[from Marsha: Through the years I and fellow students have asked that very question.
“Well how can I make something unimportant?”
Often I used Dr. Bob’s idea of “being free to experience” which worked much of the time for me; and I’ve also adopted the idea of “this is an adventure”. First of all I need to recognize that I’m anxious and see just what I’m making important. My behavior is a give-a-way because I’ll pace the floor, not be in the present moment, be unable to remember what I just did. Sometimes I just have to laugh at watching myself. I remind me of a “doodle bug” that runs around in circles and isn’t going anywhere. And so this excerpt from John B. came at a wonderful time – Christmas, pandemic, election, economy, race riots, sequestered, and on and on.]
How do you make it not important? You set your state of being against that. You’re not making it important. I heard somebody say here a while ago, that they were ‘making it important” to “not make it important” so they could do something.
You take the importance out of things because you “turn it a-loose”. It really doesn’t matter what’s going to happen. Does it?
Did you ever try “turning whatever your making important a-loose” and seeing what would happen? You are just curious and interested to see what will happen. You have no control over all the other people that have “a finger in the pie”; and you don’t have control over circumstances or the physical body. So you can make a little contribution with your good mood and see what happens.
All you need to do is “turn it a-loose”, it doesn’t matter — so what! And you really mean that, you don’t just say the words. And when you cease to make things important, you find that you can function quite well. You function on top of the world like that, okay? You now have all the ability to do it — that’s in third brain; but you’ve got to let it get quiet. You can’t get quiet while you’re making things important. You get it quiet by listening. Just stop to listen for ten minutes instead of keep pounding away of making it important and criticizing yourself because you’re making it important — it would have been “over with.” So let’s do it the easy way. Everything that works is simple
It really doesn’t matter, does it? — whether I feel “top of the world right now”, or whether I’m tired right now. It doesn’t make any difference.
Anything works when you do it, but just to know about it doesn’t make it work. You see, you have to do it. So you say, “so what’, I’m not going to fret over this today; and you “turn it a-loose” down here, and you feeL wonderful. You keep your mood up a little bit and you’re doing fine.
When we make something “important”, we have placed a “false” importance to it from the “conditioned frame of reference.” We have made it to do the “right thing”, the “best thing”; and can you answer what the “best thing” to do is? Can you ever answer what the “right thing” to do is? There is no right thing to do!
There are generally two kinds of men in the world — one that makes about anything he meets important. Everything that comes upon him, he makes important. That’s one kind of a man. Somebody tells him that it’s “important” that he eats properly and immediately he becomes all concerned about how he eats and he becomes a health food faddist.
Another one comes along and says, “You should get 8 hours sleep.” And so he makes it important to get 8 hours of sleep and promptly stays awake all night — he can’t get to sleep worrying about getting the 8 hours.
Another one says you should eat three meals a day, and so he does that. Shortly he hears another one say, “You should only eat one meal a day, and so now what’s he supposed to do?
So, everything that comes along is believed and made important. Making things important is thought to be really great. People talk about being dead serious.
If I make anything important, I feel anxious which binds me and makes me miserable. Let it go. It’s an experiment in well-being.
[from Marsha: I love Dr. Bob’s parable of food and have been caught up in the “chase” of what is “best” and “right” to eat and not eat. Wonderful to observe in self and others and apply to other such “importances” in our lives.
If you want to read more about a quiet mind, check out “The Three Brains” on the website
If you would like to read before and after around this excerpt, go to: Port Orange, Florida 4/21/91 – Page 2 on the website.]