Reference: “All It Is” Chapter 1: “The Purpose of PTP”
Wednesday, December 28
Walton: Good morning, little bee. Is your busy body brain hive alive this morning? Buzzing with excitement about your finally becoming an enlightened bee? Are you ready to look closely at all your bee-liefs and to release them to the wandering winds of change and the wintery storms of Maine?
David: What? No more Worm or Ant? I was just getting used to those two. Are we going through the whole field of Entomology this week? Today, I be the bee?
Walton: Now you be, now you don’t be. You think, therefore, you ain’t.
David: Ain’t what?
Walton: Aware!! So, ready to bee-gin??
David: Sure. Buzz. Buzz.
Walton: You make no money if you make no honey, Sonny! Be that as it may, We have a sweet-as-honey be-ginning lesson. You ready to float from flower to flower, pollinating your inner pores with spores?
David: Sure thing, Queenie. My beehive is bee-having bee-utifully! Let’s get the honey-dew dripping, and that PTP pollen percolating! Got tea for me?
Walton: I knew you’d ask. Here’s yours. Mine’s already by the woodstove. Make sure you put a lid on it. We’re going to start by taking a brief walk. Grab your backpack, so you can bring your computer tablet and journal with you.
David: Sure. And, yes, I read my first assignment last night. “The Purpose of PTP.”
{They begin walking together through the Maine winter weather, slowly and carefully.}
Walton: And what was your initial reaction to it? Did you find anything related to the world of “Simplifying your life” in that chapter?
David: Well, much of it seemed like old ground. I mean, you and I have already been addressing some really cosmic questions. But that short page simply summarized a whole lot of them, in very little space.
Walton: Did anything in particular stand out? Feel free to access the web page, if you need to. This is not a test, and you are not being notified to shelter in place if you don’t have a response right away!
David: I’ve already shared with you directly how confused I have been lately, and how complicated that my life seemed to be. And some of the basic questions? I have already asked them. And, of course, you keep insisting that life, at its very core, should be much simpler than all this.
Walton: So why bother?
David: What do you mean, why bother? Why bother with what?
Walton: Did you notice the first drawing on the page? The picture of Steven Stickman wondering what the purpose of it all was?
David: Really? The cartoon guy has a name? Steven Stickman? You are so weird!
Walton: Quite the contrary, my dear fellow. Mr. Stickman and his whole family are featured quite often throughout the entire project. And I leave it to you to “stick-figure” out why.
David: Why the Stickman family is there, in your blog articles? I dunno. Maybe to create a distraction? Maybe to make fun of your whole project? Maybe because you have a latent but frustrated artist living within your deepest mystic soul! “Miss Stick”, get it??
Walton: Maybe the answer is simpler than that. Much simpler. For example, what form of art is simpler than a basic stickman drawing? Can you pair up a simple drawing with a simple concept and have it end up still being simple? Or does it give a monkey mind like yours yet another chance to make things complicated? And if you, quite by accident, find yourself in that very act of making simple things complicated, would it not serve as yet another reminder that …
David: Yes, I got it: “Life should be much simpler than it is.” Everything included. Some old wise geezer once drummed that into my neural network.
Walton: Fascinating! Sounds like someone I might want to meet someday. So, the intent of the question “Why bother?” is designed to lead you to a deeper level of questioning. And that level should get deeper still, and deeper still. Until, hopefully, you reach what level??
David: Like you have previously and mysteriously mentioned, “Turtles all the way down,” perhaps? The deepest level of understanding for why we are here, why we exist??
Walton: Understanding is the booby prize, my friend. Look at the fifth paragraph on the page. “Is there even the slightest possibility that the more practical “answers” instead come from a direction of greater simplicity, less education, more basic experience….”
David: Well, if it isn’t a deeper understanding of something, then it must be a deeper understanding of nothing, maybe?
Walton: Of what?!
David: Of nothing.
Walton: {pause…} Bazinga! Bop the boy over the brain with a bright blue balloon!! He shows promise yet! Ah, the refreshing sound of Awareness re-awakening. Yes. Nothing! Nothing is at the end of this project, this paradigm, this parade of poo-poo platter!
David: What?! Nothing at all? All this work you expect me to do for nothing?
Walton: Yup. Why not?
David: If that’s the case, then why do I even bother?
Walton: Yes again! You are on a honey-roll this morning, Busy Bee! As the illustrious Steven Stickman throws up his arms and asks the reader “Why Bother?”, so should you! Remember the words in the first paragraph on the page?: “It is about both everything that we are and anything that we aren’t.”
David: Well, that is just frustrating! Maybe I should just give it all up right here and now.
Walton: I have to admit it, my job here would be much easier if you actually had the capability of doing that very thing. These lessons would definitely go much faster!
David: Hmmm. Not sure where you are going with this, and not sure how I am feeling about this.
Walton: Honestly, none of that matters anyway. Let’s take a break, stop walking, and we’ll both sip and sit down somewhere on campus. Today is an unusually warm day for Winter, so we’ll find a place outside for a while. There is a clear bench right up ahead. We’ve messed with enough words for this morning. Let’s switch to fewer explanations and more exercises. K?
David: {in a daze} Good idea. Sit on bench. Drain brain. Simple Simon.
Walton: Yes, I know that guy too. You might be meeting him someday soon.
David: Huh?
Walton: Good little bee. Buzz over to this lovely bench. Have you finished your Tea? How ‘bout a Fresca??
David: Fresca? What’s that?
Walton: Okay, obviously not a Caddyshack fan. By the way, David, before you started looking over the first chapter of the PTP blog, did you by any chance spend any time on the homepage before it?
David: Yeah, I scanned it, but wasn’t sure if there’s anything that I needed to see on it really.
Walton: At the end of yesterday’s discussion, in case you forgot, we were joking around a bit about the famous philosopher, René Descartes. Something about not wanting to put “des-cartes” before the horse! And now I am going to thrust Descartes before David the Bee!
Descartes was one of those few awakened beings who happened to tease out some very enlightening ideas in his own time. Which was a hell of a long time ago! Apparently, he had the same kind of difficulty finding people to share his message with. His self-appointed job was to take the entire field of mathematics, and try to find the simplest, most reduced version of that topic which might explain all of those fields, to find their single fundamental source. Above all, he sought “never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such.” But, in doing so, he admitted up front that he might not have a very large audience for reading his material.
Just like him, I don’t expect a very large group of people to be interested in what I will be sharing with you over the next couple of days. But at least he made the attempt. He says there at the bottom of the excerpt I include: “I do not expect any popular approval, or indeed any wide audience. On the contrary I would not urge anyone to read this book except those who are able and willing to meditate seriously with me, and to withdraw their minds from the senses and from all preconceived opinions. Such readers, as I well know, are few and far between.” Well David, do you choose to believe that you fit into that particular special category of human being?
David: I know that off-the-beaten-path people like Thoreau were not very popular in their time period either. They had these really intensive things to share, but there weren’t a whole lot of transcendental New England folks ready to work very hard to figure out what in the world he was saying! So I can kind of relate in that sense. And yes, I’ve spent almost a week with you, and I definitely believe that I am ready to do some serious meditating and mental withdrawing, if that’s what it takes to get where I want to get.
Walton: Good boy. Good Bee. Good answer. Good day. Let’s get started. Getting back to the first chapter about the purpose of PTP, what kind of questions did you come up with?
David: Most of the paragraphs on that page talk about people asking questions at some point in their lives. And hopefully they could find some answers from somebody somewhere. The writer, and I guess that is you, seems to be pretty critical, or at least very skeptical, of the typical way in which they go about searching for answers, the typical sources that they used to find those answers, but it sure sounds a lot like the field of mental health counseling. Is that what this PTP thing really is? Is that what this whole program is? Is it about some kind of new and unique therapeutic counseling technique? What do you actually call what you do? Counseling?
Walton: No, that term got tied up in all kinds of bureaucratic red tape by the money and power grabbing Krazy Official Overlord Counselors System, themselves all certified and certifiable!
David: Teaching, maybe?
Walton: Well, I teach and I learn.
David: What then?
Walton: Maybe a PTP’er?
David: Or Assister?
Walton: As opposed to a Brother?
David: Sure. That’s good. Or a PT Guide.
Walton: Like a wise guide to be guided by?
David: Or just a plain old wise guy!
Walton: Or a “Why’s” guy.
David: Or no label at all.
Walton: Yup. I’m a Be Here Nower Knower. A source with no name. A horse with no mane. A dwarf with no aim. A whore with no shame. A morph with no game.
David: A bore with no blame?
Walton: A door with no frame.
David: A floor with no stain?
Walton: A more with no gain.
David: A sore with no pain?
Walton: A war with no fame. And, finally, a chore with no brain! Okay. I guess that little distraction was fun. Hmmm. Now, back to our topic. I promised you some exercises regarding why we should bother with any of this PTP stuff. Remember, as my Good Book says, our intent is to go “searching for simplicity in every aspect of life.” Let’s start out in that Pizza joint over there. Think there is any enlightenment to be obtained over a meat lovers’ special?
David: I sure hope so. But I expect that too much of that kind of en-light-enment will lead instead to our en-fat-enment!! But I am more than willing to slice off a piece of that experiment with you!
Walton: So, my young hungry friend, now that we are sitting comfortably, let Merlyn again cast his spell. With pizza in hand, make sure you still pay close attention to everything that is going on around us. The cosmic question before us is still “Why bother?”
David: Why bother with what, specifically?
Walton: Why bother with anything at all? Go from that starting point. Pick a direction, and let’s see where it goes.
David: Okay. I look around and I see a restaurant full of people eating and enjoying pizza. Why do they bother doing that?
Walton: And the answer is….?
David: Why do they eat pizza? Because it tastes good!
Walton: And why bother eating something that “tastes good”? By the way, the word “Good” is a cop-out word. A lazy word. No meaning at all. Be more specific.
David: “Good pizza” is pizza that stimulates the sense of taste.
Walton: Anything else?
David: And it fills an empty stomach.
Walton: Anything else?
David: And an empty stomach leads to death, and they don’t want to die?
Walton: Good. You are creeping deeper. Keep going. Why don’t they want to die?
David: Really? You ask me why they don’t want to die??
Walton: You brought it up, so, yes, why don’t they want to die?
David: They don’t want to die because they have a lot of stuff to do.
Walton: Is that all they have?
David: They have a lot of stuff to do. And places to go. And thoughts to think. And wishes to fulfill.
Walton: Why bother having and doing and going and thinking and wishing all this stuff?
David: Wow! Rabbit hole time!
Walton: Descend the whole hole for me. Ho, ho, ho! It is a very holy hole.
David: Holy moley!
Walton: Jump!
David: Let me tell you a little story for that.
Walton: Yawn. Okay.
David: Once upon a time, when we were first born, according to most of the psychology texts that I have read, we were born with what they call “Tabula Rasa”, or “blank slate.” No thoughts, no beliefs, no intentions at all. John Locke claimed that we all started life with no way to process the information our senses received. We lived totally in a state of having simple sensory experiences.
Walton: How exciting. Yawn. And then? And then??
David: After a while, somehow, we started to interpret those simple sensory experiences, and then we saw patterns, and those patterns got bigger and bigger, and then, no more tabula rasa! George Kelly called it our Personal Construct System.
Walton: And where is the “Why Bother?” connection to all that theorizing?
David: All people, as they get older, now have a personal construct system to guide them through life. A system of patterns. Programming. What other psychologists would call an Ego.
Walton: And is that the be-all and end-all of our lives on this planet? Ego preservation? That is why everyone in this place is eating pizza?!?
David: Ummm. Sure! I’ll go with that!
Walton: So are you claiming that the ultimate answer to why we bother with anything at all is for the sake of preserving and protecting our programmed Ego’s?
David: I think so. At least for now, I think so.
Walton: And that’s all there is? The meaning of life? Ego preservation?
David: What do you think?
Walton: Does this fascination and obsession with Ego preservation have anything to do with keeping our lives simpler? How does the collection of more-and-more fit into the goal of less-and-less??
David: {pause…} Hell if I know!
Walton: Does any of this preservation and protection process have anything to do with the search for “Absolute Truth” in the universe?
David: Whoa! Wait a minute! What does anything we’ve been talking about so far have to do with Absolute Truth??
Walton: Is there such a thing as an absolute truth? Are your psychology theorists stating any absolute truths in their ideas? Do any of the so-called divinely-inspired Holy Books contain an absolute truth? Is there a philosophy anywhere at any time that you would consider an absolute truth?
David: I guess you better fill me in on what you consider an absolute truth. You tried that trick on me a few days ago. You asked me at that time to tell you “just one absolutely true thing.” And I ended up on the floor in almost hysterical laughter. Are we going there again today?
Walton: Hopefully there will be no history-shaping hysterics here in this very public restaurant! Today we are going to broaden our search to the whole world, not just your own little version of reality. So, look at the two words again, closer. “Absolute” is total, no limits, no exceptions, no opposing point of view. Universally accepted. “Truth” is a statement with which no one at any time or place could disagree. Recognized the world over, and even on other worlds. Absolute. Truth.
David: Why has this search for Absolute Truth become the discussion of the day?
Walton: IF one actually exists, and IF it is universally accepted as being that way, don’t you think that all activities and motives and programming everywhere and in everyone would be tied to the discovery of that Absolute Truth? The final answer to “Why Bother?” The final step in your Search for Simplicity. If, as you originally stated when we first met, and repeated again earlier this morning, “Life should be simpler than it is,” why wouldn’t that grand final step be to find out any sort of Absolute Truth, if indeed one exists? Why bother living with anything less than that?
David: Wow! Just Wow! And Whoa! Hmmm. You got me there.
Walton: If I suggest to you here and now that there is indeed an Absolute Truth out there, and I am going to lead you to it, would you still be willing to jump to the very bottom of that long, deep, dark, maybe endless rabbit hole?
David: I would have to take a moment, or moments, to consider that. I would have to trust you to the Nth degree. And I would have to expect that it might be a very confusing trip down a very deep hole. A hell of a hole! I would need a good flashlight with some extra batteries!
Walton: Did you have something more important on your schedule during this holiday season break from your school work? Something more relevant than possibly discovering one of the few, if any, Absolute Truths in the universe? What, my trance-ant, wiggly worm, and bumbling bee friend, would you have to lose, or to gain, by such an excursion?
David: You have a point there. As a matter of fact, you have quite a few points there!
Walton: Are you ready for me to choose and use one of these many points, and point you in a direction? Let me give you a “predictive” clue as to what is before you, based on my own investigative journey for this Holiest Grail. I shared this outline with you a few days ago. Now for a bit more dirty detail: Hard to believe, but I started out as an unconscious Trance-ant, like yourself. Then, a few steps later on that journey, I encountered massive Confusion. Then, all Hell broke loose, and I experienced a major state of Chaos. But, at the end of the Journey, or at the very bottom of the seemingly endless rabbit hole, I experienced total Clarity. And that was the journey: Initial Confusion, frustrating Chaos, and finally calming Clarity.
David: And you can guide me through this whole process? In two weeks’ time?
Walton: We ask “Why Bother” so we can claw our way down to any “absolute truth” that may exist beyond, above, below all the programming that we think we are. So, yes, been there, done that, and I can be your wise guide while still being a wise guy.
We will continue to ask “Why bother”, until we get to “Why bother doing anything at all?”. Purpose of existence kind of stuff. Why bother? Could it be to find your “simpler life”? To end up with less of anything, rather than more?
One result of our discussions could end up being very depressing, but those discussions lead to the answers behind the questions, like: Why do we all do what we do? What is the final goal of life, if any? Not HOW do we exist, but WHY do we exist? What other questions are even worth asking? Why bother with eating, working, accumulating, traveling, creating anything? Where is the Piece of Peace in a Pizza? What is the end of it all?
David: End of it all??
Walton: Of course. Sure. David, would you like to end it all??
David: Of course not!
Walton: You have forgotten a few details from that first night, haven’t you?! You were ready to end it all. Remember? Right before you reached our Sanctuary for the first time, your thoughts were “I just give up, I give it all up, — and where it goes, perhaps only the devil knows.”
David: Wait a minute! How did you know what my thoughts were that far back?
Walton: And right after you had those thoughts, remember what happened next? Beautiful lights? And beautiful music, appearing out of nowhere? Summoning you, luring you to take a few simple steps across the street to the front door of my humble church, your potential sanctuary?
David: Oh, man! You are freaking me out totally!
Walton: {pause…} You ain’t seen nothing yet, Baby Bumbling Bee!
David: Whoa! {pause…} Well, I guess that …
Walton: You’ll go? On this journey, that is? All the hot midnight mocha and meat lover’s pizza you can consume?
David: {final pause …} What the hell! Yes! I’m in! All the way! Let’s keep moving!
Walton: Hell, indeed. What is that famous line “You gotta go through hell before you get to heaven”?
David: Steve Miller Band!
Walton: And George Strait. And Keith White. And 50-Cent. And probably many others! Pretty universal concept, really!
David: {sings out loud} “Big Old Jet Airliner, carry me to my home!”
Both: {as they both stand up to leave the pizza restaurant} “Oh, big old jet airliner, because it’s there that I belong!”
*****