Excerpts - Vital Interest – What is it? (Tape 59 of DL)

We will talk about what is probably meant by living a Spiritual Life.  Most people would like to do that—at least they tell me they would.  So I’ll describe a few things as to what might be living a Spiritual Life. 

First off, we could find another word for spiritual that might fit in with our every day language—that might be of some assistance.  We’ll try the word “energy”—is energy something that you can put your finger on or is it purely a spiritual quality? 

Energy is light, isn’t it?  Is light also spirit?   So what we’re trying to do is hunt up a word that we are somewhat familiar with, ok?  But we’ll put a slightly different connotation on it.

If a person is sitting on a bunch of energy and is very much alive, you would say they show a lot of spirit, is that right?  And if they’re dragging around real apathetic, you say they’ve lost their spirit, is that about right?  Is that close to it?

Let’s see how a person might come into that?  There is generally two kinds of men in the world—one that makes about anything he meets important.  Everything that comes upon him, he makes important.  That’s one kind of a man.  

Somebody tells him that it’s “important” that he eat properly and immediately he becomes all concerned how he eats and he becomes a health food faddist.  Another one comes along and says, “You should get 8 hours sleep.” And so he makes it important to get 8 hours sleep and promptly stays awake all night—he can’t get to sleep for worrying about getting the 8 hours.  Another one says you should eat three meals a day, and so he does that.  Shortly he hears another one say, “You should only eat one meal a day, and so now what’s he supposed to do?  So, everything that comes along is believed and made important.

You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?

And all this making important is thought to be a really great thing.  You’ve hear people talk about being dead serious.   
So if we make anything important, what is the product that you come up with?  What do you feel when you are making things important?

(Anxiety.)

Anxiety, right down the line.  Now is anxiety generating and liberating energy or does anxiety bind energy so that you don’t have it available for use?  I think you’ll find that it binds your energy. 

Anxiety binds energy.  And when we have anxiety, of course, that’s a “false feeling of emergency”, so the body has mobilized a bunch of energy through all the ductless glands and the nervous system and everything is working into a big charge—it mobilizes the body to fight or run; but there’s nothing to do because you just made it “important”, and there isn’t anything to fight or run from physically--it isn’t there.  So the energy mobilizes and binds.

And, of course, the by-product of that binding is all the ills of mankind.  Now could we say that that’s a spiritual existence?--that you sit down and make everything important. 

You certainly have a beautiful squash blossom necklace there.  The man that made it was very interested—he did not make it important.  He saw it as a very interesting thing to do; and it probably took him three years, but he wasn’t in any hurry to get it done.  He enjoyed doing every inch of it; and so it shows beauty wherever it is seen.

Now let’s take the other kind of a man which you very seldom run into.  A man over in the Orient discovered that nothing was important, but that was only half of it—so sometimes a  half discovery and a half truth is worse than not at all—so they sat under a shade tree contemplating their navel or  whatever.  They discovered that nothing was important, but we want to put the other half on that—everything is interesting—but not necessarily to me at this moment--but it is interesting to somebody at some place or other at that given time, right?  Somebody will be interested in it.

So one person is interested in making a shirt, and another one is interested in making a squash blossom necklace, and another one is interested in making a suit, another is interested in selling house trailers, and another one is interested in selling horse trailers—it really doesn’t make much difference; but something is interesting to somebody all of their life. 

Now if I discover that nothing is important, then I may begin to see what is interesting.  the greatest spiritual being is that one which has discovered what he or she is truly interested in—he,  then, has a vital energy at all times to do whatever it is he is truly interested in, is that right?

If you have something you’re really interested in, do you notice that you always have a gob of energy? 

But if you’re doing it because you ought to and because you should and because you must, huh, and because it’s important to do it, how much energy do you have?

(It’s gone.)

It gone, you got it all bound up in the struggle—then have you missed the whole point? 

Now when I see that nothing is important; but that everything is interesting, what kind of a state would I be in.  Would I be in a state of anxiety or enthusiasm? 

(Enthusiasm.)

The word enthusiasm comes from a Greek word meaning “fire of the Gods” which means that you are truly spiritual then—you have found what you’re interested in—if it’s talking to people, if it’s cooking, if it’s making dresses, if it’s building houses, if it’s digging ditches, raising oranges—who cares.  Whatever it may be, I know it will do something for somebody. 

Now it will be useful to do and everybody will like it because it has that magic ingredient in it—tender loving care—when you do it.  And then, do you see, there is a spiritual being—a spiritual existence.

Enthusiasm, what does it do?  It mobilizes and releases energy—balanced interchange.  Every time you release it, you make space for more to be available for your use.  And so then there is the endless source of being filled with spirit—of energy--if you want to use that word.  I generally use the word energy because it’s more of a modern term we know about. 

So you’re constantly filled with energy and enthusiasm.  Would you like to be around a person that’s enthusiastic and always has enough energy—they don’t sap yours.

When you find yourself around somebody whose energy is all bound up, you know what they do—they get yours if you let them have it.  They’ll sap yours right down the line while they’re trying to get theirs. 

You’ve been around them, have you not when you felt you could barely get out the door—you know—somebody’s been sapping your energy because they are spiritual vampires.  They have theirs all bound up—they have the energy, but it’s all bound up, so they’re starving.  So they want yours, and they’ll get it, too, if you let them get near you.

You get it all bound up when your anxious.  That is mobilized and unreleased energy which we find innumerable people doing—worrying over all sorts of future events that they have no knowledge of.  Making it all important. 

And these people, no matter what kind of words they use are still bound up.  Now would you say they were spiritual or have they abdicated the whole idea?  Are they filled with the spirit or have they bound the spirit. 

What is a bound spirit called?  It’s called being possessed, isn’t it?  Would this person be possessed?  They really are.  What are they possessed with?—the pictures of their own anxieties.  They may say it’s something else, but it does bind their energy, binds their spirit, and a bound spirit is in a prison. 

The creator didn’t create because it was important to create.  It was interesting to do.  Obviously He didn’t need to, did He?  If He needed to, why He was in great need himself—so he created because it was interesting. 

The only reason for Him to create you is that you’re interesting?  Nobody needs you.  Really==the world would get along fine if you’d never been born.  It would have gotten along fine if I’d never been born.   If you hadn’t been born—He would have gotten along fine, but you’re interesting and I’m glad you’re here.  And I’m awful glad I’m here.

So every thing is extremely interesting, and being interesting then we can be enthused--on fire with all spirit—is that mobilized and released energy?  That’s an unbound spirit, isn’t it?  That’s spirit that is unbound—unbounded. 

And so then it’s boundless—it is without boundaries.  And what is the outcome of this unbounded, constantly creating or mobilizing and releasing energy—Creative Action.

Now supposed you hired a person that has their energy all bound.  A bound energy person is either sick or dying or they are in some kind of turmoil or kind of insanity—bouncing all around the place.  They are possessed.

Now if you could get them to see one simple point—that all the stuff they’re making so important is not important.  And then they could begin to release that energy, couldn’t they?  Would you then have cast out a demon?  Yes, most everybody can do it if you can get them to quit making things so serious and deadly—most people are dead serious.  They got a grip on things.  They’re tied up in a knot, huh?  But if you can get them to turn loose, do they really start living then?

You’ve seen them.  They sit and worry and fret and have all their energy mobilized and bound—they’ve got the unusual cellular activity we looked at a while ago.  So we get them to “unsee” how unimportant everything is, and, then, how interesting this beautiful world is—this earth—and all the nice things in it, and then they can find what they are interested in.

Did you know that that is the thing that is most kept from everybody—is to discover what they’re truly interested in because most people are kept so busy with what they should do, and ought to do, and must do and have to do. 

When you get up to go to work, do you say, “I’m going to work.” or do you say, “I have to go to work.” 

(I say I’m not going to work.)

What do you hear most everybody say when they say they’re going to work?  Do they say, “I’m going to work?”  Or do they say …..sigh………..”I have to go to work.” 

(I say I have to.)

I have to—is that mobilized and releasing energy or is that resisting it and building it up, huh?  How often do you hear somebody say, “I’m going to cook dinner.” or do they say, “Well, I….sigh…..must be getting dinner ready—I should be getting ready to get dinner—I got to get dinner on the table.”  “I got to get the laundry done today.”  “I have to go to town.”  “I have to go to the store.”  “I certainly got to get down to the bank.”  That right?  Now is any of those statements freedom?
Is that all bound activity?  Everybody’s in bondage. 

How many times can we fully go do something because we really want to?  How many people know what they’re truly interested in? 

I started us a little project down in Scottsdale not long ago with a whole lot of people that wanted to find out what they were truly interested in.  Now they all admitted they didn’t even know.  They were just doing what they had to—what they should.  They raise kids because they had to raise them. 
They were going to work because they had to feed this family. 

So we had each one keep a log as they went about their day, and they began to see what attracted their attention.  They might be going down the street dreaming—all of a sudden they’d see something over there—it would stop the dreaming and they’d write it down.  Everyone notices something once in a while, ok?  It might be in a magazine, or wherever.

Now they kept count of all this for quite a while—just build up what they were truly noticed, what they paid attention to.  After a time we sat down together and worked out what they could find that would be of an interest. 

Now some of them still hadn’t found out what they were truly interested it, but about 35 to 50 per cent discovered the things they were truly interested in—and these are like entirely different human beings now.  They know what they’re interested in, they’re doing it.  They’re making a living at it too because it’s “creative action”—that’s what you’re really going to make a good living at.  That’s a by-product.  So they’re really discovering living.  Would you say these people had become spiritual beings rather than demon-possessed beings, huh?  All bound up.

That’s what the whole definition of demon-possessed means--you are in bondage—you’re bound up—outside and inside. 

Now when it’s all turned loose and you’re freely expressing, you’re full of energy, full of vitality, full of joy really doing what you’re interested in and that is creative to yourself and to all the people around you, ok?

So the spiritual life is to begin to discover that nothing is important and get yourself out of the bondage—you got to get unhooked; and then to find out what you’re truly interested in. 

How much of the day do you do what you really enjoy doing, and how much of the day do you spend in doing what you have to, ought to and should?

Would you think it would be an interesting experiment—to discover what you’re truly interested in?  Now your interest can change from time to time; you do one thing for a few months or years, but you’re not stuck with it.  You can always change when you find something else you’re interested in, couldn’t you?

If you’re just busy doing what you ought, should and must, you are a curse everybody you come across.  It feels good to turn loose of this bound energy—it really does.  It feels good.

What is meant by a Spiritual Life—is it being all bound up and making everything important—figuring out “what I ought to do and should do and must do” or is it discovering what you’re truly interested in and really living—creating—a blessing to everyone you come in contact with and you’re doing what you’re truly interested in.