Workshop - Fountain Valley Workshop on 3-19-84 - Part 1
Since this Workshop transcription came out to almost 19,000 words, it is included here in two continuing parts for the facility of loading these pages. There is no particulat relevance or topic to each page as it just continues from one page to the next via the links at the end. As always I have edited minimally in some instances for clarification - Marsha
[This workshop came from Dr. Chuck Kerr who attended the workshop at that time and bequeathed them to me upon his death in 2012.]
What are we going to do today? I’m sure everybody came expecting wonders and marvels, and so we will disappoint you thoroughly. (Laughter)
Today I think we will talk about health, (That will take care of you, won’t it Beryl?).
(Yes, that will take care of me.
………wealth (That will take care of everybody.)
………….Love (Which we’ll make a little different.)
………and time to enjoy them -- time to enjoy health, wealth, love and time to enjoy all three of them long enough. How long would it take? I don’t know; but anyway if you want 100 years, why we’ll try to take it in that direction. If you want 500, we’ll try to do it that way.
So first off we will say that we’re not going to tell you “how” to get any of these because they are the natural states of man if he had no obstructions within him. So what we will talk about is the obstruction to health, wealth, love and time to enjoy them. Now most of us love our obstructions so well that we’ll continue to use them.
But in case you could give up one of those joyful things you carry around that keeps you from having them, you’d find that the natural state would occur. Health is a natural state of being of the human being. It’s just as natural as it could be if you don’t put obstructions in the way. So would you like to talk about some of the obstructions to health for a little while? Esther would you like that all right?
(Yeah, I need to find out what those are.)
What the obstructions are. But would you give them up in case we laid them out.
(Maybe not.)
More than likely not. So I’m never working for results. We only lay it out. You do what you want to with it, ok? So I will, at least, give you some of the obstructions—the most common ones that we have around.
The most common one is trying to be healthy. (Laughter) That’s the biggest obstructions there is to health. Now did you ever go around a health food store, for instance, and watch the customers come in buying health foods—very sick bunch of people I’ve noticed. They get sicker by the week. So that’s not the way to do it, and it’s not something that you do to try to be healthy. Every time you work being healthy you’re putting an obstruction in it.
Now health is the natural state, we said, and anytime you go to work on it will stop it. Now one of the good things you do when you’re trying to be healthy is you worry about your health, is that right Esther?
(Yes.)
You don’t mind being my front man today, do you Esther? You got up here in front and asked for it. Esther is a dear sweet friend who’s been around for a long, long time and she’s very good at worrying about health states—not only her own, but especially for the family, is that right?
(Yep!)
And when she goes somewhere she takes a case in the front seat—ice, and all the medical supplies just in case she or some of the family get sick on the road. One day she ran into a ditch and lost the whole thing.
So “worry” is a state wherein one is utterly concerned and fills oneself of a lot of “anxieties”. Now anxiety is a disintegrating factor in man. Another obstacle is you read lots of good health articles—you know....the ones about “disease”. Now you know there are two words that are commonly mixed up. One is dis-ease which means you’re not at ease (which is a natural state) that tells you you’re goofing off a little bit, you should check up on your lifestyle a bit.
The other word is disease which doesn’t exist. It’s a twist of that word dis-ease; but disease is supposed to have a name. So there’s arthritis, lumbago, diabetes, and you can go on and on for thousands of names of diseases. There isn’t a one of them because disease does not exist except in terminology.
So if you got a diagnosis of arthritis, you’ve said “artho-i-tus”. “Artho” is a joint. “Itus” is an inflammation. So now you could have a condition of having an inflamed joint, but that’s only a sign that you’re doing something that’s aggravating the body a bit. And a diagnosis has made people believe over the years that there’s all sorts of terrible diseases up there on the ceiling just floating around, and they’re looking down here on us, and one picks out a certain person and says, “That person looks good” and they bite you. So then you have “caught” it or it “attacked” you or better still, “you were a victim of it.” You hear it all the time—she was a victim of cancer; and so you hear that people are victims of this and victims that condition. And so as long as you feel you are a victim of something, there’s not much you’re going to do about it I assure you because there is nothing to do about it—you just wait until that terrible things decides to fly back up in the sky again where it came from.
But that’s not the case, so let’s stick around and see that there are only obstructions to well-being. There is trying to be healthy, worrying about health, and believing that diseases do attack us. Now I was taught all that stuff like the rest of us were, but some way or other we can look at it and see. Do you kind of think they’re liable to attack you Esther?
(Yes.)
Yes, they’re just liable to fly down and attack -- so that’s believing in diseases. I think you spell that "dizeases". I think it’s kind of dizzy, so we’ll spell it with a “Z”. Dis-ease not being at ease is a very natural state we all understand—like disappointment and so on.
Now we will put up four factors here, so we will put up the things that are at work and things that you can check up on. These factors are: “Environment”, “Inner Feeling”, “Activity” and “Nutrition”. Now none of those do you need to be a “faddist” about. We all have these. We all live in an environment of a certain kind or state—usually of our own making. We all have inner feelings of one sort or other every minutes of the day or night. We have some sort of activity, and we all have some sort of nutrition.
Now on the other side we have a “state of being”. Now your state of being is how you’re getting along today. You feel fine, up in Adam, ready to go or else you’re dragging a wee bit, or you have pains, or you have disintegration parts here there and elsewhere, huh Esther—something falling apart? Now they’re always in exact balance to these four factors over here—or we say they are balancing to it very quickly.
Now, there is no reason to be a faddist on any of these. Environmental stresses do come. We get extremely cold sometimes. We get extremely hot suddenly and we, of course, want to be comfortable so we try to change it instantaneously. We are exposed to little bugs of various sorts that float around out here, but we can all adapt to those if we allow ourselves a few minutes time—literally four or five days, you can throw off most any bug if you don’t get too excited about it and start pouring a bunch of toxic chemicals in your body to make it go away at once.
We’ve talked about one of the first things that everybody has is the “unconscious purpose of living” and that is to be totally non-disturbed at every moment; and if you’ve ever observed or checked up on it, you’d discovered that it doesn’t work. We live in a world of happenings; and so every once in a while you have a little disturbance, is that right? The doorbell rings at the wrong moment, the phone rings at the wrong time, the weather changes; it rains the day you wanted to do something in the sunshine and so on--and the body requires adapting to various changes in the environment. Now adaptation produces an unusual sensation. And most of the unusual sensations we have we call pain, and we want it to stop right quick.
So when you go to the drugstore, you find there are rows and rows of counters full of pain control substances—chemicals. And of course, a lot of people take great gobs of them.
It’s obviously one of the big businesses; and if you wish to have a good stock that makes the money buy drug stocks. Now I didn’t say take the product. So you will be a little uncomfortable now and then, but if you take the medication, you will be uncomfortable much longer.
So, let’s enjoy ourselves a little bit. Now the “Inner Feeling” of peace or serenity or joy is very healthy. The body functions fantastically when it’s that way; but if I’m angry, if I’m worried, if I’m anxious, if I’m fretful, if I’m upset, I am constantly feeling that everybody in the world, besides me, is a terrible person. I have a friend who everybody he mentions is a “stupid bastard”. So his world is full of stupid bastards; and consequently he feels pretty miserable most of the time.
My world is full of very nice people. I don’t know where they came from and really don’t care. I don’t know where all you folks came from this morning, and I really don’t care; but I’m glad you’re here because, to me, you’re all very nice people and you have proven it over and over through the years past. So my world is populated with pretty nice wonderful people. Now some are boring at times and so on, but we need to be bored now and then so we get sleepy. And so we have an inner feeling here and there that all is peaceful and serene which will get us into the word “Love” after a while.
Now “Activity” is based upon doing nothing excessively—that’s about all I could say about activity. I tell people my idea of activity is if I don‘t have to move, stand still. If I don’t have to stand, sit down. If I don’t have to sit, lay down. But I really do move around a little more than that; but I’m not into jogging 26 miles--I will assure you. And if a big old weight is laying there with a bar through the middle of it, it looks fine right there where it is. (Laughter) I have no objection to it laying there. I don’t have any intention to grab it and get it up in the air. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just I don’t feel any compulsion to do it—that’s the whole bit.
And so “activity” is that you’ve moved every muscle and joint in the body at least once today—it’ll probably get along pretty good. Now you may think that sounds a bit strange and think you do, but I’m sure that many of us have joints and muscles that haven’t been moved in months. We might have worked real hard at something. We might have even been down to the gym and pushed those iron bars and worked the machines, but there are still a lot of muscles and joints you haven’t moved.
Sometimes a real good stretch comes near doing it more than anything else. So stretching, you have an impulse to do when you wake up—sometimes—most of us think of it and it goes away; but if you do, you kind of have a tendency to want to stretch. I grew up on a farm and when you unhitched or unsaddled the horses after the work day, they went out and rolled and rolled on the ground. So any time that we’ve been inactive for a while, we can remember to move a little bit--we don’t have to go into extremes.
Now for “Nutrition”. If you allow yourself to become hungry which very few of us have ever experienced—really—we eat because we’ve been conditioned that it’s time to eat. We eat because it looks good. We eat for a number of reasons; but few of us have ever allowed ourselves to really be hungry. But if you’re really hungry, you find you’re hungry for something; and if you eat that, you got pretty good nutrition. The body, X, Life in the body knows far more what you need than all the books in the health food stores or the grocery stores or the best restaurants. And I found that if you will allow yourself to be hungry which means you go without food (in most of our cases) for 24 hours, you’ll get hungry. Now most of us have never been hungry.
We’ve had cravings, and we call that hunger. We see a beautiful sweet roll in the window or on a plate. Yesterday I saw a beautiful pastry on a plate. I took it. It wasn’t because I was hungry, I wasn’t. But it was a pretty roll, so I had a craving for the sweet roll. It was a real good one, and I enjoyed it and all that -- but I was not hungry for it or anything else at that moment; but it looked good, so I had a craving.
Now let’s don’t’ confuse cravings with hunger. When you are hungry you definitely know it, and you’re hungry for something—sometimes two or three things. When you’re hungry, that’s what you eat and you’ll have pretty good nutrition. But if you just eat because you have a craving for this pretty food or that pretty food or something that titillates you a little bit, you’ll probably have lousy nutrition.
So if environment, nutrition and activity are somewhere toward optimum—now let’s not confuse ourselves by talking about being “there” because that would be an ideal. We’re talking about optimum—most favorable, ok? And most of our environments are a little better than optimum if we care to look around at it. We can alter the temperature within a fairly narrow band so we don’t get any extremes. We live with the ability of heat and air conditioning, right? We live in southern California or somewhere where the environment outside is pretty good—a little dirt—but we adapt to dirt. That’s an easy one, don’t worry about that.
Now our “inner feeling” is usually in a bit of turmoil if you have noticed. If it isn’t about one thing, it’s about something else. People call me with wanting certain things sometimes. I have fun producing these little phenomena now and then’ and so they want a certain event to happen, and I do my best to arrange for it to happen which is fairly simple. Now as soon as it happens for them, they immediately become very anxious about something else they’re afraid won’t happen or that they want it to quit happening. So what’s the difference, you might as well have stayed anxious about the first one—that right?
So our inner feeling is the area of which we who live in this country of abundance usually keep in the biggest turmoil. We have every conceivable thing to be anxious about, right Esther? You got gobs of them?
(Gobs of them.)
All you got to do to be anxious is to set up an “ideal” or believe that you know what “ought to be”. Now is there anybody here that will admit that they “don’t know” what ought to be? No hands up. See everybody knows exactly what ought to be right down the line—that right? And the minute we set up that big ought to be, peace of mind has gone. Serenity has gone because if we remotely have it, we become anxious that we’ll lose it. If we don’t have it, we’re very anxious to get this where it ought to be. Now this is the greatest misconception that man has.
So were going to talk a little bit about man’s misconceptions. It’s not being “weirdo” to have misconceptions; so let’s look at it freely. Then we might be able to do something about it. If you go on the defensive and say, “I’ve never done that.” you won’t get anything out of it. So let’s take a look-see.
First thing we all “want” is to be non-disturbed. That’s the whole purpose of living is to be non-disturbed. Now that is a misconception. If you could no longer feel pain, for instance, do you think that would be a desirable state of being? You’d be in a very dangerous precarious position. It would be like the days of old where you’d have to have a “taster” around to taste the food to be sure it wasn’t poisoned and touch everything to see that it wasn’t contaminated. If you picked up something hot, you’d never know it until you smelled fresh meat cooking. You have a hot handle in your hand and you just burn a hole through there.
So if we ate something that was a little tainted, you wouldn’t get nauseated and upchuck. If you didn’t get it out of you, you’d just go la-de-da along until you fell over dead. So to be totally without being disturbed is the biggest misconception we all have by thinking that the purpose of living is to be non-disturbed--a very great misconception; but we all think we ought to go along constantly with no disturbances. Is that right?
The first method we use of trying to obtain that non-disturbance is if we complain enough we can get non-disturbance. We think everybody will do what we want them to if we just complain enough. Now complaining works wonderfully for a little baby. I was around a little tiny one yesterday and when he complains, everybody jumps to take care of it. But is anybody jumping to take care of your complaints lately? (Laughter) Has anybody jumped to take care of your little complaints or do they kind of ignore you? I’ve observed that when someone complains to get their way right now that it only brings complaints from the one they are complaining to. So complaining is a state of anxiety—if you choose to see it properly—and every time you’re complaining, you’re being anxious. Now have you complained any time this past week because things didn’t go your way? Esther, did you have any?
(Oh yes.)
How about you Darlene, do you complain a little bit too?
(Seldom.)
Seldom, very seldom. How about you?
(Right there.)
Right there. How about you?
(Definitely.)
You complain. Did it change anything? Not a thing in the world except it made it more tedious around there, is that right?
(Yes.)
Now surely we could begin to discover that complaining doesn’t work. It worked real well for most of us for two years—the first two years after we were born; and since then, it hasn’t worked at all, but we still go on and use it because it worked at 6 months—we still go on and do it. We do our complaining, but it hasn’t changed anything except make it more irritating; and we are upset when we’re doing it, is that right.
(Oh yes.)
That’s worry and upset. So there’s one of the big obstructions to well-being right here. The inner feeling is always complaining.
The next one is stick up for rights. The person “sticks up for “my” rights.” Now have you done that any time this week? Have you done any of that in the last week? You? You? You? Stick up for your rights?
Now when we choose to look at it, we have no rights. We have a lot of privileges, but whenever you mistake a privilege for a right, you lose the privilege very quickly if you’ve noticed. That about right? Why mistake a privilege for a right and start sticking up for it—I’ve discovered that I lose the privilege.
(Yes, it works that way………I don’t always see it though.)
Well, how about starting to see it. You’re an intelligent person. You can see what works and what doesn’t work huh? None of us go out and pour water in the gas tank of our car hoping it will run on water.
(No, I don’t do that.)
You don’t do that. Is it any different? Our well-being doesn’t run on anxiety, worries, anger---you know when you’re sticking up for your rights, you’re a little angry or ticked off if you want to put it that way. You’re annoyed, is that right?—mad, angry.
(I used to.)
So that’s sticking up for your rights.
Now as long as we do that, it’s equivalent to pouring water in the gas tank and hoping it’ll run. Now you’re old enough and intelligent enough to not go out and pour 5 gallons of water in the gas of your Buick and hope it goes to town.
(That’s true.)
It won’t work, will it? But you go out and pour a bunch of this stuff—meaning complaining and sticking up for rights--in your tank, it won’t be long before you’re on the way to the doctor’s office again. Now, look, I have no objections to people going to the doctor’s office. I ran one for umpteen years and I was glad a lot of people came; but since I’m retired, I can talk about it. Beryl, Dr. Davis won’t blow you off because he’ll be there in the morning for you anyway. It won’t ruin his business.
Three, we try to please everybody. We try to please them, and that’s a very difficult task because I have to think first what I imagine they’d like; and I don’t know, so I get all worried and fretful. Then I begin to think that I’ve done so much, and I’ve tried this and I’ve tried that and they just refuse to be pleased, don’t they? So we can get into a lot of self-pity over that one. That’s a goodie for health.
And then of course, we can try to improve ourselves. That’s a frustration. So that brings about frustration, self-pity, and anger. I’m worried. And then we can do a little bit of blaming; and of course that gives us apathy. When we blame something for how it’s happening—we want to know why---then we blame something over here—outside of us. What we don’t see is that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it as long as we blame it because we have made ourselves into an apathetic state then. So there’s nothing we can do except be apathetic.
So we don’t have to do any of those and all of them are equivalent to pouring water in the gas tank and hoping your car will run.
Now you think there’s anybody here that isn’t intelligent enough to leave the water out of the gas tank? You think there’s any of those here Esther? Or are they all pretty intelligent this morning.
(Well, that’s a factor and it doesn’t work.)
It doesn’t work—it won’t work at all. Now each of us by paying a small bit of attention—that’s all—that’s all it takes is just to pay attention a little bit; and we can see that those methods don’t work—they just create chaos. And possibly we could decide that we’d like to feel good. Now it’s surprising how many people don’t want to feel good because they use not feeling good as their source of attention and their source of being treated a certain way.
You know it started in childhood, if you were feeling good and running around, mama ignored you; but if you scratched your knee or you had a little fever, you became the center of attention; and so until this day a lot of us equate “being loved” with feeling a little “sickly”. Did you ever notice that? If you feel bad, everybody will treat you nice.
So there is environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition and the big one we looked at is inner feeling because that’s the one most of us keep messed up; and the second one is nutrition--we eat because it tastes good or because it looks pretty or because it’s time to eat; and never because we’re hungry. If we allow ourselves to get hungry, we’ll have good nutrition. But I doubt if very many of us will go without food for a few hours and really get hungry.
Have you been real hungry lately Jonvieve? You don’t allow it do you? How about you? You don’t allow it. You’re going to feed it first, ok?
Now we’ve kind of covered that a little bit. We’re talking about inner feeling and we’re talking about health. We’ll get to the wealth situation in a minute, but we’ll slow down here long enough to inquire if there’s a question. Comment, rebuttal, I don’t care; bring it out any way you like. Yes sir, doctor?
(Sometimes I have patients that are too far down in apathy, so you have to give them a kick in the ass before you can even talk to them.)
That’s true, I agree with it. Brother Dave Gardner who was one of my favorite comedians many years ago said, “When a man is down, don’t get down there with him; kick him—it gives him a reason to get up.” I found kicking them works a lot better. Now I don’t literally kick them, but I can be very obnoxious; and that gets them up a wee bit.
Now somebody in apathy, if you get them up to anger--we have a tone scale which you’ve run into somewhere—there is: apathy, fear, held resentment and anger and then we go on above that. So if I can get the apathetic person angry, I’ve got him out of that state you’re talking about—I’m real good at getting people ticked off when I want to. Now I’m a very nice sweet gentle soul ordinarily, but sometimes it requires thinking and it’s necessary to let him or her get real angry with you. Then you’ve got them up far enough you can go to work on them. That answer your question all right, doctor? Get your obnoxious streak out and use it, ok?
(I’d lose a little business that way.)
Well no, they stick around because they got angry and then they started feeling good. So they’re greatly improved if you get them up to anger and out of apathy. No, you don’t lose any business. You only lose business when the patient dies. (Laughter) Dead ones don’t pay bills. I like them to stay alive so they can still pay a bill every now and then—keep them breathing. So I pick on somebody every once in a while and they get real angry, but they also get well. Ok? Now if the guy’s a lot bigger than you it’s sometimes well to stand behind the screen or something.
(I have one more on that line. What about the psychotic.)
Well, I don’t know about you, but when I find one shows up to be psychotic I think, “What doctor do I know that I don’t like real well and I’ll refer them to him.” (Laughter) Pearl used to work that on me, she’d send them to me. I moved so she doesn’t know where I am right now. (Laughter) She sent some “beauts” I’ll tell you. But they all got pretty well, didn’t they? When I’m forced into it, I’ll do it; but I have to be forced into it, ok.
(Once again those people I give medication…..)
It’s your business, but I’m not in the business anymore, so………
(…………that stops the adaptation.)
Oh well, it slows it down. They now have the original condition to adapt to plus the chemical. But that’s all right; it makes them a patient longer. We’re not talking about any opinions here, we’re just talking about how it works—I’m not even suggesting that anybody do anything. We’re only describing how it works and everybody uses it how they want to, ok?
Any other questions? Ok we’ll proceed on to wealth and time to enjoy it.
So now we’ve talked about healthy. We don’t expect that any of you will use it, but at least you know where it is; and you can know that you can decidedly change your state of well-being--whatever degree of it you have--anytime you want to. Now that’s the one that gets there—do you really want to or does it just sound like that would be nice if it could be done without me putting out any effort. Now you see we are responsible only to ourselves. I’m not responsible for anybody else. If you’re hungry, I can cook you a nice dinner and set it down in front of you and maybe you could enjoy it, but I can’t eat it for you—period. So you’re responsible for eating. You could be dying of thirst and I bring you a quart of cold water, but I can’t drink it for you. Only you can drink it. It won’t do you any good until you do. I can sit there and say, “I’ll drink it for you.” Big deal—it won’t do any good, huh? If you need to go to the washroom real bad and I say, “I’m headed that way, I’ll do it for you.” (Laugher) You’ll still be miserable when I get back. So you are responsible, but you see we all want to avoid responsibility. We want to lay it on somebody else. Now if I can lay it on doctor, why, it’ll be fine. And if I don’t get well it’s all your fault—that right? “I went to her and spent my money and she didn’t do a durn thing for me.” So you know we act like somebody else is responsible, but they’re not.
(If you went to a doctor and they took the test and they said that you have cancer; and they have all these tests to show you that you really do have it. Now what are you choices? We’ve heard the one about: I will be a victim only if I am…….)
…..a cancer victim now—I’m a cancer victim—I’ve got it and there’s just no doubt about it, right?
(Suppose you don’t want to play the victim role?)
Well, I would take responsibility to raise myself in the way of living until I was above where cancer affects people. Now we have a number of people around over the country. I don’t treat, heal or cure anything—period! Ok? But they call up and we talk about where they are in their lifestyle and what they can do about it ok? And they go pluppp up there and all these symptoms disappear—leukemia, the whole bit—ok? Now maybe three or four years later they get careless and get back down there again. Do you know what happens? It starts again. We remind them again and they go back there and you know what happens? It goes away.
So the point is are you responsible for making the condition, or was cancer one of those things floating around up there that says, “Oh there’s Susie, I’m going to bite her.” Which is it?
(So you’re responsible for making it?)
And then who’s going to get rid of it? Now sure, a doctor can cut it out. Pearl can give you a remedy which may mask it and cover it away for a while, ok? It’s still there until you change your lifestyle. You see, all symptoms are normal adaptation to some sort of stress. There isn’t any guy out there that’s named cancer that’s sitting up there on the ceiling and says, “Man, just wait until I catch the right one, I’m going to bite them.” They don’t do that. They’re not there.
But if you want out of anything after all the beautiful tests—now when you get those tests back, you got some extra suggestions laid on you. So if you say, “Wait a minute, I’m going to get out of this thing.” Why, you change your lifestyle to where the body no longer has all those stresses that requires that adaptation of cancer.
Obviously we’re not quite through with “health” yet. I’ll draw this out here. Now we had over here a while ago some misconceptions like “you’re always supposed to be comfortable” “disease is something that flops out of the sky and attacks you” and so forth. So here’s the misconception. There’s very few of them and very simple. So we could all find them reasonably quick because they’re about living, not about mathematics or any of that—that won’t hurt you.
And over here you have a false feeling of emergency. This is called the vicious cycle. We have a living one, but this is the vicious one. If you have a misconception then sooner or later—usually much sooner—you will experience various and sundry false feelings of emergency. You feel like something terrible is going to happen or you feel like you’ve been attacked or mistreated; and you’ve got to fight; and you look for every way to resist it. Right? Husband didn’t show up on time, he forgot your birthday or whatever.
When you have a false feeling of emergency, you’re in a state of chemical imbalance and neuromuscular tension. In other words, you’re tense all over and you’re body chemistry is all screwed up because you have a lot of chemicals in the body to prepare you to fight or run but being the civilized lady you don’t fight or run much do you? Hardly ever. So in fight, I doubt you grab your club and go out and start knocking people down, right? And very seldom do you run away like the picture on the front of the gothic novel—in the middle of the night with your candle and your nightgown on. You don’t do that?
So adaptation must begin to take place to restore the body towards chemical balance and neuromuscular tone. Now the adaptation can take one of two directions. The usual one that occurs in reasonably nice people is an unusual cellular activity. A bunch of cells begin to do something--chosen by life in the body--to burn this stuff up—burn up the chemicals that were produced to fight or run from the emergency created by the misconception. Now any unusual cellular activity produces unusual sensation—unusual sensation we call pain. So we have a misconception about that and then we have a false feeling of emergency about the pain or the discomfort. We build up more chemical imbalance, neuromuscular tension—we have to have more of this. Now this goes on. This is called functional disorder. We have no pathology yet—no tissue change. But we keep going around here for a few years and finally there’s tissue cell alteration or a breakdown.
Now you mentioned cancer a while ago. A cancer cell is the cell that’s larger than usual and multiplies more frequently. It makes a tumor—two more where there was only one before. So you have tissue cell alteration and breakdown—the doctor can now find the reason for it. He’s got a pathology, ok? You can examine and find it if you run all the tests and you’ve got these unusual cells. Now you can get a diagnosis.
Do you know what a diagnosis is? What is it?
(That’s where they tell you what it is.)
No. There’s no “what it is”. A diagnosis is from a Greek word—“di’ is prefix referring to two—like diameter and divide and so forth. “Agno” is a root word that refers to I don’t know, like an agnostic. And “osis” means condition of—like tuberculosis—a condition of having tubercles and so on. So it’s a condition of two not knowing. The patient didn’t know and told the doctor. The doctor runs two thousand tests at great expense and told you exactly what you told him before that you’ve got a condition of not feeling very good and it’s got a name now. (Lots of laughter)
Now you’re back here going around the vicious cycle -- going around in circles. So it goes over and over and over; and once you get the diagnosis, now you have a real big misconception that one of these things up here on the ceiling has attacked you. It just chose you at random. It says, “I like her looks and I like what she’s wearing and I like that purple dress and I’m going to attack her.” Bang, there you go! Now you’ve got more and more of the chemical imbalance. Once the person gets a diagnosis of cancer--even though it was false---it’ll produce about everything under the sun because that big old false feeling of emergency more of the anxiety in no uncertain terms, and that gets what?—more chemical imbalance and neuromuscular tension which requires more adaptation and more of tissue cell breakdown. And so we’re on the vicious cycle.
Now the only way off of it is “seeing it like it really is.” Any of you here been diagnosed as cancer and feeling good today? How about you Patrick?
(Yes.)
You did get a bit of that diagnosis, right? And you’re feeling fine? Good. Works out all right, doesn’t it? Get off of the rat race; and you can begin to feel good. Quite a few of us have; but I know a lot of people that haven’t.
So if you go with “this” you’re bound to get there—now do you want the vicious cycle or prefer not to have it.
Now there’s a living cycle and I’ll draw it right quick. It’s very little. Very few people use it—they all use the vicious cycle. That’s why they all die off pretty quick. It is to see things like they are—somewhat see “as is” which gives you a true feeling which gives you chemical balance and neuromuscular tone which doesn’t require any adaptation. It’s a creative action all the time; and it goes around this way. Now the living cycle you can have, but only one person in the world can choose that for you and that’s you. You are responsible for doing it.
Now if you lay it off over here and say, “I’m not responsible, I’m a victim of cancer, it just flipped out of mid-air somewhere and attacked me; and here I am—poor me--and what are you “jerks” going to do about it?” Right? And so there it goes—continuing the vicious cycle.
Ok any other questions?
(How does that apply to children?)
The infants are children. Have you ever been around the little folks very much? They’re pretty upset quite often. They’re pretty upset and somebody else has to be a little responsible to see that they are brought up a little less anxious and with less anxiety around them. I know babies that when they’re around one of their parents they have colic all the time. Keep them away from that parent, and they don’t have colic. If you separate the upset person from around them, they usually do pretty good; but if they have a very upset one, two, or three people around them, they’re going to be pretty upset. They’re very sensitive little folks and they pick up--what a lot of people refer to as--“vibes” around them. All our inner feelings are highly contagious—you’re aware of that are you not? If you’re around somebody who is delighted and having a good time, you tend to lighten up. But if you’re around somebody that’s really heavy and worried what happens?—you have a tendency to go with it—take it on—feel heavy and worried too, is that right?
Now a baby has little defense. I think I can defend myself against these sad sacks, but most of us don’t. And the baby needs to have an environment around people with pretty good feelings or they don’t get along too well, ok? That help answer your question all right sir?
(Dr. Bob we lost a little 1-year-old grandchild two weeks ago with a viral infection.)
That’s possible. That’s an environmental attack. They do come along.
(What about the parent’s feelings?)
Oh, I don’t know, let’s don’t get into that because you’ll go home with a bunch of guilt and struggling. It happened, now we’ll go from there, ok?
Anyway there wasn’t anybody could do anything about the overwhelming viral infection was there? They tried, but that’s it--so everything “was done” that “could be done” and that’s it. And let’s don’t hold on to anything to feel guilty about. You’re good at that anyway. Just say, “Well, it was the grandparents had it.” I’ve had all kinds of people say, “Well, I don’t know what I did?” You didn’t do anything, ok?
(I’ve noticed that certain so called diseases go along with certain attitudes.)
That’s about right. We wrote a tone scale one time that gives tones and it says if you’re in that tone, why it goes with that adaptation. So certain “disorders” or the way of adapting goes with the general tone or habitual inner feeling—the inner feeling that you have—yes--they very definitely are connected because they produce a certain kind of stress.
(Could you do it the other way like certain kinds of cancer held a specific attitude?)
I doubt that. I wouldn’t want to go into it. It’s too much work for too little reward.
(What about viruses.)
I don’t know about those little guys. They’re ornery, I do know that. And I’ve seen pictures of them. They look like little metal sticks. They’re very rigid little characters.
(What about the degenerative diseases?)
Well, that’s what we’ve been talking about all morning—the degenerative disorders. That’s why we wrote up the vicious cycle. That’s the degenerative one. We’re not talking about the cute little things that come along here and there like the flu and so forth.
(What can you do when you’re around others who are in this habitual lower tone or inner feeling?)
Well, you look over at him and say, “That’s your feeling and this is mine.” “I’m going to have a good one you can be in whatever one you want.” Who’s responsible?
Wealth
Now, we’ll talk about wealth for a little while.
Wealth is not necessarily all dollars and cents. We’ll talk about everything that goes into a well-being existence; and without a considerable degree of well-being all the money in the world doesn’t do you too much good because you spend it all on somebody trying to make you feel good—is that the routine? How much do you spend on trying to feel good?
(I wouldn’t even venture a guess.)
You could probably buy an office building for what you’ve spent to feel better, right?
(Oh yes, because I’ve been really sick a lot.)
So wealth is involved with the state of well-being; and if you are in a delightful state of being, people like to do business with you. Did you ever notice that? If you’re in a delightful state of being, people like to do business with you.
If you’re grumpy and down in the “dumpies”, people like to avoid you a wee bit. One time as an experiment we started a business way out in the country, off of the highway--back in the middle of a horse lot where there was a lot of horses running around. Now that’s the most unlikely place to start a business unless you’re in the horse business and we weren’t. We never ran an ad, we never put a sign on the building and we never made any announcement that we had the business open. Now that sounds like a guaranteed way to fail. Mr. M. says a place with no sign is a sign of no business; but I won’t quite go along with it because that’s not exactly right. In most cases it would be; but we built a mood. Now we brought in some people that we’d worked with over a period of time; and we said the whole bit here is to have such a delightful mood in this place that the building can hardly stay on the ground--it’ll almost levitate—it didn’t; but anyway we got the mood up. And one night we opened the door for business and that was without telling anybody at all except the people in the place. We opened the door and we had some customers that night--believe it or not. The next night we had a big bunch of customers; and the next night which was a Saturday night, there were so many people that we had waiting lines and utter confusion because we couldn’t quite handle it all. It wasn’t utter confusion, it was controlled confusion. I try to keep a certain amount of controlled confusion going at all times—as Kathy and Robin said, “We got 50 chairs only; so we can only let 50 people come.” I said let everybody come that can get here; and we’ll have a little controlled confusion and get along all right. Somebody may have to sit on the floor, but I don’t see anybody down on the floor so far.
(I would have sat on the floor.)
I knew you would, so a little controlled confusion never hurt anything. So this place became a highly, highly, highly successful business with never a sign, never an ad, never a notification that we were open. So the only thing it could possibly have brought people in was that we established a mood. Now after they got there we made them feel awful good in other ways; but the “mood” is what does the business.
Now when you try to operate a business and you have a “down” mood, it doesn’t work very well and I’ve observed amany of those businesses. I travel a lot and go in all sorts of businesses—remarkably, few of them act like they’re very glad you got there. In fact most of them act like they wish you hadn’t come in and disturbed them.
You go in a restaurant and everybody’s busy with the operation manual doing their thing. Now, the operation manuals I’ve read; and I’ve read many of them for restaurants—well, it never says anything about taking care of the customer. It’s about cleaning. It’s about doing this. It’s about having the supplies ready and so forth. And when a costumer comes in, it just upsets the operation manual. That’s a literal fact. So I go in places and I look at something over there and I say, “Do you have some hot sauce?” They say, “No, we don’t carry it.” So I go over and pick it up. “Oh, where’d that come from?” They will ring it up, but not very gracefully. So you can go on with this over and over. So part of their income is tips—you know, just a little tip—gratuity I believe is a pretty word for it. A little gratuity is involved in the business. Do you know what that stands for? It can be a tremendous amount of your income if you’re mood is way ‘up”, or it can just go to zilch if you express a bunch of not I’s and neglect or ignore the customers—it’s all according to the mood, right now. You’ve been there. You’ve been there haven’t you? And I’ve been there a lot.
So if you have your mood up, the tips are good. Sales are good. Steiner even knows about that. Steiner gets his mood up when he gets broke, and he does tremendous business. Soon as he gets prosperous, he can afford to be grumpy—sometimes we can’t afford to grump for a while, is that right? But let Steiner get real prosperous and he can afford to be real grumpy and that gets rid of the business in a hurry. Have you notice that?
But we can all do this. Now this again depends upon this same little thing over here—the complainer, the one that sticks up for rights, the pleaser that doesn’t want to please and blamer gets in there and really has a ball. And you know I hear people who run shoe stores say, “People don’t want shoes.” I used to work in shoe stores when I was going to college to get through school—I didn’t have any money, so I worked at a shoe store on Saturday and every day after school. Every guy that worked there said, “Ah, that old biddy never buys any shoes.” I said, “She had them on when she got here.” (Laughter) She got them some way or other. But if you think nobody wants to buy from you, you can convince yourself that it’s true.
But if you’re having a good time and enjoying yourself (as well as making people feel like they’re welcome when they come in contact with you) they like to do business with you when they do. But if you get down in the dumpies about anything—I don’t care what it is, watch the business go down, down, down. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve convinced yourself that it’s real “legitimate” to be down, your business will be long gone. Some people not to long ago reached the conclusion that we were in a recession—you know about that? Some people didn’t agree to believe it. (Laughter) They went on the same with their business, but the people that agreed to it sat around and moped. Now I notice that quite a few people have been convinced by the news articles that the recession is over. But then there’s another guy writing one that it’s going to start again--right quick. So which way are you going to have it—it’s up to you.
When you take on the suggestion of the recession, the “complainer”, “the sticker up for rights”, and the “blamer” is in your business; and we refer to these as not I’s. Now I think a lot of people think when we’re talking about these that we’re just making a cute little statement of some kind, but we’re very, very serious. They’re things that are really not you, but they’re conditioned bits of little things that run through your head; and they are about everything and any suggestion from without can remind you and set them off. So one will tell you how bad you’re treated by somebody and you will start complaining. Do you ever do that/
(All the time.)
Or one tells you that everybody’s taking away your “rights” and you will start getting angry and start sticking up for you rights. Another one will tell you that the people you’re trying to please are just impossible to please and there’s nothing you can do but please them; and “oh” you can feel so sorry for yourself, huh? And then, of course, you can “quote some authorities” you’ve heard along through the years and feel miserably guilty; and you can try to “improve yourself” and feel very frustrated because when you check up, you’re just you, aren’t you? You’re not somebody else—I’m just me, right Darlene? So that’s a big frustration. And when we do the “blaming” we get rather apathetic because as long as I’m blaming, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
So now these are not-I’s that do work within. We put them on our little picture sometimes and here’s a big old kingpin that says the whole purpose is to be non-disturbed and here’s the little guy that’s doing it—one going one way and three going the other.
I have a little friend over in New Mexico who speaks Spanish better than he speaks English, and he says, “When I’m around you, Dr. Bob, these not-I’s get smart—they talk in Spanish so you don’t know what they are saying.” So he has nothing to do with it—they just take off because he knows they talk in Spanish; so then I can’t pick on him. I’m pretty good at picking on not-I’s.
Now not I’s are much better at picking on people than I am at picking on not-I’s apparently because they seem to win. They convince people to kill themselves. They convince people to feel sorry for themselves. They convince people to be ill. They convince people to be miserable. They convince people to be broke. They convince people to quit working. They convince people to change occupations. They convince people that they’re not happy—that life should hold more for them than they’re getting. Now they’re really not you, they’re little bits of conditioning that got in there when you were a little bitty kid and they’re still there running on with their illusions. Like I asked a while ago, has anybody complained in the last week? The not-I’s did complain. I know it, whether I saw you or not--I know they got up and found something to complain about and make you feel a little sorry for yourself or a little put upon—a little mistreated. Even if you didn’t express it outwardly and only heard it within.
Now the not I’s food is human misery--human discontent gives them a hamburger--human frustration gives them a steak. Human misery as “down and out—I’m miserable” gives them a banquet of the best. So they like to make you miserable because that’s their food and that’s what they survive on.
I would like to convince anyone that you don’t have to have these. You can tell them to go jump in the Pacific Ocean and get smashed to bits on ……..
End of side one
…………..other side……….
Who’s in charge of your inner state? Now a lot of people tell me, “Well, I’m trying.” but they never did tell me that “what was in charge” was the not-I’s running them over. That’s what’s really in charge unless you deliberately forcibly take over. This is one time you can be forceful—emphatic! And you certainly can do it any time you emphatically tell them to get out. They have to go—it is your house. They’ll try to come back next week—I’ll guarantee you. They might try to come back before the days over; but you can shut the door on them and not allow them to be there because you have no reason, no obligation for those things to have to be there anytime.
Now you’re whole financial well-being depends upon how much you’re in charge; and how little those things are in charge. Do you suppose most of us let them have a little grab in there once in a while? What do you think about that?
(I do.)
You work where some of your income is gratuity, haven’t you? How did you’re gratuities go in accord with your mood.
(Directly.)
Directly. If you were letting these things run it, tips were zip—a bunch of cheapskates came in. They didn’t leave any tips at all. And when you were up and feeling wonderful and being a delight,