WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

It is an immutable scientific fact that we are surrounded by infinity. Gigantic things like galaxies, black holes and quasars all seem to operate in proper order because every morning the sun rises and every evening the sun sets. The moon and planets follow regular patterns. As do the comets and constellations. The scale of what we can perceive is so vast that we may see starlight from stars that no longer even exist. It is not hyperbole to say that we live in an ongoing space time miracle.
Granted this reality is difficult to sustain when we’re stuck in traffic, late for work, checks are bouncing and the kids are sick.
There is however, the possibility of reconciling the two previously mentioned realities while enhancing our own sanity. That possibility lies in the fact that we have the potential to control our own reaction to “external” events.
In its most rudimentary form this means we can count to ten before we “lose our temper”. On a more advanced level we can learn to observe then eliminate conditioned negative responses to stimuli. We can observe our thought and belief pattern to understand what we thought was so important that we allowed a conditioned negative response to be engrained in us in the first place.
The simple act of eliminating conditioned negativity will make you nicer to be around, other people like to be around you more and possibly even you to like yourself more.
To be perfectly precise what I mean by conditioned negativity is your basic Pavlov dog classical conditioning. For example, other people’s stupid driving (or any other stimuli) makes you angry (unhappy, worried you pick the adjective). Then you respond like a dog and express this negative emotion in some behavior verbal or otherwise. It seems impossible to eliminate other people’s stupid driving. It is. But, it is completely possible to take responsibility for your reaction to it. While we’re at it may as well take responsibility for your whole damn life.
This is much easier than it seems. All that is required is to change the way you think about your reaction to things. The new thought process is: all your thoughts, feelings and deeds are your life and therefore your responsibility. Everything that occurs in your internal world belongs to you. No one can make you feel, think, say or do anything without your complicity or at least your acquiescence.
While this may seem like a difficult burden at first, it is really quite liberating. Some idiot just cut in front of you at the perpetual line of cars getting off the infamous Garden State Parkway exit 135 which has both north and southbound exits feeding into a circle. Did he make you mad? Or are you responsible for your reaction? Do you want to rage at his driving and the incompetent exit design? Do you want to get your own and everybody else’s blood pressure up?[1] Or do you want to just accept what you can’t control?
The other unseen and perhaps even more significant advantage to taking responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and behavior is once you apply this standard to yourself it’s completely appropriate to apply it to everyone else.
This is the liberating part because once everyone is responsible for themselves no one can get away with manipulating anyone else. Why? Because manipulation between people requires a blurring of responsibility. The classic rationalization for abuse is that person A did some behavior which caused person B to have some emotion which justified some emotionally or physically abusive behavior toward person A.
Let’s analyze this interaction in the take responsibility mode. It is very well possible that person A said or did something potentially offensive to person B. However, in the first place person B had the choice to take offense or not. If he chose to take offense he had an emotional response. It is his emotion. Now does the fact that person B has some emotion allow him to shirk responsibility for abusive behavior especially toward a loved one? No, everyone is responsible for their own thoughts, emotions and especially their behavior.
This same result obtains where person A deliberately tries to induce some form of negative emotion in person B in order to get person B to do something. The classic example is the guilt trip or its first cousin described in the Celestine Prophecy the poor me trip. In either case person A claims to have some negative emotion to attempt to infect person B with some correlative negative emotion so person B will do some behavior he might not otherwise do.
If we analyze this scenario in the take responsibility mode person A’s emotion is their own. Person B has the option of saying to person A “I’m sorry you feel that way but I am not responsible for your emotions” hopefully inoculating herself against some gratuitous negativity.
If person A persists person B can simply spotlight the manipulation.
“You are deliberately trying to make me feel guilty (or pity or in the case of a power trip fear) in order to get me to do something for you. I don’t like being treated this way. I would prefer if you want something that you just ask for it.”
Only world class manipulators will continue this tactic once the cover is blown. Even then we retain the choice of how to respond because we are responsible for our thoughts, emotions and behavior and everybody else is responsible for theirs.
A further liberating aspect of this mode of thinking is that it clarifies who did what to whom. Once responsibility is acknowledged the possibility of forgiveness, communication and compromise arise. Resolving interpersonal problems in an adult open way can lead to a happier more satisfying life. Again, if you employ this skill most people will like you more and you may even like yourself more.
Now that you have found and eliminated conditioned negativity gotten in the habit of observing and taking responsibility for your own thoughts, emotions, sensations and behavior and developed a method of smoothing your social relations it’s time to work on some basic psychic management.
In the beginning try to observe as much as possible your physical sensations, emotions and thoughts. Do it in your daily life. Do it when you’re alone. Do it as much as possible.
Almost instantly you will probably observe two things. First it is impossible to sustain this observation process very long. This should perhaps, give rise to the question of how much control you actually exercise over your own awareness?
Second in most people the mental center has words streaming through almost without interruption. After a while you may notice that the stream of words makes it difficult to observe activity in other centers. In most people’s consciousness this stream of words or internal dialogue is considered normal and hardly even noticed.
The internal dialogue has multiple negative effects. It blocks or obstructs messages from the other centers because it speaks with the loudest voice. This can interfere with at least four of our built in psychic self protective abilities.
One of the major functions of our conscience is that it is designed to help us avoid the painful consequences of violating the Law of Karma.
At its simplest level the Law of Karma is in Biblical terms “as we sow, so shall we reap”. Another way to describe it again at the simplest level is “what goes around comes around” or as we say on the east coast “payback’s a bitch”.
In other words all the energy we project into the universe is subject to a boomerang multiplier effect. It inevitably comes back usually tripled. So, for example, if because of internal dialogue we are unable or unwilling to listen to our conscience and as a result we inflict suffering on another being, that suffering will be returned to us multiplied. Michael Vick comes to mind.
The payback may not happen on the same day or the same week. We may not even be able to connect our suffering with our act that caused it in the first place. That doesn’t matter. The reason it’s called the Law of Karma is the same reason some other force is called the Law of Gravity. In each case the results are just as certain.
Further, the people who first observed this Law, the Hindus, believe that violations of this law carry forward into different manifestations in western terms our “afterlife”. For this reason the consequences of violations of this Law may well be much more serious than I have described. Allowing our uncontrolled internal dialogue to interfere with the proper functioning of our conscience is a sucker’s bet; very high risk almost no return.
Emphasizing the seriousness of this danger is the fact that we are equipped with a backup system. If for some reason our conscience fails our ability to empathize could/should allow us to anticipate the suffering someone else will feel as a result of some careless or selfish act on our part. However, the constant stream of useless chatter can shout down this message as well. If so, neither the act nor its consequences will be avoided.
Our intuition also acts as a mechanism of self protection. For quite some time I lived in the East Village neighborhood of the City. One cold very windy November day I walked north from my Sixth St. apartment to the dry cleaners on the south side of Seventh St. After retrieving my bundle I had nowhere to go but home. Instead of turning south I crossed Seventh St. to stand on the northwest corner. I was waiting for don’t walk to turn to walk wondering why I did that when a gust of wind blew down a six foot by four foot heavy metal sign which had been attached to the building ten feet high over the southwest corner of Seventh St. That corner was on the direct path from the dry cleaners to my apartment.
The capacity for intuition varies widely among people. Some people are psychics. Other people are so invested in their intellectual center that they don’t even realize that they have or once had this ability. Some people don’t believe there is such a thing. As mentioned earlier our beliefs profoundly effect our perceptions. If we don’t believe something exists we probably won’t see it unless it hits us like my Seventh St. sign.
My favorite thing about the Jean Auel Clan of the Cave Bear Ayala books is the way she depicted the differences between cro-magnum and homo- sapien consciousness. For those of you who need the Cliff Notes as a result of an earthquake the heroine Barbie-like Scandinavian homo-sapien Ayala (played by Darryl Hanna in the movie) as a baby was orphaned then rescued and raised by the cro-magnum Geico Cavemen.
They were patriarchal and their consciousness was guided by “the memories”. “The memories” was a part DNA part cultural system which provided a proper symbolic way to perceive everything and a proper way to deal with every situation.
Conflict arose because Ayala was the world’s first feminist. She kept inventing new (and better) stuff. The final straw came when Ayala secretly became a better hunter than the men. Eventually, she was busted and the mean chief made the medicine man do the banishment spell on her. As soon as the spell was cast Ayala disappeared to everyone but Ayala. Even though she was still there no one could see her because they all believed in the spell.
We’re not so different. For those of you that snickered at the part about energy coalescing in the emotional center have you ever considered that our science of zoology is deficient in that it omits a whole class of beings? That is non-organic (energetic) beings.
I don’t believe mainstream science has accepted the existence of such things as poltergeist, apparitions and/or ghosts. As a matter of political correctness it takes no position on the human soul (which is really a shame).
The object of this chapter is to identify, highlight some of the dangers of and offer a simple remedy for what I believe to be a serious behavioral disability (expressing conditioned negative emotions) and a serious perceptual disability (uncontrolled internal dialogue) shared by a vast majority of US citizens. However, in order to provide food for thought on an important theme of this book to some of you skeptics; from anthropology we learn that many divergent cultures recognize the existence of energetic beings of some form. To my way of thinking phenomenon which appear in multiple cultures are more worthy of consideration than phenomenon that don’t.
At the frontier of theoretical physics the current challenge is to develop a unified theory which will integrate relativity theory and quantum theory. The leading candidate is a refinement of string theory which postulates that everything is made of little things called strings. The theory implies the existence of at least ten dimensions instead of our usual four.
Carlos Castaneda in his book The Art of Dreaming quotes his teacher as saying that human’s have the capacity to perceive multiple dimensions that are wrapped together like layers of an onion. Some of these dimensions are populated by energetic beings. He also observes that we do not perceive these beings because we are trained not to.
He further observed that everything can be categorized into the known, the unknown and the unknowable. Consider the reality described in the beginning of this chapter then consider how your personal knowledge fits in each of these categories. I guess the moral of this digression is to keep an open mind. Like a parachute it works better that way.
The final self protective mechanism that internal dialogue can disable arises in the physical center. The subtle little changes that occur in our physical center can send early warning signals of incipient illness or deterioration.
The ancient Taoist text The Art of War advises would be generals to solve problems before they arise.[2] In the physical health context this means become aware of and deal with gathering problems as soon as possible before they become major or mortal. For example, let’s say that you notice a new little mole on your arm, a little lump in your breast or chest pain going up the stairs. These are the subtle little warnings from the physical center. Let’s say the emotional center chimes in with a little blast of anxiety. This also is a self protective mechanism.
How does the mental center deal with this situation? It immediately tries to calm it down. “Oh it’s only a mole, cyst, I’m out of shape. I’ll let the doctor look at it next, week, month, year”. This type of self calming internal dialogue is common in many people and particularly insidious because it lies. Good thing those little symptoms weren’t skin cancer, breast cancer or cardiovascular disease.
What about next time?
This type of self calming internal dialogue can disable messages from our emotional center and this mechanism is distinct from the simple obstruction by the volume of the chatter.
Assume you have done something you should not have. Your conscience is “bothering you”. That is your emotional center is manifesting shame and/or anxiety based on you as an individual, the context and the behavior.
What does the internal dialogue do? It immediately tries to stop your conscience from “bothering you”. How does it do this? Lying. This process is called in psychology rationalization. That is trying to explain away the message from your conscience. Recall in Gordian Knot I mentioned that the physical and emotional centers manifest direct experience whereas the intellectual center is derivative because it is symbolic experience?
In the event of a conflict between your two centers which one should you listen to? The one that is manifesting direct experience, your conscience because; it is not subject to the rationalization process. The rationalization process only works when the mental center and its self calming internal dialogue “fool” your conscience.
If you are a procrastinator (then I am your king). That means I am an expert in how the process works. Again the basis is in lying to yourself. I’ll start the diet tomorrow but tonight, “Please pass the plate of cannolies”. Tomorrow morning you don’t have the same motivation because the immediate need for a lie has passed. It really would be more sensible to start on the weekend. So the procrastinator avoids the suffering of doing what he himself knows should be done by lying to himself and punting to the future. This is called in psychology neurotic behavior. The secret to its “success” is the self calming internal dialogue.
This example also illustrates a problem that I will deal with in detail later namely whose in charge here? If I give you all the bad news at once you’ll get mad at me and stop reading.
In any event internal dialogue also has other effects on our awareness. As you might have guessed none of them are good.
In the lives of most people at least when they’re out and about. There is far more sensory data available to us than we can perceive, let alone process into a meaningful
coherent reality. Therefore in order to be a functioning member of whatever society you were born into you must learn to share the consensus of what data is valuable and what data has no use. In addition, you must learn to assemble the data the same way everyone else does.
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[1] Activity in the emotional center triggering fight or flight response in the physical center.
[2] The Art of War by Sun Tzu Translated by Thomas Cleary