A Marsha Summers Blog

On doing an afternoon gig, I encouraged people in the audience who wanted to sing to “sit in” with me. I learned a lot about following amateurs; however, they were able to enjoy some of what I call “sparkle time” and it increased my following which also solidified my employment.

At some point Ernie showed up. He was a professional musician and played piano and sang. He did a good job and it was nice to sit down and let him do a couple of tunes.

The audience came to be like a family with each supporting the other despite any degree of expertise.  

As it went along, a few of us decided to go to a buffet restaurant called Morrisons to eat dinner and continue the camaraderie and the happy feelings we had created together at my gig.

And as it evolved, there was a wonderful black band that played at a hotel called the LaPlaya from 9 – 1 am and they allowed “sit ins” also; so we extended the joy even later.  I had the opportunity to sit in on bass, the piano and also sing in front of the band without needing to play. We also had some great music to dance to. 

This continued for years and Ernie traveled with us. But as is the way of not I’s and how they can take over the mind and influence how we see others, Ernie started finding fault with the people, the music and some circumstances at the LaPlaya. And so he made the choice to leave  us after the buffet.

I didn’t think too much about it until he began to find fault with the buffet. The food didn’t suit him even though there was many choices. And so he stopped going with us after the gig.

Now I was starting to get interested in seeing the probability of what would happen next.  Sure enough, he then started finding fault with my gig or the audience or whatever the not I’s found to make him miserable. He only kept one friend named Jim. Jim told me that Ernie would call every day with something that he didn’t like.

Jim said he didn’t know what to do about it because when Ernie finished with him, he always had a big headache and now he had a bunch of not I’s talking to him too.

I mentioned to him something I had heard Dr. Bob say which was — tell the not I’s to ‘SHUT UP’! 

So the next time Ernie called with his sad and blaming tales; and after they hung up, Jim remembered. He said he stood up with this head full of all he had heard from Ernie and screamed at the top of his lungs…………….”SHUT UP”!  

And they did!

From that experience, I have continued to observe people through the years. So often the not I’s start out with some tiny little judgement. When they (the not I’s) have one convinced of that, the one right after that is bigger and this judging and blaming grows and grows until the person has stopped relationships with so many people that his world gets smaller and smaller devoid of people who are much much more than some ideal we have set for how they look, dress, behave, think and believe. I can only apply what I’ve learned to how I am seeing the world I live in from day to day and ignore the petty judgements I hear within so as to see others with agape and understanding.

(From: Chaos to Order—School Talk #50)

In this workshop Dr. Bob says:

A real teaching creates order from disorder by awakening a conscious and objective awareness.  Now those are adjectives….

Conscious means you know what your doing and you’re doing it at the time. 

It is objective, which means you see everything without relating it to “self” and without judging it as “good or bad” or “right or wrong” according to your taste — you know all these opposite adjectives like right, wrong, good, bad, pretty and ugly are all subjective and are judgments.  These opposites are all based on the subjective feeling within me like  “How does this affect me.”  It’s about “the feeling it gives me”; but it really has nothing to do with the person, thing or event that is going on. 

It is more worthwhile to use

                         descriptive adjectives. 

That can be an interesting challenge.  So all adjectives that are non-descriptive, to me, are really non-adjectives.  That is to say that non-descriptive are not objective–they can’t be objective because they only relate to how I feel about the thing……….

[From Marsha: So I asked myself what would be some objective adjectives and/or descriptive adjectives?  Pretty challenging, I must admit……

                                             “good”         

Subjective relating to my taste of  “good”

 I ate too much of the chocolate cake she made because it was delicious; and now I feel fat.

Descriptive – She made a chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

                                        “bad”

Subjective: “bad” You were a bad boy for pushing your sister down.

Descriptive – There are a couple ways to get by your sister.  Ask her to move or go around her.

                                      “bad”

Subjective: What a crappy day – rain and wind. I’m so depressed!

Descriptive: Today we have rain. The temperature is 76; and it is cloudy and rainy.

                                           “ugly”

Subjective:  I felt embarrassed when I found out that I was about to go out of the house with a dirty blouse because people might laugh at me or peg me as “white trash.”

Descriptive: – He said I had some kind of food staining my blouse and proceeded to get a wet cloth to wipe out the stain.  I thanked him since I can’t see.

                                  “pretty”

Subjective: I have a really pretty dress I’ll loan you for the prom.

Descriptive: I have a long red gown with a white bodice that will compliment the corsage you are receiving for the prom.  Come, I’ll show you to see if you would like to borrow it.

Subjective: If you had done the “right” thing and not gone off and spent your paycheck on frivolous stuff just on an impulse, you wouldn’t be in this financial crisis.

                                “right”

Descriptive: I hear you saying that you’ve run out of cash. What’s going on? How did that happen? What might you do differently in the future.

                               “wrong”

Subjective: He should have known better because I’ve told him time and time again not to put white and black clothes together in the washer; but he still does it. Is he stupid or what?

Descriptive – He put the white clothes and dark clothes together into the washer; but thankfully, they came out with their original colors.  

Well this is an attempt. I think it’s a work in progress. I did find that when I became emotional today that I was able to work with descriptive adjectives and not holler.

I do see that in most of the subjective ones that I was wanting to give an opinion of my personal taste or what I have accepted as right or wrong.

Dr. Bob says there is no “right or wrong”,  “good or bad”.    He talks about thinking in opposites whereas it is more accurate to talk in degrees – it’s not hot — instead, the temperature is 90 degrees.  It’s not cold, the temperature is 24 degrees. 

From the Dictionary consciousness

NOUN

the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings.

the awareness or perception of something by a person.

the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.

 From Half Moon Bay

Question: (So how much attention or approval do we need.  How little……)

How much attention and approval do you need?  Well, why don’t you give yourself what you require?  You know, I figure nobody knows how wonderful I am as much as I do.  I know people that disapprove of me just got poor taste and I’m goin’ about my business. 

Do you know how much you would need to give yourself?  You see in the ultimate end, it’s your own approval you desire, not mine.  I can come along and tell you how beautiful you are; and how wonderful you are; and you’ll say to yourself “He was just doin’ this to try to make me feel good” or “He was makin’ fun of me.”

  So it’s your approval, your image of yourself that counts.  So can you give yourself enough approval or do you want and expect the rest of us give it.  You’ll never believe the rest of us anyway, is that right?  But we’ve been taught that we should always “put ourselves down”.  But if you put yourself down, who’s gonna ‘put you up’, is that right?  Or you wouldn’t believe ’em anyway, would you? 

You’ve been told how beautiful you were ever since you was this high, is that right? 

(This high.)

You’ve been told that all of your life, haven’t you?

(Well, about……….)

Well most of your life, is that right?  That you’re a beautiful lady.  Do you buy it or do you think you’re a ……

(I think they’re lying.)

Right.  So the only approval and attention that really matters is what you give yourself.  Now let’s all get that straight.  Now that don’t mean you’re conceited or anything of the sort.  The point is if you can’t approve of yourself, you won’t buy it if somebody else does.  I’ve watched you for a long time,  You give yourself the “put down”.

(Yeah.)

Yeah.  And you give yourself the put down, And so’s about everybody else here.  Now we all give ourselves a put down, is that right?  The only attention and approval in the ultimate end that matters is what you give yourself, okay?  And that doesn’t mean that you have to run and tell everybody how wonderful you are, but just so you know it, okay?  You don’t have to tell anybody about it, just so you know it.  Then you got plenty of attention.  If you need a little more today, give yourself a little more.

[From Marsha… Once my daughter and I found a sweet little canary flying free – he obviously had escaped.  

So we caught it, got a cage, food and the necessary accoutrements. My daughter being young would go to school and leave the curtains closed. I felt sad for the canary because as I understand it, we cover the cage at night so the bird will sleep; and then remove it during the day.

So after a time, I decided to take the canary with me. I told my mentor in music about the bird; and he said to take a lesson from the bird.  “WHAT, I thought?” What could I possibly learn from a little canary bird. 

So one day I was doing an afternoon gig singing and playing keyboard with a full house and nobody was paying any attention to me. I felt like a failure,  Of course, here comes the self “put down: and I left dejected.

Upon arriving home I could see in my front window and there was the canary singing his little heart out at the top of his voice. I thought about that lesson I was challenged to learn and realized that this canary didn’t need an audience. He was singing for just the joy of it.

And so I’ve taken his lesson with me for the past many years I’ve been playing.  And if people aren’t listening, I send out the joy anyway – we can never measure the effect of what we radiate.]

                  From El paso 9/1979

Now I will ask you a pointed question.  If you had a chance today to live in a city with the finest medical clinic, finest hospital and the finest educated doctors in the world; but no sanitation department.  And the other choice you had was to live in a town that didn’t have a doctor one, in it nor a hospital, nor an infirmary; but had one wonderful sanitation department – which one would you move to?  

(Sanitation Department.)

I’ve traveled into cities where the sanitation department is on strike; and the garbage was piled everywhere.   I’ll take the one that didn’t have the doctor in it if I had to make that choice ‘cause I haven’t used the services of a doctor in more years than I care to mention; but I’ve used the sanitation department every day – every day.  So who’s the biggest man around town, the garbage collector or the doctor?   Tell me that.

(Garbage collector.) 

But you know we look down on the poor garbage collector and to the doctor we kowtow.

Nothing others do is because of you.  What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

[From Marsha… All through the years ever since I began with the teachings in 1975, it has been said, “Don’t make anything important and keep your mood up.” How often I made something important and then tried to drop it and it just wouldn’t drop. So I decided to ask myself and people around me “What Could I Do?”  So here’s some ideas.]

1.  The mind attaches to the importance, but I can take charge by putting my attention on something else—something that requires concentration and creativeness.

2.  When people say something derogatory, sometimes I remember an idea that I’ve been given from time to time that says “they are projecting onto me what they don’t want to see in themselves”.  I can check to see if it’s something I really need to change because it is an unnecessary disturbance to others.  If it is not, I can just consider the source and let it go.   So it is to consider.

3.  Sometimes it helps to change my activity.  Perhaps go for a walk. Dr. Bob told me to walk until I didn’t feel the anger anymore. That’s to “walk it off”. 

4.  Another idea is to ask myself if this is going to affect my life 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years from now.

5.  Ask “What is the ideal?”   If I could get the ideal, what do I think it would give me. Look up “ideal” in the dictionary — Ideals are illusions created in the mind.

6.  Notice if what is being made important is something I am wanting right now—perhaps seeing that it can be had eventually—perhaps it’s a process and will take a period of time.

7.  I’ve also observed that at times when I’ve made something important and been blocked, that it was the best thing that could possibly have happened.  I have realized that and sometimes it took years!

8.  Change perspective.  Imagine other ways of looking at it—perhaps the way someone I respect and admire might see it.

[From Marsha…This at least gives some ideas to work with. And if all else fails read #26 Motion under the school talks where Dr. Bob suggests beating the bath tub with a wet towel – and I’ve used that one on several occasions and found it to be very valuable.]