A Marsha Summers Blog

[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.

Just FYI Newport 1980 Workshop is new on the website.  About 300 typewritten pages so divided into 8 webpages.

Talk covers:

• Self determined/other determined
• Picture of man
• Developing a habit of a chosen inner state
• The “flat tire” story
• What would have happened if “what I see as bad” hadn’t happened.
• How can I be serene when “they” are bothering me
• Acting healthy to be healthy; action/attitude = condition
• Use it or lose it – – use it and keep it
• Tone scale – coma to exhileration
• Initiative, resistance, form and result
• The thought of being a good guest
• Time as the only resistance
• What not I’s do – – how they operate
• Nothing nor nobody is to blame.
• What generates and dissapates energy
• Common misconceptions
• Choosing how I’ll see people around me
• Purpose and will vs “will power”
• Environment, inner feeling, activity and nutrition
• Self remembering
• poltergeist situations
• autistic children
• futility in trying to do the opposite
• What have we earned?
• Faith, grace and agape
• Threat
• Choicelessness
• The 4^th Wise Man – – a book
• Freedom and experiencing freely
• Definition of “surrender” and  “take charge”
• “ideals are illusions we fight for” or cling to, but “what is we can do something about”.
• Good Sam – – who was neighbor to the man in the ditch
• Am I loved? Vs Am I capable of loving.
• Seeing people as beautiful – – consequently treating them spontaneously.
• Definition of awareness and intellect
• Romantic love and commitment
• Higher States of being
• Seeing patterns in people and in self
• Definition of renouncing
• Artistry in the higher states – painting and music
• Positive thinking – – does it work?
• Homeopathy – – removing the obstruction to cure.
• More on adaptation
• Reasons for failure in new businesses
• Seeing Life as a party instead of a madhouse
• The Masons
• Travelers and Trippers
• Suggestibility
• “seeing clearly”
• Balance of four with example of teeter tooter game
• Moods are contagious – – higher moods can counteract lower ones.
• Financially independent or “free to”
• Old man who had money sewed into his coat, yet ate garbage
• Running an experiment instead of  listening to A and B side
• Commitment to an invention or pet idea
• “Why” things happen
• Increasing one’s necessity
• Being consciously or unconsciously selfish
• Opposites and degrees

 

 

So it is possible that living in the present moment, it might take care of all the other moments quite well; but by not living this moment at all; which, if you observe in and around you, most generally none of the attention is on the present moment. It’s on what will happen, what may happen, what did happen – – where have I got to be at 3:00 p.m. and these days on all the electronic devices available, until there is very little attention paid to this moment and its logical sequence is kind of torn up a little bit.  Would you see that is possible?

Question from woman:  Would you give the illustration of the two women cooking dinner.

…. And getting dinner on the table?  Ok.  This is a little story I told some time or other and a true one.  I went into a lady’s house one time and the kitchen was a literal chaos, including her.  She was perspiring, sweating; the oven had black smoke boiling out of it, something was burning in it.  She had just dropped a head of lettuce on the floor and was chasing it; and the place was all a ’clutter.  And as is my favorite question to ask, I said, “What are you doing?”

And she implied that is was a blankity, blank idiot for asking, but she said, “I’m TRYING to get dinner on the table.”

A few days later I was in another home, and the contrast was quite visible to me.  The lady was all dressed up, and she had a pretty little apron on and she was making the salad.  The oven was lighted and everything looked under control and the pots were sitting on the burners going Psst, psst, psst – – doing nicely.  And I said, “What are you doing?”  And she said “I’m cooking dinner.”

Now she was in present time, the other lady was out of time.  She was trying to get to the conclusion without taking the logical steps as they came along in every day living.

Now, I’m sure dinner got on the table and much more enjoyable in the second home as well as much more efficiently than it got on the table in the first one because the logical outcome of what she was doing at the moment – – moment by moment led to dinner on the table; and it looked like it would be a much more enjoyable dinner in that house.

Excerpt from Newport Beach 1980 Workshop

A participant asks:

(What’s the traveler and tripper story you tell regarding enlightenment which can also be applied to other areas of living?)

Travelers and trippers – – ok – – we’ll try to work on that one a little bit. A person who is free or is an integrated individual is called a traveler in some language. So is that all right? It doesn’t mean we’d always have to use that term; but it is used in some lingo. So a traveler is not going anywhere in particular, he’s traveling; and this is generally given as a symbol of the traveler; and it doesn’t matter whether he’s here or here or here or here or here or what’s going on there because he is “on the path” or “way” and he is living it, he’s not trying to get to an “end” somewheres. In other words he doesn’t have a goal – – you can check out anything we talk about here.

Now we’ve mentioned at times about the fourth wise man, huh? Now he was a traveler. So his compadres started at point A and went to point B, and then their chore was done. Now that’s a person on a trip, ok? Now the trip has a definite goal or something to accomplish; and so they were to see a certain person when they got there, and they did that.

There is no point A and B – – no start and no finish with the traveler – – so the fourth wise man had an aim to get from point A to point B, but he never got there. So as he went along, he found a poor old guy lying in the desert burning up with fever with nobody to look after him; so the traveler stopped, took care of him and that was it. He was just a traveler anyway. He continued on and found some little girl being sold into slavery, so he took some object that he had that would purchase her, bought her and set her free – – it doesn’t make any difference. Now he didn’t see any obstructions to his purpose.

Now if anything happened along here, the trippers would be very impatient or very upset about it – – would possibly say it was so necessary to get to point B over here and complete what they set out to do, that they would have ignored the sick old guy lying beside the road or the girl being sold into slavery or an animal being mistreated. The traveler even bought a donkey along the way because the man was beating the donkey and not feeding it. So the person on the trip or the “tripper” as we call him, couldn’t stop and be bothered with all that. He has to be on his way.

The traveler works with whatever’s here in the moment. So if he sees something that requires that he be here for three weeks – – so what, he is not intervened. He is a traveler at that particular place and he’s doing what seems “to be there to do”, ok? And so he is not coming from any one spot nor going to any other spot. There’s no point A and B. And I think this is a sign of infinity. He is a “completed man” and is a person no longer looking for a given destination or a goal. He is not trying to “gain something” or “get something”. He is “doing” something. So he’s traveling and whatever presents itself at any given spot, that’s what he does; and he knows no interference or second force, ok? That help answer it ok – – so far, so good? All right.

The world is full of trippers and very few travelers, ok? Lots of folks are on a little trip. They’re on a trip to be integrated or to be whole or complete. The traveler says, “Well, I’m doing alright, right here – – I can take care of what’s going on right here, right now – – that’s the person who truly is “on the path” as it’s commonly called. And he’s not headed anywhere.

Most people say they’re on the path – – they’re headed for a given accomplishment or some goal or some prize or some illusion that they’ve dreamed up; and those we call trippers. They are not travelers of “the way”.

It’s been around for a long time – – I have it written where it was transcribed out of a talk we gave 10 years ago or so – – so it’s been around a long time. Now are you a traveler? If you take care of whatever shows up here, then there’s no such thing as an interference, no such thing as second force – – nobody’s interfering with you – – that’s just what showed here.

You’ve all read the story about the Good Samaritan – – he was a traveler. The other guys mentioned in the story were all trippers. They were headed somewhere with many misconceptions and conclusions about the man in the ditch; and they couldn’t be bothered with a guy beat up and lying there in the ditch – – who’s got time to stop.

There is a Sufi story told of two guys were traveling and they came by an ant hill; and the traveler said he heard some of the ants down there that seemed to be struggling with a big rock – – maybe they ought to dig down and open it up. The tripper was in a hurry to get on with his trip, so he kept insisting – – “We can’t stop here and fiddle with a durn ant hill. We got to go on.”

Later they came to a tree and the traveler heard bees singing in it, and the traveler saw the bees had something going on wrong; and suggested if they opened it up, they could get a lot of honey and also be of assistance to the bees, but the tripper said, “Why bother with that.”

Finally at a teahouse one night – – another bunch of people caught up with them and they, too, had noticed the ants struggling there; so they dug down and found great gobs of gold that the ants couldn’t get around. And so the tripper was all upset because the traveler hadn’t had him stop, you know – – hadn’t insisted on it.

Same thing with the bees. So there was endless number of things that the tripper was in such a hurry that he ignored – – he refused to be in the present. The traveler kept saying, “Let’s do this – – it’s here at hand – – we don’t know what’s over there.” But the tripper never would stop – – so, yes, it’s a very common little story of the “travelers” and the “trippers’.

I just get it down where you don’t have to interpret it. I just figure – – you know – – that most people are not into seeing what the subtle point is. So the story is describing a traveler and a tripper setting off together. There are many versions of this little story.

But it is a most interesting idea to keep in mind as to “what am I doing?” Am I a traveler or am I just running on little spasmodic trips out here. The traveler has a great joy, and is a completed being and experiences no frustrations, has no obstructions to his way.

The tripper has nothing but obstructions and struggle to get to where he’s going; and he has nothing when he gets there.

Want to be a traveler?

So the traveler takes care of whatever presents itself at the moment – – I wasn’t going anywhere anyway, I was just traveling. And the traveler is on the road of infinity – – the other is on a very limited road – – the end’s right here, ok?

in·fin·i·ty – synonyms: endlessness, boundlessness, limitlessness;

There’s a story told that a man’s donkey wandered off in the middle of the night; and, therefore, he had to carry his knapsack down the road on his own shoulder.  He didn’t have his donkey to ride in the middle of the day. 

Then he met a stranger in the heat, and he told him how miserable everything was.  He was so unhappy because he lost the donkey and now he was having to walk and carry his knapsack on his back.  So the stranger that he was telling all this story to invited him to come sit under the shade with him.  The stranger said just leave your knapsack there – – we’ll sit over here under the shade and refresh ourselves.  I have some water with me in a canteen. 

So the stranger gave him a drink and the guy was carrying on, still just as miserable as he could be.  Suddenly, the stranger got up, grabbed the knapsack and ran off with it.  The guy, now, was in one terrible state. 

Meanwhile, the stranger slipped into the bushes and waited a little bit until he saw the guy coming.  Then he laid the knapsack out in the road; and when the guy found it there, he was very happy. 

So the stranger came out and said, “Now you were unhappy because you didn’t have a donkey.”  “Then you lost your knapsack, and now you’re happy because you found your knapsack, and you’re in the same boat you were in when the donkey wandered off, but now you’re happy.”

So you see, it’s really very simple to decide that we will have a different viewpoint, but if I choose to be a victim, I am obviously what the world calls unhappy, right? 

Now if I’m doing something, I don’t think about whether I’m happy or not., but I have a certain amount of satisfaction in doing or being on the way to doing.  I’m now in motive, and I quit thinking about being happy. 

So we tell people if you are trying to be happy, we’ll guarantee you’ll be miserable.  I don’t know whether you’ll ever be happy or not, but if you forget all about trying to be happy, you wouldn’t trade places with anybody in the world. 

Happiness is that proverbial thing—the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that you can’t find.  It’s the bluebird saying that “you can have your wishes if you can sprinkle salt on the bluebird’s tail.”  So in other words, it’s an illusion.  It’s a joke played on mankind, and most of us have bought it.  We’re trying to be happy, and who knows what it means – – and why bother with it anyway.

If there is such a thing, I’m sure it’s a byproduct of not giving a ‘durn’ about being happy—if there is even such a thing.  Who wants it anyway, it may be that all you would do is sit under a shade tree and vegetate. 

(From Marsha) Sometimes as we go through our day, we concentrate on what we want and don’t have, what ought to be, and what’s wrong with this or that.  We forget to look at what we already have and can be thankful for.  The following couple of paragraphs from the Newport 1980 workshop give some insight as to how we might look at these daily circumstances a little differently.  Here it is:

Grace is to recognize we have all kinds of undeserved goods.  In other words, I didn’t do anything to be here at the party.  That was pure unadulterated gifty, ok?  So we have reasonably good health and we can be thankful for about every other thing we have.  There are interesting people around and there are interesting things to do.  If we just think of all the things that were here when we were born, we have to say we have a lot of things we didn’t earn.  In fact, I about got to the point we don’t earn anything, we just all make little contributions to things operating. 

I tried to figure out one time that if one loaf of bread were made just for one of us through the commercial channels, that the thing would cost billions of dollars.  So none of us could buy a loaf of bread – – as it is, we all contribute a little bit to the farmer, we all contribute a little bit to the transportation, we all contribute a little bit to the miller, we all contribute a little bit to the baker, and we all contribute a little bit to the yeast grower.  We contribute a little bit, and we can then go over and buy a loaf of bread for less than a dollar even with inflation. (Well with inflation it’s more now.) So I would say that we don’t ever earn anything – – that about everything I have I consider is “undeserved goods” or “grace” that has just simply been laid on me. 

So I have, certainly, a very decided sense of being very thankful for all these undeserved goods and I believe maybe being thankful is truly an action of one sort or another.  

(From Marsha) And the experiment might be:  How do I feel inside when I re-evaluate all that I already have; and when the inner state sees this, the feeling can be radiated throughout our day to others.