260 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
As long as mental growth in the first alternative is somewhat theoretical,
and the old me is left undisturbed, then there will be no major feelings of
guilt.A This means that the path of patience only needs to solve the
problem of guilt near the end of its journey, because it uses understanding
to build the vision of a new me, while leaving the old me intact. The old
me is only forced to change when the second „leg‟ of personal identity is
lifted up and brought forward.
In contrast, suffering requires a solution for guilt which can be applied
right away, because it begins with a painful crisis which attacks the old me.
Since this book is emphasizing the path of patience, I can leave this
question unanswered until later. It does not help for me to discuss guilt
logically with those who choose to follow suffering. This is because they
are at the beginning of their mental journey, and me is still based solidly
upon emotional 'truth.' Therefore, what they need is a solution for guilt that
involves defining experiences and blind 'faith.' A solution does exist, and it
does work.
Now that I have managed to defer a discussion about guilt, let us turn
to the topic of Teacher strategy and mental „flying.‟ As every good
Teacher person knows, we must solve our problems one step at a time in
sequence, and read our books one page at a time from start to finish. This
path may be somewhat boring, but contact with reality and with my
Teacher brother has slowly taught me, the Perceiver person, that doing
things in the proper order does occasionally have its merits. Arghhh!
A Personal honesty is painful, but we will see later that this pain can be
balanced by the positive feelings of growing understanding.