Love Story: In The Web of Life by Ken Renshaw (most motivational books txt) 📗

Tom thought for a minute and then said. "Ithink I know of a good metaphor. Lets take a little walk in theback yard."

We got up, and Tom led the way to a clump ofavocado trees in the back of his yard. He led the way throughleaves and branches to a wooden fence.

"Here, meet Mr. Spider, as Candice calls him.He is hiding up in that corner of the web, under thatleaf."

Tom pointed to a large, very elaborate spiderweb woven between branches of a tree and the fence.

"His web is beautiful when it is covered withmorning dew. After we first discovered him, or her, we don't know,we would swat flies and them bring them out here and throw them inthe web. Mr. S would scrabble out from his hiding place and jump onthe fly. Mr. S monitored the threads coming from his corner andwhen one vibrated he seemedto know exactly what part of the web to scramble to. He hasinformation connections to the entire web. His attention isconsumed in being aware of all parts of his web."

"My metaphor is that we live in a web of space-time, a web of life.We have threads from where we are now to many places in our life.We normally call those places memories or subconscious memories,childhood memories for example. Our information threads are tied toemotional incidents that were of significance to us. Those threadsare interconnected to other similar emotional incidents, similar tothe cross–ties Mr. S has in his web. For many people, all theirattention is tied up in a web with these information ties. When youtalk to them, you have the feeling they are not really there.Sometimes, people are living their lives consumed with one ideathat their web is tied to, like a spider with a one strandweb."

"I think I get the idea," I replied, "would yougive me some more examples?"

"Suppose your mother shouted at you that youwere not good enough whilespanking you when you were six years old. The idea might not be inyour conscious mind, but still be connected to hundreds of latertimes when someone told you, implied, or made you believe youwere not good enough. Yourwhole life might be organized around making up for beingnot good enough.

"In space-time therapy, we would have you clearout the information web tied to the present and all the times whenbeing not good enough came up. Sometimes it is very simple, andsometimes hard, to take the web of associations apart. Sometimes,simply recognizing the script, being not good enough, is thehardest part."

"I get that" I replied. "Moreexamples?"

"Here is a real example of how an incident candominate a person's life, which I surmised from reading thenewspapers about a billionaire who recently died. This man, John,and his younger brother, Paul, and their father were all workingtogether in a family business, which, as I recall, was a retailfurniture store. His father announced he would retire and said hewould pass the business on to Paul. When confronted by John, thefather says, 'I am giving the business to Paul because I don'tthink you will be responsible enough to make money and keep thebusiness going. You will never amount to anything.'

"John left the business and struck out on hisown, seriously dedicated to proving his father wrong. Although hisfather died a few years after John left, John worked ruthlessly,never achieving any real relationship with his many wives andassorted children, until he became one of the richest people in theworld. He died a bitter, lonely man, but he did make his fatherwrong.

"Let's go back into my office and talk somemore. I don't want to disturb Mr. Spider."

We walked back into the living room whereCandice was reading or working on her iPad. Tom told Candice thatwe had visited Mr. Spider and were now going to hisoffice.

Candice asked, "Is Mr. Spider OK?"

Tom nodded yes as we walk down thehall.

Tom's office was decorated in the CraftsmanStyle, with dark blue walls, and dark wood wainscoting and trim.His desk, facing the wall, had three large, now dark, computerscreens, a keyboard, a MIDI piano keyboard, and a couple ofdevices, possibly miniature drums, set to the side. As I lookedaround, I saw that there were some black speakers concealed in thedecor.

"This is where I do my composing and mycounseling,"

"It looks very tidy," I replied. "I wouldexpect all kinds of mixing boards and instruments, piles of musicscores, microphones, music stands."

"They are all in the computer these days. Ifind that I work best when there is not paraphernalia around for meto attach my web of attention. Have a seat.

"Let's see, we covered the general idea of theweb. There is another aspect of that idea that many people havetrouble with. From your description of your recent studies, itfeels safe to expose you to these ideas. Sometimes, with somepeople, as you work back to the original emotional incident intheir childhood, they find there is a connection to an earliertime. For instance, a person going back to a root incident of beingspanked might find there is a connection to an earlier place inspace-time, where they find a person being flogged while tied up insome colonial setting.

"Here we run up against four-dimensionalspace-time limitation of many people's thinking. Some people whoare not trained in logic and science have no trouble with the ideaof what most call 'past lives.' A very large number of people inother cultures believe in that sort of thing. Scientists would bemore apt to explain such perceptions as 'hallucinations.' A logicalfriend explained to me that past lives or transmigration of souls,as believed in some cultures, is impossible because the worldpopulation has grown. There would not be enough lives in some yearsuch as 1000 BCE for everyone in 2000 CE to have a past life. Thereare also questions of the physics of how information or souls getmoved from one life to another. Candice's eight-dimensional workprovides wormholes forinformation transfer between space-time points."

I interrupted and said, "I will callthem shortcuts in the trial.A jury of country people might think wormholes are something to be avoided since theydon't like to find wormholesin fruit, corn, or in