A Marsha Summers Blog

As we were growing up, it seemed that everyone was an authority over us – – parents, teachers, church, and on and on it goes.  Now as adults, we often continue the pattern of looking for an authority to tell us what to do, what to eat, what not to eat and it seems everyone sees themselves as an authority these days based on what they’ve read.

In the past, I often found myself asking everyone nearby what I should do or accepting the way they saw things as the “only way to view” a certain time, place or circumstance.  The conflict produced was brought to my attention very nicely when my voice teacher and piano teacher gave me conflicting “should” and “should nots” with the opinion that their wisdom was best.  I finally realized the only thing I could do was to experiment with the information they gave me to find out for myself what worked for me in performance.  It took courage, but I made many discoveries and had marvelous results.  So below is an excerpt from a Newport Beach workshop which I thought beautifully described “what goes on” with many of us unconsciously looking for and accepting opinions and conclusions from those we mistakingly view as authorities.  Here begins the excerpt:

“An awful lot of people are inhibited from doing a lot of things that they want to do, huh?  – – because somebody told them it was wrong; and I haven’t found hardly anything in this world that somebody has not said was wrong, harmful or somethin’ else.

Now have you ever eaten or drank anything that somebody hasn’t said is carcegentic, or depleting to the body?  Now if you drink water that runs in the ordinary taps, that’s gonna be carcegenic probably.  If you drink distilled water, you’re gonna deplete your body of minerals, huh?  And you could go on and on with everything under the sun.

Now you know they deny the fact that the human body is highly adaptable – – it adapts – – it adapts to all sorts of things; but if you deny that, then you’re saying that about everything you touch, taste, smell, or eat is in some way harmful, is that correct?  Now they don’t agree on what “it”  is.  This guy says this substance is.  This guy says bacon will do you in; and this guy over here says steaks will do you in – – especially if you cook them on the char broiler; and another one says that any kind of red meat’ll do you in.  Another one says that any meat’ll do you in.  Somebody says vegetables are full of oxilic acid and they’re gonna do all sorts of horrible things to you.  So what is there left?  I don’t think I can see any difference in it because this body’s pretty adaptable if I don’t demand too much adaptation from it at one moment, so I’m gonna do what I want to, ok?

Now if you really want to do it, you find you have no procrastination or anything else about it unless you have been conditioned that what you wanted to do was in some way bad, ugly, abnormal or fattening which is most of it, huh?  So then we get in a turmoil about that, huh?  So there is very little “will” in the world, and an awful lot of “will power” which is very very weak.

Now the integrated person has a want and can act freely, without inhibition from old training that “you shouldn’t do it” – – which has been the “conditioned purpose” that was put on people.  It is not your purpose but the ‘grafted on’ one, huh?

Now how long does it take us to see that all the shoulds and ought tos and have tos and musts was merely the morass of some community that had absolutely nothing to do with reality.

Now I don’t want to do anything that’s gonna harm anybody–period!  Now that is something I just don’t want to do.  I don’t want to do anything that would harm you in any way.   I’m not gonna harm you.  I want to do things which would be as much to my advantage to be non-disturbed as possible.  I’m gonna be considerate of you.  I’m gonna be as harmless as I can, ‘cause i don’t want to harm you; and I’m gonna make some little contribution to Life.  Now where do I stand from there.  Do I have a whole bunch of “should” and “ought tos” and “have tos” and “must nots” to live up to or is that enough?

“You see frustration comes when you have a challenge you can’t hack, huh?  Boredom comes when you have no challenge, and interest comes when you got a challenge that you’re interested in you can do, but takes a little effort.  So to make a contribution always requires a little effort, doesn’t it?  But it’s a size you can hack.  Now if you go out and try to do the whole thing, you’d be frustrated.”

From Marsha

I often find myself reacting to disapproval or even to words that I interpret as disapproval.  In the workshops, Dr. Bob often talked about “personal taste”.  Some things we like–some people we like.  It has nothing to do with whether the thing or the person is “bad” or “good”.

It is simply my “personal taste” which is actually of value.  Can you imagine what would happen if every man liked only one kind of woman?

But aside from that, I often wondered what I could say when someone disapproves.  The urge to defend and explain seems to elevate into who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” and possibly a big argument and hurt feelings.  If I see myself as having done what I did as right or proper or as the only thing I could at the moment with what light I have, there’s no need to defend or explain.  We each are doing our best with what light we have.

But my next question was—well, where can I go from there?  Below are several statements that John found on the website that one can experiment with.  I found it hard to use these statements in the beginning as vanity said I “wasn’t being true to myself”.  Ha, so much for that.  I can be peaceful inside anyway.  John explored the website and found more about the situation of experiencing wanting approval and escaping disapproval.

From John

I’ve been looking at the teaching about “taste” and particularly like the experiment you suggest when confronted with someone’s disapproval by saying:

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Thanks for pointing that out to me.”

“You may be right about that.”

“Oh, you could say that.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Let me look at that—I’ll spend some time with that—thank you.”

I’m a sucker for approval.  I think it says something about me!  What might one say when receiving approval? My conditioning would be to deny or play down the approval with false modesty which seems anti-agape.  So it would seem that accepting approval would be in order; not because it says anything about me, but because the other person is expressing their taste which they think is right, proper and justified at that moment.  So just a simple, “Thanks” would seem in order. The next moment they might just as easily express disapproval of me.

Interesting….  Thanks for the experiment.  As Bob said, “Nobody can tell you one thing in the world about you because there’s nobody in that skin but you.”

From Marsha

Our teacher talked about each of us believing we’ve made mistakes.  He often asked if we ever thought we made a mistake. Of course we all can look back and be totally convinced that we made mistakes in our past.

He was talking about those decisions where everything seemed to go awry—things that didn’t turn out like we thought they should.   He mentioned that if we had done ANYTHING different, we couldn’t know what the outcome would have been—we might have found a million dollars or we could have become a basket case.  That certainly made it easier for me to not make it important when I turned on a wrong street and was late.  Now I just look at it as though if I had been on the right street, I might have been in an accident—and there have been times when I was late and came upon an accident that I might very well have been involved in.  Below is another way to look at what we call “mistakes” from John.

This morning following my usual routine I worked on the newspaper crossword as I sipped my morning coffee. Saturday morning’s puzzle is the most difficult of the weekday puzzles. I do the puzzles in pen and have an aim to complete them without any “mistakes.” The aim is really a goal when I discover I’ve made an incorrect entry. The crossword puzzle is a game and like all games is given by Life that we might learn. When I think I’ve seen something from the teaching doing the crossword I write it in the margin of the paper. This morning I wrote “mistakes=human.”

Like I do with most things I see regarding my conditioning, I do a search of your site. The key word I used this morning was “mistake.” From the “Place of Language” I found,

“Mistake – An act which one thinks was not to one’s advantage but which can never be proven as such; an illusion.”

I was reminded of an incident yesterday of forgetting how to respond to my bridge partner’s bid (we use a very complicated bidding system) which resulted in us not getting to game which everyone else in the room bid but they all failed to make and with my “mistaken” bid we had a top board! My mistake wasn’t a mistake at all!

I had taken out the ball peen hammer and was beating myself over the head about my mistake. Even when my mistake turned out to have a silver lining, a number 5 Not-I was still whacking my head with the hammer. The self-improver Not-I was watching and reacting. It feeds on “mistakes” and is not easily ignored.

The upshot of all this inquiry is that my “mistake” was playing the crossword and bridge games to gain and escape the 4dbu’s. Shall I give up the crossword and bridge? That would be a reaction. A response might be to contribute to a pleasant harmonious mood whether doing the crossword in solitude or playing bridge in a room full of people. That’ll be a challenge!! I’m playing bridge again today.

From Marsha:

Competition is one of the ideas of the man-made world that is fine when agreed upon that we’ll play a game, and one of us will “win”; however the urge to competition is often carried unconsciously into many other areas of life such as “I am right” and “you are wrong” and the argument is over an “opinion” rather than fact.  Below is a contribution from John.  He found conflict within and “checked it out” with the teachings.  Below are his discoveries.

From John:

Competition

Man likes competition because he thinks he’s going to win (vanity).  He’s going to be proven better than others (at least momentarily).  Competition is a form of violence based on the belief, “If you have it, I won’t have it.”  It is a form of greed in that one is trying to keep another from getting what one wants for oneself. That’s his expectation….an ideal which eventually leads to disappointment and the necessity for adaptation (vicious cycle). Once Man is no longer in competition within, he will eschew competition without.   The absence of violence is peace.  Cease competition and begin to do what you want for the joy of doing it!  “Culture” is a state where there is no competition, where people do what interests them, where they are cooperative and independent.

For years I have heard the statement that I “shouldn’t take things personally”.   I’ve often wondered what that meant and asked myself how I could get out of it so I was immune to the effects on my inner state.  In former years, I thought what they said about me must be true and I must do a lot of changing to gain their approval.  This excerpt gives me another way of looking at what people say to and about me that puts a wedge between what they say and how I can see it differently—making it impersonal .

From workshop Albion 1972

Then, obviously you’re going to have sensation—all this approval is is that I sense somebody who says, “I like you” or “That’s a pretty suit” or “I like your weird tie” or “I like your hair” or “I like your behavior.”

That’s all it is – a matter of them expressing their taste.  It expresses absolutely nothing about me.  Did you ever realize that?  Somebody says, “I like you.”  They’re only telling you something about their taste; they’re not describing one iota about you.  Don’t get the big head over it because all they’re telling you about their taste, not a thing about you.

They walk up and say, “I can’t stand you.”  They’re not saying one derogatory thing about you; they’re only expressing their taste.  They haven’t said a thing about you, and I take it as though it was something serious—accurate–true.  No, it isn’t, they haven’t said one iota about you—they have only expressed their taste’ and I give everybody perfect freedom to express their taste—it has no effect on what I am.

So if somebody walked up to you and said:  “I love you.”  All they’re doing is telling you they have a taste — that they approve of you at the moment.  It’s a statement of their state of being at that moment, not a thing about you.

And if I say, “You are the loveliest creature in the world.”  I haven’t told you a thing about you, I’ve only told you about me.  You see we’re always talking about ourselves and other people talk about themselves; and we have a form of insanity called “ideas of reference”.  Did you ever hear that everything that is said, I think that it’s about me and I get all pushed out of shape over it—So that’s my particular brand of insanity.

So you have “ideas of reference”.  You immediately jump to the conclusion because somebody has a personal taste that it somehow relates to you.  Nobody can tell you one thing in the world about you because there’s nobody in that skin but you.  The rest of them can only talk about their taste, and everybody’s got different taste.