We are attempting to use our own thoughts to improve our chances of surviving into the next century, and we are attempting to create ourselves in the process. Unfortunately, this dual process is inherently unstable, since we are critically reading, filtering our inputs, and busy at the process of self-assembly. The further we get, the more unsupported we become. It is not a problem if we are mentally healthy, but what if we aren't? How do we know we are OK? We recognize the problem of second order errors, so we know that following others has its own problems, which can destroy us. By making our own choices, we can avoid these second order errors, but how do we add stability to the self-assembly process?

This problem has a physical analogy, in the evolution of animal life forms. There is a need for stability and support within a structure, and this is accomplished by the use of bones. It is not enough that an organism has muscle, if the muscle connects only to other muscles. The animal produced without bone has very little power except to attach to rocks, and filter feed on what is immediately available. If we use critical thinking, and self-assembly without anything else, we are similarly limited in our ability to survive. We need a structure that remains stable, and that resides within us, or at least within our own thoughts. I call the stable independent thought structures "tools". Useful, but less independent thought structures I call "Lemmas."

A "tool" is a stand-alone thought structure. It has a subject, a verb, and a direct object, like many good sentences, but it also has a conclusion that can stand on its own. A "Lemma" on the other hand, is not a stand-alone thought structure; it's more of a direction and it lacks a conclusion. I will give you examples of each, so you will have a clear understanding of the types of stability you can add to your own thoughts. What follows was first published in the magazine "Self and Other" in 1993. It provides an introduction to the concept of a "toolbox" and the "Tools" that you can put in it.

The "toolbox"

Thinking, like gardening, can be beautiful at times, with seasonal changes; and, if cultivated, it can bear the fruit needed to keep you healthy. But you must constantly pull out the weeds, to leave enough nutrients for those items you really wish to grow. Further, you must change crops, to keep the soil rich. Therefore you must be a seed-saver, and eat in moderation.. These riches are not easy to accomplish, and there is no fool-proof solution. Thoughts have a tendency to build into a mind and to mechanize and remove you from life's joy.

I suggest that we can help each other in gaining and keeping the skill of weed-removal, crop-rotation, and irrigation, by helping each other to build some thought tools. A garden hoe has a long handle, allowing you to stand up, use two arms, and really hack away. The long handled hoe puts you standing, with good visual perspective, above the problem. Once you see this tool, in this case a mental "tool" in action, and can understand how it functions, you can put one into your "toolbox." To be a proper "tool", it must work at many levels and have a handle you or anyone else can easily find.

There are no doubt hundreds of tools. I hope you will share your tools with me (by writing for the magazine "Self and Other"14 ). I will give you one to start you thinking.

Have you ever noticed how child abusers raise child abusers? Or why in Israel lots of people carry guns? The mechanism operates as a solution used in place of real understanding. The key operative word here is "hate." This is not a conception made from enlightenment. When you "hate" something, you put off understanding until some future date. You create a ridge in your free flow of ideas. At first you remain clearly on one side of the ridge, but as time goes by, on some internal level, you still need to understand. If all else fails, you can take up the point of view, the one you do not understand, as an effort to understand by the very act of becoming. It can be more important to understand, than it is to hold your previous course. Becoming what you hate can be the first step on the road to tolerance.

Having thus described the "tool", I think it might be important to give you the secret that makes it work. For me, the underlying mechanism for why this tool works is unrequited love. I cannot help myself; on some deep level, I love everyone, and everything they do. I know this seems impossible. Of course, this admission of love, blows the mind, and releases me from the power of hate. At this level of admission, I don't need a "toolbox", but weeds can return if I don't pay attention. So this "tool" can become quite handy. As with all good "tools", it can be used on many levels. If you wish, you can think, and meditate on this tool until it is yours. Then take the time to look for any ridges in the free flow of ideas, and remember, keeping your garden up puts you more in the present, and therefore better able to live life fully!

The next article also appeared in the magazine "Self and Other."

Every good mechanic has a "toolbox" and a good set of "tools". In the last issue, I gave you my first thought tool, "Tool #1: There is a tendency for people to become what they hate." Now I want to give you another "tool."

Thinking about thinking can be confusing. It’s somewhat like using a mirror to look at a mirror. Fortunately the mind comes and goes, depending on some factors we don’t entirely control. There are times when we can see clearly and understand lots of things, and then there are times when we can only feel; no thoughts are clear then. This is when a "tool" can help. A "tool" is a little piece of logic you build when the mind is not clouding your vision. Later, when your mind fogs things over, you pull out your tool, and you fix the thought engine.

Not all "tools" are those you use on yourself. Some allow you to decode the actions of others. When a thought is consciously created by you, I call it a "tool". But when a thought is created as a solution to hide something, call it a "lock". Here is the "secret decoder ring" I plagiarized from Charles Berner, a teacher of mine in 1968. It is a powerful tool to break "locks!"

Have you ever noticed how Ex-President Nixon was so critical about who could be trusted? I was always amazed about how paranoid he was. Remember Vice President Spiro Agnew? He didn’t trust anyone. It should have given us a clue about the trust we put in him.

This is not an easy "tool" to build. You must really study a person's statements in retrospect. I find people fascinating, and at the age of 50 my memory has enough data, that I can appreciate how natural it is to project out to others the holes one feels inside. Spiro Agnew was probably feeling untrustworthy, so he was projecting out, "They are not trustworthy." Note that he was not just saying it as fact, he was being "critical." He was stressing the concept, "It was their fault." Of course, this critical review he made of others, blows whatever good-will he had with the people he was accusing. It created the "good guys" and the "bad guys" mentality, making it easy to fall into the power of hate. I hated to hear him speak. His criticalness was a thought created by him to hide behind. This "lock" is an attempt to cheat reality.

This "lock" is a solution to hide something - - In this particular case of being critical of others, based on your own guilt. The criticalness of others appears to "work" in three ways:

1). It "solves" the problem of who is guilty. The act of getting critical of others, deflects the attention away from the real guilt.

2) It starts a justification process. It's similar to the claim that others are this way so I'm not so bad. It’s kind of a data collection mode in preparation for when you get discovered.

3) It's a good ice breaker. The first person discovered, sets the firestorm and acts as the lightning rod. The second person discovered is often forgotten. Therefore if you can find someone guilty, later, when they also discover you, it will be a mild ho-hum experience.

You can now start to build "Tool #2" "People are critical of the things they do themselves," by reviewing your own past experiences. Before you read on, take some time to consider the truth of "Tool #2." There is much more here than meets your first glance.

Having thus described this "lock," and to some degree why people are seduced into using it, I would like to speculate as to what the really big secret is. Suppose you did something you are not proud of. So what is the real problem? Why do people get critical so often, and go around being angry? For me, there is an underlying mechanism, a secret so big that anything is better than to face up to it. (Admitting the real secret would then uncreate the "lock" solution, wash away the anger, and we would be starting down the road of being responsible for our own actions.) The "lock" solution is used because there is a lack of effective hooks into other people’s lives. That is, there is a lack of control. There is no real process of "controlling" others. You lack a way to manage the thinking of others. Further, there is no real reason for other people to even care about us. If they care, it is an act of love. That is something they do, and not us. That lack of control is just too painful to admit to anyone. This lack of control is the big secret.

When you don't let others judge you, you keep the big secret, and you have only toxic shame for yourself. Toxic shame is what John Branshaw calls "a true sickness of the soul." They think if they told the real truth, we would have no choice but to think less of them. They love us, and desperately only want to tell us good things. This makes the world a smaller place in which to live. Even more unfortunate, they are always insecure, since they keep the big secret, and are trying to control everything to get more love.

Control is not the answer, and being critical of others does not work. In short, speaking in coded messages, being angry all the time, and looking for "a few good men" is a waste of your valuable time.

I hope you can add this second tool, "People are critical of the things they do themselves," to your toolbox. Also recognize that, as any good tool, it works on many levels. If you find yourself becoming critical of others, you may need to do some soul-searching. It is really not what others do that bothers us, it's just those things that we cannot help them with that really bother us. For example, if someone could count to 10, add one and one to get two, but could not add two and two to get four, you probably would not get critical of them. You would instead teach and help them. As you can see, it takes a lot of personal work to really understand and build a tool so that you can use it.

Now that we have created a secret decoder ring type tool, how do we prevent others from using it on us? How do we talk so that others don't need a decoder ring? Here is a Lemma, it is similar to a tool, but it is more direction and less logic and it must be taken more on faith. This Lemma will help you to not lock up!

Don't go out of your way to manipulate how others see you. Life is hard enough, without adding the pressure of maintaining a lie. There is a natural boundary, where you end, and they begin. You cannot extend your control beyond yourself and have it work for long. Besides the added effort you must achieve to maintain a lie, a lie will not accomplish real communication. It will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

A further possibility; there is a concept called "progress in a relationship," and that this can take place only when both sides are telling the truth. You cannot make the other person tell the truth, but you can take care of your side of the relationship. In general, you want to do the possible and avoid the impossible. Another useful Lemma is:

Recognize where your power ends. Consider this lemma with Tool #2 and Lemma #1. People always have the right to judge us. We can only do so much to affect their judgments of us. Remember, if they are talking to you about their judgment, they are indirectly asking for your blessing, so you can give them more information.

In order to appreciate other people, you need to recognize what they are responsible for. Their judgment of you is their responsibility. When they give you praise, thank them! Some people get themselves all stressed out unnecessarily. They need to let go of responsibility that was not theirs in the first place. The current popular culture term for this is boundaries. You will need healthy boundaries.

This is a particularly difficult concept for parents to understand. Since parents often feel falsely responsible for their adult children, they in turn don't give them any respect. The parents don't know where their power ends. Of course, parents don't need permission to continue to feel responsible; this is their choice. If you have this kind of parent, it can be frustrating at times.

I hope that you can get a handle on this new Tool for your toolbox. But even more, I hope you allow other people to be really different but not disconnected from your love.

To some degree, life is being forced to make a decision without adequate information. Often you find out after the fact that your information was wrong. Therefore, it is only prudent to realize the limitations inherent in being forced to act and then gaining information from the act itself. Therefore, this next Lemma is only prudent, under the circumstances of most knowledge.

Everybody makes mistakes, so when you opt to use the minimum force, you make the minimum mistake. It may take a while, but sooner or later, you will make a mistake, and you will be glad you chose not to use excessive force. If you act without hate, this one is easy.

Another benefit of using just enough force is that you tend to pay attention to what you are doing, and what is taking place. Having to use force is a bit troublesome, since we would rather use understanding, or some other preserving process. Unfortunately, there are times when you need force, the one that comes to mind is getting out of bed in the morning. (One must be careful in talking about words that have so many uses.)

How do you determine if you should own something? There are some things that you can afford, but you shouldn't buy. Have you ever noticed that some people are owners of objects, and other people are owned by objects?

You won’t have it yourself unless you can freely give it away to others. This is a very important tool that I have been using for the last 34 years, and it can be used on many levels. I first heard it from a Scientologist friend of mine in the 1960s and it was called "Havingness." If you had good "Havingness," you could take it or leave it. With good "Havingness," you are never a victim of your own possessions. I don't think much of Scientologists, but this one was a good one, and I stole it for my very own. On a very personal level, I think about it every time I start to date someone. If the woman is very attractive, and as I look at her, I feel myself immediately swimming, I don't date her. I could never give her up, I would become addicted, and lose myself. (I don't take drugs, either.) What I look for in a woman is the maximum amount of give-and-take, the maximum bandwidth. I don't lose myself immediately, and she is strong enough to tell me what she really thinks.

Likewise, I don't like "Rolex" watches that cost $20,000, although my sister and her husband both have them. I like my $22 electronic "World Runner" that I can buy anywhere and easily replace if it gets broken. I am not dictating how you should live, and I believe my view is not universal. My brother-in-law wears his Rolex water-skiing, where I left mine in the boat. His "Havingness" about watches is much greater than mine. Don't be confused by the cost of the watch. He probably has his Rolex insured, where I don't have my "World Runner" watch insured. So I am worried about my water-proof watch, and falling off the skis and losing it; my brother-in-law is not, so his "Havingness" is greater than mine. (My "Havingness" would go up if I made more money.)

The ability to give something up in order to have it, sounds illogical, when you first hear it. A kind of catch 22, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. It works on many levels. Take freedom. In order to have freedom, when you are older, you may need to give it up as a young person. You may need to go to school and study. This is a giving up of your freedom to lie in the sun on some island shore. Through study and sacrifice, you then can get a good job, and spend your middle-age on some island shore soaking up the sun. Take physical strength. You must exercise, thereby becoming weak on the exercise day, to become strong in the following week.

In short, this tool is the Zen way to real ownership and enjoyment of all those many states of being life offers us. It works, in my opinion, because we really are non-physical beings! As you learn to separate yourself from objects, you get closer to your true nature, and that carries a great satisfaction with it. Of course, this is grand speculation on my part, since I have no real proof. Remember that I expect you to be skeptical. Speculation as to how things really are can be called an assumption. . The process of identifying assumptions, and looking at different systems of assumptions is very interesting, but unnecessary for our survival. Tools, on the other hand, are easier to understand and perhaps more useful to our survival.

There are many other possible tools and Lemmas than the few I have mentioned here. Everybody's mother has a few more. I asked my mother for any, and without more than one minute preparation, my 77-year-old mother gave me the following:

• Stay in school,
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• Work at what you enjoy.
• What goes around comes around.

Of course, your family has provided you with similar words of wisdom, or keys to success, and I have only scratched the surface with the few I offer here. As an original thinker, you will need to take stock of the thought structures that you have used to build your thoughts and thinking processes on. You must do this to try to prevent secondary errors, and to, in fact, become a survivor into the next century.

Up to now, we have been discussing your responsibility for self-creation and how to optimize you own efforts. If you take this effort to the limit, you will become something of a recognized genius. Unfortunately, this may not be enough to survive into the next century. There is another aspect to life that is more than intellect, but still very real, and more akin to interacting with others as an art form. Let’s now turn to communication with others; we can learn much about optimum interpersonal interaction by a short study of communication.

The nature of personal "one on one" communication is more complex than most people realize. First and most important is that "Communication" is motivated by cycles. People are not interested in just speaking the words. Something else must be taking place. What are these other factors? Communication cycles can be thought of as having 12 parts or aspects. Motivation does not really end until all 12 aspects of the communication cycle are complete. What are each of these? How do they affect you and how can they influence your marriage? When you really understand what a communication cycle is - you are better prepared to clean up miss-understandings - better able to get your ideas across - and better able to listen to others. Now you have more choices - all the time. You can then choose to improve the reality between you and others.

The "Communication Cycle" to my understanding was first identified as having 12 part by Charles Berner back in 1965. It provides a rich format with which to analyze communication barriers.

1. You Choose: You have either the hope or the expectation that you can communicate with someone. This is our starting point.
2. They Choose: They independently assume that they can communicate with you. You can not force this - so you better respect it - or communication will stop.
3. Be specific: You find a specific thought you want to communicate. You get a specific idea you want to communicate to a specific other. You have something to say to them.
4. Put It Out: You present the idea in such a way that the other person can get it. You actually try to communicate.
5. Take It In: The other person hears the words that were said.
6. Directed Connection: The other also receives the "who-ness" intention of you. The message had a "to whom" connected to it. The other is aware that you intend to communicate with them and not just talking to himself or herself. The speech is not rhetorical - or aimed at someone else in the room. They are in connection with you.
7. Do the Work: The person interprets what the words mean.
8. Chooses Acknowledgment: The other decides to acknowledge the idea just received back to you the sender. They want you to know that they got it.
9. Put out Acknowledgment: The listener sends a body-language signal or some other process to let the speaker receive that he or she got what was said.
10. Take in Acknowledgment: You see that the other person thinks that he or she got it.
11. Acknowledgment is valid: You decide from the acknowledgment received that the other really got the same idea you started with. They didn’t get the wrong message. The listener is reacting appropriately to the message sent.
12. New Reality: You have a reality shift, due to the completion of a communication cycle. Things are different now in some way. The relationship has changed due to what was said and understood. The person speaking acts differently, now that the other person understood. In any case - you are finished.

This might seem like a lot of unnecessary detail to some people, but it is my contention that communication is the most important activity we engage in. Our personal sense of reality is built upon our understanding of communication. If we complete these cycles of communication we have experiences without residuals. We are not "hung up." We let them go. They stand alone in our past, and they are part of the ongoing current relationship - we know the other person better to some degree and they know us. Cycles which complete give us more choice and that choice feels more realistic. Cycles which are incomplete - have residual effects - they become part of the "reactive mind." The reactive mind is a whole series of decisions made about the outside world which serve as "solutions" to relationships. They serve as stop gap measures substituting for real communications. They are the "because" that takes away our choice in the here and now. The reactive mind takes away our choice and leaves us in a reactive state. If you really want your freedom - you will need to clean up your communication cycles. If not you will find yourself living in the past.

If you look at all 12 steps, you will see a cycle of give-and-take, or passing of data from one to the next and back again to the first. This concept of a cycle is important. What makes this concept important is how it relates to communication problems. If a communication cycle is complete, there are no residuals. No trapped attention. If a cycle remains unfinished, there will be a residual left over that will somewhat block future communications.

We need to recognize that acknowledgment is an important part of the cycle. This does not have to be ridiculous, such as saying "got that" after each sentence. It is more likely to be a process of maintaining eye contact, while letting the face muscles and iris dilation indicate comprehension, along with an occasional head nod. Also note that you don't have to agree or disagree with the person to complete the cycle. A cycle just passes one idea between two people. It doesn't mean that they agree. You can remain an original thinker, yet still be a good communicator, since the two are not necessarily related.

As a person starts to pay attention to completing communication cycles - their clarity, presentation, affinity, reality, connection, focus, and listening skills naturally start to improve. This reduces their reliance on the reactive mind -and they start to make progress. They improve their personal reality. They start to enjoy life more. Some make natural progress right up to and including full blown Enlightenment Experiences. They connect in to their deep quiet nature and they draw out great personal strength. Others don’t. Others get stuck. They get stuck because of contamination and trip laying. They buy in to group think and accept indirect knowledge as truth.

Our culture is swimming in unclear communication - buy this soap and you will be loved - contamination is how we sell goods - it is how we keep the economy going. Everything has "spin" on it. Nothing is simple - everything has a "because" attached to it. Your choice is hidden - you are naturally expected to buy this or that product. This contamination can easily set us at cross purposes. We get stuck doing both sides of opposition. We end up fighting ourselves. We lose choice.

There are many important concepts that a person can learn by understanding the communication cycle definition and then watching and running experiments to test each part. Although this stuff is important, especially to people who are professional counselors, we are focusing here on how to be a survivor. What you need to know to help your survival is that communication as a process can be described in terms of cycles. Cycles that complete are satisfying, those that don't hang us up and cause us concern.

We can take the time while considering communication cycles to develop another tool. It is not an easy tool to build, because you have to see both sides of a communication breakdown, and how each person feels about the other. My suggestion is to find two friends of yours who are in disagreement about something and then analyze the communication breakdown, without trying to solve or interfere with their relationship in any way. It might be easier to analyze two people who are in disagreement, but are strangers to you to reduce the cross coupling effects.

When a communication cycle breaks down, both people come away with a distortion of their relationship. This distortion is caused by the residuals left from an incomplete communication cycle. (In truth, the distortion is more than cause; the distortion is the residual.) If we look closely at the distortion, we can see the two viewpoints are equal but exact opposites. The residual becomes a perfect mirror, both sides see a reflection of the problem and they blame it on the other. It's like two sides of the exact same coin. After you spend some time looking at this tool, you can use it to predict what the other person must be thinking, based on where the residual was created in the communication cycle. Unfortunately, from one side of the relationship, you can't know exactly where the residual is located in the cycle. Still, this tool is useful knowledge that can help you identify and dig up a residual, and complete the communication cycle.

Meaningful examples of this are hard to create on paper. When a misunderstanding takes place, it often goes by with only one person noticing the loss. It is only after many misunderstandings have occurred, that the pressure builds for a confrontation to take place. It is usually so difficult to confront someone that anger is used to justify the confrontation, and often survival instincts are activated that further interfere with communication.

Having thus described the tool, what makes it work? For me, the root understanding is that it really takes two responsible people to communicate. If one is not being responsible, he or she has no choice but to use blame to put it on the "other." Blame causes future communication to break down. In reality, you can only speak authoritatively, at best, about yourself. You can infer and use logic to speak about others, but when you do this, you lower your sense of certainty, and you lower your involvement with others. You start to disconnect from reality.

Instead of this book being thorough, scholarly, and very long, I would rather keep it general, short, and thought provoking. The focus of this guide book is your survival. That allows me to take short cuts with my completeness; so, with that spirit, let me throw things at you, for you to munch on.

Communication has a content, and a context. It has information (content), and a general background (context) that allows that information to make sense. Communication is more than just the words spoken. It has, in a sense, a "spin". The spin depends upon the difference between where the talker is coming from, and where the listener is coming from. In other words, the difference is in the context between the two people. If I know that a person is a used car salesman, and that he owns a car, and he knows I am a dentist, and I need a car, but know nothing about cars, he can put quite a spin on the communications. If I am not very careful, I can get wiped out. This guy seems very friendly. He sounds like a close friend. He laughs at all my jokes, and seems to be a very good listener. The friendlier I allow myself to become, the more he salivates. If you are to become a survivor into the next century, you must see through this one.

For the past three years, I have had trouble recognizing spin. I own a four-unit apartment, and I live in apartment one and rent out the other three. For the previous 10 years, I lived in Maryland, 600 miles away, and I paid an agency to collect the rent. So, three years ago, I decided to collect my own rent. For the first year, it was like being a well liked mayor in a small town. Everybody loved me, they acted so nice, and it felt so good. Then people started to get behind in their rent payments, and I was "flexible." It got worse and worse, and I just became more flexible. I wanted to be loved and I could give them another chance. After all, I already had a debt to coax out of them. After three years, I have spoiled all three tenants, and each now owes me at least 6 months rent! If it were just one tenant, I could say it was his or her fault; but, with 100%, I discovered it to be my fault. Being the landlord is just another job, people act nice because you control where they live. Because the relationship between landlord and tenant is not equal, there is a lot of spin, and to become a survivor you must recognize the trap and not fall into it.

Lemma #4 is a guide to let you recognize spin and try to minimize its harmful effects. You don't have to be exactly equal, since no-one is; we all have different experiences; that is not what is meant here. Actually, the word "equal" could be replaced by the words "people who are equivalent," except the resulting expression would seem awkward. The important concept here is to be open to possible differences in people’s contexts as they are attempting to communicate with each other. When there are large apparent context differences, steps should be taken to minimize those differences. In many cases, there can be symbolic gestures, like handshakes, or jokes, which can effectively reduce some of these differences.

This guide has made the claim that you are required to create yourself and that this responsibility comes before anything else. This guide also recommends that you work at being somewhat skeptical; you have your own sense of direction and you have some kind of plan. You have also been given a toolbox and an introduction to communication cycles. All this activity should be helping you to create yourself. Hopefully, you are not trying to blame others and you are now focusing on things you can change for yourself. Self-creation is within your own direct control, although you may not see this at first, especially if you are still living at home with strong parents. We have only lightly touched on your job of self-creation, but to keep this guide at its current size it is now time to move on to new subjects. This guide will now introduce you to what you need from others and how to get it.

Besides developing your own thoughts, and direction, you need to develop what is called "reciprocity" or what could be called "Interpersonal operational currency." Its kind of like money, but it isn't money. You can earn it, save it, and spend it. It is most closely related to the concepts of "trust," and it cannot be done by you alone. You need another person. It is no big secret. There are lots of people who have a good understanding of the process. To gather first hand data on this process, find any married couple who is still happy, and been married at least 30 years. They both know how to create and use "Interpersonal operational currency" although they may not be able to talk about it.

At this point in our discussion, I have to admit my lack of expertise in this area of our discussion. I have only recently started a study of this subject. I have developed my genius, but that did not prevent me from having two failed marriages. My first marriage lasted seven years, and my second marriage lasted six years. It seems I am not going in the right direction. Therefore you must take what I say with a grain of salt; I may know what I am talking about, and I may not. Of course, by this time, you are a critical reader, so I will follow my information, and leave you to make your own conclusions.

In order to be successful in a relationship, it is necessary to develop some Interpersonal operational currency, or some reciprocity . It is not possible to always get agreement on all joint actions, so there has to be a strategy for how to resolve situations that fall outside of ideal conditions. For example, my friend Barbara does not like to go to action movies; if nothing were done to change this, we would never see an action movie together. On the other hand, I don't like to go to musical cartoon movies, and I let Barbara know this, when she wanted me to go with her to see Walt Disney's new movie. If both of us were only to act out only our desires directly, we would be at an impasse, a situation that locks up and prevents change. I don't think I need to spend too much time explaining how both of us decided to give a little and get our way later. Of course, one of us had to go first, and that was a bit of a problem, but it was a temporary problem. Barbara's credit is now good and we are going to a greater variety of movies. The end result is that now I enjoy a lot more movies.

The concept of reciprocity does not usually work as easily as the example I just gave. For one thing, we like to either loan or borrow as a mode and it is not easy to change our mode. Personally I would rather loan. Unfortunately, after a couple of years, other people break off the relationship, since they find the debt too difficult to shoulder. I end up alone, but while we are together, I get to feel like the "great provider." That is selfish, and it never really works. Karma of course is at work here, and in the situations that are not win win the relationship cannot last long-term.

Another way to look at Interpersonal operational currency or reciprocity is as a temporary imbalance in the interpersonal relationship, with a resulting increase in the power held by one side over the other. Care must be exercised not to abuse this power, since it represents the trust invested in the relationship. If this power is not abused, it can grow, and that is in your best interest.

Interpersonal relationships are beyond yourself but not above your influence. You can build habits that tend to help the growth of healthy relationships. One habit to cultivate is how you conduct yourself when chaos occurs and you find yourself in a heated argument.

No matter how knowledgeable you are, you are bound to find yourself in a heated situation that results in an argument. An argument is a condition where at least two communication cycles are incomplete. The first communication cycle that failed to complete caused an irritation, and now the second one causes anger. Now, if both people are angry, you have a fight on your hands.

In any fight, you have a choice - - win at any cost, or resolve the incomplete communication cycles. Obviously, most people, if the choice were arbitrary, would choose to complete the missing cycles. People attempt the win at any cost for any of the following four reasons:

1. Activated past memories are interfering with reality. Activated past memories can leave a person in a completely reactive state with a feeling of not having any real choice. To deal with this, assume for now that you or they have a real choice which is only hidden and has yet to present itself. This will temporally free up the reactive situation. This is only a short term fix. (We will study the reactive mind shortly, but for now lets learn how to fight fair.)
2. You or they feel that the outcome of the fight will determine survival. To deal with this situation you need to build some trust that survival is not at stake. Work together to safely direct the energy that is being generated. For example, take a walk together around the block.
3. People will attempt to win at any cost if they feel that someone else is watching that is more important. Your solution is to arrange to talk to the person in private.
4. Winning is important if they don't think they have anything better. This is either a lack of knowledge, or lack of confidence. Television teaches us to be talking heads. Point and Counterpoint, with no time delay for reflection. Often talking at the same time and projecting through the non listener to the rolling cameras. To deal with this you must lead by example. Always fight fair so that it becomes a habit you don’t have to think about. Further ask the other person - after the heat of the moment is long gone - if what you do or did was fair to them. Use that discussion to agree to your own set of custom rules unique to the two of you.

What does it mean to fight fair? Isn't the subject a contradiction - an oxy-moron? How can someone fight - without being wrong? Yes the other was right. Yes you too were right. There exists a misunderstanding between two people. Both people are honest and both were seeking the real truth, but they have misinformation or a lack of knowledge between them. It is the state of their relationship. It is not a situation about absolute knowledge, but a situation about relative knowledge. Knowledge is gathered from experiences, and all of us have a separate path of experience. People can and often do harbor real issues of truth and honesty that need to be spoken. Real misunderstanding is much more common than most people think. It comes from our unique individuality and our gift of self awareness. So what does it mean to fight fair? First of all, it is just the opposite of fighting to win at any cost.

To win at any cost, you must pile point after point, and constantly keep your opponent off balance by changing the subject. Don’t let them interrupt you by insisting on their composure while you speak. After you score enough points, your opponent will go silent on you. This means you win. You score a point when your opponent’s mouth drops open, or eyes glaze over, or otherwise loses his or her concentration. People who are good at winning at any cost are often lawyers. They, of course, are playing to a jury, even when the jury is missing. They are just practicing their profession. For them, it’s a living, nothing personal. (This of course is a conversational stereotype, used to make a point about the quality of human interaction. Not all lawyers are this way.)

If you want people to trust you, you must fight fair. This is not easy to learn, since you are sometimes very angry. Fighting fair can be easy, once you learn, consider the following six Lemmas.

In order to persuade the other person to fight fair, you need to build up trust in them that you will not pull a bait and switch. You will leave the subject on the table long enough for him or her to really finish with it. You must use your judgment to know when you can safely change the subject. If your partner shows concern, back up to the last subject.

If there are three people in a conversation, there is a temptation to face the person who agrees with you and to talk to the person who disagrees. This is a manipulation, that will cause more problems than it solves. If you want the person who disagrees with you, to trust you, you must speak to that person, as if the other person, the one who agrees, were not listening.

To maintain your integrity, you need to base your communications on long-term goals. If you allow yourself to only respond in the moment you will tend to feed re-stimulated past memories. Re-stimulated past memories is the domain of the mind, which we will shortly address and study. Suffice it for now that if you activate the mind, it will tend to take over. This is especially true if you react to the mind. This is not to say that you are not to be responsive to what the other person presence. You must make your contact real, and not phony. At the same time, you must choose a straight path toward a long-term goal. The person who is automatically reacting feels a lack of freedom and a loss of joy. If you can not separate them from their reactive mind, you will make it more difficult for them to separate from that reactivity and see that they have more choices. Again real understanding requires your leadership. You won’t have it yourself unless you can freely give it away to others.

You can act to help the other person gain confidence that the current problem will be resolved. You can do this by paraphrasing in your own words what the other person is asking you, or what his or her position is. Further, do not move on until the other person agrees that you understand him or her. What this allows is that you can slip a complete communication cycle, within the existing argument. This builds trust to help calm the panic. In this process, you are not misrepresenting your position; you are not manipulating the situation. All you are doing is being a good listener and letting people know they have been heard. The fact of being a good listener will help without being manipulative, since the progress is real and not phony.

Rather than tell other people how they are acting or doing, tell them how you are feeling. Avoid blame structured language and use instead you and your feelings. This is not easy, and to do this you must avoid unleashing your anger. If you restrict yourself to what you know about yourself, you will reach them with the real information and they will not be instantly offended. Your feelings are a subject that only you are fully qualified to be an expert on. They, on the other hand, may be better qualified to know their own actions. This is not an easy approach to communication, since we don’t see it on TV. Television has language that quickly and easy develops plot lines of blame and are easily resolved by violence. In spite of a general lack of examples, taking personally about your feelings does work, and it works well.

Understanding is a truth issue not a control issue. If you don’t understand someone, don’t lie to them and tell them that you do. They can feel when you understand and when you don’t - so you will only be lying to yourself. If you are really listening to them, and you don’t understand - they won’t be offended if you express your confusion and give them a real chance to better explain what they are really saying. It is very harmful to the quality of a relationship to be saying "yes I understand" only to get control of the conversation. They know it is a lie, and furthermore you are subverting the direction of the conversation - by inserting incomplete communication cycles. Now you have a lie making things worse.

We have lightly touched on the idea that some functions you need to survive are beyond your direct control. When issues are beyond your direct control you need to negotiate and build your reciprocity with others. There are also times when you might get angry, and again feel like things are beyond your control. To help you negotiate when you are angry, think about the process of fighting fair. To fight fair is to have good habits, based on long-term goals of real understanding. Both of these processes - - reciprocity and fair fight habits, will help you to gain more confidence and therefore more patience when dealing with other people. Understanding these two concepts will help you to become more of a survivor.

There is another difficulty that seems beyond your direct control, and this is within the realm of your "mind". We want more than the temporary relief we mentioned earlier. We don’t want activated past memories that interfere with our reality.

The concept called "mind-clear" is useful for you to know and understand. First you need to know what the "mind" is and how it works. This is no easy task, because the mind acts like a lens between you and the outside world. The mind is a solution to real experience. Therefore to ‘understand’ the mind requires a Gestalt experience. The mind is everywhere, and to understand it everything will seem to change.

The structure of the mind is built upon a dualism of thought structures. Up defines down, hot helps you understand cold, big has its nature due to small. It is not that everything isn't logical, it is that everything is just logical and nothing more. Experience is missing or diminished. Understanding then becomes relative, and with it meaning becomes relative. Everything gets stuck together. Living becomes a dull adult process, without the fun of childhood. In an abstract sense, the mind is a type of computer subroutine that runs automatically without you even consciously knowing that it took place. Because the mind is automated, it is very hard to recognize. The nature of the "Mind" is even such that people cannot make progress against the mind by themselves. You will just find yourself swimming around in a sea of dualism, and being unable to transcend it.

To regain real experience rather than just a hollow system of "understanding," one must start on the long process of clearing the mind. Even though it is ‘your’ mind, the mind is a problem between you and others and you cannot do anything with it in the way of self-help. This limitation on self-help may dismay you since up to now I have gone on and on about self-construction and the value of being an original thinker. There is a limit to self-help and the mind is one of these limits. When you are clear of the mind, it is called being mind-clear.

Unfortunately, you cannot get help to clear you of a mind from just anybody. You either need a person who is already clear of the mind, or you need a person who is willing to withhold judgment and run a process to allow you to clear your own mind. If you, like me, find yourself stranded in a primitive non-feeling society (i.e. Electrical Engineers not being known for their emotional sensitivities), there is a third way to clear your mind and that is the one I use.

What I do is learn to speak to a person's strength. Each person, no matter how isolated, maintains an area of strength, a bit of genius, hidden and not easy to find. Once you find it, by allowing him or her to guide the conversation to his or her likes, you have an opportunity to clear a small part of your mind that operates on the area that this person is a genius with. They become the teacher and you become the student. To make this process work, you will need as many brilliant oddballs as you can get. Further, you need to understand the mechanisms of the mind, so you can work with loose fragments, and not lose sight of the whole mind.

In order to make progress you will need to create a real working language with the people you contact. You will need to increase the level and nature of understanding between you and them. This is best done by carefully paying attention to only what is real and also unique to that other person. Build your own two person language. This will tend to help you from becoming trapped within the dualistic nature of the mind by keeping you far away from "automatic mode". Automatic thinking lets the mind take over and leaves decisions to it. Most people spend most of their time in some form of light mental fog talking to themselves. This is mind chatter. It can also be thought of as a form of self hypnosis. These people are caught deep in the mind. It is a fog or "understanding" that separates them from reality. You will have to break down this wall if you are to establish enough contact with them to help you clear your mind. You will also need to develop some "Interpersonal operational currency" so that people will not "re-program" you when the inner workings of your mind are exposed.

What I have described here is about as close to "self-help" as you can get, and the whole process is kind of "iffy," and difficult to count on. But sometimes you find yourself with no other choice, so you take your best shot. Of course, the more you know about the mind and how it works, the more you can do to help yourself with whatever help you do get from others. So lets look at some general things we can say about the mind and how it works.

1. The mind glues thoughts together into groups. Many of these connections are hard to recognize, but the easy connections are those made from smells and feelings. For me, the smell of hot apple cider reminds me of December, snow on the ground, and the feeling of being freezing cold. Many classifications for smells are on automatic and at the same time there is not much of a charge to glue them together. It is therefore possible for a person operating in a "self-help" mode to be able to identify these loosely connected parts of the mind. These loosely connected parts of the mind, unfortunately, are not the ones that cause us trouble. Real distortion of reality is caused by those thoughts bound together with deep unexperienced pain, and we are not about to face that alone.
2. The mind works in an automatic mode. To be on automatic is to be somewhat in denial and disconnected from reality. This is, in fact, the reason we dearly like the mind because it is very useful to avoid those things we wish to avoid. There is a wall of pain separating the conscious thoughts from the unconscious thoughts, and the mind is the idea to make the pain go away, and that process places the mind in automatic mode. There is no mumbo jumbo here, these are your choices, since your thoughts are not arbitrary, but carry some residual charge left over from some relationship you were involved in. Now you just make the decision to avoid them, and place all the connections as equivalent without inspection.
3. The mind can be loosely connected and flexible or tightly "keyed-in" and in control. This is easiest to see in others and almost impossible to discover in ourselves. Have you ever been casually talking to people, both you and they are involved in give and take, and communication is taking place, and all is well. Now you are continuing and you say some word, and you watch the face of your listeners distort, and they become intense. We say their mind just keyed-in, so to say, and now they become inflexible and dogmatic. Now it is much harder to get your ideas across; they may start to pound the table with their fists, or in some other way hint at violence, and that violence may be directed at you.

Believe it or not, but those people are trying to avoid some past experience! Unfortunately, the experience is undigested, and it's stuck and trying to get out. You, on the other hand, are now caught off guard, as if the people you were just talking to had been killed and taken over by these fanatics. You are trying to be more in the here and now, and the people who become keyed-in are talking more and more out of the past. You have an intense situation on your hands!

So what should you do? If you get up and walk away, you will leave the people to stew in their own juices. They cannot break the hold of the mind by themselves. It is not within the realm of self-help, so there is no real benefit in letting them cool off. There is, of course, your immediate physical survival to consider. You will not become a survivor into the next century, if you are first murdered. Having pointed out that obscure logic, let us consider the alternatives; what can you do?

First of all, you do not want to react! You do not want to encourage the illusion that this is just the same as in the past. You want to stay calm, and you do not want to lose the connection to those people whom you were just talking to, before the key-in took place. This is not to say that you want to ignore the current temper tantrum, you want to stay in reality, stay coherent, and stay in real time. You might also have a little faith that the "crazy" has a calm person behind him or her, who is glad you have not run away, and who holds out hope that you will be different, and that your knowledge will be enough to heal this or her wounds. You see, the other person would also like to be clear of the mind, but he or she needs your help, and wants it. Now!

So, second of all, do not try to change the subject. Stay with the horse that got you here. Try to remember the word that keyed them in. This may not be so easy, since you may have already started to sweat. If you can remember the word, ask them why this word upsets them. If you cannot remember the trigger word, just keep them talking and bleed off the energy that is driving them. Let them run down a bit. If you have any listening skills, here is where you need to use them. Stop them only if you don't understand what they are saying at that moment. Do not stop them if you don't understand their motivation; that will come later. Just listen and listen well! (You probably don't want to stand too close, although if you are caught up close, you probably do not want to back off, or show any reaction to what the other person is doing.) Above all, do not let your mind key you in! Someone may get killed..

Put yourself into the "helper" mode; remember, you are not really part of this pain the person is experiencing. Don't flatter yourself into thinking that all this is to do with you, you just supplied the "trigger-event" that unleashed all that pent-up energy. The person who is keyed-in is mostly talking to himself or herself, and you have been allowed to monitor the process. If you care to, you can usually clear up a part of the person’s mind. That would allow the person to be more able to live in the present, and therefore get more out of life.

4. The mind is a solution to some interpersonal dilemma. The mind only has an existence because it could not be allowed to be dropped. This might sound rather trite, and obvious, but it is not. There is no magic higher power. It is you doing all this stuff. So why do you do this? Why would you go into a rage over something that happened years ago, with someone who wasn't even there? It is not easy to see at first, but it is because you want to be loved. You don't want to let go, because you do not want to be alone. You loved and wanted to be loved, but it did not happen, and you feel it has yet to take place. Further, you want others to know that you are still trying and you have not given up. Further, you will never give up. Ever. (Sounds like the mind talking, doesn't it?)

Now that we have an introduction to the concept of the mind and how it works, or to put it better, does not work, what can we say about our own mind? Most of what we have covered is related to seeing the mind in others. We can see other people get critical, and overly sensitive, and then blow up in rage. We now can say their minds have been keyed-in and they are on automatic. All of this is well and good, but blame is not our most effective process, and it will not be our chosen path. How do we find the mind in ourselves? We will cover that shortly, but for now we can use logic to predict where we are most tempted to create a mind, and then we can work on reducing the temptation, by doing something more effective. Remember, your mind is created by you to solve a problem, so let’s look at some of the adult problems that might drive us to create a mind.

Unfortunately, love does not always work out. The pain of losing someone close can be intense and complicated. Give yourself some time to heal. You may be tempted to cut through the pain and simplify everything with a new set of stereotypes, to make it simple, black and white. You can then choose to become innocent (or even guilty), and thereby avoid receiving all the information and ideas that are going on between you and the other person. If you can resist the easy stereotypes, thereby keeping the situation gray, you can learn a lot and keep yourself from building a mind, becoming jaded, and emotionally sick.

Often, you are disappointed in how things went in the relationship. The pain of that disappointment has worn away at you and rather than go back and spend time thinking through what happened you want to move on. Unfortunately, you cannot run away from yourself, and unless you become honest with yourself, you will be hurt. The process of leaving feelings to be sorted out later creates the mind. Now you put those feelings on automatic, thereby creating some new stereotypes and you have lost some of your ability to listen to others. The mind is a very curious creation. It makes the "pain" go away and it clicks in and clicks into control upon your hearing "trigger" words. You are less able to hear what others are saying because the trigger words will keep pulling you back to these undigested experiences in your broken relationship. You will not know whom you are really talking to - - the new person or the old relationship.

To prevent yourself from becoming jaded, you will need to allow yourself to really feel the hurt. You can start by allowing yourself to consider the other as your friend, although the latest situation may preclude that possibility. Next, be willing to keep the situation complicated and resist the easy stereotypes that are so tempting. Recognize that you are not entirely innocent and use this "down-time" to work on your problems. You will thereby start to make some personal progress and start the healing process. Recognize all the things you have learned from the relationship. There are things you would never know, which you now know, because of this past relationship.

We are not looking for illusion here. So, also realize, starting now, that the ongoing relationship is probably over. Be open to the change, and realize that they will need to do whatever they can to grow through their pain and depression. That may include excluding you from their life. The resulting relationship will depend on their decisions and their thoughts. Here is a new tool that will help you. It’s a tool with an easy-to-find handle, that works in two directions.

This is a very useful tool, but it will take you some time to build and trust in how it operates. It is not an easy "tool" to slip into your toolbox. You have to work to see this one. It is best built long before a relationship breaks up, because then the pain can encourage you to run and hide. The reason this tool is so hard to build is that "The ground-state," the one containing truth, is so hard to reach. In physics, the ground-state is the state not containing any energy. In a relationship, the ground-state is the recognition that other people do not really "need" you, and that they in fact choose to be with you. That puts them into the relationship, and it makes you vulnerable. You do not really control them.

Many people find the ground-state too painful, so they create a "reason" that drives other people to act the way they do. They are so handsome the others just can't resist. Once they leave the ground-state, the quality of the relationship deteriorates, because they do not see the other persons as equivalent to them. This either means they are better than the other persons or the reverse. This puts a spin on the relationship. (Spin was mentioned earlier in this guide.) The spin then blocks the full impact of the relationship, and makes it hollow and unsatisfying to some extent.

"You can't hurt an honest person," but you can create disappointment. Know that others have an absolute right to judge you, and accept their judgment as their best knowledge of reality. If you do not do that, you will have failed to listen to them and that would be falling into denial.

Recognize that the scars from past relationships have hurt you, but you can work through these feelings when you can tell others what you have not yet been able to tell yourself - - the truth. Blame is just the tip of the iceberg; it is not yet the truth. You need the real truth. Of course, there is still some hurt from my past relationships that I am still working on. I do not want myself to become vulnerable again until I have cleaned up my feelings. For me, that takes some time to heal.

The tool, "You can't hurt an honest person," does not come without a price. As long as I still hurt, I do not think I am honest with myself. I try to admit and take ownership for my feelings, since I do not want to create a mind. I do not want to avoid anything that happened in the relationship. I do not want to live in fear of the others in any way. They were a gift, and I want to continue to celebrate them and their essence. Taking responsibility for my relationships with others means receiving all the real ideas that were sent to me, and not ducking them. Only with honesty can I keep myself from becoming jaded, and emotionally sick. Our relationships are deep and have the potential to be lasting. Again, for me it takes some time to heal.

If you do take the time to carefully think about the tool, "You can't hurt an honest person," you can see that it first works to keep you unafraid of new relationships, and second it helps you to free yourself from the harmful effects of a broken relationship. It serves to keep you pointed in the right direction, the direction of self-discovery and personal growth. Otherwise you just store up all these feelings, and go around with "exposed triggers".

What can we do to clear ourselves of the mind, and eliminate these "exposed triggers?" Well, as we said earlier, we can find a person who is mind-clear, and just talk in a give-and-take manner with him. Unfortunately, since our mind is filtering everything we hear, we will still need all our knowledge to come to grips with what the mind-clear person is telling us. That means it will take us some time to work it all out. There is also the danger that we will compartmentalize, and only appear clear when we are in the presence of the mind-clear person, but when left to our own, we are still stuck in the mind. This is the basic con job that we are all good at. You know the experience, we all like being around the person, since they make us feel so good. Now we are addicted, and we need them.

A more dependable way is to obtain "mind-clearing" from a person who is trained in some process that usually works. Work has been carried out for at least the last 37 years, although they may not be using the same words that I use here. Essentially you want to comb the field of thoughts and look for charges that are unconscious, or "reactive", and you want to dig them up and get to know them. This results in a bleeding off of the charge carried in the mind and unlocks the associations made with other thoughts. Unfortunately, if the person getting mind-clearing does not have a good conceptual foundation, the effects of clearing are quickly lost, and you must go back for a booster shot.

The person directing the clearing process does not have to be clear, but it helps. What he does certainly need is the skill to be a good listener, and the skill to keep this opinions to himself. He is not here to get clearing, so he needs to keep his personal life and feelings out of the process. It is best if the person wanting to be clear, and taking the role of being helped, directs the general activity. I know that sounds strange, that you would ask the patient to direct the surgery, but if we want the clearing to last, there is a certain sequence that makes sense. Only the patient knows this sequence. The helper must test the patient’s resolve to know the truth, and after resolving this, trust the patient.

The intention of the person wanting to be mind-clear is all important to the process, but it alone is not sufficient. The intention of the helper is also important, and the communication skills of both are tested to the limits. Unfortunately, the discovery process is non-linear. It does not go by any regular pattern. You cannot say that a breakthrough will occur after five hours of work; often breakthroughs occur just as the process is to end, so desperation is an important ingredient. The discoveries can be described as a process of vision. You do not usually get a bit here and a bit there. You get a whole new vision of reality, essentially a mind blowing experience.