III. April 20, 1998: Paying Attention to Your Essence Why Should We Pay Attention To Our Essence? Our nation was founded on the concept that we all have a right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. If that is what we truly want for ourselves, then there is no better way than for each of us to pay attention to our Essence, who is interested in exactly the same goals. Without the Essence, our body will have no Life. The Essence is the very source of our life energy, our ki, our kundalini, whatever you care to call it. It is devoted to keeping us alive and functioning in our society and warns us when danger is near. It's Prime Directive is to maintain life so that we can complete and accomplish our Life Plan. Liberty is freedom from domination by other humans. This carries with it an obligation to make responsible decisions for ourselves and the willingness to carry out those decisions. The Essence is interested only in the welfare of its Charge, no one else. Since each human has an Essence, one person's Essence need not attend to the need of any Charge but its own. When we have Liberty, we then have many options to choose from in our daily lives. We can never have had enough training or book learning to be able to know intellectually the best way to behave in every novel situation. These are the times we must look upwards with our eyes, go to the "higher plane of thinking," and access the wisdom, knowledge and advice of our own Essence. We must do something, we know that. What we do not know is what the best action to take might be. If we use "enlightened self interest," we want to choose a course of action which will result in no one being harmed, and all being benefitted. A Win-Win solution is always to be preferred to a Win-Lose or Lose-Lose solution, if we take a long-term view of the problem. Our true self- interest is best served by being on good terms with whoever is likely to have the most important impact on our lives. Alienating our neighbors is eventually self-destructive. Only when we ask our Essence to guide our actions can we know what is best to do to stay friendly with all around us. The Pursuit of Happiness implies being on a path that will lead to true personal spiritual growth and development. This is what is accomplished by following one's own Life Plan. How do we know we are on the right path? We feel good about ourselves and what we are doing. We are not necessarily happy, but we know we are pursuing happiness. How do we know what will make us happy if we have never had that particular experience? We cannot from our own knowledge and background. Only our Essence knows fully what our Life Plan is, and therefore what will make us happiest. Our Essence knows we will be happy when we take on specific duties and responsibilities which might now seem too scary to ever be enjoyable. How many people have taken on challenges that were seemingly impossible? They do it every day. Why? Because their Essences have told them that that is what they are to do at this time in their lives, because their Essences know that they must accomplish those tasks to complete and accomplish their specific Life Plans. Only the Essence can know what will most please its Charge when that Charge accomplishes the difficult tasks ahead for it. Each In Their Own Way How any one person best pays attention to his or her Essence is an individualized matter. Each of us has a different way to pay attention to quiet messages from inside our head. Some people believe that meditation is the way to do it. Some are able to go into self induced hypnotic trances and feel that is the way to go. Others find a quiet place and the best time of day to be alone and feel that is the way to go. I can only tell others of how I have done it for myself, which may not be useful for anyone else. My Introduction to Michael, My Essence Many years ago, "Sylvia," my most flamboyant MPD patient in Santa Cruz, told me that she could see my Essence hovering beside my left ear, trying to talk to me through that ear. She wished I would listen, as he was trying to tell me what to say to her during therapy. If I would only listen, I would say the correct things to help her. She even had a name for "him," Michael. I got used to the idea of someone called Michael trying to tell me how to do therapy, especially since there was no one in the human world who knew how to treat these patients of mine. When I met my first patient with MPD, there was only one short article in one psychiatric journal on how to treat this disorder. The subject had never been mentioned in my training centers. The only personal exposure I had to MPD was viewing the black-and-white movie, "The Three Faces of Eve," when I was in the USAF stationed in Alabama in 1957. There were no experts on treatment of MPD to whom I could turn. I had only Michael to turn to. I thought it was a fine idea, even if it wasn't true, to have some kind of a spiritual advisor always there to tell me what I needed to know. When I was on call for hospital emergencies, I would often get a panic call from the nurse, giving me the bare outline of some crisis one of my patients was having. It would take me ten minutes to drive to the hospital. During the trip, I knew I had better come up with a plan, once I arrived at the ward. To do that, I went up to a higher level in my mind, and let the ideas flow. And flow they did. By the time I arrived at the hospital, I would have laid out in my mind exactly what I needed to do, what equipment I would need to get at my office first, who should be there at the bedside, and what actions to take to calm the patient down. The great thing is that it always worked. I never failed to deal successfully with any of these crises. Now I give full credit to Michael, my Essence, for laying out the plans. I had no other source for such information. Unfortunately, when I was dealing with nonprofessional matters, such as arguments with my wife, I did not use this method to figure out what to do better. I relied on my old standby methods, like losing my temper and going for a long drive to cool down. This did not solve anything, and matters got worse. Only in dealing with my patients did I resort to listening to these inner messages, as the risk malpractice suits and the loss of reputation were too high to ignore. That was the way I made my living. After I retired and started writing the story of my most complicated multiple from Yolo County, I kept advising the subject, "Marie," to listen to her Essence, Becky. Marie and Becky had disconnected (dissociated) when Marie was six months old, and Marie often insisted on exercising her Free Will and ignoring the advice Becky tried to give her inside her head. In the past this had led to many problems, including suicide attempts. I repeatedly told her to listen to Becky. Eventually, I realized that I was not setting a good example, because I was not often listening to Michael. So I determined to do better, and started doing it with automatic typing at my computer. Automatic Writing I set up the page on the monitor screen with the title "Messages from Michael." Then I consciously wrote a question which someone else might be able to answer. Questions such as, "How can I get peace on earth?" would be impossible for anyone, including Michael, to answer. The questions that worked best were those relating to some personal interaction I was faced with that day, and involved choices I need to make. I wanted to make the best choice in the time allotted. I then tried to get myself into a state of artificial dissociation in which I allowed Michael to take over my fingers and type on the keyboard answers to my questions. I picked the time as early in the morning, when I was first awake and alert. I eventually learned to type out the questions and then let my fingers do the typing of the answer. Sometimes I heard the words first in my mind, and typed them out. Sometimes, I would know what to write for the first few words, and then the rest would just come flowing out. In doing so I collected a raft of interesting comments. I always checked with Becky to see if I was doing it correctly. I found that the biggest contamination was my own fantasy or wish fulfillment, resulting in comments that were not accurate. Whenever I let my emotions take over and write what I wanted to read, it was never the way it should be. Becky would be sure to tell me where I did that. Advising Others For ethical reasons, I only use that method for my own affairs. I never will use it to advise others, as I don't want my own wish fulfillment ideas to be what anyone else gets for advice. I would rather have the other person do it himself, and then take responsibility for whatever is produced. If one follows one's own writing, that is taking responsibility for ones own actions. I will not be responsible for telling someone else how to live their life. Still, Small Voice Within When I asked Becky why she did not simply yell loudly to get Marie's attention, she told me that that would confuse her Charge. Noisy commands issue from the neurotic part of the Emotional Self. When we hear loud and insistent messages, like, "You will end up just like your no-good father!" they are not from the Essence, but messages we have encoded (internalized) from abusive relatives. Letting the Essence Take Over the Body When watching a TV interview, I always find it interesting to determine when the person being interviewed lets his or her Essence into the interaction. If the interviewer asks a particularly difficult question which the interviewee had not expected but decides to answer, the interviewee aims his or her eyes skyward, so that only the lower portion of the iris is showing. In extreme cases, a large portion of the white of the eye will be showing above the lower lid. The person may remind the viewer of someone who is internally praying for guidance, by looking toward the heavens. This upward gaze is the maneuver which easily allows the Essence to enter into consciousness to provide ideas and even full sentences at this time of need. After a few seconds of gazing at the ceiling, while the face is still aimed at the audience, the interviewee then produces a carefully measured intellectual answer to the difficult question. I have used a simple mental command to Michael to let him take over when I am in a difficult situation. The first time I did this was when I had spent the morning in court testifying in the felony criminal trial about a defendant I had diagnosed as having MPD when I saw him first in the local jail. With the exception of the defense attorney, none of the other officials in court had any sympathy with my explanation for why he had assaulted and robbed the wife of the local public health officer. By noontime, the hostile cross examination had wiped me out emotionally. While lunching with the attorney, I complained that I didn't know if I could hold up under cross examination all afternoon. Then I thought to myself, "Why should I do it? Let Michael testify." So, when I went back on the stand, I mentally sat there and lent my vocal chords to Michael, acting as a passive bystander to myself testifying. I don't mean to imply that I had an out-of-body experience, but I felt I had deliberately given over my body to someone who could do a better job than I could. As a result, I sailed through the afternoon without much effort, and my testimony was relevant, accurate, and without emotional defensiveness. What was most important to me was that I found I could get through a tough situation calmly and accomplish what needed to be done without destroying my own emotional balance. I have since used this approach in other courtroom scenes, where I needed to tread carefully in my testimony. It always worked out well. Naming Your Essence Since the degree of hypnotizability is inborn and constant throughout life, not everyone can put themselves into a trance to listen to their Essence. Those with a higher degree of hypnotizability will find this is the easiest way to dissociate and let their Essences' messages come through. Those on the lower end of the scale will have to try something else. But once you think of your Essence as a named entity, it gives you more of a tool to do whatever you decide to do to listen to "him." You have to think of him as "real" in order to listen to him. If you would look back on your life to the many times you have weathered a storm because you chose to listen to "him," you can soon convince yourself that there was "someone" there to guide you. There was! Individual Life Plans It is important to keep in mind that the actions your Essence advises you to take are all for the purpose of keeping you in your Life Plan. Your Essence is not interested in taking care of other people's needs. Your Essence is there for you alone, not for anyone else. Since each human has an Essence, there is no need for yours to concern "himself" with the needs of anyone else. But your Essence will not tell you to do something which will harm someone else, except in the interest of your own self defense. Setting Up Hard Times for Its Charge Since your Essence wants you to be involved in groups and situations in which you will learn the lessons you need to learn in this phase of your Life Plan, it may engineer difficult times for you at work, or in other relationships. Here is where we need to become aware of the "writing on the wall." The Essence will cause our coworkers to start being unpleasant toward us, if it wants us to change jobs or careers. Everything will go wrong, one mess after the other. Take the message early rather than later. If you don't commit yourself to a change, your Essence will rachet up the level of harassment until you can't stand the situation anymore and have to move onto greener pastures. The Essence does not want you to be miserable, but it will use your discomfort to get you to moving on. When you are back in the middle of your Life Plan, then you will feel gratified by what is going on around you, and your Essence will be bringing into your life pleasant people again. Timing of Contact with the Essence To clearly listen inside your mind to your Essence you need to be free from outside influences. Therefore, the timing can be crucial. People find that they can better communicate with their Essences best in certain situations. Some will prefer bedtime. Some will prefer doing it while listening to classical music. Some will prefer doing it while sunbathing. Some may prefer to do it while doing exercises or jogging. The Emotional Self needs to be calm at the time and willing to stop exercising its Free Will to "do its own thing" for a while. Win-Win Answers To Problems The most significant difference between messages from the Emotional Self and the Essence is that the Essence is only concerned with solving problems with a Win-Win solution. The Emotional Self is interested in revenge, justice, and what is moral in the culture. The Essence is not. The Emotional Self will be satisfied with a temporary Win-Lose solution to problems. It may seem a paradox that the Essence, which is in close contact with "The Creator," is not concerned with moral issues. For the Essence, all moral codes are seen as man-made "universal rules" of conduct. Such conduct is always either Right or Wrong, regardless of who does it, or when and where it is done. Only the Emotional Self operates on such rules, which are different in each clan, religion, country and era. Since there are no rules in Thoughtspace, there are no rules which the Essence must follow. Since it cannot be destroyed, there is no physical punishment which anyone can apply to it. What would be the result if it breaks a rule? Who is there to rule on the infraction and prescribe a punishment? Yes, it has "supervisors" but they see rules in the same light and are there to guide, teach, advise, and assist the Essence in doing its job. Two Kinds of Ethics In the study of ethics, this is called the difference between "Legal Ethics" and "Situational Ethics." In our world, both methods are being used by each of us every day. The methods of applying each method are different. Legal Ethics is the domain of the Emotional Self, and is illustrated by our Constitution. It is a set of statements prescribing what is Right and Wrong for all Americans. But we need a Supreme Court to interpret it as new items, such as the Internet, are invented, items which the writers of the Constitution could not predict and write rules for. Then we need a Justice Department to find and deal with the violators of those rules. Then we need a court and prison system to punish those who violate those rules, and on and on. All of this is managed by the Emotional Selves of those human involved in social control of mass populations. In contrast, the "Situational Ethics" method has no rule other that to make a decision that will not hurt anyone. Everyone should be a winner. There are no limits imposed on the person making this decision, and what might appear "immoral" in the abstract is quite useful and practical in this particular situation. What is most important are the details of this particular situation. Who is involved, what are their needs and belief systems, and what would be the actual penalty of each proposed action? Yes, the Essence has to know the Legal Ethical issues involved before making a decision. Is the person willing to go to jail for this cause or not? If not, then any action that is a law violation would be ruled out. The Essence will often recommend an action which the person has never done before, so the Emotional Self has not considered it a possible course of action. But the Essence can make reasonable predictions for short term results, based on its knowledge of the mental dynamics of all persons involved in the conflict. It knows the Essences of the other humans involved, so it can predict how they would most likely react to each stimulus. It knows what behavior the other human has shown in similar situations, even though the Emotional Self does not. A well functioning Essence will not recommend any action which will kill another person, in most situations. To say that it NEVER will do so imposes a RULE on the Essences. It may be a situation where the other person involved is living the last day of his Life Plan and "ceasing to exist" is the next step. In such a case, death of the other individual will be one available option to the Essences involved. Both Essences would have to confer and agree before one person would be allowed to kill the other. But if all Essences involved agree that no one is to die that day, then they will work out a less drastic solution between them. It will then be up to the Emotional Self to act on that "idea which just popped into my head." Personal Rules of Conduct When any human has been through a similar crisis before, such as an alcoholic losing his job again, his Emotional Self knows what actions have been successful in the past in coping with this old crisis pattern. The first time his Essence may have told him what to do to survive, and it worked. This action then may become a "rule of conduct" of that person, and so it is the "right thing" for him to do when he loses his next job. But it is not a rule of conduct for anyone else but him, with his particular makeup and social situation. Solving New Crises When talking to people in crisis, who do not know what to do next, one needs to get them calm enough to first discuss what they have always done in the past with similar situations. When they have exhausted the list of options that worked in the past, and why they are not suitable for now, then they must be encouraged to let their minds open up to new ideas. That is when the Essence will offer new ideas which they never had before. If encouraged to do so, they will then say something like, "I had this crazy idea come into my head the other day that I should do [new action]. It sounded crazy when it first came to me, but now, after talking to you, I think it just might work. What do you think of it?" That is the point where the pros and cons of using that option need to be discussed before going on, but this is the time that the Essence has a chance to contribute a new and potentially useful idea into a situation where the person has run out of options based on past experience. In the discussion with such persons, the counselor also needs to be in touch with his or her Essence so that ideas which come to mind can be offered as tentative suggestions for the troubled person to think about adopting. This is not the time to demand the person does what the counselor wants, as that is imposing the counselor's rules on the other person. But the two Essences working together will formulate a workable plan to get the person unstuck, and on the road to recovery. That is all anyone needs at that time. Life Plans Again The main point to keep in mind is that none of us can know the Life Plan of another person. We do them no favors by trying to impose the actions required by our Life Plan on them. They must go on their own journey and we must go on ours. Obviously the two interconnect and are linked, or we would not be talking to them. But all we need to offer is the idea that we made it this far, and they can, too. They need to be encouraged to activate the same source of practical wisdom, their Essence, as we did when we hit our roadblocks. Coincidences Many people have reported important "coincidences" in their lives when they "just happened" to meet someone who later became very important in their lives. The message that my informant Essences have repeatedly given me is that they are responsible for these "fortuitous" actions, which were all planned by them to benefit their Charges. THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES. These meetings of strangers have been carefully planned and choreographed to bring about certain opportunities for the humans involved, as they needed to take actions which were essential for the accomplishment and completion their Life Plans. Nothing is left to chance by the Essences. They have all the tools available, including detailed knowledge of our inner motivations and what will "push our buttons." They know our limits and how to push us to them. If need be, they can take over our body and take action our cooperation or knowledge. A problem occurs after the Essences of two individuals maneuver them into meeting and talking to each other and taking whatever corrective action is appropriate, but the Emotional Self of one is too frightened or angry to take advantage of the situation. That is when their Free Will intervenes, and they refuse to negotiate. Their Essences will have to try again. They will do so, over and over again, until the Emotional Selves of the two parties do it right. If they cannot accomplish it in this life, they may have to do it in the next reincarnations of both. So it is best if we do the job of improving or utilizing the relationships now, while we have the chance. Our Life Plans prescribe it, and we will only postpone the inevitable.