Tag Archives: METAPHYSICAL EXERCISES

Everything in nature is intentional and useful

Everything in nature is intentional; therefore dreams must fulfill important roles in people’s lives — but how, in ordinary terms?

Even if we don’t consciously remember our dreams, we do get the message. Part of it will appear in our daily experience in one way or another — in our conversation or daily events.

Because dreams are such a perfect combination of stimuli from the inner environment and the exterior environment, other events are often used to trigger inner dream messages, just as the opposite occurs. And in a gathering of three people watching the same TV drama, say, each of them might be interpreting different portions of the program so that those portions correlate with their individual dreams of the night before, and serve to bring them their dream messages in ways they can accept.

Great discrimination is used to do that; for example, one newspaper item is noticed over others because a certain portion of that item represents some of the dream’s message. Another portion might come from a neighbor — but from the dreamer’s interpretation of the neighbor’s remarks, that further brings home the dream message. In such cases the individual will scarcely be aware that a dream is involved.

We might dream of going away on a long trip by car, only to find that a tire blew when we were driving too fast. We may never remember the dream. One way or another, however, we will hit upon some kind of situation — a portion of a TV drama, perhaps — in which a tire is blown. Or we will see an item of that nature in the internet, or we will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. The magnitude of the physical stimuli with which we are surrounded makes it possible, of course, for any given day. Even then, we might not recall the dream, but the situation itself as it comes to our attention might make us check our tires, decide to put off our trip, or instead lead us to inner speculation about whether we are going too fast in a certain direction for our own good at this time. But we will get the dream’s message.

We could not live without viruses

Nor could our biological reality as we know it exist without viruses.

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Viruses appear to be “the bad guys,” and as a rule we think of them separately, as for example the smallpox virus. There are overall affiliations in which viruses take part, however, in which delicate balances are maintained biologically. Each body contains countless viruses that could be deadly at any given time and under certain conditions. These — and I am putting it as simply as possible — take turns being active or inactive within the body, in accordance with the body’s overall condition. Viruses that are “deadly in certain stages are not in others, and in those later stages they react biologically in quite beneficial ways, adding to the body’s stability by bringing about necessary changes, say, in cellular activities that are helpful at given rates of action. These in turn trigger other cellular changes, again of a beneficial nature.

As an example from another field, consider poisons. Belladona can be quite deadly, yet small doses of it were known to aid the body in disease conditions.

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The viruses in the body have a social, cooperative existence. Their effects become deadly only under certain conditions. The viruses must be triggered into destructive activity, and this happens only at a certain point, when the individual involved is actively seeking either death or a crisis situation biologically.

The initial contagion in such cases is always emotional and mental. Social conditions are usually involved, so that an individual is, say, at the lower end of a poor social environment, a seeming victim of it, or in a situation where his individual values as a social member is severely weakened.

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In the same way that a member of such a society can go [askew], blow his stack, go overboard, commit antisocial acts, so in the same fashion such a person can instead trigger the viruses, wreck their biological social order, so that some of them suddenly become deadly, or run [amok]. So of course the resulting diseases are infectious. To that degree they are social diseases. It is not so much that a virus, say, suddenly turns destructive — though it does — as it is that the entire cooperative structure within which all the viruses are involved becomes insecure and threatened.

Viruses mutate. Such is often the case. It seems quite scientific to believe in inoculations against such dangerous diseases — and certainly, scientifically, inoculations seem to work. People in our time right now are not plagued by smallpox, for example. Some cultures have believed that illnesses were caused by demons. Medicine men, through certain ceremonies, would try to rid the body of the demons — and those methods worked also. The belief system was tight and accepted, and it only began to fail when societies encountered “civilized views.”

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If we call the demons “negative beliefs,” however, then we have taken strides forward. People continue to die of diseases. Many of our scientific procedures, including inoculations, of themselves “cause” new diseases. It does not help a patient inoculated against smallpox and polio if [eventually] he/she dies as a result of his negative beliefs.

What I have said about viruses applies to all biological life. Viruses are “highly intelligent” — meaning that they react quickly to stimuli. They are responsive to emotional states. They are social and usually spread through person-to-person contact. This is why many people try to limit their exposure to these viruses by wearing things like a surgical-mask,” for example. By wearing face masks, and other things similar, people can reduce their chances of getting the virus and spreading it on to others. Their spread determines their scale of life. This usually varies considerably, and some can be inactive for centuries, and revive. They have extensive memory patterns, biologically imprinted. Some can multiply in the tens of thousands within seconds. They are in many ways the basis of biological life, but we are aware of them only when they show “a deadly face.”

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We are not aware of the inner army of viruses within the body that protect it constantly. Host and virus both need each other, and both are part of the same life cycle.

Paranoia and its manifestations

Paranoia is extremely interesting because it shows the ways in which private beliefs can distort events that connect the individual with other people. The events are “distorted.” yet while the paranoid is convinced that those events are valid, this does not change other people’s perception of the same happenings.

Paranoia is most commonly associated with intoxication and withdrawal symptoms from drugs, including alcohol and cocaine. However, paranoia is seen in a wide range of people for many different reasons. Paranoia can be a feature of another mental illness, like anxiety or depression, but most commonly occurs in psychotic disorders like schizophrenia and paranoid personality disorder. The more severe the mental illness is, the less likely the said person is going to realize that they are experiencing paranoia instead of threat from people, or even the world.

Alternatively, elderly people suffering from illnesses like dementia can experience paranoia as a symptom of their illness. This is due to the way the brain is altered throughout the illness. Paranoia will usually start with suspicious delusions that the person suffering from Alzheimer’s experiences; they may imagine that their family members are stealing from them, or that someone is following them. As family members, it can make it difficult to interact with the person with Alzheimer’s (you can take a look at these tips on Alzheimer’s Communication if you’re struggling with this) and it can be even more difficult to calm the person down than those suffering from mental illness or drug abuse. Unfortunately, treating paranoia in those with Alzheimer’s is hard due to the alterations of the brain constantly.

Whatever the case, paranoia takes many different forms and impacts many different people. Paranoia does not care for whoever it takes a hold on, and it’s not something that is easily fought off.

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What I want to emphasize here is the paranoid’s misinterpretation of innocuous personal or mass events, and to stress the ways in which physical events can be put together symbolically, so that from them a reality can be created that is almost part physical and part dream.

We must of course interpret events in a personal manner. We create them. Yet there is also a meeting ground of more or less shared physical encounters, a sense plateau that offers firm-enough footing for the agreement of a mass-shared world. With most mental aberrations, we are dealing with people whose private symbols are so heavily thrust over prime sense data that even those data sometimes become almost invisible. These individuals often use the physical world in the way that most people use the dream world, so that for them it is difficult to distinguish a private and a publicly-shared reality.

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Many such people are highly creative and imaginative. Often, however, they have less of a solid foundation than others in dealing with a mass-shared reality, and so they attempt to impose their own private symbols upon the world, or to form a completely private world. I am speaking in general terms now, and in those terms such people are leery of human relationships. Each person forms his or her own reality, and yet that personal reality must also be shared with others, and must be affected by the reality of others.

As creatures dwelling in time and space, our senses provide us with highly specific data, and with a cohesive-enough physical reality. Each person may react to the seasons in a very personal manner, and yet we all share those natural events. They provide a framework for experience. It is up to the conscious mind to interpret sense events as clearly and concisely as possible. This allows for the necessary freedom of action for psychological and physical mobility. We are an imaginative species, and so the physical world is colored, charged, by our own imaginative projections, and powered by the great sweep of the emotions. But when we are confused or upset, it is an excellent idea to return our attention to the natural world as it appears at any given moment — to sense its effect upon us as separate from our own projections.

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We form our own reality. Yet if we are in the Northeast in the wintertime, we had better be experiencing a physical winter, or we are far divorced from primary sense data.

The paranoid has certain other beliefs. Let us take a hypothetical individual — one who is convinced he has a healthy body, and is proud of mental stability. Let us call this friend Paul.

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Paul [for his own reasons] may decide that his body is out to get him and punish him, rather than say, the FBI. He may symbolically pick out an organ or a function, and he will misinterpret many body events in the same way that another may misinterpret mass events. Any public service announcements, so-called, publicizing symptoms connected with his sensitive area, will immediately alarm him. He will consciously and unconsciously focus upon that [art of the body,] anticipating its malfunction. Our friend can indeed alter the reality of his body.

Paul will interpret such body events in a negative fashion, and as threatening, so that some quite normal sensations will serve the same functions as a fear of policemen, for example. If he keeps this up long enough, he will indeed strain a portion of the body, and by telling others about it he will gradually begin to affect not only his personal world, but that part of the mass world with which he has contact: It will be known that he has an ulcer, or whatever. In each case we are dealing with a misinterpretation of basic sense data.

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When I say that a person misinterprets sense data, I mean that the fine balance between mind and matter becomes overstrained in one direction. There are, then, certain events that connect the world. Though when everything’s said and done these events come from outside of the world’s order, nevertheless they appear as constants within it. Their reality is the result of the most precise balancing of forces so that certain mental events appear quite real, and others are peripheral. We have dusk and dawn. If in the middle of the night, and fully awake, we believe it is sunrise in physical terms, and cannot differentiate between our personal reality and the physical one, then that balance is disturbed.

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The paranoid organizes the psychological world about his/her obsession, for such it is, and he/she cuts everything out that does not apply, until all conforms to his/her beliefs. An examination of unprejudiced sense data at any point would at any time bring him/her relief.

Paranoia can be a very serious mental condition, that if untreated, may develop into something that inhibits an individual’s quality of life severely. An individual who is either suffering from this or knows someone who is may seek out help and assistance to possibly treat this. Forms of treatment could be the traditional rote of therapy and a doctor, or it might be through alternative medicines such as CBD gummies and other alternative healing therapies, that might be helpful.

Regradless of what option is chosen as a route for possible treatment, it is advised to seek out the advice of a medical professional like a doctor, so as to get some sound advice and treatment if an individual suffering from paranoia should ever need it in the future.

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Mechanics of Experience

Our world and everything in it exists first in the imagination. We have been taught to focus all of our attention upon physical events, so that they carry the authenticity of reality for us. Thoughts, feelings, or beliefs appear to be secondary, subjective — or somehow not real — and they seem to rise in response to an already established field of physical data.

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We usually think, for example, that our feelings about a given event are primarily reactions to the events itself. It seldom occurs to us that the feelings themselves might be primary, and that the particular event was somehow a response to our emotions, rather than the other way around. The all-important matter of our focus is largely responsible for our interpretation of any event.

For an exercise, imagine for awhile that the subjective world of our thoughts, feelings, inner images and fantasies represent the “rock-bed reality” from which individual physical events emerge. Look at the world for a change from the inside out, so to speak. Imagine that physical experience is somehow the materialization of our own subjective reality. Forget what we have learned about reactions and stimuli. Ignore for a time everything we have believed and see our thoughts as the real events. Try to view normal physical occurrences as the concrete physical reactions in space and time to our own feelings and beliefs. For indeed our subjective world causes our physical experience.

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In titling this discussion I used the word “mechanics,” because mechanisms suggest smooth technological workings. While the world is not a machine — its inner workings are such that no technology could ever copy them — this involves a natural mechanics in which the inner dimensions of consciousness everywhere emerge to form a materialized, cohesive, physical existence. Again, our interpretation of identity teach us to focus awareness in such a way that we cannot follow the strands of consciousness that connect us with all portions of nature. In a way, the world is like a multidimensional, exotic plant growing in space and time, each thought, dream, imaginative encounter, hope or fear, growing naturally into its own bloom — a plant of incredible variety, never for a moment the same, in which each smallest root, leaf, stem, or flower has a part to play and is connected with the whole.

Even those of us who intellectually agree that we form our own reality find it difficult to accept emotionally in certain areas. We are, of course, literally hypnotized into believing that our feelings arise in response to events. Our feelings, however, cause the events we perceive. Secondarily, we do of course then react to those events.

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We have been taught that our feelings must necessarily be tied to specific physical happenings. We may be sad because a relative has died, for example, or because we have lost a job, or because we have been rebuffed by a lover, or for any number of other accepted reasons. We are told that our feelings must be in response to events that are happening, or have happened. Often, of course, our feelings “happen ahead of time,” because those feelings are the initial realities from which events flow.

A relative might be ready to die, though no exterior sign has been given. The relative’s feelings might well be mixed, containing portions of relief and sadness, which we might then perceive — but the primary events are subjective.

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It is somewhat of a psychological trick, in our day and age, to come to the realization that we do in fact form our experience and our world, simply because the weight of evidence seems to be so loaded at the other end, because of our habits or perception. The realization is like one that comes at one time or another to many people in the dream state, when suddenly they “awaken” while still in the dream, realizing first of all that they are dreaming, and secondarily that they are themselves creating the experienced drama.

To understand that we create our own reality requires that same kind of “awakening” from the normal awake state — at least for many people. Some of course have this knack more than others. The realization itself does indeed change “the rules of the game” as far as we are concerned to a rather considerable degree.

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As long as we believe that either good events or bad ones are meted out by a personified God as the reward or punishment for our actions, or on the other hand that events are largely meaningless, chaotic, subjective knots in the tangled web of an accidental Darwinian world, then we cannot consciously understand our own creativity, or play the role in the universe that we are capable of playing as individuals or as a species. We will instead live in a world where events happen to us, in which we must do sacrifice to the gods of one kind or another, or see ourselves as victims of an uncaring nature.

While still preserving the integrity of physical events as we understand them, [each of] us must alter the focus of our attention to some extent, so that we begin to perceive the connections between our subjective reality at any given time, and those events that we perceive at any given time. We are the initiator of those events.

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This recognition does indeed involve a new performance on the part of our own consciousness, a mental and imaginative leap that gives us control and direction over achievements that we have always performed, though without our conscious awareness.

Early man had such an identification of subjective and objective realities. As a species, however, we have developed what can almost be called a secondary nature — a world of technology in which we also now have our existence, and complicated social structures have emerged from it. To develop that kind of structure necessitated a division between subjective and objective worlds. Now, however, it is important that we realize our position, and accomplish the manipulation of consciousness that will allow us to take true conscious responsibility for our actions and our experience.

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We can “come awake” from our normal waking state, and that is the natural next step for consciousness to follow — one for which our biology has already equipped us. Indeed, each person does attain that recognition now and then. It brings triumphs and challenges as well. In those areas where we are not, remind ourselves that we are involved in a learning process; we are daring enough to accept the responsibility for our actions.

Look clearly, at the ways in which our private world causes our daily experience, and how it merges with the experience of others.

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Because of our individual and joint intuitive understanding and intellectual discrimination, we were able from an early age to clearly perceive the difficulties of our fellows. This helped incite stimuli that made us question the entire framework of our civilization. We are able to do something few people can: leap intuitively and mentally above our own period — to discard intellectually and mentally, and sometimes emotionally, the short-sighted, unfortunate religious scientific, and social beliefs of our fellows.

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Many of those old beliefs still have an emotional hold, however, and some helpful beliefs have also been overdone, or carried on too long. Because we can see so clearly the failings of our age, we each have a tendency to exaggerate them, or rather to concentrate upon them, so that we do not have an emotional feeling of safety. We react by setting up defenses.

Getting acquainted with other living members of the family, who are still in time

Many individuals do this, psychologically becoming aware of relatives still living, even though in life they may never meet.

We may feel alone in life if all of our relatives are dead, for example. This might make us want to look here and there in newspapers, death records or online obituaries for clues about past relatives to uncover about our own lives. In the same way, entering life, we often assure ourselves that past friends or relatives are there before us, maybe even watching over us.

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A potpourri, it is indeed. Heredity plays far less a part in the so-called formation of character than is generally supposed

For that matter,[the same is true of] environment, as it is usually understood. Our cultural beliefs predispose us to interpret experience in terms of heredity and environment, however, so that we focus primarily upon them as prime causes of behavior. We do not concentrate upon the exceptions — the children who do not seem to fit the patterns of their families or environments, so of course no attempts are made to view those kinds of unofficial behavior.

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Because of this, large organized patterns behind human activity often escape our notice almost completely. We read constantly of people who seem to have been most affected by fictional characters, for example, or by personalities from the past, or by complete strangers, more than they have been affected by their own families. Such situations are considered oddities.

The human personality is far more open to all kinds of stimuli than is supposed. If information is thought to come to the self only through physical means, then of course heredity and environment must be seen behind human motivation. When we realize that the personality can and does have access to other kinds of information than physical, then you must begin to wonder what effects those data have on the formation of character at birth, and the entire probable intent of their lives exists then as surely as does the probable plan for the adult body they will alter possess.

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Consciousness forms the genes, and not the other way around, and the about-to-be-born infant is the agency that adds new material through the chromosomal structure. The child is from birth far more aware of all kinds of physical events than is realized also. But beside that, the child uses the early years to explore — particularly in the dream state — other kinds of material that suit its own fancies and intents, and it constantly receives a stream of information that is not at all dependent upon its heredity or environment.

On these other levels the child knows, for example, of its contemporaries born at about the same time. Each person’s “individual” life plan fits in somewhere with that of his or her contemporaries. Those plans are communicated one to the other, and probabilities instantly are set into motion in Conscious-mind-2. To some degree or another calculations are made so that, for instance, individual A will meet individual B at a marketplace 30 years later — if this fits with the intents of both parties. There will be certain cornerstone encounters in each person’s life that are set up as strong probabilities, or as plans to be grown into.

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There are bodies of events, then, that in a certain fashion we will materialize almost in the same way that we will materialize our own adult body from the structure of the fetus. In those terms the body works with physical properties — though again these properties, as discussed often, have their own consciousness and realities.

Our mental life deals with psychological events, obviously, but beneath so-called normal awareness the child grows toward the mental body of events that will compose his or her life. Those unique intents that characterize each individual exist in Conscious-mind-2, then — and with birth, those intents immediately begin to impress the physical world of Conscious-mind-1.

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Each child’s birth changes the world, obviously, for it sets up an instant psychological momentum that begins to affect action in Conscious-mind-1 and Conscious-mind-2 alike.

A child many be born with a strong talent for music, for example. Say the child is unusually gifted. Before he or she is old enough to begin any kind of training, he will know on other levels the probable direction that music will take during his lifetime. He or she will be acquainted in the dream state with other young budding musicians, though they are infants also. Again, probabilities will be set into motion, so that each child’s intent reaches out. There is great flexibility, however, and according to individual purposes many such children will also be acquainted with music of the past. To one extent or another this applies to every field of endeavor as each person adds to the world scene, and as the intents of each individual, added to those of each other person alive, multiply — so that the fulfillment of the individual results in the accomplishments of our world. And the lack of fulfillment of course produces those lacks that are also so apparent.

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Some readers have brothers or sisters, or both. Others are only children. Our Ideas of individuality hamper us to a large extent. To one extent or another, again, each portion of consciousness, while itself, contains [the] potentials of all consciousness. Our private information about the world is not nearly as private as we suppose, therefore, for behind the experience of any one event, each of us possesses information pertaining to other dimensions of that event that we do not ordinarily perceive.

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If we are involved in any kind of mass happening, from a concert to an avalanche, we are aware on other levels of all of the actions leading to that specific participation. If buildings are constructed of bricks quite visible, so mass events are formed by many small invisible happenings — each, however, fitting together quite precisely in a kind of psychological masonry in which each of us has a mental hand. This applies to mass conversions and to natural disasters alike.

 

Let us take tours through psychological realities

Or tours through psychic lands rather than physical ones. Such journeys “Take no time” in our terms.

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We have a storm. Weathermen or weather women speak of local conditions and merging air currents. We are in a realm where consciousnesses merge. A constant state of growth, expansion, and development. We can travel to many great universities of the mind.

Much of this is difficult to explain, for information and knowledge is constantly transformed — almost completely reborn, so to speak, through characteristics that are inherently a part of thought itself. Knowledge is changed automatically through the auspices of each consciousness who perceives it. It is magnified and yet refined. It is a constant language, yet one that transforms itself. We can exchange with each other a more complicated system of reality than any computer could handle. We do not understand or perceive the ways in which our reality contributes to the foundation of the mass-world reality that we experience. Unconsciously, each individual participants in forming that world. The primary encounter must be a subjective inner one, and intersection of consciousnesses that is then physically experienced.

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The encounters themselves occur in a Framed-mind-3 environment. That framework of course, again in terms of an analogy, exists another step away from our own Framed-mind-2. I do not want to get into a higher-or-lower hierarchy here, but the frameworks represent spheres of action. Our encounters initially take place, then, beyond the sphere that deals exclusively with either our physical world or the inner mental and psychic realm from which our present experience springs.

Like as motes of dust might be swept along with a brisk autumn wind from one area to another. We are carried above the land of our usual perception so that portions of us glimpse subjective states. These arouse our curiosity even when consciously we are not aware of perceiving them. That curiosity acts as impetus.

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Our intents and concerns, our interests, our needs and desires, our characteristics and abilities, directly influence our material, for they lead us to it to begin with.

We want to make the material workable in our world — a natural and quite understandable desire. The proof is in the pudding, and so forth. Yet of course we are also participators in an immense drama in which the main actions occur outside of our world, in those realms from which our world originated — and we are, foremost, natives of those other realms, as each individual is; each being is.

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Those realms are far from lonely, dark, and chaotic. They are also quite different from any concept of nirvana or nothingness. They are composed of ever-spiraling states of existence in which different kinds of consciousnesses meet and communicate. They are not impersonal realms, but are involved in the most highly intimate inter-actions. Those interactions exist about us all the while, and I would like us in our thoughts to aspire toward them, to try to stretch our perceptions enough so that we become at least somewhat aware of their existence.

These frameworks, while I speak of them separately, exist one within the other, and each one impinges upon the other. To some extent we are immersed in all realities.

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If we could, try to sense this greater context in which we have our being. Our rewards will be astonishing. The emotional realization is what is important, of course, not simply an intellectual acceptance of the idea. Do not forget the vaster context. Which will trigger responses on our part, increasing still further the scope of knowledge that we can receive.

In our world knowledge must be translated into specifics, yet we also deal with emotional realities that cannot be so easily deciphered. In the atmosphere now, there are hints of those undecipherable yet powerful realities that will, in time, gradually be described in verbal terms that make sense to us.

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According to our understanding, our own comprehensions and perceptions will bring other clues, either in the waking or the dream state. Keep our minds open for them, but without any preconceived ideas of how they might appear. Development triggers certain psychic activity that then triggers further growth.

To some extent Framed-mind-1 and 2 is of course an example of an entire idea, for we receive a good deal of information of physical life. Still they must be colored by our ideas of what physical lives are.

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Even our concepts of creativity are necessarily influenced by Framed-mind-1 thinking, of course.

Acts of creativity best approach the workings of Framed-mind-2, for [those] acts always involve leaps of faith and inspiration, and the breaking of barriers.

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When we are writing, we draw upon associations, memories, and events that are known to us and others, that perhaps we had forgotten but that suddenly spring to mind in answer to our intent and following our associations. When an artist is painting a landscape, he might unconsciously compare hundreds of landscapes viewed in the past in multitudinous, seemingly forgotten hues that splash upon the grass or trees, or as he seeks for a new creative combination. Art is his or her focus so that he draws from Framed-mind-2 all of those pertinent data that are necessary for his or her painting. Not just technique is concerned, but the entire visual experience of his or her life.

Framed-mind-2 involves a far vaster creative activity, in which our life is the art involved — and all [of the] ingredients for its success are there, available. When we are creating a product or a work of art, the results will have much to do with our idea of what the product is, or what the work of art is — so our ideas about our life, or life itself, will also have much to do with our experience of it as a living art.

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If we believe in the laws of cause and effect, as accepted, or in the laws of polarity, as accepted, then we will be bound by those laws, for they will represent our artistic technique. We will believe that we must use them in order to, say, paint the living portrait of our life. We will therefore structure our experience, drawing to oneself from Framed-mind-2 only that which fits. We will not have the “technique” to attract other experience, and as long as we stick with one technique our life-pictures will more or less have a certain monotony.

Write and artist also bring more into his or her work than the simple ability to write or paint. In one way or another all of his or her experience is involved. When we pay attention to Framed-mind-1 primarily, It is as if we have learned to write simple sentences with one word neatly before the other. We have not really learned true expression. In our life we are writing sentences like “See Tommy run.” Our mind is not really dealing with concepts but with the simple perception of objects, so that little imagination is involved. We can express the location of objects in space, and we can communicate to others in similar fashion, confirming the physical obvious properties that others also perceive.

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In those terms, using our analogy, the recognition of Framed-mind-2 would bring us from that point to the production of great art, where words served to express not only the seen but the unseen — not simply facts but feelings and emotions — and where the words themselves escaped their consecutive patterns, sending the emotions into realms that quite defied both space and time.

Now and then people have such moments, and yet each private reality has its existence in an eternal creativity from which, our world springs.

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It is not as if that vaster reality were utterly closed to our perception, for it is not. To some extent it is everywhere apparent in each person’s private experience, and it is obviously stated in the very existence of our world itself. The religions, in one way or another, have always perceived it, although the attempt to interpret that reality in terms of the recognized facts of the world is bound to distort it.

Our world, then, is the result of a multidimensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible for us to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. Again, in Framed-mind-2 each event is known, form the falling of a leaf to the falling of a star, from the smallest insect’s experience on a summer day to the horrendous murder of an individual on a city street. Those events are not divorced from our reality, not thrust upon us, not apart from our experience. It often only seems to be because we so compartmentalize our own experience that we automatically separate ourselves from such knowledge.

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Creativity does not deal with compartments. It throws aside barriers. Even most people who are involved in creative work often apply their additional insights and knowledge only to their art, however — not to their lives. They fall back to cause and effect.

Framed-mind-1 life is, again, based on the idea that we have only so much energy, that we will wear out, and that a certain expenditure of energy will produce a given amount of work — in other words, that applied effort of a certain kind will produce the best results. In the same way, it is believed that the energy of the universe will die out. All of this presupposes “the fact” that no energy is inserted into the world. The source of the world would therefore seem no longer to exist, having worn itself out in the effort to produce physical phenomena. In the light of such thinking, Framed-mind-2 would be an impossibility.

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Instead, the energy of life is inserted constantly into our world, in a way that has nothing to do with our so-called physical laws. The universe expands as an idea does. The greater life of each creature exist in the framework that “originally” gave it birth, and in a greater manner of speaking each creature, regardless of its age, is indeed being constantly reborn. Couched in our terms of our world’s known reality, which deal with local properties of Framed-mind-2 as they have impact in our experience.

Men’s and Women’s private roles in the nature of mass events

We must first look into the medium in which events appear concrete and real. The great sweep of the events of nature can be understood only by looking into a portion of their reality that is not apparent to us. We want to examine, therefore, the inner power of natural occurrences.

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A scientist examining nature studies its exterior, observing the outsideness of nature. Even investigative work involving atoms and molecules, or [theoretical] faster-than-light particles, concern the particle nature of reality. The scientist does not usually look for nature’s heart. He or she certainly does not pursue the study of its soul.

All being is manifestation of energy — an emotional manifestation of energy. Man or woman can interpret the weather in terms of air pressure and wind currents. He or she can look to fault lines in an effort to understand earthquakes. All of this works at a certain level, to a certain degree. Man’s or woman’s psyche, however, is emotionally not only a part of his or her physical environment, but intimately connected with all of nature’s manifestations. Using the terms Framed-mind 2, man’s or woman’s identification with nature is a strongly-felt reality in Framed-mind 2. And there we must look for the answers regarding man’s or woman’s relationship with nature. There in Frame-mind 2 the nature of the psyche appears quite clearly, so that its sweeps and rhythms can be understood. The manifestations of physical energy follow emotional rhythms that cannot be ascertained with gadgets or instruments, however fine.

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Why is one killed and not another? Why does an earthquake disrupt an entire area? What is the relationship between the individual and such mass events of nature?

Before we can begin to consider such questions, we must take another look at our world, and ascertain its source, for surely its source and nature’s are the same. We make some distinctions between events and our interpretation of them.

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It certainly seems that our world is concrete, factual, definite, and that its daily life rests upon known events and facts. We make a clear distinction between fact and fantasy. We take it for granted as a rule that our current knowledge as a people rests upon scientific data, at least, that are unassailable. Certainly technological development appears to have been built most securely upon a body of concrete ideas.

The world’s ideas, fantasies, or myths may seem far divorced from current experience — yet all that we know or experience has its origin in that creative dimension of existence that I am terming Framed-mind 2. In a manner of speaking our factual world rises on a bed of fantasy, myth, an imagination, from which all of our detailed paraphernalia emerge. What then is myth, and what do I mean by the term?

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Myth is not a distortion of fact, but the womb through which fact must come. Myth involves an intrinsic understanding of the nature of reality, couched in imaginative terms, carrying power as strong as nature itself. Myth-making is a natural psychic characteristic, a psychic element that combines with other such elements to form a mythical representation of inner reality. That representation is then used as a model upon which our civilizations are organized, and also as a perceptual tool through whose lens we interpret the private events of our life in their historical context. For instance, while some might dismiss the story of primitive men and women separating from each other and living individually due to their emotional conflicts as a myth, they forget that this mere myth is something that might have laid the foundation for divorces in the modern world. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be professionals like a family lawyer bradford or institutions like courts or terms like “divorce” in the civilized world.

Remember that when we accept myths, we call them facts, or course, for they become so a part of our lives, of societies and our professions, that their basis seems self-apparent. Myths are vast psychic dramas, more truthful than facts. They provide an ever-enduring theater of reality. It must be clearly understood, then, that myths imply the nature of psychic events whose enduring reality exists in Framed-mind 2, and forms the patterns that are then interpreted in our world.

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If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following questions might be asked: “Am I being punished by God, and for what reason? Is the disaster the result of God’s vengeance?” A scientist might ask instead: “With better technology and information, could we somehow have predicted the disaster, and saved many lives?” He or she might try to dissociate himself or herself from emotion, and to see the disaster simply as the result of a non personal nature that did not know or care what lay in its path.

In all cases, however, such situations instantly bring to mind questions of man’s or woman’s reality and course, his or her connections with God, his or her planet, and the universe. He interprets those questions according to his or her own beliefs.

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Myths are natural phenomena, rising from the psyche of man or woman as surely as giant mountain ranges emerge from the physical planet. Their deeper reality exists, whoever, in Framed-mind 2 as source material for the world that we know.

In those terms, the great religions of our civilizations rise from myths that change their characters through the centuries, even as mountain ranges rise and fall. We can see mountain ranges. It would be ridiculous to ignore their reality. We see our myths somewhat less directly, yet are apparent within all of our activities, and they form the inner structures of all or our civilizations with their multitudinous parts.

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In those terms, then, Christianity and our other religions are myths, rising in response to an inner knowledge that is too vast to be clothed by facts alone. In those terms also, our science is also quite mythical in nature. This may be more difficult for some or us to perceive since it appears to work so well. Others will be willing enough to see science in its mythical characteristics, but will be most reluctant to see religion as we know it in the same light. To some extent or another, however, all of these ideas program our interpretation of events.

In this discussion, we are more or less dealing with the events of nature as we understand it. It will seem obvious to some, that a natural disaster is caused by God’s vengeance, or is at least a divine reminder to repent, while others will take it for granted that such a catastrophe is completely neutral in character, impersonal and [quite] divorced from man’s and woman’s own emotional reality. The Christian scientist is caught in between. Because we divorce ourselves from nature, we are not able to understand its manifestations. Often myths get in the way. When myths become standardized, and too literal, when we begin to tie them too tightly to the world of facts, then we misread them entirely. When myths become most factual they are already becoming less real. Their power becomes constrained.

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Most people interpret the realities of their lives, their triumphs and failures, their health or illness, their fortune or misfortune, then, in the light of a mythical reality that is not understood as such. What is behind these myths, and what is their source of power?

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Facts are a very handy but weak brew of reality. They immediately consign certain kinds of experiences as real and others as not. The psyche, however, will not be so limited. It exists in a medium of reality, a realm of being in which all possibilities exist. It creates myths the way the ocean creates spray. Myths are originally psychic fabrications of such power and strength that whole civilizations can rise from their source. They involve symbols and know emotional validities that are then connected to the physical world, so that that world is never the same again. They cast their light over historical events because they are responsible for those events. They mix and merge the inner, unseen but felt, eternal psychic experience of man with the temporal events of his or her physical days, and form a combination that structures thoughts and beliefs from civilization to civilization. In Framed-mind 2 the interior power of nature is ever-changing. The dreams, hopes, aspirations and fears of man and woman interact in a constant motion that then forms the events of our world. That interaction includes not only man, of course, but the emotional reality of all earthly consciousnesses as well, from a microbe to a scholar, from a frog to a star. We interpret the phenomena of our world according to the mythic characteristics that we have accepted. We organize physical reality, then, through ideas validity. The physical body itself is quite capable of putting the world together in different fashions than the one that is familiar to us.

We divorce ourselves from nature and nature’s intents far more than the animals do. Nature in its stormy manifestations seems like an adversary. We must either look for reasons outside of ourselves to explain what seems to be nature’s ill intent at such times, or its utter lack of concern.

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Science often says that nature care little for the individual, only for the species, so then we must often see ourselves as victims in a larger struggle for survival, in which our own intents do not carry even the puniest sway.

Even in one life a given memory is seldom a “true version” of a past event.

Events do not exist in the concrete, done-and finished versions about which we have been taught, then memory must also be a different story. Remember the creativity and the open-ended nature of events.

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The original happening is experienced from a different perspective on the a part of each person involved, of course, so that the event’s implications and basic meanings may differ according to the focus of each participant. That given event, in our terms happening for the first time, say, begins to “work upon” the participants. Each one brings to it his or her own background, temperament, and literally a thousand different colorations — so that the event, while shared by others, is still primarily original to each person.

The moment it occurs, it begins to change as it is filtered through all of those ingredients, and it is minutely altered furthermore by each succeeding event. The memory of an event, then, is shaped as much by the present as it is by the past. Association triggers memories, of course, and organizes memory events. It also helps color and form such events.

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We are used to a time structure, so that we remember something that happened at a particular time in the past. Usually we can place events in that fashion. There are neurological pockets, so to speak, so that biologically the body can place events as it perceives activity. Those neurological pulses are geared to the biological world we know.

In those terms, past or future-life memories usually remain like ghost images by contrast. Overall, this is necessary so that immediate body response can be focused in the time period we recognize. Other life memories are carried along, so to speak, beneath those other pulses — never, in certain terms, coming to rest so that they can be examined, but forming, say, the undercurrents upon which the memories of our current life ride.

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When such other-life memories do come to the surface, they are of course colored by it, and their rhythm is not synchronized. They are not tied into our nervous system as precisely as our regular memories. Our present gains its feelings of depth because of our past as we understand it. In certain terms, however, the future represents, say, another kind of depth that belongs to events. A root goes out in all directions. Events do also. But the roots of events go through our past, present, and future.

Often by purposefully trying to slow down our thought processes, or playfully trying to speed them up, we can become aware of memories from other lives — past or future. To some extent we allow other neurological impulses to make themselves known. There may often be a feeling of vagueness, because we have no ready-made scheme of time or place with which to structure such memories. Such exercises also involve us with the facts of the events of our own life, for we automatically are following probabilities from the point of our own focus.

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It would be most difficult to operate within our sphere of reality without the pretension of concrete, finished events. We form our past lives now in this life as surely as we form our future ones now also.

Simultaneously, each of our past and future selves dwell in their own way now, and for them the last sentence also applies. It is theoretically possible to understand much of this through an examination-in-depth of the events of our own life. Throwing away many taken-for-granted concepts, we can pick a memory. But try not to structure it — a most difficult task — for such structuring is by now almost automatic.

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The memory, left alone, not structured, will shimmer, shake, take other forms, and transform itself before our [mental] eyes, so that its shape will seem like a psychological kaleidoscope through whose focus the other events of our life will also shimmer and change. Such a memory exercise can also serve to bring in other-life memories. Edges, corners, and reflections will appear, however, perhaps superimposed upon memories that we recognize as belonging to this life.

Our memories serve to organize our experience and again, follow recognized neurological sequences. Other-life memories from the future and past often bounce off of these with a motion too quick for us to follow.

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In a quiet moment, off guard, we might remember an event from this life, but there may be a strange feeling to it, as if something about it, some sensation, does not fit into the time slot in which the event belongs. In such cases that [present-life] memory is often tinged by another, so that a future or past life memory shreds it cast upon the recalled event. There is a floating quality about one portion of the memory.

This happens more often than is recognized, because usually we simply discount the feeling of strangeness, and drop the part of the memory that does not fit. Such instances involve definite bleed-throughs, however. By being alert and catching such feelings, we can learn to use the floating part of the otherwise-recognizable memory as a focus. Through association that focus can then trigger further past or future recall. Clues also appear in the dreaming state, with greater frequency, because then we are already accustomed to that kind of floating sensation in which events can seem to happen in their own relatively independent context.

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Dreams in which past and present are both involved are an example; also dreams in which the future and the past merge, and dreams in which time seems to be a changing ingredient.

In certain terms the past , present, and future [of our present life] are all compressed in any given moment of our experience.

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Any such moment is therefore a gateway into all of our existence. The events that we recognize as happening now are simply specific and objective, but the most minute elements in any given moment’s experience is also symbolic of other events and other times. Each moment is then like a mosaic, only in our current life history we follow but one color or pattern, and ignore the others. As I have mentions [in other blogs], we can indeed change the present to some extent by purposefully altering a memory event. That kind of synthesis can be used in many instances with many people.

Such an exercise is not some theoretical, esoteric, impractical method, but a very precise, volatile, and dynamic way of helping the present self by calming the fears of a past self. That past self is not hypothetical, either, but still exists, capable of being reached and of changing its reactions. We do not need a time machine to alter the past or future.

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Such a technique is highly valuable. Not only are memories not “dead,” they are themselves ever-changing. Many alter themselves almost completely without our notice. While the bare facts more or less the same, the entire meaning and interpretation of each version differs so drastically that those differences far out-weigh the similarities.

In most cases, however, people are not aware that memory changes in such a fashion, or that the events they think they recall are so different.

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The point is that past events grow. They are not finished. With that in mind, we can see that future lives are very difficult to explain from within our framework. A completed life in our terms is no more completed or done than any event. There is simply a cutoff point in our focus our framework, but it is as artificial as, basically, perspective is applied to painting.

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It is not that the inner self is not aware of all of this, but it has already chosen a framework, or a given frame of existence, that emphasizes certain kinds of experiences over others.

 

Thorns or Roses May Grow Within.

The individual will grow outward toward the world, encountering and forming a practical experience, traveling outward from his center in almost vine-like fashion, forming from the fabric of physical reality a conglomeration of pleasant or aesthetic, and unpleasant or prickly events.

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The vine of experience in this analogy is formed in quite a natural fashion from “psychic” elements that are as necessary to psychological experience as sun, air, and water are to plants. But as the individual’s personal experience must be seen in the light of all of these issues, so mass events cannot be understood unless they are considered in a far greater context that unusual.

The question of epidemics, for example, cannot be answered from a biological standpoint alone. It involves great sweeping psychological attitudes on the part of many, and meets the needs and desires of those involved — needs which, in our terms, arise in a framework of religious, psychological and cultural realities that cannot be isolated from biological results.

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I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual is to be stressed, and his or her power to form this or her private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow or governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, flood, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.

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There are no closed systems. This also means that in world terms, events spin like electrons, affecting all psychological and psychic systems as well as biological ones. It is true to say that each individual dies alone, for no one else can die that death. It is also true that part of the species dies with each death, and is reborn with each birth, and that each private death takes place within the greater context of the existence of the entire species. The death serves a purpose species-wise while it also serves the purposes of the individual, for no death comes unbidden.

An epidemic, for example, serves the purposes of each individual who is involved, while it also serves its own functions in the greater species framework.

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When we consider epidemics to be the result of viruses, and emphasize their biological stances, then it seems that the solutions are very obvious: We learn the nature of each virus and develop an inoculation, giving [each member of] the populace a small dose of the disease so that a man’s or woman’s own body will combat it, and he or she will become immune.

The shortsightedness of such procedures is generally overlooked because of the definite short-term advantages. As a rule, for example, people inoculated against polio do not develop that disease. Using such procedures, tuberculosis has been largely conquered.

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In the first place, the causes are not biological. Biology is simply the carrier of a “deadly intent.” In the second place, there is a difference between a virus produced in the laboratory and that inhabiting the body — a difference recognized by the body but not by our laboratory instruments.

In a way the body produces antibodies, and sets up natural immunization as a result of say, inoculation. But the body’s chemistry is also confused, for it “knows it is reacting to a disease that is not “a true disease,” but a biologically counterfeit intrusion.

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To that extent — the body’s biological integrity is contaminated. It may at the same time produce antibodies also, for example, to other “similar” diseases, and so overextend its defenses that the individual later comes down with another disease.

No person becomes ill unless that illness serves a psychic or psychological reason, so many people escape such complications. In the meantime, however, scientists and medical men and women find more and more viruses against which the population “must ” be inoculated. Each one is considered singly. There is a rush to develop a new inoculation against the newest virus. Much of this is on predictive basis: The scientists “predict” how many people might be “attacked” by, say, a virus that has caused a given number of deaths. Then as a preventative measure the populace is invited to the new inoculation.

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Many people who would not get the disease in any case are then religiously inoculated with it. The body is exerted to use its immune system to the utmost, and sometimes, according to the inoculation, overextended [under such] conditions. Those individuals who have psychologically decided upon death will die in any case, of that disease or another, or of the side effects of the inoculation.

Inner reality and private experience give birth to all mass events. Man and woman cannot disentangle himself or herself from the natural context of his or her physical life. His or her culture, his or her religion, his or her psychologies, and his or her psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. My discussions will be devoted to the nature of the great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events that often seem to engulf the individual, or to lift him or her willy-nilly in their power.

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What is the relationship between the individual and the gigantic mass motions of nature, of government, or even of religion? What about mass conversions? Mass hysteria? Mass healings, mass murder, and the individual?

 

Each of us possesses a unique, original stance in space and time, regardless of time’s relative existence.

That reality contributes to the experience of others. Only when we operate from our own stance can we help others to the best of our ability. To anticipate danger, or to imaginatively take on the troubles of others robs us of the very energy with which we could help them. I am not saying, therefore, to turn our eyes from the unfortunate conditions of the world. Practical help is needed in all areas of the human life. Yet it is far better, and more practical ultimately, to concentrate upon the beneficial elements of civilization — far better to organize our thoughts in areas of accomplishment than to make lists of man’s or woman’s deficiencies and lacks.

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Such a practice leads to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, in which effective action seems impossible. Life possesses an exuberance. If this is cherished, nurtured, encouraged, then additional energy is generated that is not needed for the purposes of daily private life — a superabundance, that can be effectively directed in those areas of the world where help is most needed.

The strength, vitality, and effectiveness of thought is seldom considered. Though, we may say will not stop war — yet what do we think started such a war? Throughout history the downtrodden have often risen into power, using force, rebelling against their oppressors; and yet, learning little from that experience, they turn and become the new elite, the new power-holders. Their physical conditions may be completely changed, Now theirs, the offices of government, the wealth. Gone are the conditions that, it would seem, caused the uprising. Yet in retaliation they strike out, forming a new class of downtrodden who must in their turn rise and retaliate.

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Despite all appearances, conditions of an exterior nature do not cause wars, or poverty, or disease, or any of the unfortunate circumstances apparent in the world. Our beliefs form our reality. Our thoughts generate practical experience. When these change, conditions will change. To add our own energy, focus, and concentration of dire circumstances in other portions of the world does not help, but adds to, such situations.

To close our eyes to them in an ignorant fashion, to wash our hands of them, so to speak, is equally shortsighted. To pretend such situations do not exist, out of fear of them, will only bring the feared reality closer. It is far better to situate oneself firmly in our own reality, acknowledge it as our own, encourage our strength and creativity, and from that vantage point view those areas of the world or of our own society that need constructive help. Purposefully in our own life, in our daily dialogues with others, in our relationships through our groups or clubs, reinforce as well as we can the strength and abilities of others.

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That reinforcement will add to the personal power of all other individuals with whom those people come in contact. Find the beliefs responsible for the unfortunate conditions. Each individual should be able to assess his or her own reality realistically. There would be no need to arm a nation in advance against another nation’s anticipated — but imaginary — attack.

Personal grudges would not build up, so that men or women so fear further hurts that they attempt to hide from life or relationships, or shy away from contact with others. It is not virtuous to count our failings. Self-conscious righteousness can be a very narrow road. If each of us understood and perceived the graceful integrity of our own individuality, just as we try to perceive the beauty of all other natural creatures, then we would allow our own creativity greater reign. There is order in all elements of nature, and we are part of it.

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The greater sweep of the seasons represents the reaches of our soul. We will not attain spirituality by turning our eyes away from nature, or by trying to disentangle oneself from it. We will not “glimpse eternal life” by attempting to deny the life that we have now — for that life is our own unique path, and provides its own clues for us to follow.

All That Is vibrates with desire. The denial of desire will bring us only listlessness. Those who deny desire are the most smitten by it. Each of our lives are miniature and yet gigantic episodes, mortal and immortal at once, providing experiences that we form meaningfully, opening up dimensions of reality available to no one else, for no one can view existence from our standpoint. No one can be you but you. There are communications at other levels, but our experience of existence is completely original, to be treasured.

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No one from any psychological threshold, however vast, can write a book that defines the psyche, but only present hints and clues, words and symbols. The words and ideas stand for inner realities — that is, they are like piano keys striking other chords; chords that, hopefully, will be activated within the psyche of each person.

Each or us is couched now in the natural world, and world is couched in a reality from which nature emerges. The psyche’s roots are secure, nourishing it like a tree from the ground of being. The source of the psyche’s strength is within each individual, the invisible fabric of the person’s existence.

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Nature is luxurious and abundant in its expressions. The greater reality from which nature springs is evens more abundant, and within that multidimensional experience no individual is ignored, forgotten, dismissed, lost, or forsaken. A tree does not have to ask for nourishment for the ground or the sun, and so everything that we need is available to us in our practical experience. If we believe we are not worthy of nourishment, if we believe that life itself is dangerous, then our own beliefs make it impossible for us to fully utilize that available help. In large measure, since we are still alive, we are of course nourished. We cannot close out the vitality of our own being easily, and the vitality “squandered” on deeper bouts of depression is often greater than the energy used in creative pursuits. We are a portion of All That Is; therefore the universe leans in our direction. It gives. It rings with vitality. Then forsake beliefs that tell us otherwise. Seek within oneself — each of us — those feelings of exuberance that we have, even if they are only occasional, and encourage those events or thoughts that bring them about.

We cannot find our psyche by thinking of it as a separate thing, like a fine jewel in an eternal closet. We can only experience its strength and vitality by exploring the subjective reality that is our own, for it will lead us unerringly to that greater source of being that transcends both space and time.

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The overall stance of the species is largely maintained by the waking-sleeping patterns. In such a fashion, one large portion of the species focuses in physical reality while the other large portion holds a secure foothold in inner reality.

In inner reality we are working on the interior patterns that will form the next day’s realities, and providing probable previews of the future events. Waking and sleeping reality is therefore balanced in the world mind — not the world brain.

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However, the sleeping portion of the species represents the brain’s unconscious activities in the body — particularly when we think of the motion of all of the species’ action en masse in a given day. Those conscious motions have an unconscious basis. If we think of a mass world brain — one entity — then it must wake and sleep in patterns. If we think of mass daily action as performed by one gigantic being, then all of those conscious actions have unconscious counterparts, and a great intercommunication of an inner nervous system must take place.

Part of such brain would have to be awake all of the time, and part engaged in unconscious activity. This is what happens.

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Diverse cultures are thus able to communicate as the cultural knowledge of various parts of the world is given to the sleeping portion of the entire organism. When they sleep, the waking nations add the day’s events to the world memory, and work out future probabilities.

When we are safely ensconced in a comfortable room…

In no present danger, our senses should assimilate it. It should be an easy enough accomplishment to look around us and see that we are in no danger.

Our conscious mind is meant to give our body an assessment of what I will call cultural conditions, for there are sophistications and specifications that in our terms consciousness alone can assess. If under conditions naturally safe in the terms of primary experience, we become overwhelmed by unsafe signals from secondary experience — that is, from our reading or whatever — we show lack of discrimination. We are not able to differentiate between the physically safe present situation, and the imagined which is perhaps unsafe, calling forth the alarms of danger.

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The body mechanisms become highly disoriented. The signals to the body are very contradictory, so that after a while, if such conditions continue, we can no longer tell whether we are in actual danger or imagined danger. Our mind then forces our body to be in a state of constant alert — but more unfortunately, we train ourselves to ignore our direct, sensual feedback in the present moment.

Our body then might say we are safe, and our senses show us that no danger is present — yet we have begun to rely so upon secondary experience that we do not trust our creature reactions.

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Because of man’s and woman’s great gift of imagination, however, the alarm signals not only invade a safe present moment, but go jangling into the future. To whatever extent, and in whatever fashion, each individual is therefore robbed of his of her beliefs in the personal ability to act meaningfully or with purpose in the present.

The body cannot act tomorrow, today. Its sense data must be clear. This resulting feeling of powerlessness to act leads to a state of hopelessness of varying degrees — and that mood does not tie itself to specific details, but pervades emotional life if it is allowed to. To whatever degree, the condemning, critical material too often becomes self-prophesying — for those who put merit on it allow it to cloud their reactions.

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In our terms, while we live, and in the most pertinent terms of intimate sensation, our reality must be what we perceive in the framework of our time, and what we create within that framework as it is experienced. therefore, I entreat not to behave as if man or woman is an imbecile, doomed to extinction, a dim-witted, half-crazy animal with a brain gone amuck.

None of the prophesied destruction man and woman so fears is a reality in our time; nor, for all of the critical prophets through the ages, and the forerunners of doom, has the creativity of man and woman destroyed its self in those terms.

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There are those who make careers of condemning the faults and failings of others, or of the species itself, and because of that attitude man and woman’s great energy and good intent remain invisible. Man and woman are in the process of becoming. His and her works are flawed — but they are the lawed apprentice works of a genius artist in the making, whose failures are indeed momentous and grotesque only in the light of his senses genius, whichever leads him or her and directs him or her onward.

When we are considering the future in our terms, constructive achievements are as realistic as destructive ones. In those terms, each year of man’s existence in fact justifies a more optimistic rather than pessimistic view. We cannot place man or woman’s good intent outside of the physical context, for outside of that context we do not have the creature that we know. We cannot say that nature is good, but spawned man and woman, which is a cancer upon it, for nature would have better sense.

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We cannot say, either, The Nature — will destroy man and woman if he or she offends her or him, or The Nature — has little use for its own species, but only wants to promote Life– for Nature is within each member of each species; and without each member of each species, Nature — would be non-existent.

Because we are natural creatures, within us there is a natural state of being. That state can be an ever-present reservoir of peace, vitality, and understanding.

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Whatever our scientist think, our body and our consciousness and our universe spring constantly into actualization. Therefore, through cultivating the clear experience of our own consciousness and being with time and with the moment as we feel it, we can draw upon the greater vitality and power that is available.

To do this, reply upon your immediate sense data, not secondary experience as described. That primary sense data, while pinpointed in the present, providing us with the necessary stance in time, still can open up to us the timelessness from which all time emerges, can bring us intuitive intimations, hinting at the true nature of the ever-present coming-to-be of the universe.

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That kind of experience will let us glimpse the larger patterns of man’s and woman’s creativity, and our part in it. We have been taught to concentrate upon criticisms and faults in our society; and in our times it seems that everything will work out wrong — that left alone the world will run down, the universe will die, man and woman will destroy themselves; and these beliefs so infiltrate our behavior that they organize much of our experience and rob us of the benefits nature itself everywhere provides in direct primary experience.

Often then we ignore our senses’ reality in the world — the luxurious vitality and comfort of the daily moment — by exaggerating the importance of secondary experience as defined for this discussion.

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The most negative projection or prophecy seems to be the most practical one; when we are reading of the world’s ills we say in all honesty, and with no humor: “How can I ignore the reality, the destructive reality, of the present?” In the most practical, immediate, mundane terms, however, we and our world are in the moment naturally and physically safe, as our bodily senses immediately perceive. In the most basic of bodily terms we are not reacting to present conditions.

This would be only too clear if we were physically experiencing the conditions about which we might be reading. If the world were falling down about our shoulders, we would only too clearly understand that “earlier” we were reacting to an imagined and not a real situation.

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While disasters, imagined or encounter second-handedly, may in fact later occur, they are far different from physically encountered ones. We only add to their unfortunate nature by negatively brooding upon what might happen in the future, and we destroy our own stance. Our stance in time is highly important, for it is our practical base of operations.

We must trust our sense data in that regard. Otherwise we confuse our psychological and corporal stance, for the body cannot be in a situation of safety and danger at the same time. It wastes its resources fighting imaginary battles.

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To some people wars, poverty, murder, treachery, corruption, are primary experience and must be dealt with — as requiring immediate action. The body must react. Such persons are beaten up, or robbed. Those are immediate sense data, and in one way or another, they do react. However feebly, their point of power corresponds immediately with the point of danger.

We cannot react physically in the same way to projected or imagined dangers. Some install a security system like those from www.verisure for peace of mind, others keep a bat by their bedside or a pepper spray in their purse. Each of these solutions is for an anticipated danger, but when the danger comes? There seems to be no possible reaction. We are frustrated. We are meant to deal with our immediate, primary experience, and in so doing we take care of our responsibility. We are able to take action in our own experience, and therefore affect others. We do not have to be ignorant of wars in other corners of the world or close our eyes. But if we allow those experiences to over-cloud our present, valid intersection with reality, then we speak and act from a position not our own, and deny the world whatever benefits our own present version of reality might allow us to give.

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The natural creature-validity of our senses must remain clear, and only then can we take full advantage of those intuitions and visions that must come through our own private intersection with space and time.

In those terms, the ever-actual integrity of nature everywhere surrounds us. It represents our direct experience. It offers comfort, creativity, and inspiration that we only impede if we allow the secondary experience to supersede our daily moment-to-moment encounter with the physical earth.

sl1

The sleeping and waking portions of life on earth.