Preparing to Play a Larger Role

From a talk by Tim Jackins at a workshop in New York City, USA, September 2021

This is one of those rare times in human history when existing conditions are dictating that society must change. It isn’t simply that some people want this. The objective conditions are making it necessary that big changes happen. 


Society has to change soon. We don’t have to worry about the necessity—we get to concentrate on how to change it. How can we move ourselves and others in good directions? I think we will need to take action out in the open. Are we in good enough shape [condition] for that? It’s not entirely clear. However, we do know how to get in good enough shape. 


NOTICING WHAT WE NEED TO WORK ON

The challenges can make us feel like what is wrong is something new. However, what is wrong has been wrong for a long time. There is not some new evil that has shown up suddenly. Irrationality has deeply affected how human beings have lived together at least since societies formed. This has made it difficult for people to think broadly about everybody’s interest. Our goal is to get everybody in shape to do that, and there are many things we can do in that direction.


As society collapses, there are lots of snags [obstacles], not all of them large. There is more restimulating pressure on all of us. We are more easily restimulated, including with each other. We are more often short tempered [easily angered]. We can feel justified in acting on how we feel, even though we know that acting based on restimulation doesn’t lead to thoughtful results. It’s good to notice what gets restimulated, so we know what to work on, so we won’t be confused as the restimulations continue to happen. 


DISCHARGING, AND THINKING OF NEW IDEAS

There will be times when it’s important to move quickly. I don’t think this is one of those times. We mostly feel far more urgent than is warranted. It’s useful to think of things ahead of time, so we have options in our minds, but we do have time to think. And we can discharge, so we have new responses rather than acting rigidly out of urgency.


It’s time to prepare to play a larger role and enjoy playing a larger role. We can choose the perspective that we get to play a big role in one of the most significant changes that will ever happen to our species. We couldn’t ask for something more challenging and interesting, and probably more satisfying, than to help humans in this period. And we have some of the best tools with which to do it. 


Societies are in an interesting phase of development. So far, societies have always been coercive. Although people tried to build societies that weren’t based on economic exploitation, ones that would benefit everybody and not exploit anyone, those societies were also coercive. People were made to do things. People didn’t know of any other way to build a society. It seemed impossible to reach minds and achieve common agreement. The difficulties were recognized, but there weren’t good solutions.


Enforcing new perspectives was supposed to transform minds. Changing the environment does help people step out of their distresses, but that alone is inadequate. People need to discharge the old distresses. Then it is much easier to think of new ideas and reach new agreements.


FACING OUR OLD DISTRESSES

Power is about human minds. It’s about getting our minds back to where they can function—to where we can think about everything that needs to be thought about, consider everyone that needs to be considered, and communicate broadly with wider and wider sections of the world’s population. Doing this is a big task. It has never been done well before, but we have a chance to take some good steps in that direction.


How do we get ourselves in shape to enjoy the challenge? How do we learn from it? How do we give everyone the chance to move forward? I think we need to look at the distresses that were installed on us early in our lives—when we were helpless, didn’t have physical ability, didn’t have enough information to try things and put our thinking into action. (We collect information much more quickly when we can experiment.) 


In the beginning we were dependent, and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and disappointment got installed. We felt like the world made no sense, that it was irrational, that it couldn’t change. And our caretakers were not as we’d hoped they would be, because they had gone through so many hard times.


For me, feelings of “unchangingness” were installed right after I was born. The standard practice in the United States at the time was to keep a newborn baby in the hospital nursery for a week, alone with all the other unhappy new arrivals. During that week, distresses got frozen in my mind. I know to battle them, but it’s still a battle.


We have material [distress] that got put in very early and is chronic. We are used to it [accustomed to it]. People have been used to it for centuries. It seems normal. It seems unavoidable. We live in the dull ache of it.


We try to hold it down. We try to dampen its volume and magnitude. If we ever turn and look behind us, we see it, but we try not to look. The distress recording says that we can’t do anything about it, so we just drag on with it. We bend forward and pull it. We don’t look back. 


At some point, we in RC understand that we can discharge chronic distress and not just pull it along with us for the rest of our days. That’s a hopeful thought. But to actually do the work, we can’t stay in the dull ache of the chronic material. It can feel dangerous and unproductive, but we have to turn and look at it. We have to see how bad it was. 


NOT RELIVING THE DISTRESS IN THE PRESENT


We have tried to live the best life we could while having accepted the limitations and defeat as permanent. In the past we lacked the resources to fully discharge the hurts and resolve them. But now we have created what was missing. We understand distress patterns. We have built relationships that are very different from the disappointing early ones. We understand more fully how to stand against distress.


I was watching some video clips of my father, from different decades. It was interesting to watch him age. It was also interesting to watch his perspective develop. He came to understand things more fully, just like we all have. He came to understand that our minds are more powerful than how we’ve felt them to be, and that we are functioning much better than we were before we began to discharge, even though we often don’t “feel” that we are.


But even though there have been significant changes, we are still confused by the feelings from the past. I have recently noticed in myself and others that we can say the words, say that the distress is only in the past, but we still struggle to stand separate from the feelings and understand that they have nothing to do with us now—nothing, entirely nothing.


We can look at how big a struggle it was, how hard it was, and discharge on it without living it in the present. We know that. We say it over and over. We tell it to our fundamentals classes. We believe it. But I think we can get better at stepping away and watching ourselves. We can look at how hard things were at some points without reliving them in the present.


I think we have mostly gone after [pursued] and cut off the weeds at the level of the soil, leaving the roots in place. It’s a lot more work to pull out the roots, to remove the distress entirely so it doesn’t come back. It’s tempting to rip it off at the soil level, so we can’t see it and it doesn’t affect things for the moment. But I think our job is to pull out the roots of the distresses that have plagued us for so long. Doing this means allowing the discharge process to operate. We can get stuck in explaining our distress instead of discharging it. 


We also tend to say, “I feel,” instead of “I felt.” We automatically bring it forward, as if it were real now. It’s possible to look at the distress and see how bad it was, and discharge the feelings, without giving our minds to it in the present. Our minds can look at even the worst things that happened to us without being consumed by them. It was real back then. It is only a recording now. 


(Present Time 206, January 2022)


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00