"est:
PLAYING THE GAME*
THE NEW WAY
*THE GAME OF LIFE"
By
Carl
Frederick
Electronic adaptation by LesDenton.com
Copyright
1974, Rev. 2011 Carl L. Frederick
Published by Carl Frederick at
Smashwords
ISBN 978-1-4524-1180-4
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DEDICATION
To Mom
(who carried me in)
And
Mother
Earth
(who supplied the necessary dirt and water)
FOREWORD
At the base of it all
This is nothing
But
a lengthy letter
To myself.
And that simple truth
Puts the
whole screed
In its proper perspective.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 4. How to Get All the Cheese in Life, OR “How Unreasonable Can You Be?”
Chapter 5. How to Get Where You Really Want to Go In Life, OR “How to Make Every Day Your Birthday”
Chapter 6. A Playful Exercise On Your River
Chapter 7. How Gurus Get Made, OR “Will You Agree With Me?”
Chapter 8. The Four Basic (And Heretofore Secret) “Ingredients” To Healthy Relationships In The Game
Chapter 10. Gamestuck, OR “The Truth Will Make You Unstuck”
Chapter
11. Onward and Upward: You’re Perfect and Genuine
How The Universe Works, OR “What’s Your Notion?”
What’s The Source Of My Notions, OR “Where Do They Come From?”
When Did The Game Start For Me?
INTRODUCTION
My purpose in creating this book is simply to assist you in getting everything that might be blocking you out of the way, so that you can proceed to win the games you have going. And before you start reading, I have a confession to make: it is that you already know everything in this tome. Not “some” of it – all of it. What I will do as we progress is create the space for you to put all the pieces together, in order that they begin to make some sense to you. But your life is your puzzle, not mine. It has been all along, and it will be for as long as you’re around. I’m just a human being who happened to drop in to observe where it is that you’re going.
So, from beginning to end, I want you to be the critic. If, at any point, you take a hard look at the words printed here and say to yourself: “This guy’s off his rocker!” you should immediately junk the book. Stop reading it – you’re wasting your valuable time. And whatever you do, don’t let me lead you down any garden paths.
I submit that you’ve been letting other people tell you what to do with your life since it began. You’ve been running your life down a whole series of blind alleys that they created for you. And I’m telling you now that you’re off your rocker for doing that to yourself.
As is evident from the title I’ve chosen, my experience has led me to see quite clearly that LIFE IS A GAME. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. And, as you well know by now, all games have rules. For the purpose of this book, I’d like to call them “agreements.” That is, you have chosen to sit down with me (the book), and play my game (read it.) And you understand clearly that at any point you can choose to upset the game board (close the book) and go away.
The agreements I want to make with you before you go on to Chapter One are as follows:
1. That you will make a conscious choice to really get involved with the message, and will simultaneously discard as much as possible in terms of extraneous external things. What does that mean? To be perfectly clear, I want to be alone with you, in a quiet room. Don’t read the book on a train, or at the beach, or anyplace where you might be interrupted. And don’t pick it up if you’ve just experienced a problem in your life.
2. That you're going to be taking a long, careful and objective look at your life, to see if it’s working for you. If you’re not ready for that, please don’t even bother to continue reading.
3. That you will read the book only when you’re fully conscious. By “fully conscious” I mean: a) That you’re wide awake. This is not a bedtime story – it’s the game you call your life. b) That you’ve taken care of all your bodily functions and necessities before you sit down, and for as long as you choose to read at one sitting. If you ‘have to go’, that ends the session. Come back some other time. c) That you will abstain from all mind-altering potions, lotions and devices for at least twelve hours before you sit down to read. This includes aspirin, indigestion tablets, etc., as well as obvious things like alcohol, marijuana, etc. You know what I’m talking about: don’t cloud your head. d) Don’t take any food into the room. My preference is also that you refrain from smoking, but this is not intended as an agreement, simply a suggestion.
4. Read slowly and methodically – let the words sink in. Kick them around thoroughly before you move on. Be certain whether they’re true for you. If it takes you six conscious weeks to finish it on this basis, that’s fine. This is not a one-night (book) stand, even though you might have thought that going in.
5. Get ready for the fact that, at times, you’re going to want to throw away the book, hate me, and/or kick a wall. And I mean that you’ll really be angry. Now I accept that. But you should be ready for it.
In summary: if you choose to explore your life and take a hard look at what’s going on with you, let’s get together. What lies ahead is just you, and you’re such a perfect being that I’m going to enjoy every moment I get to be with you in your game. Nothing would give me more pleasure than seeing you playing the new way, then sharing that experience with you.
Chapter 1. WHERE YOU ARE
Boy, am I ever pissed off at my old man. Here’s what happened: I had this really big date set for Saturday night, so all week long I did everything right. I mean I cleaned up my room, took out the garbage, fed the dog, and even shined his shoes twice. Then, at the last minute, he refused to give me the car. Now isn’t that unreasonable of him?
Signed, The Righteous Kid
Dear Righteous:
You are an unconscious ass. Why did you do that to you?
Love, Abby
Dear Abby:
Boy, am I ever pissed off at my boss. Let me tell you the story: For six straight weeks I put in fourteen hour days, plus Sundays, working on the Company’s Five Year Plan. There wasn’t a flaw in it when I finished, and I had a foreman at a tool and die company verify that. And it would have saved the Company $2.2 million the first year. But my boss only spent about 5 minutes glancing at it, then he just told me that “it wouldn’t work.” I didn’t even get a chance to defend it. I think I would be perfectly justified to walk into his office and quit. What do you think?
Signed, The Frustrated Worker
Dear Frustrated:
You are an unconscious ass. Why did you do that to you?
Love, Abby
Dear Abby:
Boy, am I ever pissed off at my husband. Get this: Last Saturday he was out in the back yard, just putzin’ around. I mean he wasn’t really doing anything. And anyone could see that. He was just pickin’ a few weeds and drinkin’ a beer. Well, I asked him to come inside to watch the kids for ten lousy minutes while I went to the store, and he flat refused! He said that I should take the kids with me, which is exactly what I had to do, after a fifteen minute argument. Now wasn’t he wrong?
Signed, I-get-no-cooperation
Dear I-get-no:
You are an unconscious ass. Why did you do that to you?
Love, Abby
Dear Abby:
Boy, am I ever pissed off at the world. I’m the quietest, most passive guy you’ll find. I never cause any trouble for anyone. And in return I never get anything but the wrong end of the stick. My parents hassle me, the local fuzz hassles me, and my teachers hassle me. I think I should denounce my citizenship and move to Africa. What do you think?
Signed, Ready-To-Split
Dear Split:
You are an unconscious ass. Why are you doing that to you?
Love, Abby
So much for the examples.
The point is that the people described are 1. REAL. You’ve seen and
read about examples like these every day of your life. 2. UNCONSCIOUS
ASSES. Unconscious because they really believe that the world, or the
old man, or the boss, or the hubby, or whoever, is “doing it to
them.” The fact is they’re doing it to themselves. .And that’s
precisely what makes them asses. 3. JUST LIKE YOU. Because if you’re
like 99% of the people I’ve observed in the world, you blame “it”
on someone or something else, most of the time.
Take a moment, right now, and look at your life. And I mean really take a hard look. You have a remarkable ability to do that, which we will work on throughout this book. Just sit there and look at some situations where you know you’ve been right, and ultimately reasonable, but you didn’t get what you wanted.
Now I want you to get the idea that the world you live in is NOT a reasonable place to be. In fact, very little about it is reasonable. So, if you’re running your life in a reasonable way, the safest assumption to make is that you aren’t going to get what you want very often.
And (no pun intended) there’s a reason for that. It is that REASONABLENESS EQUALS RIGHTNESS. Those are states of mind, which equate to the way you run your life. And to be there with your life is the lowest state I can conceive of. Because when you’re living there, you can literally end up losing all the games you set up, and the only thing you get out of them is knowing how “right” you were.
And the people you call your friends gather around and agree with you. You describe the game that you just lost, get them to agree that you were right, then they offer you a double martini on the rocks, as a consolation prize. And you swallow it, hook, line and twist of lemon. You ass.
Because the fact remains that you lost the little game, and (way back there in the far reaches of your head), you know that being right isn’t the answer. You didn’t get what you were after, and it’s still frustrating as hell, even after all your “friends” have come to the emotional ‘rescue’.
One final note: the ultimate in being right is to be dead right. That is, to be six feet under — literally — and the person who was wrong has absolutely no recourse with you. Oh, sure, he can come and stand over your headstone and cry wistfully, “I was wrong,” but you aren’t available for comment or compassion. So now he has to deal with that wrongness for the rest of his life. And somehow that pleases you too.
What I want you to get is the point of this discussion — and you’ll get it by taking a long, hard look at what’s going on out there in the world. Look at you, and at the people around you. See how much time is wasted setting up games, losing them, and then going around bitching about the losses. For days. Weeks. Years. And yes, even whole lifetimes.
Also, take special note of the fact that I said: “Games they (and you) set up.” Note that, because the fact is that no one told you to create “I want the car for my date,” or “I want my plan to be accepted,” or “I want my hubby to watch the kids.” No one ever created a game for you. You set them up. You lose them. And I submit that you’re an ass for doing that to you.
Because I’m here to tell you that you can set up all the games you want in life, then go about winning them. But the winning isn’t based on being right, or on being reasonable. In fact, you’re going to end up being unreasonable as hell. But you get to win the games. And that’s the point. More on that later. For now, understand one observable fact. It has to do with the contrast between animals and humans. Take a rat. Long ago, a brilliant psychologist proved that if you present a rat with 3 tunnels, only one of which has some cheese in it, the rat will explore all the avenues until it finds the cheese. And, after reinforcement, the rat will ignore all non-cheese tunnels, and only go down the one with the payoff. Then, if you take away the cheese, he will soon learn that it’s gone, and will begin to explore all tunnels again, looking for the reward.
Human beings, in stark contrast, will go up a tunnel looking for whatever the “cheese” of the situation is, never get any, but they proceed to run up that same tunnel for a lifetime. And what’s driving them is reasonableness, or rightness. That is, they say to themselves, quite logically: “I saw cheese go up that tunnel. It’s got to be up there! I’ll find it, dammit, if it takes me a lifetime!” So they get to spend a lifetime without cheese, but always being able to explain (to wives, friends, acquaintances — anyone who will listen) that they’re up a very reasonable tunnel. And they find people to agree that the cheese really belongs up that tunnel. Those people are called really close friends.
If you’re running your life up a tunnel (or a series of them) with no ‘cheese’ for you; if you’re losing the games that you set up, you’re beginning to get what I’m driving at: that running your life being right is pointless. And I don’t mean that what you’re doing is wrong; I simply mean that it doesn’t WORK. And that’s the criterion I’m going to use throughout this book — if it doesn’t work for you — junk it. Drop it in the round file, because you’re wasting your time. If what you see written here doesn’t work for you, close the book, think of it as trash, and dump it. Go back to running your life the way you were. You don’t need me (or anyone else) to inject more things into your life that send you up blind alleys. And that you can certainly agree with.
Now I want you to look at the incredible number of people who spend their entire lifetimes at “rightness.” Being reasonable. They never get relief ~ they just get to bitch about it. Endlessly. They never face up to the truth of the matter, which is that they didn’t get the results they wanted, and address that. Instead, they spend their lives talking about all the reasons they should have won the game.
However, as I observe things, there is usually at least one situation in the lives of most of us when we experience a jolt from our reasonableness. That is, the shock of the event moves us so quickly and forcefully that there isn’t time to stop and bitch about it. We find ourselves caught up in it.
For example, take Mr. Dewright, a reasonable man with a wife, two kids, a dog, a station wagon, and a big house in Suburbia. He suddenly gets called into the boss’s office and told that — for no reason that has to do with his ability — he’s going to be on the curb at the end of the day. Reaction: “OHMIGOD! FIRED! FOR WHAT??????? I’ve been the most conscientious guy the company has seen. I mean, look at Smith: he just sits in his office all day, doing nothing. And Jones: he never shows up until 10:30! But it’s me who gets the ax. What’s wrong with the world/this company/me?”
This is the point of crisis where most people really begin to get a brief peek at the answer - and most do it without realizing what’s going on. Because, when faced with the fact that being reasonable hasn’t worked, they are then looking at two broad choices: A. Ending it all, by taking a leap from the Empire State Building, (or its hometown equivalent); or B. GRABBING HOLD OF THEIR BOOTSTRAPS. Looking at the situation, realizing that it wasn’t right, but that NOTHING can be done to correct it, and moving on to a new situation. By not dwelling on the past, but going forward with the determination that he has to get another job, and be damn quick about it. He’s got a family to be fed, plus a dog that doesn’t get along very well without his Alpo, so something has to be done. NOW. And the someone elected to do it is Dewright. No one else really gives a damn. Oh, to be sure, his friends “appreciate” his unfortunate position; the employment agencies all say they’ll go into action immediately, and his wife gets behind him.
BUT AT THE BASE ROOT OF IT ALL, DEWRIGHT’S COME TO THE UNDERSTANDING THAT HE HAS TO GET HIS ASS IN GEAR, AND FIND A SOLUTION. PRONTO!
And the job gets done. Three weeks (or three
months) later, Dewright “finds” Corporation OK, where the people
are “really nice” (reasonable), and the business is growing, and
besides, it’s closer to the house so he doesn’t have to drive as
far. So, he sits back and declares himself “alright” again.
It
is absolutely unbelievable that people don’t see the light at this
point. What has happened is that they’ve used their natural talent
to get through a rough situation, consciously pulled themselves up by
the bootstraps, but then they throw off the responsibility for the
future to the new Company: “Corporation OK is really going to take
care of me. As a matter of fact, I don’t know why I stayed at the
old place as long as I did. I’m better off here.”
Dewright should realize by now that nobody really cares about him but him. As I said before, people will say they do, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, they don’t. And Dewright didn’t really “need” them. The power to control what happens in his life is his alone. And if he brings things into his life that don’t work, that frustrate him, that run him up blind tunnels with no cheese, he has the responsibility for that. NO ONE EVER DID IT TO HIM. HE DID IT TO HIMSELF. And the “how” and the “why” of it will unfold as you progress through this book.
For now, I want to expand upon what happened with
Dewright. You will recall that he started off (in fact, ran his life)
being reasonable. He did everything that a guy who is
responsible would do — except that he got fired. Poor guy. The
world’s wrong — he’s ok.
Here’s what went on when
Dewright got jolted out of his Rightness:
THE FISHTANK OF EFFECT
HELP
HOPE
FEAR OF WORSENING
DISASTER
CATATONIA
REASONABLENESS = RIGHTNESS
Operating his life from a base of reasonableness, he was suddenly hit with the fact that he didn’t have a job anymore. His first reaction was Catatonic = he froze. In his head he couldn’t comprehend what was going on. He was in a daze. From there, he moved up into Disaster. “What am I going to do now? This is a disaster! I have a family to support, and no job. Besides, I haven’t put out any resumes. It’s all over!”
Soon thereafter, he moved another step up, into Fear of Worsening. That is, he was in his third week of solving the problem and had several interviews, two of which “looked good,” but got no firm offer. On the way home one night it occurred to him that no one out there was going to hire him and that he was on his way to becoming a derelict. On welfare. Accepting food stamps. And what will happen to the family? The dog? The station wagon? It was all falling apart and could only get worse. Being reasonable hadn’t worked. “What the hell is the answer?” he mused rhetorically.
By now, you know the answer: it is to continue to be unreasonable — that, in fact, he’s ok, and moving upward on his OWN POWER, and he’ll soon see that. But our poor undeserving actor just keeps at it and gets up to: HOPE. Ah, he finally got an offer for only 10% less than he was making at the old joint and what’s more, has three interviews set for next week. Plus, a friend in Kansas City has invited him to come back anytime, and told him there are four jobs in three companies to look at there. Ecstatic, Dewright declares: “There is some hope in the world!” Besides, he’s basically covered. He has a firm job offer in hand.
You see: he’s HELPED himself. Then he accepts the new job, gets elated about it, celebrates with the wife at dinner for $99.50, buys the dog 6 new cans of the best chow available, fills the tank of the wagon, makes the mortgage payment, and THROWS OFF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE TO THE NEW COMPANY. He says: “OK, now I’ve gotten myself this far, and I expect you to be reasonable (recognize my talents), and do right by me (keep me around, promote me, reward me for what I do).”
What a fool. Standing on the verge of the answer of his life, he abandons it all and returns to the lowest state around: REASONABLENESS= RIGHTNESS. Somebody can “do it to him” again.
Observing that fact about Dewright’s behavior really pisses me off. Why am I angry? After all, the guy really did get to a better place, didn’t he? The answer is — yes, but, the power he exercised in helping himself is one that he could have (and should have) stayed with. Because the next station upward in life is one that would have let him see clearly that he was a winner. And he walked away from it. Secondly, you’re asking how it is that people go forward when they go through such apparently “horrible” states as catatonia, disaster, fear of worsening, etc. It sure as hell looks like they’re going backwards to have to go through things like that.
And you’re right. It sure does look that way. But the fact is that it ain’t that way. Again, the reason (as if one were needed) is that just above HELP is a state of the human mind/condition that is unbelievable. But people don’t see it, and that’s the saddest commentary of all. It looks to them like they’ve reached the apex of human conditions. After all, he got help, and that’s the time to return to running your life the way you used to ~ being reasonable. Isn’t it???
No it’s not. And we’re going to explore what’s up there at the next level, in due time. For now, I want you to look at your life with the perspective of what happened to the guy who lost his job. Translate that in your terms, to your reality. See what happened. Look at your love life ~ a significant other who left you; a divorce. The death of someone you held very close — unexpectedly. Look at the last time you thought you would get the next promotion — but someone else got it. Look at the processes you used to get back to “normal.” What you’ll see is that you moved YOURSELF all the way UP to HELP, but then went ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN TO BEING REASONABLE; BEING RIGHT; THROWING OFF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE ONTO SOMEONE OR SOMETHING ELSE.
By observation, I conclude that people who have to be “reasonable” or “right” about their lives, and are losing their games, are people who are putting on an ACT every day. They don’t see it, of course, because if they could see it, they’d ditch the act, and do what worked for them. In the case of Dewright, we saw that being reasonable/right didn’t work for him. He lost his job, and I call that not working. What did work was when he grabbed hold of his bootstraps and pulled himself up to a better place.
And people who “put on” the rightness act are easy to picture: Envision someone who gets out of bed every day, spends two hours “getting ready,” then hoists himself out over the very middle of the “Rightness River” (which, by the way, is more powerful than the mighty Colorado), and lowers himself into a frail canoe, which is floating freely in the treacherous rapids. He quickly reaches for the paddles, and begins to row frantically, in an effort to maintain balance, position, direction, and “getting somewhere.” The only trouble is that he’s ROWING AGAINST THE RIVER. And you know, as you watch him, that he’s GOT TO LOSE. You can see that he isn’t enjoying himself, that the river will definitely be there pushing long after he gives up, and that, anytime he loses a stroke, he also loses ground.
And the “Rightness River” is fed by a number of smaller streams (of consciousness) that were — in turn — fed into the rower by a combination of folklore, instructions and “teachings” from his past. Things like:
— “You have to be better than other people; more successful.”
— “You have to get married and be a good parent and buy a big house up on the hill.”
— “You have to be like your father ~ aggressive and fast and powerful.”
The list of “do’s” and “don’ts” is endless. There are so many instructions and preachings from the past that we’re using every day — unconsciously — that each of us has actually come to believe that we invented them. That they were ours all along. But the truth is that we simply made a decision (however long ago) to adopt these instructions as life purposes and proceeded to TRY to act them out. The only trouble is that human beings are bad actors. And to keep up the act is equal to rowing against the river. You’re going to lose if you get yourself into a battle with a river. Forget it, there’s no way that the river will “give up.” It’s got staying power that’s way to hell and gone beyond the stamina of men, whether they recognize it or not. And finally, you must see that the river truly doesn’t care whether you decide to ride with it, or whether you fight it by rowing in the opposite direction. It’s just going where it’s going, and it doesn’t have a point-of-view about you, or about itself.
Another thing is happening when you’re rowing against the river: it is that you’ve got your eyes set about two inches in front of you. (You damn well better, or you’re not going to stay balanced.) And that means the flotsam and jetsam of the river is going to bang into you, thus creating more problems. They could, in fact, upset your whole applecart/canoe/life. And finally, you have absolutely no opportunity to take notice of what else is going on ~ that is, the other things that are floating by you in the river .~your span of vision is restricted to those paddles, the canoe, and staying afloat.
And you don’t know where the hell you’re going, because the answer is you’re going NOWHERE. At best, all you can manage to do is stay even with the river. And that requires all the energy you can muster. Even you can see that one of the hardest things to do in the world is to maintain vigilance against the rapids, with an endless supply of water feeding them, and there you are, TRYING to go in the opposite direction. Really, it would be better if you junked your paddles, and just drifted along with the river. Even God knows you aren’t going to “win” the battle you’re fighting.
There are “rightness” acts all over the place for you to observe. Take the man in business who made a declaration to himself 20 years ago: “I’m going to be President of a big company someday!” Every day of his life he takes that act out into the river and rows like hell to try to stay even. Or, the young dude who decides that the establishment ain’t for him, so he puts on the act that includes a beard, one ragged pair of faded jeans, and rows against the river. Or, the housewife who plays the game (acts out) getting into the social whirl by joining the Junior League.
What’s your act? Take a careful look at that question, and stop reading until you have a clear idea of the act you’re putting on every morning. See if it really is you.
Next, understand that there’s a lot of ACT STANDARDIZATION in the world. By that I mean that the ticket for admission into the Aspen Act is a big sheep-dog and a Jeep ~ never a chopped and channeled Mustang. The business act requires a necktie and a Brooks Brothers suit. The commune act is one where there’s no money and a street mutt. On and on: the Hollywood act, the Upper East Side New York act, the hometown USA act. And all of them have accompanying scripts for the actors to read.
GET THE NOTION THAT IT’S TIME TO DITCH YOUR ACT IF IT ISN’T WORKING FOR YOU. And how do you know if it’s working? Simple: People whose lives are working have a rather sheepish grin on their faces ~ 95% of the time. They’re getting what they really want out of their lives: the cheese. And, when you look closely at them, you know that they’re not acting at all — that who you see is the real person, content with himself, going somewhere, WITH HIS RIVER. He’s gotten out of the “Rightness River,” and he’s riding high. On top of his life. And he’s not disturbed with himself, you, or the world. Nobody is “doing it to him.” He’s got control of his life, and it’s readily apparent by his calmness, yet firmness, with the way he runs his life.
Are you there? I doubt it, because so few people are. But only you can answer that.
When you’ve cleaned up your act, and really find out who you are and where you really want to go, life consists of getting up every morning, taking your body out onto the River of Life, dropping into an innertube (with no paddles), and just coasting along, with the river. And I want to tell you that when you experience it, it’s an amazing ride. For the first time in your life, you get to leisurely SEE what’s going on all around you. And the process of living is easy as mom’s apple pie ~ you’re riding with the current.
I’ve come to New York City to write this book, and the observation of the actors in the rightness game here is astonishing. Cabbies who play it to the hilt ~ blow the horn at 1/10 of one second delays at a traffic signal. People who won’t give you the time of day. Businessmen whose lives are so tightly screwed down (from all angles) that it literally takes them two days to recover if they miss a train. And if the Penn Central shuts down for a day, that does it to them for the rest of the month.
Can it be that I’m telling you the truth? Is it true that 99 and 44/100% of the people in the world are running their acts out into the Rightness River? Are you one of them? The answer is that you have to look at that and answer it for yourself. Based on experience, you probably are. I ought to know-. it was the way I ran my life for the first 33 years.
So, how did that happen? Why are you doing that to you?
Turn the page, and we’ll look at you together.
Chapter 2. HOW YOU GOT HERE
You were unconscious about your life, that’s how you got here. And you are still unconscious.
Here’s what’s going on with you: get the idea that your life consists of nothing but one very long reel of videotape, with the past being represented by exposed film, and the present and future are still blank (unexposed). On this tape, everything that happens to you is recorded. And I do mean everything. It’s a complete picture of all the sights, sounds, actions, tastes, smells, touches, feelings, considerations, decisions, judgments, rationalizations ~ everything.
It’s all there. And you have the ability to play back every scene, if that’s what you choose to do. Now you probably think there’s a great deal about your life that you’ve “forgotten.” Not true. It’s all there on the videotape. And what’s more, there are a lot of those pictures that you haul up and use for “reference” every day, whether you’re conscious of using them or not.
Because this is the point where your mind comes into play. Get the idea that your mind exists for only one purpose: To save and replay those pictures of the past which it believes will make you survive. And by “survive” I don’t mean just to keep your heart beating. It’s much, much more than that. It includes things like whether it’s ok for you to be sitting in the room you’re in; whether it’s ok for you to eat the food that’s presented to you; whether it’s ok for you to go 75 mph down the freeway, and so forth. In fact, your mind is what says it’s ok for you to run your life exactly the way you’re running it.
From a 'procedural' standpoint, what happens is
that you find yourself presented with a situation wherein you have a
choice: to do it or not to do it. At that point your mind enters the
game, with the old pictures, to check you out. Then it issues a “GO”
or “NO GO” decision, based on those pictures from the past. And
every step of the way, as the event unfolds, your mind maintains the
vigil, constantly checking to insure that you’re ok; that you will
continue to survive. That you’re right, doing what you’re doing.
GET THIS: YOUR MIND CANNOT LET YOU BE WRONG. TO DO THAT WOULD
THREATEN YOUR SURVIVAL.
Now you can easily see how your mind
comes into play in the 'major' incidents in your life, but I also
want you to get that it interacts with you in all situations —
even down to those that you would consider minor or inconsequential
to your actual survival.
Take a light moment in life: you go to a nightclub to see a comedian. Take a look and see what a comedian actually does. If he’s any good, all he’s doing is RESHUFFLING YOUR PICTURES OF THE PAST. Because if he’s talking about something that you can’t bring up pictures for, he’s making no sense to you, and to your mind that’s equal to being wrong. So he’s not funny. And you get up and leave, bitching about the cost and a wasted evening.
The point is that when you’re unconscious about your life, you use your mind as the statistic. The “checker-outer,” if you will. The key question, at this point, is whether your mind is accurate for you ~ that is, does it in fact serve up those pictures which actually have something to do with your survival, or is it screwing you up?
To make that analysis, let’s use a real-life situation: Take the time you rode your tricycle down the street, didn’t quite make it, turned over and crashed into a telephone pole. When you got yourself together, you discovered that your arm was scratched, that your head hurt, and you had a stomach ache, so you went home crying to mama. She fed you and told you it was ok; to be more careful the next time you ventured forth on your three-wheeler.
And the next time you get yourself into a situation where you might be hurt, your mind serves up the pictures of the headache and the stomach ache — AS IF THEY ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR SURVIVAL IN THE EARLIER SITUATION. So you get a headache and a stomach ache, and you get to “survive” once more. And your mind thinks the two events are actually related.
You see, the point is that your mind put you in the rightness game, and your mind keeps you stuck there. Your mind is screwing up your life by serving you pictures which, IN TRUTH, have absolutely nothing to do with your actual survival. Your mind seeks to make your life consistent, by serving you the same pictures when you get yourself into a situation which is even remotely similar to an earlier one. It thinks it’s helping you by making your life consistent, even if it’s consistently miserable, and not producing the results you want. Your mind gives you the APPEARANCE OF CERTAINTY, even if it frustrates you in the process (which it does). At least you get to be consistently right. That’s why most of the world never moves out of the rightness game.
And don’t get the notion that the pictures your mind serves up have to relate to traumatic or horrifying experiences. A woman once shared an experience with me that makes this point very clear: She was in her mid-thirties when I met her; and always had a terrific weight problem. At the time, she weighed about 200 pounds. When she looked at the pictures of her life, she saw what was happening at the time she was 6, 7, and 8. And the decision she made then about running her life. It was simply that she would get home from school, only to discover an empty house — no one at home. Her mother worked. Mom also saw to it that the maid came in regularly and kept the house spotless. Now this gal knew if she messed things up, she’d catch holy hell from her mother. So, because of the combination of “aloneness” (which gave her a knot in her stomach) and the fact she couldn’t mess up the place, she ate. It calmed her stomach, and she made sure she didn’t leave any scraps behind. THE DECISION TO EAT TO CALM THE “KNOT” WAS RUNNING HER LIFE FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS. And, she was running her house the same way. Spotless. And the amazing thing to observe is that the moment she took a hard look at what was going on with her, the effect of it was immediately reduced. Within two weeks she had lost 10 pounds, by doing nothing. No diets. No calorie counters. All she did was look at what was going on with her every time her mind served up the knot in her stomach; the aloneness. Then she found she had a brand new, conscious CHOICE to make about eating. And most of the time she simply chose to skip it; realizing (finally!) that eating had absolutely nothing to do with surviving when she felt tense or alone. And once she realized this, she was quite able to deal with it. As a matter of fact, you should have seen the bright look of contentment and relief and aliveness on her face when she came to the point of realization that she had control of her weight. And no doctor or diet in the world was going to get her to that solution. She had the solution all the time.
As you take a hard look at your life and the lives of those around you, you will come to the realization that very few of us have had terrifying experiences which are running our lives. Au contraire: most of us were never gang-raped or threatened at gunpoint. Yet our lives are most definitely being run unconsciously, based on decisions we made long ago.
As incredible as it may seem, our minds are screwing up our lives. And we let that happen simply because we are unconscious about what’s going on.
Another example: A lady friend was unusually cold and aloof. She had relationships, but was always on the “winning” side; very few people could get close to her; and no one ever got close enough to be able to hurt her. When she looked at that, she found that it all related to a decision she made back when she was very young. Her father was persistent in his position that “she could do it”; she could “stand on her own two feet”; that she should “get out there and show ‘em!” The fact was that she couldn’t — but she nevertheless made a decision (unconsciously) to let that stick with her and run her life. By the time she was 22, she had been in and out of four colleges. What happened was that she’d get there and just sit looking out the window, being cold and aloof. TRYING to stand up and show ‘em. But she failed. Consistently. And when she looked and saw that those pictures were running her life, she had a conscious choice to make: whether or not to let them continue to run her life. She chose to ditch them, then went straight home to her father and cried her eyes out. She told the truth about what was running her life, and how it wasn’t working. And he understood. In fact, he cried too. His little girl wanted to lean on him; she loved him. Ah, life is beautiful. But not when you’re unconscious about it.
The TRUTH is that when you become conscious of the fact that your mind is serving up survival pictures from the past — and then you choose to take a hard look at those pictures — the effects of them will immediately diminish. And if you continue to look them square in the eye — to “tell it like it is” — the effects will disappear completely. Because you will then realize that you have a conscious choice to make: whether or not to let your pictures of a similar situation continue to run your life.
You have the opportunity to go into your life and validate what I’ve just said to you. Take a hard look at whatever you don’t really like about you — then sit down somewhere all by yourself and tell the truth about it. No more lying to yourself; time to get on with it. And you should take whatever comes up. Don’t push pictures out of your mind when they drift in. Take a look at them. Start by being conscious of the problem you’re interested in, then re-run your videotape at the point the thing last happened to you. Since you’re a physical being, it has to start at some point in your body. Where is it located? How far in? How far down? How big is it? What color? Is it moving? What thoughts do you have about it? What judgments? Considerations? What do you see in the videotape pictures? Who was there? What were they saying? What were you doing?
Before you begin an exercise like the one described above, I want to acknowledge that you may be experiencing a great deal of fear with the prospect of taking that long, hard look at your life. It’s almost as if you might wander back there and get permanently stuck. Or jump over the fence and go stark, raving mad. Let me reassure you by telling you something about you: the reason you feel that way is that you’ve been acting for one hell of a long time. And since you’re still surviving (you are reading this book, aren’t you?), you’ve got a strong and well-entrenched “buddy” to ditch while you take that look ~ your mind. You see, your mind has gone on all this time validating and revalidating the act you run every day. And you probably feel that if you ditched the act, the real you would be mean and ugly and all sorts of other “nasties” that have been lurking all this time.
The truth is that you are just you, and the effect of consciously re-running the videotape and looking at the pictures of your life is one of TREMENDOUS RELIEF. You finally get to go through issues (instead of sublimating them), and tell the truth to you about what was going on. And you can just be there, watching the tape run, looking at you. Get this: You are just you. You are not the event. You just went through it. You can go back and rerun the tape on all those issues you refused to deal with at the time they occurred and get them out of the way. Permanently. Only after you tell the truth will you come to the realization that you have total freedom to choose — to stop letting your old pictures run — and that’s where you want to be.
At this point we begin the journey into your first episode of revelation. Look carefully at what I’m saying and get the message. Let it sink in. Kick it around. See if it’s true for you. And don’t let it go until you’ve really addressed it and KNOW where you are.
The truth is that if you’re unconscious about your life, you’re letting your mind serve up those pictures from the past which it thinks make you survive. And to survive EQUALS being right; being ok about everything that you do. And since your mind can only serve up pictures from the past, you’re living in the past.
You’re looking BACKWARDS, always trying to justify that what you’ve done is really alright. When you’re not rowing against the Rightness River, you’re standing on a rock out there in the middle, casting your fishing line backwards for pictures, trying to find reasons for your moves. You snag that picture on the tape, haul it up, find all sorts of reasons why you were right, and you try to make it ok that you lost the little game. Then you gather your friends around you, recreate the pictures for them, and get them to agree with you that you were reasonable ~ it was the world that was wrong. It should have gone your way. But the fact is that you don’t have any cheese — you lost your own game. And you’re an ass for doing that to you — unless you get your kicks out of being dead right, which is exactly where you’re heading.
Now you get to see that you can’t use your mind as the verifying statistic, for one simple reason: ITS PURPOSE IS TO MAKE YOU RIGHT (TO GIVE YOU JUSTIFICATION) AND NOT TO MAKE YOU WIN. Because it thinks that by being right, you get to survive. The problem is that in life you end up with only one of two things: A. RESULTS; or B. THE REASONS YOU DIDN’T GET THEM. Your mind is resistant to the truth, because the truth simply IS, that’s all. It doesn’t need reasons; it doesn’t have to be right; it’s just the truth. Period.
Let’s look at an example: a salesman who has just emerged from a call on one of his accounts. I submit to you that he can only have one of two things: 1. RESULTS (he made the sale) or 2. a whole bunch of REASONS why he didn’t close the deal. Also, notice that when he has results, no one asks for the reason(s) why. Results can be left alone — they don’t need any reasons. But your mind is resistant to that notion. And that’s because your mind desperately wants things to be like they WERE, not like they ARE. Your mind cannot create anything, it can only imitate what was. And that means you’re standing on that rock, fishing in the past, trying to justify what was. And there’s one other thing you’re doing: wasting more valuable time.
Maybe someday the real you will become convinced that being right doesn’t really represent an answer. You’ll get sick and tired of “surviving” while losing your games. If that begins to gnaw at you, you’ll begin to move, in accordance with the chart I outlined earlier. You’ll go into catatonia, then disaster, etc. And when you get through hope, you would typically seek help. From your friendly psychiatrist. You’re probably one step ahead of me, but you know where I’m taking you. Yep, the shrinks of the world make $200 every 30 minutes by agreeing with you. They’re just expensive friends, who help you find the right pictures on the videotape, take a long and hard look at them, and then make you right about them. In fact, they help you drive yourself even deeper into the mud next to the pictures, by having you analyze what was going on. And this process keeps you firmly anchored in the past, fishing like hell to stay ok about what happened then. The nice part of their job is that it represents a fantastic security blanket — for them — because the past really piles up, fast. At some point you might get to the place where you can start to fish in the experience/pictures of him and you. But you’re still in the past.
And you’re still the same old unconscious loser, because you’re anchored on that rock, casting your line backwards, and looking backwards, too. That means the present is going by without you knowing about it consciously. And just when you least expect it — BAM! — you get hit right between the eyes with another big, ugly piece of flotsam or jetsam from the river. Remember that the River of Life never stops flowing. It’s just like the tide; it was here long before you arrived, and it’ll be here long after you fade away. And it really doesn’t give a damn whether you try to push it around, or whether you choose to get in an inner tube and simply go along for the ride. The River of Life goes on.
As you can now see, one of the biggest problems with your life is simply that you’re facing the wrong way. You’re looking backwards, trying to justify what you’ve already done. And I’m here to tell you that if you manage to accomplish nothing more than TURNING AROUND — facing forward, looking at the present and the future, you’ll be well on your way to winning the game. You’ll see clearly that you have control of your life, and for the first time, you’ll know where you’re going. You’ll be able to dodge 95% of the flotsam and jetsam; then really be impressed because it was only you who got you out of the way. Your life will become free and easy – EFFORTLESS – because you’ll be riding with the river. You’ll also discover that you end up with the cheese; you get to win the games you set up. Without trying to win them.
If you're ready to turn around, we can begin our journey upward together.
Chapter 3. WHAT’S ABOVE HELP?
Just a short while ago, I told you about the condition your life is in right now: running from the lowest station called REASONABLENESS/RIGHTNESS and, for some people, moving upward through HELP. You should know that while HELP is indeed a higher condition of life than REASONABLENESS, it is still in the same fishtank. And that muddy tank is one I call the FISHTANK OF EFFECT. Which is to say that all the fishies in the tank are not AT CAUSE with their lives, but rather are AT EFFECT. And no matter where you are in the tank, you are in a negative position. The world is doing it to you. You’re running your life reasonably, which you can readily and completely explain to anyone who’ll listen. BUT YOU’RE LOSING THE GAMES YOU SET UP. If there’s some “hope in sight,” that means it’s coming from someone other than you. And when you get help, you get it from someone else. So that if he ends up not really helping you, he did it to you. It’s not your fault. You were alright all along.
There’s another amazing thing to observe: it is that most people who are in the rightness game describe their lives as if they were on a giant roller coaster. And they can see that the car (called life) is running downhill. They acknowledge that freely; noting that it’s been that way “for as long as I can remember.” But (and this is the absolute height of stupidity) they continue to HOPE LIKE HELL that they’ll soon reach the bottom, and then the trolley of life will be carrying them upward for once. You’ve heard the story: “I’ve been the reasonable guy all this time and have been dealt dirt. Surely I have some of the good life coming at some point, don’t I?”
The answer to that question is an emphatic NO! You’ve got nothing coming but more of the same. You’re stuck in the Fishtank of Effect, and unless you see the light and choose to leave it, the world will continue to “do you wrong,” and you’ll end up being dead right. But a loser, all the same.
So how do you get out of the stagnant tank you’re stuck in? Well, let me begin by telling you that the “light” I mentioned is a very thin shaft indeed. Not many people see it in the Fishtank of Effect, but it does shine there. And when you get right under it and look up it, you can’t see anything at the other end. That’s why 99.9% of the people in the world decide that they aren’t going to go up there and look around. They’d rather go back down to rightness and run their lives that way. At least they know what’s there.
And if you choose to start up the shaft of light, you will see that there is, in fact, nothing there. It’s just there, and you’re just passing through it. You’re on a little trip up through the light beam, toward the source, which you can’t see. Imagine that you are really in that shaft of light — right now — and begin to get the feeling that it’s totally alright for you to be there. Even though you don’t know what’s coming. What you have is the confidence that wherever you’re going has to be better than the rancid fishtank that you’ve been stuck in all this time. And sure enough, you’re right.
Because the first thing you’ll find at the end of the light beam is a condition of life you’ve never experienced before — it’s POSITIVE — and it starts with ACCEPTANCE.
You’re going to have to work at getting this, because by acceptance I mean TRUE ACCEPTANCE OF EVERYTHING that goes by you in your life. That is to say, the PAST IS GONE, AND THERE ISN’T A BLOODY THING YOU CAN DO TO CHANGE IT.