The Boat’s Not Sinking
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Summary
Jan Cox Talk 83, Sept 22, 1983, run time 1:47
Notes by TK
You must act upon the Understanding to ever escape ordinary life, the horizontal. This does not require full understanding of third force, nor becoming a monk. Everybody from the Line down is engaged in a stalling action –a rearguard protective defense, a bailing of the boat, stopping up the leak in the dike etc. You cannot live like that and do The Work. J. could work individual magic but it would be counterproductive to The Work–bind you unprofitably to J. and Group.
The time has come to act on extraordinary information and descriptions given–without action you remain in your original condition –still caught in the feeling of “life is broken”. There is no such thing as “holy suffering”. You’re wasting energy and energy is physically limited. You must “go against everything”, pick up the universe on your shoulders. Use the tasks –make up your own –the Few should know what to do: don’t be “you”. Don’t expect/wait for “new” energy –energy to awaken you from without. Don’t waste what you already have.
Personality as a vibration –slightly imperfect, uncertain–pitch: the “boat is sinking” pitch. There is a state of certainty, a perfect pitch. You can’t look back. Looking back presents illusion of collapse and failure. Do anything unrehearsed, unplanned by the voices –don’t be you. Everything will change–the triad shifts producing a kind of certainty related to expansion below the Line level. You must become responsible w/ no excuses, no explanations.
How is it that no one is accountable to themselves? Is it not strange. The hangover and its excuse-cum-suffering (story, explanation) go together; are the same. Consider what the Group could do to bring The Work public?
Consider the astounding-ness of the info J. gives out. Look beyond the growing familiarity with it to see again the extraordinariness of it and ACT upon it now.
Group Questions addressed: How can one work on Blue Circuit and Yellow Circuit like you can the Red Circuit? Blue Circuit is transitional, unfinished–starve it of D-based energy. Yellow Circuit is the raw open end of evolution and also unfinished—it must ignore its own voices.
Energy requires form–but awakening energy needs no form.
Compassion for self and others: based upon Seeing you are not your voices. Seeing that no one is responsible.
Everybody has just the right number of problems–they run out just when the energy of “I” runs out.
There is only one Work, although many degrees; everyone does it to one degree or other. Atlanta activity is the “hot point” of what’s available.
There is no way that you can stop transferring energy. Consider nervous tics and habits. Be aware of them and what they signify.
‘Nunc pro tunc’ The legal term and process: “now for then”. De facto reconstruction of the past (court proceedings). This has a Work relation re: the wish to un-do/re-do past offense etc.–but you can’t be ordinary to do so. Small reflection of this available for the ordinary occasionally possible on deathbed.
Children; natural feeling to bear children in women. Not so for men. Not required for awakening.
1:40 St. Quantum’s Day cautions and misc. Group business
Transcript
THE BOAT’S NOT SINKING
Document: 83, September 22, 1983
Copyright(c) Jan M. Cox, 1983
Everyone in here, in This Thing, is divided into (guess what?) two groups of people! One group believes that This Thing is the ultimate mysticism, the ultimate occultism, the ultimate strangeness. Another portion of people have some specific feeling that This Thing is the ultimate non-strangeness, that This is nonmystical and accessible.
Both groups must coalesce. Those who feel as though this is the great, ultimate mysticism, are going to have to expand immediately and understand it might just be the opposite. Now you must act on all that you have heard. To Hear what I have told you and fail to act upon it is only ordinary Line-level consciousness. It is living as if Life is broken: the feeling that you must bail the boat because everything is about to sink. The boat is not sinking, you are not being attacked from the rear. The dam is not about to burst.
Everyone in life, including all of you, from the Line of consciousness down engages in a rear guard action in dealing with Life. The boat always appears on the verge of sinking and all you can do is bail out. You cannot continue to live life in that way. This Thing leads you to See what others cannot See. It is not about becoming literally and figuratively a monastery unto yourself. You cannot listen to the voices when they begin to say, “I am seeing that life is mechanical, that I am mechanical. And it’s all just a waste of time. I am just going to try to get out of the way and let it all go.” That is no satisfactory place to stop and you should have felt that immediately. These ideas and methods must lead to your own action.
In the ordinary world, a discernible, apparently complete, immediate religious conversion is possible. People believe that by being close to the swami, the preacher, or by praying at the altar, the gods will come into their hearts. That serves a purpose, and it is not absolute imagination, if you remember that absolute imagination can’t exist. But such conversions will not ignite the higher areas of the nervous system. They serve a purpose, and you should consider what that purpose might be. But immediate conversion (if it could be done by “zap”, a ritual, or a secret word) is not profitable in This Thing.
Many of you have wondered about your highest use of “energy”. One appropriate question would be, “Why do I not have the energy all the time that I seem to have some of the time?” First, a simple, nonintellectual answer: you can no longer continue to waste energy. Each person’s energy is finite. It comes and goes but there is an ultimate limit to energy physically, literally. You cannot waste your energy suffering. There is no such thing as holy suffering. You cannot waste your energy bailing out the boat when it’s not sinking; protecting your flanks when you are not being attacked; protecting yourself from adverse and evil vibrations when there are none. You can’t worry, “I need more than eight fingers and two thumbs to plug these holes in the dam because it’s going to break and we will all drown.” It’s not going to break, we’re not all going to drown. The very energy you spend on such worries must be conserved for vertical growth. It’s simple. You must stop suffering and wasting energy. Change your overt behavior in any situation and within that triad everything shifts. And then you can see that to not be you is to go against the weight of the universe. Then you will learn something. And learning accrues from the proper redirection of energy expenditure.
Life is growing, but not necessarily as predicted at the ordinary level because it’s Like toe cells trying to figure out brain cells. But toes can’t analyze brains, and, anyway, it’s not their business. If you belong in this, almost everything in Life is directly averse to everything here. Everything natural to you is unprofitable to your Aim. It’s natural to worry about your career, your sex life, your vague fears that the boat is always sinking. It’s not sinking and there is nothing to be done about that.
What is to be done is try to act upon everything you have heard, anything that you can remember. Suppose, for example, you enter a store and see a 700 pound guy with a cigar standing at the counter, gesturing and talking loudly. A new triad is in the making, and some voices in you say, “I’ll go to another store down the road.” You are being fearful, suffering, just being you. Get out of the car and walk in; do anything you would not normally do. As soon as you hit the door, walk right in talking louder than he is, “Hey, what’s happening!” It’s thrilling, it’s frightening. It’s almost impossible but if you belong in this you can do it.
That is the road to activating the higher regions of the nervous system, that is the road to being able to See. You produce your own energy, not new energy, but energy that has always been used in supporting what you take to be you. It is a beautiful situation but, as long as you are you, you can’t do it. This is a literal redirection of energy. If you are doing what’s accidentally expected, if you’re being you, then every available millivolt of energy will be consumed in that. It is not mystical, it is not religious. All the energy has been used to prop up “I”. As long as you are doing that, do not look for new energy. You can’t continue to wait for external supplies of new energy. If you begin to act upon this you will see that some insane dynamo had been running you all these years. It was like this huge, steam driven, noisy machine. When it’s shut off, then you have only one question, if you have any: “What can I do with all this energy?”
You must remember how astounding This is. Take a side step from your own position right now and try to remember objectively how astounding This is. The maps and descriptions are absolutely insane, yet true. The only way to expand yourself is by acting upon what you have already heard. Thus the few will develop a certainty-of-experience. You find out you can act. Of course, everyone else believes they can act and they can’t. You find that, “I actually cannot be me.” It produces a certainty that all of humanity dreams about — which no one is destined to find. It is then that you are responsible. You do not let the energy reach the screen of consciousness and take form. “Not-you” assumes real responsibility.
How is it that no one is yet accountable to himself? Why don’t you find it strange that energy flows through you and you are still just an accidental “you”? When you become responsible, you reach a point of certainty.
In streamlining the use of energy in the nervous system, you cannot deal with the Blue and Yellow Circuits in the same way you can the Red. To maintain the Red Circuit you need a certain type of wiring: an immutable health, enhanced by exercise. Of all the circuits the Red is best equipped to take care of itself. It is not profitable to be obsessed with your health, your pulse, playing sick, checking your blood pressure. You need to exercise the body; sometimes you should do it just because you feel it’d be beneficial.
But you cannot deal with the Blue and Yellow Circuits in such a direct manner. In a sense the Blue Circuit has been a transitional nexus between the Red and the Yellow. It has always been speaking two different tongues. It has always been trying to look in two different directions at once. The Yellow Circuit is at the end of the unfinished circuitry and so it is never satisfied. The Yellow Circuit won’t acquire the habit of thinking only good thoughts, for example. No comparison is possible between the Red and the Yellow because the Yellow is unfinished under any ordinary conditions. You have to willfully enforce the expansion and in a sense the completion of the higher two circuits. And the best temporary description is that you have to starve the Blue Circuit from its diet of melodrama, hostility, and general all-purpose worry, such as: “The boat is sinking! I hate everybody and I am unhappy!!” Such normal negativity and hostility flow through everything and preclude vertical growth.
To expand the Yellow Circuit requires activating the nervous system below the Line in every possible way. Think thoughts that the voices don’t think, entertain beliefs that they don’t believe. Charge into that convenience store saying, “Hey big fellow, what’s happening!” rather than drive to a store where everyone’s safe. In a sense if you could do directly with the Blue and Yellow Circuits what you can with the Red, this would all be child’s play. (But then we’d be talking about a closed system.)
The only time energy exists without form is in the igniting of the higher areas of the nervous system. In every other realm, energy requires form. Without it, the energy would not exist or there would be no comprehension of it. You would not be conscious of it without it taking form. But your attempts to extend your own system have no particular form and even this is a temporary answer. That is part of the trickery. I apparently put flesh and bones on it, paint a form on it, give you temporary maps and diagrams to hold.
There is only one form of This Thing. But there are different degrees of it. All the swamis, all the gurus, all the priests and rabbis, drunks on the street, everybody in a form is serving This Thing. But there are degrees of it, and you who apply these maps and methods are at the hot point of what is available in this time and place. There is no permanent form to This Thing, no static map. If you were my Fictitious Reasonably Insane Man, you would know, “this ain’t it.” The growth of Life has only one source, but there are degrees of it everywhere. Each level serves a purpose.
But the other, weaker forms will not aide you in igniting the higher regions of the system. You can’t keep waiting for someone to hug and comfort you or initiate you with a slap to your forehead. All these pseudo-systems have plenty of rules to live by, and regulations you can’t understand or meet. This is part of the nature of ordinary life; it is also a minor reflection of This Thing itself. But none of these forms help ignite the upper regions of your nervous system.
In the legal profession there is a term and a process known as “nunc pro tunc”: changing now for then. If a judge will sign the order, the past has been constructively reconstructed, and the records have been changed. Sometimes you will have a continual lingering voice saying you failed to do for someone close. Maybe it happened yesterday, maybe 15 years before. There is only one way to undo that. You can change now for then. It is not a psychological trick — you can literally do it but you cannot do it in your normal ordinary condition. It is possible. But you can’t do it through any ordinary means and you can’t look back because if you look back you’ll only suffer. In a very mild mechanical way this is reflected in common stories. Sometimes the imminent death induces such a change-of-past. A mother forgives her wayward son, and the past is undone. But notice the extreme price in the ordinary world. It is physically possible for one with an aim to literally undo something.
You people have to become responsible. You must find out this is the ultimate mysticism, and so startling, so strange, that it is practically nonmystical. The ordinary feel saddled by a completely movable cloud, a movable feat of unbelievable ignorance. This Thing is the way out. So now you’ve got your choice.