Meta 4 Change Life
ILLUSIONS
Las Vegas, Nevada. The lights are bright, a feeling of excitement hangs in the air. A young couple, on their first trip, looking forward to learning and playing blackjack, walk into a beautiful casino. They see a player sitting at a blackjack table with thousands of dollars in one hundred dollar chips. They watch and listen with fascination. The player is betting three or four hundred dollars a hand, winning and losing. They study the player's method, see his playing style, until they grasp it all, "knowing" with that much money in front of him he has to be an expert. They take their limited funds, sit down, play and lose everything. They then decide there must be something wrong with them if copying an expert leads to such failure. If only they would talk to the casino manager, they might learn that the "expert" is really the pizza king of Chicago. He knows everything about pizza and nothing about blackjack. He has enough money to buy large sums of chips and appearances are deceiving. Even a monkey will get dealt a winning hand from time to time. The couple's mistake was to assume based on appearances.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy and girl who heard some adults use big words, and saw them do amazing things: drive a car, vote, fight, and much more. The little boy and girl assumed that since they "knew" such things, they must be experts at life and parenting. The little boy and girl set out to copy the adults only to suffer pain and frustration. Those adults were experts at pizza, but the children were too small to look beyond appearances.
Monsters & Magical Sticky Meta 4 - Change - Life
ROSEBUSHES
Once upon a time there were two little rose bushes named Judy and Jim. These rose bushes were comfortable in a nursery when two people came in and took Judy, claiming they were expert gardeners and knew a great deal about rose bushes—and they did. They planted Judy in rich soil with the best combination of sunshine, water and nourishment. They kept the weeds and bugs away and handled Judy with kindness. Judy flourished and grew big and beautiful roses, and if rose bushes could feel, Judy was happy. Two other people went to the nursery and took Jim, stating they were expert gardeners and knew everything about roses. But, they were really pizza kings from Chicago. They planted Jim in sandy, salty soil, with too much heat in the day and too much cold in the night. They watered Jim too much and then too little, and they did nothing about the weeds and bugs. In spite of these things, Jim survived but was wilted, stunted and sorry looking. Jim looked across the field at Judy and saw her beauty and decided (if a rose bush can decide) that the problem was he was just basically defective and no damn good.
Now, dear reader, if you could talk to a rose bush, I'm confident you would say, "Jim, it's not you! The experts were not experts, and it's your environment that's the problem." But, to what purpose? A little rose bush can't walk, drive a car or work. However, time goes by and Jim, by hook end by crook, learns to walk, talk, drive a car and work. He pulls himself out of the crummy environment and moves to where Judy is: the rich fertile environment and guess what? Wrong! Jim continues to wilt, and grow little, ugly roses. Jim is so convinced that he's defective that he decided, "What's the use? It wouldn't do any good to even try." In addition, he carries his past environment with him and "knows" that the rich environment doesn't exist. Well, what can you expect from a rose bush?
monkey began to bite itself, beat its head against the bars and defecated on himself. You might say the little monkey had been driven crazy. This experiment took one month. He was then transferred to a second cage with a white floor. Soft music was played, he was touched and held and fed Within a short time, he calmed down and within two weeks he was playful and exploring his cage. He could not be seen as different from a monkey from a rhesus population that had not been subjected to the experiment. Well, what do you expect from a dumb monkey? He's not as smart as a man. He didn't know how to hold onto the past forever, nor continue to anticipate disaster. He only knew how to adapt to changing circumstances. When he was put back into the first cage, he was anxious for two days, but, after assuring himself there were no shocks, he began to be as playful in that cage, too.
Well, as I've pointed out, monkeys aren't as smart as men. Maybe just smarter than rose bushes.
If, as you read the above meta-eights—a metaphor within a metaphor within a metaphor—you found yourself thinking, remembering, connecting, seeking, and understanding, it was only intended. To understand a metaphor, you must, in most cases, go into your own history, remember those situations that look similar and remember those words...
But there's "know" such thing as hypnosis.
MONKEY BUSINESS
There once was a rhesus monkey who was put into a special cage. This cage had red, yellow and green squares. After several days, an "experimenter" set it up so that the red squares gave off intermittent shocks causing the monkey much pain. The monkey became anxious but soon learned to avoid the red square. Next, the experimenter caused the red and yellow squares to give off intermittent shocks, and the monkey acted as if he was a manic depressive, alternating from hyper-anxiety to depression and withdrawal. The monkey soon learned to avoid the red and yellow squares and then all the squares were electrified. The little
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