School Talk 13 - Obstructions

Inasmuch as obstructions are usually the difficulty, most people start off thinking they can continue to gain something; but as long as you have an obstruction to whatever it is you want to do, the obstruction will prevent any value coming of it. So, inasmuch as we would like to get rid of conflict and struggle and resistance in ourselves, we will talk about what the big obstruction to eliminating struggle, conflict and resistance. The biggest one that I find is that the person has a purpose, a purpose that started out probably the first day you were born.

The four dual basic urges are the usual purpose that everyone knowingly or unknowingly lives with. Now to save time, I put the four dual basic urges on the blackboard. And that is to gain and escape. To gain pleasure and comfort; and to escape pain, being ignored or rejected; to gain attention and approval and escape all disapproval; gain appreciation—being taken for granted is what we like to escape and is the other side of appreciation, I think—just taken for granted and that’s it--you’re here--I expect you to be here next week, next year and so on.

Now all of that leads to disintegration because it’s impossible to live in the earth world and not have some little disturbance now and then. Somebody’s going to ignore you because they are busy doing something else, or they might reject you because you didn’t do exactly what they wanted you to—they’re all working on this gaining and escaping—what we call the old purpose which most people never let go of. No matter how much they learn, how much they discover, how much they struggle to try to live without conflict--the conflict goes on because if you have a lot of pleasure and comfort at the moment, you’re afraid it will get gone; and if you have pain, of course, you’re in a turmoil until all the pain goes away. If you have attention, you’re afraid you’ll lose the attention. If you have approval, you’re afraid you’ll lose it—so the conflict goes on and on and on. It is necessary to see that the old purpose which worked fine for an infant, who probably couldn’t get along with it, is no longer appropriate. We’re not infants anymore, we’re all grown up and we live in a grown up world and the infant approach does not work. Trying to actualize the four dual basic urges is the biggest obstruction to a person being integrated, or whole, or complete, without struggle, conflict and resistance. You simply cannot because there is always something which comes along that’s going to interfere with it.

Now the new purpose is for that of liberation or integration without any conflict struggle or resistance. A new purpose has to be built out of our own ideas and our own consciousness, and I’m not in a position to tell anybody what their purpose should be, but we do say that it should be consciously chosen.

You, yourself, make that purpose up after you have seen that the old purpose simply does not work. You could struggle for this--no matter how old you are. You have been struggling for this all those years, right Bonnie?

(Right.)

You’ve been struggling for this for over 40 years. So no matter what it is, we struggle away with it’ but it still doesn’t work. We still think that if we could just get everybody else to straighten up and fly right (from A) or maybe improve our self (from B), that we would have whatever it is.

Now to say that we are not working to gain the four dual basic urges doesn’t mean that I’m not going to do everything possible to live with as little stress as possible. If I lived in a swamp and the mosquitoes chewed on me every day and the water was obnoxious, I think I’d move. Not that I feel that I would be totally non-disturbed by moving, but I’d get out of some of the unnecessary disturbances. If my house was full of cockroaches, I wouldn’t want to say, “Well, I’m going to stay here and live with them.” I would call the exterminator and see if he could get rid of those bugs for me.

Now if I lived around somebody who was constantly fault finding and bitching and doing all the other things that I’ve seen some people do, I think I’d pull a Hank Snow—I’d be “a movin’ on”—because I’m not going to sit there and listen to all that—it’s unnecessary. Not that I believe that when I “move on” that everything would become utopia and there would be no disturbances in my life, but obviously we have the responsibility to eliminate as many stressful situations as we can. We’re not going to change everybody in the world; not going to make them over so that they will do all these things we want. Neither can I get along without pain, because we live in an ever changing environment and every now and then we require some adaptation in order to survive, and the adaptation is usually a little painful.

If I stay out in the cold too long, I might get frostbitten, but it hurts to where it’s a repair, and thank goodness it does repair!
But we’re not saying that we’re going to sit and put up with every obnoxious situation that comes along because of looking at the four dual basic urges. Many of us look at something, and we want to swing the pendulum as far as it will go in the other direction.

(So, I’m supposed to put up with every kind of obnoxious situation there is?)

I’m not going to put up with any more obnoxious situation than I have to. And, I’m going to eliminate as many as possible, and I’m going to be around as pleasant a people as I can. I’m going to live in an air conditioned place if I can during the heat and with heat during the winter. I noticed the other day that we had the temperature down in here to 68 degrees, and I realized that if it was winter time, we’d be turning the heat on to get it up to 74 or 75 degrees. Now if in the wintertime we have it down to 68 degrees, we’d shiver and freeze all over. Eunice says next time she comes she’s bringing her fur coat with her.

So here is the source of disintegration until we see that it is an unworkable situation, a non-workable purpose, and we’re not going to work on that purpose anymore. We can eliminate that as our purpose. Now we have formed a new purpose for living. I cannot tell you what to make as your purpose, but I will share with you what I have as a purpose. You want to know what that is?

My purpose is to be what to me is a good guest. Now everybody determines how they’re going to be a good guest if they want to. Mine is to be as considerate as I can of every other person at the big party—to be as harmless as I possibly can and to make some little contribution. Nobody interferes with my doing any of those. I don’t have any second force on that. Nobody interferes with my being considerate, or harmless, or making a contribution here and there. At least I can contribute to a pleasant, harmonious mood wherever I am. Even when I’m by myself, I try to do that. So having that purpose, or whatever you choose as your purpose, you now have something you can do. You have no conflict over it, no struggle and no resistance to it. You’re living condition is pretty harmonious and you’re one person because you have no conflict about what you’re going to do.

I get up in the morning and I’m going to be what to me is a good guest today. I feel I’m a guest at this planet earth and there’s a big party going on. There’s a lot of people running around doing all sorts of things, so I would just as soon be a good guest while I’m here. I think I’m a guest, so I might as well be what to me is a good guest. Can you think of any disturbance you would have, or any resistance? Nobody interferes with you doing any of the things I mentioned, so you could pick out any purpose you wanted to, but it would be a consciously chosen one, and it would not be in any conflict or struggle anywhere because it’s your purpose—you get up and do it every day. I look forward to being what to me is a good guest today. I don’t know what else I would do or choose—there are thousands of purposes that you could choose that have no conflict or struggle; nobody is going to interfere with you doing it, as long as you choose the purpose.

Now if you’re going to constantly need approval, you’re going to run into a certain amount of resistance to getting that because some people won’t approve of you no matter what you do. Have you ever tried that out Regina? Some people just don’t approve of you—is that right?

(Right.)

No matter what, you’re going on doing what you think is right, proper and justifiable and somebody’s fault finding with it. Isn’t that right? No matter how good you work, and how nice you are to everybody, you’re not always appreciated. Isn’t that right? Now a lot of people kind of take you for granted. Maybe the lady next door takes you for granted sometimes and sometimes maybe she doesn’t. You ever feel you’re just taken for granted, Diane?

(Yeah.)

Good old Diane is going to be there and take care of the cats and everything, and everything will be all right.

(True.)

But they also find a certain amount of things to disapprove of about you and you can get very upset about their disapproval and blame them and call them knuckleheads, or whatever comes to mind, but they’re still going on doing it, right? So this old purpose was necessary when you were born. Babies can’t communicate very well, and the only thing they can do is cry and holler to let you know they’re uncomfortable. When they get through crying, it’s because they have been made comfortable, and they learn to live on this—but when they get to be two years old, it doesn’t work very well anymore. From then on you get another system working for you.

Of course, I noticed some people keep them as if they’re two years old until they are 36. I see a lady every now and then, who talks about the “baby”, and how she has to take care of the kids. Now it looks to me as if she is old enough that she wouldn’t have any babies. So I inquire as to how old the “baby” is, and it turns out it’s 36 or so; and she’s still taking care of this “baby” and looking after all it’s little wants and cries. You’ve seen that somewhere around, haven’t you? You had a big brother who sometimes needs all those things—right, Don?

(Sometimes.)

He needs all those, so if he cries long enough, he gets all this and escapes some of that, but it doesn’t work too well. I recommend that you remove the obstruction to conflict, struggle and resistance within yourself. First you obviously remove as many impediments to your well-being as you possibly can, but that won’t take care of these. These are psychological things as much as they are physical and after you have eliminated this as your purpose in living, you see that this is most people’s total purpose in living (to gain this and escape that) an you can see that this doesn’t work for an adult and you would then begin to look about until you could come up with a new purpose. If you want to use mine, it’s all right. If you find one of your own, I’ll let you use it—it’s no bother to me. You can be what to you is a good guest. Maybe you’ll find another one in a week, or maybe you’ll find it in a day, or a year—it’s all right. In the meantime, you could be living without any conflict, struggle or resistance. You would be one person within.

Now I have the wonderful opportunity to listen to many, many people in a day. Most days I have anywhere from 10 to 20 calls or more and some days more than that; and every one of the calls are because the four dual basic urges are not working for them, but they still have that as their purpose. They cry “can you give me a formula so I can gain all of these and escape all of these?” I do not have a formula handy. I have talked on it and tried to tell them where there might be a way to get along without all the conflict, struggle and resistance. Most of them don’t hear me. Recently, I have begun to scream at people a little bit. I yell out loud over the phone—holler at them until I get their attention and then they do it and they call back in a little while and say, “Man I feel wonderful, I’m on my way.”

So that will be all right until tomorrow when they get back to this one again. It does keep me busy and I don’t really object to it too loudly because they usually send me a little money and pay for the conversations they have. If I didn’t have this, I’d probably have to go to work—can’t ever tell. Might have to get out and go to work somewhere. Not that the calls aren’t work.

Your purpose is the most valuable thing that you have to look at if you would like to live a joyful life. You have the purpose of non-disturbance which was ready made for you--it was made probably the day you were born.

The baby cries—it’s the first thing it does. It left a place of almost total non-disturbance—the uterine world—and arrived in the earth world. The earth world is a place of disturbance, so you can learn. And the first thing the baby did was cry—didn’t all yours cry when they got here? They let you know about it—most of them are still doing it a little bit, right? Because they want to have nothing but pleasure and comfort. Before they go here they probably didn’t have too much pleasure; however, I see them sucking their thumb before they’re born. They do have non-disturbance, though--they’re comfortable, and that’s the basic situation. And, of course, by the time they are a few months old, a few days old, they want attention and to escape being ignored. You can get them all dry and comfortable and put them in their little pen and that’s ok, but pretty soon, if you walk out the door, they start hollering because they want you to sit there and coo over them while they’re doing it. Just a little while later, you had better approve of them all the time. In the first few months you can call them all kinds of little dirty names, whatever you want; but they don’t pay any attention to that. But before very long they make it very necessary that you must give constant approval, you must not say “no” to them because “no” is disapproval. They love to be appreciated and they certainly don’t want to be taken for granted.

People everywhere rebel against being taken for granted. I think this is why much of the boy/girl relationship blows up—because one or the other, or both, feels they are taken for granted. I think that’s the big noise of it. There are all kinds of other obstacles, but that’s a big one.

Now the new purpose wouldn’t have any of that in it. You would first eliminate that because you see it flat doesn’t work. That’s not an adequate purpose for an adult and now we could form a new one. I’ll leave everyone to make their own; I only gave you a pointer on one I use and it’s so simple, I can be lazy and do it. I can be what to me is a good guest. I don’t have to work at it very hard and so it all gets down to the four big questions we ask—What am I? Where am I? What’s going on here? And What can I do? So what I can do is my purpose. I can be what to me is a good guest. Simple and easy.

We’ve covered all that very nicely, let’s have questions and comments, and if you will speak fairly clearly today because I’ve got a bubble in my ear and I can’t hear too well.

Jeannine? You can have the first one. Have you got any?

(You answered them all.)

Good. That’s clear as mud. I got that done fast. Eunice?

(Are role and purpose the same?)

Playing a role?

(I mean, is that the same as purpose?)

Well, not necessarily, but I play the role of having what to me is a good guest, so yes, that’s the way I act out my purpose. Purpose is my intention and the role is the way I actualize it. Ok? So now I didn’t go ask somebody else what I should do to be a good guest. I decided on my own what that is. It’s being considerate of all people, things, and the host and the planet and everything on it. Being as harmless as I can be, I can’t be totally harmless because I do take up space that maybe you would like to have, but nevertheless, I’m as harmless as I can be. I try to take up that space pleasantly, anyway.

The other one is to make some little contribution—at least I can always contribute to a pleasant, harmonious mood wherever I am. That purpose you can do if you have a headache, a bellyache, if you’re tired, or even if you’ve been mistreated all day. You can still do that much because it doesn’t do any good to sit around and bitch; you might as well contribute to a nice mood. Maybe it will all get quieter pretty soon. But, that’s only my point of it. How about you? Got a question, comment? Bonnie?

(Well, on the new purpose, Bob, I don’t know how many times I decided I was going to make a new purpose…..)

But, you never did undo the old on.

(….so the old one..)

………gets caught up. So the first thing is to remove the old one, right? And then you make a new one. You can’t put the new one on top of the old one because the old one is older and stronger and tougher and it kicks the shins out from under the new one.

First you have to see that four dual basic urges are not an adequate purpose to live with. I’m not going to do that one any more. It’s like emotions because they are all emotional. I simply cannot afford it, ok? Now then, to try to make a new purpose on top, is like people’s New Year’s resolutions. They last about as long as an April frost in Phoenix—about that long.

(The new purpose never has arrived yet.)

It hasn’t arrived because we didn’t unmake the old one, and you have to see that this is not appropriate for an adult. It is fine for a baby—they can’t live by anything else and we don’t want to change that. We see that it also does not prevent me from doing what I can to remove the more stressful situations I’m around. Ok? If I’m around somebody who’s a lunatic, I’m going to try to pull a Hank Snow. I’m going to be “a’moving on”. If I’m around somebody who is constantly screaming and causing all sorts of commotion, I’m going to be “a*movin on”—if I can afford that, and I can’t afford to live in the swamps with mucky air and mosquitoes chewing me up. I don’t like that, so I’m going to move. That I can handle. But I can’t change the fact that sometimes or other I’m going to experience some pain. I can’t so live that I can keep everybody paying attention to me—well, I might, but I’d get a lot of disapproval while I was at it. I can’t so live that I can avoid everybody’s disapproval, must less the not i’s, ok? And I can’t so live that I won’t be taken for granted by certain people. I don’t expect it anyway, and why bother?

So there is nothing, then, that interferes with me making a new purpose in living, but I can’t have the old one too. Somebody wrote a long time ago that you don’t put new wine in old bottles because they will blow up and you’ll lose them both—you screw the whole thing up; or it is also said that you don’t patch an old garment with a new piece of cloth, or it will rip off. Paulette?

(Well, so there’s nothing wrong with what you’re saying—you just take care of that stuff up there, but you don’t make it your purpose in living?)

Well, you just get rid of the whole thing because that’s not the purpose. You do try to remove as many stressful situations as you can from your life. In other words, if the neighbor has three dogs that bark all night long, either move, or shoot the dogs--it doesn’t make much difference. Of course, if you shoot the dogs, you’ll probably have to shoot the neighbor too, so probably the better thing would be to move, instead of bitch.

(How can you tell if you’re taking care of those things?)

Well, I’m just taking care of the more stressful situations. I’m not expecting that I will then be non disturbed because I got rid of the dogs or I moved. My mother told me if I moved to get away from lousy neighbors, they’d beat me there, and so I’ve never moved to get away from bad neighbors, but I did move to get away from bad dogs. I moved, I didn’t argue about how they should get rid of the dogs—they were their pets. I moved because the dogs screamed and yelled all night long and I got tired of barking dogs. Instead of arguing with the neighbor, I pulled a Hank Snow—I moved on down the street. Now when I got there, it didn’t mean that there was no disturbance there, but there were no dogs there—but there was something else—people who made noises at night and so forth, but sometimes I could get interested in what they were making noise about, so it was all right.

(I’ve stayed in an uncomfortable situation for years because I believed that the amount of resistance you get in your life is going to be the same no matter where you are, so I never left.)

Well, I said stressful situations—there may be a little resistance, but I’m not going to stay around something that is totally unpleasant to me, I don’t see any reason to; but no, I don’t think that resistance is always the same. If I lived in a swamp where the mosquitoes were chewing me up, I could move somewhere where there were no mosquitoes, and I got a little less resistance—or at least, a different variety of resistance that I could tolerate better. How’s that? Yes, Helen?

(I imagine the purpose might change as your level of understanding would progress?)

I would imagine you’re free to change it at any time, just don’t take the old automatic one, as long as this one is self chosen nobody could find any fault with it. You choose your own purpose. Ok? I’m not going to lay it out for anybody.

(Then to do that, if you had goal setting on the way, would that help?)

I hope I didn’t have any goals—I might have an aim of what I intended to achieve, but goals usually leave everybody all stressed up. Now a goal essentially says, “I’ll be happy when…..” and that’s agreeing not to be happy now, so I’ll be happy later when this goal is achieved, and I don’t know what the goals are. Most of us do not know the outcome of anything, so we set a goal and we wouldn’t know the outcome of it if we did get it actualized, is that about right?

(I understand.)

I just put the goals down and have a general aim that I intend to have my own purpose--self-chosen, and as long as I do that, it is a conscious one and you can use it then.

(When you make up your mind to go down and buy an Eldorado, you go buy it.)

That’s about right.

(So you make up your mind to have a new purpose psychologically. It’s not that easy to make up your mind.)

No because you still have the old purpose. Now if you had an older Eldorado and in order to get the new one, you needed to trade it in because you didn’t want to put all the money on a new Eldorado…………now if you refused to give up the old one, then you’d have a hard time getting the new one.

Now if you have a husband who will take the old one while you take the new one, that’s all right, but not all of us have that arrangement, honey. That helps a lot.

(That’s a good aim, Bob.)

But let’s say that you didn’t have all this, so you had the old Eldorado and you want to get the new one, so it takes $26,000 to buy the new one and the old one would trade in for $18,000, and you had $6.000. but refused to give up the old Eldorado—then you wouldn’t get the new one, would you?

(Right.)

So we’re saying that you can’t have the old purpose and the new one too. They are totally incompatible. Simple enough? You have to get rid of the old one if you’re going to get a new one. That’s all there is to it. Now everybody has the old one. We’ve all got it because it started in infancy. It was not self chosen; it just kind of grew up with us and we’re stuck with it until we consciously see it—see that it doesn’t work—and eliminate it and make a new one. We don’t try to put new wine in old bottles or the whole thing blows up. Makes this one bad and causes more conflict over this one. You got more conflict every time you tried to make a new one didn’t you Bonnie?

(That’s why the bottle blows.)

Right When you’re blowing the bottles, it doesn’t feel very good is the usual thing. Ok next question comment?

Still clear Diane?

(For now.)

Come in next Tuesday and ask and we’ll break it down.

(Getting the four dual basic urges out of your system…..)

….out of your calculation, out of your program as your purpose of living. Everything starts from there; nothing is going to feel very good very long. Do you see that? It just flat won’t be very nice for very long. Maybe for a little while, but not long ok?

(That’s like a vicious cycle, Bob.)

That what keeps the vicious cycle going, and so we live on a vicious cycle. We think of a new purpose, but still leave the old one there and the new one can’t possibly function.

(You have to see—really see—that the old one is not serving you.)

That’s not going to work, that won’t work—in fact, it’s very detrimental to us. That’s all there is to it, so you eliminate it. Period! I’m through with it, I can’t afford it. Anything I can’t afford, I don’t have. I’m not like Roger who can afford a new Rolls Royce for each day in the week, much less one day in the week, or the month. So I don’t have them. Right? Real simple. I can’t afford this thing, so obviously I don’t have it. That doesn’t mean that I enjoy pain. Don’t get me wrong—if I can eliminate it, I’m going to do so. The other two, I’m pretty well immune to because I’ve had so much of the others—so why abuse yourself--it doesn’t help any, but most people live in constant agony with this (end of tape).