from The picture of man for 12-steppers

SUGGESTION

Did you know that human beings are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time? It is part of the nature of Life on Earth. Acting on suggestion is what led to your disintegrating state.

Any threat or promise is a suggestion.

It was a suggestion that drink or drugs or binges would change your inner feeling into something more pleasant. It was a promise, but a shallow one. When the substance wore off, the inner feeling was worse than before. The dire results were not part of the promise, were they? You can see that suggestion is often a lie.

People use suggestion to control others all the time. Many sales people, for instance, would be out of work without the handy tool of suggestion to make sales. Parents use it to control their little banshees.
Institutions use suggestion for their bread and butter.

It is the nature of the human being to being to be subject  to suggestion but he doesn't have to act on it. What he has to do is evaluate it. A suggestion received will always be evaluated, consciously or unconsciously. But if it is not to my advantage, I am not under any obligation to accept it. Part of the unification process is to stop reacting to suggestions, greedily accepting promises and fearfully accepting threats. I can stop reacting and respond, instead, by evaluating whether or not it is to my advantage.

Does a hit of cocaine or a drink contain a promise? That I will feel better than I do? Probably. Is it to my advantage to take this substance to momentarily change my feeling? Most likely not.

Suggestions are everywhere in our world. They refer to our health, our morality, our intelligence, our finances, our personal value, our value within a group. They threaten and they promise. They presume we are not capable of evaluating for ourselves what's going on and what is to our advantage.

The Science of man says you are fully capable of being responsible enough to evaluate what is to your advantage; that you can transcend the usual reaction to threat and promise by responding instead. The definition of response is to consciously evaluate a stimulus as to it's advantage.

Be always on the lookout for threats and promises. They are trying to usurp your own innate good sense.

Teaching idea 156

Our #1 job is to make a total commitment to be responsible for our inner state of being. It is the most valuable commitment we make. Without doing this, everything else is nothing.

Teaching ideas

99. The whole idea of the Teaching material is for man to be aware of what is.

100. X generates action for every action the awareness values. All human energy comes from X. It is spiritual energy. The "Not-I's" using this energy is the disintegration of man.

101. Spirit, soul, psyche are all synonymous.

102. Man was never designed to have emotions-anger, guilt, fear, insecurity, and all the many sub-groups.

103. Expectation based on illusion is the disintegrating factor.

104. I owns nothing. I is an observer and reporter only.

105. Self-knowing means to be aware of the ideas one has lived by; being aware of the ideals that have been set up and the impossibility of their fufillment.