July 2022
RISE ABOVE THE THRILL METER
All right. On the thrill meter talk, the man was looking at the thrill meter on the negative thrills, and on the upper half on the positive thrills. The positive thrills being what you now call, and what society always calls, good news. More income, flattery from someone, what you call good news of some kind. That’s the positive thrill. The negative thrill is where you lose something, where you’re depressed over the news, wondering what’s going to happen to this chaotic world. That’s a negative thrill.
The point is this. You identify with, that is, you slip into sleep wherever the thrill meter registers — either above the center line into what you call a positive thrill, or call happiness, or the lower side, a negative thrill. It makes no difference where it falls, you call yourself that person. And if you don’t think so, the next time, for example, you get ‘good news’, something nice happens to you, and someone asks you “How do you feel?” you say, “Oh, I feel great!” See, ‘I’ and your feeling are one thing. “I feel great.”
You get depressing news — a loss. Something happens, someone criticized you, someone said you’re not adequate in your work down at the office, or whatever, and you get depressed. Someone says, “From the look on your face, your world has collapsed.” And you say, “Yes, I feel pretty bad over how the boss bawled me out today.” Automatically, because you don’t put a pause between you and the reaction, you fall right into it and say, “I am elated” or “I am low.”
Learn to be indifferent as to where the thrill meter registers — from the very low on the negative part, to the very high on the positive part. So-called positive, so-called negative part, it makes no difference where it is. If you are utterly depressed and gloomy and moody and sad, what has that to do with you?
I’ll tell you what it has to do with you. First of all, you’re getting a thrill out of that, right where it is! You can now say, “What kind of a world is this? I’ve always been treated this way. No matter what I do, I get knocked down by someone.”
You get bitter and hard. Now you want to keep that self, so-called self. But you say to yourself, “Well, life has its ups and downs. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be happy.” And sure enough, tomorrow the good news comes, the compliment, gentlemen. The lady smiles at you and you get hopeful, get real excited over it. And you say, “Ha, I am happy now. I have hope.”
Use the word ‘indifference’. Maybe that will get through to you. It makes no difference to you – who you really are – where the thrill meter goes, registers, up, down. Where it stops makes no difference to you, because it’s all false. Anything that can be registered on the thrill meter is not you at all.
There’s no way Truth can be depressed. You can be, your present identification, present name calling. Can you imagine God, the Creator, swinging in opposites, being elated one day and depressed the next? It’s impossible, isn’t it?
It’s quite possible to picture yourself doing this. Can’t you see you’re making a mistake because you’re out of the kingdom? You’re not in the kingdom as long as you are registering on the thrill meter. The purpose of the story is to get you to see that you are living by that. You’re reading it, believing it, and say, “Ah, the thrill meter says, I’m now elated.”
The thrill meter says, “Now, you better let the elation go and go down to the lower part of it and be bitter about something.” And of course, it always says, “Above all, deceive yourself as to the state you’re in. Never, never notice it, simply feel it.”
When you feel the state of what you call happiness, and you feel a state of depression, you are feeling something, which means you can’t understand it. Feeling does not understand. If you could begin to understand your feelings, you could then cease to say, “I am whatever that mark is on the thrill meter.”
A free mind, a free man, a free woman, does not have a thrill meter attached to him at all. He’s not living from it. He doesn’t need it. Lost people must have thrill meters, otherwise they feel lost, if you can figure that one out. Without the thrill meter they have no identification at all.
Do you have the courage to just take it out of your pocket and set it aside, throw it in the trash? This is the way a free mind operates. Then you’re not concerned, as you now are, with inflation, with the price of gold, the price of oil. You’re not concerned.
You know that person you’ve got in your life, either close or moderately close? Notice how concerned you are with how he or she feels toward you — relative, friend, acquaintance, someone you work with, whatever. You are not living your own life. You’re possessed! You’re controlled!
STUDY FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
If there’s one word that characterizes daily life of men and women on earth, it’s the word restless. We’re always moving around somewhere, hoping that the solution to the pain, the cure for the heartache, is over there. And when we get over there, it’s not there. And we start all over again. Restless, moving around, ever searching, never finding. But worst of all, never noticing that this is what we’re doing.
We’re on an endless kind of search, not knowing, not seeing, how we’re hounded along, whipped along by all these strange, and unknown feelings inside us. Not seeing how we’re driven by something we don’t understand.
Not only that, but we’re afraid to look inside and see what’s there for fear that we may not be able to understand it, because we’ve understood so little about life. And when we don’t understand it, we get punished. We didn’t pass the grade, or the teacher reprimands us.
All this conditioning is built inside us. And so we say, “I’ll play it safe by not even investigating, not looking.” Solves nothing! The restlessness is still there, and we just don’t know what to do with it. And so, we just resign, we just resign to life, which is defeat.
All most people know what to do is to fight. And have an occasional little sugar lump, where it’s sweet for a little bit. Then they know they have to go right back to the start again. There is a place to start! A place to start always exists!
Isn’t it a shock to you somewhat to realize that the evidence of the wrongness of so-called right people has been right in front of us? It’s in their faces when they’re walking down the hall and don’t know you’re watching them. But even when they know you’re watching them, they can’t hide it, can they?
Now I wonder if you understand the following statement. All those idols, successful people (who millions around the Earth admire and think are leaders) all these people have one thing in common. And what they have in common is an attempt to drown out the roar of their own pain.
If your face is wrong, that is, if it’s divided, you’re life is wrong. Now you make a study of human faces, effective as of right now. Out there in the world, you take a look at someone that you admire, that you’re jealous of, that you would like to be like. And you watch and see what you can see in their faces and ask yourself if that’s what you really want.
Think of unnatural facial expressions. Think of vacant facial expressions. Go out into the world and just look at people and see if you see anything that you want to emulate, that you want to duplicate. Right in front of your own invisible eyes as you change inwardly, you will see, and you will know your face changing. You catch yourself in a vacant, agitated, nervous facial expression. Catch it in yourself and I will guarantee you, it will make it a thousand times easier for you to catch it in someone else.
And it’ll make it much easier for you to detect one thing, which is what we’re after. Seeing the emptiness inside as it is expressed outside! The more afraid you get, the more you look. The more you’re ashamed of what you see, the more you should look. Because acquaintance with it will eventually prove to you that this is a part of that false personality that’s been hiding out and wrecking everything internal and external all these years!
All right, that leaves one thing left. And it’s called work!
