[From Marsha – We all experience times when someone is angry at us or giving us a bunch of disapproval or a hard way to go. Usually we mechanically react and think the only recourse is to get angrier back or run away in fear. Below illuminates other ways to look at the inner turmoil and deal with those situations when they occur.
All of us feel mistreated from time to time, particularly when someone violently disapproves of us and starts hollering. We suddenly find ourselves trying to “defend what we did” and then “vowing to please them” or “self improve so they won’t abandon or hate us”. This is trying to deal with the situation by the “B” side. [see the picture of man on the webpage]
And the other common way of dealing with this violent disapproval is to get angry and blame them, saying, “They made me do it!” Again we are on the defensive, but in this case we use loud complaining, attempts to stick up for our “rights” which, of course, they refuse to hear and so the conflict increases. And this is dealing with the situation with the “A” side.
If we use the “A” side we create alienation, which leads to an emotion of guilt and/or fear especially if we go too far in our outburst of anger; and sometimes we find out that we were in error in our blaming. In other words we misunderstood their words and/or motives or some unseen part of the situation.
If we use the “B” side we can create emotions of guilt from not speaking up and/or fear of one kind or another, and this can result in self-blaming and self-pity. It all becomes a din of emotions, inner arguments, and a lot of misconceptions and mishandling of situations. I have experienced these emotions at times to the point that I couldn’t understand anything I was reading in the present moment. I couldn’t remember what I had just done, couldn’t figure out what to do next – not only about the situation but also about regular daily activities.
It can be said that this is “motion” coming into us. It’s a form of energy that perhaps we don’t like. Below are ideas of what we can do about this incoming motion. They’re taken from a talk given on 7/14/79 and another one in Newport Beach in 1980. It may be old news, but the ideas are as necessary now as they have always been. There are four ways we can deal with energy or unpleasant emotions when “I feel mistreated”. Our teacher describes the “mechanical ways” we use in reaction to incoming motion along with some different ways we can work with it.]
From a Workshop Given 7/14/79
(Audience participation is in parenthesis.) [Clarifications and my comments are italicized with brackets.]
Now we’ll try to talk about what you can do with energy or unpleasant motion that comes to you from others. I think those two words are interchangeable. So there’s four possible things you can do with energy when it comes along: You can return it, hold it, destroy it and/or originate a new motion.
Now if you received a bit of energy from someone’s anger and you returned it, you have a fight on your hands; and as we said, that’s hard on your clothes, huh? Real hard. Or you could be very polite and hold it; and then of course, we get ulcers and headaches and backaches and all sorts of other physical miseries that come along with held resentment. And there is still one other thing we can do. We can destroy the incoming motion from somebody
So now one of the nicest things that any of us could learn is that we don’t know how to prevent somebody originating a motion I don’t like; and all of a sudden I get some disapproval and I want to return that motion or hold it.
To return motion is dangerous and to hold it is deadly; but there is another way to deal with incoming motion. You have this beautiful ability to imagine and you can burn up all this incoming motion so you don’t have to adapt to it.
So now you could destroy this motion. Now we all fantasize certain things. Do you fantasize a little bit? So now we could use that ability to fantasize to destroy motion. Now could you sit down and fantasize a lot of violence?
(It depends on what you call violence.)
Well, let’s say explosions, taking swords and chopping their heads off, whacking things. Could you fantasize that?
(Yes, I can sit here right now and do it.)
Well, that’s what I’m talking about. Do you feel bad about it? Does it hurt anyone?
(No, not really.)
But it might relieve you of a lot of tension. If there’s some guy who was so worked up with mobilized and unreleased anger in him that he wanted to go out and kill 16 people with his axe, which would you rather he do: fantasize it or act it out? Would you rather he fantasized blowing you up or would you rather he come with his axe and chopped you up?
(I would rather he fantasize.)
I believe that would be appropriate because that doesn’t hurt you or anybody else, is that right?
(That’s right.
It doesn’t harm anyone, but it does relieve it within you—it destroys it. It’s like if you had an old steam engine. We don’t have many steam engines anymore, but we’ll draw one. [he draws one on the blackboard]
So you got a firebox under here and you put a big fire in. You put water in the boiler. You got a pipe for the steam to come out here. And you got a whistle stuck on the boiler and you got a big wheel on it. And you got a safety valve – a pop-off valve they call it. Any of you here ever been around a steam engine and know about those things?
So you had a pop-off valve in case the pressure was too great for the boiler. You had a gauge to let you know if the pressure was too great. Now if you block the wheel and you block the whistle and you couldn’t let the steam off with the pop-off valve because somebody said, “I don’t like the sound of that pop-off valve,” but you kept pouring the fire in here—would you tell me what’ll happen to the boiler?
(It will explode.)
It will crack – in no uncertain terms. Now most people are put together somewhat analogous to that steam engine. Sometimes there is a continual inflow of irritations to you. You’ve had a little bit of those, haven’t you? So you’ve been taught not to beat ‘em up. That’d be the wheel. You can’t scream and yell – so that would be the whistle.
So the pop-off valve is to imagine different scenarios that would destroy the incoming motion, ok? And you’re not allowed to use that either because that’s “bad.” It’s bad to sit around and fantasize all kinds of violence – that’s terrible, isn’t it?
(Yes, I’m not free to fantasize violence—my parents and teachers said it was a bad thing to do.)
You couldn’t do that. So you don’t say anything, you hold the emotion in and then have a whole lot of held resentment. So that’s when the unpleasant scene goes through the mind over and over and you wind up, within 24 to 48 hours, with stiffness and soreness and if continued on indefinitely, then you have unusual cellular activity, unusual sensation, tissue cell alteration and breakdown and the folks say, “You just never know when illness will strike! You just never know…” But what’s happened? All the mobilized and unreleased energy generated and held has to be adapted to and the body gets rid of it through what we call illness.
Now to be sick is respectable—you can burn it up that way. It’s all right to have various of your organs cut out and thrown away and taking innumerable medications—that’s all right isn’t it? That’s acceptable. In other words, it’s all right to patch boilers, but first the boiler cracks and blows, is that right?
So you inwardly react to the unpleasant things said and done to you. You can almost feel it, like the fire in the firebox of the steam engine, only it’s in your solar plexus and you react to fight or run. But, of course if you let the anger out, all kinds of conflicts occur with the world outside of you. If you hold it and don’t do anything, that mobilized and unreleased energy (steam in the engine) has no place to go. So now, you could get off by yourself and use your imagination to destroy that motion… but you never have thought about using that.
So we’ve all been taught to be “nice” and that any alternative is “bad”, so we couldn’t use the safety valve. You can’t blow the whistle because that’s not nice; and you certainly can’t stop the wheel because that’s sure bad. So the only thing left on the steam engine is for the boiler to crack, is that right? That’s when you get sick, hmm? Violent headaches and all these things – so you have the unusual cellular activity, the unusual sensation that goes with it. And if you keep it up long enough finally the tissue cells will alter or break down. Right?
Now does that make sense that you can’t use the safety valve? Wonder how come we are designed so that we can fantasize things. How come you have that faculty?
(So, imagination is a gift.)
It is a gift, but you’re not allowed to use it only for very little things, is that right? You can’t use it to save your life or the body with; you only can use it for making a poem, painting a picture or composing a song. Those activities are wonderful and valuable but it seems to me we can also use it to alleviate the body from a lot of stress we put on it in our mechanical reactions to unpleasant things that occur. So you’re not hurting me if you sit here and imagine poking swords through me are you? I don’t feel a thing. Do you?
(I’ll get you……….) (Laugher)
Well good, it won’t hurt me a bit in the world. So you see you could hit me on the head with a hammer or anything in your imagination if I did or said something you found yourself reacting to. You’d have total charge. Now you could burn all this mobilized and unreleased energy up and that would sure be better that tearing holes in the body. And you know if you do this little exercise a few minutes, you can either feel lighter or you start laughing.
A story…
One time I was down here in the southern part of the country and they brought in a nice old gentleman who was sitting in a wheel chair and he’d been there for three years. He couldn’t move without the wheelchair. He couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t walk – couldn’t do anything. So we talked for a while just rambling around. I asked him some kind of questions of who he disliked most and he said the next door neighbor. I said, “What’d he do?”
Well, the old gent lived on a farm. He said his neighbor went out on a windy day in March and set the field afire (sage grass) and the fire came across and burned his barn down. You know he got some incoming motion here and he wanted to return it. But he was scared to do that because what he wanted to do was take his shotgun and go shoot the man. But he got to figuring that would get him in jail, so he just held that motion. So after three years, he still had all this motion having his barn burned down from this stupid neighbor setting the field afire on a windy March day. So he found himself in a wheelchair unable to move just like he was also unable to return that motion to the neighbor.
So we started to work that he fantasize putting this neighbor on a stump and putting two big sticks of dynamite in the stump and blowing the man up. I said, “Now go gather up the pieces, put the guy back together—you know, if you blow him up in your head you can put him back together and set him up there again because once wasn’t quite enough. Set him on the stump and blow him up again.” So he blew him up a number of times, then he took the pitchfork and piled all the bones up and the pieces up and suddenly he starting laughing.
And I said, “Well, let’s go out and see the rest of the family.” They were in the living room and the rest of them out in the Florida house in the back yard. So he got up out of the chair and walked on. He walked out the back door and his grandson came out and said, “Grandpa, you can’t walk!” So he got rather embarrassed, you know, because his grandchild, the little guy, had never seen him walk.
Now which was better—to fantasize or to go along for years holding this motion with mobilized and unreleased energy being paralyzed? So he had unusual cellular activity and unusual sensation—he was tied down, paralyzed, couldn’t walk – had not walked for three years since the barn got burned down. It took two weeks to get himself worked into that situation
Now he could have undone that mobilized and unreleased energy quite easily with a little fantasy, which didn’t hurt the old neighbor, right? It didn’t hurt the neighbor a bit—he’s still out there setting fires. Do you think it was wrong for him to fantasize?
You know when it’s just fantasy you can let it really rip. It’s not going to hurt anybody but it’s an awful easy way to destroy motion. Now I don’t say it’s the only way; there are gobs more. I just happen to find that one kind of funny and delightful.
(Now other than to the gentleman himself, was there any difference whether the man held those feelings or imagined them? Did it make any difference to anybody else?)
A difference to anybody else? No. It didn’t hurt the guy that set the fire, one way or the other—whether the old guy said, “I forgive him, I forgive him.” or “I’m going to blow him up!” It didn’t make any difference. But it made an awful lot of difference to the man sitting in the chair, yes. He couldn’t move, he was immobilized with this mobilized and unreleased energy because he was really ticked off at that guy for settin’ that fire on a windy March day and lettin’ the wind burn the fire right up and take his nice barn down. Obviously he was a little upset about it. But immediately he can get over it.
So if you want to turn all that mobilized and unreleased energy a’loose tonight, you can just have yourself a Hitchcock horror show and get rid of it. You can write the script, direct the part—you can have a Vincent Price deal and get it over with tonight. You can build you a nice big room about this size full of every conceivable kind of torture instrument; and you can go down there and work all evening.
(Sometimes I enjoy holding that resentment.)
I didn’t say you had to use it. If you want to hate him for a week or six months or two years, hate him up a storm. But when you want to get over it, use the safety valve, ok? We’re talking about an avenue of use where you don’t have to be in a bind and you don’t have to destroy the body because you don’t know what to do with motion as it comes into you.
Now these are things we weren’t taught in second grade, third grade or graduate courses in college, is that right? Once energy is mobilized, it’s a one-way street. Now it’s got to be used. We all have the potential of mobilizing a lot of energy but we don’t mobilize it until we have a use for it.
See, if I stood up on that table and jumped off, I’d mobilize exactly the amount of energy for whatever the body weighs this moment from the top of the table to the floor. I wouldn’t hurt it. Were you ever driving down the street and a kid run out in front of you? It takes a little bit of effort to step down on that power brake; but in that moment, you’ve mobilized enough energy in that few seconds to probably pick the car up and throw it around.
Did you ever have that happen, Betty? Something run out in front of you? Slam on the power brakes? You don’t use it up, but you mobilize a great amount of energy because you saw the child being hit, thrown all over, you in court and everything else—the split second you saw him. Ok?
You can’t reverse it. Now it has to be used. So how about destroying the energy? It won’t hurt the kid. Use your imagination in any way you can to creatively destroy the mobilized and unreleased energy. It might save you many violent headaches. Might save you all kinds of degenerative disorders through the years.
So could you use the gift given you as a means to destroy these motions or energy that we mobilize sometimes without having a use for it? Is that right? So you mobilized it – it’s there. Now you don’t have to carry it around and let the boiler break, do you? You can go use it up right now. It won’t hurt a soul; nobody knows what you’re doing but you and it’s a very private affair. Now you have a little incinerator where you can burn up mobilized and unreleased energy. You got one built in.
(What about when you’ve gone through this fantasy and you haven’t seen the other person for maybe six months or so and then you see him and you come apart again?)
Oh, I’d blow him up again. Fantasizing is available any hour of the day and night, honey.
(Do we get a similar type of release from when we dream at night, as when we fantasize?)
Well, thank goodness dreams do a little of it. We won’t do it ourselves in daytime, so we have to dream at night. But a lot of times the dream is not quite powerful enough because it keeps waking you up if it’s powerful enough. But we’re talking about day-dreaming and night dreaming – are very similar.
I don’t know how you go to sleep, but when I lay down I start me a dream that I like; and that’s the end of it. I start it and go into 20 more before morning, I guess. I don’t know, but I always start one. That’s the way to go to sleep.
(Would you comment on physically channeling some of this energy as opposed to just fantasizing such has heading out toward the woodpile and imagining somebody’s face there?)
We don’t get anything from just the physical, it’s still only the fantasy you put into it. You go out and get that block of wood, Roger, and you haul off and whack him one. Now you’ve got the amount of energy mobilized against the block from what you’re going to do, from fantasizing you got enough to burn up your mobilizing. Still has to come that way, otherwise it won’t work, ok?
(That’s so interesting. It doesn’t work unless it’s actually fantasized.)
On no, because if I’m going to pick you up and throw you around it takes that amount of energy. I have to mobilize that to pick you up. Now, if I go do something else, then I’ve got to fantasize in order to burn up this excess stored energy from yesterday or the day before or ten years ago, ok? What are we waiting for? It is the fantasizing that does the work.
(The other stuff would be unnecessary to cause the fantasy to really sink in.)
Right, because I just want to know who I’m burnin’ up and who I’m exploding and what all I’m doin’, ok?
Originating a motion from Newport Beach, CA – 1980
[Before we go on with originating a motion, which can be based upon understanding, I’d like to offer the definition of Agape: It means that I see that whatever anyone (including self) has ever done, is doing or ever will do is at the moment of doing it felt to be right, or proper, or justifiable with the amount of light one has.
Anti-Agape is seeing a person as knowing the right thing to do, but the person goes on and does wrong anyway.]
Ok, somebody comes up and gives me a bit of anger or some unpleasant emotion. I could destroy it because I see that it is totally worthless, ok? So we use the thing called Agape to destroy energy, incoming motion from somebody else. They’re doin’ what they feel is right, proper and justifiable; and I’m not having any of it, ok? And then one is free to generate energy. Now I can begin to be friendly to the person. I can have a nice feeling about them. I can be enthusiastic about getting along with them or getting away from them – either one would be all right. Just get out of the area. And then we can be generating energy. Now I think that most of us could usually stand to be able to be a human generator, huh?
You see, the way you act, you will produce a feeling, is that right? Now if you have a feeling of enthusiasm or vital interest or even just being very thankful that you’re alive and all in one piece today, able to get around, you are generating tremendous amounts of energy. Now if I generated a bunch of anger energy, everyone would want to be away from me. It’s a repelling energy. Now it may be very energetic, but it would be repelling to you because there’s different forms of it. If I was very enthusiastic, you would like to be around me. If I’m very happy, you would like to be around me, is that correct?
(Yes.)
And a pleasant person is full of energy, is that usually the situation? Hmm? They generate it because they are thankful. Now when you’re very thankful and you’re very alive and showin’ off your pretty wines and everything, people like to come, don’t they?
(You bet.)
And when you’re down in your dumps –
(They don’t come.)
They don’t come, do they? Now we have talked about this in relation to a business. If you’re around in a business and you’re very… generating a lot of energy from a very high mood of enthusiasm or whatever (thankfulness, you name it, plain downright gratitude that you’re alive, ok?) people flock there for some reason. They don’t know why but from way off, they will come because they are attracted to that feeling. Now most of us are unaware of what’s attracting us to a place. I have people tell me, “Well I just stumbled into that place.” But then they keep going back all the time. Now they didn’t just stumble in (or maybe they did) but something was attracting them and they kept going toward it in spite of themselves. They had no particular intention; but you follow things where there is energy levels of a kind.
Ok. Now if somebody attracts you, it is because they have a certain kind of energy and you like to be around it. If somebody repels you or leaves you “blah”, neutral, it is a kind of energy that you either don’t want to be around or really doesn’t give you a lot of interest. Now what kind do you most feel you would be attracted by?
(I like when people are serene.)
That’s a pretty good one, ok? Now that, to me, is vital interest – that a person is vitally interested. They’re serene and peaceful and that’s kind of nice to be around, right? Now enthusiasm is not quite as serene – it’s serene and peaceful, but it’s more alive, it’s more vibrant, hmm? Now can you by your own efforts and your own intentions generate the kind of energy you want for all the rest of us to be attracted to rather than repelled by? You can.
(But the family generates energy waves I don’t like.)
Yes they do….but you know, you can, instead of fightin’ about somebody else’s energy waves, you just get one higher and generate the kind you would like for them to put out and they’ll do it. But who’s responsible for the household’s level, you or others?
(Well, I guess I’m responsible for mine….)
Yes you are – you’re the only one who can be… and you can by taking yours two notches higher, at least, than anybody else’s is. Everybody will follow, ok? So let’s say that somebody is generating anger here.
(Yes.)
The next one above that is Boredom [see Tone Scale on the webpage] and the next is Contentment. Even if you only radiate contentment, they will shut up in a very short order. I just quits like that. It really does. Don’t take my word for it, go try it out.
(Can you generate so much enthusiasm about everything?)
Without opening your mouth, yes. I can do it, and it even travels at a distance and you don’t hear a word, is that right? It will be there because you can start it going, yes.
Having run restaurants, sometimes they’re very noisy. There’s certain people come in (especially if they’ve been waiting two hours in a holding pen and they’ve imbibed a certain amount of alcohol) they’re very noisy and I don’t like noisy restaurants. I like a pretty smooth hum. And I’ve walked out in the middle of the place, leaned against a post and in 15 minutes it’s quiet and the pretty hum’s back. All you do is generate some serenity in there over the level of the booze talkin’, ok? That’s all it takes and you can do it without saying a word to a single person. But you’ve really got to be feeling it.
So I can act enthusiastic without ever openin’ my mouth. Now, of course, in my case the mouth gets involved because I’m a storyteller, so I’m liable to start saying somethin’ right quick. But under many cases, just go stand against a post like that out in the restaurant to calm it down. Because it’s getting out of hand when it starts getting “staticky.” The next thing they do is start complaining and when they start complaining, they start causing other people to do the same. So we’d go out and generate a wonderful bit of enthusiasm; and they would all come down to the nice pleasant hum that you can hear in a restaurant where everybody’s very happy with what’s goin’ on. All the customers are happy. And that is a very decided asset and you don’t have to say a word. You can only act the way the body is. In other words, you can wear a smile. You can stand up straight like you were feeling vibrantly good, that you could barely keep your feet on the ground, hmm? You’re about to levitate. That’s what it takes to get it there. That’s the way it works, and it will do it very quickly.
(And that is with a feeling of thankfulness or gratefulness…..)
That would be one of ’em – enthusiasm. I’d start with at least being very thankful, yes. And I could go a little bit higher, you know. You could go up to where you were just decidedly enthusiastic about something. But definitely start with the level of at least being thankful, ok?
Now you got to act it out, not just talk about it. The body has to be involved in these things, not just your head. Because I have never seen a mind runnin’ around by itself and I’ve never seen a body runnin’ around without some sort of a vital system in it. And I’ve never seen the vital thing runnin’ around without a body. So don’t think you’re a mind and a body – you’re a human being and that includes both of ’em. The whole thing’s gotta work or you’re not generating. In other words, if you had a greatest dynamo in the world and you had a great waterfall to run it with, but you didn’t have the water pouring on the paddlewheel, you wouldn’t generate any electricity, ok? So all of us has gotta be involved in it. In other words, I think this is probably what is meant by commitment. It’s easy to sit and think about something, huh? But unless you act upon it, it is totally worthless. It has no value, no push, no punch, no nothin’ else. If you act without being aware of what you’re doing, it wouldn’t have any punch, ok? But you are a unit and all of you has gotta be involved in it.