Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Excerpt from Maryland '78 workshop

You see we have senses out here.  We hear, we smell, we taste, we touch. I cannot determine that entirely, can I?

Because then I would have to control everybody in the world and nature and I'd have to take over and I don't have time to be bothered with all that. It doesn't matter to me what I sense. Does it to you?

You got a sensing organism here and it's  nice to sense there - yeah and so on down the line. So I cannot choose everything I sense. I will hear sounds that I have no control of - I can't help when a siren runs up and down the street or not. I can't help whether somebody blows a whistle or somebody plays the piano real loud or whatever, okay? But I am in charge of my inner feeling; and that's the one thing I experience. The other I just sense anyway. I sense people using four letter words okay?

Audience : If they're people close to you, though, and you know that there's a certain violent mood that's created by that, how can you be so detached?

 I can, I don't know about anybody else. I don't see any reason to give anything or any person or a not I or a circumstance charge of my inner feeling. I think that's the one thing I'm responsible for and I determined a long time ago that I was going to feel serene or delightful or thankful or something inside.  I manage to carry it around part of the day, and I've been taking charge of that.

Now I can't lay that on you and say well you did something wrong and my inner feeling went to hell.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Goal seeking vs. purpose pt.12

Purpose is to be peaceful, but you're still doing things. You don't just sit there and rot off. You're peaceably doing things without any "what's gonna happen tomorrow". You see, we always want to know the future and also to be safe in it.

People are constantly concerned over the future. They want to know if it can be predicted. Well, if the future is predictable, it's nothing because it's already on a puppet string. So it's already for ordained, 
but we're afraid to be, we always want to become. That's the first little decision that says "I got to get back to that non disturbed state, where I was just floating in mamas womb"

Now if I want to be peaceful, I would quit setting that condition. Now conditioning is not a permanent state. It is a very temporary state except that we reset it everyday. So maybe we could spend a few extra days seeing and dropping the goals, and experiment with Being and seeing how it would work with having a purpose to be peaceful.

(End)

Goal seeking vs. purpose pt. 11

Now, when you get the degree, the next you got to get a practice established - so you set the goal of "I"ll sure be happy when I get a practice established." Then "I'll be happy when I get my office opened". Then, "I'll be happy when I get the bills paid off for school and the office and such"

(it takes a lot of time)

It's still chasin' the endless quest of goals. You never quite catch up with them. Now if you're purely interested in something, you don't care if you get a degree or not. So when you're enjoying this moment, I think you'd know a lot more that would be of use to you than you would if you just had to get that degree. We are so conditioned that the minute we enroll in school or even when we begin trying to get a school to go to, we're thinking, "I'll be happy when I can get a degree" Perhaps it's, "I'll be happy when I can get rid of that wife that's helping me get through" Have you ever heard of the PhT? It's the most common degree in the United States - the PhT put husband through. We want to be safe, so we think we have to have goals. So we even have a goal to have goals.

(We wouldn't be productive, would we?)

Oh, we got the ideal in there. I've heard lots of people say if you don't have goals you'll never get anywhere.

So we have never seen the fallacy - the joke of having all these goals. If we see the joke, then it doesn't keep talkin' back at us.

(intellectually?)

I'm talkin' about physical - doing. You know I kind of believe in those physical things. So we just said,'doing'. You see we always try to do it just in the mind without a body doing anything. You see we never use a purpose. We think when we get the goal, we can just drift.

(how do you pay your bills when you're drifting?)

You see your assuming that if you drop the goal you're drifting, but, you see, you've never looked at  purpose.

to be cont'd

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Goal seeking vs. purpose pt. 10

So we start setting up a goal the day we were born and became a goal seeking, goal directed animal, and the goal does do the directing - not intelligence. We can cease any moment we please, any moment. You don't have to learn anything, you can cease this moment chasing the goal of being safe, non-disturbed or all the other many ways that you would care to express. At that moment you are at peace within yourself. Your peaceful with the environment, other people, and you're peaceful within.
That help?

It doesn't take a lot of intelligence. It doesn't take a lot of books or learning. But immediately we can have peace of mind, joy in living and expressing at this moment - instantly. It's quite a little thing when see the joke - the tremendous joke we have played upon ourselves when we set goals. And we have allowed other people to play this joke upon us because the only chance the other guy has to play one on us is when we think we're not gonna be safe. So then, I listen to his formula. And he's always got one for me from his conditioning which only complicates the conditioning in me. Now the only way this formula can be suggested to me is if I'm wanting to be safe or non disturbed, and I think maybe he's got a formula. So then, I buy it. Now I might blame you later, but I don't need to blame you Because I was the one seeking non disturbance.

So the minute I want to be safe, sound, and secure, I set up a goal for the future - I have then given anybody who wants it, charge of my inner state, is that right? They'll tell you, you have to do this, and you have to do that, and you have to do the other and then you'll be safe - but it will be much much later. So we can pursue that one as long as we want to, or we can wake up and drop it.

(What about someone in college and they want to be a doctor or a lawyer?)

He's also setting goals to have ulcers and belly aches and all the other stuff that goes with it. What is the purpose of going to school. Is it to get a degree, or to learn at the moment - to learn what's taught today. You know you can be there and just enjoy the instruction at the moment. So finally they'll give you a degree to get you out of there.

You don't have to have a goal. But we are firmly convinced that we have to have a goal. You don't just study to get the joy out of knowing all the things you might become acquainted with - you're going to get a degree, aren't you?

to be cont'd

Friday, September 11, 2015

Goal vs. Purpose pt.9

So when we can take one small look and see, "What we are doing?" Not what we should do or what we ought to do, but what am I doing now. I'm making goals. I'm setting up ideals and I'm chasing them, and thereby I'm completely miserable. And when I see that I'm chasing these self-projected ideals or goals, and I see the joke in that, I can lay it down this very moment.

It's like taking an ice pick and jabbing yourself with it every few minutes, and say I've got the awfullest pain here. So we literally have an pick pokin' ourselves every few moments driving to us towards the goal, huh?

(Yep, onward and upward)

Onward and upward - ever forward to the goal - miserable and more miserable every day.

So whenever we take a long solid look at "What am I doing?" I'm making me a goal and I'm chasing it all over the place. And when I've made the goal, I have put on all those illusionary have-to's. And then I'm so exhausted, I'm tired, and then I can't generate to do any of these things "I have to" the body rebels, X won't generate energy for "have-to's". It says, "You don't have to". So then you go on will power and determination from the sub-conscious mind ever pressing forward to the prize.

(for your prize?)

for a very excellent prize, the greatest land subdivision possible that there is. They built them and call them cemeteries. And that's the prize you get for pursuing a goal - one of those neat little condominiums-you know--where they stack them up. Or you can get you a whole little piece of real estate all for your very own - 4 foot wide and 7 feet long - it's your own private lot. You've purchased your property -- and then your family has to pay more to keep them from digging it up so there's more room to get more subdivision plots.

But why bother with it. What's the goal - what's the goal you're headed for?

(The only goal I have is to be non-disturbed. I don't need anything else).

Well you're not disturbed unless you disturb yourself, dear one. The best way in the world is to set you a little goal to be non-disturbed because you got to be on guard unless someone's gonna bug you.

(Well what goal do you need?)

I don't know as you need any goal.

(You don't? That's the only goal I ever have)

I don't think you even need that one. It doesn't matter what the goal is, it's basically to be non-disturbed, and of course we set 101 subdivisions in addition to that one.

To be cont'd

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Goal vs. Purpose pt.8

The whole thing is you can constantly struggle to get this. You know if you're going to buy a house, you worry about getting financing for it,; and as soon as you get it, you worry about how you're going to pay for it. You want to buy a car, you wonder if you can get the credit to get the car, and when you get the car, then you begin to worry about how you're going to pay it paid off.

And as soon as the kids are born, the first thing you say is, "I'll sure be happy when I get them all through college". I've heard that from you, dear one. Does it get the kids through college any better with you being miserable? No. It even adds a few doctor bills with your worry and stress.

Somebody is ill and they say, "As soon as I get well, I'll sure be happy". You get 'em well and you hear, "I hope it never comes back".

So the disintegrating factor is the struggle toward an illusion of the ideal or goal.

Now is there any goal you can conceive of necessary? Did you start to drive your car away from here this afternoon and have the goal to get it home? - to dangerous to be on the road. But if you have the purpose of driving in your little spot on the highway, everything will work fine, won't it? You drive in your little box of space. There's a lane over here, and a lane over there, and there's a little space in front of you that you're responsible for every moment, right now. And you have the purpose of not bumping anything in the little slot you got there.

(That's a goal).

No, it's not a goal, it's that you have as your purpose not to be bumping right now, not to do it later, but now. Now is the present. A goal is then.

If I'm going to try not to have an accident for the next year, now I have a goal okay? And the justification is so that we can keep our insurance rates down. And, of course, you bump everything in site, and drive in a constant state of anxiety.

So we begin to see that we we are producing constantly all the conditioning we have. It is not built in, we set it up. But we have reenacted it everyday of our lives by continually being a goal seeking animal.

Now as soon as we see the joke in that and cease to be a goal seeking animal, we can be a living human being with a purpose - a purpose of whatever you want - but let's say being peaceful at this moment. That's not a goal for the next moment, just this moment. Now this moment I can do. But when I worry about how I am going to be peaceful this afternoon, or tonight, or tomorrow, now I've got a goal and and I have all sorts of have to's come up.

(to be cont'd)

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Goal vs. Purpose pt.7

And then we have people make it a goal that they've got to have "something else" or "something new" because we've got to have all these "up to date" things in order to be happy, so we've got to  buy  a new car, new computer, whatever has been suggested.

I have a friend who says his credit is so bad that they'll hardly take his cash anymore.

So when you're not in debt, sometimes you can get very enthusiastically pursuing a way to get in debt, can't you? So when we get horribly in debt we're back to setting a goal to get out.

You've been working for months to get horribly in debt.

(Now I've got a plan of how to get out)

So you're still going. So do you see the tremendous joke we play on ourselves - we set up conditions - we mechanically react to "I'm not going to be peaceful with this or that".

One time I was in a Hotel in St. Louis at a big Holiday Inn, and the bill was getting pretty big. Now I did have just enough to pay for it. You know what? The Hotel burned down. Well the staff was standing outside and I said I wanted to check out. They said, "When did you come in?" I said, "Two weeks ago" They said, "Well, did you have one room?" I said, "Well that was so much a day" They said, "Did you have any bills?" I said, "Yeh, I signed the check" They said, "We'll send you a bill". And it's never come yet. So you see, there's all kinds of nice little things happen when you are peaceful.

To be continued..

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Goal vs purpose pt.6

It says, You have to be good or else I'll scream and holler so I'll be peaceful later.

A lady visited with us the other night and she said,"I'm sure everybody that saw me on the freeway yesterday thought I was crazy. I laughed like a fool all the way home when I saw what I was doing. I was acting like it was "my" highway and everybody was in my way."

And really we have played a tremendous joke on ourselves about trying to achieve peace of mind because we are firmly convinced that that can only be achieved when everything is going to our ideal, and we never stop to look for just a minute, that we have peace of mind right now, it's only that we have unconsciously put it into "then" and were going to get it and not see it is possible right "now".

 We're going to chase it - because we just love to have a chase - we got to go after it - so we go through all this commotion and noise and we chase it. And really, it's there every moment if I see the fallacy and illusion of the goal I've been pursuing.

What's  wrong with just being peaceful right now? I don't have to have a condition to be peaceful -
You want fussin', that's all right, I can still be peaceful or see what a joke it is. I can see what you're doing to try and be non disturbed, and when you truly look at it, I don't have to try and change you one little bit.

If the weather isn't exactly to my liking, so what. Now I can set an ideal that the temperature be exactly 79 degrees, the humidity 38 percent, and the wind one mile an hour out of the southwest. And that way I'll get myself all torn up.

I can make a goal that all the bills are paid. But as soon as I get the telephone bill paid, the gas bills come in. When I get that paid, the water bills come in, by that time the tax bills come in. But you see, we have a goal to get all the bills paid - right now - so there can be no peace of mind with that kind of goal. You'll get them all paid, but not quite because soon another one comes.


to be continued


Monday, September 7, 2015

Goal seeking vs Purpose pt.5

Now integration is not something one gains. It is not something to become integrated. Integration is our natural state and it is what remains when we stop the disintegration process. The disintegration  process is the struggle towards an illusion that this goal would make me happy - that when I'm finally integrated, I will be what I should be. I've eliminated all the various things in myself and only got the good ones actualized. But do you truly know what all the good ones are? Isn't that more conditioning and goals? So then we feel we have to eliminate "A" and strengthen "B".  And of course, whenever we eliminate one little "A" (well, we think we have) that not-I family says, "Your not going to do that to me" and it comes up in other ways.

So then we have this endless struggle for what? Struggle towards and illusion. An illusion that does not exist. An illusion that is in the future and does not exist right now. Can you be peaceful right now?

(If I could only learn it)

You're not trying to learn anything today. You're not trying to improve yourself.  You're not trying to change anything to fit your goal, then you don't have to struggle with it, you see, it's all gone. The disintegrating process is the struggle towards an illusion - the illusion of the ideal or the goal.

My dear friend Lynn used to have a goal to have all her children happy, right? I used to go by and she'd be in a turmoil - she'd be all torn up. I'd say, "What's the matter?" She'd say, "Well this child didn't seem happy this morning, and that one did the same." I said, "Lynn, all your wanting is that all the kids line up and grin like Cheshire cats all day, is that right?" When you quit buggin' them they start grinning a little bit. I don't know whether they do or not--but they get along better when you don't insist that they be happy. But she thought all three of them had to be happy and content every moment of the day. Mama had an ideal for them. And Mama is miserable trying to achieve the ideal. When the kids want to be upset and kick around and have a little fun gritching and chasing ideals, that's part of their growing up, huh? But it's so easy to fall into "everything has to be ideal, all the kids have to sit and grin like those Cheshire cats".

(So as the Cheshire cat, what she really wants is for them to be what she calls good)



to be continued..

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Goals vs. Purpose pt.4

Now where does the ideal and the goal originate. It comes straight out of the first decision, doesn't it? The pure little infant mind. The one your newest grandchild is getting ready to make shortly.

Now in purpose, do you have to do anything? No, but you're free to choose, you're free to choose this moment to be peaceful. Now if you come up and give me a little static and I want to defend myself and have my goal of being recognized, then I'm back at setting a goal.

But I don't have these goals, so I would agree with you - whatever you say or whatever it takes to agree with it. I may not believe or do it, but I would agree with you.

(well they may feel kind of cheated).

They're the one with the goal, so they're always being cheated. Everybody's got a goal, so they are always being cheated, okay? Is that right? When you have a goal you always feel cheated don't you? You never quite get there. Just like the man that chased the rabbit. He gained 50 percent on him in the first ten minutes. The next ten minutes he gained another 50% of that distance and so on, but he never catches the rabbit because the rabbit is running to. So it's always one half off.

But the minute I set up a goal,  I have to do certain things to achieve that goal. And the minute I feel I have to, I'm in a state of rebellion within. I don't generate energy. I feel beat up, whipped, but I feel I've got to be determined to go on. So I start driving myself to keep on at achieving that goal. The ideal would be, I just can't live without it, I must keep on driving.

The difference with purpose is what? - I'm doing it now. What am I interested in doing right now. So all you have to do is quit struggling after goals and you already have it, don't you, because all the anxiety in the world is struggling after goals and ideal states that can't be in the present moment. You're going to be well or you're going to be assured of something - etc. So we always have a goal out there. "What is" is what you have right now if you're not looking for the goal, isn't it?

Peace of mind is what everybody says, in the last analysis, is their goal. To be peaceful with themselves and peaceful with their environment and peaceful with their fellow man. True? But if you have a goal it's impossible to be peaceful with yourself. As you look you find the man made world makes it impossible to be peaceful with it until it is worked over, tormented, strip-mined until what?
Some goal has been attained. So we're not in peace with the environment. And then it follows that we can't be at peace with other people because they're in our way to get "that tail pinned on the donkey".
They're decidedly in your way, aren't they? Have you ever played that game? Everybody is blindfolded and turned around and around, and the goal is to pin the tail their each holding to a picture of a donkey on the wall. So as everybody goes around trying to find the donkey, they're poking those around them with the pin in the tail they're holding.

to be continued..






Saturday, September 5, 2015

Goals vs. Purpose pt.3

So this is what set up the anxiety. Then we hear that is sure a long hard job to ever get over this conditioning. It's terrible but I'm really working at it. So we set up this tremendous goal which has lovely names on it like integrated, good, to be saintly, transfigured, but it's only attainable in the future. But right now I'm miserable. But the minute you don't have goals but only have as your purpose "to be peaceful this moment" it's possible that right now, you have peace of mind because the whole thing that tore up the peace of mind was having a goal for it in the first place.

Now we started with a goal very early in our existence  back here with that first decision the day we were born - the little one set up it's goal in order to be non disturbed later and it started screaming. And fifty years later it will still be screaming, so it will be peaceful later. But what's wrong with just being peaceful right now, I can get along with it. You can't get along with yourself if you are trying to make yourself over into this ideal person over here.

You see another word for the goal is "ideal". Now whether it's the ideal me or it is any other ideal, it's still the same thing, a goal or an ideal is the same thing.

You have an ideal for your child and then you say, "Now you must do this". And then of course you're all disturbed when the child doesn't. 

But when someone says to you, "You have to do so and so", how do you feel about it? Do you enjoy that or do you bow your back right there. So the so-called younger generation is rebelling all over the place and the rest are concerned as to what they are going to do about it- the kids are going to Hades with their back broke and it's ruining the country. But all their doing is expressing their rebellion against what? "You have to". The minute you set a goal, then comes all the "have to's", does it not?

more to come..

Goal seeking vs. Purpose pt.2

Of course there can be no peace while we're struggling away to put it in the future - we are anxious. The anxiety is to be sure I will get it. I've got to manage to get all these teachings in my head. And then we're a bundle of anxiety trying to be peaceful, huh? Now look, if you want to be peaceful this moment, what does it take?  - just quit trying to do something else. I can get along this moment just fine, but I haven't set up a condition, you see.

We talk about ourselves being conditioned, but the funny thing is that we set the condition every moment; and when we set up conditions before I will be pleased, before I will be happy, before I will be peaceful; obviously I am conditioned then. I set it up.

So we set our conditioning day after day. Now conditioning is not something that is going to hang us up forever if we but change one thing - conditioning is all concerned with a goal, is it not? The first one is the whole purpose of living is regain or set the goal of being non disturbed by gaining pleasure and escaping pain and then we add on the rest of the four dual basic urges as we go along. So if we don't like being conditioned is to quit setting conditions. 

Suppose you disapprove of me. Well if I'm going to set here and think all the "What if's" and resisting what has been said, and then I'm setting up a condition that the only way I can be peaceful is that everybody will  approve of me and like me - nobody will be howling, nobody will be complaining, everybody will be pleased. Then we have set up a condition and we are what, a full size bundle of anxiety. Then would the goal be set up, unconsciously, that "I have to do this", and, "I have to do that" and, "I have to do this over here" because if I don't, I won't gain this condition that I've set to be non disturbed or peaceful.

to be continued

Goal seeking vs. purpose Tape #81

                                                 Reality of setting Goals
                                          Difference between goal and purpose

Now most everybody wants to read books and they study and they work on themselves and they pick on themselves and they try and achieve a goal.

Now in most psychology books today, we are goal seeking animals. And as long as I'm seeking and working towards goals, we probably are animals because a goal is that I'm going to be happy, I'm going to be at one with myself, I'm going to be peaceful when I achieve the goal. So we set up all manner of goals - a goal to be fully integrated later - a goal to be happy later - a goal to be free. And, of course as long as we've set up a goal, we have set it up into the future,  and the projection is the projection of our own conditioned mind - so we're chasing conditioning as long as we have a goal.

I asked a dear person a while ago, how 'bout dropping all those goals. He said, "Wish I could". But he had goals he felt he had to go with. And the goal is of course the projection of the mind - I will be happy - I will be "safe" later - I must accomplish so and so, and then I will drop the goals.

After observing this for a number of years, we do see that they get safe - really safe - their put away, straightened out in a nice little box, very lovely, very expensive coffin, very carefully put in the ground, and they aren't disturbed anymore. And that's the end product of the goal.

The goal is always to be what?

Safe later. Now purpose is an entirely different arrangement. Purpose is what you're doing with this moment.

Now many of us have a goal to learn. So people learn and we will do "what" later. So learning is connected to a goal.

Discovery is a joy at the moment.

Now, if you had as your purpose, now, just to be peaceful at this moment - that's no problem because you can do it with the greatest of ease, but you don't feel very important because you are not stretched out in this great big drive. But just say that your going to be peaceful this moment. Would that be hard? But you don't feel like you're really doing anything.

So the goal is I will be safe and peaceful and pleasant when I get so and so, so we set a condition of RIGHT NOW, and being peaceful or whatever it may be comes later.

(Continued)