OBJECTIVES:
(A) To indicate that most of the information to solve our problems is probably already available, but that it is difficult to identify it.
(B) To suggest that the first step is to actualize our tremendous potential brain power.
(C) To indicate that the sources and conduits of information are the first target of those who seek to control others against their will.
(D) To point out that the suppression and perversion of information happens mainly through coercive interference with the media of communication and with "education."
(E) To suggest that the issue is "thought control," and that once this has been accomplished, people will suppress themselves and each other.
(F) To suggest that "schooling" in some parts of the world (or is it all?) is a process of mental crippling.
(G) To list some areas of life where there is coercive interference with the flow of information.
(H) To indicate that human beings, by their nature, are free because they control their own energy, and no person can control another person's energy.
(I) To reflect on why it seems to difficult for humans to discover that they are free.
(J) To indicate that most libertarians are extremely ignorant on the subject of freedom or liberty.
(K) To give some details of Stewart Emery's "The Owner's Manual For Your Life."
(L) To indicate that many libertarians suffer from "impoverished models of reality" and helplessness.
(M) To recommend two further books on self-actualization: "You're In Charge!" and "Spare the Couch."
Probably most of the information required to solve both serious individual difficulties and those seemingly chronic world problems is already available. The indicated task is to identify, extract, synthesize, integrate, refine, disseminate, and apply the most useful, the most practical. To do these, you have to survey large territories of information, examine vast research results. Regarding any given subject, you have to cover a wide area - it is extremely unlikely that any individual or "school" has found "the answer." So where do we start? Suggestion: We individually actualize our tremendous potential brain power (Section 16).
Whether their intentions are "good" or "bad," those who aim to control others against their own will first and foremost seek as targets the sources and conduits of information. They go for the press, the broadcast media, and the schools. They know that to repress and control people's behavior, they must control their thinking. And to control people's thinking, they must establish a firm grip on the content of thought: Sources of information, sources of speculation, and ideas...
The suggestion that the Earth did not lie at the center of the universe was heresy to the church, and Copernicus refused to publish his work till late in his life. His fears were well-founded. Some of his supporters were punished by the church, some even burnt at the stake. And when his own work was eventually published, it was placed on the Papal index of forbidden books. - Peter Russell ("The Global Brain")
When that is accomplished, and when it has been effectively accomplished throughout a culture, the control and repression becomes a self-sustaining tradition. Police don't have to repress thought. People do it themselves. They do it to themselves, to their family, their friends, and everyone else they deal with in the course of daily life.
The trouble starts...when it is assumed that the teacher is the "active" one in the relationship and the student is the "passive" one so that the teacher is, basically, "operating on" the student rather the way a doctor operates on a patient, and "imparts" or "implants" knowledge rather the way a doctor puts in a pacemaker or transplants a kidney. Next, the student is supposed to "sit still" for the operation, leave it to the teacher to decide how it is to be performed, and if it is a success, the teacher gets to walk out of the operating room to the congratulations of all for his teaching brilliance, while the student gets a pat on the back for having sat still so well, and a promotion to the next operating room. Wham-bam, another authoritarian-submissiveness chain has been forged. - Wayne Dyer ("The Sky's the Limit")
"Schooling," in a certain part of the world, has been described as: "A prison camp where education is meted out in the smallest possible doses. It is a place that must withhold information, punish curiosity, retard creativity, and avoid any specific how-to training in cognitive functioning. It is successful in that most of its victims are blocked from the data and mental tools necessary to understand what has been done to them. The tragic result: Human beings with intellectual capabilities beyond imagining who have been turned into mental cripples. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Of all ages and callings. People who can't get a grasp on reality - what is true or false - because their own mental functioning has become unconscious and robotic. Mindless gulls who can't tell what exists and what is imagination, submissive "true believers," cannon fodder...
One of the functions of the meta-information network is to foster that flow of information which will actualize our truly astounding mental abilities.
In the years ahead, we need to examine the feasibility of eliminating all coercive and violent interference with the volitional and voluntary flow of information. How about:
(A) The coercive control of media of communication, such as radio and TV broadcasting?
(B) The financing of certain forms of communication through coercively acquired currency ("subsidies")?
(C) Coercive interference with the publication of information (censorship and so-called "libel laws")?
(D) Coercive monopolies for printing counterfeit currencies or "paper money" (so-called "currency laws")? (One of the major functions of money is to convey information through prices. When prices are destroyed - euphemis-tically called "price control," "rent control," "minimum wages," etc. - valuable information is actually destroyed, one of the consequences being that economic decisions have to be made in the absence of information - in ignorance - and the results are all around us.)
(E) The compulsory indoctrination of young people in concentration camps, euphemistically called "schools")?
(F) Coercive monopolistic practices, such as "copyright" and "patents"? (Can such be handled by voluntary contract?)
It seems clear to me that the above will not come about until the number of individuals who are responsible, powerful, and free reaches a certain critical mass or passes some threshold. Does anybody know what this critical mass or threshold might be?
Actually, all human beings are already free - and they don't know it. Freedom has to do with the control of human energy:
Each living person is a source of this energy. There is no other source. Only an individual human being can generate human energy.
All energy operates under control. Whether it be the energy of an electron, a hurricane, or a man, energy is controlled.
This fact makes scientific knowledge possible. Not-living energy - electricity, for example - always operates in the same way in the same conditions. No one knows what controls it, but because it is controlled, men who have observed how it acts can predict, with sufficient accuracy, how it always will act.
Living energy is different; it is creative and variable. It changes, and it changes the conditions in which it acts. It is unpredictable because it never acts twice in precisely the same way. Not even two blades of grass in a lawn are identical. No two children of the same parents are alike; not eve two quintuplets.
Yet, living energy is controlled. Everyone knows what controls human energy. Your desire to turn a page generates the energy that turns the page; you control that energy. No one else, and nothing else, can control it.
Many forces can kill you. Many, perhaps, can frighten you; but no force outside yourself can compel you to turn that page. Nothing but your desire, your will, can generate and control your energy. You alone are responsible for your every act; no one else can be.
This is the nature of human energy; individuals generate it and control it. Each person is self-controlling and therefore responsible for his acts. Every human being, by his nature, is free.
Very few men have ever known that men are free among this Earth's population now, few know that fact.
For six thousand years at least, a majority has generally believed in pagan gods. A pagan god, whatever it is called, is an "authority" which (men believe) controls the energy, the acts, and therefore the fate of all individuals.
The pagan view of the universe is that it is static, motionless, and controlled by an authority. The pagan view of man is that all individuals are, and by their nature should and must be, controlled by some "authority" outside themselves. - Rose Wilder Lane ("The Discovery of Freedom")
I don't know what it takes to discover that you are free. If you can somehow clear your mind, then decide to lift your hand, and watch it rise, and recognize that you did it? If you could recognize the amazing miracle of such an event? Part of the difficulty is that you have to experience your freedom. You can't "know" it in the way we have been talking about "knowing by metaphor," because there is nothing to compare it to. Is it perhaps the kind of "knowing" that John Fowles wrote about in "The Magus" (Section 12)? Some day, somewhere, you suddenly experience it, and then you know it. And you may forget it again.
Because there are billions of people out there bombarding you with "we-are-not-and-cannot-be-free" misinformation. Whenever any "libertarian" uses a slogan like "freedom in our time," or says, "We-must-get-them-to-change-the-law-so-we-can-be-free," he or she is really promoting the "pagan view of the universe." This may be one reason why those who have recognized their inherent freedom tend to become disgusted with "libertarians" and "libertarian organizations."
(While I sometimes write scathingly about "libertarians," I must also emphasize that all my libertarians friends are wonderful people, and it is extremely pleasant to be with them. You only have to attend a libertarian convention to experience what wonderful people libertarians are. At the same time, their ignorance on the subject of liberty or freedom - including that of the "foremost libertarian spokespeople" - is almost beyond imagination! I wonder how many of them have actually experienced that they are free beings?)
Belief in "external authority" is the "pagan view of the universe." That includes belief in supposed "law" and make-believe "government." It is idolatry (Section 7).
What does it take for human beings to discover that they are free? It is so simple and so obvious, once you see it. Maybe the above passage by Rose Wilder Lane has to be read a few hundred times? Maybe you have to sit in a cave for five years, lifting and lowering your hand, until you realize that you control your energy.
Maybe you should meditate every day, repeating Crowley's principle over and over and over:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
It might take you five seconds or fifty years before you see the power, beauty, quality, and love embodied in Crowley's principle.
"THE OWNER'S MANUAL FOR YOUR LIFE":
(Subtitled: "The Book You Should Have Gotten At Birth But Didn't")
Stewart Emery (the author) is co-founder of the "Actualizations" organiza-tion 1610 Tiburon Boulevard, Tiburon, California 94920, U.S.A. His business might be called "individual actualization." A lot of it has to do with assisting individuals to strip away the religious, political, educational, and cultural garbage they have accumulated during their lifetimes and which prevents them from discovering their power, freedom, responsibility, and love.
This is a book about fear, power, and love. Within its pages, we will learn how we have been pre-empted from ever knowing the experience of power and love that is our birthright as human beings by the mythology of fear and the impoverished models of reality we inherit at our birth.
If we have an impoverished model of reality, we will lead an unhappy and impoverished life. If we have a rich model of reality, we will lead a rich and happy life. The purpose of this book is to show us how we can enrich our model of reality and be free from the past. It is the book you should have gotten at birth, but didn't. - Stewart Emery ("The Owner's Manual For Your Life")
(A) Introduction: What do we mean by a "model of reality"? Impoverishments common to the human species. Cultural impoverishments. Individual impoverishments.
(B) The birth of fear: Life is on the other side of fear. The birth of fear. Goodbye, good old days. The hazards of being born a person. Oh, no, it's you! Welcome savior, summa cum lousy. Forgive them, they know not what they do. Give me a chance to give. Mixed messages can make you crazy. The pivotal event in our lives - the beginning of our end. How do I avoid losing?
(C) On loss and our solutions to loss: Don't play. Quitting: The grand indulgent. Well, I wasn't really trying. Destroy the game. If I can't win, nobody can. I know, I'll become the game. Another way to avoid losing - be nice. Here comes the judge. But, it isn't finished yet.
(D) On the hole we are in and how to get out: Step two: Make a commitment. Viewing it differently, doing it differently. Viewpoint: The power of accountability. Behavior: A commitment to excellence.
(E) On emotions and feelings: Freedom is not permission. What it means to experience your emotions. For prompt temporary relief, in many cases. Why we get angry. Resolving the source of our anger. How to restore your power.
(F) On how to make painful emotions and feelings productive: What is jealousy? Scenario 1: The flight reaction. Scenario 2: The fight reaction. How to respond instead of react. Enriching your ability to build extraordinary relationships. If you don't hate me, you don't love me. Going for what works. How to win friends and influence destiny. Where to find your power. Enriching your life. How fear begets fear. Complementary neuroses. How to tell if you are neurotic. How do I know I'm OK?
(G) On habits and depression: What is a habit? What is depression? What is the cure for depression?
(H) On power: The flow of power - Step one: Clarity. Power starts with clarity, wisdom. Mastery. Facility. This is very important: Facility is not reward. How to empower yourself and others. Results. Correction. In review: Why don't we have power? The cult of the victim. Love is a weakness, we think. We trade power for love, and it's a lousy deal. The validity of our own experience.
(I) On sex: Sex: The shame and glory of humanity. Our sexual history. Our morals are subject to change without notice. Alternate models: Ancient Sparta and Athens. What went wrong and when. The rise of the devil, flagellation, and the cult of the devil. Goodbye belief, hello doctrine. The permissive culture of the Middle Ages. Enter the missionaries (and other nights of the order of the wet blanket). Sexual taboos of the Dark Ages, or no wonder we can't have a good time today. Pleasure becomes a capital offense. The Inquisition: Sadism, insanity, torture, and terror - all in the name of the Lord. The devil made them do it. The Renaissance: Times approve - sort of. The Reformation: Trading disorder for suppression. Calvinism: Guilt-edged religion and pleasure as a sin. The Victorian Age: Sex goes from sinful to disgusting. What do we really want from sex? Is happiness possible?
(J) On marriage: Why does a marriage made in heaven turn out to be hell? Alternate models of marriage: Ancient Athens and Sparta, where marriage was noting personal - just business. Tenth-century England: Trial marriages and swinging scene, then business as usual. The church unveils lifelong monogamy with no possibility of parole. Loving your mate sexually becomes a sin. The troubadours: Falling in love with love.
(K) An introduction to love: What is love?
(L) Instinctual love: The past does not cause the present or dictate the future.
(M) On romantic love: The early Greeks: Masters of love. The origins of our own mythology. Enter the troubadours: Passion becomes a career. Who wrote the book of love? Tritan and Iseult, the original legend. End of story, beginning of myth. A look at the contradictions. The plot thickens. Love and marriage go together like a horse and roller skates. Is it "only a myth"? What is the legend really about? It's not just "bigger than both of us," it's bigger than all of us. Why we can't make love stay.
(N) Conscious love: Conscious love has, as its motive, the impassioned desire that the object fully actualize its own inherent perfection, independent of the consequences to the lover. It is a state of service. Why is conscious love so rare?
What we fashion is a representation of the world, a model. In other words, we have all created a personal model of reality, usually without ever recognizing that it is only a mode,l and not reality itself.
The purpose of all adventures in personal growth - whether recognized or not - is model enrichment. What we have to do to enrich our life is enrich our model of personal reality.
Frederick Leboyer: "Fear is our faithful companion, our twin brother, our shadow. It will never let go its hold. Until, remorselessly, it sees us into our grave."
A commitment to getting out...what that means is committing ourselves to becoming aware of the behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and viewpoints that propel us down a path of death and dying. It means committing ourselves to shedding those aspects of our behavior that represent a commitment to, and the pursuit of, death and dying. Most importantly, it means making a commitment to pursue those attitudes, beliefs, and ways of behaving that represent a commitment to life, to getting out, and this takes discipline.
Our viewpoint and our behavior must be consistent. It's like climbing a wall and having each leg on the rung of a different ladder. One ladder is called viewpoint and the other ladder is called behavior. To get out, we have to take a step at a time up each ladder.
If you transcend, rise above, or become bigger than your own fear and your reaction to that fear, then you will find your experience of yourself expanded beyond your ability to imagine.
Perhaps the greatest impediment to our own power is the surrender of our belief in our personal power to people or institutions that don't necessarily support our well-being.
We tend to give up our power more readily to people who are aggressive.
Most of us give up our power to people who will treat us badly, and we organize our lives around these people. We vote for them, marry them, and go to work for them. If we succeed in impeaching them, moving out, or getting away and starting life over, we very often find another person of the same type with whom to replace the one we just left.
We seem dedicated to making ourselves vulnerable to continual assault by people who treat us with hostility and condescension.
As long as we give away our power, we won't have any. As long as we give away our power, we will not make a positive difference anywhere, either in our lives or in the lives of others.
What is it that we are giving up every day that we don't claim for ourselves our own power? We are giving up the validity of our experience. More than that, we are giving up the validity of our experience to a myth - to something that is either crazy or untrue and which does not support a happy and productive life.
We - against all evidence - hope that the people we have placed in authority above us, the heroes we have made into our saviors, those to whom we have given our power, will somehow take responsibility for the misery in our lives, will solve our problems for us, will tell us the right thing to do, will save us from our suffering, and most of all tell us we aren't as bad as we think we are. We demand of our heroes that they lead us out of the wilderness of our experience. We give them our power and create the lie that they, rather than us, are responsible for our life. This way, we have someone to blame, and it isn't us... - Stewart Emery ("The Owner's Manual For Your Life")
Thus spoke Stewart Emery, sublime and loving anarchist of the first order! For "heroes," read "idols." What I think he is saying: Don't give away your power to projected "external authorities" in any way - don't vote and don't pay taxes - to a deadly myth.
Last night, at the opening banquet of the "First European Libertarian Convention," I sat next to Ed Clark, who was the "libertarian candidate for the U.S.A. presidency" in 1980. We talked about various aspects of libertarianism. At one point, I said that individual libertarians had to become vastly more effective in life, that it was necessary for us to become supermen and superwomen. Ed bluntly replied, "None of us in this room, during our lifetimes, will become supermen or superwomen; it is impossible." This is an example of an "impoverished model of reality," as described by Stewart Emery. It is also unrealized potential hiding itself.
After studying the principles of a free society and how those principles are best implemented to protect and preserve human liberty and human rights, I have concluded that even if that society's economic and political institutions are structurally constituted and maintained to achieve the maxim realization of its goals, it cannot hope to succeed except that its members make a vigorous effort to sustain the sovereignty of their individuality. The question every person is obliged to ask himself is not how free is my country, as compared to other nations, but: How free am I? Am I free of government coercion? Am I free from interference from my neighbor? But more importantly: Am I free of irrational ideas and unjust actions against my own human nature and best interest? For surely, a society or nation cannot be free unless it consists of individuals who are committed to matching external political and economic freedom with internal intellectual and spiritual freedom.
If the external freedom that enhances individuality is trampled to death by a society run amok politically or bogged in the swamp of philosophical inertia, it is because the internal freedom on which individuality rests was mutilated first in the minds of men. That is the basic premise of this study. Its specific purpose is to identify ethnic and race consciousness as an expression of mutilated internal freedom on the one hand and a revolt against external freedom on the other.
The single most important entity on which a rational social system and harmonious social relations depend: The free and sovereign individual
I am for the individual, and what I have to say is always in defense of a particular kind of individual: The self-created person of authentic self-esteem, integrity, and honesty, whose individuality is endowed with a free spirit and an active commitment to reason as his only tool of knowledge. - Anne Wortham ("The Other Side of Racism")
The fact is (for practically all of us) that since birth, our individuality, our freedom, our power, has been trampled to death; our spiritual freedom has been mangled, maimed, and mutilated. And out of that context, we have created impoverished models of reality in which we ourselves feature as helpless victims. This is why we need to turn to the people in the human potential movement, like Stewart Emery, for guidance. Does Ed Clark, like so many libertarians, wallow in a self-created hole of helplessness, regarding some aspects of his life?
"YOU'RE IN CHARGE!"
We are into the dawn of a new era in the evolvement of being more fully human. We are just beginning to realize that human beings can more fully realize their potentials for recreating themselves and the world in which they live. Dr. Rainwater's book is a major ray of light coming from that dawn, and promises to increase and expand human consciousness.
Reading her book is like opening up a treasure chest which has been taken for granted, forgotten about, and might even have mistakenly been thought to have belonged to someone else. Now, having accidentally or otherwise found it, having opened it, we find that it is full of new possibilities that were previously outside of our current awareness: new uses for old things, new perspectives for viewing both the old and the new, and a vast array of information for making new discoveries through using ourselves in new ways.
Dr. Rainwater takes the smorgasbord of all emerging ideas of the last thirty-five years relative to evolving change of human beings and their behavior and translates them into understandable, useful, practical, and exciting action for any person who is interested in taking their own growth in their own hands... - Virginia Satir (Foreword: "You're In Charge!")
(A) Introduction: The art of self-observation.
(B) Games people play in their heads: constructive and destructive uses of fantasy.
(C) You're in charge of your personal relationships: Getting along with other people.
(D) On keeping a journal.
(E) The uses of autobiography.
(F) On dreaming.
(G) Meditation: What, why, when, and how.
(H) Awareness and the art of being in the now.
(I) You're in charge of your physical health.
(J) Death (and the possibility that you're in charge here, too!)
The basic tool whose use is taught throughout this book is the art of self-observation. Philosophers and mystics - people such as Socrates, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, the Buddhists, and Lao Tsu - have all stressed the necessity for self-observation or awareness as the first require-ment for becoming enlightened. Self-observation is also the principal road to personal freedom from the various self-torture trips that we humans are so adept at taking. - Janette Rainwater ("You're In Charge!")
In my opinion, self-observation is absolutely vital. Particularly do we need to question ourselves continuously in order to discover the holdcepts that prevent our self-actualization. Please, realize the power of living your life out of a question (like "How can I become a superman?") as opposed to an answer or holdcept (e.g., "If God wanted me to be a superman, he would have made me one.").
The "how-to" part of this book is deceptively simple. There are two magic questions that you need to ask yourself. The answers that you generate should provide the guidance that you need.
- What is happening right now? And this includes:
- What am I doing?
- What am I feeling?
- What am I thinking?
- How am I breathing?
- What do I want for myself in this new moment? That is, do I want to continue the same doing/thinking/feeling/breathing? Or, do I want to make some changes? - Janette Rainwater ("You're In Charge!")
Another crucial element is that of relaxation. Whereas, the central theme of "You're In Charge!" is self-observation, "Spare the Couch" is strongly oriented towards relaxation as a fundamental element of self-actualization. All three books in this section make important contributions to the "road to the superperson," which will be resumed in Section 16, Volume 2. "Spare the Couch" is specially recommended for those readers who became tense or stressed about some of the "horrible things" they have read in these pages!
"SPARE THE COUCH":
The single most important principle underlying the methods of change that we describe is that the connection between your inner self and the world around you is a two-way street. Not only does your mood influence the people and events around you, but the opposite is also true: What happens in your immediate environment can make a profound effect on your emotions.
The second most important principle of this book is that we consider most of our habits, thoughts, and actions to be learned, not instinctive; we're not born with fear. Anxiety is not an innate drive. This means that the potential for change is always present: Anything that has been learned can be unlearned. No pattern of thought or action is so basic to human life that it cannot be altered, eliminated, created, or enhanced as desired. - Donald Tasto and Eric Skjei ("Spare the Couch")
(A) Relaxation: One important change technique.
(B) Additional tools for change.
(C) Depression and feelings of worthlessness.
(D) Phobias: Managing fears and anxieties.
(E) Assertion: Expressing yourself effectively.
(F) Obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior: Managing useless rituals.
(G) Stress: Letting the rat race get to you.
(H) Couples: Making close relationships work.
(I) Sexual dysfunction: Learning to respond to pleasure.
(J) Conclusion: Maintaining change.
POINTS TO REMEMBER:
(A) Most of the information to solve our problems is probably already available, but that it is difficult to identify.
(B) The first step suggested here is to actualize our tremendous potential brain power.
(C) The sources and conduits of information are the first target of those who seek to control others against their will.
(D) The suppression and perversion of information happens mainly through coercive interference with the media of communication and with "education."
(E) An important issue is "thought control," and once this has been accomplished, people will suppress themselves and each other.
(F) "Schooling" - in some parts of the world (or is it all?) - is a process of mental crippling.
(G) The areas of life where there is coercive interference with the flow of information: Media of communication, censorship, "libel laws," "currency laws," "price control," "education," "patents," and "copyright."
(H) Human beings, by their nature, are free because they control their own energy, and no person can control another person's energy.
(I) It seems very difficult for humans to discover that they are free.
(J) Most libertarians are extremely ignorant on the subject of freedom or liberty (though probably far less so than others).
(K) Stewart Emery's "The Owner's Manual For You Life."
(L) Many libertarians suffer from "impoverished models of reality" and helpless-ness - and most other people probably even more so.
(M) Two further books on self-actualization: "You're in Charge!" and "Spare the Couch."
CLARITY CHECK:
(A) Do you think that most of the information to solve our problems is already available? If yes, how can we identify it? If no, how can we generate it?
(B) Do you think the first step is to actualize our tremendous potential brain power?
(C) Do you think that the sources and conduits of information would be the first target of those who seek to control others against their will? If yes, why? If no, what would be?
(D) Do you think that suppression and perversion of information occurs? If so, how?
(E) What do you think about "thought control"? (i.e., some people attempting to control the thinking of others through coercion).
(F) What do you think about "schooling" or "education"?
(G) In which areas of life do you think there might be coercive interference with the flow of information?
(H) Do you think that human beings are, by nature, free? If yes, why? If no, why?
(I) Why do you think it might be difficult for humans to discover that they are free? (Only answer if you think humans are free!)
(J) What do you think of Crowley's principle: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"?
(K) Do you think that most people might be extremely ignorant on the subject of freedom or liberty? If so, why?
(L) Do you think it might be a good idea to read "The Owner's Manual For Your Life"?
(M) What do you think about self-observation and relaxation?
(N) And what is your opinion of this book, now?
Please send me your questions, comments, and suggestions - to help me improve future editions - to "AS" Publications, P. O. Box 149, B-1930 Zaventem 1, Belgium. (Publication of Volume II: January, 1984.)
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