Judgement and Blaming; Choice; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt12.

BLAME & CHOICE

[Please see the Introduction posted March2013]

1st - JUDGEMENT and BLAMING

Judgement and Expectations.

Judgement and expectation are some of what I mean when I talk about ‘useless thinking or concepts about life’.

The axiom “no judgement and no expectations” basically sums it up here.

But, another version of this could be, ‘If everything ‘out there’ has to be OK before you are happy, you’ve got a problem’.

Our society has judgement, blame and victim so built in to it that it is hard to see anything differently at all. Much of this ‘judgement’ comes ‘built-in’ with our single-life religious teachings which are absolutely based on external authority (Power & Control (P&C)) and the judgement of whether we are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, with the consequence that we spend our whole lives deciding whether things are good or bad. But ‘nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so’. Shakespeare said it, and lots of other people say it, and it is part of some non-Western teachings.

It may be hard for us to believe, but God is not judging us. In God’s eyes we’re doing normal human being (= bumble, bumble, fart and stumble). This is not to say that there are no consequences to our actions because we are still learning about the rules of energy. I discuss this in Mirror Laws, which see. Much of what Jesus was implying in the word ‘father’ which is so different today is that God knows that we are children learning about life. We fall down and we pick ourselves up again. “There is no failure, only feedback.”

We judge so much and we are so afraid, so what are we actually doing here?

When we judge, we are actually turning our awareness to the external world, (this is where we are taught from), and we are thinking that we know what good or bad would be.

We are forever turning our awareness to, and focussing on the external world. Our society rarely considers the internal world, but introverts are more aware of it than extroverts.

When we look ‘outside’ to the external world and engage in comparing and contrasting, we’re actually trying to encompass too much and we can’t. It’s too much for us and we can’t comprehend. We try, but we’re like a frog blowing itself up to make itself look bigger and it’s all air, as in, nothing inside, and in so doing we loose sight of our InSelf.

Thinking we know what ‘good’ or ‘bad’ would be.

The trouble is, we don’t; we really don’t. Turning our awareness to the external world and making decisions about it in the absence of actually knowing the future or the longer term affects of whatever, simply dis-empowers us. God doesn’t really know how things are actually going to work out, and neither do we.

This sounds perfectly blasphemous etc, etc, but as I wrote above, God is using the laws of energy and knows how they work and She trusts that it will work out eventually while we find out on the way; we are being given the time to ‘sort it out’ ourselves. She also knows how our minds function, because we’re bits of her, and She has actually tried to warn us about it in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden (see addendum). ‘Thinking you know’ is ‘eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (=judging)’.

Thinking you know is your making of a decision about ‘out there’. You are judging Life (as the ‘out there’ or ‘the other’).

However, as we judge out there so we are judging ‘in here’; unconsciously of course, but we’re still doing it. It’s a comparison.

If it’s about the other; the worse we think they are, the harder it is for us to access the parts of our inner selves that are like that.

We feel guilt and shame about our ‘bad’ bits and congratulate ourselves and feel superior about our ‘good’ bits. But it leaves us worrying about ‘not good enough’ (NGE), and trying harder to pride ourselves as well as deny the NGE’s.

If it’s an event, we want the supposed ‘good’ by whatever criteria we use and become frightened of the ‘bad’ as potential to happen to us. Insurance ads reinforce this all the time; ‘you’ll get sick, have an accident, etc’.

The upshot of this is fear of what could happen to us and the inability to trust life at all.

This is not to say there is no need to be careful as well as to take out insurance (’in God we trust, but keep your powder dry’) but that it’s actually your judging that makes you feel unsafe and afraid of life, ie fear. Thus, the more you can withdraw any form of judgement about life whatsoever, the safer and actually ‘good enough’ you will come to feel, which translates as a ‘trust’ in life.

Expectation is similar. This is when we are expecting ‘out there’ to conform with our concepts of how things ‘should be’. The ‘should’ is the giveaway. Once again this is a ‘thinking we know’ when we don’t, but this time we cannot be grateful. If we get what we want we take it for granted, and if we don’t we whinge. We want to ‘take’ all the time.

We want out there to be how we think it should be and get very cross/angry/sad when it’s not, as in, we have a whopping snit when Life doesn’t ‘play ball’ and get even crosser when others appear to get ‘good’ things when we don’t.

This is the ‘child’ expecting to take or be given whatever it wants from Life and having a whopping tantrum when it cannot.

They (judgement and expectation) are about your decisions about life out there and thinking you know about what is external to you. You don’t.

Both are a refusal to allow Life to serve you and an attempt at domination on your part and thus, no submission. [Have I said this before?] Life is more powerful than you, but it is there to serve and guide you.

Refusing to allow Life to serve you leads to a waste of your life (’refuse’ is an interesting word) and an inability to love your InSelf.

They are also the basic cause of the ‘Internal Dialogue’, which is that racket/noise in your head that you are so used to that never goes away. This racket is disempowering in many ways, and we also try many things to cover it up or drown it out. ‘Stopping the Internal Dialogue’ is a Toltec goal that is very empowering. I will discuss it in the goal-setting chapter.

An Eastern ‘cure’ (read ‘discipline’) for judging is ‘how am I that?’ (whatever I am judging).

Blame

Blame, whether of others or self is the next step along from judgement and expectation.

Blame is basically sending out anger (an ‘attack thought’) to someone or something, either out there or to our InSelf which is just as bad. We would like to attack and would if we could which means that ‘the other’ is not safe from you.

If the other is not safe from you, you are not safe from you, as in, your InSelf is not safe from your outself (ML).

Safety is a primary issue for all life on earth.

Your fear is being expressed as anger toward another, ‘Fate/God’ and your InSelf (all of which are ‘the other’). But it leaves you the victim and powerless, in pain and suffering, and alienated from Life.

In blame, we are angry and afraid because we wanted something and think we cannot have it. We can blame externally or internally but that is the same thing in reality because the affect on your body is the same. Your anger and fear tightens the body and will bring you discomfort and pain if it continues to continue. The greater the tightness, the greater the pain. It is peace, joy and happiness that relax the body.

Depression is a way to stop any feeling because internally there is the perception that we can’t do anything about our wants, but the tightness remains.

[In general, those who blame themselves are likely to have been ‘bopped’ or punished in some manner in one or more previous lives, by receiving rather more aggression from (an)other(s) than they were sending out themselves. But, it’s still a blaming.]

Our powerlessness and ‘victim’ leave us feeling trapped, which means we cannot explore and like a caged tiger we tend to pace out the same path. Feeling trapped leads to rage. (GRANDIN quoting PANKSEPP.) We also get terribly bored. “If we do what we’ve always done, we will get what we’ve always got”. Our terribly clever society deals with this by giving out anti-depressants which is a bit like giving a captive tiger pills to make it lie down and stop pacing in its small cage. Then we can say, there’s no problem; enjoy your cage.

Our main ‘answer’ to boredom is to look for stimulation, which our world can provide in spades if the ‘racket’ of opinions, noise, entertainment, drugs of all kinds, and all forms of the media is sufficient to distract us, not to mention occupying yourself chasing P&C (see Chapter 2) in whatever form is available to you. The trouble here is that this can lead to overwhelm, and is basically like telling the tiger to be happy because its cage is now full of toys, not to mention a radio/TV blasting away, as in, ‘interesting/stimulating’ things for its mind. A pity about its body and its need to explore and to be a tiger, but there you go.

Victims want pity because of the powerlessness and self-pity and can be very angry (not necessarily consciously) when they don’t get it. This anger can turn them into a bully if/when they can be, especially to someone weaker or smaller eg, children. It is axiomatic that the victim and the bully are two ends of a single continuum, as in, both of them will be there in the one person, again, unconsciously. To repeat, in the adult, where there is victim, there will be a bully, and vice versa. Being bullied/ab-used as a child sets up the pattern for the adult who will present as a bully or a victim, but the other side will be there in the unconscious. (We sure don’t like this bit!)

The difference between wanting and having.

The general social myth is that you can have all that you want if you work hard enough, try hard enough etc, etc, and that happiness is found ‘out there’, and boy, do we keep trying if we can and too bad if we can’t. We are so far away from considering ‘in here’ that it may as well not exist; and thus it feels as if there is no other place to look except ‘out there’, so that is where we focus for everything that we want.

But this is a ‘wanting’ on our part because we don’t, or think we don’t, have it. But since life ‘out there’ is reflecting who is ‘in here’ (= unconscious/InSelf) whatever you want stays a ‘want’. We continue to search out there and try to force life to conform to our wishes. This is actually an attempt at domination on our part; we try to use power and control and connive and contrive and take, take, take as much as we possibly can for ourselves. This is our great picture of the ‘successful’ person, and some of us do ‘succeed’ in this life, but you may or may not have noticed that they are still ‘wanting’.

What’s really happening is the absolute fact of energy which is that you will never perceive yourself as having what you want unless you can give it to yourself, ie your InSelf = your internal ‘other’; your ‘in here’.

Turning your focus of attention away from the external to ask your ‘in here’ what it is that is really wanted by your InSelf is the submission, the ‘giving up’ trying to control the external to your tune.

This ‘taking responsibility’ for yourself is you working out how you can give your InSelf the internal State of having what you want. This, of course involves working out what these wishes are, and to do this you go inside and ask. (see Goal Setting) [And sometimes you have to ask quite nicely and repeatedly if you have been neglecting or bashing up your InSelf over the years.]

States belong in our physiology, ie, the body with its emotions (the soul), which are part of the InSelf, and thus it is the body that knows what we really want. Thus we have to go and ask it before we can get anywhere really. As I may have intimated above, this process requires your Time and Interest, Sustain and Protect (TISP), and it takes time to learn how to do that, but essentially what I am saying is that it can be done.

Learning how to give TISP to InSelf is how we get to Adult and full self-sufficiency and autonomy. Successfully giving TISP means being able to feed the emotional self which leaves us feeling ‘fed’ and ‘full’ ie ‘fulfilled’.

This is how you become powerful for yourself.

If you cannot find a way to love your InSelf, ie, ’the other’ (=GLS), you will not be able to grow, and will run from life because you cannot face it.

The interesting thing to me is that if we understood the bible story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden properly (see Addendum) we would be able to see that God tries to warn us not to judge (eat of the Tree) and especially not to blame because the outcome is pain felt by the body, and disconnection/alienation from the other and Life and the Garden of Eden. We insist on refusing to look at this story correctly and want to go on and on blaming when things don’t go our way. Is this having a tantrum or is this having a tantrum?

Thus my definition of ‘taking responsibility’ is the opposite of blame, and its effects are the opposite of blame as well because doing so empowers you.

However, to some blamers, the concept of ‘taking responsibility’ simply means blaming themselves which instantly leads to guilt/shame which feels much worse than anger or fear, and that person will simply run. This form of ‘taking responsibility’ is a type of blame and is disempowering; ‘in spades’ really. This form is not what this UUS is advocating.

What about forgiveness?

Forgiveness may help us feel like a ‘nice’ person but it still implies blame. The idea is to stop blame in the first place, then what’s to forgive? (lot’s more below) [PS. Eve doesn’t really want Adam to forgive her; she wants him to ‘grow up’ and stop blaming her in the 1st place.]

Normal concepts of Karma and dharma(XXX?) still imply blame; if you knew what these actually were in your own case, you wouldn’t be using these words. Much of our ‘karma’ is actually our own useless thinking, as in, concepts that don’t get us to TISP.

In sum.

Judgement and blame are an enormous part of our social legacy and we just don’t question them unless we are trying to learn to be more conscious.

Our fears about safety and wanting to get back to heaven are absolutely played upon by our current religions (and other institutions). Their teachings of the reasons for life are based upon maintaining P&C and keeping you as a child and staying fearful and thus more easily controlled, and we don’t like that either actually, so we get stuck.

This UUS has to address these fears, (which is why I ‘bang on’ a bit); as well as how to overcome them, which see below, but there has to be a reason to do so, else, why bother?

If you cannot find a way to love your InSelf, you will not be able to grow, and will run from life because you cannot face it. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ = love your InSelf first. Your InSelf is ‘the other’. Loving (giving TISP) your InSelf properly will lead to loving others, but InSelf has to be first.

Fear and the inability to face life and getting stuck are primary reasons for misery and suffering. The question of suffering has stumped many experts so I can be free to have a crack at this too.

The problem is the huge amount of suffering on earth and really having a hard time believing that …

1. Anyone who loved us would ‘drop us in it’, or, even more difficult to believe..

2. That anyone would choose to suffer.

So, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Choice or Suffering?

I’ll choose choice first.

2nd - CHOICE.

The whole of this UUS is predicated on choice. You can choose to believe it or not. The person affected by this understanding is you. Your life is affected by your decisions and realizations/understandings. So, what’s the difference whether choice or not?

IFF (= if and only if) your whole life is your choice in line with the Universe for your highest good (and others, incidentally), then, your attitude to your life changes completely to considering using the events in your life and your reactions to them as information for you, your Self, personally about your InSelf whom you don’t know about.

These events and your reactions to them can be used, and I will outline below how to use them.

But it is your attitude that is the key.

However hard the circumstances can be, and hard can be hard, it is possible to change your attitude to one of ‘what do I need to know/See/understand about my InSelf here?’ and that allows us to take responsibility knowing that the outer world reflects our inner world. This attitude actually requires a kind of submission on your part, whereby you are accepting and allowing the actuality of Life out there to inform you about the Self inside you. So, there’s a strange irony here; in normal life we are told that we should be directing our lives in a purposeful fashion and so on, yet all spiritual teachings try to coach people to submit to life, which can feel ‘powerless’ on your part. Yet the effect is the opposite.

Taking responsibility empowers us. Considering that we may be at choice is the first step in the process. That is why some people say, ‘how have you chosen this?’, which to normal victims can sound perfectly awful. It is not a blaming, or a ‘fend for yourself’; it is the first question in a series of questions whereby you arrive at your own insights about your Self. Your insights help you to grow. Every time you encompass more experiences and events for your own insights, you expand and are able to assimilate and face more of life’s experiences. The opposite is to blame others and be a victim and to become fearful of life, which will shrink you and make you ever more fearful or angry and so on. Blame disempowers you – always; however ‘easier’ or ‘more fun’ it seems to be. Taking responsibility empowers you.

It is much easier to take responsibility if you are able to consider the concept that at some level you have chosen whatever these circumstances may be that you have just dropped yourself in once again. (Grammar???)

Apart from that, there is no point whatsoever is coercing or forcing people to do whatever. Love has to give choice, otherwise it is not love.

It is also true that the less conscious you are about your own inner workings the less you will feel at choice in your life. One of the many advantages of becoming conscious is the increased feeling of choice in your world.

If you can come at choice in this and thus able to submit to the information that life can give you; you can use Mirror Laws with the Insight Tool to find out what that usefulness might be, which see below.

Two other useful concepts and their attendant attitudes are ‘Nothing is an accident’ and ‘Most Beneficial Outcome (MBO)’. They do slightly different things.

Nothing is an accident.

This is quite a concept and a very strong/forceful one in terms of confronting you with Life’s (and your InSelf’s) effort to Serve you. Accepting it helps you focus on what you are judging, and facing it in terms of making any particular event/thing/matter more defined by you. Not easy, but useful. It is hardly generally socially acceptable, because most people consider it a form of blame.

Most Beneficial Outcome (MBO).

This one is ‘softer’ and it’s a way of reminding you that things can and do turn out well (eventually). It helps you relax and stop worrying which leads to a better outcome anyway, as well as helping you learn to trust that anything that happens to you can be useful for you. It is thus great for helping build trust in GLS.

This UUS provides spiritual support as a reason and method (see below) for facing one’s own problems in the physical, mental and emotional departments of life. It’s a useful way to support one’s self in finding meaning in life and learn how to live it in a ‘proper’ manner, i.e. ‘right living’ for you. ‘Right living’ means living in a manner that is ‘right’ for you; not anyone else’s definition.

(NB. ‘Righteous’ as used in the Bible means proper or correct or right, as in ‘right living’; it has nothing to do with ‘self-righteousness’, which = I am right.)

Now we turn to Suffering.

Reincarnation; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt11.

REINCARNATION

[Please see the Introduction posted March 2013]

Regardless of whether we believe in any teachings that we have received or not, our reasons for life (ie what life is for) whether considered or not, sit in the unconscious and affect our attitudes to life and hence all we do; ie they are ‘making’ our life, so you might as well find out what they are. They may appear to come from your parents or your environment, but in general they are coming from past lives; (although some ‘funny’ things do seem to come down the DNA). Even the concept that there is no reason for life is still a belief, in that we do not actually know.

But really, these ‘believe-ins’ are taught as just that; a belief. We don’t know and have to be told what to believe by ‘those who know’, as a child has to be taught by an adult. However, the trouble with believing anything that you don’t actually know, is that dis-belief has to be repressed or buried, by definition.

We get an awful lot of ‘If you believe in God and Love hard enough or sufficiently, everything will be alright for you’. Hence, if bad things happen, you haven’t believed enough. Hence, lots of people try very hard ‘to believe’. But, this is patently fear-driven, and fear is not love.

So, the choice in teachings about ‘why life’, is believe in 1 life or lots (reincarnation). Half the world believes in one life and the other half in lots of lives.

One life only.

A single life makes no sense at all to me (as you may have guessed). It becomes a lottery and fate, the results of which you must endure (because suffering is ‘good’ etc, etc,) and God loves you and don’t ask any questions. Yes, well. You are also expected to believe because there will be awful repercussions (hell and no heaven) if you don’t. This is a fear-based teaching. All of this is an external authority maintaining your dependence upon its power (of whatever religion) to tell you what to do and decide how you have done. You get to stay as a child here; you are not going to know for your self or find self-power or self-direction here, and will remain powerless and/or try to compensate by becoming an authority yourself. (see next chapter)

But, if there is fear, there is no love here.

Love gives free will and choice to the other at every level. It has to; by definition.

Multiple lives allow for Explore, and this is the primary drive (expression is close behind). They also allow choice and free will.

It can also take many more than just one life to learn or understand important issues or develop abilities to skills. A single life teaching can allow no concept of such things.

We need the time and the Explore because we have enormous internal potential we ‘wot not of’.

We have a very large mostly unknown potential inside us.

We are a very small sub-set of God, so to speak.

We all have a little world inside us (that seems pretty big to us) within the very much bigger world out there.

It’s also true that the world out there is indeed larger than we are, but we are also much larger internally and externally than we suppose. We are meant to use the world ‘out there’ to learn about the world that we carry inside us.

That world out there includes such an enormous number of ways of being that it boggles the mind really; (‘7 billion and still counting’). We are exploring being; male and female; rich and poor; powerful and powerless; loving and unloving; build and destroy; different cultures and different religions and ideas; and on and on. All of it as ways of finding who we are, what’s important to us and what we want.

[A change of gender can take at least 2-3 lives to get used to ‘the hang of it’ if most of the previous lives have been the other. We do change gender. How/Who would you be if you were the other gender?]

I find a useful metaphor for ourselves is that of a rough diamond. Apart from the fact that diamonds are simply carbon formed under great pressure with the potential to become something spectacular, it takes skill for a jeweller to make any particular diamond. It needs to be recognized in the rough for what it is; it takes skill to cut and it takes skill to polish each of the 52 surfaces of a single brilliant cut diamond. If each of our lives is spent polishing just a few of the surfaces or views of our diamond as we address the issues in our lives, it is going to take quite a few lives to get that diamond to perfection, and then we may find that there is another one to discover and work from the rough, and so on. There are an awful lot of ways of being out there and an awful lot of issues belonging to these different ways of being. All of us are working on polishing our diamonds.

But then we make decisions about life through the experiences we’ve had, and we bring them along with us; otherwise what’s the point?

We have a pack of Expectations and Assumptions from our Past Lives.

We carry our decisions about life, useful and useless, with us, as we build on our experiences, and,of course, they impact on this life. Useless decisions can be very painful and frustrating. All of this became clearer to me as I continued with the use of Tad James’ TimeLine Therapy™ hypnosis script which I had learned as part of an NLP course. It was in this way that I found that I really liked the understanding that there were circumstances in a past life where I formed a decision that was not useful for me in this current life, such as, nobody loves me, or I am unlovable, and so on, and I would be able to change that useless decision (bloody marvellous!). The unconscious is able to go back to the root cause and re-visit the decision with the greater understanding of later experience and its consequences. I found most of my useless decisions sitting in past lives, and have absolutely adored the results of clearing them – hence this writing.

Life Design and contracts.

Various New Age writings teach that we design the general outline of our current lives off earth, in between lives. The design is formulated with a higher awareness of the need to address various issues for our own higher good.

Thus, when we are off-earth we choose our life circumstances and the general lessons we wish to learn.

Even the definition of ‘lessons’ is fraught. It’s not like school, as in, being told this is what you have to learn. We want to know ourselves. It is delightful. It is called Insight. These things we learn out of our experiences can be hard, but it is all worthwhile and we treasure these insights about ourselves and we can carry them with us into the next lifetime and the next, as we try out all sorts of things and explore and express.

Neither do we ‘come in’ by ourselves. We form ‘contracts’ with significant others in our lives; eg. ‘you can do this and then I’ll do that’, and so on. The design seems to be a broad outline of structure and events with choices at various stages and alternatives based on those choices. This is the basis of various teachings that we are the writer, producer and director of our own plays, as well as choosing all the actors and telling them what we want them to do. The most interesting bit is that somehow it is ultimately all for everybody’s good which boggles the mind really!

We design and then forget.

Well, why? What’s the point of forgetting it all?

The point is the difference between theory and practice. Do all of us have people in our lives who know all the answers and their lives are a mess or they are really unhappy or unpleasant and so is everyone around them? The question is what answers do they really know? What questions were they asking in the first place? We all have issues; that’s why we are here.

Past lives and/or genetic memories are basically one hypnotic script away if that is what you would like, but the point is that your unconscious knows even if you don’t. (PS. Hypnotic scripts are simply a method of talking to your unconscious.)

How many previous lives?

Osho says hundreds without any details given. Mann (A&R) implies 11 plus this current one as working on a particular set of themes. These themes tend to be the big ones of sex, power, and money, status/authority and religion/death. My own experience fits in with Mann’s observations. All our lives are enthralling and absorbing, (you can’t say you’re not involved in it!) and there’s always more.

Coming back as an animal.

Since we are made in the image of God, it makes no sense to me to come back as an animal, however much you think your cat has an easy time of it. We are being challenged to find what we truly want and given the most interesting and enthralling circumstances in which to do so. Eternity is a very long time.

But, as I discuss further on, animals serve us in many ways, and that service must not be taken for granted.

So, what about karma and dharma and punishment and reward?

The problem with the word ‘Karma’ is that is used as a form of judgement and also blame, as in, this is being done to you for your own good, without your consent, basically. If you are having a ‘good’ life, it must be from good karma, as a reward, and a ‘bad’ life, then ‘bad’ karma as a punishment. But this is all judging, and consequently a way of thinking that is no use to you, because it leaves us powerless in terms of being ‘pushed around’ by God etc.

Many of the usual reincarnation concepts or ideas in our Western society are not really much use to us if there is still blame and judgement.

Spiritual systems that teach us to put up with what we’ve got are not that useful in terms of finding ways to change ‘bad’ things or proposing better ways to be.

This UUS argues that you have chosen the general outline of this life as a means to learn about the consequences of your own treatment of others. The faster you learn, the less you have to bother with that, and can go on to the next realization. “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so” is as true as it ever was. Shakespeare worked it out long ago.

We get rid of karma by identifying decisions that we made about ourselves or others or our life during previous lives and deciding again in this life. See later chapter.

Consider an example.

A wealthy person brought up in great privilege has learned to treat others less fortunate than he with disdain and disrespect. This is basically inadvertent in that this man has no idea that he is doing this because that is how he has been brought up in a family that has had money and status for generations. He loses the woman he loves in this particular life because she doesn’t like his arrogant personality. Eventually (at a higher level) he may decide that he needs to experience some of what he has dished out, because he has no idea what she was talking about.

So he does in the next life and it’s a ripper; really terrible, and he dies rebelling against the poverty and degradation. The next one he’s so angry, he lasts a very short time. The next one he joins a gang of thieves and becomes a leader and organizes them quite well. He manages to rob and kill quite a few of the wealthy before he is caught and punished. The next ones are similar.

OK, this current life of now; he experiences another dose of difficulty and manipulation by the powerful, but he is now intrinsically much more aware of what he is up against, and becomes a union boss using his brains to help others fight for better conditions. Not to mention his wife is the love he lost in that wealthy life. He makes sure his children have all the education he can muster for them.

One of the children is given a trumpet and lessons and his dad thinks this is wonderful and starts to learn from his son and is quite good at it……and so on. Write your own plot here.

Where is the ‘punishment’? I see exploration of self with more to come. I am also of course, saying that we bring our memories with us in terms of intrinsic underlying decisions, understandings and drives.

God realizes we are children.

We explore first and think later and we are equipped to work it out ourselves and can’t be told anyway.

In that exploring we can do terrible things to others without realizing our affect on them . (In fact, the only way we can understand this is to experience having things done to us / see Mirror Laws.)

We can only conceive of a ‘father’ who lays down laws and a set of rules to live whereby we learn which bits of ourselves to cut off so that we can fit in to what He wants. (This is our great ‘loving’ Christian religion; neither was this what Jesus attempted to teach.) We have very little concept of a father who understands we are ‘as children’ and allows for that. We can’t understand in a fit that God ultimately wants to serve us as the parent serves the child and provides for its welfare.

We are all children learning how to walk. We fall and get up again, and we grow and try running and we fall and get up again, and so on.

From Child to Adult.

So, if we are all children wanting to grow up and actually get to be an adult, what would that be like?

Children need support. Adults can support others.

A definition of a fully adult person could be someone who can support themselves fully in all domains; physically, mentally, and emotionally as well as ‘spiritually’. If they can support themselves fully, they will be able to support others. They are requiring no energy from anyone else because they can supply their own. ‘Children’ are defined as in need of support from others in some manner in one or more of the domains PEMS. They need energy from others because they are unable to supply their own.

The primary difference then between the child and the adult is that the child needs external support while the Adult can provide its own internal support. I am using Adult with a capital ‘A’ to differentiate between the attainment of internal support in all domains for an Adult, and the attainment of age for the adult human.

Getting from child to Adult is what we find difficult.

Really, it’s back to this ‘part/apart’ business again. The child wants to stay a part, and the Adult is able to embrace apart. There is a part of us that wants to stay a child and be looked after by ‘those who know’; ie they have power and control (P&C) and are authority or parent. We look to them for approval as doing the right thing, as in, we are looking externally and thus can not provide our own authority internally. Looking externally is a ‘wanting’ of energy from ‘the other’ and in so doing we are unable to provide our own. Where there is dependence there is control and control can and will manipulate for its own purposes and attempt to keep you powerless. Staying as a child means you cannot grow.

The child..

·      Is looked after by adults or others, who can guess what the child wants/needs (and the child can have a tizzy if they get it wrong).

·      Can play, explore, absorb, distract and generally muck around as it pleases.

·      Can just take other people’s answers to it all.

·      Doesn’t have to think, be challenged, grow up, till and keep, take responsibility for finding out about self, and doesn’t need or take the time to do so.

·      Has no self-direction, autonomy, competence, power for self, or true self-esteem.

·      Has problems with unaddressed fears and anger.

·      Has difficulty maintaining or developing meaningful relationships.

While the fully Adult human being…

·      Is self-sufficient; able to TISP InSelf, and thus can support self PEMS and give it to others (=Serve) because there’s always more; ie, is able to fill self.

·      Has no gremlins jumping around in their head at 2-4 am, (the ‘wee’ hours) and can get proper peace and rest.

·      Is able to play her own part in life and specify what she wants/needs.

·      Has self-acceptance and good relationships with others and life ‘out there’.

·      Is powerful for herself, and able to follow her own path; ie she is free to follow her own destiny/destination

·      Does not need or want power over others.

·      Is in partnership with GLS; ie able to consciously create in a manner that gives life to ‘the other’ which leads to true self-esteem (TSE).

This part of us that wants to stay a child and have others look after us is a factor in all of us. There is nothing wrong with this part per se; it’s the bit about wanting someone else to do it that’s the problem. What’s actually required here is for you to embrace this part of you which means….

- turning around and enquiring = spending time and being interested in -

- what this part of you actually wants and then -

- learning how to provide your own nurturing/sustaining and safety/protection; all of which = TISP to yourself -

- as in, doing it, for yourself; your InSelf.

This part does feel like a child, and embracing it and loving it will hep you be kind to yourself and to ‘the child’ within others.

Not every adult human being is an Adult on these terms.

Being fully Adult doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate or work in mutual endeavour; far from it. It does tend to make us a maverick because we can’t be controlled or manipulated by others and are thus free to follow our own destiny and play our own part in life whatever that may be.

God knows it’s not easy to get from part to apart as the child grows to Adult and life will actually push us to grow if we begin to stagnate.

Healing the Split; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt10.

HEALING THE SPLIT between the Conscious and the Unconscious, which leads to Learning to know the InSelf.

[Please see the Introduction posted March 2013]

The primary commandment/instruction for Life is ‘Know Thyself’.

We can Know Ourselves by Creating and Serving as outlined above.

What else?

By using Contrasts and Opposites and by using Mirrors; all provided in our external world on Earth to enable us to See our internal Selves.

Contrasts and Opposites.

It is terribly difficult to get any sort of handle on anything without having some sort of comparison or contrast. In the absence of knowing anything about yourself, where would you start without having any contrasts or opposites?

Imagine if our day were all daylight. How would we define light or night?

This world of ours is an amazing gamut of contrasts in so many ways. It is the ‘relative’ world as opposed to its opposite of the ‘absolute’ world of God (or ‘heaven’).

‘Consciousness loves contrast’ and in fact cannot do without it, and the structure of Life on Earth provides these in spades. From heaven to hell; nice to nasty; good to bad; and so on.

The contrasts of opposites are throughout our lives. They are so much a part of our life that we may not realize how useful they can be to clarify for ourselves how/what we are thinking about a concept.

I used contrasts and opposites in outlining the basic ‘coat-hanger’ above.

We can make a list of specifics to give ourselves clarity about concepts. The more terms in the list, the clearer is the defining of the concept; it makes a ‘definition’ and helps us ‘see’ a picture.

We will be seeing a great deal more of them.

But the best way for us to See something about ourselves is to look in the Mirror.

Mirrors and Mirror Laws.

It is extremely difficult for us to ‘see ourselves as others see us’. It is as if we exist in an absolute world of ourselves, and need the mirrors from others to get feedback for the energy we put out. [God worked out how to do it Herself, but it may have taken a while.] Remember, it’s really easy to see others. It is only you that is unable to see yourself. We need mirrors (and contrasts) if we are going to know ourselves.

As a culture we are vaguely aware of..

..’do as you would be done by’..

..’as ye sow, so shall ye reap’..

..’what goes around, comes around’.

And less aware of..

..’you are alone in a hall of mirrors’..

..Jung’s Shadow and the mechanism of Projection, and

..Byron Katie’s ‘Turn it Around’ or ‘The Work’ from the book ‘Loving What Is’.

But it’s kind of worse than that, because Reincarnation comes into it, so that your decisions from past lives are included in your unconscious.

What I am talking about are what I term the Mirror Laws (ML). There are 2 Mirror Laws working all the time behind the scenes, although, basically they are the same concept. They are far more precise than the above and we find them very tough indeed. I have called them the Mirror Laws because they come from looking in the Mirror. I also find them easier as a concept than Jung’s Shadow and Projection, simply because they are easier for me to keep my head around.

They are…

What we do to others IS what we do to ourselves. And

What others do to us IS what we do or have done to others AND what we do or have done to ourselves, in this life or previous lives.

Mirror Laws are saying that what someone has done to you is what you do or have done to yourself in some form or manner, as well as what you do or have done in some manner to others in this life or in a previous life.

Mirror Laws are telling us how we can tell what we are actually doing to our InSelves = the internal ‘other’.

The first thing they tell us is …

a. That we have an InSelf, and

b. That this is what we are actually doing to it, not what we think is happening, or our ‘stories’ about life. Life is Mirroring your InSelf’s actual energy or vibration.

Notice here that the Mirror laws are about the whole spectrum of Energy and our relationship to it. Don’t forget that God has had to fit in with (submit to) these laws as well. They are basically, Love (TISP) leads to Life (which feels like ’heaven’ or ‘garden’), while un-Love leads to un-Life (which feels like ’hell’ or ‘shit’).

[The Law of Attraction is a variation of these MLs, although many try to use it without understanding it correctly. The world ‘out there’ is matching or mirroring the energy of your InSelf, not your outself. Many people think that just bashing the InSelf with sufficient ‘wishes’, wants or ‘commandments’ should do the trick, but it doesn’t. (’If wishes were horses, beggars would ride’.) Your InSelf holds the Truth of You and wants your love and affection for it as it is, not your conscious domination of it or what you consider a good idea. (More in Goal-Setting.)]

But we find these Laws just impossible! It is much, much easier to dismiss them out of hand. Well, why are they so impossible?

We are not taught them per se. They are not really part of our awareness, although they are the basis of the ‘do as you would be done by’ instruction that appears to be fading from social awareness in the infotainment age. Jung’s Shadow and the mechanism of Projection are describing their action.

They really are quite severe, and we don’t like that, but we keep on expecting life to be as we think it ‘should be’, and it may be for some, but they probably take it for granted. While I suspect many people put on a ‘successful’ face (’we’re all having fun here’), I am not sure how many people are particularly happy about the way their life and/or the world is going. Life in the wild looks to be a fairly ‘life and death’ matter for the animals concerned, and so it looks pretty fierce to me (’Nature raw in tooth and claw’).

Notice also that I use the words ‘in some form or manner’ and this is to remind us not to take things absolutely literally. Sometimes things in the external world have to be translated to the internal world, and vice versa. By this I mean that for example, emotional ‘violence’ can be as painful as physical violence, as in, the ‘violence’ can be in the Emotional plane rather than the Physical plane. Even Mental violence (untruths/lies) can be painful. The body ‘knows’ and feels the pain, and doesn’t really discriminate which of the PEMS planes/departments it is coming from.

One of Jesus’ most difficult instructions was ‘turn the other cheek’, if someone had struck you in the face for basically no reason apparent to you. This instruction is so far away from ‘normal’ behaviour that it is simply consigned to the ‘too hard’ if not impossible basket. How relevant is this instruction to our lives, particularly under the teaching that we only have one go at Life?

We would blame them, attack back if possible physically or verbally, be a victim if we couldn’t, and so on. Our whole social focus is so oriented on blame and fear that we have a very hard time accepting that we ourselves may have had something to do with what has happened to us from out there, but in a previous life. 'Resist not evil' has a similar dynamic; the key here being to 'use it'.

Mirror laws are the basis for ‘turn the other cheek’. There is plenty of evidence that Jesus was part of a society that believed in reincarnation. However, we no longer need to physically ‘turn the other cheek’ because we now have psychological processes for learning the lessons without having to experience being ‘bopped’ more than once if we don’t want to.

The Mirror laws as I have outlined them also imply that past lives can be accessed. Although we are taught that this is neither necessary because we don’t have them, nor possible because we don’t remember them in this life, this teaching is not correct. Past lives are quite easily accessed through techniques of talking to the unconscious if one knows how, and many people do.

More about that later.

We need these laws to enable us to understand/comprehend/realize our own energy that is internal to us. We cannot know otherwise. To rephrase this somewhat, we cannot know our own effect on others unless and until we can know their effect on us. It is only in this manner that we can begin to learn that what we do affects our selves as well as others.

So much of our social understanding implies that what we do to others has no consequences, especially if we get away with it, and in many instances disrespectful treatment of others is rewarded (see next chapter).

So what about when people do horrible things to us, and they can be horrible. These things have a tremendous effect on us, but it can still be a call to understand your own power to affect others and yourself, ie, be powerful for you

Something horrible such as rape or any other form of major violence will be devastating to that person, but, and it is a big but, if that person can find her internal ‘violence/intensity/anger’ toward others (or herself), it actually transforms that internal energy into something very powerful indeed, and that insight will help the ‘violated’ to mobilize her energy in an effective manner. Further down the track this person could choose to become a very useful therapist for others who have had such things happen to them. Anybody who has looked for a therapist knows what it means to have a therapist who ‘knows’ and has ‘been there, done that’ and come out the other end in one piece, and by that I mean able to go on to build a satisfying life for herself and not needing to look over her shoulder all her life.

It is very difficult not to get stuck in the blame game here. It all looks and is rotten for the person concerned, and as for choice - well!! Impossible. But our society has no mechanisms or answers to truly support this person in their troubles and ultimately to avoid the victim trap of suffering and being disempowered and consequently living a very fearful and difficult life. Our religion isn’t useful; our therapists are as scared as we are (that’s why they’re therapists), and the basic ‘compensation’ is possibly blame (but what if the perpetrator is not caught or insufficiently punished?) and maybe lots of pity from someone, and still the person will suffer. But it’s simply not useful for our own growth and understanding. All we know is judgement and blame, and they just make us suffer.

The ML laws are also ‘saying’ that as we judge and blame others we are judging and blaming ourselves; trouble again.

But, and this is a big but, however much we may not like it, they are acting all the time because,

This is the way in which we are all one. The external ‘other’ IS the internal ‘other’, or ‘they’ is ‘us’.

And

They are the single most important reason for ethical behaviour on your part at all times for your own sake.

When you judge, blame, damn or despise another, you are doing that to yourself (your InSelf) as well. Whenever you treat someone badly, you are doing that to yourself as well. If you steal from someone or attack someone in any manner, you are doing that to yourself as well, and on it goes. The laws are a primary reason why ‘vengeance is mine, says the Lord’. It is not, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Any vengeance on your part is acting on your InSelf as well; you are doing it to your InSelf. So, don’t.

The best way to short-circuit blame is to consider that there may be something to See that might be of value to you in these circumstances.

Of course, it is also true that when you treat another with kindness and respect, you are doing that to yourself as well. This is the basis for the church teachings of ‘being good to others as the way to learn to be good to yourself (’Love thy neighbour as thyself’). There is a problem here that is called ‘motive’, and that is why I focus on being good to one’s InSelf and loving this internal ‘other’ first, (the ‘as thyself’ bit) which is difficult enough as it is for most people.

The worst part is considering that we ourselves have done ‘bad’ things in the past. But we have, and there’s no way around it. It may have been inadvertent, but we have still done it. It is part of our exploring and it is part of God’s allowing, but we still need to understand/comprehend our own internal energy, and Mirror Laws are part of how we get to do that.

Applying them.

The main way to use them is as in Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’ where we ‘turn it around’. If for example I am cross because I feel that someone is not caring about me, I can turn that around and ask ‘Am I being shown something about how I am not caring about me?’ and you may find that indeed you do not, and it is also true that when you care about yourself, others may do that also, but it will not matter to you if they don’t.

The extent to which I feel rejected by others is the extent to which I am rejecting my InSelf, and so it goes.

A larger example would be that I could hate someone for the way that I perceived them as having treated me in this life, only to find that I myself have treated others in just such a fashion (if not worse!) in a previous life . I could also find that my behaviour at that past time was inadvertent because I had no idea at all of how to treat other people well, or even take them into consideration in the first place. I can now consider that maybe I needed to be on the receiving end for once so that I could understand that others may not like what I did then. True understanding only comes from experience, and if I choose to consider that I might have chosen this situation simply to understand why it is not a good idea to mistreat others, I can choose again to behave differently in future.

And I think that’s what it is all about. You are looking for ways to ‘love what is’ in whatever way you can for your own ultimate benefit.

The only person you have to forgive in this is yourself. The ‘strange’ thing being that as you forgive yourself you begin to realize that others are doing their normal bumbling and pfaffing around as all humans do. Not to mention learning to be particularly careful about your own motives for whatever you intend to do in the future. Nor do you ‘have to’ do anything either. In the end it’s just so much more enjoyable to find these insights and grow into love for your self.

The Mirror Laws are universal laws and are in action regardless of whether you like it or not.

They will make more sense for you under these attitudes..

·      Realizing that there are things we need to See or understand; basically referred to as ‘lessons’. Remember that we are trying to find out what is inside us by using what is outside us.

·      We have multiple lives – Reincarnation; however, these laws are still in action whatever you believe.

·      Complete choice in this life and every life.

You are using and are meant to be using Life to learn how to be apart.

To be apart properly means healing the split in your own psyche and differentiating yourself out from being a part. You are trying to find your own uniqueness, which is what you and God actually want.

Life (=God) provides

·      Multiple lives

·      Contrasts and opposites and

·      Mirrors

all for you to experience. And asks you to choose whatever you want because God knows in the end you will choose God because you are God, which is the nicest way to be anyway.

Life brings you what you need to know, not what you want. The most useful attitude for you to adopt for your own sake is to work out how you can use that information or even look for what the advantages of your current situation might be.

It’s as if Life presents us with a pack of questions that we have to answer for ourselves.

We just cannot be told – we can’t ‘hear’ what others have to say.

Hence, we have to work it out for ourselves, and we seem to have to own our own behaviour in all lives and all the consequences thereof; this being how we learn.

But we will be extremely pleased with ourselves when we have found our own answers to our own questions. It’s called true self-esteem.