisely those creative elements that we need.

Animals, as a rule are less physically-oriented in their dreaming states. They do dream of physical reality, but much more briefly than us. Otherwise, they immerse themselves in dreams in different kinds of dreaming consciousness.

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When ancient man and woman had a series of mass dreams in which he and she learned how to speak. The dreams were like glossolalia — speaking in unintelligible speech sounds — yet the made sense, and man and woman began to speak.

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Also when man and and woman were with other men and women in the physical world, he and she could point to stuff to share descriptions with others, but that he or she learned to speak when he and she tried to describe dreams. It was the only way — speech — by which he or she could share data that couldn’t be seen. He or she could point to a tree and grunt, but there wasn’t anything in a dream he or she could point to. He or she had to have a method of expression to describe invisible things. Inventions could have come about when he or she tried to tell others what he or she saw in his or her dreams, too.

Every species is endowed with emotional feelings

Each species is immersed in an interior system of value fulfillment. Each species, then, is not only concerned with physical survival and the multiplication of its members, but with an intensification and fulfillment of those particular qualities that are characteristic of it.

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As far as this discussion is concerned, there are biological ideals, imprinted within the chromosomes, but there are also in-built ideals much more difficult to define, that exist as, say, mental blueprints for the development of other kinds of interior mental life, as opposed to the physical characteristics of plants or animals with which we are familiar. Our official views effectively close us off from the true evidence we might perceive of the cooperation that exists among the species, for example. Nor an I speaking of an enforced cooperation — the result of “instinct” that somehow arranges the social habits of the animals; for their habits are indeed social and cooperative.

I have read that orthodox science still does not grant man or woman with volition. According to its tenets, any such feeling of conscious choice is instead the reflection of the brain’s attitude at any given time. Yet I am saying that man has free will within the framework of his existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of his or her existence, and that all other species do also within the framework of their existences.

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The chicken cannot read a book. It cannot choose to read. The plant cannot choose to walk down the street. The chicken and the plant can choose to live or die, however — rather important issues in the existence of any entity. They can choose to like or dislike their environment, and to change it according to their individual circumstances. It is fashionable to say that some scientific laws can be proven at microscopic levels, where, for example, small particles can be accelerated far beyond their usual states. But we quite studiously ignore that feeling exists on microscopic levels, that there can be psychological particles, much less come to the conclusion that all particles are psychological particles, with their own impetuses for development and value fulfillment. That is why atoms join together to form matter. They seek the fulfillment of themselves through form. They cooperatively choose the forms that they take.

If the simplest particle is so endowed with impetus, with hidden ideals that seek fulfillment, then what about the human being? We have the propensity to search for meaning, for love, for cooperative ventures. We have the propensity to form dazzling mental and psychological creations, such as our arts and sciences and religions and civilizations. Whatever errors that we have made, or gross distortions, even those exist because of our need to find meaning in our private existences and in life itself.

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Any scientist who believes that life has no meaning has simply provided himself with what he thinks of as an unfailing support against life’s vicissitudes. If he or she says: “life has no meaning, “he or she cannot be disappointed if such is the case, for he or she is ensconced in a self-created cocoon that has meaning, because it provides a cushion against his or her deepest fears.

When a civilization does not support creativity it beings to falter. When it distrust its gifted people, rather than encouraging them, a nation is at least in trouble. Our psychologies, stressing “the norm,” made people frightened of their individual characteristics and abilities, because psychology’s norm did not fit the contours of any one human being. It did not touch the heights of the depths of human experience. People became afraid of their own individuality.

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Gifted children do not fit psychology’s picture. Gifted children do not fit the portrait of children that is sold to parents. The fact is that for many reasons gifted children merely show the latent quickness, mental agility, and curiosity and learning capacity, that is inherent in the species. They are not eccentric versions of humanity at all, but instead provide a hint of mankind’s and womankind’s true capacities.

Our brains are not empty, but well-oiled machines ready to whirl into activity at our births. They are provided with a propensity to learn — and the rudiments of knowledge as we understand it exist within the brain. In those terms, now, the brain thinks before birth. It does not simply react. Each individual has its own unique abilities. Some that involve relationships with others, we do not even have words for. Parents, however, often half-disapprove of their children if they show unusual gifts. They are afraid their children will not get along with others. They are upset because the children do not fit the norm — but no child ever fits “the norm.”

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Many adults, sensing their own abilities in one field or another, deliberately play down those abilities because they are afraid of standing out from “the masses” — or they are afraid they will be attacked by their peers. They have been taught by religion and science alike that any kind of greatness is suspect. Yet each person alive contains an elements of greatness; and more, a desire to fulfill those inner abilities.

I am not speaking of greatness in terms of fame, or in terms of usually understood artistic or intellectual abilities alone, but also of people whose lives have the capacity for great emotional content. I am speaking also of others natural abilities — that of dread communication, the conscious utilization of dreams and creativity in daily life. There are dimensions of human sentiment and psychological experience, that remain latent simply because we focus our attention so closely within the idea of “the norm.” Ay unofficial experience must then remain bizarre, eccentric, outside of our main concerns, and ignored by our sciences.

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Many children, for that matter, who are regarded as retarded by their teachers, are instead highly gifted. The same also applies to disruptive children, who are overactive and out on drugs. Their rebellion is quite natural. Autistic children, in many cases, now, are those who have picked up the idea that the world is so unsafe that it is better not to communicate with it at all, as long as their demands or needs are being met. When the child is fed and clothed and cared for, then it continues its behavior, and the behavior itself does serve its needs.

The child feels that it is not safe to interact with the world, however. No one is going to deprive a child of food, and yet food can be used in such cases, in terms perhaps of treats, if the child must ask for them, or in some way indicate a choice. Autistic children are afraid of making choices. Some of this is often picked up from parents, so that the child expresses their own unacknowledged fears. The autistic child can be highly intelligent, however.

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To some extent, such child symbolizes what happens when an individual believes that he or she is unworthy, that he or she cannot trust impulses, that choices present more problems than advantages. That it is safer to hide abilities than it is to use them. Life is expression.

When a sperm carrying cancer enters a woman’s uterus, and if she has no intentions of getting the disease, her body’s own system would make the cancer completely ineffective.

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I will explain as best I can, though some of what I say will certainly seem contradictory to scientific knowledge.

Though scientists might find “cancer cells,” and though it might seem that cancer is caused by a virus, cancer instead involves a relationship, say, between what we might think of as a host and parasite, in those terms — and to some extent the same applies to any disease, including smallpox, though the diseases themselves may appear to have different causes completely. A host cell, say, is not simply attacked. It invites attack, though I am not pleased at all with the connotations of the word “attack.” I am trying to use words familiar to us to start.

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It is not simply that a cell suddenly “relaxes its defenses” against disease. As easily as I an, I will try to explain. A cell mirrors a psychological state. A cell exists by itself, as its own entity, but also in context with all of the other cells in the body. There are literally uncountable psychological states mixing and interchanging constantly, with the overall psychological stance being one of biological integrity: The organism holds together, maintains its functions, and so forth.

Our body is the physical mirror of our psychological state. It is powered by the energy of the universe. It actually springs into being in each moment. Our mind and our body come from the same source, from universal energy. We are powered with vitality. We must seek meaning in our lives. When we lose the sense of life’s meaning, for whatever reason, this is reflected in our body. It is very difficult to separate all of this from many connotations placed about disease, and I do not want the material to be misread. Cancer, for example, has become the symbol for the body’s vulnerability, in current years — the proof of man’s and woman’s susceptibility to the body. It is a disease that people have when they want to die — when they are ashamed to admit that they want to die, because death seems to fly against sane behavior. If the species struggles to survive, then how can individuals want to die?

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Many people have had cancer and recovered without knowing it. In our belief system, however, it is almost imperative to see a doctor in such circumstances, for many fears are unsubstantiated, and the fear alone, found groundless, gives the person new life symbolically and physically.

In the case of my example, a woman’s cells would already have had to prepare themselves for the guest — granted the guest was cancerous, and was a sperm. There is not an attack. There is an acceptance, and a preparation for certain changes.

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A life crisis is formed. The “parasite,” or virus, plays its part in setting up such a psychologically-desired position. It is an emotionally-charged position, an imminent crisis. I am aware of the tormenting questions involved in such issues, and also of the gap between my explanations and daily experiences of many people. The fact is that when death comes it is wanted; it has been chosen.

The fact is that death in its way is the culmination of life, leading toward a new birth and new experience. The cells know this. So does the heart. People cannot admit that they want to die at certain times. If they could accept the fact of their own wishes, some could even change their minds, many do: The psychological condition changes for the better, and the body cells are no longer amiable to the cancerous condition.

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Women whose husband have had vasectomies have themselves often resolved sexual problems that have bothered them. Fear is reduced in that area. Cervical cancer can involve, distortions of the growth process itself, because of the complicated distortions of belief on the woman’s part. In a way the very pain of cancer — of some cancers — often acts through its intensity as a reflection of the person’s belief that life is painful, tormenting. At the same time, the pain is a reminder of feeling and sensation.

 

Natural Law

When I speak of natural law, I am not referring to the scientists’ laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, for example — which is not a law at all, but a manifestation appearing from the viewpoint of a certain level of consciousness as a result of perceptive apparatus. Our “prejudiced perception” is also built into our instruments in that regard.

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I am speaking of the inner laws of nature, that pervade existence. What we call nature refers of course to our particular experience with reality, but quite different kinds of manifestations are also “natural” outside of that context. The laws of nature that I am in the process of explaining underlie all realities, then, and form a firm basis for multitudinous kinds of “natures.” I will put these in terms of reference, however.

Each being experiences life as if it were at life’s center. This applies to a spider in a closet as well as to any man or woman. This principle applies to each atom as well. Each manifestation of consciousness comes into being feeling secure at life’s center — experiencing life through itself, aware of life through its own nature. It comes into being with an inner impetus toward value fulfillment. It is equipped with a feeling of safety, of security within its own environment with which it is fit to deal. It given the impetus toward growth and action, and filled with the desire to impress its world.

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The term “value fulfillment” is very difficult to explain but it is very important. Obviously it deals with the development of values — not moral values, however, but values for which we really have no adequate words. Quite simply, these values have to do with increasing the quality of whatever life the being feels at its center. The quality of that life is not simply to be handed down or experienced, for example, but is to be creatively added to, multiplied, in a way that has nothing to do with quantity.

In those terms, animals have values, and if the quality of life of their lives disintegrates beyond a certain point, the species dwindles. We are not speaking of survival of the fittest, but the survival of life with meaning. Life is meaning for animals. The two are indistinguishable.

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We say little, for example, if we note that spiders make webs instinctively because spiders must eat insects, and that the best web-maker will be the fittest kind of spider to survive. It is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of our beliefs. The web, however, in its way represents an actualized ideal on the spider’s part — and if you will forgive the term, an artistic one as well. It amazes the spiders that flies so kindly fall into those webs. We might say that the spider wonders that art can be so practical.

What about the poor unsuspecting fly? Is it then so enamored of the spider’s web that it loses all sense of caution? For surely lies are the victims of such nefarious webby splendors. We are into sticky stuff indeed.

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For one thing, we are dealing with different kinds of consciousness that our own. They are focused consciousnesses, surely, each one feeling itself at life’s center. While this is the case, however, these other forms of consciousness also identify then with the source of nature from which they emerge. In a way impossible to explain, the fly and the spider are connected, and aware of the connection. Not as hunter and prey, but as individual participants in deeper processes. Together they work toward a joint kind of value fulfillment, in which both are fulfilled.

There are communions of consciousness of which we are unaware. While we believe in theories like the survival of the fittest, however, and the grand fantasies of evolution, then we put together our perceptions of the world so that they seem to bear out those theories. We will see no value in the life of a mouse sacrificed in the laboratory, for example, and we will project claw-and-fang battles in nature, completely missing the great cooperative venture that is involved.

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Men and women can become deranged if they believe life has no meaning. Religion has made gross errors. At least it held out an afterlife, a hope of salvation, and preserved — sometimes despite itself — the tradition of the heroic soul. Science, including psychology, by what it has said, and by what it has neglected to say, has come close to a declaration that life itself is meaningless. This is a direct contradiction of deep biological knowledge, to say nothing of spiritual truth. It denies the meaning of biological integrity. It denies man and woman the practical use of those very elements that he or she needs as a biological creature: the feeling that he or she is at life’s center, that he/she can act safely in his or her environment, that he or she can trust himself or herself, and that his or her being and his/her actions have meaning.

Impulses provide life’s guide to action. If we are taught that we cannot trust our impulses, then we are set against our very physical integrity. If we believe that our life has no meaning, then we will do anything to provide meaning, all the while acting like a mouse in one of science’s mazes — for our prime directive, so to speak, has been tampered with.

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I am trying to temper my statements here, but our psychology of the past 100 years has helped create insanities by trying to reduce the great individual thrust of life that lie within each person, to a generalized mass chaotic impulses and chemicals — a mixture, of Freudian and Darwinian thought misapplied.

The most private agonies of the soul were assigned a more or less common source in man’s and woman’s primitive “unconscious” drives. The private unequalled thrust toward creativity were seen as the unbalanced conglomeration of chemicals within a person’s most private being — a twist of perversity. Genius was seen as a mistake of chromosomes, or the fortunate result of a man’ or woman’s hatred for his or her father. The meaning of life was reduced to the accidental nature of genes. Science thought in terms of averages and statics, and each person was supposed to fit within those realms.

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To some extent, this also applies to religion in the same time period. Churches wanted sinners galore, but shied away from saints, or any extravagant behavior that did not speak of man’s and woman’s duplicity. Suddenly people with paranoid characteristics, as well as schizophrenics, emerged from the wallpaper of this slickly styled civilization. The characteristics of each were duly noted. A person who feels that life has no meaning, and that his or her life in particular has no meaning, would rather be pursued than ignored. Even the weight of guilt is better than no feeling at all. If the paranoid might feel that he or she is pursued, by the government or “ungodly powers,” then at least he or she feels that his or her life must be important: otherwise, why would others seek to destroy it? If voices tell him or her he or she is to be destroyed, then these at least are comforting voices, for they convince him or her that his or her life must have value.

At the same time, the paranoid person can use his or her creative abilities in fantasies that seemingly boggle the minds of the sane — and those creative abilities have a meaning, for the fantasies, again, serve to reassure the paranoid of his or her worth. If in our terms he or she were sane, he or she could not use his or her creative abilities, for they are always connected with life’s meaning; and sane, the paranoid is convinced that life is meaningless. It did little good in the past for Freudian psychologists to listen to a person’s associations while maintaining an objective air, or pretending that values did not exist. Often the person labeled schizophrenic is so frightened of his or her own energy, impulses, and feelings that these are fragmented, objectified, and seen to come from outside rather than from within.

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Ideas of good and evil are exaggerated, cut off from each other. Yet here again the creative abilities are allowed some expression. The person does not feel able to express them otherwise. Such people are afraid of the brunt of their own personalities. They have been taught that energy is wrong, that power is disastrous, and that the impulses of the self are to be feared.

What protection, then, but to effectively project these outside of the self — impulses of good as well as evil — and hence effectively block organized action?

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The term schizophrenia, with the authority of psychology, becomes a mass coverall in which the integrity of personal meaning is given a mass, generalized explanation. Those who are paranoid are, unfortunately, those who most firmly believe the worst idiocies of science and religion. The paranoid and the schizophrenic are trying to find meaning in a world they have been taught is meaningless, and their tendencies appear in lesser form throughout society.

Creativity is an in-built impetus in man and woman, far more important than, say, what science calls the satisfaction of basic needs. In those terms, creativity is the most basic need of all. I am not speaking here of any obsessive need to find order — in which case, for example, a person might narrow his or her mental and physical environment — but of a powerful driver within the species for creativity, and for the fulfillment of values that are emotional and spiritual. And if man or woman does not find these, then the so-called basic drives toward food or shelter will not sustain him or her.

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I am not simply saying that man or woman does not live for bread alone. I am saying that if man or woman does not find meaning in life he or she will not live, bread or no. He or she will not have the energy to seek bread, nor trust his or her impulse to do so.

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There are natural laws, then, that guide all kinds of life, and all realities — laws of love and cooperation — and those are the basic needs of which I am speaking.

Why do we have laws, crime and sin?

Why do we have laws? Are laws made to protect life, to protect property, to establish order, to punish transgressors? Are laws made to protect man from his own cunning and chicanery? In short, are laws made to protect man/woman from his/her own “basically criminal nature”? In today’s society, we use lawyers like personal-injury-lawyers to handle cases and uphold the law for us all.

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When someone breaks those laws, we move towards litigation attorneys handling business litigation, or other legal areas. This is the status quo we have made, and that we are used to.

Moreover, put simply, criminal lawyers are responsible for either prosecuting or defending someone accused of a criminal offense. They are required to act in a neutral, impartial manner to ensure that the legal rights of those prosecuted are upheld so that they receive fair treatment against the conduct of the law. If you would like more information about the responsibilities of criminal-lawyers is home to some brilliant law firms and you can find plenty of useful resources on their websites.

So, that being said, are laws made to protect man and woman from the self as it is generally outlined by Freud and Darwin? Man and woman had laws, however, far earlier. Are laws made then to protect man and woman from his and her “sinful nature”? If we were all “perfect beings,” would we need laws at all? Do laws define what is unacceptable, or do they hint of some perhaps undifferentiated, barely sensed, more positive issues? Are laws an attempt to limit impulses? Do they represent society’s mass definitions of what behavior is acceptable and what is not?

What is the difference between a crime and a sin, as most of us think of those terms? Can the state punish us for a sin? It certainly can punish us for a crime. Is the law a reflection of something else– a reflection of man’s and woman’s inherent search toward the ideal, and its actualization? When does the law act as a practical idealist? Why do we sneer so when politicians show their feet of clay?

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How does this concern us as an individual? We will start with the individual.

Each individual is innately driven by a good intent, however distorted that intent may become, or however twisted the means that may be taken to achieve it.

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As the body wants to grow from childhood on, so all of the personality’s abilities want to grow and evolve. Each person has his or her own ideals, and impulses direct those ideals naturally into their own specific avenues of development — avenues meant to fulfill both the individual and his society. Impulses provide specifications, methods, meanings, definitions. They point toward definite avenues of expression, avenues that will provide the individual with a sense of actualization, natural power, and that will automatically provide feedback, so that the person knows he or she is impressing his or her environment for the better.

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Those natural impulses, followed, will automatically lead to political and social organizations that become both tools for individual development and implements for the fulfillment of the society. Impulses then would follow easily, in a smooth motion, from private action to social import. When we are taught to block our impulses, and to distrust them, then our organizations become clogged. We are left with vague idealized feelings of wanting to change the world for the better, for example — but we are denied the personal power of our own impulses that would otherwise help direct that idealism by developing our personal abilities. We are left with an undefined, persisting, even tormenting desire to do good, to change events, but without having any means at our disposal to do so. This leads to lingering frustration, and if our ideals are strong the situation can cause us to feel quite desperate.

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We may begin to exaggerate the gulf between this generalized ideal and the specific evidences of man’s and woman’s “greed and corruption” that we see so obviously about us. We may begin to concentrate upon our own lacks, and in our growing sense of dissatisfaction it may seem to us that most men and women are driven by a complete lack of good intent.

We may become outraged, scandalized — or worse, filled with self-righteousness, so that we being to attack all those with whom we do not agree, because we do not know how else to respond to our own ideals, or to our own good intent.

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The job of trying to make the world better seems impossible, for it appears that we have no power, and any small private beneficial actions that we can take seem so puny in contrast to this generalized ideal that we dismiss them sardonically, and so we do not try to use power constructively. We do not begin with our own life, with our own job, or with our own associates. What difference can it make to the world if we are a better salesperson, or plumber, or office worker, or car salesman or saleswoman, for Christ’s sake? What can one person do?

Yet that is precisely where first of all we must begin to exert ourselves. There, on our jobs and in our associations, are the places where we intersect with the world. Our impulses directly affect the world in those relationships.

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Many of us are convinced that we are not important — and while each of us feels that way it will seem that our actions have no effect upon the world. We will purposefully keep our ideals generalized, thus saving oneself from the necessity of acting upon them in the one way open to us: by trusting oneself and our impulses, and impressing those that we meet in daily life with the full validity that is our own.

Most criminals act out of a sense of despair. Many have high ideals, but ideals that have never been trusted or acted upon. They feel powerless, so that many strike out in self-righteous anger or vengeance against a world that they see as cynical, greedy, perverted. They have concentrated upon the great gaps that seem to exist between their ideals of what man or woman should be, and their ideas of what man or woman is.

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On the one hand, they believe that the self is evil, and on the other they are convinced that the self should not be so. They react extravagantly. They often see society as the “enemy” of good. Many — not all, now — criminals possess the same characteristics we ascribe to heroes, except that the heroes have a means toward the expression of idealism, and specific avenues for that expression. And many criminals find such avenues cut off completely.

I do not want to romanticize criminals, or justify their actions. I do want to point out that few crimes are committed for “evil’s sake,” but in a distorted response to the failure of the actualization of a sensed ideal.

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So we return to what is the nature of the ideal and the good. Who defines what is right and wrong, legal and illegal?

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“The God of me”. No one else is watching what I watch from my personal viewpoint any moment of my day. I feel as if I am being privileged to view a beginning of the world… or of my edge of it.

It is like seeing a new corner of our own psyche, transformed into trees, grass, flowers, sky and fog … I feel as if I am viewing that part of myself that I am always pursuing, the part is as clear-eyed as a child, fleet, at one with its own knowing. That part of us exists apart from our concerns about careers or business (if you are a startup lending-expert a-guide-to-personal-guarantees-on-business-loans most business lenders will want , money, fame, the opinion of family, friends, or the world. It’s our direct connection with the universe, from which we emerge in each moment of our lives.

So, in that moment, I named that part of me the God of Me, and that designation makes senses to me, at least. In those terms, we each have our personal ‘God,’ and I am convinced that the universe knows us no matter who or where — or what — we are. I think there is a God of every individual being, and the each consciousness, regardless of its status, possess this intimate connection with the universe.

True psychology

We have been taught to believe that impulses are wrong generally speaking, or at best that they represent messages from a nefarious subconscious, giving voice to dark moods and desires.

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For example: Many of us believe in the basis of Freudian psychology — that the son naturally wants to displace the father in his mother’s attentions, and that beneath the son’s love for his father, there rages the murderous intent to kill. Ridiculous idiocy!

The self, so spectacularly alive, seemed equipped with reason to understand the great import of its own certain extinction. Such a tragedy to project upon the living personality.

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We cannot begin to have a true psychology, again, unless we see the living self in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes and meanings that we now assign to it, of for that matter than we assign to nature and its creatures. We have denied many impulses, or programmed others so that they are allowed expression in only certain forms of action. I any of us do still believe in the Freudian or Darwinian selves, then we will be leery about impulses to examine our own consciousness, afraid of what murderous debris might be uncovered. I am not speaking merely in hypothetical terms. For example, a well-intentioned woman: She worries about her overweight condition, and depressed at what she thinks of as her lack of discipline in following diets. In her dismay, she visits a psychologist, who tells her that her marriage might somehow be part of the problem. The woman never went back. It’s hard to say why though. The psychologist that she visited was bound to have had many years of training, after finding inspiration from somewhere like a up-skilled, counsellors-psychologists-working-in-community-services, to build a successful career in helping people who may be in the same situation as this woman. Did she think that the psychologist was wrong? No. She was afraid that she might discover within herself the buried impulse to kill her husband, or to break up the marriage, but she was sure that her overweight condition hid some unfortunate impulse.

Actually the woman’s condition hid her primary impulse: to communicate better with her husband, to ask him for definite expression of love. Why does he not love her as much as she loved him? She could say it was because she was overweight, after all, for he was always remarking adversely about her fleshy opulence — though he did not use such a sympathetic phrase.

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He could not express his love for her in the terms she wished for be believed that women would, if allowed to, destroy the man’s freedom, and he interpreted the natural need for love as an unfortunate emotional demand. Both of them believed that women were inferior, and quite unknowingly they followed a Freudian dogma.

The ideas we have been speaking of, then, are intimately connected with our lives. The man just mentioned denies his personal impulses often. Sometimes he is not even aware of them as far as they involve the expression of affection or love to his wife.

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In those areas where we cut down on our impulses, upon their very recognition, we close down probabilities, and prevent new beneficial acts that of themselves would lead us out of our difficulty. We prevent change. But many people fear that any change is detrimental, since they have been taught, after all, that left alone their bodies or their minds of their relationships are bound to deteriorate. Often, therefore, people react to events as if they themselves possessed no impetus to alter them. They live their lives as if they are indeed limited in experience not only to a brief lifetime, but a lifetime in which they are the victims of their chemistry — accidental members of a blighted species that is murderous to it very core.

Another example: A woman found a small sore spot on her breast. Remembering well the barrage of negative suggestions that passes for preventative medicine — the public service announcements about cancer — she was filled with foreboding. She went to the doctor, who told her he did not believe there was anything wrong. He suggested X-rays, however, “just to be on the safe side,” and so he body was treated to a basically unnecessary dose of radiation in the name of preventative medicine.

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I am not suggesting that we do not visit doctors under such situations, because the weight of our negative beliefs about our bodies usually makes it too difficult for us to bear such uncertainties alone. Nevertheless, such actions speak only too loudly of our mass beliefs involving the vulnerability of the self and its flesh.

To me, it it almost inconceivable that, from our position, any of us seriously consider that the existence of our exquisite consciousness can possibly be the result of a conglomeration of chemicals and elements thrown together by a universe accidentally formed, and soon to vanish. So much more evidence is available to us: the order of nature; the creative drama of our dreams, that project our consciousness into other times and places; the very precision with which we spontaneously grow, without knowing how, from fetus into an adult; the existence of heroic themes and quests and ideas that pervade the life of even the worst scoundrel — these all give evidence of the greater context in which we have our being.

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If the universe existed as we have been told it does, then there would be no psychological avenues to connect worlds. There would be no extensions of the self that would allow us to travel such a psychological distance to those thresholds of reality that forms our mental environment. If the universe were structured as we have been told, the probability of the mass world would not be formed as the result of individual impulses. They meet and merge, and form platforms for action.

We live surrounded by impulses. We must make innumerable decisions in our lives — most choose careers, mates, cities of residence. Experience can help us make decisions, but we make decision long before we have years of experience behind us.

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Overall, whether or not we are conscious of it — for some of us are, and some of us are not — our lives do have a certain psychological shape. That shape is formed by our decisions. We make decisions as the result of feeling impulses to do this or that, to perform in one manner or another, in response to both private considerations and in regard to demands seemingly placed upon us by others. In the vast arena of those numberless probabilities open to us, we do of course have some guidelines. Otherwise we would always be in a state of indecision. Our personal impulses provide those guidelines by showing us how best to use probabilities so that we fulfill our own potential to greatest advantage — and in so doing, provide constructive help to the society at large.

When we are taught not to trust our impulses we begin to lose our powers of decision, and to whatever extent involved in the circumstances, we begin to lose our sense of power because we are afraid to act.

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Many people are in a quandary of indecision. Some might lament, for example: “I do not know what to do, or what direction to follow. I think that I could make music my career. I am musically gifted. On the other hand, I feel a leaning toward psychology. I have not attended music lately. However, music is usually one of those skills that a person never forgets. If they’re talented enough, they will be able to make a career out of it. It’s a lot easier to make it professional as a music artist these days, especially with the help of music streaming sites, such as Spotify. Aspiring musicians only have to purchase some spotify-plays to get themselves started, and then they should be able to kick off their career. If an individual believes they’re talented enough to make music a career, they should follow that dream. However, if there’s something that an individual might be better at, it could be worth looking into that. For example, sometimes I think I could be a teacher. In the meantime I Am meditating and hoping that the answer will come.” Such a person is afraid to trust anyone impulse enough to act upon it. All remain equally probable activities. Meditation must be followed by action — and true meditation is action. Such people are afraid of making decisions because they are afraid of their own impulses — and some of them can use meditation to dull their impulses, and actually prevent constructive action. As long as you pick something that resonates with you, you should do well on your path. Don’t forget to tap into the resources made available for you, from crafting a resume using https://www.arcresumes.com/, to taking on volunteer work to feed your soul and find a new pathway. The universe will help guide you along the way.

Impulses arise in a natural, spontaneous, constructive response to the abilities, potentials, and needs of the personality. They are meant as directing forces. Luckily, the child usually walks before it is old enough to be taught that impulses are wrong, and luckily the child’s natural impulses toward exploration, growth, fulfillment, action and power are strong enough to give it the necessary springboard before our belief systems begin to erode its confidence. We have physical adult bodies. The pattern for each adult body existed in the fetus — which again, “luckily,” impulsively, followed its own direction.

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No one told it that it was impossible to grow from a tiny cell — change that to a tiny organism instead of a cell — to a complicated adult structure. What tiny, spindly, threadlike, weak legs we all once had in our mother’s wombs! Those tiny, spindly legs now climb mountains, stride gigantic boulevards, because they followed their own impulsive shapes. Even the atoms and molecules within them sought out their own most favorable probabilities. And in terms that we do not understand, even those atoms and molecules made their own decisions as the result of recognizing and following those impulsive sparks toward action that are inherent in all consciousness, whatever their statues in our terms.

Consciousness attempts to grow toward its own ideal development, which also promotes the ideal development of all organizations in which it takes part.

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We are back, then, to the matter of the ideal and its actualization. When and how do our impulses affect the world? Again, what is the ideal, the good impulse, and why does it seem that our experience is so far from that ideal that it appears to be evil?

Impulses provide impetus toward motion

Impulses coax the physical body and the mental person toward utilization of physical and mental power.

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They help the individual impress the world — that is, to act upon it and within it effectively. Impulses also open up choices that may not have been consciously available before. The cells precognate, and that at that level the body is aware of vast information, information not consciously known or apprehended. The universe and everything within it is composed of “information,” but this information is aware-ized containing” — information concerning the entire universe is always latent within each and any part of it.

The motive power of the universe and of each particle or wave or person within it it the magnificent thrust toward creative probabilities, and the tension that exists, the exuberant tension, that exists “between” probable choices and probable events. This applies to men/women and molecules, and to all of those hypothetically theorized smaller divisions with which scientists like to amaze themselves. Divisions or units.

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In more mundane terms, impulses often come from unconscious knowledge, then. This knowledge is spontaneously and automatically received by the energy that composes our body, and then it is processed so that pertinent information applying to us can be taken advantage of. Ideally, our impulses are always in response to our own best interests — and, to the best interests of our world as well. Obviously there is a deep damaging distrust of impulses in the contemporary world, as in our terms there has been throughout the history that we follow. Impulses are spontaneous, and we have been taught not to trust the spontaneous portions of our being, but to rely upon our reason and our intellect — which both operate, incidentally, quite spontaneously, by the way.

When we let ourselves alone, we are spontaneously reasonable, but because of our beliefs it seems that reason and spontaneity make poor bedfellows.

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Psychologically, our impulses are as vital to our being as our physical organs are. They are as altruistic, or unselfish, as our physical organs are. And yet each impulse is suited and tailored directly to the individual who feels it. Ideally, by following our impulses we would feel the shape, the impulsive shape of our life. We would not spend time wondering what one’s purpose was, for it would make itself known to us, as we perceived the direction in which our natural impulses led, and felt oneself exert power in the world through such actions. Impulses are doorways to action, satisfaction, the exertion of natural mental and physical power, the avenue for our private expression — the avenue where our private expression interests the physical world and impresses it.

Many cults of one kind or another, and many fanatics, seek to divide us from our natural impulses, to impede their expression. They seek to sabotage our belief in our spontaneous being, so that the great power of impetus becomes damned up. Avenues of probabilities are closed bit by bit until we do indeed live — if we follow such precepts — in a closed mental environment, in which it seems we are powerless. It seems we cannot impress the world as we wish, that our ideals must always be stillborn.

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In the case of the Jonestown tragedy, for example, all doors toward probable effective action seemed closed. Followers had been taught to act against their natural impulses with members of their families. They had been taught not to trust the outside world, and little by little the gap between misguided idealism and an exaggerated version of the world’s evil blocked all doors through which power could be exerted — all doors save one. The desire for suicide is often the last recourse left to frightened people whose natural impulses toward action have been dammed up — intensified on the one hand, and yet denied any practical expression.

There is a natural impulse to die on the part of men/women and animals, but in such circumstances [as we are discussing here] that desire becomes the only impulse that the individual feels able to express, for it seems that all other avenues of expression have become closed. There is much misunderstanding concerning the nature of impulses, so we will discuss them rather thoroughly. I always want to emphasize the importance of individual action, for only the individual can help form organizations that become physical vehicles for the effective expression of ideals. Only people who trust their spontaneous beings and the altruistic nature of their impulses can be consciously wise enough to choose from a myriad of probable futures that most promising events — for again, impulses take not only [people’s] best interest into consideration, but those of all other species.

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I am using the term “impulses” for the understanding of the general public, and in those terms molecules and protons have impulses. No consciousness simply reacts to stimuli, but has its own impulse toward growth and value fulfillment. It seems to many of us that impulses are unpredictable, contradictory, without reason, the result of erratic mixtures of body chemicals and that they must be squashed with as much deadly intent as some of us might when we spray a mosquito with insecticide.

Often the insecticide kills more than the mosquito, and its effects can be far-reaching, and possibly have disastrous consequences. However, to consider impulses as chaotic, meaningless — or worse, detrimental to an ordered life — represents a very dangerous attitude indeed; an attempt that causes many of our other problems, an attempt that does often distort the nature of impulses. Each person is fired by the desire to act, and to act beneficially, altruistically, to practically put his stamp, or her stamp,upon the world. When such natural impulses toward action are constantly denied over a period of time, when they are distrusted, when an individual feels in battle with his or her own impulses and shuts down the doors toward probable actions, then that intensity can explode into whatever avenue of escape is still left open.

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I am not speaking of anything like “repression,” as it is used by psychologists, but a far deeper issue: one in which the very self is so distrusted that natural impulses of any kind become suspect. We try to inoculate ourselves against ourselves — a nearly impossible situation, of course. We expect our motives to be selfish because we have been told that they are, and so when we catch oneself with unkind motives we are almost comforted, because we think that at least we are behaving normally.

When we find oneself with good motives, we distrust them. “Surely,” we think, “beneath this seeming altruism, there must indeed be some nefarious, or at best selfish, motives that escape me.” As a people we are always examining our impulses, and yet we rarely examine the fruits of our intellects.

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It may seem that impulsive actions run rampant in society, in cultish behavior, for example, or in the behavior of criminals, or on the part of youth, but such activities show instead the power of impulses denied their natural expression, intensified and focused on the one hand into highly ritualized patterns of behavior, and in other areas denied expression.

A particular idealist believes that the world is headed for disaster, and that is powerless to prevent it. Having denied his or her impulses, believing them wrong, and having impeded his/her expression of his/her own power to affect others, he/she might, for example, “hear the voice of God.” That voice might tell him or her to commit any of a number of nefarious actions — to assassinate the enemies that stand in the way of his/her great ideal — and it might seem to him and to others that he/she has a natural impulse to kill, and indeed an inner decree from God to do so.

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According to conditions, such a person could be a member of a small cult of the head of a nation, a criminal or a national hero, who claims to act with the authority of God. Again, the desire and motivation to act is so strong with each person that it will not be denied, and when it is denied then it can be expressed in a perverted form. Man and woman must not only act, but he must act constructively, and he or she must feel that he or she acts for good ends.

Only when the natural impulse is denied consistently does the idealist turn into a fanatic. Each person in his or her own way is an idealist.

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Power is natural. It is the force, the power of the muscle to move, or the eye to see, of the mind to think, the power of the emotions — these represent true power, and no accumulation of wealth or acclaim can substitute for that natural sense of power if it is lacking. Power always rests with the individual, and from the individual all political power must flow.

A democracy is a highly interesting form of government, highly significant because it demands so much of individual consciousness, and because it must rest primarily upon a belief in the powers of the individual. It is a tribute to that belief that it has lingered in our country, and operated with such vitality in the face of quite opposing beliefs officially held by both science and religion.

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The idea [of democracy] expresses the existence of a high idealism — one that demands political and social organizations that are effective to some degree in providing some practical expression of those ideals. When those organizations fail and a gulf between idealism and actualized good becomes too great, then such conditions help turn some idealists into fanatics. Those who follow with great strictness the dictates of either science or religion can switch sides in a moment. The scientist begins tipping tables or whatever, and suddenly disgusted by the limits of scientific knowledge, he/she turns all of his/her dedication to what he/she thinks of as its opposite, or pure intuitive knowledge. Thus, he/she blocks his/her reason as fanatically as earlier he/she blocked his/her intuitions. The businessmen or businesswoman who believed in Darwinian principles and the fight for survival, who justified injustice and perhaps thievery to his/her ideal of surviving in a competitive world — she/she suddenly turns into a fundamentalist in religious terms, trying to gain his/her sense of power now, perhaps, by giving away the wealth he/she has amassed, all in a tangled attempt to express a natural idealism in a practical world.

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How can we trust our impulses when we read, for example, that a man or woman commits a murder because he/she has a strong impulse to do so, or because the voice of God commanded it? If some of us followed our impulses right now, for example — our first natural ones — it might seem they would be cruel or destructive.

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How do our impulses affect our future experience, and help form the practical world of mass reality?

Paranoid views are not based on mass fact

No one is as fanatical, and no one can be more cruel, than the self-righteous. It is very easy for such persons “to become [religiously] converted” after paranoid episodes, lining themselves up once more on the side of good, searching for “the power of fellowship,” turning to church rather than government, hearing in one way or another the voice of God.

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So how can the well-meaning idealist know whether or not his good intent will lead to some actualization? How can he know, or how can she know, whether or not this good intent might in fact lead to disastrous conditions? When does the idealist turn into a fanatic?

Look at it this way; If someone tells us that pleasure is wrong and tolerance is weakness, and that we must follow this or that dogma blindly in obedience, and if we are told this is the only right road toward the idealized good, then most likely we are dealing with a fanatic. If we are told to kill for the sake of peace, we are dealing with someone who does not understand peace or justice. If we are told to give up our free will, we are dealing with a fanatic.

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Both male and female and molecules dwell in a field of probabilities, and their paths are not determined. The vast reality of probabilities makes the existence of free will possible. If probabilities did not exist, and if we were not to some degree aware of probable actions and events, not only could we not choose between them, but we would not of course have any feelings of choice. We would be unaware of the entire issue.

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Through our mundane conscious choices, we affect all of the events of our world, so that the mass world is the result of multitudinous individual choices. We could not make choices at all if we did not feel impulses to do this or that, so that choices usually involve us in making decisions between various impulses. Impulses are urges toward action. Some are conscious and some are not. Each cell of our body feels the impulse toward action, response, and communication. We have been taught not to trust our impulses. Impulses in children teach them to develop their muscles and minds [each] in their own unique manner. And as we will see, those impulses of a private nature are nevertheless also based upon the greater situation of the species and the planet, so that “ideally” the fulfillment of the individual would automatically lead to the better good of the species.

We use a vocabulary that automatically scales down greater concepts to fit its rigors

In other words, such attempts further compound the problem of considering a seemingly objective universe, and describing it in an objective fashion.

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The universe is a spiritual or mental or psychological manifestation, and not, in our usual vocabulary, and objective manifestation.

There is presently no science, religion, or psychology that comes close to even approaching a conceptual framework that could explain, or even indirectly describe, the dimensions of that kind of universe. Its properties are psychological, following the logic of the psyche, and all of the physical properties that we understand are reflections of those deeper issues. Again, each atom and molecule — and any particle that we can imagine — possesses, and would possess, a consciousness. Unless we accept that statement at least as a theory upon which to build, then much of my material would appear meaningless.

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That statement, therefore, must be the basis for any scientific theories that hope to accomplish any performances at all leading to an acquisition of knowledge.

Since I must use an objective vocabulary I am always seeking for analogies. By objective I refer to the use of language, the English language, that automatically sets up its own screens of perception — as of course any language must do to some extent.

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The universe expands, as an idea expands; and as sentences are built upon words, in our terms, and paragraphs upon sentences, and as each retains its own logic and continuity and evidence within that framework, so do all the portions of the universe appear to us with the same cohesiveness — meaning continuity and order. Any sentence is meaningful. It seems to fall in order by itself as we say it. Its order is obvious. That one sentence is meaningful because of its organization of letters, or if it is spoken, its organization of vowels and syllables. It make sense, however, not only because of the letters or vowels or syllables that it excludes.

The same applies to our universe. It has meaning, coherence and order not only because of those realities that are obvious to us, and that appear, but also because of those inner realities that are “unspoken,” or hidden. I am not speaking merely of hidden variables, in scientific terms, nor am I saying that the universe is an illusion, but a psychological reality in which “objectivity” is the result of psychological creativity.

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It is not just that our view of reality is relative to our position within the universe, but that the universe itself is different according to our position within it, and that spiritual or psychological rule apply. The universe deals with different kinds of order, perceptions, and organizations, each dependent upon the others, yet each separate in its own domain.

In our realm of reality, there is no real freedom but the freedom of ideas, and there is no real bondage except for the bondage of ideas, for our ideas form our private and mass reality. We want to examine the universe from the outside, to examine our societies from the outside. We still think that the interior world is somehow symbolic and the exterior world is real — that wars, for example, are fought by themselves or with bombs. All of the time, the psychological reality is the primary one, that forms all of our events.

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It is not to say that we cannot understand the nature of the universe to some extent, but the answers lie in the natures of our own minds, in the processes of individual creativity, in studies that ask questions like: “Where did this thought come from? Where does it go? What effect does it have upon oneself or others? How do I know how to dream, when I have never been taught to do so? How do I speak without understanding the mechanisms? Why do I feel that I have an eternal reality, when it is obvious that I was physically born and will physically die?”

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Unscientific questions? I tell you that these are the most scientific of all. To some extent the attempt on the part of science to consider such material may possibly bring about those qualities of true scientific intuition that will help science bridge the gap between such divergent views as its own and ours.