Conversations With Marty

2/27/**

I was looking into depression on the net and found an article on stopping thoughts of suicide and on thoughts which can relieve emotional pain etc. The author talks about the unconscious addictive part of the mind as furnishing us with some sort of relief with conditioned responses (my interpretation of course)

Now if you have any thoughts on this I would love to hear them. I am having a problem with depression and anyway, I was just wondering if you would like to sort of reinterpret what he is talking about and give me your version of what to do about these things. Can someone overcome depression without a therapist? Can someone build hope for the future alone?

Marty

Marty, I have answers but do not wish to hurt or depress you even more by waking in you some "you don't understand demons." Further, I mean no disrespect when I offer you my ideas, even though I often feel confident that what I am saying is true. So, although I don't dress up my ideas in the false humility cloak of "I might be wrong, but ...," I learn new things every day and am always open to someone challenging me with love. Being right is not the point for me. Exchanging ideas with love and helping people to love themselves is.

As for the article you sent, I must admit, this type of article sets me off a little, although I am often unable to find the words to make clear to others why. The thing the author does well, as do most competent psychologists, is that he documents the symptoms, including the thought patterns, of people who are depressed. His picture, though brief, is clear, to the point, and accurate.

However, he never states, let alone realizes, that he is ONLY DESCRIBING THE SYMPTOMS nor that he makes not one reference to the actual wound. Why? BECAUSE HE DOES NOT KNOW WHAT A WOUND IS. (Sorry for the shouting; I am not shouting at you; more in frustration at the way so many educated and well meaning people blame others for their pain; albeit, with what I call "civilized blame." So, whether you realize it or not, reading this guy's stuff is adding to your suffering and can actually deepen your depression.)

Marty, you are obviously suffering and I would guess that at some level, you also feel ashamed, that with your obvious high level of spiritual development, that you still can not overcome your pain.

You are not alone in this. I spent most of my life in this state of hell, trying all of those so called cures, talk therapy included. Yes, occasionally, I would make what they told me was a breakthrough. Of course, they could never tell me exactly what I did to make this breakthrough other than to say, therapy is a long journey; translation: they want you to believe the long years you invest are a necessary and normal part of the healing process, and are not due to the fact that they have no idea what they are looking for.

In truth, they mean well, but when they say healing must take years, they are flat out wrong. When you know the structure of the wounds themselves, healing does not need to take this long, because you know exactly what you are looking for and what to do with it when you find it. On the other hand, people often have many wounds and so, the work can take a long time. Even so, when you actually heal, the gains you make are permanent and so, the wounds do not return. This means you need heal only once, and obviously healing once takes a lot less time than trying to "heal" over and over again only to have your symptoms return.

These ideas are a lot to take in, and I know that even if you read all of my articles, that it is still very difficult to internalize these ideas not matter how hard you try and no matter how smart you are. Know that my own understanding did not come from my intelligence nor my efforts alone either. I had some very powerful spiritual experiences in which I was given access to these things. Unfortunately, though, I was not given an easy way to pass these experiences to anyone else.

Regardless, Marty, if you really want to heal your depression, try starting with this: all healing begins with allowing for the possibility that your pain is not your fault, none of it, not one moment of it. Now ask the loving parts of your head and heart if this feels true. And believe what you hear.

Perhaps if I do talk about the article you sent, I may be able to help you to believe this, at least a little.

The author's main point seems to be that you can use your mind (cognitive - behavioral) to alleviate a depression. Bull! You may be able to use your mind to temporarily over ride your internal impulses to act depressed, but depression, like all states of being, is an inside state, stemming from wounds, not from behavior or thoughts alone.

Unfortunately, this fellow either ignores or has not truly recognized this idea and so, in his writing, he passes off as scientifically founded truths the Nineteenth Century belief that there is a "conscious unconscious," a character inside of us which directs our lives while rarely involving us in the process; further, that we can, by using educated will and spiritual effort, direct our conscious minds to over ride this unconscious process. (Actually, he never even does acknowledge the spirit of it all in his article; in this, he is really off base.)

This idea, that there is a conscious unconscious, is based on the Nineteenth Century therapists' attempts to legitimize therapy and to get it to be more valued than the then current spiritual beliefs. They attempted and succeeded in doing this by renaming the then current spiritual character blamed for these painful actions, "the devil," to "the unconscious."

What is sad here is that this idea was meant to help people. Yet this whole insane and blatantly false conceptualization actually worsens peoples' pain in that, because they never see this connection, they use the idea of a "conscious unconscious" to blame themselves whenever they are unable to permanently correct or alleviate their pain through mental will. Translation; they blame themselves for not trying hard enough.

Please hear this in a loud but loving voice: IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. PERIOD. There is no character inside you, no invisible and crazy part of yourself, that needs to be cut out of you or over ridden or reprogrammed or changed at all.

Further, there are no mistakes in God's Universe, and you were born perfect. And you are still perfect. But when you have wounds, you can not access this perfection, because you have areas of life in which you go into degrees of shock, either mentally or spiritually or both. To the degree you can not consciously see something, to that degree you will not believe it exists.

Thus, you have everything you need to heal your wounds already inside you, but because your access to these perfectly loving parts of you is wounded, there are wonderful pieces of yourself you totally do not understand let alone believe exist.

The truth is, all people have wounds, and all people have an intuitive desire to heal. But they lack the road map to accomplish this healing. Then, because they lack this understanding, people concoct answers which logically satisfy these missing pieces and then pass them off as the truth when, in fact, these things can not be true because they are filled with what are really little more than thinly disguised but clearly non loving attitudes; in other words, they are riddled with what I call "blame." And when we live in a world wherein everyone buys into these lies, people get scared when someone like me proposes that believing in a "conscious unconscious" is akin to what the people believed in the "emperors new clothes"; in effect, that as logical as these ideas might sound, that in fact, they do not even exist.

So, no matter how scientific these explanations may seem to be, learning and using them does not help people to heal EXCEPT OCCASIONALLY, AND EVEN THEN, ONLY BY ACCIDENT, ALMOST LIKE THE PROVERBIAL MONKEY WHO, GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, PAINTS A REMBRANDT.

What is the truth? The truth is, no matter how many thousands of books and no matter how many educated people tell you otherwise, and regardless of how much love they cloak these ideas in, you have no character inside you, no hidden part of yourself, who is addicted to anything. You simply have areas of your life in which you can not stay fully conscious and therefore, can not understand, let alone feel loved or be loving or even make sane decisions.

Thus, depending on the degree to which you go into shock when you are in these situations, to that degree, you will be blind NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WORK ON YOURSELF AND NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU PRAY AND LEARN AND TRY.

Again, this is neither yours nor anyone else's' fault, not even these well meaning but ineffective therapists. And it has literally been a hell for me to know otherwise, because I have been alone in these discoveries. Very simply put, and although I do not know why, no one else has ever noticed the importance of these little moments of shock and so, because it feels better to have a wrong answer than no answer, people create logical but false explanations for why we suffer and how we heal.

Probably the biggest error they make is that they see the symptoms (in your case, your depression) as the actual wound. The wound is the blind spot, what you can not see. It is not the symptoms, which is what you can see.

Consider this. If you were physically blind, and if you were to get an operation which then allowed you to regain your physical ability to see, your symptoms would abate; a wonderful thing. But would your wound be gone? Actually, no. So, although the operation would have restored to you some of your potential to see, this operation would not have taught you to understand the things you would now see. Nor would it have helped you to learn to understand what you could not see (your wounds.) Why? Because even with your physical ability to see restored, you would still have wounds to your head and heart (thoughts and feelings) which would prevent you from learning to see normally, even with the physical ability to see restored.

This whole idea, that wounds are what you can not see, is a tough one to grasp internally, even if my words do begin to wake something up in you. To be honest, I am still just too inadequate in my ability to put these things into words to as yet help people to learn these truths. Even so, try these ideas on for size.

I have told you, your depression is not your fault, not even a little, none of it, never. If you would take a moment now and try to use your internal unwounded sensors, your head and heart will know, when you hear me say it is not your fault, that what I am saying is true.

In fact, often, when I tell people this, and if they can allow for the possibility, they fill up with tears and even break down and cry at times. Why? Because the truth rings like a perfectly clear bell. The tones of blamelessness are pure and send love straight to the heart.

Unfortunately, what people are then left with is the question, "if finding my faults and correcting them is not how I heal, how do I heal?" In fact, this dilemma is exactly what I am describing in the opening pages of my web site, where I talk about wounded people (including me before I discovered emergence) as people who, no matter what and how hard they try, never end the cycle of their pain and at best, get only temporary respites from their pain, only temporary reprieves from the symptoms of the wounds. Why? Because they never realize what the wounds actually are.

Thus, even when their symptoms do go away, as in when depressed peoples' sadness' leave and their loving motivations return, because their actual wounds are never healed, their symptoms eventually return.

When this happens, these poor people, and perhaps you are in this group, blame themselves, as if they knew better but were not trying hard enough. Again, bull. They and perhaps you have been trying too hard, and you do this because no one has actually taught you how to find the wounds themselves, let alone heal them, except to tell you to try an endless sequence of things all of which are claimed to be what heals, but none of which can reliably be repeated let alone described in loving terms.

Let me now offer you something a little more tangible. If you close your eyes and let yourself visualize a scene in which someone, anyone, is sad, you will have a doorway. Not "the" doorway," a doorway. Actually, there are an infinite number of doorways into wounds.

Then, while you visualize this scene, try to see the eyes of whomever is in the scene. Further, try to see if the eyes you see are looking at someone or through someone. By "at" and "through," I mean, do their eyes actually touch something or someone, as in the way babies eyes touch the eyes of whomever looks at them, or do their eyes seem to just look past you or never reach you?

If you see one of the latter two examples, it means whomever you are seeing, even if who you are seeing is yourself, is in shock and is therefore unable to see, let alone experience, the love present in the scene.

I have to stop here for now. I have something I've promised to deliver, an outline, to an editor. But know this: even if you never become able to understand the few simple patterns which underlie all human behavior, the patterns I call, "emergence," even so, you can still heal your wounds. And you deserve this healing, you and every other being on this planet.

I hope the love I have woven into these few words is the primary substance you receive.

And that you are well,

Steven

Steven

That was the sweetest letter you have ever sent to me. I think you are talking from your heart. I want to find the wounds, the shock or whatever it is I need to heal. I really do. Have you ever noticed the advice people give on "how to find the right person." blah, blah, blah; they almost always have some comment about how to avoid people with abandonment issues? I don't even understand abandonment issues, but it seems they are saying abandon all hope with these people. Reject anyone who has a problem. Save yourself. Duh. What a mess.

It seems so easy to see into others, into what bothers them, to connect, and yet it is this shock, the blindness to our own wounds, that keeps us in this hell. It looks like we need others to heal ourselves sometimes. But they rarely know how. You know how to heal people. You have more depth and insight than most. Most people do rattle off some formula or other. Even the psychologist I married used to throw fits and hit me. I couldn't believe it. I thought somehow he was above all that. He was supposed to be able to heal other people and there I was trusting him with my whole life and all he could do was get frustrated and hit? And I don't know what caused it....I don't even remember the events, so how can I heal the wounds?

I block out the painful memories. I get an A+ in blocking! My survival technique. I don't want to frustrate you with more of my babblings. I know you are a busy person with a lot to do. You are an excellent writer, one of the best. And when you talk from the heart and not so much the intellect, you do make sense. I know you are very intellectual and you probably wrote this just for me and maybe I am just fucked up and want to be spoon fed but I have noticed that the really popular books, the ones that get read are like that. Spoonfeeding (I know at this point you must be thinking, yes, she has a wound connected to spoonfeeding. Lol)

Lately, it bothers me a lot that as I am waking up I wish I were dead. This just keeps popping up as I am waking. Now this is not how I want to wake up in the morning! I want to wake up happy, and hopeful and creative! I want to look forward to my day!

Why do I keep having these stupid thoughts as I wake up? Why do I have to take medication to keep from being miserable. Why do I get through life for a while and then when I lose someone, I go into this hell! Why is that happening to me? Oh Guru of mine, when you have some time. Do something? You can be my cyberlove! Probably a better relationship than the real in person one because you don't have to put up with me all the time!!! lol

love and light

Marty

Marty,

Here's all the help you need to begin: the only test for "truth" worth believing is, "to the degree it is loving, then to that degree, what they are saying is true."

How do you know if something is loving? You use the bullshit test, which is: "to the degree something or someone blames people, then to that degree, what they are saying is not true (it is bullshit) and therefore, is not loving.

The author of the article you sent me says, if you try hard enough and use your mind, you will over come your depression. This is "civilized blame," cah cah at it's finest. It is also totally untrue. How can you verify this?

Ask yourself how hard you have tried to over come your pain and also, ask yourself if a loving creator would have set this place up so that you could try all your life and still fail? No. The answer is no. This would not be loving. So how come people can try so hard and often do not succeed? Because you can not get to China if you dig up. And you can not heal if you do not know what a wound is, let alone where to find it, except for those accidental healings, the occasional gifts life occasionally gives us.

Another hint: "Heads with feet" do not a healer make. Neither do "hearts on wheels." Only holism, conscious head and conscious heart in the same place and time, heal. How do you get into to this state of being? Imagination; the shaman's stock in trade.

One foundation which you might begin to build, the one which may help you to understand some of what emergence and healing is about, is reading Gleick's book, "Chaos." If you understand Chaos Theory even a little, you can then see that what I have discovered is simply a few universal patterns which underlie all of human behavior, albeit, randomly occurring patterns. As you may have noticed, I call these randomly occurring patterns, "emergence," and emergence is simply yet one more interation of the totality of organic life scenes which chaos theory describes.

In lieu of reading Gleick's book though, my over simplification of Chaos Theory is this:

First, there are only two parts to Chaos Theory: first, that everything in life exists as a recognizable pattern, and second, that these patterns always repeat chaotically, that is to say, randomly. Further, from these two ideas derive the most important concept in Chaos Theory; that small, seemingly insignificant changes can cause great AND unpredictable results.

In other words, the whole of Chaos Theory is: all of life, every single thing we experience, can be described as randomly repeating, recognizable patterns; further, that these patterns are created in a nonlinear fashion, often from seemingly insignificant events.

Thus, all life and experience, organic and non organic alike, is recognizable only to the degree we can consciously recognize the patterns that identify these things. Rain, the stock market, even who gets alcoholism in a family; all these things are recognizable only to the degree we see them as iterations of a recognizable pattern.

Is being conscious of these patterns the whole answer then? No. Why? Because even if you were able to be perfectly conscious, you would never be able to see the Creator's hand here because these patterns repeat at random, chaotically, NEVER PREDICTABLY.

This second part of Chaos Theory, the chaotic nature of the repetitions, is what science and philosophy has always and most times, still misses. It is also, to me, the most important discovery of the Twentieth Century.

In essence, this idea means that any search for linear occurrences within the patterns we call life is doomed to fail, because these linear patterns do not exist, except for brief, randomly occurring moments.

Trees exist, and we can tell a tree apart from a cat, but knowing the exact condition of trees and cats in any given moment in time is chaotic and therefore, we will never know things to this degree of linearity.

Thus, for me, the chaotic aspect of existence they refer to in Chaos Theory is the most fundamental of all truths about the Universe we live in. (Of course, this is only one of many Universes, and this two sectioned pattern is probably not the basis of all of these Universes. But what the heck. We have a hard enough time grasping this Universe, and we can use all the help we can get in trying to understand the place in which we exist.)

So, again, what is "emergence?" Emergence is a set of simple patterns which underlie all human behavior and which repeat chaotically, never predictably. Want an example?

The sequence of every wounding event is always the same: you enter a state of hyperawareness, you experience a startling event, you go into shock. This simple pattern of three events is at the heart of every human wound. But ... it occurs randomly, so ... a whole group of people can live through the same painful event and who gets wounded and who does not is chaotic, random, always. Like who died and who lived during the black plague.

(As an aside, I want you to know I am enjoying this and am more fired up than I have been in weeks.)

Another way to see the two statements which make up Chaos Theory is: the patterns we see consciously exist in the physical world only and are what I call, "mental consciousness"; the randomness exists only in the spiritual world and is what I call, "spiritual consciousness'; and the two together make up our whole world, holistic consciousness, or what I call, "the two that are one."

Oh Goodness, I am behind.

Please forgive the rapid exit.

Be well,

Steven

Marty wrote:

...I don't remember the events so how can I heal the wounds?  I block out the painful memories. I get an A+ in blocking.  !  My survival technique. 

Marty, this idea, that you choose to block things out, is blaming yourself. You do not block out anything, at least internally, and since there is no devil inside you, this is not even happening at an unconscious level. More so, if you could actually do this blocking, wouldn't you be using it to block out your internal pain <g>?

What I am sure you do is that you put one foot in front of the other and try to face the sun. This is not blocking. This is faith and damage control and an act of survival and self love. And courage. And this is focusing on what you can change and not on what you can not; truly an act of sanity.

More important, I can already see, even from the few events you have just revealed about your past, how you might mistake the frustration I felt as I wrote my e-mail's to you for something akin to the prelude to your x's attacks on you.

I am not him, and not all frustration causes people to lose control. And some psychologists are among the most severely handicapped people in all of the world.

Still, they, too, deserve all the love in the Universe. And many try hard and sacrifice much in efforts to help others. Too often though, they come home with no energy left to make these efforts at home.

And you are not babbling.

(Oh, will I even have the will power to get back to work <g>?)

Remember, THIS, TOO, NOT YOUR FAULT.

Steven

I'm not sure, Marty, that I can keep up, time wise, with all you ask, so please do not feel I am blowing you off if I can not answer in a timely manner. Nor do I wish you to stop asking questions. Just know it is not you if I do not answer even for days. I am committed to my path and to my students and to my teachers in training.

Unless you were born severely shock and ended up autistic, hyperawareness is the state in which you were born. But since you are not autistic, you were in a hyperaware state for most of your first year on the planet. Then, somewhere around the one year mark and for about the next six years, you began to transition more and more back and forth between hyperawareness and normal awareness. By seven, then, and with few exceptions, you spent most of your life in normal consciousness, with frequent momentary excursions into some degree of shock.

How can you recognize when people are hyperaware? By the way peoples' eyes connect with whatever or whomever they see; their eyes look just like newborn babies eyes or like lovers' caught in each others' glance or like baby deer eyes.

Actually, this subject is too complex for me to fully describe right now, so you might want to read the article on my site on recognizing shock. Hopefully, reading this article will help you to begin to recognize hyperawareness.

How can understanding shock help you to understand hyperawareness? Because hyperawareness and shock are two sides of the same coin.

In my writings, I most often use the term, "trance" to represent the state of hyperawareness. I use the word trance because the state of hyperawareness and the state babies are born in and the state the lovers' are in when they lock eyes; all of these states are the same state of being, which, not coincidentally, is also identical, consciousness wise, to the state of being the hypnotist puts people into; hypnotic trance.

By the way, I am familiar with this state of being from both personal and professional experience. I've done lots of training in hypnosis, and I spend a good deal of my life in trance states, certainly, most of my working life and in fact, being in this state so much is why I do not burn out, even after doing thirteen straight sessions. Most days anyway. Since you can not burn out in trance and since I spend so much time in this state, I do not burn out.

Did you notice that you used the phrase "block out" and I use the phrase "BLock." (Yes, the "L" is supposed to be capitalized.) A BLock is a place you can not stay fully conscious and therefore, can not experience love. "Blocking out" is what some people believe they do to avoid pain. The truth is, no one can actually do this, though, as no one can deliberately put themselves into shock this way, not even alcoholics and drug addicts. (Alcoholics and drug addicts have to already be in shock to even do the horrible things they do to themselves. This, By the way, is why their addictions are never their fault.)

Other than the times wherein being hyperaware is normal, like the first year of life and the lovers' glances, what causes people to go into hyperawareness? The "oh, my God" events," whether they are exceptionally pleasurable or exceptionally painful. Thus, despite the obvious qualitative differences between these events, people experience the great orgasm and the terrifying rape in exactly the same state of consciousness; hyperawareness.

In a way, you could say this is the Universe's way of helping us to not miss the details in important life events. Also, being in this state gives us the best chances to gain more ability to love from our life events. These two ideas are both true.

The main point here, though, is simply this: we are vulnerable to being wounded ONLY when we are in the state of hyperawareness, as this is the exact same state a hypnotist puts people in when he or she plants post hypnotic suggestions, tells us we will forget being told, then wakes us up. In fact, this sequence is exactly the same sequence as the one underlying every event which wounds human beings except for one thing; the hypnotist plants his or her cue gently; wounding events plant these cues in us with violence.

This difference is very similar to the way a flashbulb will imprint on our retinas the snatch of an image we were last seeing before we were blinded, while using a dimmer switch gently increases or decreases the light we see.

By the way, my article on "Why Therapy Takes So Long" explains much of what I am saying here in great detail. Remember, though, if you do read it, that I use the phrase "trance" to mean hyperaware, and I use the phrase "abrupt sensory overload" to mean a startling event. Despite the words being different, though, the meaning and the stories all make the same points.

Despite the humorous nature of your comments and questions then Marty, yes, we are all randomly "fucked up," and no one can reliably predict what moment or moments of an event a sequence of three will occur, nor if one will even occur at all.

You may be interested in hearing that I received my worst and most painful BLock at my age three weeks. My mother put me down in my crib for the first time when I was still awake.

In my emergence scene, which by the way was the most painful experience I ever consciously endured, I saw her simply put me down and then turn and leave.

Do you see anything here you could call abuse here? Of course not. Yet this is the event which caused almost all the feelings of abandonment I experienced during my life. How can I be so sure? Because I had those feelings, randomly, all my life, and they are now, for the most part, gone, and this with no further effort on my part; no praying, no using my will to do the right thing, no reciting philosophies like the "I'm learning lessons" crap; none of this stuff. I am, in fact, happier and more content now than ever before in my life.

Please do not hear this as I no longer suffer or that all my BLocks are gone. But I do not suffer from feeling abandoned anymore.

Steven Wrote:

"The sequence of every wounding event is always the same: you enter a state of hyperawareness, you experience a startling event, you go into shock. This simple pattern of three events is at the heart of every human wound. But ... it occurs randomly, so ... a whole group of people can live through the same painful event and who gets wounded and who does not is chaotic, random, always. Like who died and who lived during the black plague. "

then Marty wrote:

O.K., why would you go into hyperawareness and then have the startling event? I get the shock sequence.

Are you saying hyperawareness is a random event? What causes hyperawareness. I know I am off here but I am thinking that is like hyperfocus? So the wounds we experience from childhood could be from being so focused on our parents that whatever weird shit they do causes wounds.

Close, but no cigar, Marty. Being hyperaware is more like being very over sensitive. More important, we become hypersensitive with no choice involved. In fact, we get into this state because our natures are programmed to do this, as it is the only state in which we can learn to love, anything or anyone, person or idea.

Babies have the most to learn. This is why they arrive in this state, the only one in which they can truly learn. Being in this state for most of the first year means they are extremely open to new experiences and to retaining these new experiences, and to learning to love the place they have arrived in.

Marty wrote:

Thus we are all screwy because we don't remember our childhood experiences that caused the sequence? Or do we? When I say block, I mean I forgot....I guess you know that huh? So like an alcoholic blacks out parts of his drunken stupor, you could forget these events and never recall them until something triggers a similar event, a word, a sound, a smell, and then we go into shock and repeat or get the effect of the shock from the first experience.

Marty, this is very close to the truth. The pieces you and everyone else have missed are the patterns these events have in common, the underlying structure. Emergence is a fairly complete collection of these underlying, universal patterns.

Marty wrote:

We are all randomly fucked up? No wonder people have so much trouble loving people. No wonder people get depressed and hide out from people. You reach a point where you give up! Always dealing with other people's bullshit shocked responses.

Here is the thing that provokes blame the most; because we do not having a true and loving understanding of why people come in our lives, and of why we even invite these people into our lives. So, when they restimulate so much suffering in us, we blame the suffering they wake up in us on them.

But if you were blind and bumped into someone in a public place, would it be your fault if they got frightened? Hell, no.

Your x was blind. Unfortunately, neither he nor you saw him way. Seeing him as more sighted than he was then caused a great deal of pain in both of you, because like the blind man's imagination when he tries to explain what he just painfully bumped into, the explanations you two came up with were, for the most part, blaming and hurtful and never led to healing.

In the end, when the violence gets to be too much, people do need to separate. But this is still sad.

Marty wrote:
Lovingly I say this dear Steven. As you can see I am in a confused state. Just thinking. I studied in grad school, much to my distaste, sociology, always trying to draw conclusions from bullshit. Create bullshit to make more bullshit. I couldn't make that a life long career now could I? Duh Just tell a sociologist that sociology is bullshit! Wow! You get some mean looks! Ha ha and the best part was that trying to teach it....I was sufficiently brainwashed with all the crap that I could teach it! People hated it! So I changed it lol.......I just let them argue with each other.

Gave them opposing viewpoints and let them fire away at each other! What a load of crap that was but it was funny. Now looking back I think how that experience was just primarily about me learning to teach...to experiment with warping people's minds......to become the teacher....does it even matter what you teach.....it was just about having the courage to stand up in front of a room full of students and babble away about whatever their parents were paying for....their education......so they could become familiar with the grownup concepts.....and when they got through...maybe they thought....I used to tell them I was just trying to teach them to think....that was my job....teaching them to think...to be aware...

Marty, there is no wasted experience in God's Universe, only experiences in which we can not see the love.

Be well,

Steven

Hi Steven

Marty

Marty wrote:

OK I won't bother you anymore.  Just notice that Mercury is in retrograde and communications are all screwed up.  It's not my fault!

Be well live well and prosper

Marty Goddess

Marty,

I would be the first to tell you, nothing is your fault, not for the reasons you state and imply, but for reasons I have yet to find a way to pass to others, you included. Know that this is my inability, not theirs nor yours. On the other hand, peoples' hearts sense they are not at fault the minute I speak, as if in the minute I speak, peoples' hearts come out of shock and remember what they have always intuited, that when people do painful behaviors and when they experience painful inner lives, that these experiences are not conscious acts, therefore, not their fault.

Unfortunately, most times, when people are blamed, they automatically respond by EXPLAINING their behaviors, whether they actually speak these explanations or just hear them internally. (Interestingly enough, our word "apology" comes from a Greek word which means, "explanation.") Either way, by engaging in these explanations, people are actually adding energy to the very acts which blame them. Why? To respond to these accusations is to imply legitimacy to the questions, through the act of offering answers.

However, there is a problem here, since when people do not blame, they are usually left with little or nothing to say because unfortunately, we are not taught how to give non blaming responses to the suffering we see and experience. Thus, and you probably do not realize this, but your responses to me have alternately blamed me then yourself, and like most people, I feel pained when people blame anyone, even when their intentions are to resolve the difficulties we may have between us.

When someone as kind and loving as I asks you to please consider how you speak, I am not blaming you; rather, I am asking you, with respect, to honor my needs. If, after several requests, you are still unable to consciously recognize my request, then I must back away, as I am far too open to withstand coarse interactions for any length of time and still be conscious. I go into shock. My internal fuse blows.

Once my fuse blows, I am no longer able to consciously experience you or myself with love, and I lose access to my ability to both receive love and to give love. My way in these situations, then, is to do what I call, "damage control"; in effect, I withdraw so as to not do or say things I will regret later.

As to "why" you, me, or anyone else does the things we do, to ourselves and to others, all I can say is I try each day to ask fewer and fewer of these "why" questions, as I am certain that for the time I am in this body, that I will never know the answers to these "why" questions beyond the few natural but chaotically occurring patterns I have discovered, the few simple sequences which underlie all human behavior. These patterns are what I call, "emergence."

Even here, although these few natural patterns do explain "aspects" of human behaviors, they do not, in any comprehensive sense, answer these "why" questions either, other than to reveal, in an elementary sense, why people are not to blame for their problems. Actually, these patterns do not even do this in that what they do answer is an aspect of "how" people can hurt each other and themselves: people can hurt themselves and others ONLY while they are in shock, never while they are conscious, at least, not in the holistic sense of the word "conscious." This idea IS why no one is to blame for their difficulties nor for their painful acts. This idea is also what I believe is at the heart of the words which Christ supposedly said as he died when he said, "they know not what they do." I believe what he meant here is that to the degree you are in shock, to this degree, you know not what you do. If people hurt themselves and others ONLY while they are in shock, then they are never to blame, as they literally "know not what they do."

As for the fact that it is natural for human beings to examine their world and lives by asking and answering "why" questions, I try to teach people (my students, not you), that "why" questions, even those neither spoken aloud nor shared, are the mechanism which creates and dispenses blame. No "why" questions, no blame.

Here again, not asking "why" questions leaves us with a problem. Thus, I very much believe in what Socrates said when he taught, "the unexamined life is not worth living." By this, I mean we very much need a mechanism with which to examine our lives. In lieu of asking "why" questions" then and in order to be able to examine our lives, I teach my students to ask "what" questions," the questions a loving observer asks when trying to literally get the psychospiritual "picture"; meaning, the questions observers ask when they are trying to share in and be close to and be conscious of another person's joy and suffering. These acts are literally the legendary acts of "intimacy" in Cinderella stories. They occur every time a conscious person asks, "show me the picture." "Help me to see."

These acts are also the true acts of courage and love. And unlike when people ask "why" questions, when people ask "what" questions, they help to create the consciously involved and loving interactions that much of Buddhism and Taoism and so many wise and loving people aspire to, a goal which I myself aspire to and work to become each and every day.

Unfortunately, few of us, even Buddhist and Taoists, are ever taught to consciously recognize the differences between these two types of questions, and so most people confuse "what" questions with "why" questions. Further, even when people are asked to examine their lives with "what" questions, most times, they mistake "what" questions for "why" questions and answer by explaining "why they did" their behaviors, and "why other people did" their behaviors. In fact, I frequently overhear people in public places, restaurants and such, offering explanations as to why they and why others did or do the things they did or do.

Whenever I hear such things, my heart aches. Still, here again, they know not what they do, and I do not know why such things occur, other than to say they speak these things while they are in shock.

Further, in effect, when people answer "what" questions" with "why" answers, they are blaming whether they intend to blame or not, and even very loving and educated people make this error. Sadly, these interactions, those generated by "why" questions," are the single most significant flaw in our psychology's and in our religions, both of which are institutions which sincerely try to help us to love each other. Yet when blame is an invisible and ever present part of anything, to the degree it exists, to this degree, we can not be loving. Both psychology's and religions blame, regularly and frequently, albeit, unconsciously and without fault. Again, "they know not what they do."

Why can we not answer "why" questions without blaming? Because no one, other than our creator, if such a "being" even exists as a being, knows why we do the things we do. Further, to say we know is an act of arrogance beyond belief; it is saying we are equal in understanding to our creator. Here too, I have frequently fallen into this error myself, albeit, less and less each day now.

As for what I can say to you, Marty, to enable us to continue to talk, I am not sure. What surprises me though is how our interactions provoke such deeply loving responses in me, responses which, because they are written, I can easily pass on to others. Thus, I value these exchanges very very much and in my sense of relationship, you are acting as my teacher.

As for what I would reveal about you, I try to always be respectful of the privacy of others, "try" being the operative word here, and so, I was not even considering revealing the more personal aspects of our conversations and would only include the briefest outlines necessary to frame my remarks.

As we have said to each other, the Universe makes no mistakes. The only mistakes are our attempts to answer why questions and even here, that we ask these questions is no mistake, as the true reason we ask them is beyond our understanding.

Keep writing to me and do not give up.

Steven