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INNER MEN AND
THE ROPE
Macho
Montana Al Harvey of Bakewell Mountain has been one of my Christian Zen
teachers via his incredibly creative humor. I have learned that humor
helps us consciously cope with life but surprisingly it helps open the
unconscious by relaxing the ego's grip.
Al says we have inner men in the basement of our psyche and they can
only take control of us by shinnying up a rope and getting into the room
of consciousness. They are always competing with each other to get up
the rope and influence our behavior.
In a Science of Mind interview the author of "The Power of
Now," (Tolle) says we take responsibility for a lot of attitudes
and behavior that we have no conscious control over. It is a
manifestation of our unconsciousness. Rather than submerging ourselves
in guilt, we would do well to simply become willing to become aware of
our inner workings.
I believe this is what Jesus meant when He said on the cross,
"Forgive them for they know not what they do." People who
choose to be completely oblivious to their unconscious can do some
strange and wicked things to other people, and to themselves.
One reason I love Vernon Howard's writings and lectures is his ability
to get my awareness down into that basement room where the rapscallion
inner men are going for the rope.
Knowing that we can "know not what we do," we become more
alert to inner influences. We do not want to live an unconscious life.
Strangely, people who are living an unconscious life are more certain
they are right. Listen to the crowd scream, "Crucify him!" Few
of them had ever met Him or talked with Him. They were going 100% on
what people said who hated Him. They listened to those who knowingly
twisted what He said. But they became passionately positive they were
right.
In "Stars In My Crown," Joel McCrea played a minister who
talked a lynch mob out of hanging a sweet old black man who had loved
and befriended many of the men in the mob when they were boys. He had
taken them fishing and listened to their problems. McCrea reminded them
of these facts they were not admitting to awareness. One by one the men
walked away from the mob and went home.
Once we open to Truth and admit it to our awareness on specific
occasions where we see unconscious patterns coming out, or as Al would
say a bad dude coming up the rope, we can move a step or two toward
sanity.
*****
Email Dalton (daltonroberts@chattanooga.net) or check out other
writings on his website at www.daltonroberts.com. To book him to
speak/entertain for your group, call 423-697-0680.
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