Theos-Talk Archives (January 2007 Message tt00360)

A psychological method


   There seems to be an innactive period
here at theos-talk, so I'll put a chapter
of a book on I compiled about 20 years
ago. (If anyone wants to see the whole
book, I'll put it on in sections - about
150kb total.) Its a compilation from 
transcriptions from tapes from informal
group meetings with "J.B." I just use the
initials, because the guy is old, and I
don't want to be the cause of him possibly
being hassled.  JB was in an out of mental
institutions for about a 40 year period.
Instead of just becoming a basket case,
he put all his energies into understanding
his own mind and "cured himself of more
mental illnesses than the average county
has."  He started out life with 2 strikes
against him as a drunk delivery surgeon
maimed one of his arms. Many probably won't
make head or tails of his material, but
it provided me with some real psychological
keys that I've found invaluable.  The 
problems that go on with someone with 
extreme problems go on with everyone, but
not so extremely.  What all this eventually
formulated into in my mind is that the 
human subconscious is the same as the
'Antaskarana' refered to in Theosophy -
the connection between the higher and lower
self.  JB isn't a Theosophist philosophically,
but there isn't anything he says that is
in contradition to Theosophy either.  HPB
says that a key to living a tolerable and
worthwhile life is attention to the inner
life.


    For those who hold importance and
omens in numbers (sometimes), I finished
this book-compilation on 7-17-87, I worked
7 hours on it that day, I finished at 7 pm,
and the whole original compilation was
77 pages!


                 - jake j.




METHOD

   (From 'At Home With the Inner Self,' by
J.B.)


   We were talking about free association 
the other night and someone brought a 
point up.  This point has to be brought 
up.  When I was doing this, I had no one 
to talk to.  I had no one to turn to.  I 
had no place to go to discuss these things.  
So apparently, the forces that exist 
decided that they were going to give me 
the special gift of teaching me how to 
do my own learning, how to do my own teaching, 
how to do my own insighting.  I learned 
how to free associate.  I asked myself 
the questions that would take me out 
of the blind spots.  Most people doing 
this get into a blind spot, get into a 
thought that becomes repetitive, and 
they're done.  You don't know where to 
go with it.
       

   People get into a blind spot and 
might stay there for the rest of their 
life.  I didn't have that problem.  I 
learned to ask myself the questions:  
What does it look like?;  What does it 
feel like?;  What does it seem like?;  
What does it act like? - endlessly asking 
myself questions.  Until suddenly there 
was one thought that was blank and would 
go no further.  The free association 
word wouldn't yield anything like the 
release necessary.  I would change just 
one little inflection in the words as I 
repeated them in my mind, just one little 
inflection.  I'd ask myself:  What does 
this mean?;  What does it suggest?;  What 
does that make me think of?  I never 
found one of them that I didn't find 
my way out of whatever trap I got into 
by doing that.  I don't know anybody 
else that knows how to guide themselves 
out of that hole.  I can guide someone 
else out of a hole, but I can't seem to 
teach them how to do it themselves.
       

   Everything you've went through in you 
lifetime and haven't resolved is still 
sitting there waiting to be worked on.  
Either you get straight with some of 
this stuff, or you'll wish you had.  
It is a mountain of work.  You don't 
deal with each individual circumstance 
but with the abstraction of the problem.  
You deal with the still existing patterns.  
You don't deal with the individual 
circumstances of things in your life.  
The singular psychological patterns that 
maintain presently held values and 
patterns of thinking are what you deal 
with.  You don't deal with the individual 
circumstances that gradually imbued you 
with one particular aspect or complex.  
Even then it is a mountain of work.
       

   The ability of getting a feeling to 
translate into words is a tricky business, 
but it is well worth the effort.  When 
some insight comes up, you should stop 
everything you are doing, if at all possible, 
and pay attention to it.  If a word 
associated with a current feeling comes 
up, it is often extremely important.  
Repeat the word until you get some sense 
of what it means.  It is often a word 
at the crossroads of other concepts, and 
ties them together.  Before you couldn't 
figure out how this tied into this or 
this tied into that.  You begin to build 
a structure and develop comprehension.
       

    If you hold center on a problem 
long enough, things will open up.  It 
is especially difficult when you are 
first trying this.  It takes awhile to 
develop the expertise.  Sometimes the 
effort of trying to hold center and bring 
something up is so great that you simply 
can't do it.  It takes practice.  You 
are facing a void because you don't know 
what you are looking for.  If you keep 
mentally facing forward, it will eventually 
focus itself.  You will focus on what 
your inner nature is seeking.  If there 
wasn't an unanswered and even unstated 
question you wouldn't be doing this.  At 
this point the question isn't even formed.  
You just know that there has to be 
a better state than that which you 
are currently in.  The unanswered is 
what you are seeking.
       

   It is difficult to stay on the 
point when thinking about something.  
It may be something is so painful to 
you that the mind will keep drifting 
to almost anything to get off the 
painful thought.  When facing the unknown, 
the key is overcoming the fear.  You 
must have faith that it will work.  
Fear is absolutely the hallmark that 
you are getting near something important.  
When you get to this fear you know 
something you are looking for will be 
found.  You know that you've found a 
hot spot.
       

   You have to have consistency in doing 
this and facing it to produce results.  
You can't meditate this week, do it 
again next week, and then let it go.


   You'll wind up always going back 
to the beginning.  On the other hand, 
don't expect too much of yourself.  
When it gets too hot, let it go for 
awhile.  The next time around you'll 
be a little closer when you start and 
you'll go a little farther before 
uncomfortable again.
       

   If you're being bothered by something, 
I've found that if you let your body 
run the show, just laying horizontal, 
that all the things that wander around 
in your mind will drift off.  You'll 
start getting a feeling that an important 
thought is coming.  It's a physical 
feeling that a thought is coming up 
into your brain.  As soon as this happens, 
you know you're on the road home.  The 
pain diminishes and you start realizing 
what is disturbing you.
       

   Learning this technique is like 
learning a new language.  The first  
couple of times it is not going to be 
very effective.  You just have to lay 
there and be quiet until the problem 
comes to the surface.  You have to face 
forward into the void, as it were, a 
type of tunnel vision.  Ideas will come 
to you and eventually one will come 
that really hits the gong about problems 
you are facing.  Different ideas will 
come to fill that void.  The thing that 
is hard about it, when you're first 
attempting it, is to realize that you're 
searching for something you presently 
have no answer to.  It is hard to realize 
that you are putting effort into putting 
something where there is now nothing, 
as far as consciousness is concerned.  
I came upon this method instinctively.  
For the first year I wondered what the 
heck I was trying to do.  Finally it 
started to work.  This, meditation and 
dreams is where I've learned everything.  
I never learned anything from a book.
       

   You may unconsciously be chastising 
yourself that inner work is not a good 
use of time and energy.  You may be 
prejudiced against your own thinking 
compared to what someone else says or 
what you read in a book.  You have to 
think as much of your own thoughts as 
you do of somebody else's.  In any effort 
you start out from zero.  You may feel 
foolish about the things you are thinking 
about, but you have to start somewhere.  
You have to realize that you are trying 
to be a student of yourself and that 
it is a good effort.
       

   I was stumbling around with meditation 
and I discovered that if something was 
bothering me and an answer to the problem 
occurred to me, then it stopped bothering 
me.  So when something started bothering 
me I knew I was looking for a specific 
answer, which was the golden key to the 
thing.  Little did I realize how much 
work it would be.  At first you don't 
know what you are seeking.  Once you make 
the discovery of this inner statisfaction, 
then you know what you are seeking for.  
You're blind to it for quite awhile.  
You just know things aren't what you'd 
like, but you aren't able to be specific 
about it.  Our major appetite is the 
need to comprehend.  


   Comprehension is a specific appetite 
and even needs to understand itself.  
You need to know what the mind is trying 
to get done so you can be more effective 
at it.  Your internal system is entirely 
capable, given the opportunity, to teach 
you what it is trying to teach you.  
Your inner being knows.  Your outer being 
is always unknowing.
       

   Your system is constanty trying to 
get some inner job done.  It is constantly 
trying to get you conscious of what is 
distressing you.  Secondly, it is tring 
to get you to comprehend what natural 
laws and patterns that distress is 
involved with.  'To know where the 
mistake is so you can evade making the 
mistake and start going with the natural 
flow.  This is all built in by design.
       

   Try to place the problem mentally 
in front of you and let every tension 
go out of your body.  Let the thing 
just hang in front of you.  Gradually 
a word will come to mind that will 
begin to explain and alleviate the 
circumstances.  The words form so long 
as you hold that center.  It is 
uncomfortable, miserable, and the only 
thing that is worse is what you're 
trying to escape.  If it is something 
superficial, you can deal with it 
superficially.  If it is a deeper 
problem, you have to pinpoint what is 
bothering you.  To find out what it 
is you have to stay on center on the 
problem and not slip off the point.  
Sometimes a flash of insight might 
come which lasts but milliseconds.  
If you miss it, you can only get 
back to that insight by plodding and 
working step by step.
       

   You can bring on insight experiences 
if you learn how.  You have to let 
go of the trivia.  But you have to 
learn what the trivia is in reference 
to what you are seeking.  It may not 
be trivia in all situations.  Some 
insight might come up when you're at 
a business meeting.  Now to me, for 
the time being, the meeting would be 
trivia because it is more readily 
accessible, and I'd have to get away.  
'Maybe excuse myself to go to the 
bathroom, to get at the source of 
what's coming up.  You may have to 
try to get a handle on it by repeating 
the word or concept over and over 
to yourself.  When you get a handle 
on it, you can keep it to get back 
to later.  If you let it go, it may 
not come again.  It is a way of life.  
You don't want to give your job away, 
but you have to do what is ever possible.
       

   When you run the gamut of 
concentrating on something, you may 
want to take a break or forget it for 
awhile.  Just when you take your mind 
off it, is when answers to you other 
problems will often come into view.  
This is a good thing to know from the 
methodological standpoint.  The reason 
for it is very simple.  When you are 
keyed up and putting a lot of energy 
into a problem, the minute you let go 
of the problem, all the energy has to 
go somewhere, and it goes to whatever 
the next problem is on your agenda in 
priority basis, even if you don't know 
consciously what your next priority 
problem may be.  The second you break 
off concentration, a slight dizziness 
sets in because of the change in 
concentration levels.  That is when 
the answers will come in.  The more 
you do this switching back and forth 
of levels, the more effective this 
process and information is.  As soon 
as you take this high energy level off 
the problem you are focusing on, it 
will escape to the next energy level, 
like a spark crossing the gap  in a 
sparkplug.  Until you are good at it, 
you won't notice it.  It will just go 
flashing by.
       

   There is a free association part 
of the mind that is like a citizen's 
band scanner, constantly going up and 
down the channels.  Your inner mind 
is constantly trying to get your outer 
self aware of what's going on within 
yourself until you've answered to that 
need.  It keeps throwing balls over 
the fence.  As you drive down the road 
your mind will constantly pick out this 
fence or that tree, or this sign.  
You're accustomed to it and assume that 
everyone else's mind does the same thing.  
If you analyzed why you pick this or 
that to see out of everything that is 
available, there is a definite reason 
and pattern to it.  It follows very 
closely the things that come in ordinary 
dreaming (which is another method of 
throwing balls over the fence.)  The 
dream-maker uses these things in waking 
life.  They are attempts to guide you 
to what in you is unfulfilled.
       

   When I was young I learned that 
dreams were the source of all necessary 
information.  It's good to go to sleep 
slowly and to wake up slowly.  If you 
have a nagging dream, just lie in bed 
and be quiet.  Try and be conscious of 
no-thing, which is different than nothing.  
Just let it come to you.  All the 
pictography of the dream is an attempt 
by the inner stage master to throw things 
over the fence to key you in to what 
is happening in your insides.  Through 
dreams you can repair the bridge to 
the inner self and again become a whole 
person.  Realizing something in a dream 
isn't enough, you have to become aware 
of it in the waking state.
       

   When I was good at dreams, several 
times I was able to go deep inside myself 
and hear the dream and actually be able 
to see it, and get a person to repeat 
what they said time after time until 
I was able to re-experience the dream.  
In interpreting my dreams, what I would 
do when I woke up was to go all the 
way back to the cross-over state.  The 
feelings that the dreams elicit are 
the things that tell you what the dream 
means, so you have to be able to go 
right back into it.  Whatever the same 
feelings are that would occur to you 
when you are awake, is what the dream 
is trying to get to.  The real point 
in dreams is to get it to come back 
so clearly that you get all the 
feelings as they went by.
       

   Your inner mind is using all 
opportunities at all times to get 
you to look at something about yourself.  


   When I had my mind and could use 
it, everytime I found somebody I didn't 
like, invariably I would discover that 
they had something that I didn't think 
I could ever have.  But the process of 
going from the intitial dislike to the 
discovery of the secret jealousy took 
me months every time to work my way 
through it.  As I'd go through the 
process of discovering specifically 
what characteristics I was so jealous 
about, I'd find out that the person 
really didn't even possess the 
characteristics.
       

   My mind was just using the 
characteristic to bait me, to bring 
into my awareness something about my 
own values.  'That there is something 
that I consider to be important inside 
that I'm not consciously aware of.  
Your mind only uses these circumstances 
to bring your attention to something.  
When the washout was over with, what I 
would find out about the situation was 
that there was something that I valued 
that I never realized that I valued.  
My mind was just using the opportunity 
to bring it into view.  You can't know 
what your real attitudes are until you 
get good at inner work.  It's the only 
way you can find out.
       

   Use your mind to see what are the 
implications of everything.  It is an 
offense against a very offensive reality. 
You can do something about it.  The 
people who can't do anything about it 
are the 99% of the population that don't 
know what hit them.  The minute you see 
you can do something about it, you cease 
to be one of those people, although it 
may take awhile before it dawns on you.
       

   The classic idea about going to a 
psyciatrist is that they set you down 
and want to know about your past.  I 
don't want to know anything about the 
past, but about what brought the person 
in today.  It is like a person looking 
for their glasses, and where are they? 
- right on their head.  If I had been 
an analyst, a lot of the type of material 
I'd have written is in D.W. Winnicott's 
book, The Maturational Process.  You 
couldn't spend enough time on it.
       

   You don't have to remember anything, 
traumas and the like.  You are never 
dealing with anything except what is 
right here.  How long it has been there 
is another aspect.  The Freudian notion 
that you can go into your past and set 
yourself free is totally false.  They 
only achieve remembering things.  That 
has nothing to do with it.  You have 
to deal with the weird things you are 
doing now, that you started doing back 
then.  You don't have to remember anything.
       

   When you find the deepest past 
as the real now...  In other words, 
when you find that deep past, the 
real now will never be the same again.  
When you realize that something you 
started nearly from the moment you 
were born is something you are doing 
right now, it instantaneously changes 
and will never be the same again.  
You don't go back.  You go along the 
surface until you find the past in it.  
You don't go back anywhere.  It's 
all right here.  It never really went 
anyplace.  It's still here.
       

   "The Truth will set you free."  
There are times you are set free and 
you don't even know what the truth was 
that did it.  You have to search for 
the concept that expresses it.  It 
is important to search for the concept.  
When you find the concept that sets 
you free from something, and you 
understand how it explains a natural 
process that was aborted and then brought 
back on track, you experience a shift 
of realities that will take you away 
from the mundane for all time, the 
first time it happens.  It can happen 
in a repetitive stream for half a 
lifetime.  You are never again caught 
in the surface of things.  You can 
withdraw from the surface of things 
and see the overriding influence that 
causes situations.  The first time you 
escape the surface of things, you are 
relieved of it and never caught or 
bound in it again.
       

   Nobody knows this when they are 
studying themselves.  They stumble along 
and fall into it and get set loose 
from the whole thing.  Sometimes they 
think they've lost all their sense of 
reality, because reality is never 
perceived again as the same thing from 
that time on.  Reality is a matter of 
concepts.  Up until this point, the 
most real thing in life is a hammer.  
After you've crossed this invisible line, 
the concept of "hammer" is much more 
real that the hammer itself.  Without 
the concept, you could not have the 
hammer, but up until this point you 
couldn't appreciate the importance of 
that thought.
       

   The usual meaning of choice, the 
usual meaning of will, the usual meaning 
of self-determination are linguistic 
concepts that are darn near necessary.  
I accept the unfoldment of me before 
the only audience that matters - me.  
I long ago came to the realization that 
it has been completely out of my hands 
from the beginning.  I know I've had 
nothing to do with what I've gone through.  
I've been the little character that 
sits at the crossroads.  Nothing more, 
nothing less.
       

   I have not had the opportunity that 
most people have had of being in the 
ordinary sense self-determining.  They  
determine what they want to do, go out 
and do it, and have a reasonable amoung 
of success.  They pay their own bills 
and are able to do what they call 
"stand on their own feet."  They have 
the ego support involved in it and it 
becomes a large part of their view of 
themselves.  You must remember that I 
have had none of this.  The body is 
built to answer to the first necessity.  
Get the bills paid.  Get the food on.  
Get the house in shape.  My hunch is 
that the only reason I can still put 
up with life is because of the experiences 
I've had.  For me to contiue life makes 
no sense.
       

  A friend was talking last night 
about the fact that he gets so despondent.  
He'll get a rush of insight about 
something, and it will trigger a flood 
of insights that will come.  He'll be 
uplifted by the passing flood of insights, 
even about minute things but mostly the 
seeing into important things he's been 
blind to.  Then he'll go to bed one 
night and wake up completely in a hole 
and not know how he got there.  The 
insight is gone.  He looses all the 
insights.  He can't remember anything 
that he's gained.  He feels completely 
dissipated and spent and doesn't 
know what hit him.
       

  I really raised his eyebrows when 
I told him that the whole point of 
the conscious effort, the whole thing 
you want about insight, is the insight 
to insight.  You want to be able to 
get to the point where you can see 
how to bring insight into the hole, 
to keep it from crushing all the progress.  
That's the only impediment to an 
endless, continual consciousness of 
insight, which is what I finally got 
to.  The key was to seek and pray, 
literaly pray, for the insight to see 
what causes the depressions, because 
the depressions are what destroy everything.
       

  Every time you have a specific fall 
into a depression, some one, specific 
emotional experience is invoved in it, 
and only one.  There can be a string 
of depressions caused by different 
emotions.  When you resolve and dispell 
one big depression through conscious 
effort and insight - if you ever accomplish 
this once, you've learned the root to 
dispelling all depression.  Free 
association is the biggest key.  


  Also, you conquer the hopelessness 
by facing it.
       

   The minute you can generate a goal, 
depression dies.  The thing about 
depression is that you can't generate 
a goal.  A negative long-span thinking 
situation is always a case of the dog 
chasing his tail. 
       

   To be genuinely clear, which doesn't 
have anything to do with Scientology's 
"clear," is to have answered every 
question you have had to date, and I've 
been there on a regular basis.  If that 
isn't paradise, I don't know what is.  
It is to have taken every feeling that 
ever came into your comprehension and 
to have traced it all the way back to 
its roots.
       

   A funny thing about depression is 
that it takes just as much effort as 
it does to be positive, but you end up 
with totally different results.  The 
activity itself is not so much the key 
as what it produces.  Being positive 
about things is equally as real as being 
negative.  You have the same input, 
different outlook and results.  The 
only way you can determine better or 
not between them is by what they produce.  
Between them they both suffice.
       

   If you let negativity get hold of 
you, it becomes consumming and you are 
negative about everything.  There is 
nothing worse and more draining than 
having to hate.  About the only way you 
can correct it is to be positive about 
little things at a time.


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