Blog

Thursday, August 22, 2024

5:40 a.m. Jon?

It is a good thing to start getting counsel from others. You don’t replace your reliance on intuition, but you do supplement it. It’s more balanced.

Well, I’m using you that way, as long as you’re willing.

Yes, I understand. As usual, look at what you’re working with. What emotions are going into your general feeling about [a certain issue]?

[Discussion shows that I have a different attitude consciously and unconsciously.]

Now here you see an example of the shadow. Consciously, the last thing you want is [X]. But beyond the reach of your awareness, another part of you does want just that.

And I can honestly say I don’t, because that’s all I recognize, the conscious attitude.

Yes, exactly. There it is. And once you really experience it, then you know, and your view of yourself and of everybody else changes.

Is that the purpose of the analysis that prospective psychiatrists have to undergo?

You don’t want the blind leading the blind. And, you need that firsthand experience of your own resistance to learning the truth, if you are going to understand the resistances your clients will show.

It’s amazing anybody can communicate with anybody.

It doesn’t happen vey well, or very deeply. What else?

[More, leading to a topic that at first seemed unrelated.]

I would miss it, too, like everything else in my life I kicked away.

You might look at that. What is the pattern, what is behind it?

For some reason, the pattern is, there’s the glittering possibility that is probably beyond me; then, the reaching for it and attaining it; then, the worms in the apple and a forgetting what I have; then a freeing myself from what has become a constriction; then, exile, a little regret, a feeling of lostness, a temptation to return to the womb I just kicked my way out of. That’s more clarity than I have ever had. It has to be thanks to this conversation.

Now you see the pattern, things will be easier. And there is the credentials thing.

And I suppose I could go into that too, if I weren’t so tired. I disregard credentials as artificial (they are external; they don’t show what I can or cannot do) and then suffer from lack of credentials that might have opened some doors.

But it doesn’t matter, because you would have become dissatisfied anyway.

Yes, I see the pattern.

Go get some more rest. We can pick this up at any time.

Jon, thanks, this is really helpful.

 

10:55 a.m. I haven’t mentioned – maybe to anyone, ever – how my life has been shaped by a contradiction. Everybody has a private life and a public life, which amounts to, an interior life and a social role. I never bought into the social roles, the status. It seemed to me “all men are created equal,” even though everything I saw denied it.

That isn’t saying it in a way that will lead you to greater insight.

You phrase it, then.

Just as you chose intuition over sensory input – to an exaggerated degree – so you chose the soul over the persona. But of course you can’t live that way, nobody would let you. The policeman demands respect. The doctor, the teacher, everybody in your life is a function to you, and may or may not be a person behind the function.

In short, I was one-sided in this as in other things.

You were, shall we say, focused on one idea and were forgetting or preferring not to know contradictory or interfering ideas. But you had to live in the world, one way or another. So there was conflict.

It seems to me I see so much more clearly than others do, but I can’t really act very skillfully.

You see the world in a certain way, an unusual way. Because it is unusual, it is valuable, and it makes you a great deal of trouble.

And it makes it hard for me to understand where other people are coming from.

Not exactly. It makes it hard for you to understand the results of their compromises and strategies to deal with various parts of themselves.

I think I lost part of what I was getting when I wrote the first part of that.

Linda and Dave would bring strangers to see you at Rita’s house because they couldn’t get enough of seeing how you would penetrate their reserve instantly and get them to open up.

That’s true. I’d say, “How are you,” and whoever it was would say, “Fine,” of course, and I’d say, “No, I mean really,” and they would open up. I have assumed it was because they sensed I was really interested and was not making small talk.

They also saw you as intelligent, and open, and without harm. They took your bona fides from your friendship with Linda and Dave, but your manner reinforced it. They didn’t decide to trust you, they instinctively trusted you: by instinct, not by reflection or calculation.

And what is this connected to?

You relate to individuals better than you realize, but what part of the individuals?

Ah, I see. Not the social roles part but the who-am-I-really part that they are probably exploring at the program.

And few enough people find someone interested in their essence rather than in their role. Why do people learn what each other do for a living when they meet, rather than compare longings?

Not so easy to talk about deeper things, not so easy even to know, let alone to know what to say.

Leave this now and come back to it at another time.

Okay.

 

Yesterday’s drumming

Our small group did a five-minute journey on the question, “How can we learn to use our emotions to serve us better?” What I got follows:

“You are all on the same track, and it is the right track: Observe. Even when you find that you have gotten caught up again, go back to observing. The remembering, that you are 3D and non-3D both, will help you see how the “outside world,” so called, is useful in challenging you. These challenges are vital. They give point to your lives. They provide the opportunity for great growth. And remember, positive emotions are just as strong, just as useful, as negative. A parent dealing with his or her cherished newborn is a beautiful thing to see. Is that not emotion? Does that not offer clues toward growing to be more what one wants to be, and less what one regrets being?

“In learning distance from drama (not distance from emotion) you learn advanced control and it extends to other parts of your life. The objective is not this or that state of being (calm or tumultuous, for example) but greater control – less forgetting who and what you are. Life more abundantly.”

 

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

7:50 a.m. Suppose we make an attempt?

Prudence and providence. Let’s look at that Freudian slip [from the 20^th]. You were thinking of your undetermined future, and how to live in faith without being foolish about it. You heard “providence,” knew it wasn’t right, then heard “prudence.” But as I pointed out, there is a place for both.

It can be hard to find the line.

It is a matter of attitude, more than action. If you approach your everyday life in confidence, you can approach the unseen the same way. If you feel you need to protect yourself in one, you will feel it in the other. Confusion comes when you are confident by day and cautions or fearful by night.

Like the African natives Carl Jung observed.

Exactly. So it resolves into the same old problem of consciousness. If you are conscious, these contradictions won’t sneak up on you. Or, if they do, you can leverage them for more consciousness.

 

[An edited account of a consultation between myself and Jon Holt, a friend, a psychiatrist and long-time Monroe participant, who moved over to non-3D earlier this month. My particular issues are nobody’s business, but I thought the example of how interaction can work might be of interest.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

5:30 a.m. Jon, it came to me last night – via you for all I know – that the real question is about my grinding to a halt, or winding up in a dead end, or whatever is happening. But I don’t want this on the record.

We can do a session on the record or off the record, could do it now or later – and later might be better.

I think so too. It seems stupid to keep reading Night Action instead of talking to the gods, but no stupider than the rest of my life.

Plus you never know why you’re led to do whatever it is.

True too.

8:30 a.m. Okay, Jon, let’s try it.

The thing to remember is that you can always go deeper but after a certain point there’s not much to be gained. The important thing is to find the right string and pull on it, and keep pulling as long as you’re getting something out of it. You aren’t trying to become perfect here, you’re trying to find anything that will be of assistance. Something too high-flying might not be helpful. It might be discouraging.

I can see that.

So what is the most troublesome thing you can deal with?

That’s an interesting way to put it.

We’re after something useful.

Understood. Well – sometimes it feels like it’s a race between death and disaster. If I don’t die, I don’t see how I can get out of the cul de sac.

You realize, I would be laughing.

I do, and I sort of agree with you. It’s like choosing suicide so you don’t have to keep living with your fear of death.

Only in this case, it is your fear of life.

Is it?

Isn’t it?

Fear of where my life is leading me, maybe.

And the difference is –?

Point taken.

It seems to me, you are looking at the way your life is shaping up, and a bunch of vague fears are looming over you and you can’t imagine a good result.

True. [Specifics]

The trick here is to look at your fears one by one so you can get a handle on each one. Trying to do everything at once merely leaves you overwhelmed.

All right. [I spell one out.]

See how much smaller it looks when you pin it down?

That’s true, and I knew that abstractly.

You should find yourself feeling lighter. Next item?

[More examples]

I thought you take whatever comes.

Day by day, I do. I guess it is when I’m projecting forward that I get worried.

And you see why.

I do now. I can deal with specifics. How do I deal with the possibilities that are not realities?

There is such a thing as prudence. But you’ll notice you wanted to write “providence.” That too.

I feel like I’m in a state of suspension.

You might be surprised to know how many people feel the same.

I’m going to break off, but maybe we can do more later. I think this did help.

Any time.

 

Monday, August 19, 2024

6:05 a.m. Okay, Jon, what shall we talk about? Are we going to contend between ourselves, as Wilbur and Orville did, thrashing out intellectual puzzles without ill feelings resulting? Is that why I have been rereading in my books on the Wright Brothers?

It’s your life. Don’t ask me!

But I just did.

They argued highly technical questions and benefited from their different opinions and points of view. One man couldn’t have done what they did. They were highly intelligent, and had all the intellectual tools they needed, and they had the mechanical aptitude that let them test theory with practice – but the main advantage of their partnership was that it prevented either of them from going off on a wrong track, reinforcing each mistake with another based in the same wrong notions, as happened to many solitary inventors and experimenters. They challenged each other, continually, and they didn’t take it personally. Their emotional bond was so strong that they could get mad about arguments without getting mad at each other. There’s a big difference.

Ah, and that’s a model for people talking to the other side?

Well, if you look at it, you’ll see that self-deception has always been a major pitfall in such communication. And people working together are prone to quarrel for various reasons. The Wright Brothers are a model of productive cooperation, turning friction into usable energy.

But even brothers are rarely as close as they were.

The cooperation is the model, not their biographies. People will work best when they keep in mind that even heated disagreements don’t have to interfere, but can be made to work; and nothing works better than love (that is, expansion) rather than fear (a certain type of zero-sum competition).

I get the “feel” of the engineers small group. Five people, all engineers professionally, all instinctively cooperative, as best I can tell. I haven’t seen signs of heated contention, but on the other hand a virtual meeting once a week isn’t the same as living in the same house year after year all your lives.

It might be a productive experiment if people were to choose sides over a question and argue it as strenuously as possible, not seeking victory but seeking clarity.

Such as the “individual soul v. collection of threads” question?

Any question that was real to the participants. Not much point in going through the motions: Go after clarity on something that genuinely puzzles you.

Various groups would have various questions, and the answers between them might not gibe, of course.

Treat that as the Wrights did, as the font of further questions. But you have to start with what really interests you, what you really want an answer to.

And of course that is going to differ one by one as well.

So what’s yours? What is the one thing front and center in your mind at the moment?

Personal or cosmic?

Either, not that there’s any difference. Just as you find yourself reading for no reason, and then you see the reason that was there all along, so your question that seems to be theoretical will be seen to have personal aspects, and the question that seems to be personal will be seen to have wider application. You know this; you’ve been preaching it for years. So what is your question of the moment?

Actually, I guess it is, What is going to happen to me? I live in faith, but another word for faith is lack of knowledge. I know it is useless to want to know, but I do wonder.

Naturally. Will your body hold up? What happens when you experience a critical failure? What of the million critical consequences? And you know you can’t know the answers and you know it doesn’t matter.

I don’t know that I can’t know, actually. Swedenborg knew in advance what day he would die. If one person experiences something, I suspect that others may and perhaps do. So, I don’t know that I can’t know the future – and in that, I haven’t made any progress from when I was a kid and desperately wanted the ability to know the future.

Yet you know there isn’t any what you call “the future.”

All right maybe let’s start with that. Everything the guys have told me over 25 years rings true, and that ought to amount to: All futures exist and it depends which one you choose by your actions. Understood, of course, is that our choosing isn’t, mostly, conscious. We can choose an attitude, we can choose to believe that All Is Well, but we can’t choose what is going to happen. So why do we sometimes feel like there is a “the future”?

Which question are you asking? How things are? Or why they seem a certain way?

I hadn’t realized that they are two questions, though it’s clear enough now. Answer either one, and we’ll go from wherever it takes us.

It may help if you make a general rule: Go with the most practical question, the easiest one to approach.

That’s what the Wrights did. They broke the overall question into specifics and tackled them one by one. But can we do that – can I do that – when I don’t know what I’m driving at? Wilbur and Orville wanted to learn how to fly. That defined the overall context for every problem that arose. What is my aim here?

And that is a good question and you might have started there. Shall we look at it?

If we can.

For you and for others, this word of advice: Always be honest in private, and if the result isn’t suitable to be public, keep it to yourself. But it is hard enough to come to the truth without always being on guard lest you say too much.

I’d guess you had some professional experience with that.

Just a little! But it’s as true for psychiatrists as it is for their patients. More so, in fact, because we know more ways to hide from ourselves.

Okay, so what is my aim?

Now, don’t confuse yourself. The question needs clarity, and the process of bringing it to clarity will refine it, will orient you.

I seem to be blank. Maybe let this go as a discussion of process, and wait for the question itself to bubble up?

You can do that, but you’re wasting time. If you want to know, ask!

I’ve heard that somewhere.

Yes. So try it.

What is the front-and-center question in my life? It’s complicated.

Not complicated, complex. It won’t be a ten-word answer.

Okay, well, Am I misleading myself and others? Do I really know anything? Is that all amounting to anything? What do I do with the things we put together but didn’t publish?

And, deeper?

What about personal relationships? I am so alone. I have never been comfortable with people, or, no, not that, I have never really known how to relate to them. Or, not even that, I can relate to them, but usually not to their lives. We don’t move in sync.

Keep going.

Which of the ways I can see my life are correct and which are not? Was it a train wreck? A productive experiment? A getting-by? Did I do more good than harm?

And?

Oh yes, of course: Am I on a good track or should I change and if so how do it and toward what.

These are good preliminary questions, and you can publish them or keep them to yourself. And certainly we can talk with the veil of professional silence around us, any time you like.

Thanks, Wilbur. Till next time.

Sunday, August 18, 2024 5 a.m. Ready to talk, Jon, if you are. Clearly the block over the past two days has been on my end.

Yes and so what? There isn’t any obligation. It is a free gift or it is nothing at all.

Well, I feel vaguely guilty when I don’t make even an effort.

Ask yourself why.

Why? It feels like a shirking, I guess.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.  “Shirking” implies an obligation. When did you oblige yourself, and who did you oblige yourself to?  Is this any different from feeling guilty that you haven’t written your novels?

I’m trying to find the most honest answer. It’s hard to sort things out.

Yes it is. That’s why the world has rabbis and priests and psychiatrists, to help people sort things out. So what is your answer?

I don’t know, Jon, I was sort of born with the sense of obligation. I don’t know where it came from.

Your family?

My brothers and sisters don’t seem to have it. We were all helpful to others, I’d say, but that isn’t the same thing. I’m not pretending it’s rational.

No, you think it’s exaggerated.

I do. But that doesn’t change anything.

Is it a compulsion?

You’d know that, better than I would.

It’s very simple. Is it something you have to do, for whatever reason, even if you don’t want to?

It’s something I always think I should be doing, anyway. That doesn’t mean I always do it.

You don’t do it for reward, but for its own sake.

I think I can honestly say no, not for the reward. I did think there would be response and maybe a big success, but that was long ago.

So why do you do it?

Because it is satisfying and because if I don’t do it, I feel like I’m wasting my time, being here.

So you can’t expect others to react the same way, even when they see how easy it is.

Well, I don’t know, it always seems to me they ought to be doing it too. It’s like, Why should I be the only one?

Even though it is a compulsion of yours and there isn’t any reason to expect others to share it.

Jon, the one feeling isn’t any more irrational than the other. If I feel I ought to do it, and I feel others ought to want to do it, what’s different? And of course I hear it immediately: One is about me and one is about others, and others aren’t my business in the way I am my business.

Try this on for size: If other people don’t start doing it, it means you failed to inspire them to do it, so you failed what you came to do, so all your work was more or less for nothing, because of course on non-3D level you already knew how to do the things you spent your 3D life remembering how to do.

And that puts my meaning in the hands of others.

A common mistake. It is hard enough to justify your own life, without having that justification depend on what other people do.

And besides, we never know the full effect we have on others.

You took the words out of my mouth. So, leaving other people out of it, where are you?

I suppose there’s a vague sense of resentment.

Yes. Does this ring a familiar chord?

Oh, I get it. It’s like you thinking your life was stunted because you couldn’t experience the growth you wanted.

And if you assume that somebody somewhere is to blame for it, what is more rational than a certain resentment? After all, whoever it is, they’re messing up your life.

I hope you’re enjoying this.

Not particularly. Did you enjoy watching me suffer from the results of wrong ideas?

No, I sure didn’t.

Did you feel able to do anything about it?

Nothing very successful.

It may help if you remember that the intent to help may easily become interference. We all have to work out the puzzle of our lives. You didn’t interfere and you did listen and give your counter-view. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what anybody’s non-3D component is always doing.

And you spent your professional life trying to help people untie the knots they found.

I did. It’s also easier to help others than to help yourself, and you know why.

Because you can see their situation from the outside, not just from the inside.

That’s right. You are supposed to be inside your life. That means inside your moods, your irrational compulsions, your obsessions, your illogical connections, your disconnects between who you want to be, who you feel you ought to be, and who you are in practice. You might get a bird’s-eye view of your life in addition to the view from inside, but you’re never going to get outside that sphere. (a) How could you, and (b) what would it accomplish if you could? You are there for a reason.

How about you say a little more on that. We have come to realize that our ideas on life are still mixed up, inconsistent, contradictory even.

We aren’t going to clear that up in ten minutes. The confusion and the inadequate analogies and explanations stem from the fact that you have two alternative and incompatible starting-points:

1. An individual soul that wanders from 3D life to 3D life, hopefully growing and progressing.
2. The coalescing at any birthtime of what you’re calling strands or threads – that you might describe as past lives entering with other past lives into a new 3D existence that will merge them.

That’s it exactly. The guys spend the better part of 25 years building up a new model and we see that it’s still just scaffolding.

But don’t forget, “just scaffolding” was required to build the highest cathedrals.

Is this the carrot, to match the stick of boredom and guilt, a promise of a new and even more interesting scaffolding?

You are losing sight of your audience. “Think of your reader,” your editor-boss told you. It isn’t only about how you pass your time. It is also about what only you, or mainly you, or – let’s say – you better than the next available candidate, can bring across.

So my sense of “ought to” is connected with an intuition of irreplaceable opportunities. That rings true.

But in that case, why can’t you be given the help you need?

Exactly.

Why don’t you just assume that you automatically have the help you need?

You’re a fine one to talk!

Do as I say, not as I do.

So what was the theme here? Seems to me we moved from personal to general. I’m going to send it out and not worry about what kind of reception it gests – if any. But usually there is a theme and I don’t always notice it.

Maybe it was about irrational senses of obligation – bearing in mind that “irrational” doesn’t mean crazy, it means, you don’t necessarily know what’s going on or why.

One thing. Don’t you think it’s time for others to be doing this?

Doing what? Leading their lives the way you have led yours? How could they? Why should they?

That isn’t what I meant. I mean, now that they know how, from a solid base of experience, shouldn’t they be able to bring the same kind of information, from their own angle? Wouldn’t that be good for everybody?

Nothing is ever good for everybody, but I know what you mean. My very best advice – and you know I mean this for you specifically as well as in general – is to do what you have to do and not concern yourself with what others do or don’t do. Worrying about the actions of others is a leftover from the idea that everybody is separate and things happen by chance.

Yes, I hear that. Well, it is going to reinforce my worst autistic tendencies, but I can carry on without depending on feedback. I’ve done it all my life.

To you that seems a true statement. You might reserve judgment.

The voice of experience speaking, eh? Okay. And thanks for being here.

 

Thursday, August 15, 2024

4:50 a.m. I don’t know if this will work, but maybe. Jon, I wonder what we can say about yesterday’s disappointing session.

You mean, what do we dare say, or what can we attain clarity on?

Either. Both. Maybe keep it to ourselves.

We don’t have to. You can if you wish. One setback isn’t a defeat unless you give up.

No, of course not. But still it was a disappointment.

Maybe you’re just expecting too much.

Was it a difference in the number of people involved? I half expect that was part of it.

Number, composition, sure – but are you thinking that anything about it was an accident?

I felt the people were withholding, that they were reluctant to expose the partial contacts they made, because they were partial, or inconclusive. And I didn’t know what to do. The more I intruded myself, surely the more they would hold back. Maybe I ought to let them do it on their own.

So think about Pentecost and don’t worry about blasphemous comparisons. We aren’t saying you’re Jesus, we are saying certain situations have similar dynamics.

Hmm. Well, what I got is that Jesus said the Paraclete (the holy spirit) couldn’t come to them while he was with them. I hadn’t thought of that as meaning, “While I’m here, you’re naturally leaning on me because I showed you the way. Once I leave, you’ll be able and willing to stand on your own feet.”

You could say he showed what was possible by living it, and the example was contagious, but nobody wanted to set up as competition with him, which is how they might see it.

I can see that if I had been fortunate enough to study with Jane Roberts or Edgar Cayce, say, or Carl Jung or William James, it would have been a great opportunity that might have had two contradictory effects: encouragement and discouragement. I would have been able to see what is possible, and I would have doubted I could match what I saw.

And it might have been complicated by your seeing their human flaws. You would have had to reconcile the message and the messenger. It might have added dissonance.

The effect is less with a smaller group. Why?

Isn’t it obvious?

Not to me. Not yet.

In a smaller group, the bond is stronger, one-to-one and also one-in-all. Every person you add to the group dilutes that bond and at the same time adds to the group energy, so you wind up with a different kind of dynamic. It is the difference between a group of two or three truth-seekers and the congregation of a megachurch listening to a televangelist. It is the difference between a prayer meeting of two or three and a football stadium of people exulting in the group-enthusiasm but unable to do so while retaining their individual judgment.

Are we saying that 10 or 12 is already too many people to work together?

Not at all. It’s a good number to experience together, as you have seen. But think of your rule of thumb about conversations.

Yes, I see. I always say that conversations get shallower as they include more people, even if the people are the same. You just can’t – I can’t, anyway – have as deep a conversation with two as with one, nor of four as with two, nor of six as with four. I don’t know where the limits are. So what do we do in practice? And as I ask the question, I hear the answer: Let people choose for themselves.

They’re going to anyway.

Split the group into subgroups so that everybody is in one?

Are you going to force somebody to do it?

I didn’t mean instead of the big, group, I meant in addition to it.

The larger group – and the shadowy even larger group that listens to the recordings but does not attend, that you tend to forget about – will have a purpose of its own, and will take care of itself. But people who want to work more intensively can group themselves, just as you have already done in practice.

And I get, some will and some won’t.

Isn’t that true of everything? Are you back to helping the sun come up in the morning?

As a practical matter, I don’t see how I can be a member of a group, fully connected, yet withhold a lot because I don’t want to take it over. As it is, I’m never sure where the line is.

What is clearer to me than to you is that everybody, in every group, faces that same dilemma. That is one of the things that makes larger groups harder than smaller: Everybody has to judge, should I contribute this or not? Am I speaking too much, or not? Is this only my opinion, or am I getting a message? All these hesitations add up.

So this is about group dynamics.

Partly. Partly it is about how everybody has to decide for themselves, all the time, what is appropriate and what isn’t, what is authentic and important, and what isn’t. and the more people you have doing that at the same time, the more complicated it gets.

Monroe programs are usually two dozen people.

And how many people speak during a debrief? And how long is the debrief compared to the individual tape experience?

Maybe that was the step too far? Trying to do with the large group what we did with the small group?

“Make haste slowly.” You might think about tattooing that on your forehead so you can see it in the morning when you’re shaving.

So maybe suggest to the larger group that we do a drumming, and then report, as we have been doing?

Or maybe alter it. Do the drumming and discuss rather than sequentially reporting. People will have to be careful not to step on each other, but interaction will be a step up in understanding over merely hearing one after one.

A step up because active rather than merely passive?

All I can say is, you might try it. There’s nothing wrong with trying things and failing. You know what Edison said.

“That’s one more thing I know doesn’t work.” That’s how he finally figured out what light filaments could be made of.

I assume you continue to be ready to assist in the process.

Who do you think is there by accident?

Very funny. And I get, you aren’t the only one.

You have all been accompanied – shadowed, if you like – all the way. This is of great interest here as a practical way forward.

This isn’t a natural segue, but I’m moved to ask – maybe by you, for all I know – what can you say now about your connection with your guys who you used to say betrayed you? I assume things look different now?

You assume that naturally I’m now going to see it your way.

Laughing. Yes, I guess that was my assumption.

Well, I don’t. But of course I don’t’ see it the same way I did when I was under the pressure of 3D constrictions and expectations. It didn’t occur to me, what I mentioned the other day, that restrictions are focus. I never thought about it this way, but frustrations can be very powerful focusing devices. I was a concentration of frustrated aspiration, and that energy form remains.

That last isn’t quite clear.

I never thought it would be. Let’s let it lie for a while.

So are you saying your guys really did “underinvest” in you, as you used to say?

Let’s put it this way: My composition and the events of my life and my perseverance in desire led to 3D frustration; that was obvious enough. What I didn’t consider was that frustration can be used to fuel the engine. Just because the ego-level consciousness isn’t getting what it wants doesn’t mean it isn’t getting what it needs at a larger level. This may sound strange, but I don’t regret my anger and frustration and sense of disappointment and betrayal. Those feelings were right in a way, wrong in a way.

We spend so much time sorting things into right and wrong, desired and not desired, it makes it harder to see things neutrally. I would say now I am seeing it neutrally, seeing that everything has the defects of its qualities, as everybody knows, but the defects are as valuable as a qualities.

Shouldn’t you have figured that out, as a psychiatrist?

Psychiatry assumes desired and undesired. It assumes an intent to help people cope. It doesn’t necessarily say, “Well, sure, that hurts, but so what?”

Well, thanks for all this. I’ll sent it around and we’ll see how many people think I think I’m Jesus.

They’re more likely to be relieved to see that you don’t.

We’ll see. Thanks again.