Going Within (5 page)

To me, this basic principle appears to be at work throughout the world. If we are not in harmony with ourselves, how can we possibly be in harmony with anyone else, much less the world we inhabit? We want to lead lives that are whole, without sorrow, anger, fear, stress, and anxiety, yet we continue to define ourselves by these negative outlooks. We seem to be ignorant of, and even threatened by, more positive perceptions. Indeed, some people would call positive perceptions sentimental or unrealistic. Intellectuals who achieve personal security only in being cynical scoff at love and the softer emotions as being mere sentimentality. Good is not in the cards for the human race, they say. Just look at our history, they say. (What they are
really
saying is, “I don’t want to risk belief, or love, or anything kindly, because I can’t bear to be hurt, or betrayed, or rebuffed, or made to look foolish.”) The human race has indeed had a bloody history. So what do we do? Keep allowing, or
causing
, it to happen? Or try, each one of us individually, to accept the internal recognition of responsibility, to believe in and make real the power
that each of us possesses,
knowing that what one single person does can indeed make a difference.

This so-called New Age then is the age that challenges us to use our power to create whatever happiness we want and need in our lives. As many of the great teachers have said,
it takes a great deal of effort to be unhappy.
Why
not
use the effort in the other direction?

As we become more enlightened about ourselves, the more we manifest (live, act out, dispense) happiness. The more we manifest happiness, the more society will improve.

So what are some of the factors holding us back?

Up to now most of the progress defined in our society has revolved around the great advances in technology. Indeed, we have made giant strides in translating our intelligence into technology, to the benefit of a great many people, to such a degree that we are now using technology as the medium, and the measure, of our evolution. Now we are suffering the consequences of making technology a little tin God.

Technology has outstripped our knowledge of self. I remember reading a report on the world’s most impoverished nation. It was researched by a Western economist. In the view of this authority, the world’s most impoverished nation was the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan (a Shangri-la of a place I visited years ago). When presented with the facts of the report, the king of Bhutan said, in effect, “Bhutan may have technological impoverishment but we have
spiritual richness and happiness.” We clearly have different standards of measurement. The Bhutanese would wonder why man should produce any product if it reduces spirituality. We would wonder why we should be concerned with spirituality if it doesn’t generate product.

Technology has become the way Western man perceives progress. But technology itself is a reflection of how we see ourselves. If the negativity is in us, it will appear somewhere in our technology. It is inescapable. Through technological progress we are moving faster and faster … toward what? We have taken the concept of the magic carpet and, bolt by bolt, turned it into an airplane—but the magic has gone out of it. The magic has been replaced by hurry, crowding, frustration, anger, even ulcers and heart attacks, many, many accidents, and a harried, embattled feeling of alienation from the original purpose of the magic of flying … to experience being above the fray.

I think we must learn to place technology in its proper framework and perspective. It is a tool for comfort for the physical betterment of
all
people—it is not a mark of evolutionary development. There is no innate wisdom in technology. No matter how sophisticated, or how clever, or how fast it is, even artificial intelligence in computer form still requires human control, the application of humane thinking. Do we really want computer-directed living? Some scientists are pleading for more “humanization” of
technology, warning that conscious awareness relative to what we are producing technologically is a dire necessity if we are to avoid obliterating ourselves. They ask for a redirection of technology to include consciousness and spirituality because without it we may well destroy the planet.

We cannot divorce what we are producing from what we are. We create technology out of the vision we have of ourselves. If we are blind in our conception of ourselves we will create a blind technology. Our technology reflects disharmony with natural laws because we ourselves are not in harmony with natural laws. The technology merely reflects our own neuroses, our own demented drive for power, our own sense of chaos, our distorted behavior patterns: violence-directed mechanisms on the one hand, frantic overproduction on the other. We need to free ourselves of destructive patterning. We need to see the logic of order, in man, in nature, in technology, in our world. Or, as Krishnamurti said: “Order is morality,” and, “The content of our consciousness is a product of our conditioning.” We are a result of our own pasts. Knowledge is also a product of the past, but thought alone is now inadequate to solve our problems. We can’t do it just with our heads. Consciousness of a greater whole is necessary now—awareness of ourselves so that we can come into balance with our own perfectly balanced universe.

Science itself now says it cannot separate the reality of the environment from the reality of our experience;
in fact, that there is no such thing as separateness from anything. If we create that separateness we destroy ourselves
and
our environment.

To me that says, we have to make it together. The chain of the human race is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each individual to learn and understand himself or herself by raising his or her conscious awareness. As a
first
step. Resistance to awareness only creates more chaos, and chaos is against natural law, against the glorious balance of the universe. Why do we want to fight the universe?

So each of us has a decision to make. Do I make the effort to understand the grand design by harmonizing my own inner design? If I do, then the question is, how?

And the answer is, not easily. If we really want to get right with ourselves and right with the world, we must be prepared to
work
at it, to be wide open with our minds, patient with our understanding, kind to our bodies, and infinitely loving in our hearts.

As I realized when I began: there is so much to learn.

I have tried to share with you some of the things I’ve learned (and am still learning) and some of the methods that help me “go within.” In continuing to read this book, I suggest that you don’t do it all at one time. Let yourself become accustomed to the new concepts. In fact, I hope you will stop and give yourself time to assimilate by rereading. Practice the
meditations—and again, do it little by little. Let yourself feel deserving of relaxation, deserving of freedom from stress. If a lot of the information is too new to you, or too difficult to absorb, let it alone for a while. You can always go back and make another attempt at understanding when your personal exploration has progressed.

With all I have done in my life I have come to the conclusion that the most important journey I have taken is the one into myself. Or, as Yeats said, “It is not the most important journey, it is the
only
journey.”

3

Dealing with the “Reality” of Stress

A moment’s insight can often he worth a life’s experience.

O
ne of the immediate results at each seminar, and particularly following the talk about the New Age, was always a spate of questions having to do with real problems with which various individuals were trying to cope.

Rather than retelling each and every question (which, in any case, would not be within the compass of a single book), let me try to describe more generalized situations, but using, as I must, myself as a prime example of how things can go wrong—and right.

I have come to realize that “reality” is basically that which each of us perceives it to be. That is, what may be real to me is not necessarily real to a friend, much less a stranger. We each live in a separate world of reality.

I know how abstract and esoteric that sounds, but it is the single most important truth I have learned.
And it has helped me immeasurably in reducing anxiety and stress in my life.

I function in a profession where stress and anxiety are often considered necessary to good work and creativity. Furthermore, the
goal
is the high priority, not the process by which one achieves that goal. What shows and wins is what matters. The end, then, comes to justify the means, and as long as the priority objective is accomplished, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

In the meantime, the joy of interaction on a human level is usually sacrificed to the demands of time and money, and the act of stopping to smell the roses is nearly unheard of—unless the roses are part of the deal.

Nor is my particular profession different from many, many others. Goal achievement is the name of the game.

Even now, in many ways, I’m still goal oriented—the conditioning has been long, going back to well before my professional life. But I
am
learning to say no to something that means success at the price of inner peace. I am learning to alter my perceptions and therefore change my “reality.”

I arrived at this point of view after years of participating in movie making and stage work as though they were the Normandy Invasion. I finally asked myself, “Where is the war?” Pressure and stress were no longer creative for me—on the contrary, I was beginning to notice that the harmony that resulted
when professionals worked well and lovingly together was potentially far more creative than combustible pressure and “motivating” hysteria.

I arrived at the same point of view in relation to friends, family, and fun. With each personal drama I began to see that stress wasn’t necessary if I chose not to allow myself to experience it. The script changed if I changed my perspective on the “scenes” around me. The
reality
of the scenes themselves shifted as I shifted my outlook on what I was observing. I found that no matter what unpleasantness I found myself involved with, if I stopped and asked myself, “Why have I created this? What am
I
learning from this?” the circumstance became not a tragedy but an enlightening experience.

This was not easy when a mugger lunged at me on First Avenue with the clear intention of doing whatever he deemed necessary to get my handbag. I remember my flash reaction that I, by God, did not like playing the part of a victim. Instinctively I changed my “part” and lunged back at him, shrieking like the Wicked Witch of the West until the mugger thought
my
insanity was something he didn’t want to tangle with. I changed the script.

I began then to view almost anything negative as a question of
my
point of view, which I could alter. I watched myself as closely as though I were a character in my own play. Then I’d ask myself, “What am I learning about me?” When a producer would renege on a promise, or a director would humiliate me or
someone else in front of the crew, or when an airline would lose my luggage, or a cabdriver was rude, or a friend or a lover did something that really hurt my feelings, I would ask myself what I was learning from it and wonder if I needed to learn about myself in
that
fashion any longer. I found that when I took the responsibility for what happened to me and claimed the power to have created such a circumstance in the first place, I could then give it up. To continue to blame someone whom I considered to be a culprit was to abdicate my own power. I was, on some level, drawing the unpleasantness to me, participating fully in the throes of the conflict, and, more than anything else, creating the environment for it to happen so that I could learn more about myself.

When I began to experiment with this shift in perception, a new world of positive attitudes began for me. It was as though I was constantly opening up windows onto new landscapes.

I first noticed the phenomenon with a friend of mine who was sick. I felt helpless in trying to help her. I didn’t approve of the drugs she was taking. I felt she was giving up and had adopted a negative attitude toward life and her situation. I became despondent about her future. Then it occurred to me that maybe I had created her in my life for a reason. What was I learning from that then? Why did I need her to play such a part in my play? Was she a mirror for me? Was she going through an experience that I
did not want to go through myself? Was I observing her as though I were observing myself?

Suddenly the depth of such a new perspective hit me, and as I absorbed the truth of it, I began to work into a system of thought in which I pictured myself releasing her from her pain because I didn’t want it anymore. In one month, she was better and off the painkilling drugs.