Living in a World of their own creation. Let’s look again into the Individual Mind, and seek to discover idiosyncrasies that may be holding us back. Oftentimes circumstance is blamed for our problems, while the big picture of what is actually going on in the world eludes us. Therefore, we need to evaluate our positions constantly, to be sure we are moving forward. Furthermore, the best way to do this is by comparing ourselves to others. There is plenty of room for us to be inspired by others, but we have to look at them and ourselves to do it. Let’s see now if we are measuring up–– THERE IS IN EVERY SOUL a facility for keen self-appraisal, but it does not manifest the same in any two people. Furthermore, that person is rare in which the appraisal of self is exactly the same as that accorded to them by ‘the world.’ This difference in self-appraisal makes for a queer and oftentimes influential condition in the otherwise normal person: it leads them to believe that they are either greater or lesser in their degrees of attainment than those around them will concede. This reacts on them as either a criticism of them- selves, or a criticism of society. Their errone- ous self-appraisal confuses them, and this confusion causes malformations in their de- portment towards their fellows. In nine cases out of ten, such a person is merely perplexed and wondering what an accurate self-evalua- tion might be. They will sometimes be labeled erratic, but the term is viciously unfair. So-called Erraticism is not what the world ac- credits it. ‘Erratic’ souls are unable to deter- mine true evaluation of themselves, and thereby go on living blindly from blunder to blunder. Erratic people, overall, are quite nor- mal people in most respects, but have a natu- ral inclination for estimating themselves by
their beliefs in what they could accomplish under ideal conditions, instead of estimating themselves by what is possible for them to accomplish in the world as they find it. To complicate matters, they only use their pres- ent or past attainments as the measuring-stick for what they exhibit. They do not accredit that the true function of the world may be to accost them on occasion and demand, “Who are you, anyway? What excuse do you have for living in the world? What does your particular existence amount to, and how do you know? Are you estimating yourself and your value to the universe by your actual per- formance in relation to others?––or are you estimating yourself by what you dream of per- forming in the privacy of your own mental and spiritual processes?”
The supersensitive person is usually the latter type of erratic: they are forever comparing themselves to themselves, instead of comparing themselves to the world as they find it, filled with similar human beings of all shades and degrees of exhibiting. By doing this, they are negating their true worldly missions of attain- ing those objectives and lessons that they came into life to gain. Consequently, these people frequently fail to conquer their life’s mission. To achieve maximum development, they need to admit that they have come into the mortal arena to profit from what they find in it, else they would never have gone to the trouble of getting themselves born into it. They are in flesh to profit from the experi- ences life brings to them: yet how then can they do this except by observing the traits, habits, and reactions of other people––com- pared to their own behaviors and perform- ances while each is under similar conditions of living?
People of supersensitive or introspective na- tures should not examine themselves inward- ly, but analyze their behaviors in relation to the behaviors of others. People of supersensi- tive natures should frequently say to them- selves, “I came into this world where there are millions of sentient creatures like myself, at least in their physical fundamentals and men-
tal processes. All of us must be here for some constructive purpose, since everywhere in Nature there is a progressive evolutionary movement. Now what can that purpose possi- bly be for me?” . . . Instead, supersensitive people bemoan themselves by saying, “We find ourselves beset on every hand with con- ditions not to our liking. We are confronted with cruel problems, and failure to find their solutions terrifies us. We find ourselves un- loved; our bodies possess strange inclinations and impulses that make us traitors to our spir- itual development; life appears constantly to us as a hopeless jumble. What on earth is the trouble?”
But their questioning should not stop there. They should go on reasoning: “Might I be pic- turing to myself an idealized state of society where I could go and dwell in peace? Might I be trying to live in a world of my own thought-creation, and superimposing it upon the mortal world as I find it by a sort of force? Might I be using this force of my willpower to avoid change, when I discover the world of mortality will by no means conform to my whims?”
They should say to themselves, “In this ideal- ized world of my own manufacture, I natural- ly think of myself as more or less perfect: at least I am quite satisfactory to myself in my mental and spiritual attainments. Likewise, the world I project in fancy is more or less satisfying to me, since I am its creator. But is it all true? What guides do I have to go by to in- dicate that I am thinking or reasoning honest- ly and correctly? Is there any test I can apply to myself or to this world of my own projec- tion, which would prove my perceptions to be precisely what I think?”
When any given soul has reasoned thus far, they have come into cognizance of the very thing they came into life to get. Look at it this way. There must be a reason why men and women come into earthly life: what can that reason be? Each one of them knows it isn’t a world that he or she has made for themselves, for the very antagonistic nature of it proves that: if each of us were given our choice, we
- 47 - would certainly be sensible enough to create a
world of minimum discomfort to ourselves, meaning we would create a world that would adapt to our own traits of occupancy while in it. Instead, we discover a world that does not accord with our own pet notions or fixations, and we are inclined to get very angry at it. We do not stop to reason that this world of mortal reality may be a projection of the God- Thought about the matter, and that we are living and experiencing in the mortal tenure for the purpose of getting our own notions altered, so they correspond to the true God Notion of what a world should be, in order to be of maximum profit––physically, mentally, and spiritually––to the greatest numbers of persons in it. No, on the whole we are think- ing strictly of ourselves. We would manufac- ture a perfect little personal world, without much space in it for the rights and properties of others. We would have all others be very much like ourselves, or get out of our world and be no part of it: we would label them disturbing elements.
Now that would be all right for a time––a very little time––for much would be lacking in such a world. For one thing, there would be no measuring-sticks for human character; there would be no opposition, either natural or personal, by which we could adjudge our- selves as being alive at all. Remember, we are what we are because of the experiences we have had in encountering other persons, eith- er more or less developed than ourselves. It is this very difference and variation in human attainments that makes us realize that we are alive.
The erratic, introspective, or supersensitive person negates and ignores the very thing that has made them come into an awareness of themselves. They have built, or are build- ing a tiny little world of their own imaginings, in their own picturings and patterns. They cir- cumscribe themselves by limiting their voice of conscience, with limits conceived by and for themselves. Then they belittle themselves to themselves, or magnify their own traits of character to themselves, and generally get no-
where. If they could only be aware of it, they are transcribing themselves to themselves in terms of themselves, instead of using the di- vine measuring-stick on character develop- ment that the God of the True Universe has provided for them in their especial instance. And that is other people, and the manner in which they live their lives––compared to how they imagine they would live their lives if left utterly alone.
Now those who live Above the Worlds, or in higher states of matter with character devel- opments beyond the mortal, have a very bitter crow to pick with those who thus envision life. These Eternal Mentors know that intro- spective and supersensitive people are injur- ing themselves terribly, because spiritually speaking they are letting themselves stand still. They see them saying, “Thus far have we progressed in our lordly contacts with other persons in previous lives, but now we rest up- on our oars and stop rowing toward the etern- al benefactions that await us in higher charac- ter development. We want lassitude and qui- escence, so we can indulge ourselves need- lessly in what we have already attained. Therefore, we go no further forward: we are quite content to look inward upon ourselves and declare that we are more or less perfect.” However, the God of things as they are knows they are not perfect, and never can be perfect in a world where the mortal would acclaim itself without comparison. This being the case, those who look down upon mortal society have a sizable grudge against such complac- ency because they know it snarls up the other- wise progressive lives of those living correctly and constructively––those pushing onward ir- revocably by grasping for new opportunities to bring out the best within themselves and their species. . . . The introspective has no right or license to do this: they are in a man- ner of speaking, bombastic. They are disrupt- ing or hindering the whole Parade of Mortal Existence, made up of millions of marchers, and refusing to go forward themselves unless the Parade goes where they want it to go, stepping to the music they particularly fancy,
and only if it serves the purposes they have called up. They forget that every other unit who makes up that Parade has just as much right to insist upon the same procedures for the same items. They ignore the rest of hu- manity and insist worldly performances pro- ceed after their own bill of particulars. THE VICIOUSNESS of the program adopted by supersensitive or introspective persons lies in the fact that their whole philosophy toward life is one of escape from the standards for true progress. The Almighty has set up these standards, and he exercises them equally to- wards all humanity. Yet supersensitive or in- trospective people do not fancy the Almigh- ty’s world that takes all other persons into consideration, because to them the world seems to be one of surface cruelty and unfair- ness to their own small egos. It seems to cir- cumscribe their ‘free expression’ by the dic- tates of a reasonably organized society: it shackles them with handicaps that require them to expend mental, spiritual, and physi- cal energy to overcome.
Yet they do not want to expend energy of any sort, regardless of the fact that such expen- diture constantly strengthens them, and im- proves on the very individuality they cherish so indulgently. They prefer to consider them- selves already perfect, in a little Thought World that they also conceive of as perfect, but which is really the epitome of weakness and disintegrating individuality, since it re- sults in a sort of spiritual inbreeding that de- vitalizes and emasculates their characters. The secular psychologist provides a recipe against this by telling such people to forget about themselves, to get interested in others, to look outward and not inward. But that is like putting a philosophical poultice on an ex- ternal eruption, instead of going down into the bloodstream and observing what microbes are working there. The true recipe for the su- persensitive or introspective person would be for them to face the facts around them and recognize they are crystallizing past idealisms into a world of their own makings. Moreover, their world is grievously lacking in a factor of
- 48 - major importance: it is a factor that makes
God’s True World the proper universe of reali- ty that it is. And that factor of major impor- tance is the item of about six billion other souls who must be taken into consideration and provided for, so they too may have an arena for their self-expressions. When the su- persensitive or introspective takes these into their reckonings, they suddenly realize they are approximating a world that is an exact prototype of the one the Almighty has already projected. Remember, the supersensitive’s world is a world with all the other people in the universe left out. Consequently, to escape completely into such a world would mean not only the annihilation of character, but also the eventual annihilation of personal conscious- ness.
You are told from the Higher Dimensions that supersensitive and introspective people, those whom the world term erratic, are merely nor- mal persons whose characters are lacking in the proper quota of moral courage. They fear new experiences; they dread new contacts with new people: it makes them break out in a cold sweat to be suddenly thrust into the limelight, whether to play music at a social gathering, or to make an impromptu speech at a banquet. They have been living in a per- fect little world of their own Thought Crea- tion for so long that they have lost the ability to exhibit publicly, and thus the ability to disclose to themselves their obvious degrees of imperfection. They have so weakened and emasculated themselves by living in their own private little universe that they cannot adapt themselves to a world where millions of others like themselves are primary factors. Hence, when such a public exhibit is forced upon them by circumstance, they forget it is a measuring-stick of the ‘perfection’ they have been mentally imagining about themselves; and with embarrassing fear, they flee still more swiftly into recesses of spirit.
Such people uniformly turn to their own bodi- ly processes to give them vicarious reactions to the physical world: they let their physical functions take the place of social functions in
their philosophies. Even though they know the inadequacy of the former to provide a true measuring-stick for them, they continue to magnify the physical in their thinking. Soon the world is labeling them introverts and per- verts when they are really nothing of the kind: they have simply missed the point as to why they have come into life.
They really came into life to have social con- tact with six billion other life forms who are in life with them for similar contacts––and for similar reasons: social contacts provide them with accurate estimates of their true mental and spiritual attainments. In other words, the world measures them for their real worth, whether they assent to such appraisal or not. And instead of noting those appraisals and setting out accordingly to improve them- selves, they run away into spiritual seclusion and hide from reality like a frightened puppy beneath a divan.
Now self-consciousness, considered in this light, is nothing but a person’s acknowledge- ment that all of the foregoing is quite true, and that something should be done about it. However, since they have dwelt within them- selves overmuch, they have pictured so many bugaboos existing in the world of Reality that they have become foolishly fear-struck, and permitted this fear to become the ruling emo- tion in their lives. They are constantly in a panic, fearing that their imaginings from the cloistered retreat of their own spirits will sud- denly happen and injure them, thereby de- feating or devouring them. They constantly forget that the world from which they con- tinually flee is only composed of six billion other human beings not one whit different than themselves.
It is an old adage, “Remember: the enemy is equally as frightened of you as you are fright- ened of the enemy!” That truth applies with the same potency to the warfare that is called earthly living. The world is made up of vast numbers of people, quite true; but they are people of exactly the same hopes, timidities, panics, and aspirations as ourselves: and most all of them are also equally afraid of us, and
self-conscious in our presence. Frequently it breaks through with a sort of shock to some people to learn this truth, for in their own minds they have conjured up humanity as a great indefinable monster, made up of people with different attributes and temperaments, who are only waiting to wreck or belittle them. They are really afraid of those powers they have accorded to humanity. So-called ‘leaders’ have learned to their amazement how easy it is to play up to the fear that the individual has of the mass, even though the mass is nothing but one person multiplied many times.
To summarize, instead of being hurt by every little wisp of adverse comment, or terrified by the bugaboos of the Social Monster, the self- conscious, supersensitive, and introspective person should look upon their experiences in life as a chance to learn how child-like and naive human nature is; and how stupefyingly easy it is to impress, control, or command it, when thought is kept constantly on the fact that all other people are merely replicas of one’s self.