Introduction

WW:  We’re going to draw a simple picture today and you will have to sharpen your own pencil and draw your own picture.   When you draw your own picture, it requires the activation of values as we we’ll see later.

Over the course of this talk we’re going to look at the human condition.  I’ll put forth some ideas that you may not have previously heard of or considered.

We need to look at things together, not as me telling you what to believe or as me giving you my opinion or as some authority that you’re supposed to believe because of some credentials.  I don’t want anyone to believe me because then all we will have done is to file away some dead information in the mental library.  We will also field some questions that I’ll do my best to address.  Let’s be careful not to turn this into a debate though, so we won’t get bogged down and go nowhere.

Let’s look at some things on which we can make observations for ourselves as we go through them, or at the very least that we can check out for ourselves after we leave here.  We’re going to look at both the esoteric and exoteric sides of subjects.  This is not psychology, where you accept the ideology or studies of some professor from the college.  This is not religion or some religious substitute where you need to be a believer and have so called “faith.”  I am not interested in pushing some self-improvement scheme, but rather, self-observation without improving upon it, condemning it, justifying it, or blaming someone or something for our condition.   There are several areas that I would like to address today, but I think it might serve us well to address some questions first so we can see the direction we need to go.

PARTICIPANT:  Some of us have never met you and don’t know about you.  I know that you said something about not believing someone just because of who they are, but it might help us to know where you’re coming from if you could give us some idea of your credentials, or possibly, an internship or something like that.

WW:  I was born.

(Chuckle from other participants.)