The First Law Again
I think that a reader may have given the wrong impression about belief and disease through this statement:
“the reason people get sick is because that’s what they want”.
Now think on this for a moment. Have you ever been sick or in pain and then said to yourself: “Man this is just what I want. I want to have my nose stuffed up. I want to not be able to breath… I want a good dose of diarrhea – I want to puke in the toilet.
Obviously none of us consciously want pain and disease. How about the unconscious then?
I may be the first to tell you this but there is no such thing as an unconscious desire, for desire can only be manifest through consciousness.
Let me rephrase the above statement in a way that I believe will be seen to be true by most of the members in the group.
“None of us want disease and pain, but disease and pain are often caused by what we want.”
When I was a kid I wanted and loved sugary products but at the same time I did not like feeling ill. I did not realize it at the time but all the sugar I ate made me feel good in the short term but ill in the long term.
Because what we want is often a thing that gives short term pleasure but long term pain our computer brain often takes these signals from us and takes the short term want as its prime directive.
Note: The important thing to understand about the computer brain is that it is not very smart. It is a great computer and storehouse of data but it has primitive reasoning powers. It always adds A+B to get C. It cannot look at the picture composed of A+D+F+G+K+M+P and get X as you and I can do consciously.
Our computer program in our computer brain thus takes in the input as “I want sugar – sugar is good – sugar is pleasure” and does its best to adjust its programming to cooperate with this desire. It does not recognize that “sugar brings long term discomfort,” for that would be seeing the big picture or coming up with X.
Sometimes illness does bring us some of the things we want – sympathy and attention, for instance.
Now if the computer brain receives the input as follows: “sympathy is good and illness brings sympathy,” then it will draw the simple conclusion that “illness is good,” and arrange an illness for you since that is what you seem to want.
Notice the word “seem” here. No one who is sane wants to be ill but your programming can misinterpret it because of conflicting or confusing desire messages that we send to it.
Now in the above case it is entirely possible that someone could apply the technique that the reader used to get rid of the illness. That is you could send a message to the internal programming telling it that you do not want to be ill.
In our above example the computer brain made the person ill to get sympathy – so what happens if you send it a message that you do not wish to be ill? Depending on other aspects of the data that is stored it could do one of two things.
(1) It could receive the “I do not want to be ill” as a mistake because illness is equated with sympathy and therefore you cannot want health because illness brings you sympathy and sympathy is good. It would therefore calculate that you wish to remain ill and keep your illness for you.
(2) It could receive the “I do not want to be ill” as correct and thus assist in your healing but at the same time conclude that the need for sympathy was a mistake and thus influence the program of your life so you no longer receive sympathy.
Now this (#2) may work out fine if you have outgrown the need for sympathy, but if you have not you may find your life as miserable living with little or no sympathy as you did living with an illness. If your computer brain receives strong input that this new health seems to be a mistake because you are more unhappy than before then it will resume the old program of illness and then see if this makes you happier. If you seem to be happier being ill than being healthy it will make the simple interpretation that you desire illness above all else and it will cooperate to keep you in that condition because it seems that this is your desire.
But is this what you really want?
No, of course not, but your internal programming is deceived into thinking so because of wrong messages sent.
Another member writes: “I believe that there are no judgments unless you make up one…”
Yes this is true, but life is composed of millions of judgments. Without judgment there would not even be consciousness.
Below is a quote from a previous post:
When you think of it, it is silly to say we should not judge. As soon as you wake in the morning you make a judgment as to whether to get up or sleep a while longer. When you get in the shower you make a judgment as to when you are clean enough to get out.
When you eat breakfast you make a judgment as to what you will have and how much.
When you drive to work and are a little late you make a judgment as to whether you are going to speed or not.
Finally you get to work and meet the new guy who was just hired. He wants to be your best friend and now you make a judgment on whether or not you want this type of personality in your life.
Then your boss wants you to dig up some dirt on the boss above him. You judge your boss to be wrong and refuse.
We could go on and on here but hopefully we get the point. Judgments are not wrong. Only wrong judgments are wrong.
Every quality and ability has a positive and negative side to it.
When the Bible and A Course in Miracles talks about judgment in a negative light, they are talking about negative, limiting judgments.
Example: The kid tells the parent he is going to get straight A’s next time around and the parent says: “You’ve failed miserably in the past, so you’re going to fail again.”
This is a cruel and limiting judgment.
A positive judgment would be something like this: “I have seen you make progress in the past when you make an effort and I do believe you have it in you to dramatically improve your grades.”
Here the parent made a judgment on the positive possibilities of the child and in this case judgment is a good thing.
Thus we see that making judgments is not the problem, but using the negative aspect of judgment can be.
The reader continues:
“and “you are betrayed because you betrayed someone in the past” doesn’t make sense in that light. It’d suggest clear “universal judgment” directly from the Higher Self, who’s not supposed to judge in the first place… :)”
Where do you get the idea that the Higher Self does not judge? If we equate the Higher Self as being One with God then it would have to judge. For one thing, all the sacred writings of the world tell us that God does judge.
Your Higher Self made a judgment and a decision to extend itself and create the entity which is you. Therefore, without judgment you would not even exist.
In this reality we have made certain judgments about what constitutes betrayal and rightly so for without such judgments civilization would have no order and would cease to exist.
For instance, at least 99% of humans would judge the following to be a betrayal.
You (Person A) finally meet the person of your dreams (Person B) and make wonderful soul contact together. You both seem to desire to spend a lifetime together and make many wonderful plans to this end. You both thus make a voluntary commitment to seek union together throughout this life and to keep romantic and sexual energies within the union. As an external symbol of this agreement you both enter into a marriage contract and make promises to each other and the world.
Now shortly after your marriage at a time when you think all is well you come home from work early and find the love of your life having wild sex with the UPS person in the back of the truck.
Is there betrayal here?
Yes.
Is there hurt?
Definitely.
Now some would go so far as to say that the hurt is the fault of the Person A who is innocent by most standards. They will say that as he or she opens the UPS truck door and gazes on the sexual escapade, that he is not supposed to judge.
What’s he supposed to do then? – say something like this:
“Honey, I am sorry to disturbed you. Obviously you have needs to fill so I’ll go in the house and read a book so you can finish your fulfillment without me in the way judging you.”
There are actually people who believe that they are so non judgmental that they would behave like this…
Until they go through the experience. Then they change their mind. Then they discover a reality that they were oblivious to in their idealistic past.
Now such a discovery is not the ultimate reality, but a necessary stage of reality that must be faced before higher realms of non attachment and bliss can be truly discovered.
The fact is this. Person B broke a solemn promise to person A. Even though Person B knew that the breaking of this promise (a promise given through free will) would cause great hurt to his/her spouse he/she did it anyway.
Just like setting your dog on fire will cause a negative effect that you will have to account for even so will the pain caused through the breaking of a promise create an effect that will need correction.
The reader continues:
“Now, I do believe that we, when we act from a limited consciousness, make mistakes, and that we create our realities based on that, but I do not believe that it is purposely made “difficult” but that we get “stuck” on what we haven’t learned, and thus by merely not understanding enough to be aware that we can create a better outcome, we make the karma principle work.
So, in actuality, our Higher Self wouldn’t make us “pay back karma”, but instead steer us towards experiences where we could best learn to forgive ourselves and the situation, thus freeing the energy that was previously stuck in relation to that particular issue.”
JJ
Karma, or cause and effect, as it effects you has nothing to do with the judgment of your Higher Self. Cause and Effect is just there for eternity and there is nothing anyone or any being can do about it. It is not created by judgment for it exists independent of all things and is the power through which all realities are created.
Karma also has nothing to do with guilt. If Person A and Person B are both in accidents that break another person’s leg, is there any difference in the effect if person B feels guilt and Person A does not?
No.
The third party still has the broken leg whether guilt is involved or not. The doctor needs his pay no matter how much guilt you feel or do not feel – it makes no difference. Both person A and B must cough up the payment for medical expenses.
The Higher Self therefore does not “judge” the amount of Karma (effect) that you have manifested in the great pool of universal response. It is just there for you to deal with. Instead the Higher Self is a little like your financial advisor who understands your debits and credits much better than you do. It sees that you owe X amount of money and is aware that you may not have the capacity to pay it all off at once so it works out a payment program so you can retire the debt in the most pain free way possible and at the same time teaching you the perils of overreaching yourself. This Higher Self (advisor) thus seeks to get you debt free so you can use your assets (good karma) in a joyous way.
Thus eventually you can use money (effects) to the ends that you desire with no limitations.
April 15, 2000
Copyright by J J Dewey
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