Creative Virtue

R.S. Pearson Miscellaneous Writings

Introduction
1 The Two Worlds Available To Us
2 Optimization
3 Relaxation
4 Some Things This Work Does For Us
5 We Are Not Only Our Current "I"
6 The Affluent State of Being
7 Notes One
8 Separation of the Real from False in Oneself
9 Accounts
10 Non-Identification
11 Non-mystical Esotericism
12 Worldview
13 Notes Two

When I refer to "mental stillness" I refer to getting in touch with that part of us that can have a pure attention to our thoughts as we go about in life. It is also called "divided attention." Doing this, we don't find our true self lost in the day. The idea is probably best referred to as self-remembering or awareness of consciousness. It can also be at various levels, the deepest leading to a "why am I here?" or "what is life?" type of experience. It is a way of getting outside of the mind's ramblings, to find a center of stillness which leads to purity of essence. To sum it up, it's said in the bible, "Be still and you will hear My voice." This stillness can have many different levels.

There are two worlds available to us. One world is a world of joy and curiosity, of many beautiful and spiritual feelings, of strength, of courage --a world of accomplishment. In this world one is loving and reacting to the friendship of others. In this world, one is aware of the good and real intentions of others. In this world one is always aware of what one receives and not what one feels owed.

The other world available to us is a world of dullness and of worry. It is a world of nailing down the exact limitations on our future -- before they happen. It is a world of dull grays. It's solace, or lack of it, is found mostly in the balance in the bank account. It is a world of being rushed, having to pay to avoid being crushed. This negative or even common world available to us is often a painful and humorless comedy. It is a world driven by false promises, which make one rushed and asleep, unaware, barely able to look for some truth in the falseness.

The fact is that the better of the two worlds is almost impossible for the average person to get into. The better world is to be obtained by working on one's emotions, by remembering oneself and not-identifying with the negative or common stresses of life. One does this by means of stilling the mind and practicing positive emotions as a method of using a mechanism for better living.

We can develop an inner taste which can distinguish between good psychological food and bad psychological food. What impressions we take in hourly, like what food we take at every meal, makes up our state of emotional health. Emotional health is a core concept of spiritual freedom. This idea, along with the idea of progressive non-identification, are two of the most powerful ways to optimize oneself.

Being awake means taking responsibility for the mechanical tendencies in one. Being awake means we are more powerful than the negative world as it tries to produce disorder in our lives. We take responsibilities by our new and special acts of mental stillness, muscle relaxation, following an aim such as self-observation in deep sincerity and trying to stay in positive emotion.

We don't need to have a mystical reason for believing that life fights against our best interests. These best interests of ours are simply to be positive, to be healthy, to be organized, to be optimized. It is easy enough to just look around at hospitals, news headlines, jails and realize the how the spectrum is spread of what can go wrong in a person's life. The retreat into fantasy, into paranoia or racism is often just a bi-product of the threat that life makes against us. Upon recognizing these things one should try to understand that this is a very special moment of awakening.

If one is in a very bad season in one's life, one must meditate on the work, create new links to positive moments in the time body, positive I's, and root out the negative season by these new experiences. Remembering often our logical-actual-culmative-self helps us understand that we don't have to be locked into small I's.

When the mind and heart are optimized, there is the possibility of experiencing life as pleasurable and also fulfilling our responsibility. When it is without a system, without a ladder, the mind merely is the result of reactions to outside influences. It can become swamped in useless and mechanical reactions to the stimulus of the senses. We can say our mind is always practical, but is our mind always optimized to what we are capable of? of what our conscience has said? or of what gives us joy?

What the mind is without a system of control is the average of one's upbringing, and the effect of one's motivations and belief systems. These convictions and methods can save a person from harmful habits like heavy drinking but they also can bring an inability for other optimizations. One may stop drinking heavily but also feel they have to cut out art, creative thinking and other similar things from their life.

For the mind to spend time in the optimized state it must first dedicate time to nothing else but the method, the ladder. Practicing real optimization methods can bring one more into stress but it makes one face one's aim: to face one's responsibilities.

The exercises I describe require attention. This study is not like studies where your mind flits from this idea to that, and your body is left without monitoring. What I prescribe is a stopping of the thoughts, a stopping of muscle tension of the body to become something different. The old automation which is less the result of one's conscience is ended.

One effort that always seems to work for me is looking at a "relaxation list" like I've included here. Just going over it makes forces one's mind to slow down and concentrate. The tensions of the muscles that have been created by stress and the hustle and bustle of contributing a service in life gratdulally fade away. The body is like a type of molded plastic that stays in place, until you consciously move it to another place.

This is an example of a relaxation technique:

Sometimes we can pinpoint a specific set of relaxations that we especially need. This is very good if we don't have the time to do a complete relaxation.

I relax the muscles of my mouth
I relax the muscles of my throat
I relax the tension in the left eye.
I relax my knees and ankles.
I relax my elbows and wrists

The work on oneself leads to many improvements such as bringing in new energies into a dull, tired body. Another improvement makes positive the negative emotional repertoire of a period.

What awareness of consciousness does in part is to put the person in the state of mind that a meditator experiences, but without having to sit quietly. It slows down the entrance of useless thought or anxiety, enlarges the capacity of breathing, helps to relax muscles, and gets one in tune with the conscious control of muscles, instead of the useless fidgeting which also can reinforce states of mind that are not our best. This can manifests by a slowing down of movement as the result of movement being less controlled by the external senses. This self-observation often creates more of a good sense of "self." It is because of lack of self-observation that we behave more mechanically, at the whim perhaps of external forces or sensory triggers and associations.

Whenever I start to practice awareness of consciousness, I feel a straightening also of my posture, a certain relaxation of certain facial muscles. Most definitely, if one is trying to gain consciousness of ones thought life in retrospect with one's entire life or soul, one should also practice releasing tension in their muscles. When I'm in a lower level of thinking and then start to notice my soul's existence in a disciplined way, I start breathing deeper. Perhaps some people slow down their breathing but I can see how I am increasing the amount of oxygen that I'm taking in. I believe this helps increase energy.

Mental stillness creates higher energy by mixing the force of one's soul with the impressional maze and chaos which is often one's mental, and emotional life. Mental stillness mixes one's true soul, the Real I, with the life one must lead meshed in with the world around us. Since all thoughts or impressions contain energy, the higher energy of the impressions of one's soul mixes with the lower energy that is often the level of the world or our associative thinking. This second management, not just of our daily tasks and responsibilities, but of ourselves, our "instrument," honing the skill that we live life with, makes our life much more clear and conscious. We are able to gain control over where we are going. We are then more able to go where we want to go, or know better when it is impossible or wrong to go there. Being aware of the activity of our soul in this way also allows us to relax better.

Progressive relaxation of unknown but active tensions in the mucles reflects the same principle in mental stillness. The control we gain in progressive relaxation straightens out the body in a similar way to the way stillness straightens out the qualities and contents of the mind. Relaxation allows the energy previously expressed in tensed muscles and unnecessary straining to be available for other things, as stillness helps us to take gentle actions in directions which we would not have been able to before because of the crowding of thought.

With spiritual principles, this work can "digest" coarse psychological impressions of ourselves and events into finer and finer ones, to the point where we can be fully responsible, less sensually bound, and tools that God can use.

Some may have low life experiences --influenced by the world's general state of violence, intoxication and incompetence. Instead of good breeding practices, some may find none that are able to lift oneself to a real sense of what they consider their best self. We must take the mass of ourselves and expose it to the effect of the main part of the work, mental stillness and something that is simply called the second conscious shock. The first conscious shock is the mental stillness practice; the second is maintaining control over the emotional center so that negative emotions don't overcome us.

For the second conscious shock we can reflect that we were created for joy, to fellowship with the higher life, to have a pleasing personality, to be the spirit of God towards others. The spiritual ideas of joy and bliss can be our focus in this area. We may think about how we re created in the image of God and have His love for our ultimate good, even though we ponder our smallness in the infinite number of suns and planets, our smallness as a creature and our relative short time alive on the planet.

The best way to explain why someone would need the things found here is that practicing these things on occasion help one get more control of oneself. One can do this even if one doesn't hold its worldview. I say on occasion because I think in a good life there are times when practicing these things can pass away f or a time and not be missed. They are like a checks and balances system for staying the absolute real of ourselves and who we want to be, and who we should be. mental stillness is a way of grabbing yourself in your proverbial hands so that "mechanical tendencies" do not lead one to places they shouldn't. Sometimes we go through life in more or less negative states of existence.

When mental stillness occurs it is as if a door has opened somewhere in oneself. Also something can open up towards the fourth state of consciousness, the time body. The theory of recurrence helps a person remember oneself because it is a myth that contains our life as a subset.

Eventually, after working on oneself, non-identification can be brought into many areas of one's life. We can be so identified with so many different things that it is like an interesting puzzle to find out all the exact things that we've been identifying with.

Making a list of the things we don't identify with is a sure way to gain some higher state of consciousness. For some people its "I don't identify with not having a significant other." or maybe "I don't identify with not liking my job." It frees up the energy we were using on the identification for something more conscious.

One cannot use the higher centers unless one has energy for them. To get this energy, one has to remember oneself, and apply the second conscious shock, and as important, make sure these processes don't stop by considering and identifying. If one is considering, one cannot even begin to see the possibility that comes with mental stillness. mental stillness shuts down the lower manifestations that we are mechanically tricked into making. It lets in a huge dose of light, which comes in as ray of ourselves. It is true light appears brighter and impressions sharper, but one object of radiance is ourselves. Reflection upon ourselves even radiates light as we see we our created in the image of God.

One idea that has been in Western tradition for hundreds or years and even longer is that we all have many I's, and that we are not always able to control their manifestations. This is to be seen as a symbol of what man is, and not actually taken more literally. What we often are as people seems to be sometimes separate individual "I's" that often do not know each other. Psychologists talk about this as "personality integration." Someone decides to do something one day and the next day decides against it. People who have this quality in a more severe way are extremely unreliable.

A person is not manifested as who they really am when they're down and in an "I" that is negative, yet they may take it as their whole self. They can also look how at how they are at certain good periods and thus not become one with the "I" that they may be currently absorbed in.

Another related concept to this idea is that every person has in them a "higher self" or perfect "I" that God originally created for them. A good name for this is "Real I." Real I is always there, defending itself against the shifting values of the small I's that exist on top of it. Real I is the hero of every children's story. Real I is both the higher self and is also a part of our daily everyday self. Real I overcomes any problem, whether it be neurosis, addiction, guilt, or bad memory. Real I has the way to the accomplishments I've always wanted.

I have seen the only way for myself to achieve contact with this Real I is to have a basic Judeo-Christian religion. My Real I has never been able to accept values that most people who live outside these Judeo-Christian parameters accept. Likewise, I believe in the world historical importance of the life of Jesus Christ, and the work that he did in His
life, death and ressurection, because I have seen the value of my faith in these events. The evidence in my life surrounding what happens when I have faith in these things and when I don't point out that it is much wiser to have such faith. In Judeo-Christian religion (like Leonard Cohen, I prefer to call myself a Judeo-Christian because the word Christian has been severely tarnished in the last few years), the idea of Real I is paramount. It is the New Creation, it is the life of grace, the power of Christ within, Adam before the fall, and other metaphors. I have seen it to be a literal reality, something that can speak through the mass or other small I's which I and everyone else has.

People are unable to develop into people they want to be sometimes because of habits that they have not just in the mind or emotions but in their body language. Releasing muscle tension is one way to stop the negative working of the "body mind." It creates more awareness of oneself, of what the body mind is doing and therefore helps us gain consciousness in the entire person. When this consciousness is gained over the body mind, we gain awareness of not just our mental and emotional states, but of the more elusive moving center mind.

What are my aims in these areas? To hit a state of intellectual affluence where I feel I'm not being lessened by any negative experiences is one aim. It is also an achievement to be able to practice these ideas for a thirty minutes period. Doing so I believe will change my blood chemistry for the rest of the day, as medical science has proven. When I am in the a more "affluent state" of being -- a new world of possibilities enters in. Hope because real to me.

The affluent state of being is the goal of an enlightened man. I have seen in my personal life it is more the result of my spirituality than controlling my mind as I described but the two are meant to be practiced together. The richness of consciousness or state of being is measured in affluence.

Life programs into us, and it is a very true reality, that a life of non-responsibility and "sinfulness" can never bring true and lasting positive emotions. The ensuring suffering that often comes from living a life Hollywood depicts as perfect brings pain -- look at the numerous movie and rock stars who have had tragic ends and who are no longer with us.

The end result of all success is serenity. This can manifest as a slight squinting of the eyes. So why shouldn't this serenity be aimed for and practiced, especially when it is known that many people who achieve successful standards can not even acknowledge to themselves that they've succeeded?

A cheater uses drugs to get at that state, but let not the common man think the "high" state of mind is a bad idea if achieved in some other way. Non-identifying or detachment is part of what will bring you to this state of higher consciousness, or "high." When the mind can achieve relative stillness, and it can observe and control the unconscious movements of the body, and the consciousness shifts into a higher level. In a spiritual person the emotions seem to vibrates at a higher, faster rate. This brings pleasure to the self or a feeling of "serenity." Continued attention to stilling the thoughts, controlling unconscious movements, and resultant "speeding up of the emotions" can brings one to a very nice "high" for lack of a better word. In fact, the word "high" has filtered into normal vocabulary without any reference to drugs. The whole effect of regenerative methods produces the perspective of a good high without the negative things that come from drug abuse. It is a further fruit of self-discipline.

What does it mean to be high? A better definition and understanding of what it means to be high is important. In regenerative methods blood chemistry is said to changed by having less stress and more peace of mind, hence we can see the practical value of this work. It is interesting to feel oneself say, "My body likes this, I'm in public but I register no stress." This can happen when one practices progressive muscle relaxation.

The high state can come as a result of using such things as gratitude lists and accomplishment lists, which are lists of what one is grateful for and what one has accomplished. Often times chasing even some sober way to feel high can be fruitless and take us away from fulfilling our responsibilities. One has to work, and learn how to find some peace of mind while working. What leads people to seek drug and alcohol abuse is an inability to cope with the normal reward system of life. What the enlightened person does who has this dissatisfied disposition is to be around these normal states but handling the stress in a different method than what other people use to cope.

This mental stillness method works wonders because it mimics the initial reaction of the consciousness during drug use. Shoving drugs into our system is a clumsy way to awaken -- to gain control over our thoughts, emotions, and unconscious movements is a better way.

Again, a major method with mental stillness is telling different parts of the body to relax. This of course is also what drugs do -- they change the tension patterns in the body. One doesn't just do this at some ritualistic time, like before one goes to bed at night. One does this as one goes through one's day. The idea is to control tension and bad feelings as stress before they condition the system.

To get to that high state some clues are to sit comfortably or relax where you, are notice your breathing, increase naturally the oxygen intake, do not identify with the concerns of the last day

It's clear that the use of drugs is very destructive because it clouds the visual imagination of the mind, and can lead one to belief that the images of the imagination are somehow objective. Trauma and stress can also separate this visual imagination into belief of something real.

This is a study of methods that help optimize a person without reliance on ideas that are unscientifically or pragmatically proven. It does need to be taken on faith even though to me it is secondary than a life of faith. It is different than many ideas in Eastern religions or New Age or "Occult" beliefs because it steers away from ideas that make a person develop experiences that can be called hallucinations. Non-mystical esotericism is a term one could use to describe these methods.

The best methods that I'm aware of makes use of certain principles of self-knowledge and self-regulation. The best method not only integrates the mind, that is, aims to controls one's thoughts, but works on positive emotions and unconscious body movements and tensions. It leads one to a state of active positive emotions which streamline the life. It teaches people about hidden laws of ourselves, that we sometimes can be seen as having many contradictory moments and impulses, the control of which lead to development of greater willpower. It is not a dry dull non-spiritual system I am describing as it also leaves open truths about a loving God, who cares for us in a paternal or maternal way, so it is not inherently atheistic or pantheistic like other systems.

We must devote ourselves to true spiritual delight and in doing so unite ourselves to God. We can spend our time working towards this luxuriation of life by giving up the useless sufferings we so often have found in life.

1) The idea of mental stillness as a way to still the mind and draw attention to the unconscious manifestations of the body.

2) The understanding and ability to break my manifestations down into several parts or centers: intellectual, emotional, muscular movement, muscular tension and to observe them in case they become out of control or distasteful. These aren't mystical divisions such as in many "new age" teachings.

3) The idea of a higher blood chemistry, which is improved by practicing mental stillness and positive emotions.

4) The observing of body tension and releasing it as a way to increase my energy by saving energy that would normally be used up.

All the negative things that we may be able to say about ourselves, about our life -- that must be passive. Our work is to continue to make that passive. More passivity so that greater consciousness, understanding and organization can arise, and that an spiritual attitude to that which is exterior can arise so that social relations can be blessed.

If we always live in small I's we cannot remember the deeper live that this work can give us. If we only remember small things we can't remember the big thing of waking up and living in a better world.

I see how Real I is that soul of ours in its purity, which is always present but sometimes it seems like only the stage on which small I's play on.

Lack of force comes from staying in the illusionary web of small I's. Small I's represent themselves because they are often saying "I'm this" or "I'm that." Instead, there is a more abundant force that comes when there is a threshold or plateau of awareness. Practicing mental stillness produces a non-identification with the false in oneself.

I've found Real I can trust God to be good and can also pray. Real I is close to the strong person we were as a child, full of joy and planning.

The biggest decision we make in our life is whether we are going to assimilate the impression of our "Real I" -- or, on the other hand, the impression of the disorganized person, the person who uses their imagination to fuel dull or negative states. Real I should be able to give us guidance into areas of life that most currently leave to their imagination.

Mental stillness increases one's will power by connecting I's. Identification with negative emotions and negative self-evaluations caused us to be disconnected with more powerful I's from the past. This is where the Real I's comes in and manifests what our soul really is.

There is an Eastern saying that goes something like this: "'He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me.' Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate"

We must see what happens in our thinking regarding living with difficult people. So much mental time wasted that a greater person would use spend constructively and spiritually. The goal is a free mind, and how can worrying about our rights provide that? I don't think Jesus made "accounts" when people rejected him.

We need to make sure we don't make many negative accounts in our day-to-day transactions. Also, making such accounts in the larger sense of our life can destroy us. How we feel a parent treated us or even God falls into this category. For some people, how they think their friends see them is almost always imagination. Not making accounts and not living in the imagination puts one in the realm of reality. Nothing usually has to change in the way people act towards one. I think Jesus was a perfect example in this. He didn't pussy foot around. He was confrontive when he needed to be.

Another reason not to make accounts with anyone is because that person may not be on a spiritual path. Second guessing their behavior will bring one into whatever path they're on, and it might be quite hellish. Also, the problem with bad communication ability, hence what Jesus said about if you are angry with your neighbor be sure you talk to them before the sun goes down. Just learn not to make accounts -- don't get angry in the mind.  In order to pass through an especially stressful event, such as tax season, moving, writing a paper or studying for a final, one has to take breaks or "high naps." You have to stop functioning completely for fifteen minutes. You can read the spiritual book of your choice during this time but you can't do anything else, except something like a spiritual exercise like yoga or tai chi.

There are these flashes of insight we have now and then that we do the very things we wished we would not do, and can't do the things we should do or need to do. The idea of a balanced man is a normal man who works on the other side of himself. That is why for an artist, studying business is a good match. Studying art for a business per son is a good match. It is often in the things we do not do that we will find certain freedoms.

We can go through a whole routine of negative I's. Sometimes, not connecting with a person, for instance, a person who was not returning phone calls, can set us off. Overcoming it is a matter of no longer connecting in thought with the person. It is about giving up one's suffering, realizing we have a right not to be negative. We surely want out of this maze of suffering.

Most children have two primary goals: those of wonder and curiosity and those of fun, excitement and humor. Most adults have these also to a lesser degree but have one big goal: security/money/status/power. Security comes from money, which comes from status which comes from power. But there is a higher security that comes from a higher influence.

It's very clear that a heavy account that occurs after abuse or even a perceived abuse, one must do something conscious in the emotional center to get rid of it. Even if it is a false negative imagination, if it is strong enough, it lodges in the emotion al center. Stopping thought isn't perhaps good enough; one has to work on emotions by working on the creation of positive ones.

Real I -- lives in conscience -- wholly loves our family and friends.
Real I -- lives in our best career -- has no regrets from the past.

Real I doesn't look at finances in bad shape and God in the same breath, when it comes to responsibility. Real I knows one gets what one deserves financially and in terms of a career. Even if one were to go bankrupt, Real I knows that all good possibilities remain after that. In seeing chief feature we see a spoke and a time the spokes are on a central axis that we are said to revolve around So, I would enumerate the spokes, the spokes are pictures of oneself. Accounts make us defensive about other's imagined judgments of us. These are the intrusive thoughts of false I's.

Can we imagine our life with saturations of the Real I and the universe's response to this living in Real I?

Can we imagine stages in progressive non-identification?

I want awareness as only awareness is the first step of change.

Ask yourself, "what fruit did the work make in me today?" It gave me the necessity of realizing my nothingness in achieving a higher state. I must be passive for mental stillness to take place.

The work on myself told me never to make personal accounts with people, and to work in the opposite direction to counteract heavy account making.

I see this solution of knowing my own nothingness and working consciously in the opposite of making accounts would create a new life for me. It would make me a much more useful, noble person. I can make it my new prayer. The idea of being passive to this false personality -- and allowing impressions to digest by our understanding and go higher in a spirit of stillness and love.

One very helpful and interesting idea that has been around for thousands of years has been called non-attachment or non-identification. It is the idea that we lose ourselves in events, thoughts, attitudes, or desires that we envelope ourselves in. Of course, to be a responsible and mentally healthy person, we must have some degree of attachment or identification with people, events and activities. But when we are really stressed out, and when people stress to the breaking point, we can see that they are more attached or identified than what is normal. Identification often takes us away from a greater good because it is never necessary, and in this, lies the mystery of what it really is. It is by not identifying, that we can often find our path to bliss, that is, we can find freedom from the mundane. By holding so tightly on these things, by the very act of holding so strongly, we lose our strength for other things life is presenting.

To not identify or not be attached is not immoral, but that is one of the hardest lessons about it. When looked at in the light of the concept of non-identification, the bible verse "to all things there is a season, and a purpose under heaven" is marvelous. It can help us not identify or be pre-occupied with things at their wrong time. We can say "I don't identify with this, it is not the appointed time for it." Each person perhaps has to put this idea into their own words and experienced, and it is perhaps in this idea of non-identification that helps people feel "englightened."

When one is truly not identified and has stopped the automatic action that comes from it, one can have the sense that they can do anything. This is liberating and also one reason why it is said that some spiritual ideas can get people in trouble.

You can find the things that you are identified with, and deny identification with them. This has also been called "un-thinking." Non-identification is a spiritual exercise, it's a spiritual effort, a regenerative ritual.

To not identify with limitations on our future, can bring is to visualize goals of one's good future. People define themsevles and limit themselves by what they identify with. You can see the limiting factor in this more easily sometimes in people who are not very educated or have had limited exposure to culture. They often are identified with things that hold them back in life. They create prejudices about things that could in fact help them very much. We all to a greater or lesser extent our limited by our identifications. It is interesting however that in psychology, the term "identification" is used in a positive way. Our identify and our identifications are the healthy things in our psyche that help us form normal relationships with ourselves and our surroundings. This is also where people often go wrong in studying advanced ideas: they lose their normal identifications and become lost in a sense of infinite possibilities.

Sometimes it's a cherished thing we must tell ourselves we don't identify with. It doesn't mean that we don't love doing those things, it just means we can non-identify with the way the lower self would do them and do them more spiritually in all circumstances.

What will happen if we stop identifying with so many things? We will lose a sense of our limitations. We will lose much of our negative emotions and will gain more positive emotions. Practicing non-identification is especially good in a period of high stress.

We can stop identifying with events that have happened to us: we can see ourselves as existing in limitless events, and in greater and greater levels of spirituality of people. We can stop identifying with the space and time that we find ourselves in.

We could go on a vacation of not identifying. Everyday can have a vacation of non-identifying. This is like a feeling of heaven on earth. It is like never falling from the garden, existing in a state of grace.

The trick to see is to stop identifying and to pick out what we are identifying with most strongly. I will make a list of some of the things that can happen to a person, put them in an affirmation, and then make a short list of them. Different lists of things can help at different times.

11 Non-mystical Esotericism

The stilling of thoughts and of the mechanical movement of the body, can lead us to a better rest of the organism. The intellectual observation of the instinctive control, can also occasionally really recharge us.

All we have to do is be still. If we are still, we will swell in the Holy Spirit if our hearts are right. Stillness takes an effortful watch over our thoughts. We can watch our emotions, to be on the lookout for a type of vague pain or whatever it is that one might be predispositioned towards. For some this could even be a type of goofiness. Instead we can have an inner smile and radiance in the mental stillness we find for ourselves.

Knowledge is important also, and it may be for years we can go on in ignorance regarding discernment of something that troubles us. This is why I believe in relying on prayer. I especially use the tradition known as Hesychasm, or the Jesus Prayer. It is a way to "pray without ceasing." With constant prayer, one is always alerting God of our need for help. If we are praying, God will see that. We will then gain all our faculties, and we will be lead to the wisdom we seek. We can pray also for help in stillness.

Only an pure effort changes my consciousness. In raising my consciousness, I can better latch on to the time sense. I may not have a watch or clock, but I can ask "Am I aware of all I can do today, of the possibilities the universe has to offer today?"

Mental stillness is important because it posits the mind in the space time continuum where there is not mere association with life events but there are more eternal principles in a higher form.

When I stop thoughts, I feel like I am in a movie theater, sitting watching new movies that I know not where they will go. All that must be done for this beautiful movie to continue is to stop my thoughts.

12 Worldview

Life is a mix between the idea that the Earth was created for man as God's "highest" creature and also that humanity has experienced a serious fall.

More people than are willing to admit have to ask: "Am I a machine driven by dysfunctional patterns in life?" "Am I the victim of a dysfunctional family or the victor over one?" "Did I rise above whatever bad deck life gave me?" If people don't ask these questions, they can not be helped.

The machine driven by this dysfunctional life is a machine full of fear, not a naïve love. Dysfunction or the "fallen life" operates on it in various degrees, by forcing in it memories of the person's past actions and various events the dysfunctional life created for the person, or better, against the person. Mental constructs are formed such as fear of poverty, harassment, and verbal or physical abuse. But if that person can charm themselves through the spell life has previously had, they can see themselves as God made them. They will see the day that God has made for them, free from the chains that dysfunctional life surrounded them with. While a common Judeo-Christian worldview is my understanding of a truly positive life, getting to that place of being "still before the Lord" is a big mystery for many. It is where much of the work must be done.

One beautiful area is to focus on the good people that one can find in society. The television most often wants to focus on the bad people (the news, police shows of various types, real or fiction, the monster theme shows based on fantasy superheroes). We don't need to be anything like these people and can try to get out of their way as much as possible, except when it is our prayer to help them. It becomes even hard to write about focusing on good people without having to spend time warning about the fact that life seems to always be showing us the bad people.

It is always in giving out to others less fortunate than ourselves that we give to ourselves. One area that one can do this is in non-profit work. Volunteering is often filled with opportunities for helping such people, but they basically come to us naturally, where we are at without having to go anywhere special.

13 Notes Two

Some time after 1998, I moved away from writing new aesthetic theory to writing that had a more philosophical orientation. In 1997-1998, I was able to systematize aspects of the Emotive Virtuism philosophy to make a short critique of some of the Post-modernist canon, and to further "deconstruct" the value of Nietzsche's work. This exposure to Post-Modernism lead me to study Foucault's notion of history, especially his work on power. I had seen further that without more of an understanding of the area of power my work might not proceed in the way that it must. I needed to create a work that could truly exist in the world and help people be more optimized, something that was outside of what is becoming known as “tribalisms” (which I like better than the Post-Modern notion of "narratives"). Since Nietzsche was wrong in many of his conclusions, and yet there was no validity to say that Foucault is wrong in his idea that power plays a central role in human life, even a doctrine like Emotive Virtuism must take Nietzsche into account if it will benefit from what so many other moderns benefit from: a good adaptation to a society not based on lifting up the other but one primarily focused on lifting up the self.

So, from 1998 to the present I trod down the dangerous path of studying human "power" and just what it meant. Psychoanalytically, the human need to be seen as a functional person, or “powerful” in this way of competence, is present in the healthy ego whether that person wants to acknowledge this or not.

Empowerment must often be an emotional one. Most are forced to operate in a world of limited financial resources and this limitation influences their life-philosophy. There is much wisdom in statements such as "he is truly wealthy who has need of little." I understood, not so much from reading Foucault yet by having my eyes opened a little by his thought, that in the unconscious of man there lies deep security needs that are foremost in human interaction. I believe many who are the philosophers, aesthetic theorists, or who become academicians, come relatively from a leisurely background, not always a wealthy one but at least one in which they are able to buy back much of their time from society (in place of obtaining it's status-tokens). Many such cerebral people aren´t quite aware that people en masse were basing almost all their actions on certain power-calculations. These power-calculations many who went down the realm of spirituality, aesthetics, philosophy, etc., were not as interested in, yet in not following their path often limitations are placed upon their life. (I´m interested in what it takes to empower the great among us). Some of us probably didn't even fully understand the nature of them. I like using the term "power-calculations" -- I don't recall what Foucault would call them. (Being a polyartist and polytheorist, I don't often have time to remember such writers in depth, and trying not to identify with the old, I don't make it my life-task to spend my time studying them).

For some, a pragmatic "emotional luxuriation" was the wisest path to go on, and in a sense, this is largely this is where true human power lies. This is also dangerous, and in my writing I am looking at the value of traditional religious views as being psychologically healing. I like telling people "I'm religious, not spiritual" to affront the somewhat conceited modern slogan "I'm spiritual, not religious." If you at least consider yourself religious today, you are pretty sure to establish in yourself psychologically healthy patterns such as avoiding psychological-sexual infantilism (the modern porn-promiscuity trap of the multinational corporate marketing-entertainment schema), substance abuse (coming from a likewise hollow and fictitious portrait of the modern artist) and a lack of optimism/hope/mind-expansion-through-prayer-meditation (probably unconsciously coming from a similar type of need to keep people self-sufficient, organized and hard working).

I picked up the term "luxuriation" from my study of Moshe Feldenkrais, the body-movement theorist, and from my history studying almost every religion and philosophy that was of any repute, the body of thought that tried to bring man to this level of inner bliss seemed to be Buddhism, the idea of enlightenment, but through long arduous experience in trying to get a Western man to think like an Eastern one, I realized that I was too Judeo-Christian. I had seen how the basic Judeo-Christian worldview was to save my psyche on numerous occasions, when open-ended worldviews such as those in Eastern paths combined with my Western mind and made a hodge-podge of nonsense. So, I knew that being into Buddhism would not work for me. Jung said that it's dangerous for a Westerner to try to think like an Eastern person but not sure what he would say if he were around today after it became much more popular.

Some of these ideas I found from studying a philosopher whose philosophy I don't agree with more than about half, so I am not going to point out who that philosopher is until I can write adequately about him. I don't want to lead anyone astray by pointing in that direction. I think I have taken most of the good ideas out and left out the rest. There may be an ocassional use of a term that may seem odd, and it is because I'm using the terminology this philosopher uses.

Creative Virtue

R.S. Pearson Miscellaneous Writings