Jun 14
16
Integration of the Mind – Part Thirty-Nine
Religion, Science, Conflicts and Perspective
Why not choose both. They can work together.
I wrote Treasure Chest which contained much of what I had written personally for the doctor and her husband. They read the original draft and made several suggestions which I incorporated into the book and which I wrote anonymously. An updated version is available FREE as an e-book at www.spiritualhealingsource.com and is also available in paperback at Amazon or can be ordered directly from the SHS website.
During lunch together with the doctor’s husband, a successful businessman, after I shared some true stories, he told me that he thought I ought to put some of what I had written for them (and in Treasure Chest) into a novel. For over forty years, at that time, ever since my first book about training was published commercially in 1963, I had dreamed of taking the time to write a novel; I told him that I had never written fiction – he made the comment, glibly: “Man, just change the names and the geography around a bit and tell your stories and, presto, you have a novel based on a true story.”
Don't worry, we all want to be Brad Cullen in some way.
He readily agreed to proof the original draft and Leapfrog was born, also anonymously; also available on the website free in digital form and shelf copies are available at Amazon or can be obtained directly from the SHS website, with just a click of the mouse. The only things purely fictitious about Leapfrog were the names of some of the main characters, Brad Cullen being one of those and the places in which the events took place. Everything else was based on real events, with real people, much of which revolved around my business association with a psychiatrist, disguised in the book as William Barry, M.D.
As I have said many times, Brad Cullen, I suppose, was everything I wanted to be as a human being and that I wasn’t – and it was Ryan Bruce and his wife Jade who first suggested that I use Brad Cullen as a pseudonym and Ryan started a publishing company for the express purpose of publishing Brad Cullen books and started the SpiritualHealingSource.com website for my articles, because they both felt that my writing should have a broader audience.
Ryan considers Leapfrog as “foundational reading” to understand the message I have been given.
I’m about to make another BOLD PRONOUNCEMENT: From my point of view …and it is ONLY a point of view, that what is really foundational, to understand the message I have been given, is for anyone to open their minds to a different possibility …by being willing to look at things from a different perspective.
Procrastination is waiting for you...just do it.
Here is just one of many examples: The Internet is loaded with offers how to overcome procrastination – you know, as the Nike ads say, “Just do it!” The message I urge upon everyone is not to overcome procrastination, but to welcome it as a friend which has been keeping them from making mistakes which are potentially dangerous to one’s health.
When we allow ourselves to begin to be somewhat creative, our minds become fertile places with all sorts of ideas. Some of which may be excellent, some of which may better be left alone (or at least put on the shelf for later. To “overcome” procrastination, revolving around an idea that “may better be left alone,” is inviting conflict and possible disaster.
The million dollar question for each of us, in my view, is: “How can I know the difference between an idea that will work for my better good, as well as the better good of others involved and an idea which I should leave alone? Sales people are urged to set goals …what if the goal actually sets up a conflict because the person subconsciously doesn’t believe that the goal is possible? CONFLICT spelled with all capitals …the big “C” that is potentially just as dangerous as that disease people tend to mask their fear about by using “the big C” instead of pronouncing it.
Procrastinate on getting cancer.
Since I’ve seen people not only diagnosed with “the big C” disease …and pronounced terminal by their physician, be healed …resolving conflicts seems to be relatively simple. This brings us to the point of looking at some other issues. Let’s quickly introduce a much-used term introduced many years ago by the mental health profession and is now used commonly by almost everyone …denial.
In order to protect the status quo, buried in it, under all sorts of layers of supporting rules implanted by parents, teachers and experience, the subconscious will provide a disabling physical problem so that there is a logical, conscious reason that working toward the goal could not be kept. I received this as a “revelation” and scientific research confirms it!
The way the revelation came about;
I’d been hired as the division sales manager for a transportation and warehousing company which had the contract for storing and delivering large model copying machines for the manufacturer. Just outside my office was a door that led out to the cavernous warehouse in which hundreds of copiers were stored in their original shipping crates, which were about 5’ in length, 3’ high and 2’ wide …and of considerable weight.
I had gone out into the warehouse for some reason, which is not clear to me now, but had become involved in a conversation with a personable young man who was a seminary student, working for the summer as a delivery driver for our company.
I had been impressed, noticing his quick efficiency in using the specialized equipment that enabled one person to transfer the crated copier from the warehouse to the truck and then from the truck to the customer’s office where the machine would be uncrated and set up …all the responsibility of the delivering driver.
He’d been working for the company for six years and had gone through extensive training from the manufacturer, not only for the proper handling and set up of the machines, but also in customer relations. He told me that he had received the “call” to go into ministry three years previously and was in his final year of seminary training “for the pulpit,” he told me, but had continued working for the company nights and weekends and now summer vacation.
Being one of over 200 union drivers for the company, his hourly pay for nights and weekends, during the school year, because of overtime, was actually higher, cumulatively, than working full time during the summer. When the summer was over he would begin his final semester and then become a church pastor.
I had an idea – the president of the company had hired me to become the general sales manager over all three divisions of the company …but that future was based on turning around the moving and storage division which, besides local and long-distance household goods moving, included office moving and delivery of high tech office equipment.
There were six salespeople in my department, all who had been working for the company for many years – and who were seasoned in the moving business, two of which had been over-the-road drivers running coast to coast for the world-wide carrier for which the company was both a hauling and sales agent. They were highly resistant to thinking in terms of being “salesmen” and thought of themselves as “estimators.”
The president’s charge to me was, “Let’s see if you can kick these guys into the real world of going out and selling our services rather than being order-takers who sit around waiting for the phone to ring.”
Back to the idea – I would recruit and train some novice who had absolutely zero sales experience and once he became the top producer in the department, the other six might begin to open up to learning and applying effective sales techniques. The company was reluctant to fire anyone, so that wasn’t even an option.
This young driver, Jim, could he become a candidate? I’d soon find out, “Jim, have you ever thought about going into sales? I mean, with your education, customer relations training, not to mention your good looks and great personality,” I said sincerely, but also with what I thought was my most winning grin, “plus you know the business from the operational side, you could go quite far …and if somehow the ministry didn’t work out, I’ve found from personal experience, that a successful sales background provides an open door to all sorts of other opportunities.”
There were obstacles that had to be overcome; for one thing, even if Jim was seriously interested, which as yet I had no indication, the operations manager, who was responsible for managing the drivers who serviced the copier contract, wouldn’t think very kindly of my “stealing” one of his drivers …especially one of such obviously high caliber as Jim.
If Jim indicated any interest, I would have three sales chores to accomplish of my own: Overcome any objections that Gordon, the operations manager, would have to Jim transferring into sales – getting the president to approve the high starting pay I’d have to pay Jim to equal what he was earning as a driver …and last, but certainly not least I would have to sit down with him and his wife (they had three young children) and make sure she would be totally supportive. In addition to those three obstacles was knowing the time and energy it would take me to groom Jim into being a top producer …a fourth sales objective would be to get him to commit to doing things that would take him way out of his comfort zone.
It all worked and smoothly …as if ordained on high …and I became convinced it must have been! Except for one small problem: Jim did, indeed become the top producer and would later replace me as sales manager of that division …and then general sales manager to replace me when I was “kicked upstairs” to being Vice President, Marketing and Sales – and ultimately taking that job when I left the company a few years later – we have stayed in touch for over forty-five years.
Every time, however, he was about to break through some previous limitation he would get sick! …bedridden with a “bad cold” or the flu and he would miss several days of work causing my carefully laid plans to be disrupted. “What is going on?” I asked silently – the revelation came in one word: CONFLICT.
I understood immediately …but I didn’t know what to do with it. Jim and I had become close friends – I had infected him with my belief that “ministry” is far more effective almost anywhere except from behind a pulpit, except and unless when that is the specific “call” …I had told him shortly after that first conversation in the warehouse, that I believed his “call” was far deeper than to get sucked up into religiosity …he saw it and we had become very open with one another. A side note is that his wife was mentally troubled, to put it mildly – the stories about that are many and varied, but would not be useful here; other than I recommended to Jim that he arrange for counseling with my other friend named Jim …the psychiatrist. How that relationship evolved with the three of us is a story of seeming miracles many times over …again, for another time.
When Jim got over his most recent bout with the “flu” I confronted him with his many absences due to illness. He was shocked by the record – his absenteeism exceeded that of anyone in a company of over 400 employees! He readily accepted the revelation about CONFLICT and agreed that it needed to be resolved. The issue was quite simple …but we’re going to let it spill over into the next segment.
NEW PODCAST: 104 – Integration of the Mind part 39