Classroom Talk
Spring - Summer 2002 Archive
Do I have some amends to make? Posted by John on June 07, 2002 at 16:28:29:
Am I owing some amends?
I'm thinking of how I focused on the music of the Player/Judge only with you the other week, Pauline. But—if that fits!—that is only a piece of the
larger spectrum of your human make-up, including your other types, and, above all, your essence, all the way around the wheel, including the essence
of the Player/Judge, which is (when the shoe fits . . .) about having a great sense of humor and the ability to make others laugh at the ironies of life.
So I didn't mean to put you into a small box that day, in focusing on only one small part of the spectrum. Ah, but asking you to tell us what is *great*
about you . . . I apologize to you, dear Lady. I know that's a question that hurts.
And that other day when I brought up the idea of "Pauline being able to turn her whole life around" by collecting these insights of Self-discovery . . .
that was a poor choice of words. I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings. I didn't mean changing your life from a bad life, or being a bad person around
to having a good life and being a good person. I honestly didn't mean that. You already do have a good life. And you already *are* a good person.
What I meant by that remark was changing one's life from a life which is largely pre-determied by the automatic, conditioned patterns of one's main
personality types, to a life where one is able to *see through* that funny stuff, and realize that one is free to make any changes one chooses to make in
guiding one's life on one's own in the present.
This doesn't mean that such freedom would result in disregarding others, or forgetting the cherished aims that one has always had in one's life with
regard to others that are close around.
What I meant was turning a life around from where everything is a set-up, beforehand (cf. what I would call one's "Fate"). by the habitual patterns
that are dictated by an ordinary person's conditioned personality . . . . . to a place where the person is free to make choices and actually guide their
own life on a day-to-day basis—based on awakened observations of the present—that is, free to make a new kind of life for their Being by their own
choosing (cf. what I would call "one's Destiny.")
Stay as sweet as you are, Pauline. I've been liking you already *without any* changes!
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Sally brought up something in the Coach's Office—I don't think she'd mind if I repeat it. She's been kinda down on my case lately because I said I
would be "calling it quits" at the end of this year.
Golly, I guess I did mislead you all about that. It hasn't been my intention to "call it quits" at the end of this year. It's been my intention to complete
the Sixth Grade, and thereby complete the whole course, by the end of this year, trying our best, I hope, to come up with a graduating class of people
who are familiar with this training and how it can be taught.
I wasn't intending to "go away." I thought I might have a different and easier job around here then, though. Along with Perk, maybe—who is an
expert in precisely this—I thought I would have a job of "Staff Supervisor of Training," or something like that, and go on "supervising," in much the
same way, a group of you—a small group, perhaps—who would form the new Teaching Staff around here, for newcomers anywhere in the world
that we would begin outreaching to on the Internet in ways we haven't been outreaching in the past.
Long ago, Jeff envisioned that several of you might have your own Classroom Talk "labs" in a new building in our school. And, if so, I could just drift
among them, seeing what's going on, posting a comment now and then perhaps, or discussing what I see going on with each of you in the Coach's
Office.
Interestingly, if that were to come about, I would be doing more or less the same job that I once did as a Teaching Assistant for Dean Mits Aoki, many
years ago at the University of Hawaii. That would be a sentimental touch. I don't know if this sort of thing is really going to be happening, or not.
But I'd like that.
As for completing the course by the end of the Sixth Grade . . . I think that's appropriate. I know what I feel I have left to teach of "subjects" in this
course, as a whole. I feel that I can finish the whole course up by then. To that effect, I'm also posting a Sixth Grade Teaching Plan today, as a
reminder to the class of what I've got in mind.
And with all of the coaching things that have gone by so far at this website, if you students need any brushing up on any of that past training . . . . .
well, I think it's a good idea to have a "time limit" for this. Maybe that will light a fire under some of your butts. (No more Mr. Nice Guy.) Maybe
you'll start speaking up more often about the things you don't feel clear about, so I can do what I'm supposed to do around here before the school
year runs out. I'll always do my best to answer brush-up questions like that, and I'll own up to it if I don't know useful answers from my own
experiences of life.
True, as I feel my body getting older, I have had concerns this year about how long I can keep doing my life the way I've got it set up now. I'd like to
get as much done as I can while I can. And, yes, {bashful grin} the prospect of having a job with a little less day-to-day pressure than expecting to
squeeze several new classes every week out of this ol' bod' . . . . . well, that does have a certain appeal to my lazy Doormat side.
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Maybe I owe some apologies for spending so much time on this "fictitious corporation" kick. Maybe that's an unwelcome diversion for some of you. I
can only say that I'm teaching this exercise so that all of you can learn to see that "doing impossible projects"—the ones that you'd love to be doing on
your own, in your own individual lives—becomes possible with an accumulation of certain deliberate mindful steps. It's the tiny specific actualizations
that count.
Here's Deirdre stepping up, and volunteering . . . doing a single concrete gesture in the direction of finding out what that good Sir John fellow may
have to share financially with this project! It is the actualization of such gestures that actually works in the real world. If several people were making
one such gesture a week, there might be quite an extraodinary power in the accumulation of these efforts.
I haven't been to Sir John's site yet, but I will soon. I'd like to clarify to the class at this point, that this "Class Project" exercise is not—in my view of it—
something that I am going to do "with a little help from my friends." To me, it is a class project for everyone to learn things by watching it that apply in
your own individual lives. You may participate in concrete ways in this exercise, or not, as you freely choose. I mean that. But I'm not going to "do it
for you." Let's find out whatever it is that can happen on a basis like this. I am willing, however, to volunteer to be "one of the gang" with those of
you who are willing to participate, but I am not willing to do this whole thing on my own.
As for each of you, it doesn't matter what projects you choose in life—whether this one or others that you come up with. Look to your own heart to
be the arbiter of this. But it is good to *have a project*, or projects. It is good for your happiness. Remember the example of Hotei as he hefts that
bag of his gifts over his shoulder again. And, each time that you actualize any real piece of a project that you love that you are working on, you are
fulfilling that idea that Sir John expressed the other day about "spiritual productivity" and the part this plays in human happiness.
This human body was made to *do* things. It is happy when it is moving and doing things. This body *feels good* when it moves, naturally.
Get up now, and test this out with your awareness of your inner body, if you wish. Stand up and stretch, and walk around a little bit, and see if you
can *feel inside there* what I'm talking about.
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Here's another clarification that may be owing. When I said, awhile back, that Judges were the type to make up certain sexual games in groups—I did
NOT mean all Judges, or even most people with a Judge in their personality makel-up. Most people who are Judges wouldn't have anything to do
with that kind of stuff. I was only referring to the *few* Judges who do join such groups.
In other words, what I meant was that those few people who do join sex clubs and do promote certain types of sex games—with costumes, for
instance—are most likely to have the Judge in their make-up.
There is great diversity between two people who share the same type. I expect you can see many examples of that around here in our class. But,
even with all the many, many different ways to play Dictator, for instance, on the stage of life . . . . . there are still certain underlying themes, certain
refrains of recognizeable music that can be perceived in all the people who share having a Dictator in their make-up.
If you are a Dictator, or a Con Artist, or a Judge, etc, etc. you are not like all the other people who share that type. First of all, what you are like is
influenced by all of your other types, as well, both in personality and around the wheel in essence. Then you each have your types to *differing
degrees of intensity*. Different Dictators have different lives. On one end of the spectrum we see one who is "a light Dictator." On the other end of
the spectrum, someone is "a heavy Dictator." One Dictator becomes a horse-shoer, another a sergeant in the ranks, another a union boss, another an
electrician, another a chief executive of a company, another an oil-well-fire capper, another a chess champion, and yet another, like Hitler, becomes the
actual "dictator" of a country.
They are each different, and yet all of them have certain themes of music that play in their lives. There are certain basic themes of behavior that they
have in common—let's say for one example they habitually fall into "too much controlling of other people" when they are coming from their personality.
Yet they are not "like each other."
It's a fact that I can look over the population of a given area of society (such as sex groups) and show how different types around the wheel may likely
relate with that scene. And in exactly the same way, one can look over any other given group of people in the population, and recognize how
Dictators, Con Artists, Judges, etc., etc. would relate with *that* scene. All eight of the types around our wheel make up the population of any given
demographic group. In any group of eight or ten people, we can see all of the eight types are represented. And so we can see here in our class, and
recognize—by the music of it—the parts the different types are playing. . . . . . . And, at the same time, we can see that those of you who share any
of these types are not the same as each other.
I don't know if this is enough to clarify these points. If not, please speak up with any questions.
I did NOT mean in that class, of course, that anyone in our class (including me) is a new candidate for any kind of sexual experimentation. If any of
you thought I might be implying that, I *do* apologize.
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[Note that Hitler, from his known history, appeared to be a Dictator, a Judge, and a Rebel/Artist—all on the Yang side of the wheel. His paintings as
a young man were much as one might expect of his typical make-up—very controlled, no fluidity, all straight lines and right angles, no heart—street
scenes that seem "frozen," with nothing moving, no liveliness. As a painter, he didn't show us much, I'm afraid. His Artist took a back-seat to his
other more intense types. But, when the Jewish professors at the Art Academy he applied to as a young fellow turned him down and rejected his
paintings, that seems to have been a profound turning point in his life . . . He *rejected back*, and he became "Hitler."
[My point here is that the Dictators in our class, the Judges, and the Rebels here, like me, are NOT anything like Hitler, nothing like Hitler as a living
human person, at all! Heh-heh . . . in case any of you were worrying about this.]
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Let's see . . . Where might I owe some amends? Maybe my jaundiced remarks about the world and economic bad news the other day turned you off,
of maybe seemed depressing, as if there is no hope for anything better.
Yes, the world is a mess out there. Go back to any period of history and you'll find that it's always been that way. But you will also find that there
have always been masters and classical warriors throughout all these troubled times, one century after another. No matter how bad things of the
world may get, there have always been masters learning and practicing ways to see through it and get around in it in peace, ways to find harmony in
small groups of us who care enough to get through it, and keep on doing *what can be done* as a way of creating a new kind of life for humanity, a
path of spiritual productivity.
This is all the good news that we have for now, that and the fact that some of us are still doing concrete gestures that can help get the good news
around. In spite of the way things are looking these days . . . I still believe a day can come for the whole human race when the opportunity can pop
up in high relief for the whole world to start operating out of love.
Call me a dreamer (John Lennon had this same thought), and maybe I am. So many generations of masters have kept this dream alive over the
millenia, and still we don't know if it can ever happen. As for me, my only real choices in the real world in this matter are to keep on being ready, and
keep on coaching, and keep on making little tangible gestures in the real world every week . . . . . . . . and just see whatever comes out of it.
I'm sorry if I may have rubbed any of you the wrong way in recent classes. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. (If you Folks can't be candid with
me by now, this class is in *big* trouble.) Speak up, please, and let me know if you are "disappointed" with anything that's going on around here.
Love y'all, yes I do!
Coach
Douglas, I'm not forgetting that dream I woke up in and wrote down to share with you last Saturday. Bear with me, please.
Hi, Eon, in there behind those eyes! I'm in here now grinning for you, wherever you go! I hope you'll be enjoying that trip to the absolute hilt! . . . . .
yet another bold leap into the space, perhaps.
Thanks for that *beautiful* sharing, Student John. Bon voyage on your journey, too! See you then! And my love to your Father-in-Law, as well, and
Great Grandma, too, of course! That sounds like a lot of nice vacation team-work your Family is working out there together! May it be a blast for
one and all!
Thanks so much, Deirdre of the Desert! (With your real world experience in professional office management) you've given us a taste for a moment of
what it is actually like in this fictitious project of ours to have a Business and Accounting Department in that building there by the desert on our
worldwide TTMT Campus . . . between the Library and the Department of Design.
Thanks, too, Sally for volunteering, and offering your consulting (in that wonderful conference we just had in the Coach's Office—much appreciated.)
These are concrete gestures, Ladies—actual actualizations, more than just words. So far, that sort of thing seems to be going on happening around
here. Our fictitious Staff is growing slowly, in spite of the odds. I believe this darned crazy project ***might*** actually work.
Do you believe in magic?—doing the impossible? I don't know . . . yet we'll see whatever shows up here, one little step at a time. I'm *very happy*
with it all already, without there even being any more.
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Archived 08/26/2002