Imperial Beach Twilight Session

The Right Worldview
 
Have you ever looked around in life and had a hard time finding anything right with the world? How many times in life have you had to stop yourself from whinning or complaining when it did no good. How many situations, people, things, places, events, injustices, crimes, opinions, fashions, tunes, sayings, creeds, prejudices, programs, decisions, changes of all kinds … in your life, just ain’t right? The question nobody seems to be asking is what to do about all this craziness in life. Why do we have such a hard life? Where this, that, and every other thing ain’t right? And then there are those people in your life who seem unfazed by the chaos, content, and unmoved? They’re not right. Some appear to rise above it, engaging passionately in some greater mission which at least generates something that is right in their lives. Thus, we really need to have our own self-correcting worldview of what’s right.

I can no longer ignore or avoid what’s not right in my world. The pile of instances of what’s not right has reached overwhelmingly into the sky and is blocking out the sun. When you cannot go through your day and find something right with it, you are in trouble. I know some people who are on fire with what is not right and they don’t even have a clue because they’re so busy fighting and resisting it. Myself, I am tired of watching people burn, myself included. 
 
The importance of being able to find what’s right with your world is primary. Because the alternative is illness, feeling ill, queasy, sickness. More important than anything else is having positive anticipation, hope, looking forward to your day with a smile and a happy thought. And all that is based on being able to find what’s right with your world. If you can’t do that, you might as well shoot yourself in the head. 
 
So let’s look at the question What *IS* right in your world? I tend to feel good about something if I get its integrity. This is to say, when something presents itself as what it holds itself out to be, then I have the space to be satisfied with it. Today, was a rather windy warm day here in Southern California. A fire erupted up around the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15 and because the fuel was so dry this fire spread with such ferocity and speed that it just ripped across the Interstate putting numerous cars and tractor trailers on fire. The view from the sky, where you could see all kinds of people hiking away from the fire and their vehicles, which now were ablaze. Well, the short of this scene, was there wasn’t anything right about it. 
 
Having your vehicle catch fire and putting you on the side of freeway on foot, that ain’t right. Those people, when they entered the onramp to the freeway had no inkling of what was about to rain fire down upon their heads. Wildfire is nature’s way of cleaning up the trash, the rubbish, the refuse. Accumulate to much of it and a fire will bring it to ash. So, what isn’t right in this scene. We can’t say it’s the fire, because nature is fine. We’ll get nowhere if we start winning and complaining about nature being herself, right? 
 
What we’re dealing with here is a need for systems thinking. The interstate is part of a system which interfaces with nature. This interface was not maintained and so when nature erupted with fire, the interstate became a victim to its destructive force. And, one of the principles in systems thinking is integrity. The integrity of a system is its independence or self-sustaining features, and that it function the way one would expect it to. It’s important to note that there are unanticipated benefits to integrity that could be inspiration for exclaiming that something is right. If using a certain medication treats a condition successfully without negative side effects, one could be motivated to say that drug was right. Another medication made to treat the same condition but having a side effect of having your hair fall out - well, that drug ain’t right, right? 
 
Things that are and do and present themselves the way in which they’re purported or expected to allows for an experience of satisfaction and this in turn expresses a level of being or vibration in us which propagates outward among others.

Notes - Erhard, The Heart of the Matter

Everyday concerns

What kind of being is a human being?
What is the possibility for being for human beings?

—> Questions aren’t about looking good

What is the practical value, what is the impact that these issues have for us?
What is the correlation with these issues and our Everyday way of being and concerns in life?

Erhard’s method: Transformation

The Domain: Being
An inquiry in being in the domain of being

Not designed to produce answers or solutions, or a prescription for living.
In the process of this inquiry insights show up that dramatically impact the quality of our lives.

Insights don’t show up as answers, but as actual openings, or a space for being, a sense of freedom, or a being empowered in your everyday being in the world and your everyday concerns

Thinking that’s gotten us to where we are is insufficient to solving the problems of where we are. - Einstein

Working on what you don’t know: Ask questions to get answers to expand what you know

This is not about what you know, your opinion …

It’s about what you don’t know that you don’t know. Very few people know anything about what they don’t know that they don’t know.

What Werner Knows:

The kind of question, relationship with what we don’t know. Finding out is not much of value, when you begin to deal with what you don’t know that you don’t know. Asking questions, doesn’t work. Asking questions to get the answer isn’t powerful in dealing with what you don’t know that you don’t know.

There is a way to question or be with the question which is appropriate for getting at what you don’t know that you don’t know.

You don’t pose the question to get an answer, but to stand inside of as in a space and look out from to the whatever is the world to look out to.

Uncharted waters that may not be like water or act like water.

From which to stand, looking inside out, an moving from space to space still in the question.

To get to this stand, one needs to be willing to do violence to what we identify with and what we know.

We’re trained to listen for answers. This is about freedom and power, not about getting better, reducing the risk that life is by getting answers or solutions or prescriptions.

We’re here rather to conduct a special inquiry.

We are a psychological interpretation, a set of assessments … This is not about that.

The domain is being, not psychology, or history, or biology.

Authenticity:  We abhor the thought, we’re committed to looking good.
    We showed up in the commitment to looking good.
    We are inauthentic about being inauthentic. We are a cover up for our own inauthenticity
        Thus—> The need for violence.


Getting permission to be with one’s own inauthenticity, be in the clearing of the question, and get beyond what we think or believe and be in the question, looking out to see what you can see.

Superstitions are only powerful when they’re not superstitions, when they’re an *IS*, are so …

Superstitions determine the options in which people live. Recognizing a superstition neutralizes the *IS* and gives a person more and more freedom to be and live.

The you that you are is a superstition.  The *I* you speak when you say *I* think, is a superstition.

We are that we are the *I* that is pointed to in I think or I feel.

Human being was here before we showed up, already had a scope of possibility. Maybe human being is using us. We showed up in human being, and it is using us, it already was, a thrust, a scope, a definition, a certain set of options. And those options are using us.

    There are thoughts, there is thinking, consider the possibility that it isn’t you thinking.
    *IT* thinks and you have the thoughts.
    “One of things it thought up is YOU.”

What is it that the stars will move for?  That’s missing, that we don’t know that we don’t know about this issue.

Our concerns are for our own identity. Our appetites have us. Our concerns have us. Our appetites and concerns are *IT*s concerns, not my own.

The possibility of being a human being is an already set of options we showed up in. There are no possibilities, just a set of options.

There only OPTIONS in the possibility that we showed up in as Human Being.

One possibility of options.
    Begin to see why problems have not changed since beginning of time
    Options on the board we showed up in.

Our lives not determined by the circumstances but the box in which circumstances showed up in.
    The box has more power than the circumstances themselves
    Not much power in what you think.
        Tell your opinion to the stars and see if they care or not
    The box determines what you think
        Some people who are about to die, have lives richer than people who can pass physical
        Intelligent people less effective than less intelligent people due to the box

We give no thought to the box, far more to the circumstances.
    We’re unaware that we’re unaware
    We live in a structure of interpretation
        We only think what’s allowed in that set of options.

What are we being used for?  By this box that we showed up in?

Being of Human Being is survival, that is what we’re being used for, a possibility.
When you are that you are *IT* … The I in the phrase I think, I want, I
    What it’s up to is making you right and everything else wrong
    Using me to Win, justify it, invalidate anything else

If you cover up being used, you are resigned to being used
    only coming to confront our inauthenticity that *IT* thinks and we that have the thoughts

It’s a trap, resistance and avoidance is more of the trap

Lots of options, no choice. We’re thrown to a particular set of options

MOOD of RESIGNATION
 
    that environment of being which you wake up to in the morning

Observe … is their any possibility, are they thinking
    or are they really speaking out of the resignation to the options that own us.

Addiction to looking good holds the resignation in place. Our unwillingness to confront our own
    inauthenticity, making ourselves right and others wrong

Most complaints are a racket to not show up at whatever opportunity is there
    complaints help us to avoid domination
    we don’t give everything we got in relationship
    let’s us off the hook for being responsible for relationship as an opportunity.

The rackets payoff is that you get to be right
    people would rather be right than be loved or love

The Acceptance of the inauthenticity will lead to a breaking up of the Resignation that you are
    The environment of being that you wake up in the morning
     Looking good, we don’t mean it, and we know we don’t mean it
        afraid to express our own doubts for fear of not looking good

Best place to look are those places that you complain in life.

Erhard: I promise you will never get happy in life. The pursuit is an absolute guarantee against happiness.

    Life has no meaning or purpose, same as a thunderstorm
    not going anywhere like a purpose, wonderfully unpredictable
    adding meaning, we cover up inauthenticity of the being of human being
        fundamentally inauthentic, a being used by being

The being of human being is a mechanism the design which is of survival
    we can’t hear this because we think its going to work out
    it’s not going to work out, because this is it, this is the way it worked out
        if you don’t like it, too bad

The whole story in which you are a player in the script called your life, is fundamentally inauthentic
    like a thunderstorm, doesn’t mean anything
    we kick in our windshield when we have a flat, our complaining
    doesn’t mean anything that it doesn’t mean anything

The Box in which options come determines the quality of life
    the box we showed up in has no being
        no choice

can’t use the fact that its meaningless and empty, it’s empty that it’s empty
    Erhard: I say it’s a possibility to stand and look out at life.

Domains of Showing Up
    what opportunities for showing up is there?
   
    structure of concept limits and shapes our experience which reinforces the concept - viscous circle

Collapse of 2 Domains
    no distinction between what is and my representation
    between the presence and concepts in our lives
   
Restore the distinction between experience and concept

I forgot lives in a different domain of showing up than being late.

There is no difference if your late and you forgot and your late and you remembered
    our culture doesn’t make the distinction either
        it wants to know why your late

A question arises when we confront our inauthenticity
    what is the possibility of being for human beings
    asked in the environment called resignation gives more inauthenticity, survival answers

    None of the answers makes any difference
    the questioning generates a breaking open from the resignation, a sense of freedom

    instead of a given set of options, there will be a freedom to be with something constraining before.

The risk of being alive
First answer … there isn’t possibility of being for human beings.
    What we showed up in did not include being
    *IT* is only concerned with survival

If you can be with the emptiness and meaningless of life
    a thunderstorm about which we tell a story
    if you can be with the inauthenticity it becomes a clearing

Changing is something from something, we would change the situation
    except there is no possibility of being for human beings, so change won’t work
    change only alters circumstances, becomes another form of survival

Creation is something from nothing
    our whole lives is a derivative, a predicate   
    were always living into the options
    to create is to act without predicate

First you have to restore the emptiness and meaningless that you are
    Being honest about being inauthentic OPENS the possibility
   
Being cannot be evidence, there is no predicate, the possibility
    of being as itself, the stand that I am the stand that I take
    not a change
    the possibility of possibility,
        is a product of taking a stand as a clearing for that for which you stand

maybe your not the kind of meaningless which is i like, i want, i think

a clearing for life to show up in like a possibility, like something from nothing

Erhard: inviting you to take a stand that the stand that you take is a possibility or clearing for the stand you take

    live in the question, what is the possibility for being for human beings?
    not possibility of options, but being authentic about our inauthenticity
        instead of living our lives into our past and the resignation of the options using us

    a question like an opening is not to live into the resignation in which we wake up looking for an answer.

Peaceful Word

Peaceful Words

I don't think there is any harm in discussing the subject and defining what principles or principle is in fact intrinsic to what may be considered the heart of peace. A principle I have in this context is that not expressing myself forcefully upon others or rather forcing others to get what I'm saying. First of all, I don't know how I would accomplish that. The effort is allowing others to get what I have to say, thus my focus is on speaking to the listening I encounter. I always find that peaceful enough.

However, when encountering others who would force their viewpoints on me, this is the big challenge for me. And for the moment, i really don't have an answer for you on the principle means by which peace is attained in such a situation, at least one in which my soverignty is preserved. The even more difficult aspect of this is the awareness of such force harming others, which calls forth in me the impulse of protection, which is always an opportunity for recreating the possibility for peace that only exists in the moment and cannot exactly be defined outside of it.