Life’s One-Two Punch
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Summary
Jan Cox Talk #330 ** Apr 5, 1988 ** – 1:45
Notes by TK
A distant relative of Life’s “First Story”: Life’s “1-2 Punch” in regard to problems. There are only 2 possible sources for ‘problems’: lower circuit (LC) or upper circuit (UC) (non-verbal vs. verbal). LC problems can ‘cure’ themselves, no thinking is necessary for their satisfaction. Sex, hunger and sleep are immediate of thought; the Yellow Circuit does not need to verbalize/participate for their satisfaction/treatment. Yet the YC problems cannot be solved without recourse to the LC; it must verbalize to the LC.
One of the categorizations made of man is: the Problem Solver. It is the YC which is the agent of such solving. But consider: what problems would man have without the YC? LC problems solve themselves. An UC problem must be able to be thought of to be a problem; it must be named. Not thinking of problems = NO PROBLEM! No internal problem can withstand the internal ‘look around’ method. But ‘Bad Memory’ prevents this–it CAN be done–but only when REMEMBERED.
WETHTI = Whatever the Hell This Is.
Production of New Energy can be effected by increasing the rate and amount of present expenditure of energy. This is a prime use of the irrelevant, for to City consciousness such appears backwards at best, insane at worst. It is the breaking of habit.
0:57 Paradigm presents.
1:45 end.
Transcript
LIFE’S ONE-TWO PUNCH
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 330, April 15, 1988
I’ll start off with the big stuff. Life is always set up as an apparently binary situation. This is not normally recognized, but you can see it quite easily. In a sense, it’s really simple — really direct. It’s flawed, it’s lacking, but it’s a place you can get your finger in. But, do not be misled and buffaloed by the apparent simplicity. If your voices take what I say and go, “Oh yeah, yeah, well, you could look at it that way,” then you are wasting your time here. Life has a first story for everything, but you should not be stopping there. To take a term from that wonderful intellectual sporting activity, boxing, Life has a one-two punch.
I’ll use the subject of problems as an example. Listen carefully, because this could be of real interest and value. Everyone still has a great interest in, god knows why, problems. If not for the seeming problem of problems, none of you would be here. So, I can keep making fun of problems, get you to laugh right here in the beginning, emphasize the word “problem” when I say it, put it in quotation marks, and laugh at it, to the point that maybe you refuse to say “problem.” You start calling it oatmeal. If I told you never to say the word “problem” again, still, deep down in your heart you’d still have this voice telling you, “it’s my problems.”
Human beings apparently have two sources of problems: the lower circuits and the upper circuits. For now you can take the lower circuits as the old, nonverbal door to the past and the upper circuits as the younger, more verbal part of Man. All problems apparently come from either the upper or lower circuits. That’s it. Remember now, don’t just take this and think, “Oh yeah, that’s it, that’s it.” There is something of value here if you can see it, but then you have to keep it from getting into the realm of, “Oh yeah…”
The difference between lower circuit and upper circuit problems is that lower circuit problems treat themselves. If you live, if you survive, lower circuit problems DO treat themselves. For instance, when you are hungry the lower circuits will see to it that they are fed. You do not have to sit down and look at a picture book full of food and try to work yourself into an eating frenzy the way people might use pornography to arouse themselves sexually. You do not have to get a cookbook and look at pictures to get food wise horny. You do not need to think or talk about your hunger. It is just a lower circuit problem that will treat itself.
Do you realize that there is no such parallel, there is no such reflective condition in the upper circuitry? Think about it. If you are thirsty you do not have to look at semi-erotic pictures of water to try to work yourself up to the point where you give in and have a drink of water. If you are sleepy you do not have to look at pictures of people sleeping. If you are fairly sane you will eat a more or less balanced diet. If you suddenly get a craving for yellow vegetables, you’ll go out and eat, well, maybe two gallons of squash ice cream. And remember, it’s not a nutritional game. It’s the other way around: what you eat becomes you.
The lower circuit problems treat themselves. In a sense the lower circuit problems cure themselves. But, do not become confused with how I’ve used the word “cure” in the past, that is, fixed, once and for all. If you are hungry and you are at all sane, you will eat. You’ll eat more or less enough so that you are no longer hungry.
If you were cold, if you were thirsty, if you were too hot, if you were horny, if you were sleepy, if it were only the lower circuits in operation they would continually treat themselves within the small context that I am talking about. They would, in a sense, cure themselves.
Now, let’s look at the upper circuits. Ofttimes Man is referred to as the “problem solver” by anthropologists and sociologists alike. Problem solving is unique to Man. If you put food in a jar, even close relatives of Man, monkeys for instance, can’t figure out how to get the food out of the container. What makes Man the problem solver? It’s the upper circuits.
Now, here’s the one-two punch. What untreatable problems would you have were it not for the upper circuitry to begin with? The intellect, the problem solving ability, is THE thing that separates Man from the lower circuit operations. Yet, what untreatable problems would you have were it not for the upper circuits? The kind of problems that really plague you are upper circuit problems. You don’t have to worry about going hungry, about not having water to drink, about not having sex to the detriment of your health. For all intents and purposes those are not your problems. The kinds of everyday problems you think are real important — your family problems, job problems, pack position problems — do you think that any of them would still be a problem if you didn’t think about them?
If you were really, truly hungry, so hungry that when you saw a picture of food, spit slid from your mouth, if you were that hungry and you quit thinking about it, you would still be hungry. If you were very thirsty and someone distracted you, or you decided to stop thinking about your thirst, you would still be thirsty. But is there anything else, anything that does not fit in the category of food, water, sleep, your immediate health or sex, is there anything that if you stopped thinking about it, would still be a problem? I’ll tell you. You wouldn’t have the problem. Is that weird?
Now, you may not have jumped up yelling, “Hallelujah, I’ve seen the light. That’s it! That’s what I came here for,” but if you were my fictitious reasonably insane man or woman, that is exactly what would happen. To some potential people that would be it. Maybe it would take them 15 seconds or so, but they would squint their eyes without squinting them, exclaim, and then get up, leave and say, “I’ll write you some day.” That would be it. No matter what kind of problem you have, if it is not one of the lower circuit problems that treat themselves, it is not a problem as long as you do not think about it.
Your greatest fear may be that you will go hungry, that you’ll end up a bag lady or bag man with no place to live and nothing to your name. But you are not going on the streets. You’re just fooling yourself. Anyone attracted to This Thing would have to be purposely dumb and stupid in this country, in this day and time to actually go hungry. What you worry about is your position in the pack.
Every problem you’ve got, as serious as they are, (yes, there, there, I know they are serious), you should recognize as a problem that lies in the upper circuits. These problems are uniquely human which is another way of saying that they reside uniquely in the upper circuits, not the lower circuits. Problems only exist if they can be named, if they can be worded, if you can think about it. Conversely, if you can’t think about it, it’s no problem. It’s just not. It’s like somebody telling their mate, “I can’t go on like this,” and they describe the great bouts of depression they’re going through. The other person says, “Gee, I had no idea this was going on. I had no idea we were having a problem.” Exactly! If you are not thinking about it, if you have never thought about it, it is no problem. It can’t be.
In order to have a problem, it has to be outside the lower circuit problems we’ve already covered, and if it is outside that, you have to be able to think about it for it to be a problem. You have to be able to think in sentences about how it is “driving you crazy” and “making you depressed.” There you are reading a magazine article about modern relationships and the Partnership goes, “Yeah, that’s what’s happening to me. I’ve got this problem.”
If it’s in the lower circuits and you are halfway sane, those problems will treat themselves. You can discuss food, compliment the chef or say, “Thanks for the glass of water,” but it is not necessary. It requires no thought. Thought does not precede hunger. This is so clear cut that it is almost a true dichotomy, almost. Thought is not necessary to produce, to satisfy, to even enter into the problem of hunger, thirst, sleep, self preservation, or sex.
Conversely, there is almost an absolute line above which you are dealing with an upper circuit problem, a “uniquely human problem,” a problem that animals do not have, for instance, interpersonal relationships and depression. I am telling you outright that without the absolute continuing support of the upper circuits not only would you not have the problems to start with, you would not be ordinarily, uniquely human and you could not persevere in the problem. It would simply go away.
You can check this any time. You can verify it any time because it is going on continually. I don’t care what the problem is, if you don’t think about it, there is no problem. Here you are sitting around, driving your car, mulling on the problem, thinking about it, wrestling with it, whatever genteel terms you care to use. The problem is in your upper circuits, part of your consciousness. You and the Partnership assure one another that if you just think about it long enough you can work it out. You sit there and worry about it, and consider all kinds of changes, but what you suffer from is Bad Memory. If you had any memory at all you would realize that you have been thinking that same thing day in and day out for as long as you can remember.
This is not a psychological condemnation of Man. It is not a psychological trick. This is a fact. You have got the library, the information, the machinery. All you have to do is look at it. You are not thinking anything new and yet you and the Partnership will say, “I am. The problem between me and my spouse is getting worse and I don’t think about it the same way I did three years ago because it is not the same problem. Things have changed.”
If I was dumb enough to get in a tree at the City limits and holler all this down into the City, anybody that heard me would scream, “Idiot! Fig brain!” But if I told them to check it, if I told them to quit thinking about their problem and they did it for a moment, right before they started thinking about it again I could ask them where the problem was, and they would have to say, if they could do it at all, “Gee, it went away.” Then, of course, they would come back to their senses and go, “Hey, come on now!”
This may sound funny to you and make you laugh, but in another sense it is strange and almost disturbing. Maybe you laugh at my examples and take some notes, but what are you going to do, what is going to happen? I’m talking to you people, just this handful of people. For you to believe that you sweat blood over your problems, to sit around by yourself immersed in problems — now, I’ve never laughed at anyone’s problem directly — I know the basis of it, I can feel it, I know exactly what it is. It is not that it is a joke, it is simply an upper circuit problem. You must see the validity completely, that everything below the upper circuit treats itself and everything else as an upper circuit problem. You would not have the problem were you not human.
When you are hungry or horny you can satisfy the problem, completely. There is an immediate treatment. But, is there any such occasion with personal problems? No. Every personal problem that is yours and yours alone fits into the upper circuits. It cannot treat itself and there seems to be no immediate treatment.
Now, in the City they have answers for that. They’ll tell you, “The basis of the problem is in the unconscious mind so I’ve got to go into analysis, which is another problem since I can’t afford it.” And for those in a Time Zone a little behind the one we live in, people still believe that problems are brought on by not living the correct religious life. “I’m being dominated and tortured by demons and evil spirits.”
I will repeat this just one more time because it’s too potent, too dangerous and it is like throwing pearls before swine, it devalues the currency to repeat it too much. Whatever your personal problems are, you have to think about them in order for them to exist. You can begin to slap yourself around by realizing that, “Every personal problem that I’ve got must be thought about, or it simply goes away.” It can begin to slap you around without me being there and once you See it, See how simple it is, you then know how to treat yourself. Of course, once you get your mind clear you realize, “Well hell, all he said was ‘if you don’t think about it, you won’t think about it.’ Big deal!” Big deal indeed.
See if you can take this and fly with it. If problems don’t exist as long as you don’t think about them, then there are two possibilities: either the problem is separate from you, for example, based on someone else’s behavior, or, there really is no such thing as a problem in the upper circuits. Is the problem that “my husband,” or, “my wife drinks and it’s making me tense and miserable”? Or, is there no such thing as an upper circuit problem and it’s only thinking about problems that is the problem? That just flies in the face of the upper circuits. The upper circuits will protest: “You don’t have to live with my husband!” But, are there actually problems out there?
This is not unlike the guy who carried a defective battery from desk to desk in the service department. He saw the problem as the defective battery, but each person at the desk saw the problem as the guy yelling, “Who do I see about this battery? I want some satisfaction!” They’ll tell the guy, “That ain’t my job. Go see the assistant manager.” The guy leaves and as far as they are concerned the problem is gone. Their problem wasn’t the battery, it was the guy yelling at them. The guy’s problem was not the battery, it was his errant expectations. But, the battery was not the problem. That may seem like a really hard wired example, but what if you apply that to your seemingly more personal problems?
If you don’t think about it, it is not a problem. If you get good at it you’re left with the question, “What does that say about what the problem was in the first place? Is there any such thing as a problem outside of me, outside of anyone? Or, are all problems in thinking about problems?” At that point, the time would be right upon you to begin to use the Look Around Method internally. You would look around, not just each time you walk into a new area, but to look around internally. There are no upper circuit problems. There are no personal problems that will withstand simply looking around internally. I guarantee it.
It is a kind of 4-D expansion of my term Medevesqo, cure by inquiry. If you constantly examine, “What’s going on here?” internally, you find out there ain’t nothing going on. The only thing going on is, “Oh, I see it’s all quiet on the eastern, western, southern and northern front. No problems here.” All you have to do is look around internally.
It’s really too weird for words. It’s not so weird that I would come out and tell you, “I’m going into a trance to channel for Ronald Reagan.” I just told you something and some of you see that, “Hey, that’s true. Everything I call a problem is absolutely tied to the upper circuits and if I didn’t think about it the problem wouldn’t exist. It’s like it went away, like I said, ‘Be back in a second,’ and slipped away and it left. I got involved in something else, good sex, a good meal, sat back and went Aaaaah.” Then someone says, “You may feel good now, but what about your husband?” “Oh that.” So then you’re back to it. But once a potential Revolutionist realized that the problems vanish, they would continually use the Look Around Method, internally.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but what if you hear what I’m talking about and it strikes you all over, “Yeah, that’s true and I should look around continually.” Then why is it you can’t? It is almost as though you get a glimpse of something and try to make a move and this big old foot, with the whole weight of creation, suddenly shifts and falls on top of you and you are back to where you were.
Another way to look at it would be Bad Memory. You simply can’t remember to look around. I could get sarcastic and tell you, “Forget bad memory, you enjoy suffering and you just won’t give it up.”
You should be able to see that all upper circuit problems halt and vanish if you stop thinking about them. They will stay vanished for as long as a smart aleck Argentine who criticized the army. They will stay vanished as long as you don’t think about them. The question then is, “If that is true, why is it I will go back to thinking about it?” But, that’s a Daffy Duck question. You tell me why. “Why?” Then, I’ve got a better question: “How in the world can you ever face up to repeating, or bringing a problem back up to me, to yourself, to anyone, once you realize that you wouldn’t have this great pressing problem if you didn’t think about it?”
Is that weird or not? I remind you, problems are misnamed. What you see as a problem is also only a partial reflection of what is going on in the Vivus Machina. You are only aware of a piece of the great machinery of Life itself. But one place you can affect the fact that you only have a piece of it is, to not think about that which cannot treat itself. The body can treat itself, the lower circuits can treat themselves, in a sense heal themselves. The upper circuitry cannot heal itself. The upper circuitry is the problem solver. But, remember to ask yourself: “All right great problem solver, the problem that I am thinking about right now — I wouldn’t even have it were it not for you to begin with.” And then think about the old one-two punch — Life has done it again. Thank you Life, thank you, thank you.
For those of you that still don’t know what to call This Thing, I made up a new acronym: W.E.T.H.T.I. — Whatever The Hell This Is. So there! That was a little humorous aside to let you catch your breath for a moment.
Here’s something, real quick, that has to do with energy. Little pieces of this keep popping up, but in everyday life there is no common knowledge of this. Here it is: you can produce energy, apparently new energy, by expending energy.
All of you can test this. Some of you have probably stumbled upon it and had no upper circuit description for it. Let’s say you are out running and you usually run three miles a day at the same pace. By the time you get done with three miles you’re completely worn out, the last eighth of a mile you’re counting the steps, plodding along and you barely make it. You feel good, but the end of the three miles comes up and your energy is depleted. You feel you could not run another step. All the energy has run out.
You can apparently produce more energy by increasing the energy output right then. Increase the speed at which you are running. Increase it right then and what you will find is you apparently have more energy by expending energy.
There is a physiological basis for this, but there is more than that. There is also something that would probably be of more immediate interest and perhaps assistance to you. It is breaking habit. It is dipping into the obviously irrelevant. “Now that is insane. How could you get new energy by expending energy?” But try it and you will see that it works. By breaking habit, by going against your established patterns you gain access to a kind of parallel energy source. By doing the very thing that would seem to be at the very least, irrelevant, if not insane, you get more energy. If you’re slowing down because you’re tired, speed up and will get untired. That is a simple fact — check it tomorrow.
This extends far beyond running. Go into the upper circuits and think about it. The very things that seem to wear you out in the upper circuits, including the blues, your feelings, your problems, the way you’re mistreated, the way you’re depressed, frightened and disappointed. You operate at a certain speed when you are having these feelings, the same way that you run at a certain pace. You jog with these feelings. You jog with the way in which you think about the feelings. You actually think about the way that you feel that you feel. You do it all at a certain speed, with a certain habit pattern. If you change it, if you go against it in any way, you get a surprise. You will have new energy.
I bring this up in part because some of you when first exposed to this say things like, “Well, I hear this and sometimes I’m very enthused and I feel like I’m making some kind of progress. But then I go through these periods that I seem to be almost without energy. How can I get it back? What can I do to get more energy?” I’m telling you what to do: run faster. Of course, you can’t continue literally, to run faster and faster and faster. But then you can run differently, change the way you hold your arms, run with your arms crossed, run with them over your head. Put more emphasis on your left leg for a while — until it becomes habit. Then you’ll start getting tired again. At that point start to throw your weight on your right leg. Then try to run real funny, although, I suggest, not through real Red Circuit neighborhoods. You can get energy by expending energy. Try it.