In Order To Help Many People, We Must Be Many People

Of all the problems that each person must solve, the complexity of our own temperament is probably the most challenging. Most of us have very little trouble giving other people good advice – we see exactly what is wrong with them – and we tend to develop the attitude that perhaps we have been more fortunate; that through experience or opportunity we are just a little wiser than the others.

And then a little problem comes home to us, and confusion immediately results. The confusion, of course, arises from the important principle operating in nature that impersonal judgment is always best. It is very true and we cannot deny it, that we can advise others in many areas where we cannot solve our own, simply because personal involvement results in loss of perspective.

We spend many years becoming proficient in some art or science but we must also remember to give some time and thought to disciplining and directing our own consciousness.

Any time we have a feeling that the moods that arise within ourselves are inevitable we develop what might be termed as “blind spots in our understanding”. Several factors can lead to this type of “blindness”. One is prejudice.

In any area where we have prejudice, we lose sight of facts. Prejudice is a kind of intensity that drives us past what is reasonable. If we study this problem we would come to one general conclusion, which is that each person has areas of his own understanding that has not been developed.

These areas represent fields of activity with which we are not familiar, patterns of life that we have not experienced, levels of understanding that we personally have not known. We must then depend upon advice, or opinions of those more learned than ourselves, “experts” in various fields.

Sometimes those experts are really helpful, particularly on practical levels but no experts can contribute to us their experience; they can merely apply it to our problems, and sometimes this adds further confusion, inasmuch as they are applying a perspective that belongs peculiarly to themselves. They have not experienced our problems, any more than we have experienced theirs. Practice and familiarity and constant work may give them certain advantages, but these advantages also have their limitations.

So it is important for each of us to experience as wide an area of life as is feasible or practical for us. Our blind spots are nearly always in areas where for one reason or another we may have refused to live, or refused to think through or accept certain ideas that have appeared distasteful or unimportant.

Today it is assumed that we know many things that we actually do not know. It is assumed that in our search for spiritual consolation, we are adequately informed on the principles of religion. This is usually not true. We do not have as much ground work as we might wish. We must develop a greater breadth of thinking in order to meet the challenges of other minds.

The unknown is not or should not be the cause of anxiety. What we do not know should not cause us to be unkind, critical or suspicious. We should assume the unknown is merely an extension of the known. We should realize that the meadows that we have never seen are not different from meadows that we have seen, and that just as surely as the familiar landscape is beautiful so the landscape that we do not know is also beautiful.

Some areas have mountains, and other shave seas; but each has its own beauty. And the same is true of humanity. The people we do not know are not mysterious; they are just like the people we know. Sometimes that is a disturbing thought, but we should accustom ourselves to it. The basic emotions of all people are essentially the same.

That which we do not understand should not cause us to suddenly pause and tighten. We should approach these things with a desire to understand and an expectation that what we find will be natural, reasonable, and proper. It may not be exactly what we want, but then, what we do understand is not always what we want either.

We must not be afraid of growth or change. We must not fear broader vistas. Of course, we have a right to choose what is most suitable to ourselves, but we should also recognize the right of others to choose. We may admit that tastes differ, but it is very hard for us to really accept this. We have lived so long in the concept that there is only our own good taste and everyone else’s bad taste. Yet, to others, we may be among those with bad taste.

We can gradually correct our tendency to make these generalities. They do not hurt the people or the groups against which we direct them as much as they hurt us. The great danger of a generality that covers a vast area without any deep consideration, and arrives at negative conclusion is that it is continually taking us away from learning. It makes us reject the challenge of that group or situation.

We should remember that we learn most by relaxing; we teach best by listening, we help others in many cases just by gradually coming to understand the total pattern of their kind of life. It creates bridges of understanding.

Every day we live, we should not only strengthen our strong points of character, but also redeem our weak points. By simply working, day by day to understand and to share, and refusing to permit prejudice or criticism to limit our search for knowledge.

When we decide that there are things we do not like simply because we know nothing about them, or perhaps because we have mistaken one or two solitary instances for a complete picture, it comes time to review the whole situation.

We know for example that today we are having trouble internationally partly because small groups of visiting tourists from a certain country have behaved miserably. They have gone out as ambassadors and representatives and have betrayed their country as far as maintaining any dignity or prestige as far as the homeland is concerned.

As a result, we will find in some small town in Portugal or somewhere the typical Portuguese who does not like Americans. He may also be in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, England, Scandinavia or any part of Asia or Latin America, because they all feel the same way. To them, we are an extravagant impolite, disagreeable, fault-finding, critical, snobbish group, and they know it. After all, they have met six of us.

The same thing happens here. We do not like a certain religion. We just know it is bad, because we knew two people who belonged to it, and neither one of them was pleasant; therefore, we have all the facts.

Facts about what?

Not about the religion – about two people. But we never seem to be able to keep the points clear. So wherever we have prejudice, we must look a little deeper.

If our prejudice is directed against a religion, for example, we must try to understand why this religion, with perhaps 400 million followers, can survive with our disapproval. Somebody must like it. Some people must find good in it, or they would not believe it. People are not that foolish. Therefore, it is up to us to go a little deeper.

We do not have to join the religion, but we cannot allow it to be a blank area or prejudice in our own consciousness because if we do, it may sometimes cause us to cause a terrible injury upon a perfectly honorable member of that faith. We will not have natural honesty when we come in contact with that person, and this lack of honesty arising from ignorance, will also hurt us because that person might have become a valuable window into a larger world.

It is the same with every field of learning-art, sciences, industry, politics – all these things have to be understood. This does not mean that we take the Pollyanna attitude that everything is right but we should take the attitude that everything is interesting. In everything there are probably values that we should understand, for we are not even entitled to criticize unless we understand. And usually understanding ends criticism. We have a right to choose what is good for us, but we have very little right to condemn.

We must learn to have a certain amount of detachment. One way to do this is to simply look in the mirror. We shall then observe in all probability that we are not marked by Heaven with any particular symbol by which we are superior to other creatures.

Even under ordinary conditions, even if we are slightly sensitive, our haloes do not show in the mirror, and they do not show to other people. As we observe, as we look at ourselves, we have a somewhat reminiscent similarity to a creature called a human being; that we are just like people. We are people with all others, striving to learn. We were born as they were born, we grew as they grew; we suffered as they suffered; we achieved as they achieved; and in due course we will depart as they departed.

Therefore, there is nothing about us that demands that we regard ourselves as a peculiar and sacred creation apart from everyone else. We have a perfect right to learn, and to grow and to share, but there are very few persons in this world who have the right to dominate.

It is not necessary that other people agree with us. It is not necessary that others cater to us, or that they should keep their tempers when we lose ours. The thing that is essentially necessary and right is that we shall grow up in the world together, enjoying our own individuality and enjoying the individuality of others – not trying to create conformity, but trying to help people be themselves.

This is real helping, and it means a larger foundation in our own thinking. In order to help many people we must be many people. We must have in ourselves an availability of general knowledge, understanding and appreciation.

We must grow beyond the tendency to criticize or condemn. We may not agree but we can understand; we can sympathize. We can realize the circumstances and conditions that cause other people to be what they are, because we are gradually learning to appreciate the conditions that made us what we are.

Live and Learn.  We All Do.

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Filed under: Culture, Philosophy Tagged: bridges of understanding, change, education, growth, human, humanity, philosophy, prejudice, Self-Help

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To Live By Medicine Is To Live Horribly

We are all, to a measure, the victims of the environments in which we live. When this environment becomes too oppressive, denying us self-expression, or discouraging it to the degree we no longer have energy or resistance to demand personal rights, we are bound to become unhappy. We then seek a way of relieving the negative pressure in our lives.

In modern society, certain drugs and assorted pills have come into the category of escape mechanisms.

Before we begin we must differentiate, of course, between the right and wrong use of medication. There are undoubtedly individuals who need medical help, and who, seemingly at least, benefit from a certain use of medications. If a person develops certain symptoms and finds extraordinary difficulty in getting along without sedation; or without some type of artificial stimulation, then this person is probably sick. Such illness needs proper diagnosis, analysis, and care.

However, it does not pay merely to drug ourselves in the hope that we can pass over certain symptoms. We are learning to depend too much upon this kind of thing. Of course, it is very profitable to the pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers to make us all addicts to these remedies, but it is not profitable to us and it is not a good or valid use of medication.

Our forefathers and those of preceding generations made use of natural and simple remedies on many occasions and those were useful. But there is no usefulness in the practice that is becoming prevalent today of carrying a pill bottle at all times and munching on them like candy.

This type of thing is no answer to anything.

We now think in terms of how many packages of aspirin the average citizen consumes in the course of a year. It would seem as though we are depending upon it as a basic element in our diet, and this is not good. Yet it is hard to tell people that they should be uncomfortable or should not take care of these symptoms that come along because the individual must be able to continue with the daily processes of life.

Pain, discomfort, the sense within ourselves of things not being well-these symptoms are of the greatest use to us. Naturally we try to eliminate pain, but we should not forget that pain is not there merely to be alleviated. It is there to tell us something. It is a voice crying in the wilderness of our mis-behavior and it is trying to convince us that something we are doing is wrong. If we keep on ignoring this symptom, we will suffer more and more until nature will make it impossible for us to endure the difficulty without very strong sedation. If we sedate ourselves too much, we may damage the pain mechanism.

Twenty-five years ago, it was common practice for physicians to tell patients that they should get down on their knees and thank God for pain, because pain is nature’s way of preventing us from gradually killing ourselves without even realizing it. Suppose we should be indiscreet enough to sit down on a hot stove and had no pain reflex. We would probably be burned to death. Of course we can say that no one would be so foolish, but everyone is doing more foolish things than that everyday.

Though it is possible to perfectly block each symptom, this dash to the medicine closet is no answer to anything. In an emergency, it might be necessary; but as a solution to a problem, it is worthless and always has been. There are a limited number of instances, of course, where minor ailments, aches and pains can be temporarily alleviated, so that we immunize ourselves for six to 12 hours, and where the pain will then not return.

But this is due to the fact that nature has been working behind the scenes to correct the situation itself. It is not proof that aspirin has cured anything; it has simply, perhaps given nature a little help in attempting to ease a difficult situation. This is very different, however, from the problem of our neurotic pressures, which do not respond permanently and will return immediately after the sedation passes. To continually relieve these pressures, therefore the individual must become a chronic or habitual user of various types of sedation.

What does a tranquilizer do? It simply lowers nerve function. It creates a temporary toxic state in which the individual becomes unconscious. The individual whose nerve reactions are not quite so acute feels happier. They become increasingly comfortable as he lowers the threshold of consciousness. If they could be totally unconscious, they probably could be happy all the time.

It is only when we are awake that we worry. It is only when we are conscious that we are sorry for anything. So if we can keep the individual further and further under the influence of negative drugs, they will gradually emerge as a kind of happy idiot, where they will experience nothing unfortunate because their centers of responsible cognition have been numbed. This apparently is the end greatly desired at the moment. We want to enjoy being foolish and that seems to suggest these tranquilizers.

Everything in life has become the basis of an anxiety mechanism and a dash for the bottle. We face every emergency with a bottle in each hand. Today the pill-taker is the “normal” person; but he is still sick. He is not normal, and he never will be. All these things are just plain foolishness.

We are losing the power to think things through; we are losing the desire to make any real personal effort to solve things. We do not wish to solve them; we wish to be immunized by some fancy method. This can ultimately become as dangerous as a national or international emergency as any we face today on a political level.

Actually, the strength of a nation has to be the integrity and integration of its people, and where this falls to pieces, there is no political power that can hold a nation together.

We must realize there is no use in merely blocking symptoms, in as much as symptoms tell us facts. Usually, in modern people, these symptoms are more difficult than they were in our ancestors because we have less resourcefulness. We are not as resourceful a people as we were even 10 years ago.

Resourcefulness means that we have something in ourselves that is capable of taking over and contributing to the solution of our problem. It arises from experience, from the actual fact of discovering that we can stand on our own feet. This discovery is becoming increasingly rare; it is almost considered unnecessary. All we have to do is pick up that convenient telephone and almost anything we want is available. Our ancestors could not do that, so when problems arose, they had to either work them out or suffer the consequences.

It is nice to hope that our way represents a new standard of living that will go on forever, but actually it will not. This so-called luxury living, resulting in increasing mental and emotional laziness is not producing happiness or security or well-being that were envisioned in the beginning of our great era of modernization.

Behind this situation lies a series of false values, which we must eventually face if we do not want to become hopelessly drugged and medicated generation of people.

About fourty years ago, psycho analysis and psychiatry began to loom large on the scientific horizon. These discoveries seemed to fit in with a new need that was arising, and it is quite possible that most psychotherapy is keyed to complexities that have come as a result of our present way of life.

A hundred years ago there were no psychologists as we know them today. People are always referring to the miseries and sorrows of ancient times. We know that in those days, people did not enjoy most of the facilities that we have; life was harder; working hours were longer; rewards were fewer. Yet with all these limitations, and these other pressures people were not as consistently unhappy as we are. Having less, they expected less, and this made a certain kind of balance.

Nervous tension is not the same as physical effort. We can get more miserable today over the front page of the newspaper than our ancestors did after a fourteen-hour working day. We are more concerned with situations that have less validity and our sufferings are due to a fantasy that has gradually become so real that we are unable to cast it off or evaluate it correctly.

All these together create a set of ills that require pills to sedate the pain.

Our civilization is producing these as inevitable by-products. These disturbances in the body do not simple represent clouds that pass. They are becoming so chronic that is astonishing to consider the amount of research and scientific chemicalization being directed toward these problems today.

Whereas five years ago we had one or two tranquilizers that were of some value, today we have dozens; tomorrow we will have hundreds; before long they will become as common as aspirin. (I think we are already there)

These medications by the way, do have gradually cumulative results. The pill that takes the edge off worry also takes the edge off the will to achieve. The tranquilizer gradually dedicates the individual to mediocrity. It digs in continually under the incentive mechanisms, and the loss of pain also means the loss of self- directive.

This does not indicate progress. It is merely scientific ingenuity trying to struggle against private stupidity. The painkillers are not progress, but patches upon something that threatens to fall apart. They do no represent any positive advancement in knowledge, but are merely escape mechanisms for people demanding these to a far greater degree than ever before in scientific history.

Most of the ailments for which our assorted drugs are available come under the general heading of “nervous disturbances.” We are becoming a generation of nervous wrecks, and each person has his own explanation for his particular case.

What we call our problems are really evidence of hysteria within ourselves.

Education is contributing to the common dilemma. Our religious systems, also, have not yet been strong enough to lift us out of the problem, to give us again the courage of personal conviction in the things that we do. Yet within each one of us there is an archetypal individuality, something that wishes to be true to itself.

Nature has its own plans and its own ways, and these are now being continuously blocked by the artificial way of life we have gradually accumulated, which has been a burden upon the spirit since the beginning, and now threatens to be a menace to the survival of the body itself.

It is useless for us to use chemicals in trying to meet this kind of problem. It is useless to believe that by some kind of process of medication we can kill out in man that which is man-the individual expression of life. The person who tries to fit into a norm may then consult a psychologist to see if something can be done to adjust him to our time. And the adjustment is possible, but, in many instances only through a different kind of sedational medication.

Why then, do we try to escape by means of these artificial methods? We feel nervous, things have gone wrong, we gradually develop a sour stomach, a headache and these symptoms are not to be neglected. Twenty-five years ago, it was common practice for physicians to tell patients that they should get down on their knees and thank God for pain, because pain is nature’s way of preventing us from gradually killing ourselves without even realizing it.

Suppose we should be indiscreet enough to sit down on a hot stove and had no pain reflex. We would probably be burned to death. Of course we can say that no one would be so foolish, but everyone is doing more foolish things than that everyday.

We must learn to use our own nervous system as a thermometer. When it begins to go high, we are in trouble, and there is no solution to that trouble but to find out what caused it. If it is due to an organic or systematic problem, it may be that we are finally reaping a long harvest. Perhaps many years ago we developed attitudes that we have never been willing to change, and which are basically wrong.

No individual can hate and be in good health, no matter how just his dislikes may seem to be. No one can be jealous and not finally come to the pill-taking stage. We may think that the pills will neutralize jealousy; that we will be able to continue to be jealous and not feel discomfort; but he is creating a cause and effect pattern here. He is not improving his attitude, and he is endangering his body.

The purpose of education, of religion, and of philosophy is to make the individual tranquil by understanding without the aid of dope. If he does not wish to grow if he does not wish to use these instruments to improve himself then he will take pills and hurt himself. Nature seemingly continues to fight with man on the ground that nature’s end is that the individual shall be sufficient and that this sufficiency shall not require a pill bottle.

Our only escape and true solution to most of these situations is to face the facts. Facts are not always what we want, but if we permit ourselves to war with them, we are fighting the most losing battle of all time. We know, as philosophy teaches us, that we live in a world of facts. Some of these facts are good, as far as we can understand them, some we do not understand; and some appear to be very dangerous. But we do live in a world of facts.

Actually when you look over some of these problems that people consider monumental, many of them are utterly ridiculous; and yet, to the person involved, they have become tremendously vital. The only answer lies in facts.

Know what you want, and have the courage to do it. When situations are wrong, correct hem as quickly as possible; and if you cannot correct the situation, if there is no way to correct it, and you see that it is making you sick, simply move out of it. Do not try to find escape by dulling your senses.

If we find that we cannot enjoy the average normal functions of the body without continual minor medications, then either there is something wrong with our health, or there is something wrong with our psyche and either of these conditions must be cured or at least corrected as much as possible.

In most cases it is hardly necessary to go to a doctor because the situations represent only psychic stress. If after you have made a series of good personal adjustments, the condition remains, then it may be well to consult your doctor. The beginning, however, is always to do the thing you realize right now you should be doing. Most people know what is wrong with them they just will not face it.

And in order to forget, they use every conceivable means. What we need to do is remember, and while we still have the courage to do it. This will be hard on the pill manufacturers, but it will certainly be a great saving to the individual and a great enrichment to the future.

Unless we solve some of these problems we are going to have a very poor heritage to pass on. We have no way of knowing yet what all this doping and drugging is actually going to mean in terms of heredity.

Cure the cause and the effect will die of itself. You will have better health, freedom from stress and vitality and courage you have never before experienced.

Live and Learn.  We All Do.

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Filed under: Health and Fitness, Philosophy, wellness Tagged: anxiety, god, health, healthy, medication, nervous, pain, philosophy, Self-Help, sick, wellness

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What Are People For A World That Does Not Need Their Labor?

One of the tragedies of humanity is artificiality. Having attempted to take over the leadership of our own kind, we have placed human beings under the guidance or dominance of man rather than the intuitional power that is locked within consciousness. Little by little we have simply exiled Diety from its place of existence.

We use the word God, we attend places of worship but still in most of our conduct we are man-governed rather than nature governed. We are rules by laws we created. We follow habits and policies, which we have fashioned, and we lose the tremendous advantage that comes from living close to the facts of existence.

There is no such thing as an atheist in space; there is only a locked mind trying to be an atheist in the midst of a divinely administered plan. There is no such thing as injustice in the universe; there is only us, creating concepts which result in injustice, and then plaguing ourselves with the consequences of our own invention. To be unhappy has become a habit with us. To be miserable has become our inevitable destiny.

We try to estimate the incredible wisdom that maintains the order of the stars. We can hardly dare to think about the infinite chemistry of space. Yet with all the skill and knowledge that we have today, we still discover every day that the universe is greater than we ever suspected. We go through it and on into it, step by step, with a strange faith that it is lawful.

If it were not for the fact that we believe in the law of space, we could not send our astronauts out. We calculate their journeys according to laws that we believe are true, and we did not make those laws. Yet we depend on them, because if they were false our astronauts would never come home. We have to believe in a universe in which infinite integrity is everywhere forever manifested. Our whole scientific world and our most exact patterns of thought are based upon this.

Happiness does not arise from copying other people because the things that make them happy might make us miserable. There has to be a universal happiness- something infinitely beyond the individual patterned pleasures which we recognize; and this happiness is the freedom of life in itself.

Perhaps, having gradually lost our positive experience of things being right, we do not know how to revive it, how to make it alive in us; and instinctively, having set up the habit of unhappiness and we carry it along with us through the years.

We can recognize that most of the way through life we are in the presence of difficult situations, and this is especially true of young people growing up in the present generation. Children growing up fifty or sixty years ago had a little better sense of happiness than the young people of today. Of course, you cannot generalize completely, for there were miseries at every period of history; but young people in the last generation or two before the great cycle of wars and depressions that have upset us, grew up, in a certain security which we do not know anymore.

Their ambitions had less pressure; they had more leisure time; they played more in those years when play was proper for them. They were not attempting to assume great responsibilities while they were still in their teens, and the educational theory was not filled with pressure as it is today.

Young people today do not have very much legitimate expression of simple, honest fun. Nearly every bit of fun we have now is costly, and perhaps detrimental to others. It has become more and more destructive. We have lost the simple pleasures.

So what is it that can produce for us this continuing state of contentment and inner joy? The obvious answer is that the person to have this must live in a world of light, beauty, of appreciation and affection. We must realize that the great value of our affection is not that we are loved, but that we love, that happiness is not the result of what others due for us but the result of the dynamic expression of our own divinity. It is the expression of our own spiritual strength to be right, and this alone can bring us to the solid sense that we are cooperating with the universe, and that we are true to God, and that we are working constructively with our fellow men and women.

Once we have even a slight experience that there is a better life, a better consciousness that right here and now we are divided only by the wall of our own attitudes from a situation infinitely better than anything we have ever known. Once we really know this, we are inevitably moved to cultivate it. It becomes our duty, and it is also our privilege.

The thing is though, that each person must come to the decision on their own. Are you going to follow the rules which lead to happiness, and be happy; or are you going to follow those rules which lead to misery; and be miserable? We cannot come to any end without a decision relating to the end with which we seek.

The tendency today, however, is to drift with the main body of human society, to assume that this large collective drifting is the only thing that can be done. Whatever be the styles of the time, those must be our styles; whatever be the policies they must be our policies; because if we try to stand as individuals in this collective situation, we seem to be penalized. Yet the universe did not labor for millions of years to create a human being with nothing but a herd instinct.

A hundred years ago, we had much more individuality than we have today, but the gradual integration and organization of our economic theory has worked a hardship on individuality. The direction in which our educational theory has gone has also worked a hardship on individuality, and we are constantly struggling now to produce conformity. This conformity we accept as so natural and inevitable that we do not even try to resist it. This might not be so bad if the conformity were getting us anywhere, but it is not.

If out of this conformity we came to anything resembling peace or happiness we might excuse it. We might say, “Well by following these rules, we can be well-adjusted people, therefore why not follow them” others have followed them and are happy, so we might as well. But what we really say today if we think for a moment is “others follow these rules and are miserable; therefore, we will follow them too and hope that we will be happy”. We cannot hope to win this way; the odds are too heavy. There is no winning, only various degrees of losing. If we are a slow loser we consider ourselves fortunate, if we are a fast loser than we consider ourselves less fortunate.

But we are all going to lose unless we depart from a policy which has loss built into it as an inevitable. Somewhere along the line, individuals must regain certain individual rights, and these rights do not necessarily have to produce physical complications.

Actually, the rights that are important do not interfere with those of other people. We can cultivate them without doing damage to our neighbor or our friend. And if we do not do something that is better than what we are doing, we will do damage to our neighbors, our friends, and our world. We will create situation that we ourselves cannot endure.

Live and Learn.  We All Do.

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Filed under: Culture, Philosophy, Spirituality Tagged: consciousness, god, happiness, humanity, nature, soul

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