The Need for Explanation and Adjustment Time

So, although this freedom that the full truth delivers is what we have longed for throughout the ascent of humanity, our first reaction will be to procrastinate. We have been building the staircase for so long we have almost come to believe there is no other life, we have forgotten what the staircase was to achieve, and in some ways we have become so exhausted from the labour we almost feel we don’t want our freedom. We have become cynical and embattled. We also have to overcome our fear of being exposed. Further we are incredulous; even though the gate through the wall is opened we can’t easily believe it. NeverthePage 205 of
Print Edition less, while it will take time, we will gradually realise that we have at last succeeded in liberating ourselves and will take our well-earned freedom.

Each of us will need time to adjust. It has to be stressed again that some initial confusion is to be expected in making this adjustment. Earlier in the text when our rehabilitation stage was being described it was mentioned that ‘until humanity has mastered the skills that will be necessary, we should limit our efforts to self-expose and to psychologically analyse others to what comes naturally to us as our minds absorb understanding’. To illustrate this problem. In the past it has taken each of us many years to achieve a full recognition of the depth of the pain associated with the human condition. While our basic alienation/personality was established in our infancy and early childhood we did not realise the full extent and consequences of it until we reached the middle and latter half of our life. As an illustration of this, young people often did not appreciate their parents’ need to go to Church. Because they have yet to come to this full realisation and thus don’t fully recognise the dangers of exposing that alienation, young people naively will tend to want to confront older people — such as their university lecturers and parents — with these explanations, unaware of how deeply evaded these truths are, and have had to be, in us. There is a need for consideration and patience. Until the counselling skills to accompany these understandings are developed, those who are attempting to understand them and their implications should not try to force the unevasive truth upon others. We can give others access to the unevaded truth but they should not have it imposed upon them. We need time to adjust.

When these explanations are first read, the reader (especially those more naive or unaware of the hurtful implications the mention of such truths as integrative meaning have traditionally inflicted upon us) should find them extremely interesting because they account for so many mysteries. Actually they should be so accountable, they should make so much sense, the reader will feel that what is being said is exactly what he or she hasPage 206 of
Print Edition known and been trying to say all along. (Huxley’s exclamation that Darwin’s idea of natural selection should have been obvious to him [Huxley] was an expression of just this kind of recognition.) However, after some months of living with the explanations each person will discover that he or she is being brought back into contact with the deep hurts and evasions that all humans except exceptional innocents have hidden within them. It is these same hurts that left us unable to grapple with, find and reveal these explanations for ourselves. Although it did not start out this way two million years ago, at the end of humanity’s search it was alienation not insufficient cleverness that stood between us and the explanation/defence for ourselves. The balance had tipped the other way and we had become too clever, too unsound. Rediscovering and re-negotiating our deeply repressed upsets/alienations/block-outs will be traumatic. As soon as possible video counselling films have to be made showing other people being guided safely through the initial shocking self-confrontation stage. Unless these are available we can all too easily slightly misunderstand — become slightly lost again — and again start seeing ourselves as worthless which will lead us into depression. If we feel worthless we have necessarily misunderstood because the full truth is we are in no way bad/ worthless.

One dangerous trap is to fail to realise that these upsets exist in everyone, is to think the repressed upsets that we will discover in ourselves are unique to, or exceptional in us personally. The reason this pitfall exists is that until now humanity has evaded acknowledging the extent of the existence of upsets. It was only a few years ago that going to a psychiatrist became socially acceptable. Unable to tackle our neuroses we have pretended they did not exist. Many of us may not be aware that all humans have similar repressions so we can be left feeling terribly alone with our alienation. Ideally revelation/‘exposure’ is not to be negotiated alone. Hopefully in the near future institutions manned by staff fully familiar with all the explanations we will need to cope with exposure day will be established for people to attend whilePage 207 of
Print Edition they are reading this book. Initially the reality is it will be difficult to find people to look at all the truths that we have practised evading and thus read the book, let alone have them absorb and adjust to the information sufficiently to respond and support what it is about. (Of course eventually humans will be able to grow up familiar with the truth. Instead of schools teaching information that is so evasive it is almost meaningless, as currently occurs, children will be quickly introduced to the predicament of humans on earth so they will not have to cope by adopting evasion. Able to maintain their true selves they will be full of enthusiasm for and love of our world and will learn all that has to be learnt out of interest/fascination with their world and themselves. They will not have to be taught anything.) If we start becoming seriously depressed after reading this book and attempting reconciliation on our own, we need help because we are actually not worthless at all and have either not properly and fully understood the explanation or have been destabilised and disorientated by the amount of information to which we are trying to adjust.

The extreme fragility of our sense of worth or self-esteem, together with the fact that we have evaded the existence of and are therefore unaware of this extreme insecurity within us, are the problems we face in the immediate future. They are the problems associated with ‘future shock’ mentioned earlier. To quickly give some indication of just how extreme our insecurity/fragility is, consider the following:

For two million years humans have been unable to defend their search for understanding. We have each ‘known’ our life was totally legitimate and worthy and have been preoccupied trying to establish that fact. We were constantly looking for support and sympathy for ourselves. Real sympathy has not been possible until now so the best we could hope for was to find other people like ourselves and a realm that didn’t expose us — we sought people and environments we could identify with. This desperate search for sympathy was often revealed in our choice of mate. How often have couples pictured in engagement and Page 210 of
Print Edition wedding photos in newspapers and magazines had the same looks. Their smiles especially were often almost identical. We found support/sympathy for our identity in others who were like us. This desperate need for support was also what made couples who had spent years together adopt each other’s mannerisms. It is also the reason we could either take on the identity of our pets or sympathise with and thus select pets that looked like us. Though we cannot begin to imagine how insecure we have become after two million years of being indefensible these illustrations give us a glimpse of just how desperate we were for sympathy.

They also reveal something of the true depth of the difficulty of maintaining our self-esteem or sense of worth during life in alienation. The false defences we built up around ourselves were like a castle built of cards — the structure could all too easily come tumbling down. We ‘kept it all together’ — but only just — by employing every little bit of support for our egos that we could find and by blocking out any criticism. Now our blocking out is exposed and massive disruptive change is being introduced.

There is a lot to adjust to. While we have at last found the real defence for ourselves (and it is anything but demoralising, in fact it is the ultimate reinforcement for self), the rebuilding process involved is shattering and as such is severely disruptive of our fragile state of security. To protect our fragile stability we will be tempted to reject the information out of hand.

If we are aware of this reaction, this temptation to stay with the old defences, we will be in a strong position to contain it and in so doing will help the process of repair and rehabilitation on and of the earth a great deal. While this early rejection stage will pass as a matter of course, the longer it lasts the longer suffering persists on earth.

Apart from the destabilising effect — which is overcome with sufficient adjustment time — it is not too difficult to get through the initial confrontation stage as long as we are helped with sufficient explanation to allow us to understand. Until now onlyPage 211 of
Print Edition exceptional prophets could reach an integration-based unevasive and thus full understanding of our upset condition and they couldn’t communicate their understanding because humanity had not found the mechanisms to make an understandable explanation possible. The situation now that this full first principle-based understanding is found is we can all share in it and thus eliminate our upset. However the problem is that while this understanding is now available it is not easy for us to use it to understand ourselves. If we were practised holistic thinkers we would only need the outline of the explanation sketched in this book to work out the remaining details for ourselves and apply them to our own particular situation. Not being holistic thinkers and instead ardent evaders of holism we will all too easily become lost when we try to think holistically. To learn to think this way we need lots of help. In fact we need everything explained because being crooked thinkers we will not be able to take the explanations on for more than a few steps on our own before unwittingly reverting to our old evasive explanations and becoming lost again. We are trained to think crookedly not to think straight. We are mental cripples when it comes to thinking holistically. While there is sufficient explanation to adjust to for the present in this book ultimately we will need a great deal more explanation before we can find security of understanding about ourselves in the presence of the truth.

Further, evasion is gradually going to become a useless form of defence. Hiding, escape, self-distraction, block-out, denial, pretence, facades, distracting humour and a bigger car or a new pair of blue shoes or another squillion bucks takeover deal will all eventually become ineffective in relieving the pain in our brain. Confrontation with the pain rather than escape is the solution and for that we need explanation/understanding. ‘To live well’ will soon no longer be ‘the best form of revenge’/defence, rather to understand will be.

For these reasons it is obvious we need to find our prophets — our straight/unevasive thinkers — and bring them to the forefront. They can ‘explain everything to us’ (John 4:25) andPage 212 of
Print Edition explanation is all important now. The ‘last [the innocent] need to be first’ (see Math 19:30; 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke; 13:30) during rehabilitation. Egotism — the need to defend ourself against criticism — is finished with. There is no longer any criticism of anyone. Demonstrations of our worth are not necessary now. We can understand that we are worthy. We can love ourselves and others now. Those most capable of explaining can best show us how to do this because doing it depends on explanation/understanding.

It is hoped that many people will come forward to assist this project, if not straight after they have read this condensed version then once it becomes obvious that what is being foreseen here is actually beginning to happen. Then proper preparation can be made for the traumas that revelation/confrontation/ exposure/‘judgement-day’ brings for many people.

Until proper preparations can be made for exposure — day for all-out self-confrontation — it will be necessary for each of us to rely on block-out or evasion to cope because if we can’t understand and/or adjust to the understanding and can’t confront the truth then evasion, as before, is all that is possible. While humanity is getting itself properly organised to cope with revelation day we each will need to be free to hide from the truth as much as we need to. (This will happen anyway.)

After negotiating the initial shock of self-confrontation we will each back off from the truth again, repressing it to varying degrees, re-establishing our self at a distance from the truth at which we feel comfortable. From this new position we will gradually begin to think ourselves together at a rate that suits us. If someone asks us about the truth we will say ‘I know about as much as I want to know for the present but you are welcome to read it for yourself. The book is over there on that shelf. Take it, come to your own terms with the material then come and play a round of golf (or whatever) with me — but leave me to adjust to the information at my own pace’.

It will take us time to heal and each of us will be starting at a different distance from the truth. The less battle-weary, beingPage 213 of
Print Edition less distanced from the truth, will have less ground to travel but the more exhausted, since they tend to be the more clever among us, will be able to think faster and absorb the understandings more quickly so they should be able to heal themselves faster, the net result being that we should all arrive at soundness at approximately the same time. Ultimately the meek [the innocent] won’t inherit the earth (see Math 5:5) although initially during rehabilitation it is true that they will. During rehabilitation the innocent will lead the battle-weary, will show the way — the ‘last will be first’.

It might be emphasised again here that in the final analysis differences between people and races in the degree of their battle exhaustions will be insignificant. We are entering a world of so much beauty and happiness all remaining problems will be drowned out. In fact they will not be a problem to us, rather they will be a pleasure to overcome. Humanity will have so much generosity nothing will be a problem. In our exhausted cynicism we have often tried to turn this positive into a negative by saying that ‘the price of paradise will be boredom’ and that ‘there is only fun in the adventure/journey itself’. (For example, from an essay on secrecy which appeared in Time magazine, January 17, 1983, ‘Still, anybody contemplating humanity as it is must wonder whether, in a thoroughly transparent world, the species would not suffer spiritual anemia and perhaps terminal boredom’.) As was explained on page 43 we have to remember that the excitement of adventure was ‘in truth a very small positive’. We have lost virtually all memory of the real ‘positives’ our world has to offer. Our cynicism about the future was a result of loss of access to what true happiness is like and in the extreme a case of painting the future black to make ourselves feel better about our own bleak state. Like many of our negative attitudes, it was a false form of self-defence and one of the products of extreme exhaustion.

The rapid and major adjustment phase of our journey home to soundness will take possibly two or three generations with the finer adjustment taking a few generations longer. For our ownPage 214 of
Print Edition immediate future, while it will take time to fully confront, acknowledge and adjust to the truth, we will very soon derive great relief from the realisation that we at last have the full/compassionate truth up on earth. Our hope and faith that humanity would achieve liberation and avert apocalyptic self-destruction has been realised. With this realisation we can find the strength/enthusiasm to call a moratorium on our upsets and buy the time necessary to heal ourselves and our planet. Our great anxiety for ourselves, our children and our world can at last subside. We have made it to safety. Everything is possible now. Essentially, while we still have to repair ourselves and our earth, we have achieved our freedom.