Divinity and Duality

More Picture of Man: Methodology December 3, 2010

WW: It looks like we’re short a person or two.

(Inaudible group remarks.)

I expect someone to leave at a talk like this. Sometimes people are just too busy to take this much time, but often there are other reasons. Some people may think that this is just boring. Others think that they already know this stuff or that it really doesn’t apply to them. Sometimes I just offend people as I can make some frank statements.

If everyone is ready we can look again at the picture of man. Let’s take the lower segment of the three divisions of the awareness function and fill it in so it’s all black. The darkness symbolizes that we’re unaware that our driving motivation has fault, a fallacy. Not only have we been unaware of the fallacy, we glorify it.

Now we have two segments to go over, the upper right and upper left pieces of pie in the awareness function. We’ve established that we want to eliminate disturbance from our adventure here on planet Earth. The question is: what methods will we use to achieve a life whereby we have a minimum of disturbance? We have two opposing methods. I’ll give you a story of how we made these driving decisions just for the purpose of demonstration, but it really doesn’t matter how we came to these decisions, it matters only that the decisions are there. Let’s write the number one in the upper right segment. We can complain, cry, whine, blame others for our plight. As infants we can get someone to offer some type of physical comfort when we put up a fuss. We feel that we have a reasonable amount of success at this and eventually come to enjoy the attention and approval that we get. Further down the road, we start blaming mom or dad or siblings when we don’t get what we want. This is the belligerent side of us—side number one.

Until now, we have only had conflict with “what is.” When the pleasure and pain decision is not being fulfilled, we have internal disquiet because “what is” and what we want are at odds with each other. Now we’re going to find another way to have an internal fight. Let’s write the number two in the upper left segment of the awareness function. This is where we have decisions that oppose the number one side. We find that we can get some satisfaction for our basic decision, the black area, if we try to please mom and dad and accept the authority that adults have over us. When we’ve gone further down the road, we even learn to blame ourselves for not achieving success in our basic desires.

Now we have two opposing sides that are both trying to achieve the same goal of not being disturbed as the purpose of living. We’ve all seen pictures of someone with a cranky devil on one shoulder and a self-blaming pleaser on the other shoulder, both of which want their way. Our first side and our second side frequently fight with one another, and they’re both trying to achieve success with the basic decision, in black. We have allowed a grab bag of ideas, dogma, beliefs, often conflicting with one another, to take control of the awareness function.

I suppose that we have all heard or used the phrase, “There’s a method to my madness.” I don’t know if someone had this subject in mind when the phrase was coined, but it certainly does fit. How many thousands of times have we struggled with decisions, trying to act out according to one side or the other? If we pick one side, the other side will jump up and say that we should have used a different method. Not only do we have conflict with other individuals, we have fights within ourselves regarding the method by which to control circumstances. You know, when we use the word, circumstances, it usually means controlling others.

What is the awareness function doing all of this time? It has long since been asleep and has turned everything over to all of these little creatures that are running around inside of us. We run on automatic, trying to achieve our goals by whatever means we can. Each of us has grown to accept these little trolls as “I,” each of them transmitting information to Delta as if they were “I.” It is interesting to speak with a person, knowing that one is effectively speaking to an impersonator, or over the course of a conversation, many impersonators.
What are we to do with this situation? Is there any way out of this mess that we have gotten ourselves into? How can we see our way out of this when the part of us that needs to be looked at is the part that does the looking? If the part of us that does the looking is faulty, how can it clearly see itself? Did you ever look at yourself in the mirror while wearing glasses that belong to someone else? This is one reason it is so commonly accepted that one cannot see one’s self objectively. Indeed they are correct. One cannot see one’s self objectively unless one makes a new point of awareness that has dis-identified with the self—a point of awareness that doesn’t fit in with the trolls—a point of awareness that covertly watches them from a detached position. This vantage point must be one that sees the trolls without self-justification or self-condemnation. Both of those, the justification and condemnation of self, are also trolls. It is just more attempts at self-improvement.

PARTICIPANT: I’ve read several self-improvement books. I think there is a lot to be said for self-improvement methods. There are several speakers and writers that have a great following and there are large numbers people that say it’s changed their lives.

WW: Okay, self-improvement methods. Hasn’t our entire life up to now been made up of self-improvement methods? Our two pieces of the pie that we drew, part number one and part number two; are those not self-improvement methods? Haven’t we had a constant series of self-improvement ideas since the day we were born? When we read a book or adopt someone’s self-improvement idea, are we not just doing more of the same thing? Weren’t fussing, whining, and being belligerent early self-improvement ideas? How about pleasing, obeying, accepting blame, accepting authority? Aren’t those all self-improvement ideas? After a lifetime of this, why do keep looking for a better self-improvement method?

PARTICIPANT: Isn’t that what this group is all about? A form of self-improvement?

WW: I don’t think (that) anywhere in our discussions today, I have suggested that we improve upon ourselves. Look, you are the most advanced living creature that has ever been on the face of this planet. Why do you think you need to improve on that? As for myself, I don’t care if I’m ever a so-called “better” person than I am today. We tend to think of self-improvement as some sort of lofty activity that’s being pursued by only the so-called “good” people. I would argue that when someone is figuring out some way to rob a bank or burglarize a home, it’s a form of self-improvement. Look, they’re trying to improve their lot in life. It just so happens that it may make it unpleasant for the rest of us. When a baby screams, it’s expressing its idea of self-improvement. How many more years are we to continue with this when, in the big picture, it hasn’t been in our best interest? We’ve hammered on one self-improvement idea after another, trying to forge success in our endeavor to change “what is” into “what ought to be”—trying to make the ideal come to pass. When someone hatches a plan to become more aggressive, it’s self-improvement. When someone decides to become less aggressive, it’s self-improvement. When we blame ourselves for failures, it’s self-improvement. If we blame someone else for our failures, it’s self-improvement. Our entire lives have been devoted to more and better means of achieving more and better satisfaction and less misery. And what has been the result? More urge for more and better satisfaction? More achievement? More misery? How many people have you seen that move into a huge home so they will have more room in which to be miserable? When do we give up… when we go to the grave?

PARTICIPANT: But there is some success at self-improvement. I mean, some people have done well for themselves.

WW: Some people have done well at the slot machines, at least that’s what some of them have told me, but I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that it has anything to do with seeing the world in a different way. The trouble we have here is the idea of success. It’s an illusion. It doesn’t matter if someone has done well with self- improvement. Success is something to achieve in the future, or something that was done in the past. It does little, if anything for the moment. We can’t have consciousness in the future or the past, consciousness can occur only in the moment, regardless of what the so-called psychics have to say.

I’ll make a guess that everyone here has heard about someone that has become critically ill, spent their entire life savings and sold their home to get enough money for medical treatment to live for a few more months. I’d probably do the same. What in the world are we doing? We spend 60 or 80 years in the struggle of achievement, giving up our intended function, foundering in a sea of ideology, sacrificing the moment, sacrificing our lives. Then, when the Grim Reaper is knocking at the door, we’ll sell all of that achievement for a chance at a few more months on earth. Why don’t we think of that as we’re selling our souls to the Grim Reaper for decades?

Maybe we could put some energy into reevaluating the way we see the world, then possibly, so called “achievement” will take care of itself.