Excercises - Threat

Excerpt from Salt Lake City 4/71 - Tape 4
(*Audience participation is in parentheses--notations in brackets have been added for clarification )
[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.
By the way, she's written a book "The Short and the Tall of it" , A wonderful biography in which she includes many of the teaching ideas.]

[My teacher began this excerpt with the statement.]

I would like to give an idea before we start that we listen to what is being said with only the idea of understanding of conceiving what the subject is and not listen to the ideas as a way to achieve a means to an end [non-disturbance].

We find that many people will attend many many talks-they're extremely interested; but they're always listening, hoping to find a means to an end. Now we're not going to discuss anything that can be used to achieve an end. So, if that's what you're going to listen for, you might as well not listen at all. There will be nothing that will tell you how to achieve a goal or an end of any shape, manner, form or fashion.

Unknown to ourselves, we are generally listening to see how to be non-disturbed and I'm not going to talk about anything that will be non-disturbing. In fact I'm going to do the best I can to make it very disturbing-and it will be forever disturbing-so there won't be any way to get comfortable. I'm going to do the best I can to make it very disturbing.
If you're listening for that purpose, try to just drop that purpose and try another one.

The first thing that we will discuss is, of course, ourselves which is the picture of man. Man has four aspects, three of which are within himself, the fourth is a function. Now the one thing we can all see is a physical body. And we can also tell, even though it's invisible, that there is something that we can refer to as an awareness. In other words, the individual is sensing something that is going on.

Now the body picks up senses and the awareness interprets that sense into a concept. Then there is something that we refer to as X, or you can refer to it as Spirit or whatever word you want-the biological aspect of man-that which is alive.

X accepts this concept and does the appropriate thing for whatever the concept says. The concept doesn't have to be that the concept is absolutely correct. Having observed several years ago, we worked in finding something to understand how X operated. We worked in mental hospitals.

Piano story of gas delusion

One time in a mental institution a young lady was observed who had a delusion that the room frequently filled with poison gas. She would begin to have this delusion from some association. The first thing she did was climb up on the piano stool. That got her head above where she thought the poison gas was. When the gas filled the room up to the level to where she would have to breath again, in her delusion, she climbed up on the cover of the keyboard of the piano. That got her still higher and when she felt that the poison gas was to her nose again, she got up on top of the piano with her head almost to the ceiling. When she felt the gas reached there, she passed out. The room was continually filling up with gas, to her, but the rest of the people were sitting around in chairs. She didn't take that into consideration; she was in a mental hospital. After a while she revived and would go on about her usual affairs until that particular delusion set in again. What she did (what X did for the being) was climb upon the piano stool, keyboard cover and the top; the appropriate thing to do for the information X received from this "deluded awareness."
Now under hypnosis you can put a person into a degree or stage of suggestibility that they accept whatever the operator says. We used to take a person that was in a state and put them in a hypnotic state. Then we'd say some object (say from your pocket) was a red hot piece of steel. You'd put it on their hand and instantly there would be a blister appear the shape of whatever the object was-50 cent piece, dollar bill, whatever you put on there. Now was this the appropriate behavior for the information this person was giving to Life?

(Really?)

That's the perfect one to form a blister because then it protects the nerves and the underlying tissue from severe damage. So it forms a water pocket in between the skin and the underlying tissue to protect whenever there is burn occurring. Now there wasn't anything hot about this, but the interpretation was that it was.

So let's take one concept for a moment. The Life principle within us--which is Spirit, X or whatever word most fits you--does the appropriate thing for whatever we give it as an interpretation of my senses.

(Then how can it happen that if a person is asleep or under drugs and gets burned and is not aware that he is being burned, he still gets the blister?)

He is being very much aware he is being burned.

(Self consciously.)

He reports it. First thing, if you were asleep, X wakes you up and tells you that something's going on. And if you're under an atheistic, you're not only able to report it, but you are very definitely sensing it. You're not able to record it, but you are very definitely sensing it, and you also can sense every word that is said and most often those words turn into very powerful suggestion.

When a person is under an anesthetic, a total silence, they pick up every word and they usually misinterpret it altogether differently than what was said and meant. So you are still registering and picking up. It's just that you can't do anything about it.

(Are you ever aware of it?)

It can very definitely be brought to awareness, and I know many people who live over and over by something that was said while they were under anesthetic. They completely repeat this same thing over and over and over. So there is a recording as long as you're alive. Now you can only alter it the way you interpret it; but you'll still do something with it, ok? You may not even recall how you interpreted it-most of it you don't-even in the everyday sense. You probably seldom recall that you've interpreted many things through the day as either "good" or "bad". You kind of do that mechanically; but almost every sensation you've had today, you've interpreted it mechanically as either "good" or "bad". How about that Margaret?

(That's pretty right.)

You've been doing it all day and didn't pay much attention to it. Now, when we interpret anything as a threat, X does the appropriate thing for a threat. Now the only appropriate action for a threat we've ever observed is to fight or run. And before you can fight or run, you have to have the emotional feeling that goes with it. Before you run, you've got to feel scared; and before you fight, you got to feel a little aggressive or angry, is that right? You feel that way most of the time?

So from infancy, we have interpreted most every sensing that we have as a threat of one form or another. Now if it is unpleasant, of course we recognize that as a threat; but if it's real nice, there's also a threat--afraid we can't keep it. So that's just as big a threat as the other.

Now man is divided into somewhat of a three-story system here and the function will determine on how he puts this together. Now basically this is a sensing machine. It works very adequately as long as there is life in it. As soon as Life's out of it [the body is dead…..Marsha], it seems to not sense anymore. You can put hot irons on it and it doesn't do anything.

Now the awareness has the job of interpreting those senses and X does the job of generating the energy--mobilizing the exact amount of energy--for whatever is seen as being here in the awareness. So if I see this as a big threat, it mobilizes a tremendous amount of energy to fight or run; and how much fighting and running do you do? You do all the fighting and running inside the mind. So then you have to burn all this stress juice up in a little while by experiencing a whole bunch of symptoms [such as stiffness, soreness, colds, flue] of some kind or other or simply aging.

So we have something like a cycle. So here is a misconception. I saw this as a threat when it is not a threat. Then of course, there is a false feeling of emergency. I'm prepared to see something as going to attack me. Somebody walks up and disapproves of you. What do you feel? Do you think that's fun or do you feel threatened. Somebody has attacked you, huh?

(I don't know.)

Do you want me to try it? When you least expect it-not while you're watching me. I'll try it out after while and we'll see what you do.

(Here we go again with the vicious cycle!)

So then of course, you're filled with a feeling of emergency and then that mobilizes energy to fight or run; but you don't have any fighting or running to do, so there is chemical imbalance and neuromuscular tension and then we adapt after a while. Then the adaptation takes the form of all the symptoms you know of including itching, and cataracts, and skin irritations, and varicose veins, and migraine headaches, and all the other things we come up with. That's what we call going to sleep. All sets of symptoms come by and then, of course, we have an additional misconception because now we think of the symptom as a threat instead of our friend which is restoring us to chemical balance. We interpret the symptoms as a threat, and we get more false feeling of emergency and more of the chemical imbalance; and then we require more adaptation and pretty soon we might even need carcinoma to burn up the juices with; and then we really have something to have a false feeling of emergency about.

(What's carcinoma.)

Oh, that's a fancy word for cancer, honey. The worst of the dread diseases. In the illustrations, "mc" is a misconception. In other words, I interpreted the senses as a threat rather than as a challenge, ok? The false feeling of emergency is the thing I feel when I don't know what else to do except that I'm going to be attacked. "ffe" is a false feeling of emergency. "cib" is a chemical imbalance, and "nmt" is neuromuscular tension-your nervous as a cat on a hot-tin roof. That's what all those fancy letters say. And then "adt" is adaptation. One must adapt to burn up the chemical imbalance and restore the body toward it's chemical balance-and those are symptoms. If you have just a little bit, you call it aging, if you have a lot, you call it chronic disorder, if you are having a big amount all at once, it's an acute disorder; but it's all your friend (X saving your life), and we interpret it as something very bad, and then we take a stimulant or a sedative to reverse it, and we can really get it so complicated that even the body doesn't know what's going on sometimes.

(When one has an ache or a pain……….)

One is real thankful for it because it's saving your life.

(It burns up this energy?)

It burns up very quickly and the whole thing's over with and that's the end of it, but it's the best thing you ever had. That's X getting rid of all the mobilized and unreleased energy you created from your misconception and misinforming X of the events in your life. He made the juices to fight or run from your misconception-there's no fighting or running, so now you start adapting whether it's an ulcer or a headache or whatever. If you can be conscious of that, aware of it, then the body takes care of it very quickly and it's all gone. Any symptom can be gone within 24 hours if you're real thankful for it.

(I was just thinking of my case of the hives?)

Yep. She was taking a trip not long ago, and her little vehicle began to make funny sounds - clickity, clankity, clunk-and she painted a picture of being stranded in the middle of the Mohave desert without water, fuel or transportation and nobody would stop, of course (a lovely lady sittin' beside the road in a little white Volkswagen)-nobody would stop. You thought you knew this. They're all going by. And she dies of thirst-right out here in the Mohave desert.

Now she does all this afterward lying in bed in the motel. That was the misconception to the terrible state of affairs, terrible false feeling of emergency, the body was loaded up to fight or run all the way to no telling where; and the adaptation turned out to be a big set of hives, right?

(The thing that was beautiful was I did have enough remembering at 2:00 a.m. to realize that I was grateful. I saw what was going on when I came out of the almost hysteria of the conjured dream, and I realized that the hives were taking care of the false emergency I had declared-I could feel the hives were so bumpy and itchy.)

It was burning up the chemical imbalance of the juices produced to fight or run.

(Thank heavens, it's the first time in my life I recognized what was going on and by morning, it was gone.)

She didn't die of thirst in the Mohave desert, and the car didn't break down.

So as we observe these adaptations and symptoms, we find that prior to the unpleasant symptoms, we have an interpretation of everything as a threat-you see, there must be something before it.

So we have the ideal or something within where there has been a big misconception. Now let's see if we can determine what the ideal or misconception is, where it came from and the nature of the thing?

(for more on this, go to the Expectation and Adaptation cycle under "Basics" on the web page.)