As we have been doing the work for the past two weeks we are probably, by now, beginning to notice that there are various and sundry thoughts racing through the mind that say things like this, “There isn’t anything worthwhile in this, drop the whole thing.” Some self-improving “I” comes along and says, “You’re really a mess, I’m a mess, this is terrible, I don’t want to find out these things about me” — that really one “should” do a great amount of suddenly changing the whole thing. Or another one says, “What’s the use, this doesn’t change anything, it’s just making it worse.” Now all of these are very natural occurrences and they happen to everyone who takes up the study of self and to have self-knowing. All these doubts etc. have come along because one begins to discover certain things that are not exactly pleasing and not in keeping with vanity, especially as we write them down and looked at them. But this is essential and it is necessary. The first thing is to be knowing self as to what happens. We will be working on knowing self that the self may undergo a transformation. But if one doesn’t know the self there is no hope of a transformation. One may hide the self, may keep it under cover and be blind to it, but it still destroys. So to bring it to awareness and be conscious of it and pay attention to it, while it may not be very pleasant at this moment, it definitely has a great value. So let’s continue our work.

We’ll start this week with completing the picture we started on last week, of the picture of man as we find him in his conditioned state. We had the basic idea that the whole purpose of living was to be non-disturbed and we had four ideas of improving the self in order to actualize this non-disturbed state.

1. Complain. The first one was to complain which didn’t work and hasn’t worked so far.

2. Sticking up for rights. The second one was sticking up for rights, which hasn’t worked so well.

3. Trying to please people. It sometimes works but it creates an inner havoc. Then we looked at the one that:

4. One must believe and do as one is taught by one’s authorities, whether in newspapers, books, television, what someone says, or by some authority figures that we might run into in our affairs.

We’ve been writing down how we practiced each of these. Now the next decision that the infant makes is

5. It is important to be different.

In other words, the way I’ve been getting along up to this state has been quite a conflict, so “I should be different.” So here comes the effort to put on a front. It is a thing to do so people will approve of me, give me attention and that I will look good, that I can approve of self. But it’s all on the outside. It is not due to an inner state of really discovering that “here is a way to behave, a thing to do,” but it is to put on a front to impress people. This has been referred to as the Scribe and the Pharisee, the one to put on the front. By trying to appear to be different we build barriers over these four we looked at for the past few days and we are usually unaware of how they work. We give them other names. We don’t describe them as we have, very bluntly, in this picture we are building now.

So we have on the B side, above the one that says PLEASE everybody, that IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE DIFFERENT. This is, of course, different behavior and the person is trying, but every so often one of the others reacts. One has an explosion of temper or one has an explosion of resentment or one has a fit of jealousy or whatever, but they will continue to appear. Then, of course, we only give those other names and we try to describe them differently as well as appearing to be different. But this doesn’t bring any peace to the person’s being, and the child is probably is 7 or 8 years old now and so he makes another decision. Maybe he makes it earlier or later but the time element is unimportant because we’re talking about the person with all of them now, anyway. Over on the A side he comes up with another very solid decision which we will put opposite to the one That it is important to appear to be different. In this one he has discovered that it’s really everybody else’s fault that he wasn’t always different. So he says that the whole worthwhile thing here is to establish what is to blame, so we will just simply put BLAMING here.

6. Blaming (It is important that everybody else be different) (On the A side.)

Now when a person blames somebody he tries to get them to straighten out so that they will do what they ought to do and then, of course, “everything would be fine for me.” And I can go on in the illusion that I am quite different because there would be nothing to upset the appearing to be different by putting on this particular mask or behaving differently. There would be no challenges if everybody else would just be different. So we build quite solid accounts against everybody we blame. Now this is a very fundamental School idea, that we build accounts. In other words, we’ve established blame and we say that the person owes me an apology or they owe me damages or they owe me to behave differently. This, the School idea says, “This is the burden that every human carries.” It is what ages a person. It is what gradually disintegrates the person over a period of time. One big aspect of it is the “Accounts Receivable” we have against all people. It is blaming and that they should do differently. So the infant decides that if everybody else were just different then I would be just as peaceful, pleased and happy as I can be. But they’re not different so they’re to blame and they do owe me.

So we now have six basic ideas of self-improvement and the big ideal; so we have a picture of man, each of us, as we are in everyday life until we have studied ourselves and observed what goes on for a considerable length of time. This time is not indefinite. We’ll be doing it in a reasonable number of months or weeks but it is not going to be gone tonight. We do want to be aware of it; we want to be conscious that it is going on.

We will add two more sheets of paper to observe now. Write down when “I ought to be different” every time one notices “I should have been different” or “One is putting on a particular front or fancying up the story a little bit,” write it down. Again, not for other people but for one’s personal use. On the other side we will put down all “The people I blame” and what they would have to do in order to pay the debt.  Now someone no doubt has apologized to you many times.  Did that end the hurt or are you still nursing it a little bit?  Recall the incident and see what kind of a feeling arises within you.  Someone cheated you and then they apologized or they forgot your birthday or forgot the anniversary or promised to take you to a party and they forgot all about it and didn’t arrive until hours later.  They apologized and said how sorry they were.  Let's recall those incidents and see if there is still a decided feeling that they “owe me,” they “mistreated me,” a hurt feeling.  Now we have six sheets of paper that we are keeping up with. We won’t see all the incidents but we can certainly add a little bit to them each day, and each bit we add is knowing a lot about this conditioning that is controlling ones existence, and if we may say, is destroying that existence.

First, it is in conflict, is it not? A against B and B against A. The real person with a will is not even there. That is myth we read about up to this point. Maybe someday we will have a will. Maybe all the conditioning can be gone. But at this moment we are only interested in knowing about the conditioning and watch it work. Because without being aware of this conditioning and how it works we wouldn’t even believe it’s there.

It usually comes as quite a shock to any of us to discover what is really within. It is as though we have a lovely home and we suddenly found it was infested, almost to the point of destruction, by termites. We’d be quite shocked. If we never find out about the termites we wouldn’t do anything about it until the house fell in and then it will be too late. While we might see all these things of conditioning as termites and they are slowly but surely sapping the strength of one’s being we have every reason to observe them.

Starting with a new picture, we will talk about expectations. We will draw a picture of how expectation works. Take a sheet of paper and on the long side of it draw a straight line. Write under that line, “Expectations based on the ideal.” Remember that the ideal is to regain the non-disturbed state by gaining pleasure and escaping pain on all levels. We want pleasures of physical comforts, physical sensations. We want the pleasure of having favorable attention, approval, of feeling important and being able to control other people. We want to avoid physical pain, we want to avoid being ignored or rejected, disapproval, and avoid the sense of being inferior because things don’t happen like I want them to. People just don’t do what I want them to. So now we have expectations based on the ideal, the first decision, the one that’s dark, drawn over in the picture of man as he is in his conditioned state.

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