A Marsha Summers Blog

From: Tuesday Night Talk on Reporting

If a man was going to invent something, he could never work on it unless he was free to have a bunch of experiments that wouldn’t work.

So if we wanted to invent something, paint a picture, write a story, learn an instrument, run a business of some sort or other, the first necessity is that we’re free to fail.  Then we are free to go ahead and do it.

In running an experiment or in any endeavor one wants to do, one has to be absolutely free to fizzle – FAIL.  Now the first rule that comes along if you’re interested in being successful at anything whether it is being happy, peaceful, or makin’ millions of dollars is to be free to fail because when you’re not free to fail, you can’t function.  You are trying to find all the ways to be safe; and there isn’t anything you might want to do where there isn’t some risk involved.    So if we’re free to fail at anything, then you discover you can function.

If you’re not free to fail, you have to take so many precautions you’ll never get started.  I heard of a man who wasn’t free to have any discomfort occur to him, so he begin to build a tower.  He kept building it up and building it up; but he could still see that danger could come from above, so he finally completely enclosed it over on top as a dome.  He had lots of bricks and mortar inside and he completely closed it over.  Now he couldn’t have any doors and windows in this thing because danger can come through those too, you know.  So of course, when he got it all sealed up — you can imagine that very shortly he used up all the air in there and he smothered!

Now if you are not free to take a risk, there is very little chance of doing anything of profit because profit is what you get paid for by taking a risk.  So the source of anxiety is basically the attempt to be non-disturbed.  When you start thinking about how you are going to avoid any possibility of disapproval, rejection or feeling insignificant what happens to you?

(I get anxious and sometimes that leads to sickness.)

But anytime you’re in the pit it’s because you’re afraid of taking a risk.  Now a man called me a little while ago and said that he was in a state of fear over something he needed to do.  So he was going to quit because he didn’t wanna be fearful.  That’s a bad thing to have, isn’t it?  Well now, did any of you just deliberately feel free to be fearful this week? So you can really do your thing – be as fearful as you can.  Really do the thing.   Betty said she really was free to be fearful and it just went away.

When you really set your mind to deliberately be anxious, the anxiety says “Well to hell with you   — you won’t run.”   It’s very freeing.    So you see it really hasn’t or isn’t any great power if one feels free to have a little fear; but somehow or other we have become very fearful of feeling fearful; and we get very angry about feelin’ angry; and we get very resentful about feeling a little resentment.  Now if you’re free to feel those things, what happens?

It’s really all right to feel fear; but you see the first thing when we feel a little touch of fear, we  begin – “How am I gonna rid of it right now!” — like it was the plague or something.  It really won’t hurt you.   You know it really doesn’t do a thing to you.  Have you ever been disappointed?  It didn’t kill you all these years. You’re still functioning, is that right?  So if you’re free to be disappointed, why it’s all right.  You ever been free to have any feeling you had?  I mean the ones that kind of let you know you really have an emotion, not the ones that you purr with when you’ve been well fed or something.

So perhaps that could be an experiment to run today and maybe even two or three days or a week.   We are all grown up adults now; and it’s very liberating when we discover that we can be perfectly free to feel any emotion.  They haven’t killed you or destroyed you or put wrinkles on your face or anything of the sort.

So all of a sudden instead of being fearful, you can be very serene.  But you know we fight fear.  Some of us eat and some of us drink and some of us smoke and some of us do some other things to keep from feeling fearful.

So are you perfectly free to feel fearful?  Well let’s start right now.  You’ve felt it; so if you’re gonna feel it, you might as well do it gracefully and politely.

From TNT “Acting and Feeling”

{from Marsha…..Long ago I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmatosa which is a deterioration of the rods and cones in the retina.  It is a slow degeneration and has proceeded as predicted.   The doctor told me it was a hereditary disease and created a lot of fear.   I lived with that fear of passing it on to my children and recently my eye doctor said it was not hereditary.   I felt such relief after living with the suggestion for so many years.    So in transcribing the above Tuesday night Talk, Dr. Bob says:….}

Question from the audience:

(Will you talk about hereditary disease because told that by my doctor’s.)

It was hereditary?

( Yes, how much does your own belief system count in these matters and could one alter that?)

Disease is a normal adaptation to your own state of stress.  Now the fact that the doctor you went to see couldn’t find out what was goin’ on; and he didn’t understand; and so in order to some way explain it to you when you kept sayin’ “Why did I get this?” he said it was hereditary.

But now if you carry that idea back for a while — if you inherited it from your grandmother, then she had to inherit it from her great grandmother or somebody back down the line then Adam was a sick old guy!   Howling laughter from the audience.

He was damn sick.   So let’s forget that one while we’re at it – without further noise about it, huh?

{from Marsha….After I also had a good laugh, I can’t tell you how much relief I felt.   How amazing a suggestion can get in there when we accept the medical profession as being infallible and turn our well-being over to an institution.}

Exercises – Now is Then – From Levels of Food – School Talk #40

(*Audience participation is in parentheses–notations in brackets have been added for clarification )

Here we go with a description of the exercise – perhaps you can find a way to apply it to your own experiences.

One time I unknowingly ate a piece of tainted pie. Along with the pie I drank a cup of coffee. Before morning I had considerable physical difficulty, and that difficulty went on for many hours.

After the acute stage was over, I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee. [There was an “association” set up between the experience with the tainted pie and the coffee being consumed together]

I would drive down the street and smell coffee in people’s homes–I’d never done such before, but it kept happening. If I walked into a hotel–it was overpowering–the coffee from back there somewhere gave me horrible nausea!

Another thing that went on while I was still in that [acute physical state] was that I was to take a state board exam in New Mexico–and so I went to take the exam. I sat at the table and here’s the monitor of the exam–a lady with her coffeepot perking away right next to me. I spent more time in the wash room than I did writing the exam.

I did pass the exam, but at great agony, I will assure you! I made frequent detours. Test takers couldn’t leave until the paper was handed in. I had my “necessity” increased/! That paper was handed in in a hurry and correct–but with agony.

So finally one day I decided I didn’t want to live that way. I did like my coffee. [He decided to do an experiment to put a barrier between the “now is then” association which was creating nausea every time he was around coffee.]

I sat with a cup of coffee and a little teaspoon. I would take a half a teaspoon full of coffee and tell myself that “now wasn’t then.” It took three hours of that [procedure] before I got any “action” to understand that “now wasn’t then.”

Since then, I haven’t smelled coffee in people’s homes [with the result of nausea].

[From Marsha – When I began studying the teachings many years ago, I often heard the phrase about “doing the work”. The ideas began with the “picture of man” and “the four dual basic urges” (see website under illustrations).   So I mistakenly saw “the work” as just like public school, I thought that “doing the work” was trying to “not” do the four dual basic urges or trying to not complain, not stick up for my rights, not please, not quote authorities, and not blame. It took me a long time to realize that by trying “not to” do the “four dual basic urges” and the “picture of man”, I was only listening to #5 in the ”picture of man” which is none other than the self improver family of not I’s.   It Is not the intention of “the work” to try to change what we observe within ourselves. Following is another way of understanding what we CAN do. It is from #113.)

Here we go:

Now there is a little principle which we find is a necessity to operate with – it describes running experiments.

When we hear an idea, concept, or maybe only read a teaching, it makes an impulse in one side of the brain and is only a bit of a trivia until we get the idea or concept practically applied.

To get it practically applied, we set up another spot over here in the grey matter of the brain by running an experiment of the idea or concept. Now we have created association fibers that go from one side of the brain to the other.

Going on further, anytime something is remotely similar to the experiment, experience and concept, we’ll recall the whole bit. But if you only have one side of that, say you only read a teaching idea, you can’t have an association so the idea is forgotten quite quickly.

Now is there a way that you can see that complaining is not you? How would it be if you made up your mind right now that you was never going to complain anymore?   That would be a way of running an experiment.

(That’s running an experiment?)

Right. And so in a few minutes, I walk over and poke your buttons; and you begin to complain. You said you wouldn’t complain, but then you reacted when the situation changed.   So then you’d see real quick that wasn’t you, wouldn’t you?

We had a man not long ago tell me I couldn’t make him mad. So I said, “Well I probably couldn’t, you’re very awake, very in charge, I’m sure you got it all done.” He really thought he had the concept down.

Then about 20, 30 minutes later when his statement about me being unable to make him mad had been forgotten; and it looked like a good opening, I walked over and asked him a simple question; and he literaly came unglued at the seams.

Another example happened only last week. I walked over to a man who told me he was getting very objective. He had this thing all figured out. Course he hadn’t experimented with it. So I happened to say “What time did we agree on?”   He literally became a bundle of anxiety and total frets. ‘Course he won’t ever forget it now because we got this concept tied to an association right then and there.

So people ask us what we do – we first get a concept (a teaching idea); and we keep the concept kickin’ around a day or two. We try to get everybody to experiment one way or another before the week’s over.

By doing the experiment, there becomes an association with the concept. Now with this man and the question about time, I’ve tried the same thing three or four times since; and he gives me an answer and goes on about his business without getting all pushed out of shape. But when it’s just an idea, it’s just something we talked about one time and that’s all it is.

So when we can see that there must be an association connected with it, we would see the reason for experimenting with these teaching ideas. Now the idea or the concept by itself is absolutely worthless – it’s a bit of trivia stuck in one side of your skull bone.

So there’s always this association going on. So you never have to think “Well how am I gonna be awake and remember” once you have done an experiment and set it into an association of having experienced the practical application of the concept.   Now you have the experience here and the concept here; and you got the association fibers in between; and I will make a bet with you, you can’t forget it.

I hear people say, “I’d do anything if I could remember it immediately instead of after it has already happened.” “Next week I look back and say, ‘Oh yeah, I did get pushed out of shape and got very angry last week and the relationship suffered for quite a while.’ ”

So if you would like these concepts to be around, you would see the concept and then create a practical experiment where you see it acted out, Then you’ll never be able to forget it. It is there as a constant reminder of everything that comes by that’s remotely similar. You remain objective because there is an association in there that reminds you to be objective, okay?

So without it being associated, you’re going to forget it – over and over. You’ll remember the idea later next week sometime and then it don’t do you any good because you don’t have the association with it,

(It has been kind of a difficult thing for a lot of us to design experiments to run.)

Why would it be difficult to design an experiment? You could find out what happens to you when you judge something?

(I was judging something last week.)

See, you see it in the past, you didn’t see it while it was happening, did you?

(Well, I think I kind of had a hunch.)

I had a hunch but is kind of hunchy; and it didn’t work very well. But you see that can be an experiment, there’s always an experiment to operate. What is there about judging. Can you always run an experiment with your judging? So I’m gonna experiment with judging. I’m going to go out and judge something, right now. I’m gonna see “what’s good” and I’m gonna see “what’s bad” right now.   I’m gonna see “what’s right” and I’m gonna see “what’s wrong”, right now!

And then there’s that beautiful statement when you decide that you’ll “never do something”; and one of the other decisions within just seems to insist that “it’s gonna do it” very shortly. Did you ever do that one. One of your false personalities said “I’ll never do so and so again”; and it seems there’s one of the others in there says “Aw, you just wait – when you fall into your waking sleep, I’ll have you doing it in a few minutes.”

(I remember I said I’d never live in the desert.)

Right! And there’s where you moved, right?

(Emphatically.)

Right, said a lot of other things you wouldn’t do too. And they’re all there because there’s another little guy sittin’ over there says, “You wanna bet?” Not I’s are always in competition from the word go.

So perhaps that will help you to understand the value of running experiments with the teaching ideas or concepts that come along.

[From Marsha – I had some difficulty understanding that a concept is just a concept and has nothing to attach to.   No wonder I could read teaching ideas and then promptly forget them until the next time I read them again. So I’m centering on potential experiements that can be observed and experiemented with on this blog.   I want the teaching ideas to take root in me so they are up front and center when the challenge appears; and there is certainly no lack for daily challenges!   I may never be able to measure spiritual growth, but the physical body will tell me quite noisily when I have fallen asleep and hopefully the experiment will associate and the teaching idea will be in the present moment.]

[from Marsha: If you’ve ever started on the path of the teaching ideas and heard about complaining, sticking up for rights, pleasing, quoting authorities, blaming, self-improvement or trying to be different; and in that have observed those in self, you might have begun to think of them as entities because they certainly act that way. And when you try to stop them, escape them or ignore them, very often it seems like they are stronger than you are.   So you hear them over and over in your head. So here is yet another way to see them for what they are – they are not I’s – they are not you. Below is an excerpt from a workshop #113 where we’re given a little idea that might be nice to play with.]

Now anybody that has experienced conflict, and I believe we could safely say that that is all of us. We have judged that a thing should be a certain way; and when it wasn’t, we got our conditioned tools out — (not I’s from A-side) — to try to change whoever or whatever wasn’t the way ”it should be” into what we wanted. In other words, we felt we were capable of judging what is, and it ought not be that way.

Then as soon as we got that said and done, then all of a sudden we heard the “B side” of the picture of man (see website) with the methods to achieve that nondisturbance start hollering – The not I’s say, I got to be a good pleaser — then we decided that we ought to quote some authority we had chosen to believe or we put on a front or try to change ourselves into somebody that has more self determination, huh? Be assertive! We was tired of just being a door mat. And so we begin to struggle. We pushed over here and then they pushed over there; and that’s the conflict to and fro.  We resist what is and see it as bad.

Now what if you could just see, well there is an “acquired personality in me” that wants to do it this way, but I’m not subject to it – I don’t have to do it’s bidding, it’s just hollering.

There’s a lot of ladies have indulged in making little craft items for sale; and so you could gather or if you’re crafty, make a bunch of talking dolls, and sit them on the kitchen table. mantle or somewhere where you see them. They can remind you that they all talk in opposites – all the time! Would you have to go by and/or do everything those talking dolls you made this afternoon told you to do?

(No.)

You wouldn’t pay a bit of attention in the world, is that right? So you see that as soon as we recognize that these are ”acquired, self created little personalities” that we have, we absolultely pay no attention to them.

So when we see what a not I is, those are little dolls that we made huh? We materialized them out of nothing one day long ago; and maybe set them on our shoulder – three on one side, and three on the other and a little chooser on top of our head that listens to one side and then the other, so they talk and talk in our heads and we’ve been listening to them ever since, huh? And they’re still there since you acquired them.   So they are constantly giving orders. They’re all yakkin’ away. Did you create those little dolls?

(I guess I did.)

Are they all homemade little gadgets, huh? Is there any rhyme or reason to do what those dolls that you made say to do – have you any reason to be subject to them sir?

(I don’t have to be.)

They’re little dolls that each of us make, huh? That’s what conditioning is is a bunch of little dolls that all holler. We taught ‘em to talk. We put the programing in; and they talk. Now are you subject to conditioning or the little dolls? Are you subject to them when you see they’re little dolls that lie and tell you what you “should do” or what somebody else “should do” or how “circumstances should be” or how to get what you want right now! If you don’t recognize them as not being you, then you think that is ”I tellin’ myself” this, but instead it’s one of the little dolls – soon as you see it’s a doll you no longer feel subject to it.So the discovery that we can make is what?   That we can see these little things as what they are – all things which I created and made talk. I materialized ‘em, set ‘em up, put ‘em on each shoulder so they’d talk. And it is really that they’re not I, not you. So we could call it conditioning. We can call it devils. We can call it little dolls or demons or whatever you want to, it’s still something you made, is that right?

Now once you see that that’s what it is, could you be objective to not pay any attention to it anymore.

(I guess.)

You could do that right now – is all of this stuff “you” or is this all acquired?

(Acquired.)

See, that wasn’t you at all. You acquired the ability to complain because you hoped it would be a way to “get something” and then you set it off like it was you. It says I. Did you acquire the thing, the idea about sticking up for right?

(Right.)

Did you acquire the idea very definitely of pleasing everybody. Did you acquire the idea that it was correct to believe and do what you’re told by you authorities. Did you acquire the idea or make a little doll or piece of conditioning that says you ought’a be different – the self improvement bit. Did you create, define, or agree to the idea that you were perfectly capable of judging everything? That’s a little idea, isn’t it? It’s a little old thing.

Once you see that you created these and then forgot you created ‘em, they keep on operating. They’re still little dolls sittin’ on your shoulder, right? Could you be subject to them any longer? Cause what are they – things you made yourself, is that right – whether you call it conditioning or whether you call it a little devil or a demon. And once we see that, we’re bound to be somewhat more objective.

[from Marsha: It might be fun to find or make these little dolls and put them somewhere with their respective names and attribute to them what the ones inside you are saying – what a wonderful way to disidentify. Further, couldn’t this be a really fun way to play a game and bring the not I’s to a physical level because it’s been said that they can’t stand the “light” being put on them.   They can’t stand to be laughed at.   With the dolls, we can maybe point an laugh and see their diabolical schemes to create misery, conflict and struggle in our lives.]

[From Marsha:   I’ve had a long-time habit of listening to other piano players and thinking this one is better than me or I’m better than that one.   Always comparing.   It is a tenant of the teaching to drop comparing.     It’s valuable when shopping, but not in the case of comparing people, talent and skills.

Here is the idea of comparing expanded in a workshop.]

You know we have more “dreams” in the daytime that we have at night because we get more involved with them; and they’re experienced purely in the “subjective” state.

Now man’s dreams, of course, are based upon his desires from this first decision — always wants to gain pleasure and comfort and escape pain, needing attention and to escape being ignored or rejected; and he wants to gain approval and to escape disapproval. He wants to gain a sense of being important or special and to escape the sense of being inferior. Now all of those, of course are illusions too. They’re all things that one only senses.

(What’s that last one?)

This one here? Being important or special and escape the sense of feeling inferior or incapable.

Okay, so man dreams. First off, he dreams that he will try to be superior here. He starts off feeling inferior after birth because he compares himself with his parents. As a little kid, he couldn’t reach the top shelves and get things that he wanted. They hid things from him. So actually that’s where you began to feel inferior.

Now when one begins to feel inferior, one usually trys to adapt to it by getting some way that you can feel superior. You find yourself feeling inferior; and you try to convince yourself in some way that you are superior, is that right?

(Don’t you try to do something to prove that you are superior.)

Well that’s the next step. First off you just assume you are – you start dreaming that you’re superior; and then you try to do something that says that you are; and it always seems to be that there is some obstruction to it.

So then we feel we’re persecuted. Somebody’s picking on me. If it wasn’t for her – I’d get along just fine. I’ve had many a man tell me, “Well if it wasn’t for my wife, I’d’a really got ahead, but she just drags me down all the time”. And I’ve had many a lady say, well if it wasn’t for the husband and children, I could have written great books and great poems; and I could’ve painted great pictures and all these good things. And so another person said, if it hadn’t a been for this particular system that’s in operation, meaning society, why I’da been getting’ along great. So the persecution sits in them and then, of course, we hate that which we feel obstructed us – is that right? We have a sense of hate for whatever — we blame..

And then when I hate something, I can’t dispose of it, so I begin to feel inferior; and then around and around it goes; and this is one lovely little wheel that we can get hung up on when we dream of all this; and that creates many great problems, doesn’t it?   Do you live with it about every day in the week?

(You just keep goin’ around and around.)

Round and around, round and round and gradually but perfectly deteriorating; and in 60 or 70 years, you usually wipe it out.

(That’s when you die.)

Yeah, in one way or the other.

Is this illusion all the way around – something you can identify with?   Are you inferior or superior to anybody in the world or just different.

(Different.)

We all stand in different places, so we’re just different. And when you really look at it, isn’t that a perfectly designed world? Can you imagine if everybody had the talent of math; but couldn’t write books or everybody could invent machines but nobody could manage a business?

So there is no price that you could conceive of because you’re totally unique, right? And we could get that down to see that there is no one we need compare ourselves to.

So when we are doing all this comparing, we can remember that there is no two of us alike.   So the exercise is to drop the idea of comparing – comparing me to you, one child to the sibling, and one friend to the other.   Then I can just BE myself and do what I do best.  I can be content with me the way I am and not expect everyone else to fit some ideal I’ve dreamed up for them or try to make myself into some ideal picture I have in my mind for me.  And what is that ideal, picture and certainly an illusion based on anyway?