Submission — The Key to Evolution

April 19, 1987

Submission is the key to getting the hang of all of this stuff.

Corky: There are so many words that mean the same thing, and everything is so simple. Except a lot of times it takes a lot of words to try to describe the intricacies of things, and then sometimes things are so simple they can't even be described with words. They're just so simple there are no words that are for them, because the words are too complicated and it's just real simple. So it's a real paradox. And what I wanted to talk about today was this process that we've been talking about lately of meditation and controlling your moods and dealing with the things that are happening with you. But before I get into that, Carnie had a real good suggestion. Instead of asking somebody the day of the class to give the 11:00 class, what we want to do is give them a week to prepare for it so they can give it the next Sunday. So, who would like to volunteer for our next Sunday's class at 11:00, to teach it?

Bernie: I'll do it.

Corky: You'll do it? Okay, great. What we want to do is we want to pick the topics in the new book [SUMMUM: Sealed Except to the Open Mind]. And what I'd like to see happen over a period of time is to have everybody get a chance to give all those lessons at the 11:00 class to the group that is there, and everybody just discuss them back and forth. Not in a way where you are criticizing the teacher, and not in a way where you are trying to present that you know the lesson better than they do. But in a way that you participate in the class, where you assist in the well being of everybody involved, including the person presenting the information. How does that sound? Fun? It sounds great.

Because it would get down to the bottom line of, everything really that there is to know is in that book. Everything that you want to add to existence, you can take all those things that are in the book, or the basic heart of the book, and have an understanding. There is nothing that escapes the fundamental principles that are in that book. And if you've got those fundamental principles as a basis for your existence, and the way you walk through life, and the way you see through life, and the visions of your life are tied to those basic principles, you have an understanding of everything that is happening from the way that it really is, and it gives you a workmanship within it. Which you don't lose control of yourself within it, and that's what I want to talk about today: the control of oneself, the stability of your evolution through existence, and some of the factors that are real keys to giving everyone really good self control of their evolution. Does anybody have an idea of what I'm talking about? Chris, tell me what's going through your head, just talk about it for a second.

Chris: Oh, I thought you said it pretty good, just that the importance of being... having control over yourself so that other people - and not even just other people, but the environment - doesn't take you away from that center, from your direction, and also your feeling of well being within you should not be compromised.

Corky: Or disturbed. It's disturbed in everybody to a certain extent. And that's because that is the swing or the rhythm of the pendulum. For example, if you have a little bit of well being, you're going to swing back to "unwell" being, a little agitation. Although, there is the meditation that everybody has been taught to assist you in getting control of your ego, so you can take your ego to a higher resonation, to a higher vibration, as the book says, "spiritward." To a place where your body and your life is still affected by the circumstances, but your ego misses or jumps above the wave that I've talked about before. The wave comes rolling in to the shore, and you are out there dancing around, and you jump above it and the wave goes by and catches your leg - instead of catching your whole body and knocking you down, which gets you so involved in the wave coming in, as you get caught up in the wave. But this way [with meditation], just your legs get caught by it. So, everything has a swing. If you have a little bit of well being, you're going to have a little bit of unwell being swinging back. Everything compensates to an equal balance, and the swing of the pendulum as we go through whatever the thing is we happen to be involved in. We can call it a life or a movie or whatever it is; the evolution of the mental existence of Creation.

A real key to working with that has been the word submission. When I first started using the word submission back in the 70's, I had people get outraged! Remember how Rachel used to get so mad? What did she say? She used to scream about it didn't she? She would say, "You cannot use that word to people, because nobody wants to submit. Because they think their lives are going to be taken over, and their lives are going to be controlled by you or by this group, or by this thought or whatever it happens to be. You can't tell them that they've got to move into submission, because they want to be in control of their life."

But in reality, it's a paradox. Because when you tell people that they need to submit, it is the answer. What it does is the submission allows them to really be in control of their lives. And it's not really what it sounds like on the exterior. Like if I tell you Al, that you need to come over here and submit to what's going on at Summum, and you have to move your life into submission okay? Submitting to everything that happens. Within your own life you could interpret that into saying, "okay what you want me to do is become a sheep or a follower, and do everything that you say I'm supposed to do. Walk around like a zombie and lose my mind and lose control of my existence and turn into a follower." But I keep on trying to tell the media, we don't have followers around here. We're not trying to make followers. We don't want followers of a group or a leader. What we want is people being followers of themselves. And it's a real paradox. So some of these terms are drastically misunderstood because of the things we're taught about those terms as we go through life.

For example, I had a girl at a show come by the booth in one of the shows in California and told me, "You guys are like Jim Jones!" That's the guy over a group where everybody committed suicide in Ecuador or something like that. She said, "Because you want people to be a follower, you want them to submit to this consciousness or this group or whatever it happens to be. And everybody turns into zombies, and the leader says let's all drink poison and everybody drops dead and it's a waste of existence."

The submission that I am speaking of is not that kind of submission. It is and it is not. It is a really intriguing thing to talk about, to the extent that the submission that I'm talking about is submitting to the reality of your destiny. Everybody doesn't want it the way that it is. They want to change it and be in control of it. So what I'm saying is submitting to the reality of your destiny. It's the same story that Christ said, "Don't kick against the pricks." Flow with evolution. Swim with the current in the stream of life, instead of trying to fight it all the time. Submit to the reality of your destiny, instead of being in an argument with it all of the time. It's like Chris and I were talking on the sidewalk last night, and I forgot the words that we were saying, but it's the same concept. What were we talking about Chris? You gave me a beautiful story and it was real interesting and you told me a story about yourself, what was it?

Chris: I remember it. Basically, what we were talking about was the equal sharing of good and bad. Like the principle of polarity. That everybody has an equal share of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow. And that each individual is a self contained unit that is bound by the law of polarity to experience the same amount of pain as pleasure. And it applies to everybody, no one is exempt. But the trick is that everyone looks at everybody else, and wants what they don't have, and sees... Shakespeare wrote a sonnet about it, it's really beautiful, I wish I would have memorized it... and everybody looks at everybody else and says, "if only I had that man's ability, or that woman's ability," you know? Or if I could have what he had, I'd be okay. And we kind of want what we don't have. But nobody is better than anybody else because everybody is subject to the same laws, and experiences the same amount of pain and the same amount of pleasure.

Corky: Right. If they experience a lot of pleasure, they get a lot of pain. If they don't have a lot of pleasure, they don't have that much pain. It's the swing of the pendulum.

Chris: It's hard to learn. That's a hard one to accept.

Corky: And that is the submission to your destiny right? It's the same thing. It's the same story, just a little side shot at it. Talk some more about that Chris, you are doing really well with this.

Chris: The little story I was telling is kind of funny. I hang out at this pizza joint by the University called The Pie. I like it because it's open until 3am. I really like it because it's one of the most normal places in Utah, because people go there and you hear them talking about things that you don't hear people talking about around this state. I went there one night and I was in line, and it was about 1AM or something like that. The guys in front of me went up to the counter and the girl carded them because they wanted to buy some beer. Then it was my turn and of course I wasn't carded because I look over 21. But I remember feeling kind of a momentary depression, like "God, I wish I was younger again." Kind of like here I am out of place at school or whatever, I should have done this a long time ago. There was a momentary sinking feeling that she didn't ask me for my ID. When I sat down I remembered when I was younger, when I was 20, I took this girl out to dinner, and tried to buy us some wine and the waitress wouldn't serve us wine. And I was very embarrassed and I was very upset that the waitress would not serve us wine. She screwed it up, she humiliated me, and I was really pissed off that night. And I went to this position of neutrality and I observed both moments! And something said to me, "Well Chris you know, there you were and you're pissed off because they asked for your ID, and now you're pissed off because they are not asking for your ID"... and this voice just said to me, "What do you want Chris? What is it that you want? What's really going on?" It all just kind of ties in to what we're talking about, the different swings of the pendulum.

Corky: We seem to be dissatisfied with where we're at because we can't be happy with the now. We want to change things. For example, I'm sure everyone here today could say I need more money to make my life happier, right? Let's just say more money per month. I saw a thing on TV, reporters on CNN News were asking everybody how much money they needed to be happy, and to feel like they were part of society. These yuppies were saying, "Well I need an extra 60 thousand dollars per year income." Or I need an extra 80 thousand, or I need to triple my income, and they were making 30 thousand or 40 thousand dollars per year. I was saying that's real interesting. Like Ivan Boskey, it didn't matter how much money he had, he needed to have more, something different, something that he did not have in order to reach that point of acceptance of himself, or to accept the now of what he was involved in. It wouldn't make any difference if we were sitting in here and there was a million dollars that belonged to you out there in the parking lot, how would it change your well being in here in this moment Al? Would it affect how your body feels? Would it affect how your consciousness is inside? It can only affect maybe some of your movements in the future, which doesn't exist right now, but it's not going to affect your well being. All it's going to do is create that law of compensation with other things to deal with. How to hold on to it. How to keep it. How to invest it. How to make sure that you don't lose it through inflation.

Al: It seems like it's an impossibility, to be able to have it and not be concerned about the things you just mentioned. How much interest is it earning? Should I invest in that? Is somebody stealing it?

Corky: Carnie, tell the story about Stanley who is dying of cancer, and what he's worried about. Listen to this one!

Carnie: Right. Well first, I would say that until you're making 80 thousand dollars you are really not living. And that would be the beginning place for me. I wouldn't try to save any of it. I would spend all of it and just have a great time. I would need 80 thousand dollars just to consider myself part of the society.

So anyway, he's real sick and he's dying and he doesn't know he's dying and he doesn't want to face his death. He's 70 years old, and he has cancer that has metastasized all throughout his body.

Corky: Does he have sufficient amount of money in reserve would you say?

Carnie: Yes, he's got a lot of money.

Corky: What's a lot of money, several million dollars right?

Carnie: Probably. Enough so that when he bought his new Jaguar XJ he went out and paid cash for it. But he is worried about money. He's dying. He told my mother that if he really thought this was the end, he'd go out and spend a lot of money on himself. I encouraged him to do so, and so did my mother. But not wanting to say this is the end, everybody knows this is the end, it's only rational, but he cannot accept the reality of the end. Because the end for him would be the end of everything. He's an atheist. He doesn't believe in god.

Corky: Well, just talk about the money, and how he talks about how he's got to get it invested.

Carnie: Yeah. He spends a lot of time worrying about it, and so does my mother. "Should I sell my IBM? Should I keep it? What do you think?" I say I don't know, I don't have any money. I don't have any of those problems and I'm glad. I never worry about my money because I don't have any. I don't have to worry about where it's going to go. But that's a constant thing for them. Every single morning they get up and first thing they start worrying about it. They're not worried about what's happening in the world or their community, all they are worried about is the stock pages. They go right to the stock quotations. They just live for that, or some new investment that could be coming up. Where they could be making more money for their money, and that preoccupies - absolutely preoccupies their whole lives.

Corky: And so it takes away their life?

Carnie: I think it does, because they don't seem to get any enjoyment just for the enjoyment of things.

Corky: So their attention is always locked into this money thing?

Carnie: They are very locked into it. I guess you get the lower end too where people are locked in because they don't have enough to live a comfortable life. So they are locked in too. It's probably best just to make 80 grand a year and be happy.

Corky: So do you think Chris, it's possible that a lot of people are unhappy with their lot in life?

Chris: Maybe even most. I don't know. I think a lot are. Yes.

Corky: Yeah. Is your dad unhappy? When he looks at certain circumstances and stuff?

Chris: I think he's unhappy with certain aspects of it, yes.

Corky: Like the swing of the pendulum. He would be over here and be unhappy with those aspects of it, and then he'd swing over and be happy with these aspects over here. So he swings back from unhappiness back to happiness?

Chris: Yeah, oh definitely.

Corky: Back and forth between the two. Does anybody know anybody who is just perfectly happy with anything that happens?

Carnie: Yeah, they are on Thorazine.

Corky: I've seen them on Thorazine and they're not happy at all. There's a whole building down there where Bob is running around.

Carnie: There are some people who I've met, very few, who have transcended to the point where they might get a little low, where even at their lowest they are pretty serene.

Al: Just because we don't know them, doesn't mean they don't exist on the planet.

Corky: Right. I'm not arguing with that. I'm just saying, how many do you know personally?

Al: I don't know many people aside from those in this room.

Corky: You've run into a lot of people in life haven't you?

Al: No I haven't.

Corky: I mean California. Did you meet a lot of people? Did you meet guys on the dock? Okay. What about the guys on the dock, did you meet any there?

Al: No.

Corky: They were always bitching about something, right?

Al: Pretty much. There was this one guy who was pretty complacent, he seemed to be pretty satisfied. I met an older man that I used to work with about 20 years ago who was a retired painter who just lived off his pension, and just wanted something to do during the day so he became an auto parts driver for $2 an hour. He was very complacent. He was just happy as can be. He just went to and from work, everything was paid for, he had money in the bank, he would take a couple weeks vacation, he drank his beer every night, he always talked about it, always had a smile on his face, always chuckled, he was a very happy man.

Corky: Well, if he was happy, is there a swing of the pendulum from happiness Chris?

Chris: I would think so. I also don't think you can say any man is happy unless you are that man or that woman.

Corky: Exactly. You can't. Unless you are walking in their shoes, you really don't know what's going on inside, do you? From the exterior view of what's going on with them.

Chris: Some people are really masters of being in society, of giving the appearance of happiness. I could never do that.

Corky: Anybody ever been to the LDS church on Sunday? What do they do Terry, tell us. They meet you at the door with a handshake?

Terry: With a handshake and a grin and a "Hi, how are you?"

Corky: Then what?

Terry: Six days to make up for it.

Corky: The rest of the week right? That's really funny, is that what you saw Donna?

Donna: Like they could care less the rest of the week, but if they became your home teacher or they were assigned to greet you at the door, everything was just wonderful and you were their best friend in the world and everything.

Corky: What would they do to you during business deals during the middle of the week?

Donna: They could care less.

Al: Can I ask a question? We seem to be talking about the extremes, happiness and sadness.

Corky: Those aren't extremes. Elation and desperation go a little farther on the swing. Happiness is right about here, then elation, ecstasy...

Chris: Oh, ecstasy will kill you!

Corky: On the swing back right!? Happiness is just bumped slightly off the center. It's not extreme.

Al: The center would seem to be the ideal place, would it not?

Corky: Yeah. If there is... was an ideal.

Al: If there was an ideal, so what's that all about then? Can you give us more examples of it?

Corky: That's exactly where we're headed in this discussion. The center is a place where you are in acceptance of what's happening to you in the circumstances of your life, and fully satisfied with those present circumstances and happenings, and your emotions are not trying to change the present circumstances.

Al: What kind of a person does that make you? What do you look like then?

Corky: You don't look any different.

Al: No, I mean, do you always have a smile, or do you sometimes have a smile?

Su: I'd say you probably go about your movie, you do whatever you are supposed to, but inside you are not that affected. I was just going to say somebody can be bitching on the outside, but on the inside they're okay. It's just part of what they are supposed to do, but they are sort of a little bit... I don't know how to say it.

Corky: They are active on the outside, but not moved as much on the inside. So, one of the keys to this whole thing is the meditation and the resonation that you guys have been connected with. And I don't know how many times I can stress this, that when your will or your attention is turned towards these different things, it begins to resonate with the resonation of what that thing is. The thing that you are perceiving, it becomes it. It changes to it, and harmonizes and attunes with it. It's like a tuning fork. What's that term called... resonation, when you bring one [tuning] fork up to another one, and it picks up the resonation of it, and it hums like it. And so, this thing of the ego getting caught up in its wants, wishes and desires... does anybody remember that saying in the initiation? If you have a want, wish or desire come upon you, start doing the meditation, to the extent that it will bring you back to the reality of where you are at; to accept or submit to your present circumstances in your destiny of life. Rather than fighting with it, and saying you are not happy with your lot or what's happening to you in life, or where you are at or what condition you are in, and trying to change it, or fighting it. Because it will automatically change. You can try to change it, but the argument that goes on inside of you is the problem. There's nothing wrong with changing your lot, and working in the pattern of the way that your destiny is. That's what life is about, the movie of life, the dream to change it. But the argument caused by the elation or the depression of your current circumstances is where you create your own personal highs and lows. Does that come home real strong Chris, do you see what I'm saying? And it doesn't do any good to argue with it because it is.

It's like when I was with Julie the other day, we went to a track meet and she didn't run really fast, and she kept laying this thing on me about how bad she ran. I said, "Julie, you ran. It's over with. You ran at that speed. Next time, you'll run faster. What you need to do now is put your attention on working out, lengthening your stride, examine the circumstances about what you did and try to improve upon it, rather than dwelling on the bad parts of the event. It's over with. There is nothing you can do about it." Go on and improve yourself and make yourself better and use the experience of the old to go to a newer height, but don't get stuck in the dilemma of the way that it was, or the way that you would like it to be. Do something about it. Take your energy and put something into the change of it. But don't worry about the dilemma of the condition of the event, the past event or the continual event that is going on with you, or the condition that is with you.

For example, you talked about weight Al. Heavy weight, light weight, whatever. And if you dwell upon being overweight, you stay overweight. Right? You do. Like you've been talking about it, and if you change your mind and you say, "I'm going to be thin, and I'm going to establish a program to do it." And just do it, instead of dwelling on your condition, you allow yourself, over a period of time, to get well. It doesn't happen overnight. And that's in all situations. Instead of terrorizing your body with the pain of it, you allow it to gradually get well. Instead of terrorizing yourself with the pain of it, of why you don't have this or that or whatever, you allow yourself to get well with it. Because as long as you terrorize yourself with it, you have the fear of it, and the fear keeps you there. You reinforce the resonation. Does that make sense?

Let's just say I've got a pimple in the center of my forehead and I keep on whining about that nobody will like me, or a girl will see me. Like Julie always does: "Oh no, I've got a pimple on my nose! I can't go to school because the boys will look at it." You know, and she concentrates on the pimple, and it seems to get bigger because all her attention is on the pimple and she is energizing it. Until she forgets about it, and it goes away. That isn't to say she doesn't do something to take care of it. She washes it, makes sure she dries it out, and eats food that doesn't mess it up. Like if you want to lose weight, you don't eat 40 pounds of chocolate when you get home at night, right? You go on a conservative type of program that takes care of your problem, and whenever it draws you into the pain of it, into energizing it, you do the meditation and you take yourself away from it. You raise your ego to a higher resonation to somewhere out of it, and draw yourself away from it, which allows it to come out and vent itself and go away.

So the submission to your destiny is critical, instead of fighting with it. Submission is the key to getting the hang of all of this stuff. Being with your destiny. If you are going to have a pimple on your nose the rest of your life, submit to it and just have it. Be with it. Let it be there. Go on and do the rest of life and don't worry about the pimple on your nose. Don't make that your life. And that's what we do. We get so caught up in our present condition, right Al, and being unhappy with it, that it devastates you?

Al: Well your thoughts just go around and around in that particular thing.

Corky: Exactly, and that's all you do. You can't have any well being, as Chris would say. You can't have a middle point between depression and happiness. Sadness and happiness, it's always in degrees.

Chris: Explain that to me. I thought that there was something that you could have inside that would be some kind of stability.

Corky: Okay, I see well being as a little swing off of the center point is all. It is good that you asked that question. On the other side of the center from well being would be discontentment. So, well being is on this side and discontent is on that side. Well being is sort of like a low grade endorphin presence. You know, I don't know if it's possible to stay right in the center. You are in existence. But the closer to the center the better. So there are not too many highs and not too many lows. So, well being and discontentment would sort of be the path that you would drive down the freeway of life.

Al: Yeah, so what you are saying is this — on a gross level your mood can go to billions and billions of miles on one end, and extreme distances on the other end, or we can bring it closer and just kind of jostle between the two. Until you go back and forth so much, so quickly, it just becomes the hum.

Corky: Right, exactly.

Chris: Not even those master guys, those major enlightenment guys, they can't stay in the middle all of the time?

Corky: To participate in life, it's impossible because you are in polarity, and you are moving through existence, and you are bumping back and forth. That is action. That is what action is. Now, if you sit in meditation, you can stay in the center. If you sit just in meditation, you can stay perfectly in the center. But for example, I saw a real interesting thing — Rashneesh does a pretty good job of staying in the center. But right after they got the commune going in Oregon, he got a little high up there, and he was very wise so he went into silence for awhile to take the edge off of the high. He didn't want to get too high, so he went into silence, because he didn't want to participate in what was going on. Then when he came out of silence, because of the high, he had devastation on the other end. I watched some of the interviews that they did with him right after Sheila ran off with the money, and they shot people in the butt with drugs, and they did all that kind of stuff, and he was pissed!

He was real pissed, because what had happened is they had a divine thing going, okay? And it was a divine thing, and he "welled" within the divinity of it because of the beauty of the commune. But it was so high that he saw the problem in it, and he went into meditation into the silence to get out of it, to escape it, because he saw what was coming I think. He would only have to be able to see that because it was so high. And then when he came out of the meditation there was still a down swing on it, and that's when the whole thing fell apart. He really probably escaped the nightmare of the whole thing by going into silence for two and a half years. And he caught a little bit of the end of it when he came out of his silence, which was the down end, when he got real pissed about the whole thing. But when you are in the action, in the activity of life, there are bumps - the well being and the discontentment.

Chris: Can you say once again just so it's with me, this ideal neutral point that we don't have to necessarily stay in all the time?

Corky: You find it. You pass through it as you are coming out of discontent and going into well being. As you are going out of well being into discontent, you go through it. It is sort of a neutral zone. It's got to do with submission, as you move into submission you go into that point. As you submit, say you are discontented with the way a situation is, you got an F in class or something, you say, "Oh screw it, I'll do better next time." And just as you submit to it, you pass through that point of the submission, and you move into well being on the other side because you've accepted the situation. But you pass through it on into wellbeing instead of staying in there. So it's difficult, it's impossible practically to stay in the center. But bring the edges off by meditation. When you get really high up there, meditate, or a when you get a real low on, meditate, it brings you closer to the center every time. Anyway, let's take a break.