Understanding the Unity of Life
Transcript of a talk given by David Truman
This morning I really, really saw the unity of life, and I wanted to tell you guys about this, because you can see it now. You can see our world. You can understand our world and the people in it very well from this.
It's like this: If you suffer abandonment, how do you spell "withdrawal"? A-B-A-N-D-O-N-M-E-N-T. Withdrawal. When somebody has withdrawn from you, that's how you spell it.
Now, if you have been abandoned, then you regroup, and you recover some. And you rebuild yourself in a new adaptation, essentially. Right? Now, everybody in this world has been abandoned many times in many ways. It was dramatic that my friend Michael the carpenter's father, when Michael was eleven years old, got Michael's backpack and put his stuff in it, and dropped him off in the middle of a graveyard, and that was the end of that relationship. Now you know an independent man.
That's a dramatic example, obviously, and probably not real common. But it symbolizes a feeling -- a feeling that many people in our world have, which is that somehow or another, somebody walked out on them. And there's two ways that happened. One is physical: the person walks out physically. And the other is emotional: the person shuts down emotionally, even while they're still there. In either case, the heart sees it as the same. It's abandonment.
You could've had a parent who was really enthused about you at some point in your development, and then sort of lost enthusiasm, for example. Or you could have had a lover who did the same. Or you could have had a friend in high school. You could have had experiences in the world. The world, you see, is like this. In the world, it is not uncommon that such things would happen in the life of someone, and anyone.
And therefore, you go into the adaptive cycle subsequent to abandonment, in which you rebuild yourself in a more conservative form. Your revised mentality is supposed to be in some ways wiser, and in that respect healthier.
However, we do have an expression called "damaged goods." And when we speak of damage, we are not speaking of health. In fact, we are speaking of unhealth. A condition of compromised and diminished well-being. Damaged goods.
And then we have an expression called "emotional baggage." When we speak of emotional baggage, we are not talking about a healthy and wiser adaptation, which is the one that we think we're building. We think we're wisely revising to a more "realistic" perspective, you see? Improved goods. Wised-up people. Smarter, better prepared for the realities of life. But we're damaged goods. You can name it any way you want, but a rose is a rose by any name. And damaged goods are damaged.
So that revision of attitude and social orientation, which characterizes the average person's world experience, is a downgrading towards a closed heart from a relatively open previous condition. And this happens stepwise -- steps down towards more and more damage on the goods. The progressive achievement of "wisdom" and "realism" is a progressive achievement of closure in the heart. Damaged goods.
And so we say we are wiser and healthier, but I hate to break it to you that this expression "damaged goods" shows we are not better off having made these successive improvements or adjustments and adaptations. We are certainly worse off. We are damaged goods; we are less open. We are less free. We are less human in every way. Because we are less inclined to wear our heart on our sleeve, which is an expression for being real. In other words, "I wear my heart on my sleeve" means I present myself as I am; I do not hide my feelings. Now, if I in fact wear my heart on my sleeve less, then I am less human.
And so, we move from this heartbreak to heartbrake, b-r-a-k-e. See? Heartbreak becomes heartbrake. We have brakes on the heart. We have brakes on our feelings; we have brakes on our humanness. We have brakes, braking action. We withhold on that level.
Now worldwide, this movement or adjustment is creating a world that is unified, in that every person is affecting every person by their adaptation. This particular adaptation, this single adaptation. They're all going solo. That's s-o, new word, l-o-w. Okay? They're all going so low with their new adaptation of damaged goods, into what we would call distrust. Into what we would call being guarded, withholding, withdrawn. Not wearing our heart on our sleeve, but instead being duplicitous, unavailable, anti-juicy, anti-good, pro-selfish. Pro-self-protective. This is the nature of the damage upon the goods that we are, you see?
And it is a global damage that we experience as humanity, that we experience as each other. Damage. We experience the strategies of damaged people who see these as wise, who see these as bringing themselves up to speed with survivalism and proper, appropriate adjustment of attitude.
So the people we meet are all already wise. They all, like us, have wised up, you see; and they have reached so low. Before we arrived, they have reached it. And we're meeting individuals who are prepared for life, ready to be appropriate in relationship to ourselves. They were ready before we came, for our arrival. They were waiting for the guest. They prepared for the guest by shutting down their heart, by keeping themselves under lock and key, by presenting us with a facade that is impervious. You see?
And so now, if we ourselves are already similarly wise, similarly well-prepared for life, similarly realistic and so forth -- whatever we want to call these things, this closed condition -- then what we have in the ensuing meeting, when we meet that person who is prepared and we are also prepared, what we have is a grand mutual irrelevance. At least we hope it is that; we both hope that, individually and mutually. You must be irrelevant to them for them to be safe. And they must be irrelevant to you for you to be safe. Or your relevance to them must be minimized by them, and their relevance to you must be minimized or held in check by you, to be safe. And that's what: heartbrake. They will do their best to minimize the extent to which they give you their heart, to protect themselves from you and from relationship and its presumed dangers. And you will do the same. And this is the non-event of your relationship.
So we have a world of hurt people. You see? Hearts to Hamburger. (holds up chart) Hamburger Hill. A heap of hurt. A mountain of pain. A pile of pain. That, you see. It's your world. And they see your pain. And so they see a heap of hurt, a pile of pain. And they see it in the world everywhere around them, as you see it in the world everywhere around you. Hamburger Hill. Heap of hurt. Pile of pain. And so they've all gone so so so so low, maintaining your irrelevance in their lives. They are heart sick indeed, and therefore withheld, sick in the heart, sick in the love department. And all going solo, all going so low, to survive.
So the world they're seeing in going so low is the world they're creating. And that's what I mean when I say this. Look at this. (Passes out the Heartbrake illustration, and reads: "Behold the world.")
Now, this expands it to a slightly less psychological mode. When we say God foresakin', we mean that which forsakes God. And heartbrakin', which means to go against the natural tendencies that God implanted in the soul, which is to love freely and spontaneously and generously. To put the brake on that. To become the kind of person we want to be -- an unloving person, an ungiving person, a self-protective person, a selfish person. To create that kind of person we put the brake on the heart. That thing in the middle here is a disc brake, for those of you that are not mechanically inclined. It's a heart brake.
So now you see a world of heartbrake in every sense. A systematic withholding from you, which has, in fact, broken your heart, and caused you to put on your heart brakes. And now you have been integrated into the machinery of Hamburger Hill by this. Because if you do what they did, which you almost certainly will, as a selfish, egotistical person, then you will put on your heart brake in relationship to them. You will work to maintain their irrelevance to you. And you will break their heart in the process.
And they will then put on their heart brakes a little more. And so they will, then, reject, or withhold from, and break the heart of, and disappoint someone else. And who is that someone else? I know exactly who that someone else is: that's a person you're going to meet in four years, and try to get together with. But because of you, it'll be too late! They are ruined, by you through your other friend, the one you rejected, who then rejected them, in turn. And you didn't know that person. That person was just your future love.
But like we say, it goes around, and it comes around. What goes around, comes around in a small world.
So you put your future mate into a psychological position in which they would refuse to love you in four years from now, by the fact that you refused to love someone this year. And now what has gone around has come around. The shoe is on the other foot. And now we have what I call the unity of life. Now you can see it, that life is indeed unified. That we reap just what we sow. And there's a tremendous unity. It is impossible to escape the fact that we are creating the world that we see. And as we victimize, so also we will be victimized.
Now this is something for the intelligencia among us to contemplate: that this is true. That there is no escaping the fact of the unity of life. And the wise withholders among us will, in fact, recognize that our destiny is involved, that we are creating our destiny as we don't speak, even here and now. We are creating it, as we don't speak. As we withhold, so also it shall be withheld unto ye. As we don't speak, so also you will meet a non-speaker who you want to get to know. Who you want to share with. Even as we do it, they will also do it unto us. And we are creating that world, because the heartbrake that we're giving out is the heartbrake that we're going to discover in them. Round about. Round about. Roundabout ways. The way of the world. You see?
So you meet this person, and you see that they're in a holding pattern. Afraid to land. Afraid of touching bottom, terra firma. So they're in a holding pattern. Did I say holding? I meant withholding. They're in a withholding pattern. Afraid to land. You see? And you will try to talk them down. "Flight 889, come in. Come in please. It's time. You're running out of gas. Come in." And they'll go, "We can't come in. We shall not come in. We do not trust your runway." And they are going to circle, and circle, and circle, until they crash, because they ran out of steam to withhold with.
This circling business is very expensive on fuel. You get nothing when you give nothing. And you just run on fumes, waiting to land, or being determined never to land. You circle, you see.
We're going so low, then we're running on fumes. We don't have it. Cause it's in the Tantra. It's in the relationship. It's in the where-two-or-more are gathered. That's where the fuel is. That's where the energy is.
So now you've got people who are running very very low as being. So you go the market, and you see these people in the store, and they're walking back and forth. And you're saying, "Jesus Christ! Downtown looks like the living dead. What the hell's going on?" The ones who are running on fumes because they don't want to give their heart, so they're the living dead. "Doctor I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't have any energy. I feel numb." You see? Blah, blah, blah. The regular stuff. You know?
So there they go. They are the living dead. What happens? The GNP (Gross National Product, the country's overall productivity) goes down 5%. That's very conservative. You know the number's closer to 35%. The reality is, a person with a lot of energy gets 35% more done. There goes the GNP, for all you economists out there. The GNP took a hit in this heartbrakin' world, because the workers are low on juice.
No problem. But that's our world. Our God-forsaking, heartbraking world.
So now you know the unity of life. We all know it.
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