Out of the Outcome Business
Audio = Stream from the arrow or download from the dots
AKS/News Items = none
Summary = See Below
Excursion / Task = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk #338 May 3, 1988 – 1:20
Notes by TK
C,D, E, forces. C & D never have enough info/data/energy to produce change, yet they are the only two visible to man. If you’re not totally dissatisfied with a particular situation, your successful change away from it to another “better” condition would be to that same degree unsatisfying; the opposite condition can never have more perfection than the original one did. Any attempt to change the status quo is an insult: the Insulting Force at work! A ‘sole proprietorship would never attempt change –only a partnership can covet change and thus insult itself.
To still have thoughts re: some previous change means you didn’t do it right; didn’t do it completely. There would not be continuing mechanical memory about a totally effected change; mechanical memory is always a reconstruction for purposes of analysis. The motivation for past deeds imperfectly, incompletely done = guilt. Mechanical memory is about guilt. At the time of the deed, the only Yellow Circuit input is characterized by: “will I get caught?”, i.e., a behavioral question vs. a motivation-morality one.
The Real Revolutionist would ignore such memories, treat them like flies landing on the brain: brush them off, don’t take them personally, seriously. The Real Revolutionist should not be in the “outcome business”. Outcomes are dead-ends, results. They can’t wait for a payoff: the partner who asks/waits for outcomes is totally ignorant and the Real Revolutionist shouldn’t give it any explanations.
If it could understand what is happening it would help, not hinder. Since it can’t do this and awaits outcomes, that‘s why the Real Revolutionist should get out of the ‘outcome business”.
Paradigm presents 0:49 to 1:20.
end 1:28
Excursion
Excursion for NP: go to a public place and sit near someone who you can strike up a casual conversation with easily. Bring up current political events or person and criticize them to your conversant as if it’s your opinion. Then completely reverse opinion with a rational, reasonable rebuttal as if it were a low-level epiphany of some sort, then leave quickly . Be aware.
Transcript
GET OUT OF THE OUTCOME BUSINESS
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 338, May 3, 1988
I’m going to pull a handful of things out of the hat tonight, but first a reminder: In the observable, 3-D world, you could look upon all events as being triaxial, though they’re not normally seen that way.
I have referred to the forces, the persuasions, the winds (which is really the best name, in a sense, because there is no such thing as “the wind,” and the wind coming from the west is not any different from wind coming from the south, or a northeaster, right?), and for the benefit of ordinary consciousness, I have referred to “C, D and E,” ad-hoc-ly speaking. Everything that takes place has these three supports or forces, or winds — everything. But ordinary consciousness is wired-up to only see two. If you feel smoking is a bad habit and you decide to quit smoking, something in you resists giving up the habit. Or, you seem to have a bad temper and think, “I’d like to calm down,” but some part of you seems to want to continue to get mad. You can see what seems to be the immediate resistance to change; you can observe two forces, C and D, at work. In times past, people looked at C and D as being good and evil, and for ad hoc purposes I have even described them as constructive and destructive. But such descriptions are all ad hoc, because what seems to be a constructive wind from one view can appear to be destructive from another view.
Then we have “E.” In my jocular way, I’ve referred to that as the E-relevant; that which seems to have no bearing on what is now taking place. Once you realize what I’m talking about, you can picture the E in any situation — say the good guys against the bad guys — as anything that doesn’t fit into that binary scenario.
I want to bring your attention back to several things I’ve mentioned over the past year, in light of some things I’ve been discussing recently. First, there is never sufficient energy/information in any ordinary C and D situation to facilitate change. This is, if you can Hear it, a hard-surfaced scientific reality. When you see a situation, you see only the two obvious, blatant, ever-present forces; there’s me wanting to do something, and there’s whatever stands in my way. That’s the situation, in the ordinary dance, and there is never, never enough energy there to change the situation. You always have insufficient data to even figure out how to go about changing.
Can any of you see that there is a scientific proof of why change is not ordinarily possible? Nothing can ever change. Nothing, nothing, nothing. You can, apparently, pirouette around and around with yourself. You can apparently go through a dance of, “I’ll change, no I won’t, I’m too tired, yes I will, I’ll do it tomorrow, no day after tomorrow…” But there is simply not enough energy available. All of the available energy — all the information — is being taken up by what seems to be your urge to go from here to there and running into the ever-present resistance in your way. There always seem to be these two factors, the two winds blowing. You aim toward the coast, but then a wind from the southwest blows and keeps you away. In this scenario, nothing will ever move.
Of course, I hope you realize I’m not just talking about breaking some habit like smoking — the habit you’re trying to break is much worse than that. In fact, it’s so bad I don’t even want to go into it.
Ok, here’s something else. If anything is not total (how about a good bad habit?), then its opposite, if you could bring that opposite about, would also be lacking. If you could experience the opposite of anything that is not total and complete, that opposite would be incomplete as well. I’m telling you that in the strange, revolutionary world, this is a mathematical reality. Take as an example some minor thing people call a “bad habit.” You might believe a certain bad habit you have is keeping you from some better condition. Yet, if that habit is not totally bad to you — not completely bad — then any abandonment of the habit will not be totally satisfying.
If any of you can Hear this, it explains a lot out in the ordinary world that goes under the name, “Well, I just didn’t do that right,” or, “Maybe that wasn’t such a bad habit after all.” Whatever you’re confronted with an apparently C and D situation — where you’re trying to go from here to there, from X to Y — if you are not absolutely, thoroughly desirous of moving from .paspot X, and you succeed in moving to spot Y (which you expect to be an improvement), you will find Y lacking to some degree.
Maybe your bad habit is that you have a few drinks on the way home from work every day. You believe if you’d stop drinking you’d feel a lot better and be able to run twice as far. Then you stop drinking, for whatever reason, and find that none of what you believed is true. You find out Life always arranges these little — for lack of a better word — clubs of reformed people who will say, “Yeah, since I stopped drinking…” “Yeah, since I stopped smoking…” “Yeah, since I lost weight, I feel so much better and I can run the triathalon!” But the reality is that if you were not totally desirous of change, you’re not going to feel satisfied.
Does anyone remember the “insulting factor”? Although I’ve never really discussed this, do you understand that all attempted change is insulting to the status quo? To believe that, “I should lose weight,” “I should quit blank,” “I should become a better person in general,” is the insulting factor at work. Consider what the person you are now thinks of all that. Of course, you can say, “Well, part of me agrees.” Sure, part of you agrees — that’s the part saying you should change. That’s not all of you, because if it were, you wouldn’t be wanting to change. If there were not a partnership inside — if you were a sole proprietorship — you wouldn’t want to change. There would be no part to want to change. So the idea of change is insulting to begin with.
I guess I should go ahead and make this really plain. Life is wired-up, through ordinary human consciousness, so that generally no person can ever be in a position of total condemnation. That is, no one ever totally wants to change. No person who drank too much or smoked too much has ever been in the position where every molecule in his or her body wanted to stop. Nobody — even when they’re spitting up blood and the doctor’s saying, “You’re going to stop or die,” — ever completely wants to change anything.
When a person says, “I’ve got to stop this,” perhaps 87% of his molecules may be wired-up to believe he should stop. But he still does not totally want to move from his position, under any conditions. All of you can scientifically verify this, in you. If you said, “I want to quit smoking,” and every molecule in you wanted to quit, you’d just quit. There would be nothing, nothing to discuss.
All of you have had the experience of making some change. Maybe the change wasn’t negative, in the sense of stopping a “bad habit”; maybe you’ve always felt you should go back to school and so you finally went to night school and got your degree. You make what seems to be an important change, yet it’s never really satisfying. I’m not trying to give you the blues, but you need to see the mathematical reason why this is so. You may apparently make a positive change, or abandon some negative aspect of you, but unless l00% of you wanted the change, it will not be satisfying. And you’re never dealing with l00%. You never completely wish to abandon the spot you’re in; you’re never completely motivated. So moving will never, never, never be totally satisfying.
City people are not wired-up to know or notice this; that’s part of the irritation which keeps things moving. People do finish school, or stop some habit, or go ahead and lose ten pounds. Then they wonder, “Did I do it right? Why are all these other people going around saying they did it and it made them really happy?” In other words, change is never like you think. There’s a piece missing, even if 98% of you wanted to change, so the best you’re going to feel is 98% happy. You might tell yourself, “Boy, 98% is great!” But it’s not. You are still going to be irritated; you’re still going to be pissed and less than totally satisfied with the apparent result.
Neuralize this: If you still think about something you once did, you did not do it right. Actually, there is one other possibility which should be obvious which often applies to people’s sexual daydreams — that you’ve simply never done it and probably never will, so you can continue to dream about it — but we’re not going into that tonight. If you still think about something you’ve done, you haven’t done it right, meaning, you did not do it totally and completely. If you had, you wouldn’t still think about it and you would not have recurring, automatic memory of the deed. Ordinary memory is just the continual flow of static and noise in the Yellow Circuit. If a deed is done but not done completely, the experience does not satisfy. That’s why, after the fact, memory continues to replay and question your behavior and, now that you’re a sophisticated up to date person, your underlying motivations.
At the time you did the deed, there was no questioning going on about your motivation. The most a city person ever experiences is a momentary hesitation, a split-second questioning along the lines of, “Will I get caught?” Assuming this is a behavior you want to engage in — to drink, to shoplift, to pinch someone on the subway, to do anything — your action is based on behavior, not motivation, and the only question is, “Am I going to have to pay for this later?” That’s all.
Since deeds in the city are never completely well done, then afterward your memory of the deed (which you wouldn’t have, if you’d done it well) is not just of the behavior. Your memory is about “motivation”; your memory is a reconstruction of “what made you do that,” and how the next time you’ll behave differently. What I want you to notice has to do with verbal memory. The only things you normally think about — the flow of what city people call “daydreams” — is the Life noise of your Yellow Circuit working when it’s not being specifically fed. This noise is a sign the circuitry is alive, just as breathing is a sign your lower circuitry is functioning. I suggest that you just study this — not for months or years — just be aware of the fact that you continually think about, remember, deeds already done.
Let’s really go down into the gutter, down to the level where many people experience what they call “guilt.” Think about all of the things you’ve done that you regret. When you think about the past — when you’re a victim of the automatic flow of Yellow Circuit memory — what percentage of what you’re thinking about has to do with your victories, the deeds you did that were really exemplary? How many pictures do you have of deeds that made you proud, of you carrying the avant-garde banner of good marching down the highway of Life? Notice your dreams are more like a rat going in and out of a hole.
Ordinary people have an explanation for this: “Well, of course, I remember the times I did things that were immoral, things that went against what I was taught and against the cultural norms.” There’s nothing wrong with that explanation, if you’re a child. I’m giving you a fuller explanation which begins to stretch this into the 4-D world. You don’t have these memories because your deeds were transgressions against some religion or cultural norm. They may have been, but that’s not the basis of your lingering memory. The reason you remember anything is that you did not do the deed completely.
As an aside, do you realize that anyone attempting to follow a religion in which there were gods and anti-gods would actually be pursuing that system if they could completely follow either one or the other side of the teaching? Meaning, if you could be totally “evil,” according to your religion’s teachings, that would be as effective as being totally “good.” That may sound strange, but the fact that it does just shows the limitations of ordinary, childish consciousness.
In the city, behavior and consciousness are limited in such a way that no one can apparently, completely, wholeheartedly, do something. Under ordinary city conditions, nobody can turn to an enemy and say, “I hate you with a vengeance, with a passion unequaled in my life, I hate you, I hate you!” Even if you say you hate — whatever hate is — you don’t really mean hate. If you did, you would simply destroy the person. Or, you would be so passionate, that it would scare them to death. You cannot do anything in the city l00%. Let’s assume that on a really perfect day, with hot muggy conditions, you could hate your worst enemy 99%. That’s still not good enough.
Once you glimpse how consciousness continues to replay those deeds that were not well done by you, why would you bother to tolerate those kinds of memories? Why would you entertain them at all? Such memories are like flies lighting on you, except they’re lighting on your brain. When you’re lying out in the backyard in the summertime and a fly lights on you, you just brush it off and it goes away. You can still almost feel its little feet tickling, and for a split second you knew it was there. But do you take that fly personally? Do you feel that, out of the whole universe, you were personally selected for that particular fly to annoy? The fly may come back and light on you again. But you can wave it off and what’s happened is no more than that. You don’t speculate about whether evil spirits or Jupiter’s fourth moon are responsible for the fly showing up. Unless you take memories personally, they are no more significant, no more a part of you, than flies in the summer.
You continually take memories and thoughts as being part of you, which just shows the limits of your knowledge of you. All you have to do is turn your head, shift your eyes and the thought will go away. It will come back again, but so what? All of the memories of all of the deeds you have incompletely done keep flying and lighting on your brain; you keep taking them personally, as being serious, as being problems. Your memory will never improve. There is no way to rehabilitate these memories; you cannot make 98% into l00%. But how many times have you entertained a memory about how you insulted your mother or she insulted you? How many hundreds of thousands of times have you thought about that, though the situation never gets any better or clearer or more understandable from all that thinking. Brush such thoughts away.
A revolutionist cannot be in the outcome business. Can you see any connection between this and what I have been describing? Your enterprise in This Thing should not be on the basis of any apparent outcome; whatever efforts you are making should be focused on efforts. Only ordinary people pursue what amounts to dead-end results. If you have some hyphens handy, you can put that down as “dead-end-end-results.” That’s what you’re dealing with, at the ordinary level, when you believe there is an outcome to your efforts — that there can be a period to the sentence — that given only the energy/information in a “C and D” dynamic, there will ever be a satisfactory conclusion.
Don’t take my word on this. Ask yourself, “Have I ever done anything in my life that had a totally satisfying conclusion?” The answer is, “No!” Once you get a glimpse of this ongoing illusionary enterprise, you should abandon the outcome business. To believe in this binary C and D dance in which there is never enough energy, always insufficient data, is unprofitable.
Ordinary consciousness does believe, “My efforts are going to lead to…” a big O — Outcome — or a big C — Conclusion. Information-wise, everyone is locked into this belief, licensed by the city in the outcome business. No one would get up the morning or make any effort whatsoever unless they believed in some big payoff. “If I quit drinking, I’ll feel so much better.” “Once I lose forty pounds, I’ll be a new person.”
What you must Remember is that, whatever the apparent outcome of your efforts, the outcome will never be any more complete or satisfying than the questionable condition you are in now. Only a Real Revolutionist has any understanding of this situation, which cannot be described using 3-D verbal logic. A revolutionist understands, “Whatever efforts I’m making, that’s the point.” He does not entertain questions from his own partnership, from his own mechanical memory, about “Why am I doing This?” Any part of you that says, “Why am I doing this, what is the payoff for all of this effort?” will never understand why. Remember, in dealing with such voices, that the opposite of an incomplete is still incomplete. The resisting force has no idea of why the first force is trying to do something. If it did, it would join in and would not be resisting. The resistance will never understand — never. That’s the binary dance. That’s why you might as well get out of the outcome business. There is no outcome! At least, not one that can be explained to the resistance.
Everything that apparently happens “out there,” can be used “in here.” Remember the old story about the Romans attacking the cultural center, the city of Masada. As the story goes, the city was built on a high plateau, the only access being a rope ladder. But the Romans laid siege at the bottom of the cliff, and were yelling for the citizens to come down and surrender. Finally, things reached the point where the city seemed destined to be overtaken, but the upper forces were fanatical, almost suicidal, in their resistance. History is full of such stories. You could picture this as the lower circuitry calling out to the upper circuitry to give up. Consider what would happen if the Romans did sack Masada (if the lower circuits took over)? They wouldn’t know what to do with the treasure. You would come back days later to find soldiers wrapping their lunch in beautiful paintings and burning manuscripts for fuel. That is what the lower forces do to the upper forces. I’m not describing “good” and “evil,” but two different worlds.
The “Romans” are there in you, as part of your memory. The lower circuitry in your nervous system is continually shouting, “Give it up!” And the upper circuits think they are the good guys and that there will be some satisfactory outcome to the battle. So you have a continual, binary dance within — what appears to be two forces in direct conflict — with no way out. In you, and in all of humanity, the lower forces seem to be always nipping at the heels of the upper, so that even if they surrender and jump down from the cliff, they can’t make a clean getaway. “Come back! Come back to paradise and be a happy carefree native!”
If the upper circuitry is not being fed, not getting some encouragement and pursuing creative activity — if you are not making effort — you will spend more and more time looking down and worrying: “They’re gaining on us! They’re older and stronger — what if the outcome of all this is that we lose?” Remember, you can’t be in the outcome business.