A Marsha Summers Blog

The knowledge that whatever myself or anyone else has ever done, is doing, or ever will do, it is felt at the time of doing to be right, or proper, or justified.

Check it out.

[From Marsha:  Long ago a fellow student and I did an experiment we had heard in the teachings concerning the Law of Balance instead of the idea we all have heard of Karma.  The dictionary says:  “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences”. But the idea was presented to us that there is only the Law of Balance.   So the experiment in balancing says if someone was mean to us in some way that we could balance that action by doing a kindness to someone or something else.   Sounds pretty far out, but we did the experiment for a while and like other ideas forgot it after a bit.  And so here’s that very idea again and certainly worth reviving and checking out.]

Dr. Bob says:

So you said, “you have any number of moods.”  Well, let’s say that I looked at things and said, “Well I think what I will do as my purpose today is work with balancing everything that comes along.”

So somebody comes in and gives me a hard way to go.  Well, the balance to that would be to do something rather nice for somebody  I meet through the day and give them a compliment, okay?  Somebody steals somethin’ from me, I go give somebody somethin’.

I read in a book that if somebody stole your overcoat, go give him your suit coat – or give somebody else your suit coat, I guess.  That kind of balanced it up – you can just keep on givin’ it or else you create more of an imbalance: and it’ll have to come back – I don’t know which.  I’m not talkin’  as that’s what you ought to do or not; but it would be the way that I would see to establish a balance.  And I find it works pretty good because it keeps you reminded that all these unpleasant situations that come along, you can do somethin’ rather nice for something or somebody – doesn’t matter, you just threw it out there, doesn’t matter where it goes – it keeps you aware of your purpose.

So here comes an idea that is only one purpose; it doesn’t go into the unconscious purpose from birth of only being non-disturbed; therefore; it doesn’t have all these methods of complaining, sticking up for rights, blaming or any of the others from the picture of man.  (See picture on the webpage)

With this purpose, the function comes out as something rather constructive, hmm?  It’s not something or someone you get even with, it’s not something to avoid.  It’s not something to fight.  And it sets up a whole different mood that we have talked about with your whole situation and everything around you.  It does all the things we have talked about — that is to say that what you radiate is the environment you live in.  This is a conscious purpose.

Now you can talk about being a conscious individual because you have consciously chosen your purpose.  And once you have a purpose, you don’t have to figure out how to execute it.  In fact it can be fun to figure out what you can do with balancing by doing something nice for someone or something.

[From Marsha   When I was first introduced to this precious work, I treated it like all the other events in life including school, church, parents and peers to mention a few.   That is to say, I felt I must self improve to fit what they were trying to teach me.  The ideas, however, are very different.   May this excerpt  be of value so that you can avoid this common trap.  Dr Bob refers to the idea of observing what goes on in our daily events while we  use the Picture of Man (see illustrations on the website) to discover what’s going on in the inner man and the inner state of being….]

Here he says:

There is an idea of surrender.  We would say live with what we observe within as we use the Picture of Man without judging, condemning or justifying what we see—just live with the fact without condemnation or justification.

When you observe a not I within, there isn’t anything you can do about it because if you try to “change” what you see—let’s say “complain to get your way”, all you’ll do is flip to the B side and try to “please everybody”.  If you try to quit  “sticking up for your rights” from the A side, you’ll just start living and quoting your “authorities” from the B side.  If you try to quit “living by authorities”, all you’ll do is begin “sticking up for your rights”.  So all you do is jump around the Picture of Man – A side to B side and back to A side.   If you try to quit “being different”, why you start “blaming everybody”.  And if you try to quit “blaming everybody” you’re only trying to “be different” or “self improve.

So nothing is gained by condemning or justifying what we observe—it’s just live with this fact and see that “I am living by the infant mind”.  That  infant value was set up by my ancestor — a little baby born back in wherever you were born.  He/she didn’t know very much.  He was naked, helpless and a whole bunch of other things, but he was pretty sharp, he made all these decisions–which was appropriate for him at that moment—necessary to survive.  He “had to complain” because that’s the only way he could get his parents to notice him—he had to beller and let them know he was hungry, wet or hurting in some way.

But nobody ever gave him the opportunity to know anything about himself, and he grew little by little and never noticed that he got to be a big man or a big woman and was still working on these infant methods of getting his way or escaping the for dual basic urges (see website)  So he only expanded these infant methods a little bit.

So he sees that he can live with this and there isn’t any use fightin’ with it.  Now sometimes it takes a little while to discover that we cannot alter it by main strength and awkwardness, okay?  So that’s all we can do is observe and live with it.

[From Marsha…You can go through the 48 basic tapes on the website to discover more about the Picture of Man and how to apply the ideas alone with many others.     The discoveries are well worth the diligence and effort.]

(Audience participation is in parenthesis.)

(Below is an interesting excerpt from one of Dr. Bob’s workshops.)

Have you ever observed an accumulater. Some people accumulate – they have an accumulative instinct. They feel rich by accumulating “whatever” whether it’s ideas or many other things.

One time I was on Grand Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri just standin’, watching the show go by; and there was a man came down the street that had pots, pans, old pot lids, old shoes, everything tied all over his bib overalls with leather strings. Now there was trash cans sitting in front of the stores and one was a millenery store.   So he stopped and looked in there and found a ladies hat. He pulled it out, got his knife out of his pocket, punched a hole in it, got a string laced through it and tied it on.

So I’m watchin’ this and thinkin’; man, you look like so many other people only you’re doin’ it literally and they do it symbolically. They gather up lots of junk that they protect and take good care of. And so I stare at him; and pretty soon he catches my eye that I’m staring at him. So we stare at each other for quite a time. People walk by, but we keep on — we don’t lose the stare. And pretty soon he reaches up and he undoes the one string and he puts the junk in the trash can; and he goes all the way down. He had ‘em tied around his leg with leather thongs like boot straps. He undid it; and when he got the last piece off, he forced the wrinkles out of his overalls, looked at me with a face, spit, and went on.

(Bob were you giving him suggestion more than just the spirit.)

No, I was just trying to understand dear. He looked just like all the rest of the people goin’ up and down the street, — they’re accumulatin buildings and merchandise. He was just accumulatin’ junk, but it’s all the same – nobody’s gonna take it with them. And I think he suddenly realized that this looked a bit ridiculous to accumulate all this ‘cause he wasn’t gonna take it with him anyway, so he just pulled it off and put it in the trash. And he told me what he thought of me.

(You messed in his fun!) (laughter from the audience.)

I was a dirty old killjoy – He had pans and old coffee pots and everything tied all over him. The barrel was full when he got it all taken off. He must have had 25, 30, 40 pounds of this stuff piled on him.

(Man, he must have felt real good to get rid of that.)

Well, I don’t know. But he had a motive – to accumulate. Now why do we accumulate if we stop to think of it? We want to accumulate because if we accumulate, we are more secure from future pain — is that the general idea? But that also means I made a prison for myself; and now I’m inside thinking I’m protectin’ myself from future pain. So the accumulative idea is not a natural thing – it is a conditioned thing. To accumulate is to serve the first decision — I will be comfortable later, huh? Maybe I feel more secure if I can impress people. How do you feel, Joseph, when you’re struggling to accumulate?

(Nondisturbed?)

Highly disturbed! And if you do accumulate?

(You’re still disturbed.)

Because you might lose it.

(Yes, you might lose it.)

And somebody might stare at you.

(Somebody might take it away from me.)

Somebody might stare at you and you’ll have to tear it off, huh? So then the accumulation is a motive for what – for future comfort due to the first decision which is to regain the nondisturbance experienced before birth, huh?

So always the mind is planning, working, struggling in one way or another to accumulate and then after it accumulates, it struggles to maintain. Does that make any sense? Now we could ask the question, are the possessions owned by the person, or did the possessions own him.

(Oh I get it, the possessions own him.)

Okay, and so the struggle goes on and on. Now if a person looked and said, “All right, I enjoy that ocean out there just as much as if I had a title to it.” Huh? Is that joy? It’s a re-evaluation of values.

I used to live in Albuquerque, and there’s a beautiful mountain range that goes down the east side of Albuquerque called Sandia Mountain. The Simmons family owns the mountain. But you know, I enjoyed it a bit more than they did because they had to pay taxes and I didn’t. The face of that mountain turns color every afternoon – the color of a ripe watermelon which is what sandia means in some languages. I used to be sure I wasn’t gonna be busy at that time so I could enjoy it.

So can you have action from agape with the understanding that you don’t need to accumulate. Now if it is put in your charge, fine, you still haven’t accumulated it – you are using it. Sometimes we find a person greatly disturbed over the struggle to keep a house or something and they call it “my home” – and if we can get them to say “the house” or “the automobile” and, really not just say it; but understand the idea behind it. Then they are doing something for the Host. The Host says would you look after this “whatever or whoever”. Is it “mine” or does it still belong to the Host. And I’m doing it for the Host.

So this gets down to where if we can think about the new good, it is an action without a motive and we tell a little story of asking four questions — what am I, where am I, what am I doing, what have I been doing.  I’m a privileged invited guest at this beautiful estate called earth.  Life is the Host and all the other guests are like me – they’re privileged invited guests also.  I only do for the Host.  So if one of the other guests is hungry; the Host says, if you like, would you feed him – it doesn’t say I “have to” or “must” or “should” – He won’t throw me out if I don’t, so then perhaps I would choose to feed the other guest and who am I doing it for?

(Excepts from a talk by Dr. Bob Gibson in Salt Lake City October 1970)

[from Marsha   All my life I’ve heard people say I’m waiting for God to tell me the right thing to do and sometimes they say, “it was the will of God” when things don’t go to suit them.   I believed these words since it was so common a saying, but where did that leave me?   Where does it leave you? The following excerpt from Donna Lancaster’s library gave me another way of seeing.   It is a lovely idea to work with and observe.]

The discussion this morning will be relationships. When everything is in its proper relationship it works real conveniently. Let’s take a buggy, a horse and you have a driver sitting on the seat. So you have the vehicle. You have the motive power. You have the driver. If you put them in the proper relationship you have transportation.   You have a function.

Now you have heard of putting the cart before the horse. If you tie the horse behind the cart, the driver gets on the seat and hollers “Gitty-up”, and nothing much happens. He hasn’t got it in the proper relationship. If he puts the buggy behind the horse and the driver is sound asleep, the horse usually doesn’t go very far in any particular direction. If the driver gets drunk and falls off the buggy, not much goes on. Now if the driver got up on the seat and said, “I’m going to sit here and wait to see the will of the motive power here and then we will go”, the horse could care less which way he goes. His nature is to provide power. So who is responsible for the direction the motive power takes? The driver.

We can use this parable to see our various aspects – when all of this works as a unit, everything works smoothly. We have transportation. The driver is going where he wants to. The horse is furnishing the motive power and the vehicle gives the transportation to the desired destination.

However, does the driver take on the responsibility or does he sit down and whine and want to be told what to do and where to drive the horse. He waits for the horse to tell him where he wants to go and what to do?

The horse really could care less. His nature is Power. The nature of X is to express energy. Where would X express it without an awareness, the driver here, to decide what to do with it? Let’s put the driver to sleep with an anesthetic, maybe ether. What does the motive power do then? Nothing. Its nature is the expression of energy. What would you say then is the “will of the horse”? To please the driver? Now the driver is trying to get the horse to tell him what to do. Stays up all night trying to get the horse to tell him what to do. And what happens? Nothing. And the horse is sitting there with all the power of the universe ready to go.

And what are we doing? We don’t want to be responsible for directing the pony down the road. So we sit and say we want to find out the will of the Power. The Power loves the driver very dearly. The horse loves the driver very much or he would have already left the driver and the buggy. But he has only one thing, “You tell me what you want”. It’s up to you. And if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.

Now the will of the horse is for you to make up your cotton-picking mind, then we’ll do it. Now usually the driver doesn’t know what he wants. He pleads with the horse to tell him what to do. The horse will do anything the driver directs him to do. It will be happy to work with you as long as you drive. But when you don’t drive, everything comes to a stand-still or never starts. We have a responsibility and we avoid this responsibility, because if something happens and we’re criticized. we can blame the horse and say the horse did it. It was the will of the horse.

All our limitations have been chosen because we don’t want to be responsible for the outcome. Who is the director of the motive power? We are. Now with all this conditioning in the awareness we have, how many drivers are sitting on the driver’s seat?   (see the picture of man on the website under illustrations to see who the driver’s are.) But when the driver (awareness) tells all these Not-I’s to shut up and he’s driving the horse, everything goes well. It is a matter of making up the mind and giving the command to the motive power. We are through with conditioning, right there. We are the driver of this most wonderful steed who loves us dearly. But we like to use the phrase “it’s the will of whatever” to not be responsible. It there any excuse not to be the driver?

Do you see where you fit in the Picture of Man? Do you see what your position is? We not just going along for the ride, even though that’s what we try to do. There is only one thing that keeps us in eternal bondage. We don’t want to be responsible. “Now you just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it beautifully”, we say. But we have all the Power of the universe at our direction. The driver is always with the horse. That is the most perfect union in relationship there is. That is when the motive power and the direction are ONE. That is real marriage.

[Very often we get caught up in the suggestion of “What will people think”. When this occurs, it creates “conflict and competition” not only within self; but also with others.   It is interesting to discover how often this occurs just by being aware and observing. Below are some thoughts about the trap.]

What will people think is our biggest competition item, isn’t it? I’m afraid you will think I’m kinda dopey, so I will have to begin to compete so that you will think more of me than you do Ever watch that little game?

So I will compete for “what will people think”; and I will try to get you to think more approval of me than you do of him or her, huh? And here we go. Is this society? Do you wanna live in it?   There’s nothing but war and death that’s in it – you can observe it in conversations, actions, and thoughts which is in the realm of relationships – it determines whether the relationship is in harmony or conflict.    Often this is just ideals, opinions and conclusions we have that don’t agree with others.   It all starts off with competition. The division in man brings about division between man and man.

There’s also “What do I think of me”. This can create an internal war within myself called conflict which sooner or later can then manifest itself it in conflict with others. For instance, if I am working at “self improving” me, then eventually I want to “self improve” you – I think I know what you need or what you ought to be – in other words, be more like me..

Competition and worrying about what people think is an internal thing first; however once one is no longer competitive within self – he sees the whole idea of competition as a fallacy, and steps out of the illusion. He will not compete with anyone; and consequently, he won’t be invited to join in anybody’s conflict.

But you see we seldom step out of society. We’re always gonna fight it and make the other side work better. In other words if I’m a good A I’m gonna make the B’s get in line to be A’s. And if I’m a good B I’m gonna try and make the A’s get in line to be good B’s, so it’s still competition isn’t it?   So we see competition everywhere. (see illustration of the Picture of Man on the webpage of A and B sides.)

Now can you just step out of it? To step out of it is to become noncompetitive not only within oneself but also with others – to be at peace. How much effort does it take – we just observe the decision or the reaction to do it and see the fallacy of this. Can you see that the division starts within the person? The conflict can then escalate to the point of violence.

Now if I get out and organize a group to demonstrate against the establishment, have I stepped out of society? No, I’m still right in there competing and still expressing my division within myself. And then I can say I’m opposed to this, but somebody else says we’re opposed to what you’re doing and the fight’s on.

But now let’s say that I’m just not interested in either side of that little noise; and I just will not compete – I’m gonna do what I’m interested in. I won’t be invited to be in anybody’s conflict.   Can you kinda see how that could be.   I think you can if you’ll think just a minute.

But, you see, we like a certain amount of this competition because we always think we’re gonna win. I’m gonna win out over the others. I wanna make it all my way; and we’re gonna win in this competition; and so we like it because it gives us a sense of power.

That’s the story of Animal Farm. Did you ever read that little book?   So then I’m just saying well the pigs will run it better than Farmer Jones – is that right? I’m the pigs of course, huh? And so we will organize and do. Now did that end any competition?   It didn’t end a bit. You’ll get carried away with vanity and pride in your self discipline. Now you will try to force it on me and so then I’m liable to buck it, and again we got a fight.

How about just steppin’ out of society?

But you see we compete all over the place. How about just letting that all come to an end – end all competition and say I’m gonna do what I love to do. I’m gonna do what I like to do and I don’t care how much more you have or how much less you have, I have no concern with that.

Now to set up a culture, it starts with one individual who is noncompetitive. Then two people might see each other; and they might say, “All right, I’m non competing and you’re non competing.” That way we could kinda operate in the same area a little bit. Would the thing be then that we would start cooperating or would we have the very minimum of cooperation. Which would it be? Would we cooperate or would we set up as our purpose to cooperate a lot or to be the very minimum of cooperation – which would it be?

A very minimum because if we’re gonna cooperate then I’m gonna have to have competition as to which one is doing enough; and then I got to get somebody else as judge to watch between you and me then, don’t we? So, if needed, we’ll cooperate to dig the ditch out there; and then you can go back and do your thing and I’ll go do mine – so it’d be the minimum of cooperation. Could there be peace in such people then? Somebody else might come along and see the value of doing likewise.