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Mighty
Plan's Home
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Preparation is made of seven parts: If You’re Drowning and an Ugly Boat
Comes to Rescue You, Don’t Refuse to Get In In One day, upstream from the village, a dam broke. When the girls were in the middle of their crossing, a four-foot wave came down the river and turned their canoe over and threw them into the water. They couldn’t swim, so they cried out for help as they clung to the swamped canoe. Long-faced Chen paddled out to them, and extended his paddle to Ling who was closest. She took it, and he pulled her to him. But before she could climb in, he held her hands on the gunwale of the boat and said, “Now, how does my boat look?” Ling
looked up and smiled, “Your boat is beautiful,
Chen.” Rhee was beside her in the water, and holding on to one of the
ropes that held the Styrofoam in place. She laughed and said, “Yes!
And you are not looking so bad yourself, handsome Chen!” People often resist my solutions because they expect the solution to take another form. Please give me a chance to demonstrate an unexpected approach to solving the world’s problems. One source of people’s pessimism about humanity’s prospects was stated earlier: People believe that due to human nature, the world cannot significantly improve. My counter-argument was that change could take place through an educational transformation, and also through supportive relationships. You could say that human beings are dominated either by destructive or
constructive emotions and desires. Probably most people would agree that
this drawing represents the current state of the world:
…In other words, the negative forces currently outweigh the positive. But with superprograms and the other upgrades, we can try to tip the balance the other way: · Add useful knowledge and useful skills · Add ongoing support structures to reinforce positive actions · Add the desire to be free from fear and suffering · Add the anger at injustice and at some people’s greed · Add the incentive of long-range self-interest (helping others will help you) · Use social desire for attention and approval. (This could be used on either side of the seesaw.) Adding these other motivations on the side of love and kindness can tip
the balance. Realize that in
some communities and in some groupings of people, the balance is already
tipped toward the positive.
Using a chain reaction and the other upgrades, the balance can be tipped toward the positive in other communities and in the rest of the world. It really can spread around the world—but it may be prevented from happening in the places where people become convinced that it’s human nature to be greedy and cruel. Fear and greed will in fact dominate in places where essential resources and services become unavailable or rare. Unfortunately, in most parts of the world today, fear and greed are deeply rooted. Meanwhile, in a few other parts of the world, love and cooperation seem to winning. A chain reaction of empowerment may be able to permanently tip the balance in favor of a cooperative world. Or a chain reaction of fear and conflict could do just the opposite. As population increases and resources drop, things are likely to move faster in one direction or the other. In other words, I believe that the forces of stabilization and cooperation are in a race against the forces of conflict and destruction. The backbone of this approach is a set of seventeen upgrades, big and
small. These are seventeen
ways of thinking or acting that are better
than current approaches. You will be asked to make a decision about
each of them. If you reject
all of them, then, to some extent, you are choosing to maintain the
world as it is. The more
upgrades you accept, the more lives you save, and the better life will
be for all. I have made a fascinating observation. When I present the $500 billion a year idea, as I just have, almost no one is impressed. This idea can save more lives and prevent more suffering, that possibly any idea in history, and yet most people are not impressed. That amount of money doesn't even seem to impress people. In part, I understand why. To most people, it seems too theoretical, and too unreal. So we have a communication gap. I am thinking of real adults and children, but people reading this, probably you, aren't seeing this as completely real. Otherwise, I think that, you would be calling up your friends to announce the huge news: a $500 billion a year idea. So I'm not blaming you for not getting excited. As I said, it's too abstract. So, to try to get you to feel this, and to make the abstract into something concrete, I found two pictures. One is of a little girl who happy and is being loved. This picture represents life. The other is of a girl--I think it's a girl--who has been hit by a bomb and is either dying or dead, I can't tell which. She represents a world in which death dominates. It's a gruesome picture that you might not want to look at, because the details are horrific. However, I can't think of any other way to bring home the message of Mighty Plan. The driving force behind the plan is to create situation where children and adults can live full lives, and to eradicate situations where people are suffering and dying. To me, Mighty Plan is as real as these two photos. I
am sorry if that shocked you. But I feel that it's necessary for
you to grasp this on a gut-level, and not just think that this is some
theoretical game. Mighty Plan will have real power
almost as soon as people take it seriously. Here's a parable to help you get a sense of the possible relationships between you, me and Mighty Plan. Again, the goal of this story is to prepare you to be open to the power of this plan. Hold the Pattern
Together!
“Hold the pattern together!” has two meanings. One
is illustrated by this story: Two men were each given a hen, a
rooster and a large bag of feed. One man killed and ate first the hen,
then the rooster. Then he picked the corn out of the feed, boiled and
ate it, and threw the rest away. The second man built a pen for the two
chickens and fed them daily. He ate and traded fresh eggs for a month,
while he took some of the feed and planted it. He used the eggs to buy
tools and things he didn’t have. While the pair produced baby chicks,
the crop grew and within a year he had a chicken farm and a means of
producing more feed through the seeds he had planted. Similarly, All Around or any multipurpose
“superprogram” can be crudely used and its “food” potential
quickly exhausted, or it can be used intelligently and provide
“food” for hundreds or thousands of people for years. It depends on
how you use the materials. Separately they can do you some good. If kept
together, they will be many times more powerful. The second meaning of “Hold the pattern together!”
is illustrated by the following story: A man decided to try to make the
world a better place. When he asked people to help him, they told him
they were too busy. So he came up with a strategy. First, he would teach
them time-management skills. That way, they would have the time to help
him and they’d probably be grateful too, because they could use some
of their newfound time for their own projects. So he devised a one-day
seminar, and each weekend for six months he worked with a different
group. At last, he felt that he was
ready to gather some of the people he had taught and ask them to help
him with his world-improving project. He called a woman in the first
group and asked for her help. She told him how grateful for his help she
was. So he felt encouraged and told her about a project that he’d like
her to help with. “That’s impossible,” she
said. “But didn’t I help you free
up two hours a day?!” “Yes, but at the time I was
only working and taking care of the kids. Now, however, in addition to
that, I’m taking Spanish lessons on Mondays, leading the choir on
Wednesdays, and fundraising for my son’s little league team on
Saturdays, and playing Bingo with my girlfriends on Sundays. You should
have asked me months ago when you taught me time-management, because
unless you have some brand new ideas, my schedule is totally grid
locked!” When people benefit from something, they naturally
share it with others. So, unfortunately, if efficiency-building
materials are given away or taught first, as they tend to be, then
before the other pieces of the pattern are presented, people have
already increased their time, money and energy and then completely
allocated these to new projects. Of course, I know that similar efficiency-building
materials have always been available through self-help books and
courses. But the fact that others do just a little good out of ignorance
of the greater good that could be done is no reason for us to accept a
lower standard of action. If the materials of this book are used together as a package, then it’s much more likely that people will appreciate and put into practice the greater pattern. This pattern is contained in superprograms. Some people will still disregard this request, and they will be doing damage or wasting much of the materials’ power. But if enough others hold the pattern together then it will enter into more people’s thinking and become widely understood. That’s why you were told not to share the resources of the book, even with good and decent people—unless you are going to pass on the book to them.
A beggar approached a man and asked for some food. The
man handed him a piece of paper. He threw it away and screamed at the
man, “I ask for food and you give me a piece of paper!” The man
said nothing and went on his way. Later, a second beggar approached the man, asking for
food. The man gave him a piece of paper that he started to read. It
looked like a deed to a farm, but he didn’t believe it was real and
threw it away. A third beggar asked for food and received the piece
of paper from the man. She also read it and realized that it was a deed
to a farm. Being cautious, she put it in one of her pockets and
continued her search for food. She promised herself to study it later.
That night she carefully put it in an envelope that she kept in her
shanty. Eventually, she forgot it was there. When a fourth beggar read the piece of paper the man
gave him, he recognized that it was in fact a real deed. He immediately
took it to the closest restaurant and traded it for a hot meal. When his
belly was full, he smiled in contentment and thought, “Easy come, easy
go.” When a fifth beggar got the same treatment from the
man, he studied the whole deed and found that it included a vast farm,
complete with farmhouse, orchards, livestock, and thousands of acres of
farmland. He ran after the man and kissed his hand in thanksgiving. Then
he went to the farm and daily slaughtered an animal, picked apples and
corn. He ran the farm into the ground in two years because he did not
plant anything or tend to his animals. He sold the gutted farm, and, a
year later, was begging again. A sixth beggar took control of his vast farm with his
deed, and, by selling off small portions, paid others to teach him how
to work the farm. He learned well, and because the farm was vast he
became very rich. But he became wealthy for himself only and did not
share with his neighbors or with the beggars who had long ago been his
friends. Eventually, attracted by news of his lavish lifestyle, a thief
broke into the farmhouse. The former beggar surprised him as he was
trying to make off with some silver candlesticks. The thief was able to
kill him with a knife and get away. Hearing what happened to the sixth beggar, a seventh
did not use his farm to become wealthy. He only planted a small part of
it and let most of the land lie fallow. Over the years, a wilderness
grew up on the unused land. From it, wild animals would visit his farm
and destroy some of his best fruit trees, crops, and livestock. An eighth beggar acted like the sixth beggar who grew
rich, except that when she grew wealthy, she shared her bounty with as
many people as possible. She gave away food and livestock, so that
others could feed themselves. As a result of her generosity, people were
generous to her. One of them introduced her to a kind and handsome man
whom she married, and they had children. She lived happily ever after,
busily managing her farm and helping others. A ninth beggar acted very much like the eighth, except that she did not marry. After many years of giving away food, livestock, and parcels of land and teaching people how to feed themselves, she became a beggar again and devoted herself to the spiritual life. Commentary The different beggars
had different experiences mainly because of what they believed about the
deed. I believe that this
website can be the “deed” and operating instructions to a large farm, the
farm being the Earth. If you can’t believe that at all, they you will
treat this website as worthless or a mere curiosity, like the first two
beggars. If you can believe
that this website offers something of inestimable value, and if you exert
some effort like the latter beggars, I believe that you will be
handsomely rewarded through ongoing personal support and new skills and
habits that increase your quality of life. I believe you will also be a blessing to many others, like some
of the latter beggars. In fact, I believe that your reaction
to Mighty Plan must resemble
the life of one or another of the nine beggars. |
