THE TWO BASIC SYMPTOMS
All symptoms can be reduced to two basic interdependent opposite
strategies: phobias and obsessions Phobias occur when you believe that you have what you don’t want; obsessions occur
when you believe that you don’t have what you do want. I want this; I don’t want that. I love this; I hate that.
I am this way; I am not that way. This is me; that is not me. I control this; I can’t control that. This is good; that
is bad.
The world of opposites has deteriorated into strategies of survival
called phobias and compulsions. These strategies of compulsive avoidance and compulsive pursuit are re-enforced by various
payoffs and costs (primary and secondary gains) to the extent that they harden into habitual patterns called personality traits
or types. "That’s just the way I am." "I’m an extrovert" "I’m a loner" "I’m blunt" "I’m sensitive"
"I’m a good guy" "I’m a hard ass"
Each unit in a pair of opposites seems to exist by itself, but
it does not. Each unit of passive and active is interdependently connected to its opposite. Day cannot be separated from night.
The world of contrast has become the world of conflict in our minds. We have made two finite opposites
into apparently two infinitely conflicted opposites, and never the twain shall meet: selfish versus unselfish.
The "background and foreground" of a gestalt (whole) has become
the "me versus not-me" of the divided mind. Both/and has become either/or.
A couple are about ready for a divorce. He is super active and
she is super passive. He pursues car racing; she pursues intimacy. He talks and doesn’t listen; she listens and doesn’t
talk. He plays the nice guy and she plays the bitch. He is satisfied with things as they are; she is dissatisfied with things
as they are. He talks 90% of the time about cars and she talks 10% of the time about people. He falls asleep one night while
she is talking. She gets angry and goes to sleep on the couch. She tells him that she isn’t going to sleep with him
any more. He is upset. She confronts him about why he falls asleep when she is talking. He makes excuses. She won’t
accept them. She asks him if he is bored with her or angry with her. He is cornered, either answer is bad for a "nice guy."
She won’t let him off the hook. Finally he says grudgingly that he is angry. She asks why. He says that he is getting
even with her for not listening to him by not listening to her. This is the first time she can remember that he ever took
the blame for anything. She is exhilarated.
Upon further analysis it turns out that he is addicted to whatever
car racing means to him and she is addicted to whatever intimacy means to her. He gets what he wants, and she doesn’t.
So he is the satisfied good guy and she is the dissatisfied bitch. Only now she won’t fake it any more that things are
okay. She won’t sleep with him. She makes it obvious that there is distance between them: the bed and the couch. He
cannot overlook that. He is upset. He had been telling himself that everything was okay.
It turns out that he is probably avoiding the experience of
powerlessness and she is avoiding the experience of loneliness, that he is pursuing powerful cars and she is pursuing intimacy.
She listens to his incessant talking about cars, but neither of them understands what that conversation means, and so it becomes
superficial and symptomatic. Neither of them understands why she is a bitch and doesn’t listen to him. They are involved
in a continuous silent power struggle over who is right. Now it has erupted into a loud argumentative power struggle.
He has to get acquainted with his dread of powerlessness and
she with her dread of loneliness. He has to get acquainted with his need for intimacy and she with her need for power. They
are a perfect match for personal growth. But their strategies have each contained a payoff and a cost. They must explore their
payoffs and penalties. This is just good meat and potatoes psychotherapy. Each rejected opposite must be explored and accepted.
Each of their symptomatic lifestyles and personality traits
has a phobic component and an obsessive component. They absolutely resist something and they absolutely pursue something.
They absolutely fear something and they absolutely desire something.
Jesus taught us to "resist not, to fear not" and Buddha taught
us to "desire not". Either of these teachings would unhinge the whole system. But it is easy to miss the whole point. These
avatars come from the position of the Infinite and their counsels are aimed at the unhinging of the finite mindset. They speak
from the Infinite to the Infinite about the relativity of the finite phobic and compulsive strategies people are using as
though they were absolute. No desire and no fear is absolute. Any fear and any desire is an invitation to awaken to the Infinite
being that you are. Generally speaking, any desire and any fear is relative, but in our conditioned minds we have made some
fears and some desires absolute.
Infinity Theory goes beyond the gestalt theory of accepting
the opposites, although you have to move through the opposites to get there. You have to love your enemy. You have to bear
the tension of the opposites until the unity comes. Flipping from one side of a polarity to the other is not enough. People
do that all the time. In one situation you are passive, in another active. Or in the middle of an argument you switch strategies.
There are some people whose strategy is switching strategies. Many people have multiple strategies. Very few people have just
one or two rigid strategies, and they end up sooner than others in some psychiatrist’s office or some law suit.
And so I am saying that we may have multiple phobias and obsessions,
even about the same opposites. A parent may be obsessively permissive and then obsessively punitive. A housewife may be obsessively
neat and then obsessively sloppy. A teenager may seem obsessively compliant and then erupt into obsessive anger. A man may
fear commitment and fear freedom. And so people say that couples can’t live together and they can’t live apart.
You can’t stop doing it and you can’t fix it. You can’t quit drinking and you can’t keep on drinking.
Why?
Infinity Theory says that obsessions and phobias are inevitable
in the finite mindset, and that they are our invitations to awakening. Each of us has our Symptoms of Infinity, and until
we discover our Infinity, we will continue in the endless repetitions of the conflicted opposites. Sure, some of the opposites
are not a problem and never were, but others are the self-selected "bones we chew on." Each of us has his favorite neurosis,
his favorite suffering, his favorite symptom, his favorite hidden path to spirituality. Some of our symptoms are "bad" and
some are "good" but none of them are considered our path to infinity.
It is the theory which decides what we can observe
Albert Einstein
It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might
learn thy statutes
Ps. 119
He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and
opens their ear by adversity
Job
A woman had a vision: I was Infinite Spirit; there
was nothing but myself. I desired to go out into the world, although seemingly there was no other world. I knew I had to have
form to be seen and communicate.
Neville Goddard
The gospel that I have preached to you was preached
to everyone under heaven.
Paul, Colossians
Man is not the creature of circumstance, circumstances
are the creatures of men
Benjamin Disraeli
Wherever the sole of your foot shall stand, that
I have given to you
Deut 11:24
Rivers, mountains, cities, villages , are all human
William Blake
Give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, the spirit
of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may become trees of righteousness.
Isaiah 61
The nature of visionary fancy, or imagination,
is very little understood. Everything I see in my world is vision.
William Blake
You only have to raise imagination to the point
of vision and the thing is done.
But the nature of visionary fancy, or imagination
is very little known.
William Blake
There is no one besides me. I am the Lord, and
there is no other, the one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who
does all these.
Isaiah 45
A strong imagination begets the event
Joseph Chamberlain Wilson
God calls things that are not seen as though they
were seen, and the unseen becomes the seen.
Romans 4: 17
You are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High.
Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O ye princes.
Psalm 82
I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind
it into a ball; It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate, Built into Jerusalem’s wall
William Blake, Jerusalem
Oh, let your strong imagination turn the great
wheel backward, until Troy unburns
H.G.Wells
Man is all imagination. God is Man and exists in
us and we in Him…The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, that is, God Himself.
William Blake
Objective reality is solely produced through imagination
Fichte
There is a moment in each day that Satan cannot
find, Nor can his Watch Fiends find it; but the Industrious find This Moment and multiply, and when it once is found it renovates
every moment of the day if rightly placed.
William Blake
God only acts and is, in existing beings or men
William Blake
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price.
Isaiah 55:1
Mental things are alone real; what is called corporeal,
nobody knows of its dwelling place: it is in fallacy, and its existence an imposter. Where is the existence out of mind or
thought? Where is it but in the mind of a fool?
William Blake
The secret of imagining is the greatest of all
problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far-off solution
of this mystery
Douglas Fawcett
Human history, with its forms of governments, its
revolutions, its wars, and in fact the rise and fall of nations, could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas,
implanted in the minds of men.
Herbert Hoover
He who does not imagine in stronger and better
lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing eye can see, does not imagine at all.
William Blake
If the spectator would enter into these images
in his imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could…make a friend and
companion of one of these images of wonder, which always entreats him to leave mortal things…then would he arise from
his grave, then would he meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy.
William Blake
Nothing can act but where it is: with all my heart;
only where is it?
Thomas Carlyle
This is an age in which the mood decides the fortunes
of people rather than the fortunes decide the mood
Sir Winston Churchill
…all you behold, though it appears without,
it is within; in your imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow
William Blake
The distinction between what is real and what is
imaginary is not one that can be finally maintained…all exiting things are, in an intelligible sense, imaginary
John S. MacKenzie
Imagination is more important than knowledge
Albert Einstein, On Science
Imagination, the real and eternal world of which
this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. What is the life of man but art and science.
William Blake
I rest not from my great task to open the eternal
worlds, to open the immortal eyes of man inwards into the worlds of thought: into eternity ever expanding in the bosom of
God, the Human Imagination
William Blake
Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the
earth and of the water.
William Blake
The eternal body of man is the Imagination: that
is, God himself. The divine body :Jesus: we are his members
William Blake
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my
mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto
I sent it
Isaiah 55:11
Man should not stay a man: His aim should higher
be. For God will only gods, accept as company
Angelus Silesius
Four mighty ones are in every man (producer, author,
director, Son of God)
William Blake
All the world’s a stage, and all the men
and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts
William Shakespeare
According to the Scriptures, we sleep with Adam
and wake with Christ. That is, we sleep collectively and wake individually
Neville Goddard
Let the weak man say, I am strong.
Joel 3:10
Faith is the evidence of things not seen
Hebrews ll:1
God calleth those things which be not as though
they were
Romans 4:17
