4b Unimpressed - Suffering & Pain; Death

Chapter 4 But We are Not Impressed ctd.

SUFFERING & PAIN.  (4D)

"BUT BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE".

Introduction.

The greatest problem with trying to discuss suffering is that the ‘causes’ can be internal or external; ie, ‘caused’ by others or self and that these causes can come from more than one domain in terms of PEMS; not to mention levels of understanding. We have almost no understanding that much can be faced in life if we have the tools, the help, and the understanding that it is our 'Spiritual' concepts that affect our lives all the way through to our individual physical circumstances. This is both for ourselves as individuals and as part of society.

We absolutely need a proper and respectful set of concepts for TISPing ourselves and Life as a reason to live and to treat ourselves and others with respect. This UUS is attempting to set up just such a set of concepts.

In general our greatest suffering comes out our lack of real meaning in Life. This is what Jung was talking about. To quote Marie Louise von Franz;

“Jung would never treat a patient in their 2nd half of life without arriving at the question as to the meaning of this person’s life. It made no difference which everyday problem had led to the commencement of treatment; it always came down to this final question. For if one knows that one’s life has a meaning, then one is able to endure it.”

This theme is illustrated in the Tarot card of the 5 of Pentacles where 2 people in poverty and illness struggle along in the snow past the slightly open door of a church (depicted by a church window) without noticing it (they have 'missed the point'). What we ‘believe’ or how we find meaning for our life affects us to the core.

This is the primary reason I argue for this UUS. It gives useful meaning and a ‘reason’ for our ‘discomfort’ with Life, and thus helps us face the Split/disconnection within ourselves. This disconnection is what I am talking about when I am saying that essentially we disrespect ourselves and our bodies and Life/Nature. Life is perfectly capable of (and does) giving us a great ‘whack’ when we are heading in the wrong direction for ourselves and have not taken sufficient notice of the prior gentler ‘tapping’ that we often receive. Finding this respect is essential. I don’t think we have much time left.

Life has a bad habit of pinning us up against the wall and saying ‘is this what you want?’. I suspect that many people have chosen this current lifetime as a method of pressuring themselves, as these seem to be very pressured times.

We are built to think about any pickle that we are in and to try to ascertain all the factors that got us where we are.

We are built to Explore and Look for what we want. We are also built to be able to ‘back up’ and work out how we got to where we have got; to re-think and to remember (the 're-pent' bit). “If you don’t go back to the past, your future will always look like the present.” Antidepressants seem to do a good job of messing up our ability to do this.

Once we have done the ‘thinking and remembering’ we need to look in the Mirror and check out our own ‘beam in our eye’, and inspect and unravel our own judgement and blame of ‘the other’ to learn about our own InSelf. If we were not so caught up in our pernicious universal judging/blaming and were able to understand our ‘normal’ human-ness and bumbling, we would be far better equipped to help each other sort out our own ‘beams’, before we begin to ‘throw stones’. (A mixed metaphor or so.)

[The trouble here is that the factors in our ‘global environment’ that do greatly affect others’ suffering are now horrendously intertwined and thus appalling to attempt to unravel.]

Sometimes we seem to need to ‘get higher up’ to get out of feeling trapped.

It is suffering that forces us to look for alternatives. It (suffering) is not necessarily required. Although everybody is nominally looking for the same thing (which we tend to refer to as ‘Love’) what we are really looking for is how this love feels inside us, as well as how to give it because we do not know. Sometimes the only way to find what we don’t know what we are looking for is to learn to know what it is not. The following are some of the fears we have that contribute to our suffering. They are Frequently Asked Questions. (4D1)

We feel intrinsically separated from the comfort of heaven. (4D1a)

Being apart from God is painful, and we are deeply afraid and yearn for the safety of being a part.

We deeply fear alone, and run from it.

We are afraid we won’t get back, and we’re full of sin.  (4D1b)

This UUS argues that you will get back, and you’ve not been ‘thrown out’ for ‘badness’.

We don’t know why we’re here and it makes no sense; it’s all arbitrary.  (4D1c)

This UUS argues that God wants us to embrace Life and learn how to have the fun that She has. She knows it’s not easy, and I suspect She didn’t find it easy either. But, once She had worked it out… well, that was something else, and She wanted to share it. In effect, She wants partners, and we want to get to be partners. And basically, we’ll keep going until we get there, because, as I may have said before, we are parts of God.

To repeat; this UUS provides spiritual support as a reason and method (see later chapters) for facing one’s own problems in the physical, mental and emotional departments of life. It’s a useful way to support one’s self in finding meaning in life and learn how to live it in a manner that is correct/right for you. It is a reason for Life that also gives choice in every way.

We are supposed to suffer because it makes us ‘good’.  (4D1d)

This comes straight out of good old P&C teachings. It’s incorrect simply because you are not considered ‘bad’ in the first place, as I hope to have made plain by now.

And, Suffering is ‘good for us’.  (4D1e)

Suffering is not ‘good for us’ per se except to make us think. Its main message is ‘wrong way, go back’.

Thus, we are meant to think about - if able to - and remember…

·         How we got into this situation, taking all factors/forces into account and going back at least 2 years.

·         What were you judging, expecting, or blaming.

·         What is your body actually telling you?

·         Can you turn within?

·         What are the things of the most primary importance to you?

·         Can you find any advantages in this situation?

·         What brings you comfort/solace?

·         What can you learn here?

·         Can you change anything of this?

·         Are you passing this suffering along?

If God loves us, She wouldn’t make us suffer.  (4D1f)

Not so, She treats us as powerful for ourselves as She is for Herself, because we are, but it is up to us to find that power. Life includes it all, so that we can explore it all, but our use and mis-use of energy has consequences that we may not understand for a while.

Suffering calls us to look for alternatives and hunt. It is still informative even if it’s ‘wrong way, go back’

How can we believe we are at choice?  (4D1g)

Love must give choice, and we want to get to be partners to God. However, believing is not required here. This UUS is entirely one person’s (ie, me) ideas that give/gave me comfort, and that is why I am expressing them. Yours may be much more use to you.

What about the starving Africans/Asians etc? Have they chosen their situation?  (4D1h)

I really don’t know. This UUS argues that their situation will serve them eventually, even if I don’t know the details. Nor does this mean we just leave them to it. But it sure is time to change some of the factors that affect us all at higher levels.

Other major causes of suffering are the way power and money are used by powerful companies and countries to play ‘ducks and drakes’ with developing countries’ economies in whatever way they wish and these countries cannot do anything about them. Some of the things that rich powerful countries do to poor countries contribute to some of this abuse of the populace. Many companies are now bigger than countries and to whom do those people in charge of these companies really answer? Our P&C model of ‘how life is and should be’ (see next chapter) causes immense suffering and powerlessness to many people. Mirror Laws make it plain that as we treat others badly, so we are treating ourselves badly at very deep levels.

We need a different model, and I explore this in Part III.

Disrespect for Life and ourselves.  (4D1i)

Much of our suffering is through our real failure to appreciate the needs of the Soul and thus our bodies.

Our disrespect for Life and others as well, is enormous. We poison our environment (and ourselves) with chemicals, heavy metals and waste and pollution and ignore, absolutely, our bodies’ and Life’s need for clean air, clean water and clean soil, and I mean clean, not just a little bit ‘buggered up’.

This poisoning of our environment and the decreasing ability of our food to nourish us, directly affects our bodies and thus, our health (physical and mental) and gets us into trouble; deep trouble. Are we looking for ways to tackle cleaning up our environment at major comprehensive levels? Some governments are attempting to do so, but at great risk of being booted out of office as it is generally deemed a terrible thing for business which, of course, must come first. We worship money.

And disrespect for the power of God/Life/Self.

Our disrespect for our own need to allow life to inform us of what we need and want to know is directly related to our suffering.

‘Man’ puts himself first above life and attempts to dominate and control the natural world. This is mostly because we fear it and we fear life. If we can’t sort this fear, we can’t really sort anything.

What about ‘really bad’ people?   (4D1j)

Sometimes people place themselves in situations which will give them the experience of being at a very great distance from God.

The greater the distance between a part and apart, the more uncomfortable is the process of growing up but the more you will be able to See and the more adult you may be able to become and thus a potential partner to God. That distance is what you have chosen, but it does not mean that it’s going to be a comfortable ride or even that you will succeed in your aims in this life. Remember that you have a great deal of time in which to do this, and it can take a great deal of time and different lifetime experiences and perspectives to do it. My own experience is that ‘it all comes out in the wash’ you might say, but that is not to say that it was easy or that there wasn’t plenty of ‘grunge/muck’ to look at.

PS. Judging that other people are ‘really bad’ is a call to look in the Mirror, because your judging is making a fear available to your notice, that you may wish to clear.

Another thing that is useful to understand is that when we judge and label another as ‘really bad/terrible’ we have no way of accessing or even recognizing that strong ‘negative’ energy that is apparently ‘out there’ but is actually also within ourselves, and if we can’t access it, we can’t use it. It’s not available and in fact, it just frightens us, and thus, controls and limits our lives. This is the way our judgements make us afraid.

Trying to Assign Blame.  (4D1k)

The problem with trying to understand how we are at choice is the temptation to blame the suffering person as being ‘at choice’ and leave it at that, but as I stated above, this UUS is not a blame system. This is a ‘support the other person, as you may yourself wish to be supported’ system. [Not to mention, there’s still an awful lot of explaining left to do on my part about ‘how’ one could possibly get to empowering oneself. - see below]

Also, you do not know why something is happening to someone else, or what they may need to See/learn, and they may not know either until further down the track whenever that may be, and it is actually not your business.

So, if someone has ‘chosen’ to suffer in this life do we leave them to it? This is another loaded question because their and our motives are usually very mixed up and unconscious to boot. Unravelling and sorting out our own motives is an essential part of facing ourselves, and is dealt with in later chapters. A lot of the answer includes who is wanting or expecting help for themselves as well as those who wish to help or think they are expected to.

My ideal world includes an overall awareness that the ‘weak’ need basic protection and the chance to ‘grow up’, simply because we need to protect the ‘weak’ in our selves (Mirror Laws = ‘the rejected weak out there are the rejected weak inside us’). I address the question of group awareness and action in a later chapter because I feel strongly that a society that has people in it with nothing to lose, is a society that lacks integrity and will therefore be prone to disintegrate.

THE CHALLENGE. (4D2)

We don’t know what we can find out, and we don’t know what our resources can be, so sometimes we challenge ourselves or we want the pressure. Resilience seems to need duress before we know we have it. Diamonds are forged under great pressure.

Consider some examples.

A mild example here could be someone who wanted to check if they could meditate in the noisiest environment that they could find. Another eg, is the mystic, Ainslie Meares, who taught himself to really relax by using small controlled burns on his wrists. (awk!) We have internal resources that may only awaken under exigencies. Only someone who has experienced major poverty and/or degradation will galvanize themselves to try to prevent it further down the line or at least have a very strong understanding that it is deeply wrong to allow humans, or animals for that matter, to live in such a way. Someone who has been blind in one life will be far more likely to be extremely interested in finding a way to give sight to others in this or a later life, and so on.

Someone who has tangled bitterly with the medical world may begin to look for alternatives. Someone who has tangled bitterly with the legal world may learn to be a lawyer in their next life, and so on. Someone who has starved may learn to be very careful about food. Someone who has been extremely poor and oppressed may realize that it is better to die fighting for his and others’ rights than to continue to be oppressed. Someone who has lived with secret guilt in one lifetime may decide that death and/or speaking up, maybe both, is possibly a better idea in the next one.

The challenge of suffering is how you are able to achieve the healing you desire.

If you cannot, you may continue to suffer, and many people do, and then the challenge is how you deal with that. Milton Erickson was paralyzed by polio in his late teens, with only his eyes and his mind available to him at the time. He used them to observe people very minutely. He later learnt to walk but always with pain which he dealt with by hypnotizing himself. He became simply one of the best hypnotherapists of all time. (There is a short biography of Erickson in Wikipedia.) This is inspiring because it reminds us that it can be done. Another example could be the Greek story of the centaur Chiron, who used his unending search for healing for himself to teach others about what he had and had not found. Notice that this search was unending; it did not end in his lifetime. Life is not necessarily a film with a happy ending.

If you end up simply suffering and sorry for yourself, you will unconsciously want others to suffer too, and will ‘spread it around’. “Misery loves company.”

A primary challenge for many people is how to find ways to maximize what you can do in this situation. You are looking for ways in which to prevent and reverse such things in the first place, for yourself and others, and this is not always possible.

Sometimes we are unable to be healed and sometimes we cannot change the situation either, and may die. And still this is not the end.

Some of these factors/forces are beyond any single person to fix, and some of them are something to be angry about and to fight for. It is also true that some of them are not worth living through. Sometimes it is better to fight for our ideas or to die fighting/protesting than live/survive under vile circumstances/treatment. Some suffering is worse than death.

Sometimes we do not know what we had until we’ve lost it. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”. Our and others’ losses can be devastating and teach us to value the fragility of life, and maybe to be grateful while you have these things that are important to you.

SUFFERING AND PAIN FORCE ALONE AND DOWN TO THE BONE. (4D3)

Alone.  (4D3a)

Suffering forces facing ‘alone’, (as does death, but we don’t always face this). But we fail to notice that God had to face it too! And we and Life are Her answer to this question. What is yours? Who are you when you are alone in the middle of the night? What are your resources? Who is there? This ‘alone’ means externally alone, but you have an ‘other’ within you. You can label this God/Life/Nature/Universe which is a great comfort if you can turn to Her, or you can label this person your InSelf. This UUS (amongst others) argues they are the same thing. Either way, this pans out as ‘you are loved’ even if you may feel ‘unloved’. You don’t actually need anyone else for you to learn to Love your InSelf, and therefore feel loved. God did not, and neither do you; and you can still ask for help.

To repeat, it is possible to learn to Love You by yourself. A method is outlined in this UUS. There are others, but almost always all under the radar of social awareness. Our society prefers Blame.

and ‘Down to the Bone’. (4D3b)

We are ‘hung on the hook and rot’; we are stuck and forced to stop and back up and work out the absolute essentials for ourselves (the ‘bones of it’); this is called thinking. The world out there goes on without us. Do then we even exist? Suffering and pain reduces the material world to ‘dust’. It is the great equalizer, (while alive) and we may not like that at all. And yet in facing our essential equality we come closer to our own humanity and our own self. Remember, Merge needs equality. Suffering may be the only way we will look at and come to it.

Pain can break us, and for others it has made them ‘break open’ in a way. The pain and suffering has made them kinder and wiser; sort of ‘bigger’ in fact. It does seem to be true that pain is the only thing that makes us look at ourselves. If things are OK, we seem to congratulate ourselves or take it for granted and only start to query things if they are not.

BUDDHA AND DESIRE. (4D4)

My understanding of Buddhist belief is that Buddha noticed that life on earth was full of suffering, and developed the idea that this was inevitable until a person became ‘enlightened’ and could ‘get off the wheel’ and no longer needed to be incarnated on earth. He also noticed that people wanted what they could not have and received what they did not want, so his answer to this was to consider that desire itself was the problem. Hence it seemed to him a good idea to eliminate desire altogether; (except to desire to be ‘enlightened’?).

There are 2 problems with these concepts.

1. ‘Getting off the wheel of Life’.

This is another ‘ off-earth’ version of ‘Heaven is where we’re ‘sposed to be’. This UUS posits that Earth is where we’re ‘sposed to be.

2. Getting rid of desire stops suffering.

To me, this is like telling the tiger in the cage that it’s wise not to be a tiger. This is also similar to directives that anger is ‘bad’.

Anger is your energy heading in an uncomfortable direction, ie, your gut. People who want to be ‘good’ have a terrible time stuffing down desire and anger, especially when other ‘un-good’ people have a great time. (It’s a judgement; what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’?) Desire is a primary drive, as is Explore. No desire, no Life. It is desire that can get us out of the cage and eventually to our own Expression of Self. When our desires get us stuck, the idea is to back up and think about how we got there, and what we’re thinking about it, (judging or expecting), and what can be done about it. It is not the desire that is the problem; it’s the ‘wants’, and specifically our attachment to our ‘wants’. (see also ‘wanting versus having’ in the previous section.) Then be careful about how, what and why you desire whatever next.

ANIMALS AND SUFFERING. (4D5)

Animals are sentient beings, but they are unconscious and therefore are not ‘split’, and are already fully expressing their being. They do not need to become conscious of their unconscious as we do - they are their unconscious, and are in fact here to teach us a few things about that. Buddhists have a ‘do not kill’ command as part of their belief structure, but this can and does leave a lot of animals in suffering.

Mirror Laws (ML) make it quite plain that it is wise to avoid causing suffering even inadvertently, or we will need to experience it ourselves. For our own sakes, we need to work to alleviate if not eliminate suffering in others as much as is ‘proper’ for us, starting with cleaning up our own.

Thus, all animals must be…

·         Allowed to be themselves and not treated as a commodity; (ML - as we treat animals as a commodity, we treat ourselves as a commodity); CAFOs (or any factory farms) are a prime example of treating animals as a commodity.),

·         Protected from suffering and pain as we wish to be protected from suffering and pain, and thus we work to stop it, which includes ‘putting down’ animals that can’t be healed physically, and of course working to prevent unwanted or neglected/sick animals in the first place.

This does not mean, don’t kill farmed animals, especially if the reason for their existence in the first place is that we want to eat them, but it does mean that we need to honour and respect their needs for their own being, as we wish to do the same for ourselves. This means ensuring that they have a life that is correct and enjoyable for them, and that when we do kill them, we do it without any pain or suffering for them, and we do it with gratitude for their gift of their life to us, and use as much of the animal as we can, ie, don’t waste it or ‘rubbish’ it.

It also means clean air, water, and soil (for all of us really) and working to avoid and eventually eliminate the use of hormones, vaccines, antibiotics, GMOs in their food or anyone else’s, and so on.

Our health and vitality depends on their health and vitality, and of the plants that feed them.

Animals as Vermin. (4D5a)

For example, foxes, rabbits, cane toads etc. etc. These still need to be killed ‘cleanly’, for your own sake (ML). Neither should we ignore their uses to us while living (their presence in our lives are still information about us), or dead, (it is wise for us not to ‘waste’ their bodies or treat as ‘refuse’). If we handled Nature better and had less ‘monoculture’ thinking, we might have fewer problems, but it is still a difficult area to delineate, because there are so many factors in the way we impinge on Nature and regard her as something we are here to exploit, or defend ourselves against her ‘attacks’. However, the main principal is to avoid inflicting suffering.

Life as an Illusion. (4D6)

There is nothing illusory about Life on Earth in this UUS. Any perception of it in this way arises from teachings that imply that our ‘proper’ home is off-earth. Such an attitude leads to essentially disrespect of all around you, both life and others, and of course, yourself. How does one love anything in the face of such disrespect? The only place there may be illusion might be in your own decisions and attitude to life, which are being reflected back to you.

‘Ascension’ thinking. (4D6a)

This is another version of ‘off-earth’ ideas, and to me, another version of wishing to escape the difficulties we do not wish to face, as in, our own Shadow within InSelf. These ‘ascension’ ideas don’t fit in with this UUS.

WANTING TO BE RESCUED FROM LIFE.  (4D7)

This is an impossibility within this UUS. We are not being punished in the 1st place. We are not powerless or victims and therefore do not need rescuing, and if God did so, how would we learn to work it out ourselves. We ourselves have made this mess, and thus can work out how to undo it. "Where there is a will, there is a way". We may lack ideas about how to do it, and those with heaps of power may wish to hang on to it (power), but that doesn’t mean that something cannot be done. What we really need to be careful about in this discussion is the difference between the personal ‘we’ and the group ‘we’. The ‘we’ that can move a mountain or so is the group we, with the will thereto.

That group ‘we’ cannot move successfully without our being extremely clear with ourselves about our aims and methods and motivations. We do have to name what we want. But, for most of us reading this, we do have some power over our own lives, and we can start with our own in our own small way.

In sum.

Our patterns and searchings and explorations have a far greater scope than we are normally aware of in this life. However that is not to say that it is not possible to find out what your own patterns and searchings are. There are now tools available to find out. It is possible and can be done. It is worth considering alternatives and hunting/exploring.

Life is God’s great Creation and Expression of Her Self in Her Exploring; and thus Delight and Love of You. It Serves You and Everyone Else All the time at the same time, as Mirror and Guide for your ultimate Delight for your Self and your Expression of this. This is what is truly mind boggling! This is the great ‘perfection’ of life. Hence, awe, gratitude and respect are useful attitudes on your part, and you must respect its power and its information for you, ie, its personal effect on you.

If it is all perfect, how is the un-love of suffering telling you about your own and others’ un-love for your InSelf? What do you want; what is important, and what are the basic basics? My version of the basic basics is this UUS of TISP InSelf. What is yours?

Ultimately the idea is to be able to support ourselves internally regardless of external circumstances and thus be able to have courage in our own lives and be kind to others in theirs. It is a great self-sufficiency in life.

Thus, always and still we are being asked

Who are you in this? And what do you want? Go inside and find out.

In this way we ‘grow up’ and embrace being apart. This means we...

·         differentiate ourselves out by sorting out and refining what we do and don’t want.

·         understand what’s important to us and others while we learn that ‘they is us’.

·         come into partnership with Life and learn how to Create Life from the heart both internally and externally ie ‘do God’.

In this we find our own Self and own that Self.

And we have a lot of time - eternity in fact - to do it.

and Life on Earth has heaps of

Contrasts and

Mirrors and

tonnes of things for us to experience.

to help us heal the split in our psyche.

The upshot of all this.

You cannot know others’ choices or their greater purpose which can span many lives, not just one, and they themselves may not know either. (Try telling me when I was young I would be writing about all this stuff in later life. What?? And nobody did either, but I would not have believed them.) Blaming others as ‘deserving it’ is pointless. It is far better to have a society that works out how to help all of its members to have a meaningful participatory life.

As with all of us, the other is also searching and exploring.

It takes Time to understand what we have experienced and it takes Time - lots of it, to understand our own relationship with life.

Life is the gift; the journey is imperative. In the face of eternity, it does not matter one bit how long it takes to get there. Working it out is not easy, but having worked it out is great. On the way, like a worm on the hook, we scream and yell and winge and hate it. We are afraid and angry. It is cold outside and it is painful and we hope like hell it really is just one life (oh no! it’s not! but it’s too late now!).

And now we turn to Death.

DEATH. (4E)

Introduction.

Death, of course, is not the end; we continue to continue. But, the internal split also continues; it can only be healed during life/incarnation.

The ‘judgement/assessing’ of the Bible appears to be our chance to assess how we have done in this life, but we can choose to avoid that too. There are too many people who have said ‘my life ran before my eyes’ as they thought they were going to die, as well as the number of people who have had NDE’s, to think otherwise. ‘Assessing’ is the business of facing ourselves, and that can be a very uncomfortable process indeed, such that many will not do it; this time. Notice here that the person doing the assessing is not God, or the church or anyone else but you; you are the one that carries the memories. We don’t even like this one; it implies that if someone does not feel guilty, they won’t even feel the blame or guilt, which is correct, in that they may not; but the mirror laws are always there, whether we know it or not.

Through reincarnation we carry whatever our decisions about Life may be along with us to the next life, where we will receive feedback about these decisions, and so we continue on and on.

WE ARE DUST = EARTH. (4E1)

There’s a lot about ‘dust’ in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; "Dust we are, and dust we shall become".

This was part of God’s ‘cursings’ in the story, so we consider this a curse, but we forget that God is not going to curse anyone; whatever for, if She needs nothing from us? But we are made of earth, and I suspect that there is something inherently powerful in that, even if the ‘powerful’ is only for our own purposes. I suspect that it is an instruction to come back to our own bodies and to our own sensing. This can help us observe just exactly who we are and what we have and what we can do and this makes us ‘powerful’ for ourselves.

We also need to remember that everything else on earth is made of earth, as are we. So, physically, we are related to all life on earth; we are part of earth’s ‘family, so to speak; hence they are our ‘siblings’. How/who would we be if we factored that into our lives?

The instruction may also include considering that we will die sometime, so we need to consider/remember that we are mortal; life is fleeting etc, etc.

It is also true that the more you are able to connect directly to Earth, the more you will be able to draw energy from the Earth. You may be able to notice that as you do so, Earth considers that you are good enough for her, as is true for all creations made from earth. How could she think otherwise? If you feel ‘good enough’ you can feel safe; the safety that comes from not being judged or compared. This is a pretty good feeling.

Death follows life as night follows day. It is not only our chance to rest and take time out, but also to ‘start over’ and tackle it all again. But, ultimately we need it to inform life.

By informing life, I mean asking the ‘death questions’, some of which are…

‘What would you do today if….

..You were to die tomorrow?

..You were to die within 3 to 6 months?

..You became ill and only had x months to live; and so on?

I spend more time on these in the goal-setting chapter.

These types of questions help you to work out what is important to you, and what you want and what you can do about it. That is why we ask them. They inform you about your life. Who are you, and what would you change? The pressure here is on you to ask, especially about what you value the most, and usually that’s relationships and love. But, notice too, that all of these questions are about you having to ‘go inside’ and ask your InSelf for the answers.

We fear death; it is the end of what we know, (as well as the potential for the assessing which can actually feel worse). On the other hand, many people don’t know why they are alive and are not that interested either, so they don’t really care either way. Life has a habit of trying to make/help them care, even if it is a solid ‘whack around the ear-holes’ and sometimes it is just that, especially if we will not take any notice any other way.

In the end, the person you get to face is your real Self which is hidden within the InSelf. It is that unknown ‘other’ (have I said this before?). We would like to run from our fears or we try to block them as much as possible. But, there is no way out, only through. We get to face our fears and we do that by understanding that everyone fears their fears as we fear terrible dragons. The question is when, not if, we face them.

FACING OURSELVES = FACING OUR OWN DRAGONS.  (4E2)

Our society has many myths and tales about horrible dragons breathing fire, who sit on a great pile of treasure and defend it. And of heroes who fight these dragons and become owners of this treasure and thus able to win great things in life.

These ‘dragons’ are your fears and guilt and shame because that is exactly what they feel like. Facing them is what fighting the dragons is about. They are very frightening, and awful. They are terribly strong, tricky and agile; they breathe fire and can burn us and even kill us, and want to. They must be treated with the deepest respect for their powers to kill us, because they can and do.

You must armour yourself with your resources and check that these resources are in working order first. This means finding out what these resources actually are and practicing on something very small or ‘fake’ first, and work up. Think of young pages training to be knights practicing with jousting posts and wooden swords and finding and developing their own strengths first.

There may be several jousts as you try to battle the dragon and you learn what the dragon can do, but when you win and the dragon is dead, you get the treasure, and become ‘wealthy’. You have been heroic, and will feel stronger internally and be able to tackle more dragons if needs be. The internal ‘wealth’ is the Insights.

There is truly nothing more heroic than facing and killing your own dragons, and the ‘treasure’ is immense, and there is always ‘treasure’. We will deeply ‘treasure’ what we find when we kill the dragon and inspect what was underneath it.

This UUS includes a useful method for tackling many of them, but not all. Some of them do need 2 people, and are thus not DIY; you will have to have help for them. I discuss this in Trauma (which see).

WORSE THAN DEATH. (4E3)

We tend to think of death as the opposite of life, but it actually isn’t; it is part of life, and in fact, a great ally in learning to live correctly for ourselves.

But I suspect that there are things worse than death. Those Greek myths don’t talk about ‘the Shades’ for nothing, just because we don’t understand what they may be referring to.

So, what do we think life is? If we were truly alive, what would we be? We might be what…?

An opposite of life is un-life. It comes about through un-love. But another opposite can be non-life. Looking at the opposite of something is a very good way to understand both ends of a continuum, and hence the whole continuum.

So, the following is a list of opposites (again). Once again, as always, the concept and its opposite are on the same line. And, once again, you may like to add your own concepts…

USING OPPOSITES AND CONTRASTS. (4E4)

A list of contrasts builds a ‘picture’ or a ‘feeling’ (depending on how we take in information). Notice that each word is a separate concept or Modality that we use to build up these pictures, with the more modalities making a more compelling and specific/particular picture/definition. Some of the modalities used here are colour, brightness, movement, temperature, and so on. The ‘opposites’ are not necessarily fixed in that your opposites may be different from mine.

But the point here is that increasing the number of modalities builds the picture increasingly clearly….

LIFE compared to =>	NON-LIFE = ‘Ghost’
Vital	Sluggish, still
Colourful	Grey, colourless
Giving	Wanting
Warm	Cold
Expressive	Dumb, silent
Creative	Consuming
Trusting	Fearful
Having	Taking
Relating	Alone
‘Present’, Seen	Absent, invisible
Happy	Sad
‘Fed’, satisfied	Hungry, empty
Effective	Impotent
Passion	Boredom
Free	Trapped, stuck
Down to earth	Ungrounded, floating
Make/act/do	Unable to act/do
Real	Unreal

Etc. Etc.

…. to build up a very clear picture of what non-life could be and what it feels like, which is actually not very nice.

My argument here is that an opposite of life is the ghost, and that makes us really fearful, and rightly so. And yet, it is far more likely to creep into our lives when we refuse to ask the ‘death questions’. If you recognize some aspects of the list in yourself, that can be a warning. I call it the ‘greyness’.

[Children know all about ‘the ghost’; any attention being indeed better than none.]

See more about the Ghost under Fears in Part II.

CYNICISM. (4E5)

I also think that we need to beware of cynicism, which tends to build as we have trouble believing in what we are told to believe. We kind of end up in a limbo land of can’t believe what we’re ‘supposed to believe’ and can’t work out what might be useful to believe (and make sense too?). It seems so self-indulgent to look for or well, actually find a belief system that keeps us happy, but what use is your unhappiness, to yourself or to others? Were you wanting to spread it around? Cynicism makes us sad ‘at bottom’ which brings in the ‘greyness’, and really, it’s the greyness that can be a useful warning that we might be heading in the wrong direction.

WHERE ELSE MIGHT 'GREYNESS' BE IN OUR LIVES? (4E6)

Well, have you looked around at city environments lately? Concrete, steel, glass and bitumen. So little plant material or anything that belongs in nature unless it’s a useful office plant. Lots of coloured flashing lights and noise to cover it up, but it’s still there. We all wear black as we go about our working lives. Modern colours for gymnasiums, and many corporate-style meeting places are grey, white and black, with red for luck. Is this what you want in your life? If we dance, it’s by ourselves in the dark with a few lights thrown around, and being deafened. If we sing, it’s others’ 'music’ in a beat (rock; heavy metal) that kills life, and deafens us with generally sad/angry ‘male’ words about ‘the lost only ‘lerv’’ .

LIFE IS FIERCE. (4E7)

It really is. The Mirror Laws are fierce in terms of ‘watch out’; even Being at Choice is fierce. It’s up to you. Life can give us some awful whacks if we won’t ‘wake up’. It seems to be really hard and mean to even say this. We actually like the idea of staying as a child, but we mustn’t and we can’t. All we have to do is look at and watch animal behaviour in the wild, but we can’t do it without judging. We refuse to look at this. We want life to be all nice and ‘lovey-dovey’ and our way and get very cross and sorry for ourselves when it isn’t.

This does not mean you need to hide under a rock, or be afraid or avoid the natural world, but it does mean be careful, observant, awake, and use all your senses, including your intuition, as you explore life. Animals get to do it all the time, and we are an animal.

Finding our own power for ourselves as we head toward being a full Adult is immensely rewarding. This ‘power’ is a kind of ‘powerless power’ in a strange way because it is not a ‘power over’ anyone. It is the power to execute our goals in Life for ourselves.

And that’s what this UUS is saying Life is for.

Facing death and submitting to the information that Life brings to us is the way through (it’s not out). It’s not if; it’s when. When will you stand and Look; now or later? As we do so, Life becomes a Present, and we live with our own Purpose which leads to great satisfaction with Self, ie, proper Self-esteem (TSE) and ‘fed’-ness. There is a feeling of great internal Security here; it is the ‘house built on rock’. [As well as that ‘Rest in Peace’ bit.]

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE? (4E8)

If I have defined life on earth as spirit and soul coming together with both available to the mind, then death means that they will split again.

The body disintegrates, and so, in some sense, does the mind. However, NOVAK argues that the split is between the conscious and unconscious which is also split during life. I am not sure how much one can tell anyway. We like to think that we all go to heaven etc, etc, but ‘channeled’ stuff is all pretty much the same, ‘it’s wonderful here’ and sounds a bit like spirit’s ideas about heaven to me (no pain, freedom, and no attachments either). We also have the Greek myths about the shades - where does that fit in? I don’t think it’s a good idea to ignore things just because we don’t understand them - the Greeks were very good at psychology.

The point here being that this is academic for the practical purposes of this UUS which is about using your life on earth to find the Garden of Eden for yourself.

So, the Upshot?

I think the upshot of this is that there are some really scary things that can happen to us when we will not submit, ‘turn around’, face ourselves, and use life to learn about who we are inside. They are not punishments per se, or even threats, but they are the consequences of energy that extends from love to un-love; life to un-life.

It is not easy, we don’t like it, and don’t want to do it, but getting to be partners with God is what we need and want to do, and we truly love it when we ‘get’ that, and there’s more. There’s always more. The Universe expands all the time; (apparently even the earth is expanding).

This leaves us a choice of, the scary business of facing yourself (carefully) and finding treasure, or the scary consequences of not facing yourself, and I can assure you that misery can go on for an awfully long time! You won’t want to take as long as I did, but I’ve only learned the hard way.

And now we go on to the next Part which is about what we humans might actually be wanting.