Change One’s Destiny
Stream from the arrow, download from the dots
AKS/News items = none
Summary = See Below
Excursion / Task = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk #318 * Feb 23, 1988 * – 1:49
Notes by TK
Answers to questions from new people: how to change circuit functioning so as not to fulfill destined defects of genes'”? This is a question of binary consciousness, one thing or other, but Real Revolutionists are not destined nearly so certainly as everyone else. Changed destiny is a matter of the smallest shift, but the energy required for that shift is huge. The ordinary think changed destiny would be of dramatic proportions.
The Few must balance their circuits to provide foundation to grow into new destiny –a destiny Life doesn’t particularly need. Change seems to be only of two possibilities: behavioral or informational (understanding). The ordinary pursue only one of the possibilities; believe changing one produces the other.
But they do not work independently (except in the City where it works perfectly, i.e., it fails); they must be pursued in concert (and then some). Change does not come piecemeal thru reordering or reforming parts, it comes thru change in the total organism. There is nothing to be learned from studying the unmoving; the out of context; the unconnected. But line-level consciousness insists on it anyway; freezing/stopping the subject in order to be able to study it. Still maxims = dead wisdom. Same true of ‘still’ methods, codified procedure.
The Real Revolutionist is a “tight ship with a loose cargo”; an “ice water Captain with the 3 Stooges for crew. The ordinary view is that people are either too serious or too silly and unfocused.
Man’s inhumanity –is just the doing of common things by unexpected people; unhoped for actions by high profile person. Thus despicable acts are just common acts, it is the designed-in expectation of otherwise in men that gives the negative taste.
Paradigm presentation by Group members from 1:00 to 1:49.
Excursion
- [1:49 Excursion: For New People, “Look Around” every time you enter a new space, without fail for 6 days.
- Every other day ask 6 strangers for the time. Listen to see if they answer from head, heart or gut.
Transcript
TO CHANGE ONE’S DESTINY
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 318, February 23, 1988
Here is a question I received from someone: “If we are destined to live with our inherited defects, how can we change our circuits to not fulfill our destiny?”
That’s a good old, basic, down-home question. First, and I don’t mean this sarcastically, the question is a paradigmatic example of the absolute brilliance and limitations of binary consciousness. It is binary consciousness in action. “This is possible, or it’s not possible.” And that seems to cover it. But your reading this indicates that you suspect perhaps it does not cover it.
What the question amounts to is, “What’s the use?” But a Revolutionist’s destiny is not nearly so certain as everyone else’s. I have never been so crude as to tell anyone that the rest of humanity is destined to be what they are. I have never done that for a reason; and the reason is not because it is not true. I’m not going to do it now, either. I put it to you just as I did: a Revolutionist’s destiny is not nearly as certain as that of everyone else.
At Line-level consciousness, you’ve got a destiny. You should strongly suspect that left to your own devices, all your ideas of change are like mirages. You should have already reached a point of being super-anxious by the time you found me. (Not desperate, but super-anxious. If you are desperate you get to be crazy.) You should have already had that suspicion. And to have such a suspicion about the impossibility of change always reflects something; you should find it interesting.
I am telling you, if you are involved with This, your destiny is not near so certain. But I’ll also repeat for you: you have no idea how small a shift is required for your destiny to go off in another direction. You have no idea. The human organism is wired up to believe that any change would be of an extremely observable and dramatic nature, but that’s not required at all. I must use scientific terms now: all it takes is a teeny-weeny shift and you have then affected your DNA destiny. It takes so little, except it takes so much to do that little bit.
There is no way to change your destiny and your circuits as they are. Life does not operate in that way. There is no information. Life needs people to be disturbed, upset, and off balance. It needs outlets for growth. It does not need to make it easy for people to satisfy themselves, for example, to “change their circuits.” You must strongly suspect by now that the operations of your mind — your awareness, your personality — cannot be changed. But also note: in the city it is assumed that it can be changed. For instance, “body building.” The insinuation is that if you lose weight your destiny will change. .paWell, if you indeed can lose weight, that is your destiny. But even so, things do not change that much if you lose 200 pounds.
(Plus, there is more and more statistical evidence in the city which shows that almost no one who believes they should lose weight can lose weight. And 98% of those who do lose weight put it back on. For anything to be successful in the city, it has got to fail.)
Moving up in the circuits a bit, people in the city believe that if they could change the way they feel, their destiny would change. Okay. Let’s say it would. But please note: no one can do it.
It is the same with the Yellow Circuit. No amount of education will change destiny. It is simply this: all you can do is balance your circuits. Even before you started reading these transcripts you were very close; you just didn’t know it. You not only have to have a sound sub-flooring of physical health, but also of what you would call emotional and mental health. You cannot be a manic depressive and you cannot believe that the voices of the gods are talking to you. As always, I mean no offense to those kinds of people in the city. Nutty people are fine people. But they have no business in This. Their destiny cannot be changed. Their destiny is in the same ball park as those who are treating them.
You must very quickly balance your circuits to the point where you can understand what I mean by “fuck health.” What your genetic destiny was until that point then becomes irrelevant. It is a kind of minimal operating level. Once it is achieved, you can begin to facilitate growth into new areas and, in fact, into a new destiny. That’s what it amounts to. It is a destiny that Life does not particularly need. It is a destiny that is yours singularly.
Note that historically, the apparent aim of strange philosophical cults and mystery religions is perceived to be to produce uniformity among the followers. We’d be surrounded by thousands of little Moses es or Buddhas if that were so. Everyone would act and talk alike. If you believe there is uniformity in changing your destiny, you are wrong. Your involvement with This is not to turn you into something. It is only in This that a singular destiny is available. That is why anyone who will predict your destiny is lying to you; they do not understand. I can predict this: your destiny is not what you are now. The rest of it is a crap shoot. I don’t want to scare you — you’ll be happy with it. Of course, once you are changed, what’s your choice? You will not be able to drop back down and enjoy your old destiny. As that great philosopher B. B. King would say, “The thrill is gone.”
Along similar lines, it would seem as though there are two possible routes to change in the 3-D world. One could apparently gain new information to help change behavior, or one could apparently change behavior to produce new understanding. Neither possibility, however, will work by itself. To attempt either by itself is no more than a kind of Yellow Circuit roller derby. Of course, in the city those possibilities work absolutely. That is, they fail. (I will point out that to say they do not work is simply a reflection of imperfect information and imperfect view. It is simply that from a binary viewpoint there is no way that any one thing will work.) And yet in a sense, everyone in the world belongs, at any given time, in one of those two camps. Religions can all be divided into one of those two classes. Everything you’ve ever tried on your own was one of those two. What you have got to be able to do is do both simultaneously and then some.
But you cannot be captivated by and entangled with one or the other. When it comes to Revolutionary growth — to this teeny-weeny, astounding change — the entire molecular organism must be changed. Not just the parts. That alone will change your destiny into a useless destiny. You don’t have to do it. You can stay like you are. You always have to remember that: you can stay like you are as long as you are staying like you are. If you get above the Line, it’s too late — you’re done for. In that sense, this kind of change is useless. Unwarranted. I don’t care if you are the most miserable son of a bitch in the world — that is nothing. Somebody has to be. And plus, I doubt if you are. It is a certain hubris on your part to believe that Life has stepped on you worse than anyone else.
The entire organism must be changed, not just the parts. Notice again, this is not simply the opposite of what you are built to believe. When you can only hear with two ears, though, that’s the worst and the best I can make it. But it really goes off at another angle. Everyone is wired up to believe that change happens through change in the parts. You have never analyzed it in that manner, and they don’t talk about it that way .pain the city. It is just part of the parallel and unrecognized information I am dealing with.
If you were unable to follow that, try this. If it were not for attempting to change the parts, psychiatry would not exist. Psychology would not apparently work. There would be no religion, no books of famous quotations, no common wisdom, proverbs, maxims, or epithets.
Nobody would try to change. In the city, people do lose weight. But they do not change. The change must be in the total organism. When that kind of change happens, then the change of the parts perforce takes place. Then the parts have no choice but to be dragged along. But in the city, the only reasonable way to approach change is: one thing at a time.
Assuming I am correct and assuming you are trying to Hear me, notice that everything in you says, “What the hell is the choice? You have to start somewhere, do something, right?” Yeah…everything. That’s what I’m talking about. You cannot produce a new destiny one piece at a time. It cannot be done, and that’s why everybody believes that it can.
Since it is evidently one of my hobbies to badmouth maxims, let me tell you this: there is nothing to be learned from observing the unmoving. There is nothing at all you can learn from studying the still. That’s more than a maxim; that’s a fact. In the city though, they believe that in order to study something it must stand still. If you are a psychologist, how do you study humans? Well, the first thing you do is to go out and get some rats. Okay, let’s assume you do actually look at some people. Get them to sit still and fill out a questionnaire, and then put together a statistical profile. You won’t learn anything that way. You won’t learn anything from observing the still.
For instance, what are the most important ideas in the world? The dead ones. The ones already said and already thought. And especially the ones already written down. You know — not this kind of shit. Not this guy standing up here talking as fast as his mouth works. “Some of this is interesting, sure, but this ain’t the same thing as the Old Testament, the baskets of Buddha, or the anecdotes of Mohammed. The weight and validity of the really great ideas is that they are still.” Which, I hate to point out, is synonymous with…dead.
And not just ideas. How about this: there is nothing to be learned from any method that is still. All of the so-called codified methods of religion and psychology assume that there is something in Man stable enough to observe. When people say that probably the greatest thing would be to “know oneself,” what they want to do is pin themselves down like a poor bug in biology class. To spend your life noticing all your warts and being able to admit to them is a nice hobby, but you are back attempting to work on the parts.
Do you recall that I have said that if you have a real passion — collecting books, records, some hobby — which is driving you nuts — one way to change behavior, and to absolutely stop the passion would be to go into business doing that same thing? Let me tell you though, for it to work, the business has to be alive. If collecting books is your potential downfall and you open a book store to cure your habit, you have to keep the merchandise moving. If you let it sit there on a shelf, very shortly you will be again entrapped with the same attachment to books. If you had no business because you opened your shop in the worst location in the world, you would not lose your passion.
Does anybody see any connection? I did not change the subject. Whatever in you it is that you want to deal with, it has to keep moving or you won’t learn anything. If you attempt to look at yourself as a noun (which you always have, without knowing it) you are taking yourself as a stable thing and there is therefore no possibility of change. But what does everyone say in the city? “Well, I may make mistakes, but I won’t waste my life — I’m going to learn from those mistakes.” And do you? The only way to explore new areas of possible destiny is to first see that you, Life, and everybody else is a verb. But ordinary consciousness is such that if I could play with destiny and suddenly make all of humanity see (in an unprepared way) that everything and everybody are verbs, everything would fall apart. Ordinary consciousness would then have no faith in anything. People would have no immediate memory anymore.
In the city, there is no choice: the only way to hold people responsible for their actions is to have no awareness of time. No awareness, that is, of the fact that those you now love, an hour ago you hated. Not only that, but by operating on the basis of episodic consciousness, people appear to be stable at any given time and can therefore be held accountable. But if you saw people as irreversible verbs operating within a limited range of destiny, and also saw you as that, you would realize that it explains all forms of guilt, hostility, irritation, and disappointment.
Things and people seem to be either too tense and serious, or else to be too silly and unfocused. That binary statement would seem to cover all people, attitudes, and forms of behavior. Just think about it a second. Alright, that’s long enough. A Real Revolutionist, though, would be like this: a tight ship with a loose cargo. He or she would be like a seaworthy, knowledgeable captain with ice water in his veins and three hundred stooges for a crew.
Think about it quick, before I leave it. What seems to be your problem in life, and et cetera? Do you see that almost everything you can answer fits into the two categories of “too serious” or “too silly”? Emotional problems? Too serious. Can’t seem to finish anything? Too silly. Think about it: a tight ship with a loose cargo. Think about passing for a reasonably held-together noun while inside being a completely frightening verb. In all observable ways your ship is tight — the rivets are good, you’re not rusted, you float. You apparently can set off and go somewhere, and even appear to be stable, impressive, and on course. But inside the cargo is not tied down; it’s as though there are no cargo holds and no lashing. I like it. Of course, in the ordinary world that is impossible.
If you would like it put another way: the Revolutionist would pass for being sane, while internally there is room for further discussion. That is, if there were anyone with whom you could discuss it. Or, externally you could apparently be as dumb and confused as everybody else, while internally you might have a strong suspicion as to what’s actually going on. I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about you…about a person.
I know that some of you are still bothered by what seems to be inhumanity, hatred, warfare, and all that stuff in life, but if you stay here, you’re going to be surprised how quickly something will begin to change in you about that. Let me point out that people do not actually do exceptionally bad things. Actually, people do quite common things, but in the city they are the very things that everyone hopes no one else will do. For example: for a famous and/or powerful person to become infamous, they don’t have to do really bad things. All they have to do is common things. But it’s not what the populace expected, and therefore it is seen as horrendous, condemnable, and disgusting. It amounts to finding out that the pope has been sleeping around. Or that the prime minister of a large country has been taking five dollar bribes for liquor licenses.
We are not down to the level of actual murder, of course, which I know seems from some city views to be really despicable. I’m trying to get you to shift your view a little bit; to try and expand it. There is not some big category of exceptionally bad things which people do. The real basis of it is that people are simply doing that which is just as common as shit. Taking bribes, sleeping around, lying, stealing — everyone’s doing it. But to find out that the pope, your rabbi, or your father does it…it’s just disgusting. You think, “The depths to which people will stoop!” And they didn’t. It was just common. May I remind you that we’re not simply talking about popes, bribes and the city? How about you? Your DNA destiny right now continually tells you that what you do over and over is condemnable. Contemptible. Disgusting. And it’s not. All it is is common. You are the walking epitome of the middle class — the boobs. You’re just common, that’s all.
People are wired up to expect better. The unspoken aspect of witnessing someone do “bad things” is, “Jeeze, what a let down…I expected better.” Well, you’re just a run of the mill idiot. It shows that you don’t see Life as a verb. You don’t see that time carries everything. That is, there was no reason. There is no basis whatsoever for any of you to expect anybody else to act otherwise than the way they act. Is that too convoluted? For apparently intelligent people to say (for instance) that they have hopes that at least outer space will not be turned into a battleground between earth nations — they might as well be babbling. They are saying, “At least we have hope that humanity will not do what humanity will do.” A person who talks like that is an absolute blatant idiot. Can you hear me?
Everybody is wired up to believe that humanity not only should act a certain way, but that they could. You’ve got to be time blind for that to hold water. A Real Revolutionist is never shocked. And I don’t mean that he or she is without feelings. To be shocked is to hope that people will not turn out to be common. Ah, I hate to be foolish, but could I ask you, what led you to hope for that? And the answer would be, (of course, I’m really tearing up reality) “Well, Life made me think it.” And with their dying breath they would say, “I appreciate that. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything in my life.” And, of course, that would kill them.