Transcript of Doug Gibbs’s
WTM Whangarei Centre video
(To learn more about Doug, see www.wtmwhangarei.com)
My name is Doug Gibbs and welcome to the new World Transformation Movement Centre in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand.
I went to university in Palmerston North, where I studied [and gained] a business degree in agricultural business. Finally, at the age of 57, I did a Master’s in Counselling and since then I’ve worked in counselling, firstly for an NGO [a non-profit organisation that operates independently of government] and then I moved into working in a [secondary boys] school as Head of Student Support.
I came across the WTM after, I suspect, a lifetime of asking questions about why things were the way they were, and always never really getting the answers. So some of the questions I asked as a child (and people may resonate with these) were did you ever wonder why adults were too busy, too stressed, arguing, violent, angry, sad, behaving badly, having affairs, getting drunk, etc? Why they never seemed to pay you enough attention? Why they’re constantly distracted and stressing about jobs, mortgages, politics, careers?
As a kid I used to wonder, and you may have too, why people bullied each other incessantly and seemed to get perverse pleasure out of doing so? Why some people wanted to fight everyone? Why countries go to war over trivial ideological differences or to get revenge for past injustices or gain economical, geographical advantages over others? What makes dictators tick? What encourages them to hold on to power, with sometimes savage brutality as we see in Syria?
And a big one for me was why religious faiths are so hypocritical and not behaving the same way as the principles they teach? Where ‘hell’ and ‘heaven’ ideas originated? Is there a God? What is ‘judgment day’ and why do we fear it so much? Why do we insist on destroying our environment and slaughtering animals for sport or dubious medicinal products?
I also read, and you may have too, dozens of personal development books. And maybe you, like I, tried therapy, different philosophies, religions and still did not really find the answers you’re looking for…that something is still missing, even if those things have helped?
So after doing this for most of my life, and wondering whether I fitted in or not, I somehow saw Jeremy Griffith’s book FREEDOM pop up on the computer screen and I was intrigued. So I started to have a look and then I ordered it on Amazon and the rest is history. I joined the WTM not long after starting to read the book and I’ve been around it probably for three years or so now and learning all the time.
What I see with kids going through Resignation [the psychological process whereby adolescents wrestle with the horror of the utter hypocrisy of our horrifically corrupted or ‘fallen’, soul-devastated condition before ‘resigning’ themselves to never again looking at the seemingly inexplicable, unbearably confronting and depressing issue] upsets me, there is so much anxiety and depression: they say, “Oh, I think I’m depressed. I’ve got depression” and I’ll think, “What?! At this age you should be bouncing out your skin, mate!” That’s a big change in my life, in my lifetime. It seemed a lot rarer when I was in that age group. I mean there was all the other stuff but there wasn’t anxiety; I’d never heard of anxiety. There were a few housewives on Valium, that was about it.
So it is quite disappointing, quite saddening really, to sit with so many boys between 14 and 18. But it’s probably around that 14, 15, 16 age where parents are worried about them because they’re withdrawing into their room and they’re worried and they’re anxious—some of them to the point of just about being dysfunctional with it; they can’t even come to school or do their work. Very distressing; it is distressing, and it’s frustrating, not being able to do much about it, when you know now the answers that I’ve read in FREEDOM that explain what’s going on. I think that understanding what’s going on has been at times very helpful, but it can also be very frustrating because you don’t know what to do about it.
So for the origin of the human condition to be explained so clearly and so simply in this book, FREEDOM, has given me an understanding of this battle between our conscious self, the conscious self that was seeking understanding and learning, and our instinctive self—this battle that is the human condition. And having read that understanding in FREEDOM means all the issues that come to me in a counselling situation, or just through watching the world around me, questions as to why we’re behaving that way, have been answered. So I can always find an answer to why this is happening, which makes understanding much easier, and working with people much easier, because you can understand that “Ah, that’s going on” or “This is going on”. There’s a reason for it, which the theories I learnt before, although they were very good, really all you are doing is putting a ‘band-aid’ over a sore or a cut. They’re really providing temporary relief so people can carry on functioning in the world, but by doing that we’re not actually providing the actual cure for all of it. Whereas all the information in FREEDOM and the work of the WTM is providing that answer, it’s actually providing the cure. So most of these problems will disappear over time as people catch on.
Having this much bigger and much deeper level of understanding of what is actually going on and why people act the way they do, I’m finding very, very helpful for myself and for my work.
After three years and a lot of reading, a lot of learning and, I have to say, a lot of thought, I decided it was time I actually did something for the WTM and actually help this movement go forward because I think it’s so important and probably is the only thing that’s going to save this world. So I decided to open a WTM Centre in Whangarei in Northland in New Zealand so that people can make contact if they wish, and hopefully spread the word and give people the opportunity to find this information and help us cure the ills of this planet. I think it’s that important.
