Exercises - Activity--Nutrition--Environment--Inner Feeling

Salt Lake City Workshop 6/69 (tape 18)
(audience participation in parenthesis)
[brackets for clarification]

"All completed phenomenon of the universe are the expression of law including the present state of being of each individual."

Everything is in a state of balance or balancing, things are only like they could be-the only way they can be at this moment; and it says instead of going and complaining, "Why is it this way, and "Why did this have to happen." It says, "What can we do about it." We've got to start here. And you can't start from here and get there instantly. Here and now, the way things are at this moment, is the only place we can start when we see that-things are in balance, And then we can begin to make some kind of an arrangement in ourselves to change it.

One has a state of being, {which is what everybody is concerned about--this is the person's state of being) and it's just like it has to be for this moment. And on the other side we would have environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition. Now all of these are available which we have considerable control over, do we not? These are all variables that we have considerable control over.

Environment

So, let's say I live in an environment. I've got me a free piece of land down in the swamp in Louisiana with alligators, mosquitoes, obnoxious gases from rotting vegetation and so forth. It won't feel too good for me down there-and I'm very apt to be feverish 'cause there's too much toxin in the material. So I could start with that environment. One of the first things I would want to do is to turn that towards optimum. So I'd move out of there right quick. And I would begin to return my environment towards optimum. We know, each of us, what kind of weather we feel best in--what kind of surroundings we feel best in. Now some people feel much much better here on the seashore and some people don't like the seashore-they're desert rats. But either way, you can artificially change your environment. If you live here, you can still put dehumidifiers in the house; and you can still warm it up a little bit-thank goodness. So you can return it more towards what's optimum for you.

Inner Feeling

The inner feeling. If I'm in a state of anxiety, I'm worried about bills, I'm worried about all the things I've made important, and I've made several hundred things important, then my state of being is going to be far less than desirable to me; and so then it behooves me to begin to return my inner feeling toward optimum.

Activity

Then if my activity is such that I only sleep a couple of hours a night. I carouse on the beach all day, and I spend quite a bit of time in the bar boozin' it. I don't do any of the other fundamentals like taking a bath once in a while. My activity is apt to be less than optimum, and my state of being wouldn't be optimum even though the other three are fairly good. So then again, it would be necessary to return it towards optimum-this is under my control. It's something I have dominion over.

Nutrition

Nutrition is what I'd eat. It will be less than optimum if I eat a lot of starch and sweets; and I don't eat reasonably what my body calls for; but just stuff it up with something every time I feel a wee bit hungry, or it's just the time to eat. Most of us can tell what's adequate for us. X seems to tell us to go get a piece of beef or to go get an apple, or to go get an orange, or you can get real hungry for snails or whatever it may be-X has learned in the past what has the proper element for you today.

A pregnant woman can find herself starving for a piece of chocolate because it has some calcium carbonate in it which she can very well use. So if you get the nutrition benefits far from optimum, you can return towards optimum for the state of being.

Now it says man has dominion over all things, and aren't these aspects all the things that affects your life practically? So this we do have dominion over. Now I don't have dominion over what time the tides come in, and the tides go out. I do not have dominion over what time the sun comes up and what time the sun goes down. I don't have dominion over when it rains; but the things that concern me, I do have dominion over.

And I don't have dominion over you 'cause you really don't affect me unless I make it that way.

So over these four things we have dominion, and if we use our intelligence and practice them-and any person who does-that person can be in a state of being that is desirable to them. Who are we to say what's desirable for the other guy?

Now what is the percentage of each one of these. We have no way of knowing. We do know that the inner feeling is the kingpin. Is it 70% 10%, 10%, 10%? I don't know. Is it 97%, 1%, 1%, 1%. I don't know. But we do see that the inner feeling colors all the rest of it.

In other words I could live in a beautiful home; but what I really want is to live in the desert in an adobe shack 'cause I just can't stand this old stiff formal house. It's just too pretty for me. So I would be very uncomfortable about it, and so my inner feeling would color the environment.

The activity. I can be doing something that would ordinarily be considered very worthwhile-exercise-walking for instance; but I say, "Oh my gosh, I've got to walk." "Ugh, walk again?" and I can make a big mess out of that. So my inner feeling colors the activity.

Nutrition is also likewise. No matter what you come up with, your inner feeling colors your attitude about what you have to eat.. And you can get all concerned about that.

So we have these four that we definitely have dominion over which are the four things that very concretely affect our well-being--our state of being.

(So if your health goes, the percentage of nutrition might be very important.)

We don't know what they are

(If they let themselves go.)

If you didn't bother to eat, then suddenly it would become all important, wouldn't it? We're saying comparative ratio--we don't know what they are. Let's say they are 97%, 1%, 1%, 1%--or that they're 70%, 10%, 10%, 10%. Definitely, inner feeling colors all the rest of them. So if we see this and we can get it across to anyone else that we work with, then we are saying what?
"I am responsible for my state of being."
"I have dominion over these four things, and they very definitely control how my state of being will be."

If I'm responsible for them, then I am free to use them in any way I see fit. Now if I want to destroy myself by paying no attention to this and just go on mechanically, I can sure do so. But if I wish to pay attention to them, exercise my dominion over my environment, my inner feeling, my activity, my nutrition, then I can have the state of being that I would like-the one that's desirable to me. And when we take care of that, then we have come up with seeing that balance is the law that we live by-that we can have charge, and you can have the state of being that you would find desirable to you. Does that make sense to you?

We are saying that we are not subject to chance, like suggestions from the TV or insurance salesman that "you don't know when you're going to get sick"-you know very well when sickness is going to happen if you want to observe it. Any question?

This is to allow us to see that we are responsible; and we are the only ones who can be responsible. What are we responsible for?-for ourselves.

So the state of being is our responsibility. It's different for each individual. What is optimum for me? Obviously if you were working sitting at a desk and I was out on a farm working in the hot sun, then our nutritional requirements would not be the same. This is where each of us are responsible to figure out our own optimum. Some require 8 or 9 hours of sleep at night. Others, if you try to keep them in bed 8 hours would "buck" and I'm one of them. And that would not be optimum for me at all to spend 8 hours in a bed. Maybe it would be optimum for you. Each individual has dominion over his own environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition, and can determine this optimum by his own functioning which very quickly tells you if it's optimum for you or not, doesn't it? Your own announcement from the body tells you whether it's optimum for you or not. Stick your finger on a hot burner on the stove and see how quick you know that's not an optimum place for your finger to be.

(I've read all the books about how many hours of sleep a person should have.)

I said, you find out for YOU, not from a book. If you go to a book to find this out, you are denying the only place you could possibly get it-it's within. The next principle will bear this one out. If you're going to a book, forget it!

(I tried what the book said.)

That'll kill you. That's not you-you are not a machine, you don't say well you put cleaning gasoline and 30 weight oil in it. That's not the way it works. It's up to you. You have the dominion and also the necessity and responsibility to inquire into for yourself.

When you accept suggestion from a book, that leads to misinformation, misconception, prejudice and preconceived opinions which are a bar to understanding self. So, you probably got kind of "ticked" did you not when you took all kinds of suggestion from what that book said that you tried . So if you use the same amount of time you did reading that book, on observing you, then you'd have far more information that related to you than all the books do. We are capable of having observation and running experiments which are inquiries for ourselves.

But instead we generally go to the books, and say, "Now let's see. It says here that this is a "wing ding" thing". You eat chie seed and you're gonna feel wonderful. So I ran into a guy down in Los Angeles about a year ago that was eating a half pound of chie seed a day. He had a heart attack. He thought this book was really gonna fix him up, huh? Chie seed. "They grow in Mexico; and oh, they're wonderful". "They're a marvel". "The better heath food stores have them, and they're supposed to prevent you from having cholesterol in your blood stream and they'll keep you from having heart attacks, and they're the next thing to Ponce De Leon's fountain of youth-Chie seed". That's what the man said. It was right there on the label, but he died of a heart attack

All completed phenomena have four interrelated factors, none of which can be called cause/effect". So we could take the ones we just looked at-all these are balanced in everyday living-environment-inner feeling-nutrition and activity. They're all interrelated. If you take any one of them out, you're going to feel pretty miserable-you take all four of them away from optimum and you're going to be like the usual person we see walking the streets of North America. You get all four of them away from optimum and you'll see the usual bedraggled, below par person that you see walking the streets everywhere. Any one of the four is involved with the others and each one relates to the other one. If you have very poor nutrition, it would be very difficult for you to have a desirable inner feeling, would it not? You're nervous. You're jittery just from plain malnutrition-a decided calcium shortage in anyone's food intake will produce a highly-nervous individual. You could talk to him from now on, but if he doesn't return that portion of his being towards optimum, he's still going to be jittery because his nervous system is out of balance.

If a person lived in a swamp or in an extremely noisy city or very dirty place-his inner feeling is not going to be quite up to par. Even yours gets disturbed by the hi-fis up and down your block, huh? Or is it that coming from your inner feeling which is on edge and upset. Anyway, they're related, huh?

So these are interrelated factors and it's not optimum to get concerned with just one. We sometimes tell the story about the 5 blind guys that were asked to describe an elephant-each only felt one aspect of it.

[from Marsha As I remember the story, five blind men were asked to describe an elephant. One was standing by the trunk and described the elephant from what he could feel from the elephant's trunk. One blind man was standing by the tail and described the elephant from that aspect. One was sitting on the elephant, one by the ear and one by the leg. So each had a different piece of the puzzle, but none could see the completed picture of the elephant to give an accurate description]

So it is well to be observing all aspects--to consider and tell a story of all these four interrelated factors. In other words tell about them in your everyday life. Now in the area which we live most people's environment is pretty reasonable-you would think their nutrition was, but it isn't. Basically it's too high starch 99% of the time. Their activity is possibly anything but up to par because they run, run, run, run, run-busy, busy, busy, busy, busy-nobody ever sits down and just relaxes and does nothing. You can't go out here and just watch the water run at the beach, you gotta do something. Now you can go surfing, that's all right; or you can hold a fishing pole. But if you just go out there and sit down, they'll call that officer with the little blue flasher and he'll come down and say, "What are you doing?" "What are you doing, neighbor?" And he'll take you around quite a bit to inquire about that too. People just sittin' and doin' nothin'-they're rather suspect, huh? There's something wrong with them. So you can't have that.

Describe what your day is like from the standpoint of your environmental strains, you're inner feeling activity (worries and noises and aggravations and etc.) and then describe what you eat every day, and your activity for about a week. Look at them. Ask yourself if you think it's optimum-the best it could possibly be? This brings it to your attention very well. It gets you thinking on it. And you are responsible and do have dominion over these four things and only you know the optimum.

When you understand how the law of four operates it relieves a lot of the struggles that you can go through with trying to analyze, and worrying about causes/effects.

There is the principal that says that the action, which is called Life Function, is the sign of the balancing activity which is called Adaptation. It is not creative action, it's just living our vicious cycle which is what we experience when we are not aware of activity, environment, nutrition and inner feeling--it's according to how you use it. This balancing state from Life Principal is always perfect for here and now without regard as whether it is desirable or undesirable to the usual human awareness and physical body.

Now we judge it as to whether it's pleasant or unpleasant to me, not whether it is balance or not.

So suppose we could think in terms of balance rather than sensations for just about a week.

Wonder how it would be if we could think in terms of balance for a week rather than in terms of good or bad-opposites for instance, huh? Then would you see sick people or would you see people that had let optimum slip in their environment, inner feeling, activity, nutrition-one or more? Which would you see Joseph?

We can see that the problem is lack of information and misinformation about keeping one in optimum which would be exercising one's dominion over all things that relates to one, huh? Environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition-you see people that have given up their dominion and are unaware they've ignored the forces of Universal Intelligence which is always balancing-so by not taking dominion over those four, adaptation in the form of unusual behavior or unusual cellular activity is required to maintain the balance, is it not? Would that be what you would see? Given time, it will have them straightened out, huh? Sometime it will have them straightened out in the form of physical death.

So now would you see sick people and well people, or would you see people who had given up dominion over the things that they have dominion over-environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition.

(They would be in some state of out of balance.)

No they're already balanced, but that's for the amount of dominion they gave up. They're in perfect balance right now for the amount of dominion they gave up. You always have to take that one little thing into consideration. The amount that he just turned over to the environment and said, "Let'er rip-I'm not interested, huh," or that he was misinformed and thought he ought to get it from some book, magazine or somewhere else at some other time.

We have the principle that the adaptation indicates the work of an intelligence of a very high order. Being an unknown factor but one that action can be observed, it can be called the Life Principal, biological factor, the spiritual factor or X.

This is where you can begin to realize your relation to the universe--your aspect of it--and you begin to have a true spiritual understanding.

How do you go about it? You start with simple things like your state of being--what you have been given dominion over-you can have the picture of man along with you to get some understanding.

Draw the picture of man and see what you can use it for. Now this is beginning to put the responsibility back where it belongs, huh? All the blaming's gone-now I'm doing this-and this is the greatest approach to freedom for any individual there is-I'm doing it. I am doing how I'm handling the environment. I'm doing the way I'm handling the inner feeling, the activity and the nutrition. You are taking up your dominion. You are taking on your responsibility.

A Great Teacher said, "Take up your cross and follow me". Which is another way of expressing the four aspects of balance. Take up the things you have dominion over and follow me. I've taken full charge for all these things over me. I've accepted dominion. If you want to follow Me and work with Me, you must pick up responsibility for your environment, things that you are responsible for-your control over your environment-inner feeling-activity and nutrition. We drew it on the cross. It's just as easy to draw it that way. Take up this and follow Me. Take up your cross and follow Me-the cross is used as the symbol of man-the four aspects of man-the environment, the inner feeling, the activity and nutrition. You are responsible whether you like it or not..

It is a very perfect symbol of man-the four aspects-it's the completed phenomena of a man-and so if you're going to be a co-worker, you pick it up and come along. Now you and Life Principal work together. You're going to be responsible. You're going to accept dominion over you're environment, you're inner feeling, you're activity and you're nutrition. You're not going to blame the husband, you're not going to blame the wife, you're not going to blame the children, you're not going to blame the government, you're not going to blame the establishment, you're not going to blame the weather-you start doing something about it. I'm here and I can do something about all four of these.

(It's What can I do?)

You do what you have dominion over. You can't change yourself, but you have responsibility to observe and know enough so that you're inner feeling "that you put yourself in" is a desirable state of environment to you for the purpose of which you are interested. You are responsible for every action from the wiggling of your little "pinkie" on up, right?--and for your nutrition.

So when you work on these, then you have accepted you're dominion. Without it, what do you have dominion over, if you come to think of it? And what would you need dominion over? You don't have dominion over the tides-over the sun rising and setting-how much the sun is gonna shine a given day. You certainly don't have dominion over what other people are going to do. You don't have dominion over the seasons. But you do have dominion over everything that relates to your life-you. Environment--inner feeling-activity--nutrition. That you do have. And this is the one we turn away and go ask everybody else to have dominion over-and blame everybody else for having dominion over. Is that about correct?

Is that about how it is?

You're state of being is determined by how much responsibility we've taken for it, or how much dominion you take.

From "Place of Language in the Teachings."

Cause and Effect - Blaming "that" for "this." Looking for a cause ignores other causes which also "caused"---thus not really a cause but part of a chain of relationships.
Relationships - that which exists between everything based upon the Four Forces of BALANCE.
Balance - Universal Law which can never be broken.
The Four Forces - Initiative-Resistance-Form-Result
[This teaching idea comes from my teacher through Donna Lancaster.
If you would like to receive her newsletter which reiterates our teacher's material, you can contact her at donnalancaster@hillsboro.net.
Meanwhile, here is some material from our teacher that I didn't have.