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Dalton
Roberts |
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Al Harvey, the wizard of Bakewell Mountain, makes it clear in his writings and consultations that every man has many inner people that he must train to do his bidding. One of the most important of those inner men is Mr. Quality Control. It might be wise to clarify the difference between inner people and multiple personalities. Multiple personality disorders are difficult to treat, even for the best psychiatrists. Why? Because they operate at the subconscious or unconscious level. A person can slip in and out of different personalities without being aware. They literally become the victims of a personality, relinquishing control of their lives to it until another personality takes over. Harvey’s inner people are an altogether different thing. Our experiences and personality traits combine to create most of these inner beings. We merely identify them but once we are able to identify them, we are able to work with them to improve our lives. We may look inside and see Miss Duncan, our high school English teacher who is forever correcting our grammar and punctuation, or Mama Plate Monitor who is making us obese by telling us to eat everything on our plate. My evangelical upraising implanted Rev. Buster Brimstone in me. He doesn’t always keep me from sinning but he sure makes me pay for it. I have thought many times of evicting Buster but I realize I need a good conscience-thumping now and then. So I just created Rev. Moe Lasses. When Buster gets to hammering me too hard over my sins, Rev. Moe Lasses balances it out by reminding him of all the kind and sweet things I do. I admit that I feel a lot closer to Moe than to Buster. You can see that we have this incredible power to create new inner people to meet specific needs in our lives and to sit them in big leather chairs in the Grand Boardroom of our psyche. I had a friend who created Mr. Bouncer to remind him when he had too much to drink. One of the most important inner men is Mr. Quality Control. He is there inside every sane person, telling them all the time what will improve the quality of their life and what will diminish the joy of their earthly days. Lao-tse, the Chinese philosopher, said, “Life can be measured by the number of points at which you touch it. If you touch it at 25 points, you are twice as alive as if you touch it at only twelve points.” While his theme of increasing the points at which we contact life has merit for those whose lives are too constricted and limited, there is an opposite danger of contacting life at so many points that you lose the quality of those contact points. The main question is always, “How many of these things can I do well?” This is where Mr. Quality Control becomes useful to you. Let him be always evaluating the value of all your points of contact. Sometimes you can improve the content of your overall life by reducing the less rewarding contact points. Sometimes dropping a point of contact with life may seem like a disaster. Like when I had to discontinue my band. I had played with a band or had a band all my life. Then I developed so much arthritis in my left guitar-chording hand that I simply could not play for four or five hours a night like bands are expected to do. I dropped that point of life contact with a band and began a career as a one-man show, telling stories and doing mostly original songs. Sometimes I do short duet gigs with other musicians. To my pleasurable amazement, I have enjoyed solo and two-hour-or-less duet gigs just as much. Miss Duncan just told me this thing is getting too long so I’ll hang it up for now.
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