Workshop - “Whitney ‘88” – Lake Whitney, TX 1988 - Part 2
Verbatim Transcript: 6 CDs
The following is as close a verbatim transcript as is possible.
Dr. Bob’s laid-back “Kentucky-ese” is retained –
we have neither corrected his grammar, dialect, pronunciation
nor taken it upon ourselves to change his words.
Audience (laughter) is noted; he was a master at keeping the mood up!
Audience participation is (parenthesized) and separated from his words.
Emphasized words by the speaker are in italics.
If the words were unintelligible, there’s a blank: “_________.”
[Anything that offers clarity to the reader is italicized inside brackets.]
CD 3 of 6 “Lake Whitney, TX 1988”
Right, that's accordin' to what town you live in. That’s in what town you live in. Certain areas have certain favorites, yes, so it's an allergy. It means some are sensitive to it. I'm sensitive to about everthing, aren't you? Thank goodness. If you bite my finger, I'm sensitive to that.
(Mm-hmm.)
So I'm allergic to bites on my finger. Okay? Everything's an allergy if I don't like it. I happen to like everything, so I can eat anything that don't run too fast. So nothin' bothers me much, okay?
(Is that just a popular thing to –)
That's just one of the goodies these days, yeah – in certain circles. Yeah. So if you eat food and it makes you get jumpy, that was because you have a food allergy. She has allergies to rattlesnakes, okay? She gets all upset when she sees one. So do I. Okay?
(Dr. Bob, when you said that Patti asked about the lady that was so negative and said that the people around her probably were upset. You said they were just like her?)
Yeah, they was all about alike. They’s all sittin' around there feelin' sorry for themselves. There was only two others in the house – both of em were her sisters, one older and one younger. Three of em; they deserved each other.
(Well that's about like the lady in the nursing home, she wondered why nobody came to see her?)
Yeah. Well, who wants to...bitchin' all the time. So there's a lady showed up at my door Friday afternoon, she said she come to spend two weeks around me. I said, “Who invited you? I don't wanna listen to you for two weeks. I've been listenin' to you for about 15 years now – bitch, bitch, bitch and I know all your stories, so don't listen to me. Go on up the road somewheres. You can stay 15 minutes and then you gotta go. I got things to do and places to go.” And she left. Went out and got in her motor home and sit there and I got up and got in my little vehicle and left. I've been listenin' to her complainin' for years. I know all her stories. She's a victim par excellence. I know all the ways she's a victim, okay? And I've tried to talk to her for a long time and she tries to convince me more and harder and deeper as to what a victim she is. So finally I just said, "Yes, you're the world's greatest victim...now go home."
(She’s a victim of what did you say?)
Huh?
(She's a victim of what?)
Everything! The human race, the weather, the gods, the heavens, the earth, the weather – you name it – her children! Her husband had the good fortune to die when he was very young. (laughter) I'm sure by intention. [he chuckles] Got out of it, okay?
Doug's next over here, then I'll be there, Marce.
(At the break, you made a statement about the change in the attitude that it was real important to get into something that's of service to others.)
I said that was one of em. So, if you're enthusiastic or you’re vitally interested, you're bound to be givin’ the service to somebody because there's not very much else. In other words if I'm interested in plant breeding, I'm trying to work on somethin' that will be of value to the human race. Right? And it doesn't matter what. I don't care if I'm just breedin' pretty roses or graftin' rose bushes onto apple trees. They'll grow, incidentally and you'll raise some very beautiful things. Well, somebody's goin' to enjoy that and admire it. So in order to get your attention off yourself and onto somebody else is the way you cross, or to many people, is the way you cross that barrier from contentment down or contentment up. Okay? So it's like the two little folks I just talked about, they found that they were interested in each other instead of just themselves. When his interest got on her and her interest got on him, then they got well. They got all right. They've been livin' fine ever since. So first your attitude has to… [corrects himself] or, your attention has to be turned outward to other people.
Now if I sit and I mention to you, “Have you checked yourself over every day?” you get your attention ingrown on you, you’re gonna get sick. So if I get my attention totally on this big, it gets the minimum amount of attention. When it gets hungry, I will consent to get it somethin' to eat. When it gets thirsty, I'll try to get it a glass of water. When it feels a little dusty, I'll try to take a shower, give it that. But I'm not gonna sit around and inspect it and consider it and devote my entire attention to the physical body, okay? I'll let other people do it, but I won't. So if you get your attention off yourself, you're gonna feel a lot better, okay?
Now we'll go to Marce.
(About four years ago I went to a doctor about my knee. It was hurting, kind of, and bothered me some, and he did tests and named some names and the medicine cost a dollar a pill –)
That's good. That impressed you.
(I asked will it make my knees well and he said no. I said what’s it gonna do for me? He said it was gonna keep them from hurting. I said they didn’t hurt that bad. Then he gave me a little thing to go get an x-ray and said, “You probably have arthritis.” I decided I didn't want to find out.)
Right. You didn't want a diagnosis, okay?
(I decided I’d just go on –)
Grin and bear it. [chuckles]
(Just go ahead… you know, they haven’t gotten any worse.)
No, but you're gonna have a little pain.
(But it’s something that’s still in my mind.)
That maybe it's arthritis.
(Yes.)
And you do a little self-diagnosin' on it. So what, let's just say you got a minor disturbance in life like everybody else has. You happen to feel it in your knee. Somebody else feels it in their elbow. Somebody else feels it in their belly. So what. It's just part of life to have a little disturbance here and there. It isn't worthy of a name or a diagnosis or anything else. You just got a gimpy knee now and then, okay? Why not call it that? Then you can laugh about it. Yes?
(Dr. Bob, we don't see any reason to name the attitudes above Exhilaration?)
Oh yes, but not now. Let's wait till we get there and then I'll give you a bunch more, okay? When you can show me you're in an enthusiastic mood, all the attitude or a mood, then I'll give you some more, okay? I'll run you up to 23. Yes?
(I was gonna ask you how it seems to relate quite a bit to the hierarchy of needs?)
To the hierarchy of what?
(Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”?)
I didn't hear the word.
(Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.”)
Of needs – okay. If we set down our needs as compared to our wants, we'd have an entirely different list. My want list would be forever. I want everything, but not today. I couldn't handle it all, okay? But I have very few needs. I need air to breathe, but I happen to have it now, so I don't need air, okay? I need water to drink every once in a while, but I have plenty around here. There’s little fountains here, yon, and elsewhere. I need some food to eat. So far I haven't done without in a long time, okay, so I don’t need food. Is that right? I got it. I need a little bit of shelter. I have it so I don't need that. And I require a little transportation in my affairs, and I already have that, so I don't need any transportation. I got food, clothing, shelter, transportation, interesting things to do, delightful people to be around, huh? So I don't need anything today.
Now if I needed air, I'm gonna get it quick or I won't be here to bitch about it. (laughter) That right? If I need water, I'll either get it pretty quick or I won't be around in three or four days to argue about it. I need food and if I don't get any food for the next 30 days, I will be in a pretty rough shape probably, okay? All right? Shelter I could probably do without quite a while. I’ll run south like the birds do, I'd rather live in the South anyway. And where I live out there, I don't really need shelter. It's just convenient, gives a certain amount of privacy. But if I had to stay outside, it wouldn't hurt me very much, okay? I could sleep under a tree and get along fine. And I like clothes, but I have plenty of clothes. In fact I'm thinkin' about givin' away two or three pieces of it in the next week cause I don't want it around.
So what do you need that you don't have? You see, your needs are small. Your wants are very great. So there is a story out of the near East that says when your wants are small enough and your needs are great enough, all difficulties are removed. Cause most of our difficulties are concerned with wanting something we don't have that we wouldn’t miss it if we didn't have it unless we set it up. That's what I said we'll talk in the mornin' on expectations. I'm gonna keep that one until tomorrow. I'll even write it up here so it'll be here tomorrow. E-X-P-E-C-T-A-T-I-O-N. Expectations. So that's what we're gonna talk about in the morning, okay?
(What’d you say? If your wants are small enough and your needs are great enough?)
No. When your needs are great enough and your wants are small enough, then all your difficulties shall be removed – period. Okay? Period. They'll be removed. I'll promise it. Guarantee it. Okay, any more questions, comments? Yes, Doctor?
(Are you gonna amplify that tomorrow?)
On expectations.
(Well I mean about the needs...)
Oh well, I'll probably amplify on a lot of things fore I get through, but we'll run by it, okay?
(Okay, that’ll do it.)
It'll probably fit in with the expectations, okay? Who knows, I may make it fit there. (laughter)
(All right.)
Okay. Okay next question if there is one?
(Dr. Bob?)
Yeah.
(Before I heard you say about the lady that came as the victim, then you allow people who want to be in a disturbed state be in a disturbed state.)
I have no desire to control anybody. I have tried to talk to the lady for almost 20 years now – 17, 18, somethin' like that – and she insists on playin' the role of a victim and who am I to interfere with her fun? So I told her to go away and do it by herself, but she's not gonna have me for an audience, okay? Not move in uninvited and say, “I came to spend two weeks here.” (laughter) Now, that's one set of disturbances I don't have to tolerate, okay? There's a lot of others I can't do anything about, but that one I could. I said, "Get lost, go up the hill. There’s a place to park your motorhome up at Scotts Valley. Go on up there. There's not a one in all this silicone valley, there's not a place to park a motorhome nor a trailer, so pluuup, up the hill, and don't come back down. Go over to the other side. Santa Cruz is over there; that's the cesspool of California, so go on over there.” They'll agree with you, okay?
Okay, let's call it an evening and we will see you at 10 o'clock in the mornin'. Is that right?
(Right.)
Time I'm allowed to get up. Okay? Next time you ever call–
[End of day one.]
[Day Two: room noise as people settle.]
All done?
(That’s it!)
Okay everybody's got a questionnaire. Everybody wants to give you a questionnaire these days. I don't ever fill em out myself.
(You don't?)
Naw.
(You gonna throw this one away?)
Huh?
(I just thanked him for doin' this.) [referring to the questionnaire]
You're right, he'll go ahead and fill it out. Okay, we said this mornin' we would talk about
Expectations.
So we're gonna talk about that basically we have our expectations based on that everthing will just be lovey-dovey and everthing will work out just like I want it and there will be no resistance of any kind. You know, frequently we call that resistance “Second Force.” The first one's “Initiative.” You start something and then you have a resistance and without the resistance, you'd never get the “Form.” If I've boiled up a bunch of iron in a kettle somewheres and I wanted to make a pot out of it, if I don't have a form to resist where it goes, it'll just pour out and be a blob of iron on the ground somewheres, right? I won't ever get any pot. So we have to have a resistance. And then we can get the use of things [Result]. But bein' as much as we all started out that I expect that I will have the perfect little non-disturbed state like I had in the uterine world, obviously we get some resistance and then we are upset. So our expectation is that if I dream up a good project, it'll just work out beautifully without any resistance. It's like startin' a new business. They always take more money than you thought it was goin' to. That right, Barbara? Takes a lot more.
So expectations are based on a misconception. The misconception we looked at last night is that it's possible to live on planet Earth and do all my things and have no interference. Now, if we have that set of expectations, sooner or later – usually very much sooner – you're disappointed. So you ever have that feeling of disappointment? Things didn't work out just like we wanted em to. “Disappointment”. When we have a disappointment, we feel hurt. You ever had disappointments in your life?
(No.)
Nah, never had a one, so you've never felt hurt, huh? You ever had disappointment, honey?
(I’m sure.)
One or two since you was born, yeah. One or two. So disappointment, the next thing is we feel “Hurt”. Why did this happen to me? I'm a poor little victim now because things didn't happen just exactly like I wanted em to. There must have been somebody opposing me or maybe it was the stars and maybe it was the heavens or something was opposed to me. Things didn't work out just like I wanted em to. That right? You frequently run into that, huh? Never, never. I've noticed that people get married expect it's gonna be one big date, (laughter) but they're usually disappointed. They feel hurt.
And when you feel hurt, the next automatic response is to look for “Blame”. What can I blame it on? Well, we have a whole bunch of things we can blame it on, is that right? We look for blame. And I find it was myself and I feel guilty or I find it was you and I feel angry, feel upset, huh? It was you – you caused all my problems. Or it was that the heavens was opposed to me and I feel that I was just born unfortunate and pathetic and so forth and nothin' ever works like I want it to. As the lady said, life has been one disappointment after another. So, she felt hurt and looked for blame.
When I look for blame, I will find it was you and I will feel angry – somethin' outside me, you know. Or I find it was me and I feel “Guilty”.
Ever feel guilty? No, course nobody here ever felt guilty. No use askin'. I can look around and see nobody here ever felt guilty. Is that right? Nobody here ever felt guilty. [chuckling] But, of course, in our private moments we sometimes feel a little guilty, you know, that somethin' happened. And when we look for that, we can call those feelings of “Anger” or guilt or several others we could have “stress.” In other words we'll make it distress. So, now we're in a state of “Distress”. We feel put upon and we're in a bad shape and stress results in the need for adaptation.
And that adaptation takes several ways because that stress, we generated energy if we was feelin' guilty – we want to run and hide somewheres and get out of the ways so nobody can catch us, you know. Cause if I feel guilty I have a sense of impending doom gonna come upon me in just a little while. That right, Amelia? Do you ever have that feeling that something’s gonna get you in a while? And so we have this adaptation is necessary because we've had these feelings… these adaptations as we've seen takes two forms: the unusual cellular activity, the unusual sensation and finally, tissue cell alteration or breakdown or unusual behavior.
Now, those will we expect to go away. If I take somebody… I'm turnin' myself over to somebody else and say, “Here, I'm not responsible, this is yours, doctor. You’ll get me to feelin' good. All I gotta do is pay your bill and take your pills or your potions or whatever they might be. Then I'll be all right,” mm-hmm? Anybody ever tried that? Somebody told me a little while ago about their child who was given all sorts of things over a period of time and finally said somebody said quit the treatment! When he quit the treatment, the kid gets all right. You know, strange as that may sound… cause I see treatments everyday that any of us who are disgustingly healthy… You know what disgustingly healthy means? You're no value to the doctor; then you're disgustingly healthy. And if we had the treatments that I see sick people inflicted upon them, we'd all be dead cause we couldn't survive it. There's no way you could handle some of the treatments that I see. And so then our expectation is that we will get a cure. Isn't that nice? That means I don't have any responsibility whatsoever in the whole situation. I just turn myself over to you and you're gonna take care of it. Now then, here I am. Now I'm goin' on with my anger and my guilts and my fears and my anxieties – and you make me well, okay? That's a goodie. You just try it sometime. You just try it.
So, if the person carries on their same lifestyle, which is… here's most people's lifestyle: [draws on the board] Now the lifestyle required that the adaptations start and continue as long as you had that kind of lifestyle. In other words if I went out and did hard manual labor without any gloves on – you could look at my hands and see I haven't indulged in that activity very much – but you know what would happen if I did. I'd get calluses on there. First they'd get a little red and tender, and then they'd grow calluses because that's my lifestyle is to be doin' hard work with friction on my hands. Then I would grow calluses. Now I go to the doctor and say I don't like the looks of these ugly calluses on here, how about you, what can be done about it? He says, “Well that's unusual. We'll take em off.” So he carves em off. Okay, that's easy. And I go on back in the mornin' and go to work with my hammer and my hose and what-have-you. You know what'll happen? They will come back. They'll reoccur. And they got there with all the tenderness and the soreness and you cut it off. Now how many times could I go through that procedure? If I went and said I want these things healed up, I don't want those old ugly calluses on my hand. We wanna go on and do the hard work. As long as that's my lifestyle, they're gonna continue to reoccur. Hmm? So the whole thing come over again. And it's a “disease,” you know. You can call that whatever you want to, you could give a fancy name for it. We all know about calluses.
By the same token if went out and stayed in the sun without my shirt on, I'm gonna turn brown after while. I don't like that old brown color on me, so you fade it off, okay? So you put some good stuff on there and you can fade it down. I go on to stay in the sun, it's gonna keep on recurring, is that right? That correct? Simple? It's gonna reoccur. It's gonna be there over and over. So it has to be a change in your lifestyle.
So let's say that I decided to change my lifestyle. So we'll start decidin' what we can do. Now I'm takin' responsibility for my situation. In the case of the calluses, I quit doin' hard manual labor or I wear a pair of leather gloves when I go out to work. Now what will happen to the calluses after a while? They will disappear before very long cause I have changed my lifestyle, is that right? Didn't need any cures or anything, just quit doin' what I was doin' on that score.
Now if I change my lifestyle, first thing I'd change is my attitude. Doesn't matter what it is, we'll just change it. Let's say that I wanted to lose weight. Well, all I could change is eating. Now I'm not gonna quit eating – that's funny. You know a lot of people try that. They go on what's called diets and all that does is get the body far more efficient at handlin' food cause it's gonna take ever little thing they get and turn it into storage. And that's not gonna work. The more diets you go on, the easier it is to gain weight. I've known people that lost over 3,000 pounds (laughter) and they're still chubby. And they have lost it, but they also gained it back because they kept the same lifestyle quickly after this starvation bit goin' on. So if I go around starve myself, I get so I use less food to produce the same amount because it's all stored up. Life says you're gonna be out here without a drop of water to drink or food to eat and we'll cut you down. So it gets very efficient. Now we can go on like the calluses analogy we used. I get very efficient at growin' calluses. I'd get em back on there much quicker than I did the first time. Every time I kept havin' em cut off, they grow back very quickly because life kinda put it on.
So the first thing if we're gonna change our lifestyle, is change my attitude.
That's first number one. That's not so hard to do. Course most people don’t like to pay attention to their attitude; they know their attitude’s caused by other people, so go ahead and have it. Cause as soon as he, she, it and this all changes I'll be all right, you know. But they're not gonna change. They're always gonna have flaws as long as I'm lookin’ at them as to blame for my situation. They're gonna have a big bunch of flaws. So he, she, they, it, this and that's gonna come on and be about the same or it'll be whatever it is and I'll still say it's the cause of my difficulty. I'm gonna have the difficulty, okay? What difference does it make?
So I change my attitude, and I change my action. You will remember we had last night attitude/action is the same. So if I wanted to be a weight lifter, what do you think I would most appropriately do? Huh? You think I would sit down and talk about it? Do you think I would pray about it? “Lord, give me big muscles.” And he says fine, soon as you go out and work em up there, I'll do it. But before then you got somethin' to do. So I could go out and say, "Well, I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would get strong. I want big muscles out here. I wanna look like the best weight lifter around – maybe I could win Mr. Universe contests." But I sit or kneel while I'm doin' it and that won't change very much. But if I change my attitude and say, “Well that's fine, let's use these muscles!” and I really start puttin' some resistance on it, what happens, Donny?
(They're gonna grow.)
They're gonna grow. Is that right? That's the nature of things. So first off, I've got to change my attitude that I can sit and am entitled to whatever I want without any effort on my part – period. Now, I start puttin' forth the effort and that's it. My mother told me when I was a kid, "Don't ever go near the water till you learn how to swim." So I, bein' a good kid, obeyed. So I can't swim today cause I haven't been near the water. Okay? Cause I don't know how to swim yet. So don't go near the water till you learn how to swim. Don't get in the car and sit behind the wheel until you know how to drive. Okay? Yep?
(Where can I get the motivation.)
Oh that's out of your head. You either want to or you don't. We talked about interest. You don't have any interest in any of those things.
(I wanna do something, but I can't....)
You're like me, you're lazy, (laughter) so you don't get started, okay? So that's simple. All you do is....
(I wanna do it.)
Well, I know.........tomorrow, but not today.
(I just wanna get that spark to get started!)
You don't. You get up and build it. So I say if I want to drive a car, fly an airplane or whatever it is… Donna how'd you get up the guts to fly an airplane?
(Practice.)
Practice, and you didn't feel very confident when you went out the first time, did you? And probably everbody told you, “Well, hells bells, girl, be happy that you can ride in one, not fly it, huh? You'll kill yourself if you get out there. And after all, you don't have all the physical body to fly an airplane. You gotta use your feet and you gotta do this and all that stuff.” Did they tell you all that? Huh? Try to discourage you?
But you got the attitude "I'll show em!" I happen to know what it was and I wasn't there. Do you ever get the attitude, “I'll show you, you jerks!” Then you've got the spark. That's all it really takes. If I decide to show you, damn it, I can do it. That's all it really takes, huh? Did somebody tell you that it was kinda impossible for a grandmother to go out and go to college and get a degree?
(Mm-hmm.)
Yep. You said, "I'll show em!" Right?
(Right.)
Whether you said it out loud or not doesn't matter. Our pretty little Heather says, “I'll show you! I can get through the door myself. And I can get up and down the steps myself. And I can put my clothes on myself and I don't want you pickin' em out for me.” I have one of those little folks, too. I know about it. You don't go buy clothes and say, “Here, honey, you wear it.”
She says, “I'm not gonna put that mess on!” Boom, boom, that's it!
So the attitude that “I will show them!” has to be around there
before you can really generate a spark to do anything.
If you don't wanna show nobody, forget it. Just daydream about it. If I wanna be a weight lifter, I’m gonna say, I can show you. The old man can be a weight lifter, okay? Cause all I gotta do is go pick up some weights and move em. Now, let’s face it, Amelia. I don't have any great spark to be a weight lifter, okay? [he laughs] (laughter)So you know how many weights I pick up? If it weighs more than a piece of meat on the end of a fork, I don't bother with it, okay? Huh? Don't bother with it. But if I get around and especially if somebody challenged me a little bit, I'll show em. So if you tell me somethin' you wanna do, I'll challenge you hard. And you say I'll show you, Bob, I'll do it. Okay?
So now, we said first is your attitude. So let's take an attitude, “I'll show em.” I don't care if it's wantin' to be a success, wantin' to be a happy individual, wantin' to be well. If you're good old chronic illness or you got an acute diagnosis, if you decide, “I will show you, I don't have to be sick!” you're well on the way, hmm? You can be well on the way, don't matter what it is. First off – I'll show you. If you got that there, you got a long ways, you got the attitude.
Now the action is, it has to go along with it. As we said, if I wanna be a weight lifter, first I'll show you I can be. Then I gotta get some resistance goin' of some sort whether I go down and pay the gym to do it or whether I just lay on the floor and push me up – whatever it is, I'll start doin' the action, is that right? And the condition then will come along with it. You see, we're sittin' in a state that the law of the universe is balance. So if I wanna rest all the time and sit in the chair and lay in the bed, my muscles is demonstrating the balance to it, hmm? They're a little flabby and they hang a little bit and what-have-you and they're not very strong. But if I decide to do it another way and I change first my attitude, then the action, then the condition is automatic over here.
You see we all have life circulating here some ways and it does whatever we ask of it
as long as we ask properly – and we ask with our Action.
Now if I don't ever get up and do any action towards some activity, I won't do it. If you hadn't started flyin' an airplane when everbody told you, you couldn't, would you be able to fly an airplane today? No way. Could you drive a car? No.
(What if I wanted to keep my house clean?)
Well, it's accordin' to how big you want to.
(How would I do that? Would I say...)
First is I'm gonna show em I can keep a clean house. That's the first thing. I gotta show em. And I have that attitude.
(What if I don't...I mean I wanna get the house clean....)
But you really don't give a durn about showin' anybody that you can do it.
(Right.)
Okay, you gotta go back first. I wanna show some… I'll tell you: there's no way you can keep a house clean. Now show me. Okay?
(I can do it.)
You’re damn right. Now you say, “I'll show you, Bob.” I say there's no way you can keep a house clean, you're just messy from the inside out. (laughter) And you say, I'll show you. If you agree with it you'll just keep on doin' the same thing.
(Can I do that by myself without somebody else?)
Oh, I doubt if you'd ever get there by yourself unless somebody challenged you. Unless you said, “I'll show the world I can keep it clean. I'll show me I can keep it clean. I don't have to be like all the rest of the folks.” Okay? All right? It's something that means something to you. If it don't mean anything… We said we was gonna talk about what's of value to you. Is it value to you or is it just, "Well it would be nice – if – I had the urge to keep the house clean,” okay? Huh? It would be nice. But you don't have that urge, so your house is like it is. My friend had a sign on her kitchen wall said, “My house is clean enough to be healthy and cluttered enough to be homey.” So, it's friendly. Okay so you can say yours is homey and everybody can feel comfortable there and don't have to worry if they're gonna drop something or anything, is that right? So it all depends on what you make of value.
Now, if I make it of value to be a weight lifter, I'll be a weight lifter. If I make it of value to do somethin' else, I'll do that. You made it of value to fly an airplane. Right? Put a pretty good pitch on it, hmm? Made that pretty valuable. I'll show em! And you showed em you could get through college and have a degree and all this even though you're a grandma. That right? So you have to have a value, okay, or you don't have an attitude. So first off is the attitude is “What do I make of value?” Now don't try to make... excuse me, go ahead.
(Well, the things that I want to do, I don't have to show anybody, I just go do em.)
Go do em. And if you....
(But I'm interested in them.)
Right.
(So I'm not showing anybody, I'm just doing it cause it’s fun.)
You wanna know somethin'?
(What.)
You're showin' you. And I know it.
(Hmm…)
I've been watchin' you a long time, girl. I've known you for many years now since like back 1979 or 80 or somewheres back there. And you're always showin' Donna you can do it. Don't kid me, honey. (laughter)
(Don't we, like Amelia was talkin' about, say we wanna do somethin' and maybe we really were playing a game on ourselves? We really don't wanna do it?)
Don't give a hoot about it. That's right; but I “should” want to.
(… or somebody else wants us to…)
That's like people that drink a lot of alcohol and stay drunk all the time, they're always talking about "Well I know I should sober up. I should quit drinkin.'" They said they should, but they're not going to. When they say, "It's either this or dead," some of em will get in motion. Some of em will still go ahead and die. They rather die than quit, hmm? You've seen that haven't you, huh? I've known a lot of people when they told em you're dead if you don't quit it, well, all right – they'll quit then if they prefer living.
But first off, you've gotta put some value on something. Now you've been tryin' to show yourself and prove to yourself you could do all sorts of things. And you do em all real well, right? Because you’ve got you there to demonstrate to, hmm? Cause if you woulda allowed other people to set you, you'd be sittin' in a little lap somewheres bein' takin care of. Is that right?
My mother had a cousin and one of his kids had polio or somethin' when he was real little, like a year and a half, two years old and his legs didn't ever grow from there on. They just wobbled around like wet socks. This man had twelve sons. That was one of em. And he looked the situation over and he told all the other kids and his wife, we're never gonna help him do anything. I don't care what. If he wants to climb a fence, he has to climb a fence. If he wants on a horse, he has to get on the horse. We're not gonna help him because we won’t all live around him all of his life and take care of him.
So he used to come sit on the front porch and talk to my mother and I'd be sittin' where I could hear. In those days kids was seen and not heard and preferably not even seen. But I was around. And I’d hear him sit and tell about his conclusion to do this and the tears would steam down his face. But he'd never do anything for that kid that he wouldn't do for all the others, okay? No special privileges just cause he didn't have legs or they were all doubled up in a little boot top and so forth.
This kid grew up and he'd go out, he’d climb the fence as well as anybody else could. He could go out and catch the wildest horse they had out in the pasture, climb its front leg and ride it to the house bareback and without a bridle. He’d just come in on him. And when cars came along later, and he also… they did consent to build him a little stairway up with a little platform on top. And he'd saddle his horse he rode wherever the other boys did and as fast as they did and everything else. No, no privileges because he was handicapped, the __ people would say. He grew up, bought his own farm, raised fine-blooded cattle, drove his own tractor, made a fantastic good livin', had a beautiful little wife and kids. He did everthing that everbody else did. And I've often thought what a wise father he had because if they had went out and started pamperin' him, haulin' him around in a wheel chair and if he wanted to go somewheres, they did. When he got...kids begin to get cars, he got a car, got hand controls on it and he can drive like everybody else. The car and his tractor had hand controls on it.
Everything was there because his father was wise enough to say we're not gonna give him – one - special - privilege. Okay? The old man may sit off and cry; but he was not gonna give that kid one special privilege. And he could do everything under the sun that anybody else could cause the kids then had a value to do what the other kids were doin' and just so he could do it without legs was fine, so he got his attitude – he'd show em he could do anything they did. He did. He put the action behind it and everything he did seemed to work out all right. Now, he had his share of resistance, we'll have to agree. Maybe he had more than most of us do, but he got there because he had a reason to.
The rest of us have got all the pieces here… “well I'm a poor victim because nothin' ever has worked out well for me,” and here we go. So there's an awful lot of people like to experience the idea of victimhood, you know. You ever feel victimized, Amelia? Ah, yes. You got a hundred reasons you're a victim. Is that right?
(I'm a victim.)
Well, if you wanna change your lifestyle so you don't keep goin' around this endless Vicious Cycle here… You know, we love to feel sad and love to feel fearful and all these things because then we're saying I am not responsible. So the attitude that we come up with? I'm responsible for what's goin' on here. Okay? You can cook me a lovely dinner and set it in front of me. Can you eat it for me? No way. That's up to me, right? You may even if I couldn't use my hands, put it in my mouth; but I still got to chew it up and swallow it – some way. You can't do all that for me. So if I decide my attitude is I'm responsible for my situation, no matter what it is.
We said last night we're every one a powerhouse. If I don't like the situation, I can change my attitude and begin to use the action and the whole condition of my existence comes about quite different. I'm still gonna be challenged, yes. Disturbed if you wanna call it that, I'm gonna have em, hmm? But I don't have to sit there with it and say, if somebody else will do it all and I have an attitude that, “I am a victim. Nothin' has ever worked out well for me. Life's been one big disappointment.” So I am responsible.
Now, the other side of the coin that says “Responsible,” says “Freedom” on it.
Freedom. Now once you’re responsible, you're free, is that right? You're responsible learnin’ on drivin' a car regardless of what, is that right? Now you're free to drive anywheres you want to. In fact you got a few more privileges than I have. You can park places I can't, [chuckling] right? And you're doin' as well as I am anywhere, but you got the privileges. That's all right, keep em, honey, keep em. By all means get all the privileges you can get, enhance em, and get more. But nevertheless, you had to be responsible before you could be free.
Now this young man I was just talkin' about that his father wouldn't give him one little assist, he's a free man. But suppose he would a been pampered and cuddled and everbody felt sorry for him and the whole family went out of their way to see that nothin' ever… he didn't have any challenges. Would he have been free? Nope. So, as long as he wasn't responsible to do his own number, he wasn't free. So, if I wanna be responsible for my own state of well being… I don't know of anybody else that is. Any of you feel responsible for my wellbeing?
[End of CD 3]
CD 4 of 6: Lake Whitney, TX 1988
Do you? Very good friend – do you feel responsible for my state of being? Do you, Tanya? I've known you a long time.
(No way.)
You don't give a hoot, one way or the other. It's you you're thinkin' about, right? So I'm responsible for whatever state of being I'm in. Hmm? If I'm around something that I don't like to be around, who's responsible for pullin' a Hank Snow? “I'm a movin' on.” I can't wait till they do, I gotta do it, is that right? I can do it. I'm the one that's gonna move on, not the other one around there. If I'm in some kind of a work I don't like, am I responsible to change it and go do somethin' else? Hmm? Right? And if I don't like where I'm livin', I don't like the weather… I lived in Idaho one winter. It was way below zero most of the time.
(Nine months.)
Nine months of it was, man! And I decided I didn't like that. So did I have to wait till the climate in Idaho changed or did I get up and get movin', hmm? I moved to a warmer climate. I took a lesson from the birds. They move south. So, I left while it was still gettin' along all right – why not? But who's responsible for me? Hmm? Who's responsible for your attitude? Who's responsible for your inner state of being? We have a little book around here, somebody that says, "Who's in Charge of Your Inner State," or somethin’ close to that, is that right? That the name of it?
(Who's in Charge of My Inner State of Being.)
(Who's in Charge of My Inner State.)
Yeah. Who's in Charge of My Inner State. Do I have to come along ever mornin' and lift you up? Or are you responsible for it. If I come along and entertain you and lift you up, it’ll last until I went out the door. I'd stay there till I got all the coffee I wanted and I left and poof! – down the tube you go again.
Now, what's your state of being? When I tell somebody you're responsible for your state of health, they look at me like I should be shot – immediately! (laughter) They start tellin' me, “No, but it fell out of the sky; that diagnostic term got me. Arthritis attacked me. I'm a victim of it. It says so right here in the newspaper that there's so many victims of arthritis, and there's so many victims of cancer, and there's so many victims of – you name it.” You're even a victim of drugs.
You know somethin' out there? Those drugs are runnin' around all out there and they say, “Well, I think I'll addict Bob”...poof! (laughter) Down the throat they go. I don't have anything to do with it. Another person says, “I was born with the proper genes to be an alcoholic. Oh fine, now I'm not responsible. That alcohol just chases me down and runs down my throat and attacks me and makes me an alcoholic. I got a disease and I'm not responsible for the disease.” Course the word disease doesn't exist, not even in the dictionary. The word is dis – ease – not at ease. If I'm not at ease, are you gonna make me straighten up and be at ease, or is that up to me?
(You do.)
That’s my deal. So I can be at ease any time I want to or I can be all victimized and pathetic and tied up and have more troubles. Oh, man… One old man told me one time when I told him he was fairly responsible for his own state of being, he said, “Yes, I know what you mean. I've lived a very long life and I had tremendous amount of trouble – most of it of which never happened.”
And you notice we do that. We worry about "What if? What if this happens? What if I get sick? What if I don't have a way to earn a living? What if we have a depression?” You know that's the common one I'm hearin' these days – what if we have a depression. Some people are sayin' what if a Democrat gets elected president, and the others are sayin' what if a Republican gets elected. We won't know the difference if we go on and take charge of my own inner state. Is that right?
Bekki told me this mornin' she went down to Lafayette, Louisiana and they told her that Lafayette was in the midst of a depression. Is that right, Bekki? And she looked around and people had new cars. People had new television sets. They was buyin' new refrigerators. They was livin' in nice new homes and she said, where's the depression? Course, that's my little Bekki. She knows to not sit down and feel victimized. She tried it once, didn’t you, Bekki? It didn't work very well, did it? Because long as you did it, that's the way it felt, huh? But Bekki's not goin' to be anybody's victim. She's responsible for Bekki and so Bekki feels fine and got a beautiful smile and a lovely daughter and nice occupation and she lives in Lafayette, Louisiana and she's not livin' in a state of depression. Right, Bekki? You can have about anything you want, hmm?
So we're all powerhouses, but who's gonna take responsibility? Now this is the hardest thing I find to do. I said I've sold a lot of different things in my life, but the hardest thing to sell is wellbeing because the hardest thing to sell is to accept responsibility for yourself. But the minute you accept responsibility, you feel fine. Not immediately, it takes a little while for the callus to wear off, but you'll start feelin' better right now.
I am responsible for me. Nobody else is.
Nobody. Hmm? I have lovely friends, lovely companions, interesting things to do – to me. I don't know whether anybody else would find em interesting. I'm usually sittin' on the telephone about all day long, but that's interesting to me. I like to listen to people from all over the country.
And it's surprising how often that the same situation comes up today. I get 20 calls, eighteen of em will be about the same general subject. Two days later, I get 18 calls or 20 calls and they've got a different subject. Now, I don't know whether that's due to the moon, the signs of the astrological sign. I've never asked myself why and don't care because what's the difference? I just as soon talk about one thing as another. It suits me. I don't mind. I can talk about health if that's what they want to talk about. Talk about romance if that's what they want to talk about. I can talk about relationships if that's what they want to talk about. I can talk about the weather if you want to. I don't know anything about it, but I could. And I can talk anything except two things I say I won't talk about and that's politics and religion. I'll agree they're both wonderful things, but let's don't talk about em. Let's just don't bother with those. You can have your own kind. I don't care.
Somebody said, "Who you gonna vote for?" And I said me. I don't agree with either one of em that’s runnin' so I don't have to bother with it. So I've never bothered to vote because what difference does it make to me? I don't know. I'm happy with whoever gets elected. They all suit me fine.
So are you willing to accept responsibility for your own state of being? First off, your own inner feeling – that's what really counts, isn’t it? And that's what you experience all day is your inner feeling. Now, your inner feeling goes perfectly along with the way you're acting. If you act like you’re feeling wonderful, you will begin to feel wonderful in a few minutes. If you act like you're miserable and woebegone, you will feel miserable and woebegone in a very few minutes. You know a lot of people have a habit of standin' up and sighing great big [he does a huge, dramatic sigh]. And they walk around like they had atlas of the… like atlas was supposed to – carryin’ the weight of the world on his shoulder. They got it all. But what really have you got to carry, Tanya? Your pretty shirt and that's about it. And your head.
So let's see that we can act out any role you want and you will begin to feel that way. So let's first start off actin' like I am responsible for me. Now that's a fact. You are. Nobody else can take it on for you. Hmm? I can't breathe for you. I can't think for you, hmm?
(No way.)
No way. I may and may not agree with your present way of thinkin' but I can't do anything about it except we can chitchat about it once in a while, huh? Maybe I can get you to see there's a different viewpoint and you can take some responsibility. And when we take responsibility for how I am – I, me, for my whole state of being – then we have found the road to freedom. But until we take responsibility for it, there's not much freedom. Try it and see if the whole thing is due to that rattlesnake comin' in the house and I won't let it go. I'm gonna keep on thinkin' about it. I'm responsible for what I think about it. Is that right? I can think about anything, I think. You know. If I ever heard of it I can think about it. I may be erroneous, but I can think about it.
So, I happen to like to feel good and enjoy myself fairly well, so I think I’m being responsible for takin' care of that. Nobody else is. Huh? Is anybody else responsible for that? Friend, husband, or friends and associates and everything else, they're not responsible. World events, they're responsible? Can I just go on and feel pretty good anyway? It's not happenin' around me right now. I'm feelin' fine… enjoying. So I can take responsibility and begin to be in charge of my life. If I turn it over to you, you're gonna forget all about it. Maybe you tell me you care much for me, okay? But you haven't got time to look after me, have you? Besides that, I'm too big. So you have nothin' to do except take responsibility for yourself. You willing to do that, Miss Barbara?
(You bet.)
And then you can do pretty well anything you want to, is that right? Right, but if you lay it all on somebody else, you're in a state. So I'm responsible for me. Everybody agree on that or does that sound too far fetched to handle? Huh? Anybody say that's impossible?
Okay, we'll stop for a while and ask questions. You will ask the questions and I'll try to field them, okay? I didn't say I'd answer em, I said I'll field them a little bit. You know you can ask questions that are proper and you can ask improper questions and those improper ones I just have fun with. The others are self-evident. You answer those yourself. Okay, let's have the questions.
(Dr. Bob?)
I'm listenin'.
(Are your attitudes an accumulation of what you’re doing and your thoughts?)
No, your attitude is something you choose to do yourself. You can let everything else affect it or you can take charge of it. So which one do you want to let? All the past have charge of it, all the old habits? Or would you like to take charge of the whole thing today? Okay?
(Can you change your attitude to... okay, what the problem I’ve found is that I try to do attitudes and positive thinking without any of my feelings.)
Which one you wanna come first, the chicken or the egg. It can either way. You can start either way. You can start with the hen and get an egg, or you can start with an egg and get a chicken after while. So you can do it either way. It's a two-way street. But now I wouldn't talk about positive thinkin'. First off that'll screw you up. Okay? Does a wonderful job of it. Let's say that you can act a certain way, Miss Bobbie, okay? So if you begin to act that way. Now we'll try to answer it with a little diagram.
There is three things you can do in this world.
You can THINK – accurately or inaccurately. You can FEEL and you can ACT.
Can you tell me anything else you can do, Miss Bobbie? That it? That's the crop. That right? Now, most people allow their feelings to take charge because they've never accepted responsibility for themself, so maybe I eat dill pickles and corned beef last night about 1 o'clock in the mornin' and I didn't have a very good night, we'll say. Okay? I didn't have a good night. So I feel, we'll say, wretched this morning. That's a good dramatic term. (laughter) We feel wretched. And so how do I act? This is the way I feel. So I feel wretched, I will act wretched and I will try to get all the sympathy I can and it wasn't my fault. It was that corned beef and that other stuff or was it just bad dreams last night. I don't know. So now I have feeling and I'm acting and I'm usin' my thinkin' to explain why I'm acting so wretched this morning. Is that right? I'm tryin’ to explain away my action. “I don't feel good, so therefore don't bother me this mornin'. Don't talk to me. Don't say nothin' to me. Okay?” Now that spells, if you take the letters Feel, Act, Think in that sequence, you get the word FAT. And I'm not talkin' about anything except your head. So that's called a FAThead. (laughter) I don't wanna be called a fathead.
Now feeling and action is a two-way street, Miss Bobbie. Okay? Now let's don't leave… let's just leave the thinkin' over here for a while. All I'm thinkin' about here is, “How would I like to feel today?” Cause feeling is what you experience all day. Is that right? How would you like to feel today? Huh? How would you like to feel, Miss Bobbie?
(Enthusiastic.)
Enthusiastic. So, I will start sayin' I might as well act enthusiastic but nobody's going to feel sorry for me cause I got a bellyache this mornin' and a thick head. So I will start actin' enthusiastic. So, I use my thinkin' first to say, “How would I like to feel today?” I've thought it over and I think I would rather feel enthusiastic than wretched, is that right? Okay, so I think and then I ask myself, how would I be acting if I already felt enthusiastic? Well, first I'd have at least a slight smile or grin on my face. I will walk around like I knew where I was goin' instead of [big sigh] won't you please feel sorry for me. I'd act like I don't need nothin', is that right? Huh? So I would think and then I would act and that's a two-way street. Then I would feel. And that don't spell fathead anymore, does it?
I would think, act, and then I will get to feelin'.
If you act a certain way for 30 minutes, you will begin to feel that way.
Now it takes maybe 30 minutes, Bobbie. And it’s not instantaneously and we're thinking here in order to ask what I really want and not tryin' to be positive and say when I got a headache, “I feel wonderful, I don't have a headache,” when you know you're lyin' to yourself. I admit that I'm feelin' raunchy this mornin' but I'm not gonna let anybody know it. I'm gonna act like I could whip my weight in wild cats; and it'll take maybe 30 minutes to get it goin' good, but I'll get it there. Can you do that one? Run an experiment and find out. Don't bother with thinkin' positive, just thinkin' is kind of locating where are you. I want to feel fantastic today. I want to feel enthusiastic. I want to feel up.
I have people that come in the office once in a while that I've tried all the tricks of my trades and you can't even get a weak grin out of em. Now I have other people smile all the time and you know, basically they feel pretty good. You ever run into those people you can't get… “I'll dare you to make me feel better!” And I don't bother with there and I don't care how they feel, not really. I'm tryin' to give all I got and I'll put on my comedy act or anything else to get em to have at least a little smile here and there. Okay? But there's some people don't wanna do it. Some people have got their face set.
This is the first act you have, Barbara. [he draws a face on the board] You got an eyeball here and an eyeball here and a nose here and a mouth here. And basically, it's set. (laughter) You don't have to hunt very hard to find it; it's out there. And if they refuse to change the action… Now, this is the first action we have – most people forget they got a face. So if we got this one and we got this and we got that, you don't have to be any great authority of any kind to know which one of em's feelin’ a little better than the other. Is that right? So you know that's the first action. The next one is where your backbone is – hung over like that and hangin' out here like that. Ever walk up to somebody and stick your hand out, Richard? [reaches out with his hand and wrist limp] You got that, hmm? How's that feel?
(Kind of limp.)
Yeah, gone – like a dead fish or something out there. Smells about as bad anyway. So we can think what we do with this body because the action and feeling are synonymous – not thinkin' and feelin'. Most people try to think themselves into feelin' good when they call it positive thinkin'. That don't work.
Thinkin' and feeling is not a two-way street. Action and feeling is a two-way street – whatever you feel, you will tend to act;
whatever you acted, you'll tend to feel. Yes?
(What is the difference between a specific drive of some sort and someone telling you, “No you can't do that.”)
Why, I'd say I'll show em. And if I have any doubts myself, I'll say I'll show you, Robert; we’ll do it.
(And some people say that has caused them to have something like job burn out.)
Oh yes, that is a wonderful thing. I've got burnout. (laughter) “Well, it's not my fault, [speaks in pathetic voice] I'm just burned out,” which means simply I don't like it anymore. And then if I don't like it, I'll go. So you can say I'm burned out with my mate. Means you don't like her or him anymore. Doesn't mean that he got bad or that you're worn out from doin' it. It's a fancy way of saying “I'm not responsible.” I got burned out because I've been on this job too long or I've been with this person too long. “We've outgrown the relationship.” I hear that frequently. Burned out with it. Okay?
(Then I just did it to show my mother I can do it.)
Well, that's all right. So it doesn't matter what she did. Now you can show yourself what you can do. If I don't like somethin' I'm gonna leave; but I don't have to give her an excuse for it, okay? I don't have to explain it to nobody. I don't like it anymore so I'm pullin' a Hank Snow, I'm movin' on. But I'm not gonna say it was due to burnout, which is another way of tryin' to lay it off onto some unknown myth out there that attacked me. Is that right? Burn out fell out of the ceiling (laughter) and attacked me. And, “I can't do this work anymore. I have no heart and my heart's not in it.”
“Well I just don't want it, I just don't like it anymore! I'm going, okay?” That's being responsible, isn't it? Sayin' I'm tired of this mess. I'm leavin'. I'm a movin' on.
And the other way I say, “Well, I would stay here forever, but I just got burned out.” Pluuuup! You see how hard we work to find some insignificant somethin' to blame? Something that’s nonexistent; we blame it on a myth. Okay? All right, another question, comment? Yes, Amelia.
(Those two ways, one way you would be playing victim, and the other way would be taking control.)
Yep, when you're takin' charge – not control, just takin' charge – and the other one you're bein’ a poor little victim. “I'm a victim of burnout. I'm a victim of growin' out of this relationship. I wish I'd a never grown into it in the first place.” (laughter) Whatever. Okay? All right, next comment, question? Yes.
(I think that’s probably the worst thing that I did...)
The worse thing you do is say, “It's the worst thing I do.” That’s first off. I'll start there. Now, let's start over.
(The thing that I can’t seem to get out of, even through the years, um...)
Can't get out of you. [he chuckles]
(Well…let me finish… (laughing) I had it before you talked.)
Well I know, but I wanna wreck it before you get it out. (laughter) Why get it out and deal with it if we can just destroy it before you get it out, okay? (more laughter)
(I guess this is going to be a tough one!)
Yeah. Come on with it, honey.
(Okay. What I find myself doing a lot, it’s expectations – I expect people to do things and I know I shouldn't...)
Well, no… you shouldn't or should.
(When I ask, like, maybe an employee or somethin' to do something…)
....do somethin'.
(...and they don't do it and there's one woman that I'm working with now and I know for a fact that she knows when she says, "I'll do that," that I know she's thinkin' – I mean, it seems like she thinkin' – “I'm not gonna do that.” But then I’ll ask her about it two days later and she'll say…. and I'll say, “Glenda, why don't you just go ahead and tell me you don't wanna do that?” And I said, “Then I'll do it.”)
That wouldn't be polite.
(That wouldn’t be polite, right. And so it's getting so frustrating to me and then I get all, “Why should I even be here?” you know. And I start feeling used and abused and ...)
...victimized and so forth.
(And I'm really tryin' to get out of that; but I just...)
Well, I don't guess I'd bother with it. What'd I'd do with her is tell her she don't work there anymore. And then you don't have the problem at all; but you don't wanna do that because that might be embarrassing, okay? So, same difference if... Hmm?
(No, I just want her to do it!)
(She’s not going to do it.)
(But it didn't get done anyway.)
(I don't know.)
So, why don't you just fire the person that don't carry out. I know these people. I have – did have – an employee not very long that no matter what I said, he'd say, "You got it!" Yeah, I got it. I got it to do because they're not goin' to. (laughter) So they told me correctly. I go up to this guy and say, would you do so-and-so for me? "You got it, Bob!" I did have it to do because he'd never think of it again. So, one day we said, "You got it. You're out the door." Now I don't have that anymore, okay? But I wasn't frustrated by it, I knew what was comin' anyway when he said, "You got it! You got it, Bob!" Mm-hmm, I knew about it. I just started doin' it right then. Didn't wait around two days, so I got it done. But I told him where he could go. And he went.
(I’d rather hear there’s somethin' wrong with me.) (laughter)
Well, I'm not gonna tell you there's anything wrong with you except you procrastinate gettin' rid of her.
(Ah, definitely – I’ve done that.)
Well, let's go say, "Goodbye, Glenda! Nice knowin' ya. [chuckling] Nice knowin' ya, kid."
Okay, in other words, if you had a tack in the heel of your shoe and it bit every time you took a step, would you just keep on goin'? Say, “It would be terrible if I stopped here on the street and took this shoe off and went home barefooted rather than have a tack chew the bottom out of my heel.” Would you do that? Well this is a tack in your shoe, okay? And you are responsible for gettin' rid of it. You're responsible for bein' there. You're responsible to send it out of the way, okay? Simple. Easy. To the point. Now I never fired anybody in my life; but I sure did de-schedule em (laughter) – you're not on the schedule to come work tomorrow. I felt firin' people was kind of puttin' em down. Just de-schedulin’ em said you don't exist. Okay? You don't exist around here anymore. Okay? Another question, comment.
(Bob, on our tonal scale, where was depression on the tonal scale?)
That's another word for self-pity or apathy.
Depression is a diagnostic term. Self-pity is an insulting term (laughter)
– means exactly the same thing.
Ever try feelin' sorry for yourself?
(Mm-hmm.)
How'd you feel? Depressed?
(Yep.)
Yep. Somebody give you Elavil and you still feel kind of poopy anyway. Ever take Elavil for your depression?
(Uh-huh.)
Yeah. All it did is made you jumpy, isn't it – on top of feelin' sorry for yourself. (laughter) Solar plexus did a tap dance. Okay? Another question, comment? Miss Donna.
(My aim would be to be awake. Then I can choose how I would act if I wanted to be awake.)
Well, awake means you're at least vitally interested so instead of actin' awake – I don't know how that is – but I do know how vitally interested is and that means awake. So,
I'm not awake if I'm not interested.
So, I would get vital interest. Act vitally interested and you're awake.
In fact any time you put on a role to act it out, you have to stay awake to remember what the hell it is you're doin', is that right? So, if you were playin' the part of Macbeth in a play, you gotta remember to pay attention to play Macbeth, is that right?
(Correct.)
Okay, so let's play any role. I tell people you can play anything as long as you know what you're doin'. But I would keep it aware if you wanna be really up there, you might as well play the role of being a vitally interested young lady, okay? Somebody asked me recently "How do you stay young?" I said, well I'm not; but the best I can do is stay around young people. I don't go around old people at all. (laughter)
I wouldn't join a senior citizen's club for all the tea in China. You couldn't hire me to go down there and sit around with those old folks talkin' about their ailments. They'd throw me out on my ear anyway cause I'd start laughin' at their pathetic strong things. We went by somewheres yesterday and you said it was what? A senior citizen gathering. I said, “There's a lot of people.”
“Aw, it's where the senior citizens go.”
“I'm gonna get outta here quick!” You can get discounts for bein' a senior citizen but I never accepted one yet cause I'm not a senior citizen – period! So I don't wanna play that role even for one minute. Not even to get a discount, okay? All right, let's take a little break here. We've run over a wee bit and we'll stay out about 15 minutes and I will hammer here on the little thing and say let’s start again. I'll holler loud and we'll know when to get here, okay?
[after break]
Now Miss Barbara? Okay, all done, taken care of, wrapped up.
(Thank you.)
(Don't forget to leave your tape orders with me over here in the corner.)
Right, buy lots of em. Okay, let's all start around. We'll chitchat a few minutes and then you can go to lunch and all those good things. Go do something that's interesting, okay?
(We are.)
Okay. [chuckling] Well all right, we'll call this lunch, and after a while a necessity or somethin'. Okay?
We have written on the board, it says,
“We give power to whatever we blame.”
Now, the ordinary situation, we don't blame anything… You don't do much blamin', do you? (laughter) No, but she doesn't call it blamin'. She calls it “cause.”
So, whatever I say is cause is what I'm blamin'. You know, we've managed to invent words to keep us from feelin' aware of what it is we're doin'. Now, if you only had the one word, “blame”, you'd kind of dig that; but very few people blame. “I just don't ever blame anything,” I hear all the time, while they're sittin' blamin' up a storm on somethin', only they're sayin' it’s “cause.”
Now if I say that arthritis is the cause of me limpin' around or I blame arthritis for attackin’ me, it's really no difference. It all comes out the same thing. But “cause” is a nice respectable word. Anybody can have causes. When there is any kind of an accident or anything across the world, great crews of experts go there to find out the cause of it so they can know what to blame. Now, of course, we found that an airplane engine fell off, that was the cause of the crash. Now we wanna know the cause of the engine fallin' off. All right it was one reason in one time. The next time an engine falls off it was somethin' else. Is that about right, Don, huh? And they do fall off once in a while and the plane goes [makes engine sputtering sound]. So we give power to everything we blame.
Now, suppose I blamed you for some situation. I've given you great power over me, is that right?
I don't trust you to have power over me.
So, I'm not gonna blame you for anything.
I think you got too many things to do to be the cause of my difficulties, okay? So every time there's a little Second Force happens, we want to blame it on something or find the cause of it as though if we found the cause, that would make all resistance to everything I do disappear. You see how strongly we are attached to this idea that if everything was like it ought to be, I wouldn't have any resistance. I wouldn't have any Second Force. Everything would be lovely. I would have no interference to anything I wanted to do. We got that pretty well ingrained in here and we find all sorts of ways to try to find it.
And if we only accomplish one thing this weekend, I hope we can see that the idea that non-disturbance is a misconception, that I can achieve non-disturbance by havin' things just like I want it to be. I hope we can discover that's a misconception; we don't have to go on workin' on it anymore. Hmm?
So, certain people attribute all illnesses to certain things. We now have the great doctor – what is his name anyway? Koop? The Kook… works better that way. Koop the Kook. He can tell you that if you run into cigarette smoke somewheres that's two hours old that somebody else left out there, it'd probably kill you. And they've got all sorts of other things that's gonna do you in. I have a list in the office of everything I read that's harmful for us to run into. I haven't found anything that is not. Butter is gonna give you cholesterol. A piece of meat's gonna give you cholesterol. and cholesterol might do somethin' terrible to you. I don't know, but you know until we heard about it, nobody was concerned over it. It hasn’t been bein' heard of very long. And I heard triglycerides was worse for you than cholesterol. Is that right, doctor?
(About the same.)
About the same difference. Anyway, any one of em will do you in. So we give every little substance out here in the world power over us – not just cholesterol and not just cigarette smoke and not just things in the environment. In other words, the food you eat is probably contaminated with fertilizer and oh, it's got it goin’ on. It's a lot of bad things goin' on.
And then we have noise pollution. Donna's got that figured out. She sticks rubber plugs in her ears and that cuts out the noise pollution. Okay? And we can go on down the line with a tremendous lot of other things. Now, bacon is very severe – not only cholesterol, it's got nitrites in it and they will do you in when you least expect it. So the environment is a very threatening place. Now, I don't know where we're going to retire to so we don't have an environment. Does anybody got a halfway answer to that? Where we goin' when we don't have an environment? Because the environment is very dangerous these days, did you notice that? Hmm? I hadn't noticed it. I go on and enjoy it, but I read the papers once in a while – not that I believe one word of it. But I think it's the greatest hilarious joke I can ever read. You know, you got a funny paper in the editorials and in the news. I don't ever read the comic strip because they're not funny. But you miss all the real funny stuff if you [don’t] read all the stuff that's threatenin' you. The ceilin' is absolutely loaded with monsters who's going to attack us when we least expect it, hmm?
Now, they're up there. No tellin' when they're gonna come down and get you. One's sittin’ there and says, “Well, I see Cherry, I'm gonna get her.” And another one says, "Well you can have her, I'm gonna get Marce." Another one looks down and says, "Well, they can have those, I like Patty over here," so they come after you. So then we get all these things fallin' upon us, and the environment is a hideous place to be. Where you gonna be other than the environment, I don't know, do you? We got sand, we got wind in it. And now then, what's this stuff that's gone up there? The, uh...
(Ozone layer.)
Ozone layer's got punched full of holes, looks like a polka dot screen and there's terrible things seepin' through those holes. And they're all after us. Now, we have given tremendous power to everything except ourselves. That about right? You're the powerhouse, not all those things out there. But if I blame them or am threatened by them – which is another way of blaming, that right? – then I am in a very sad situation. And I know people that I take them out to lunch once in a while and, well, they can't eat this cause it's got cholesterol in it. They can't have that, it's got cholesterol in it and somethin' else over here's got somethin' else in it and you can't have those things. And you can barely breathe because of all the things that's in the air. I don't know what you're gonna breathe other than air, do you? Have you tried it? Have you tried it, Amelia?
(I just breathe something.)
Just breathe the stuff, that's the only way. I guess you could breathe acetylene or somethin' like that. Maybe you could get you a tank of that, but it's probably polluted. Who knows? So we can also blame what happened to me when I was four years old, five years old. I frequently used to ask – I've learned better – “Well, tell me what's the problem?” you know. Somebody comes in and says they just gotta see me. "Well, tell me about yourself."
Well, first is a long sigh… “First I had an unhappy childhood.”
I said well join the human race – it's hell to be a kid. Anybody knows that. All you can do is go around and look at people's bottoms, you know. You don’t ever get up any further. (laughter) So what! It's not happening now. So did you have an unhappy childhood, layin out by the wellhead, huh? (laughter) Seein' what you could find out there. So, did you have an unhappy one or did you have a few thrills? I don't know. But what happened when I was a kid has nothin' to do with it. It's not what happened to me unless I wanna sit and use that as my excuse for bein' miserable all my life – “I had an unhappy childhood.” How long did little Heather have to work to learn to tie a shoelace, honey?
(A year.)
Over a year – that's hell! Did you ever be frustrated for over a year? Sure it's hell to be a kid. Anybody knows that. I understand that very well. That's why nice little kids, they’re in a mess. But you don't have to go all your life and say, “Well, I started out life as an infant and that was terrible. I was helpless. If it hadn't a been for a couple of slaves I found – that found me – I'd never made it.” And that's true. But sometimes… a couple of slaves found your little boy; he got a couple slaves, is that right? Right. And so he'll make out all right. But he can say, “I had an unhappy childhood. It took me over two years to learn to walk,” crawl, or whatever he wants to. He could say that.
(Or five years!)
Well all right, five. It doesn't matter if it's ten. I know some people that never crawled, okay? So, you can have an unhappy childhood we say. Well, all I gotta do is try to recall it. I forgot bein' a kid. I'm not one now, so why should I go around and dwell on it, okay? Now I see a lot of people that I would have to say the best description of is that they're infants with grown bodies and technical educations. Now, that's not complimentary, so I don't say it out loud; but it's very factual in much cases. Now, if I'm gonna cry as to what an unhappy childhood I had, I'm still actin' like I'm there, is that right? Now, I burned my fingers a few times in my life, but I don't sit around here and say I'm burned. “I had a terrible burn. Oh, it smarted hard!” I even stuck my tongue on a piece of ice on a pump handle one mornin' and there was no way to holler for help because my tongue stuck. So there was only one thing to do – back off! I left a piece of tongue there, but it hasn't bothered me. (laughter) I'm still talkin', is that right? Makin' noise and I can taste things and so forth. Only, to sit and say, “I had an unhappy childhood, I didn't know any better than stickin' my finger while I was pumpin' water and a drop splashed up on that handle and it turned to ice so quick. I thought that'd be nice, so I’ll lick it off, and I didn't.” But you can go through all the terrible things that's happened to you all your life, is that right? And no doubt some of em weren't pleasant. Hmm? Does that mean you had an unhappy childhood? It means you had a session of growin' up for a while. Thank goodness I found out I'm six foot tall now. I don't have to worry about bein' a kid.
I remember one time lookin' down in the bed – I was layin' down and my feet were a long way down there – and I suddenly realized I’d grown up. So, somewheres I read in a book that says “When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spake as a child, I behaved as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.” I rearranged that because the translator didn't get it right. When I put away childish things, I became a man. That's the way it was written to begin with, not the way the translator did who didn't like it that way. He said, “That doesn't make sense,” so he changed it: “When I became a man.”
But you won't ever become a man or a woman until you put away childish things. When I sit around feelin' sorry for myself because I'm helpless, that's childish. Kids do that; they are helpless, okay? They can't even feed themselves when they get here. You gotta hold them up to where the food is. Is that right? Hmm? Then they can handle it pretty well, but they couldn't crawl and get there.
So, everything that we do, we put away childish things.
Then we become a grown up.
[End of CD 4]