Lesson 10
There is a Teaching idea that would be very worthwhile to make a note of and to observe for a while. This idea is: That only as I the observer sees some idea of the self, of John or Mary, as an illusion, is it free of the tendency to identify with that idea. One may see a given idea now and then or something that a Not-I is doing and not agree with it at that moment but really doesn’t see that the idea is an illusion. And as we have said, to see an illusion for what it is, is to see the truth and that X operates upon that truth. Once I recognize that a given idea in the self, a conditioned idea, is an illusion, there is no longer any tendency to identify with that idea.
Now to start today, let’s look at some of the ideas that we have of unpleasant emotions. We have an idea that one cannot prevent having an unpleasant emotion, that one must have these ideas, that people cause us to have these ideas of anger, fear, guilt, resentment, boredom, apathy of what’s the use it’s all in vain, jealousy, envy and a number of others. All of these are very unpleasant emotions. Now the Teaching says that one has a right NOT to identify with unpleasant emotions. As we’ve said, a right was something no one can take away from you, and no one can take away from any of us the right not to identify with unpleasant emotions. The self may have them but I, the observer, does not need to identify with them and nobody can make us. So that is one thing that no one can take away from us.
As we observe this we see that unpleasant emotions do arise in the self and that unpleasant emotions bring about, of course, when they are identified with, a terrific change in the body chemistry. One does become addicted to these various charges that give one a feeling of energy or strength or other things. Self- pity is one of the more common unpleasant emotions. Self-pity gives the person a sense of self-love — “I am so wonderful, so nice and no one is treating me right.” So one cuddles the self when one identifies with the idea of self-pity. Now as we begin to see by observing the self, I, the observer, observing the self, sees all of this is an illusion. That it does not bring about more consciousness, that it does not put one in a higher state of being but actually takes one to a much lower state of being, down to apathy, fear, self-pity, to the lowest levels of being, down to a hypnotic state. They offer, of course, from early infancy, that all of these are wonderful things and that one cannot prevent them. The infant controls grownups with unpleasant emotions. The baby cries “pitiful,” someone picks it up. It cries “angry,” someone pays attention to it. It cries “hurt” and everybody runs. So the self started very early to value unpleasant emotions.
Now as I observe the unpleasant emotions we will observe what the self is tying to gain with this unpleasant emotion. Let’s start with anger. When I, the observer, observes the self being angry, let’s see the motive with the anger, what it intends to accomplish. It is not something that can’t be helped; it is that this is the way to get people to get in line. It is an effort to control and one gains that sense of importance, a sense of being able to control people.
Now let’s observe self-pity, being pitiful. Does it not also control people? Being a martyr, “I’ve pleased everybody and nobody has appreciated it. I’ve worked my fingers to the bone and nobody pays any attention to me,” is a cry for attention is it not, and does it usually work? At least the self is paying attention for self. One Not-I is feeling sorry for the whole state of the other Not-l’s and a whole crowd is all involved and one is in a very unpleasant state; one might say one is in the slums of one’s inner world, and all in an attempt to control.
Now much of this starts with greed. One has a certain amount of pleasure, comfort, attention, approval and ability to control others, especially if they are smaller or younger or one is the boss. Then that’s not enough. Greed says there should be more. It begins to put up pictures. It begins to offer suggestions: “Well after all, at that time they didn’t appreciate it, here I gave all the employees a Christmas bonus and not one of them has come around and really said thank you for it. I bought the family a new station wagon and all they want is more money to drive it. I fixed his dinner every night when he came in, but he really has never appreciated what I do for him.” So greed with its basis of the four dual basic urges and always wanting more, better and different for any amount that it gets begins to be the great suggestor. So one of the more unpleasant emotions that is seldom observed until it is brought very definitely to one’s attention is to observe the urge for more, better and different.
So our first practical thing to records on this week, we’re going to write down when self wants more, better and different. We’re going to observe the self offering suggestions that one should have more, better and different. We will write down, self says it should have more attention, it should have more appreciation, it should have more approval. We’ll hear things coming up out of the self trying to suggest to I that “All he is interested in is his business or profession and he really hasn’t given me any attention, hardly at all, so little that we may as well forget it.” So the next statement is, “He has given none at all, he’s totally interested in his business or profession. That’s what he really loves. He doesn’t care a thing about me.” Visa-versa, “She doesn’t care anything about me. All she wants is the money I bring home. As long as I bring her lots of money she’s all right, but she’s always hollering for more.” So one observes greed. We will write down all the times that we see the self, John or Mary, wanting more, better and different. We will write down how it wants more. We will see then, possibly, that this is an illusion. When one sees an idea of the self as an illusion it no longer has the power to suggest identity or to suggest that one identify with it. One is freed of the urge to identify with this Not-I because one sees it as an illusion. Now as we observe greed and its many ways of functioning, of course, vanity says, “I don’t have greed, I only try to have what is essential and I look after everybody else.” We will observe carefully to see greed. Then we will see vanity. We’re going to write all three of these down, vanity, pride, and starting with greed, which is the parent of vanity and pride.
Now vanity paints a very composite picture that’s only allowed to the surface of, “What a wonderful person I am. I’m better than other people; I can see where they go wrong. I can see where they have faults. Of course I can recognize that I have a fault or two but they are all caused by circumstances. Other people make me angry. Sure I get angry but it’s due to other people’s misbehavior.” In other words, “My anger is really righteous indignation but other people are just plain short-tempered, they have short fuses.” So we paint a very beautiful composite picture of self which is called vanity, of “the ability to judge others, the ability to see how I am better than others, the ability to see where others have shortcomings that I wouldn’t stoop to, to see how I’ve always tried to do the right thing against great odds, of course.” So we will paint this picture. This is enough to give you a start. Each of us must discover for self what one’s false picture of self really is.
Then pride is the defense of that false picture. We will write down all the times that we feel on the defensive. Now there is really only one thing to defend unless one has a gun or a knife after you and I am quite sure that is very infrequent, if at all. In order to expand this picture a bit, let’s go back and think of all the times that can be recalled that one has been on the defensive for the past several months. Now we are eliminating the times one was threatened with a gun, a knife, or a madman or physical violence of any sort. We’re talking about when we were on the defense of psychological motives, of our opinion of self. Someone comes in and says, “You’re forgetful.” Of course, here comes the defense. Someone says, “You’re always late.” Here comes the defense of all the things I had to do, “and the car wouldn’t start” or a hundred and one things to defend the fact of being late. “It’s not really I that was late, it was other things that forced me. Circumstances made me late if I was really late, but I was only late once or twice this whole year and they said I was late every time,” and many more of the same general idea.
We are going to keep records of greed, vanity and pride. We’re not trying to change them; we’re not having some self-improving Not-I say we’ve got to get over this. We are looking at the propositions produced by greed, by vanity and by pride. This is all the work of the four dual basic urges, the master called mammon, the one which the self serves, the one which when I was identified with the self because it did not see it as an illusion, was identified in serving. Now I, the observer, sees something as an illusion, reports that to X and henceforth I is no longer tempted to identify with that idea of the self that it has seen as an illusion. So we hope that by making very complete observations and recording them so they can be read and reviewed, by writing them down, that we begin to see the ramifications of the four dual basic urges as expressed in greed, vanity and pride. If one should see clearly the illusion of the four dual basic urges one would cease to identify with it and all the others associated on and based upon the four dual basic urges and its work of greed, vanity and pride. So if one should see it one has produced information for X that greatly enhances the possibility of the awareness being cleansed, of being made pure.
Now to observe some of the ways that the Not-I’s, the self, justifies itself into a state of having the unpleasant emotions. First will be that the self is observed by I, the observer, to be re-playing past happenings. They are powerful influences to bring about the state of the unpleasant emotions because it generally either compares the present state as being not as good as the good old days or it feels sorry for it self because “It had such an unhappy childhood, such an unhappy last year or such a terrible state of illness three years ago that they didn’t think I would pull through; but I finally made it.” And they can replay it and replay it and gather all manner of self-pity as to how sick I was three years ago, how terrible I felt. Recalling these are obviously the unconscious association which we started on a few days ago to make the associations conscious. It may be observed that each of the Not-I’s in the whole self is always considering its being — “How does this affect me?” Everything that happens, and there are six major families of them and each one sees everything that’s happening as being opposed to it. The one that’s determined to have its way by complaining feels that “Nobody really pays any attention to me.” That Not-I is saying, “I’ve complained and nobody did anything about it.” The one that sticks up for its rights is very belligerent and nobody gives it its rights as it thinks they are. The pleaser tries to please and people don’t appreciate it. It tries to believe and do as told by authorities and there are no rewards. You see the self is always looking for a reward, “What’s in it for me.” I is looking for no reward, is not interested in escaping anything because it is a function of X. It is not subject to reward or punishment. Its only difficulty is when it identifies with the self and then it’s involved in the turmoil of the self, the name, the false personality, that bit of all the conflict and confusion serving mammon, manipulated and controlled by mammon. But it is not subject to punishment. It sometimes goes to sleep and gets it in a bad place. So each of these false I’s is always considering self. Here’s the one that’s been different for two weeks, it’s put on a good front, its pleased everybody, it’s been polite, it’s smiled a lot and has not started any arguments. And here I’m not any happier than I was before because the other people are still going on and misbehaving like they’ve always done.
Then, of course, the blamer always blames and thinks that everyone should apologize. So I blamed and nobody apologized and I should have been entitled to an apology. So you see that all the Not-I’s are continually building the accounts receivable that you have your records on and are observing. When we begin to see that the whole idea of accounts receivable due the self are illusions, that nothing is due, then one is further freed from the ideas of having something due one. One no longer identifies with these ideas that they owe me, that they have done terrible things to me and they should do something about it. Each I has a very high opinion of its worth. The one that complains will brag about how it got something done by complaining. “I cried and he went out and bought me flowers. I cried and he bought me a new car. I cried and he got me some jewelry or he quit going out at night.” Or the man says, “He sat and pouted all evening and mama began to notice that he wasn’t just putting up with everything and she began to be awful sweet to me. I just walked out of the house and slammed the door and when I came back in she was kind of in line.” So each I has a very high opinion of itself. It will tell how it pleased people and it did very well. One will tell how loyal it’s been to the institution that it accepts as an authority. How it’s always believed and done everything that the institution asked it for but it’s feeling a little sorry for self because the institution hasn’t really taken the proper notice of it. In fact the self has not yet been made the head of the whole institution and is still an underling, but it has a very high opinion of itself. The one that is always putting on a front and behaving differently will tell you how wonderfully they behaved under such adverse circumstances. You will hear the I’s within and the I’s without the environment telling how wonderful they performed but they always imply they weren’t given quite enough for it. The blamer will be busy telling how he determined the cause of the situation and how it could be corrected if everybody could just see what he sees as cause. “If so-and-so could just be eliminated or locked up or in some way be disposed of or just go away everything would be all right.” But still it feels it’s been cheated because everybody wasn’t converted by his discovery of what was to blame. Everybody hasn’t changed their ways so it was mistreatment that people didn’t get with it and do what they ought to have done.
We will observe how each of these supplies greed by what it reports and that each of the Not-I’s is greedy for more attention, more approval, more sense of power and more appreciation. It has a false picture that it is very wonderful, unusual, well developed, highly conscious and an unusually pious state of affairs, a composite picture of self. Also, along with how pious and wonderful it is, it is also very aware that others do not appreciate this great and wonderful thing. So it wants more appreciation. So this is what we will write after our three headings of how I see greed working in the self, in John or in Mary, how I see vanity. We might write out that picture. You won’t be able to do it all at one time. You will write a few lines of description and then a little later you will add some more to it until you get the picture pretty well completed and you might see the whole idea is an illusion. Then we will see the feeling of the necessity to defend this picture, this false picture, this illusion of John or Mary, of self. After all they are ever changeable, ever flitting about, so no description could be accurate. As we put down the means of defense, all the times the self in on the defensive to prove that the false picture is correct and that the accusation is all wrong, anything that anyone said about the self is in error, we might begin to see quite an illusion.
Now there is more than one reason for asking each of us to write down what we observe, what I the observer observes, write it down and keep a record of it. Every time that we do anything we have more than one entry for it to be into the inner man. If I hear something or see something, that is one entry. If I don’t act upon it, nothing happens. It is just a bit of trivia in the in the trivia box. If I write it down, now it is put in the action center of the person as well. If I really look it over after having written it down, have seen it and heard it, I will value what I have discovered. Now we have another center involved, and when two or more centers are involved in any given bit of observation, anything that one is aware of, acted upon, valued, seen or heard, that is really SEEING, that is being CONSCIOUS of it. One is only taking notice of it if one only sees it or hears it. One has not understood it. One has not brought it truly within the being. It is only in the trivia box. But when it is seen or heard, written and valued, then it is truly one and can not be taken away. So there is a very definite reason for writing it down, keeping a record of it. As one keeps this record one sees the value of it. So two or more are gathered together, two or more of man’s inner centers of activity are gathered together in one activity then something really happens — X operates upon it.
Now as we keep our records we will observe that the self is an illusion, that its whole ideas are all based upon suggestion, it’s based on the ideal that the whole purpose of living is to be non-disturbed which is an illusion. Now you cannot force seeing something as an illusion. You can see that it is not valid. As you observe it in action you can begin to observe that it is an illusion. In other words, really seeing something in a new way is something one EXPERIENCES again. REPORT, OBSERVE, WRITE and REVIEW which is to value it and see the value in what one has done.
Now about this time it might be well to remind us that we are working on the 10th week. If we are somewhere out beyond that working with discussions 32 or 27 or some other number, vanity has said, “You don’t need to bother with this.” Greed has said, “Let’s go on and get it over with,” and pride will now defend your position. But if we may suggest, if these aspects of mammon, greed, vanity and pride has one beyond the 10th discussion on the 10th week, that we go back and start over again, otherwise these three aspects of the four dual basic urges of mammon will make your entire efforts useless.
Copyright © 1973 by Rhondell. All rights reserved. This material is for an individual student’s personal use; it is not to be duplicated or loaned to another.
