[continued from previous post]
R: Well, let’s see. I’m confused here. In viewing all those possible alternatives that we chose among for this particular one we’re looking at here, you’re saying that all those choices were not only potential but they in fact occurred.
F: Exactly. They exist. Not past tense, not future tense. The whole thing is one big present. At least to us.
R: It’s very difficult to perceive things from your perspective. [laughs]
F: Well, in fact, it takes a certain skill to – It’s like a homing device, you know. We have to sort of keep a bookmark on you. [they laugh] because —
R: That’s good. That’s good.
F: You don’t ever have trouble finding us only because we find you. But if we didn’t, you couldn’t.
Now, you can extend that a little farther and say, if there weren’t the inherent tie between us – if we weren’t really all one thing – it’s difficult for us to imagine that! — but if we weren’t all one thing, how could we find each other?
R: And you have the same ties to us in all those other alternative —
F: Sure. We know the question that arises is, “all right, if I’m here, this by definition is C1, and those other alternatives that I didn’t take are by definition F23, let’s say. Are they less real than this one?” Well – [pause] This is the only way we can say this. At least for the moment; maybe we’ll think of something. All of the terrain is let’s say Focus 23, just to call it that. Okay? All of the terrain, including where you are. What’s different is your circumstances – your consciousness makes it C1.
You see? So it isn’t like there’s one reality that’s really real and the others that are only potential or are only theoretical. It’s the best we can do, al right? One viewpoint is that there is only one place, where you are at a given time, one path that you’re walking, and that path by definition is always C1 to you. And by definition you’re always in the reality, and the others are either theoretical or hypothetical or they don’t exist. To you.
And it’s only a function of your consciousness! We shouldn’t say only; only is a big thing, but you see? So that if you stretch your consciousness to the point that you actively experience other lives, for instance — which is typically a first step, because it’s easiest, it’s closest to where you are — if you stretch your consciousness to there, you begin realizing, “time’s not really real in the way that I think of it,” and you realize “well, they and I are part of something, but we’re part of something bigger than either one of us; they’re not really me; I’m not really them” – that is to say, the thumb is not a past life of a finger, but they’re both part of something bigger, you know.
As you develop your consciousness, your effective world expands. Can you get your consciousness to the point that you really see that you really are on the other side of all those choices, then your world will expand in a totally different way. And this is what magic is. Magicians don’t think so themselves, but magicians are people who learn to move from one to the other on demand. If in your reality you don’t like it; if you have a broken bone and you can figure out how to do it, you can move to another reality in which your bone is not broken – and it’s just as real, because the reality of it comes from your consciousness, it does not come from anything external.
R: But one can’t really change a specific instance without changing the whole pattern, then, can one?
F: Well, you aren’t really changing anything; you’re changing where you stand to it. Nothing really moves. The only thing that moves is consciousness.
R: [pause] So you’re saying that these patterns that we put together in a lifetime are alterable–
F: Well they seem alterable, yes. But you don’t so much alter them as just go to a different one.
R: Well it’s not going to a different one but changing the events within one of those, of the perceptions within one of those.
F: Well let’s look at that a little. Every time you come to a choice point – which in practical language, means every second —
R: Mm-hmm. Every nanosecond.
F: Exactly. A leaf falls this way or that way, okay there’s two paths. You look this way or that way, there’s two paths. So the choice points are infinite. And the possibilities are infinite. Therefore there isn’t really a path and another path, those are conveniences of speech, but what really is, is you’re walking in a maze of freedom.
You’re walking in an absolute maze of freedom. You can have, do, be whatever you want, provided you know how to do it. Or provided you can do it without knowing how, which also happens. To say, “well I’m on this particular path, but I want to change this,” – it’s true enough, but it’s no more meaningful than saying “you’re in a maze of freedom and you can go where you want to go.” You see? One way is saying that the path is more real than the part not on the path; the other way is saying a path is just an arbitrary definition among this wilderness of choices. You see?
R: But because of this duration of time phenomenon, there are going to be consequences to choice, are there not?
F: Well – there are if you continue down that path, sure. There are if you want them to be, believe them to be, think there have to be. But if you believe in miracles, that’s what you get. And that’s what a miracle is. A miracle is a sudden movement from one place to another place without any transition. Well, there could be transition, but you see what we’re saying.
R: Hmm. An unexpected —
F: Well it wouldn’t even have to be unexpected. If you expect a miracle, it’s still a miracle.
R: [laughs] Very good.
F: It’s not meant as a joke–
R: Yes, I hear you.
F: And in fact there are people who do expect miracles every day, and they get them. They live in faith. That’s what living in faith is. That’s one form of living in faith. [pause] Living in trust perhaps would be a better way to say it. And there are people who live in trust negatively. They fully expect bad things, and of course they get them. They choose the path nanosecond by nanosecond, as you said.
R: Okay now I wanted to come back to where we ended up last session, in which we were talking about your seeing footprints of your guidance. We ended at some puzzling questions about that, I thought.
F: You thought!
R: You at one point said “how would we know?” Well, we sense our guidance, in some way. We sense that you’re there, that we have a sense of being able to dialogue with you. We find that things work out better if we get some word from you and follow through in that kind of way. That’s all what I would think of as a sensing of guidance and I got the feeling that you didn’t have a similar sense.
F: Well, I think what you saw was an example of the fact that your consciousness is somewhat more pointed than ours. Because you’re more pointed, you are of course more limited in input, but you‘re also more aware of nuance, perhaps. All right? And so where you get guidance and guidance has a different flavor than your own thought. Seemingly.
R: Mm-hmm
F: Well, if we’re [laughs] – you know, we can hear his pleasure at this one – If we’re somewhat in a fog [they laugh] we need to become more pointed in order to recognize such things, and a very good way to get more pointed is speaking to someone who’s in time-space who can focus these things. But it’s not occurred to us before that we were in time-space and someone focused it back on us. And when they did, and for the duration that they did, we thought “yeah, you know, maybe so.” Now, this leads us to the suspicion that we have our own Gentlemen Upstairs, which implies that they would have a wider breadth of knowledge than –
[change sides of tape]
Well, as we were saying, we don’t think that makes much sense, because – here’s why. Unless –
Frank: [Eyes pop open; laughs] That was so startling my eyes popped open! I mean, I got a sense of them being startled. [resuming:]
F: Unless, there’s another form – just as our reality is less pointed shall we say than yours, there may be another – No, we don’t know. Come back to us on this. We’ll examine this a little bit. Or come at it from another point of view; maybe that’ll give us something more.
R: Yes. Well the implications of something like this would be that there are some hierarchies here of —
F: [slowly] Well, you know, you know – We told you that we know we’re waiting for us to sort of complete ourselves to go to the next stage. It does make sense that still is only one thing, and we’re a part of a larger thing. And by analogy perhaps we’re one of its slow learners, as you’re one of our slow learners. [they laugh] We don’t know.
But – but, but – we do know. Okay. Here’s what’s going on here. There is one thing. We are like a conduit. We are like a conduit to you as you are a conduit to, say, your blood cells or something. That is, just as you are part of us and we are part of you, both of us – being part of the same thing – are also part of it, whatever it is.
This has the flavor of infinite regress, but we would say, all of a sudden we would say yes, there’s definitely another level. And the suspicion arises now that – ah hah. [laughs] that in fact they’re waking us up. You know, they’re manipulating this around to help wake us up. If we were actually to wake up – Let’s assume that we’re half asleep. Let’s assume that we could make our consciousness and pointed as yours – Well, well, who knows? That may be what’s going on. But you’ve made us aware that something’s going on.
R: Mm-hmm And can you say something about what the footprints were, what was giving you this awareness?
F: Oh, well, once we began a little self-referential thinking about where did that idea come from, where did this bright – You know? Just like when you do your retrievals and you say, “what made me get into that scenario” and you finally realize the scenario is all set up for you? Well – it’s [they laugh]
R: I see.
F: It’s only speculation, but it’s very persuasive speculation at the moment. We’ll get back to you. Or you’ll ask the right question and it will come to us as well. Oh, that’s a very nice sub-purpose of this. It’s good to remind you how valuable you in bodies are to us. You constantly tend to put us on pedestals and it’s not warranted.
R: But if we keep asking questions this will cause some kind of movement somehow.
F: Well, it sort of illuminates us. You know, your question provides focus, and things come around the focus. And because we are in communication with you at the time that you’re providing the focus, we think differently than we would if we were just giving you guidance. Because there’s all the difference between extraver—between extra-spection and intra-spection. It’s probably not a word. But it should be. It’s all the difference btween looking outward and looking inward. If we’re concentrating on setting up a scenario and walking you through it, we’re not necessarily aware of what behind-the-scenes constraints are on us. But if you ask us something in a way that focuses our attention that way – we have lots of data; we have access to lots of data, and we have the ability to make sense of that data. You have the ability to light up the corridor.
R: Would you see any resistance on your part to becoming aware of an additional layer of guidance now?
F: You mean resistance of will? Or resistance of circumstance?
R: A resistance to seeing that there is another level.
F: Yes, we mean – Do you mean a resistance of our will to do it, or a resistance caused by our circumstances? We’re not sure which you mean.
R: Yeah, well I don’t know – I think I’m interested in both of those.
F: All right. We have no resistance of will as far as we know – in fact, it intrigues us quite a bit. The circumstances are that it can be difficult for us to hold this self-referential thinking. However, we’ll see.
R: I do keep coming back to it, so —
F: Good.
R: [chuckles]
F: The funny thing is, you know, we’re well aware that all of this discussion is couched in terms in time, but as we said, there is duration and we need to think some more of that; we all need to thing more of that. It will be the answer to lots of questions, and the poser of more questions. It’s important. If it doesn’t do anything except get you off this eternal idea of us sitting on clouds and having haloes and all of that, for some people, or of being perfect sources of information who – blah blah blah, you know – what we’re saying is if it helps to bring a better sense of the reality in which we live, it’ll be all to the good.
R: Okay. I’m going to move on to something lighter here. Here’s something I wondered about. When we were talking early about the different aspects that make up the totality, we talked about some component parts, or some aspects, whatever is the best language there. And as I recall your response was that it would be composed of a whole variety of things, energies that at some point had been in a physical body, either on earth or elsewhere; and some would not have been in, and I wonder is this at all a meaningful question: Is there some aspect in that that has been in what we would call our future.
F: [pause] Sure. Because the whole thing is in all the dimensions in all the possibilities, and that of course includes all time and all space, which means all futures, all pasts, all presents, dimensionally, possibility-ally [laughs] you know, in possibilities, and what looks to you to be only probabilities. So the answer is, by definition, by definition, now, we have to exist everywhere. And so do you. Because you are us.
Now you locally don’t, but that’s all right. You understand what we’re saying. We’re saying just as you as one individual in one time on earth, in one what you call a path or a probable moment; just as you experience the separateness of that, that’s fine. That is your pointedness. At the same time, you’re all part of one and therefore are part of everything. That’s all we’re saying. Is that unnecessarily complicated?
R: No. I just wonder if there’s somebody there that I can talk to that’s lived on Mars. Maybe having gotten there from the earth.
F: More the other way around.
R: Meaning the Martians have come to earth? Is that what you –?
F: You the Earthians used to live on Mars. That is, in other words, you’re the same beings. A Martian would look upon this as their future. [pause] Okay? However, having said all that, let’s see if we can find someone who was on Mars. But you really want an Earth person who lives on Mars in the future.
R: Well that’s what I started out with, but I’m willing to phrase it some different way if that’s a more productive question.
F: Whatever you want. You choose.
R: Well, I guess this gets into the question of whether people from earth eventually will be able to transport themselves to Mars, to have an existence there.
F: Well, sure, in some realities.
R: And in terms of the probabilities of this happening from earth? I mean, you said you know what’s going to happen–
F: Everything’s going to happen. That’s what we say. It’s absolute. All probable possible theoreticals happen. What is capable of being put into odds or probabilities are more “what will the local probability go to?”
Well, no. We need to back up a little. There are realities in which Wernher Von Braun did or did not develop rockets in Germany. And there are probabilities from there in which he did or did not begin to work for the United States. You can see where that all goes. So, yes, you got to the moon, and no, you didn’t get to the moon. It depends on which reality you look at. Your question actually would boil down to saying, “is it 100% — are there no places at which humans ever lived on Mars? Ever got to live on Mars.” You see? That would be the only way in which we could give you an answer other than “yes you do, no you don’t.” And that isn’t so.
But you have to understand, it’s really a meaningless answer. [pause] If one says, there are probabilities, there are realities in which humans live on the surface of moons of Jupiter, those realities almost by definition preclude other things that you might find preferable. Which doesn’t matter, but we’re saying the realities that extend in space may be considered somewhat less likely to extend their consciousness. That being so, they’re more likely to be the detour realities rather than the one we’re most interested in, which would be, to get all of us back together again. That’s not an absolute at all. In one respect, we don’t care if you go visit Pluto.
R: [chuckles] That would be a detour in your —
F: It would tend to be. Wouldn’t absolutely have to be. And of course there’s more than one way to visit Pluto. You could visit Pluto without having to carry your body along in a rocket. But at the moment only a very few of you could do that and come back with a fix close enough that it didn’t fluctuate all over the place, which means it would be a mixture of reality and unreality in any given existence. In any given reality. You see what we’re saying?
R: Yes. I get that.
F: Your Swedenborg conversed with beings that lived on the planet of Jupiter. Well – not in this reality. But he wasn’t wrong either. But it’s hard to hold that focus! Well, anyway, you see the point.
R: Okay.
F: Now. You want to communicate with – what?
R: Well I think I’ll drop that, unless there’s something you want to tell us about that that I am not now asking.
F: All right, the only answer we’ll give you is, yes, you can do that. We’ll find ‘em. So whenever you’re ready–
R: Whenever I’m ready to talk to someone who has lived on Mars.
F: How about someone who’s lived in Virginia?
R: [chuckles] I don’t want to talk about anybody like that.
F: They’re just as mysterious; no more, no less.
R: [pause] I’ve been listening in to people’s reaction to this disaster still, on the issue of striking back against what’s perceived as the evil forces of Osama bin Laden. And it’s presented often in terms of “this is what we need to do to balance things out.” And I’m asking about this issue of balancing things out in a worldwide sense. You’ve talked about the fact that you see this without the slices of time. You’re looking at the totality, and in the totality everything is balanced our eventually. And eventually means — ?
F: A long time. [laughs] You’re asking, are they right in any sense?
R: Yeah, I guess.
F: Well, if the world had been created the day before yesterday, maybe. But we say to you that given the history of the planet in any given reality you choose to investigate, it becomes obvious — once you look at it even consciously at all! – that there’s no way to balance it out, because every planet, every society on the face of your planet is the result of some past aggression somewhere. Forget the present at the moment. Everyone has or could have grievances. Everyone wants to get one last blow in and that’ll make them even.
But the people who are saying that, to the degree that they’re saying it, aren’t very good at mathematics. The entire point of breaking the cycle of vengeance is that the cycle cannot be completed at all; it can only be broken. The reason it can’t be completed is, every new retaliation creates the seeds of new retaliation in the future, because it can never balance out. It’s foolish talk. Besides, that’s not what they mean. What they mean is, they don’t want to feel that they have been weak, that they have been taken advantage of. That’s all that really amounts to.
R: Well, you know, we talked about our visualizing ourselves and being a certain way as a way of dealing with this kind of thing. Is there more that we could do? For example you talked about one of the factors here in understanding this process is people’s inability to see their own shadow sides, or integrate their own shadow sides. It’s hard for me to think about how we would go out on a campaign of teaching people to see their shadow sides or to integrate their shadow sides. [chuckles] Is there something in that kind of a realm that we could be doing?
F: Well, each will be impelled to do the work that’s proper to each. You will know – you’ll meet the opportunities that come to you. And some people will be called upon to teach, and some to organize and some to stand silently and protest, and some to fly warplanes. You know. There are millions of roles and everyone will know the role that’s there that’s available to them. However, — [pause]
Frank: [That’s funny, that doesn’t happen often. I know there was something else coming, but it just went away. Wait a minute. [pause] Hmm. I’m going to re-say what they were saying and then maybe it’ll come out again. It just disappeared.] I know what they were saying was everybody will have their own thing to do — And that’s obvious. It’ll be obvious to the people. Well, there was another point that wasn’t like that, but – What was the other part of your question?
R: The question had to do with, is there something more that we can do besides try to be the best of ourselves. Is there something we can do in this world where everyone is worried about —
F: Oh now I know what it was.
R: All right.
F: The other thing that came was, yes there is a campaign to have people recognize their shadow selves, and that campaign is being orchestrated on their side, not on our side. [laughs] That’s what they’re saying.
R: Okay.
F: The impact of events is a bigger teacher to you than anything that one of you could say to another, and so you are a different country today than you were last month. That difference has been created by your reaction to the events. We can create the events but it’s up to you to choose the lessons to be learned from events, and the ways to change from the events. So because the airplanes hit the buildings, there are people who are a little more chastened and a little more self-reflective and sober today than they were before. There are others who are totally lost in rage, and there are some who are lost in fear. You see? Millions of reactions. Andyou needn’t worry too much about that, we will provide the opportunities. You can each spread the word first and foremost by living it, because you’ll spread it on the internal internet, so to speak. First and foremost by living it. There are many people preaching it and if some of them would do less preaching and more living of it, they would be more effective.
But having said that, there are specific things that some of you can do, and you’ll know it. And there are specific things all of you can do and you’ll know it, but some of those may not be external things. They may seemingly be tending your garden in peace, so to speak.
R: What did you mean by a campaign on the other side to orchestrate–
F: Well, we’re orchestrating the opportunities you know.
R: Mm-hmm. Specifically having to do with people becoming aware of their shadow side?
F: Specifically being concerned with creating the situations that allow the opportunity for some people to wake up in response to the situation. So that when we create what you are all fond of calling a disaster, it has impact around the world in the unpredictable way that Princess Diana’s sudden death had, or the killing of the Kennedys. Those orchestrated incidents — and we remind you that those who participated in those incidents were volunteers – those orchestrated incidents couldn’t have specific effects because the specific effects are more the result of people’s conscious choices, which are free by design. But they set up the circumstances in which people could make the choices, you see? It sort of stressed them toward it, it biased the – [they’re like, it’s a visual of like pushing on a screen, you know, to push it sideways. I don’t know how to translate that.]
Your choices are always free, as individuals and therefore entirely, and all that we can do is set up circumstances and give you opportunities, and it’s up to you to take them. And as soon as you take them or don’t take them, then we scramble with Plan B, you know? [chuckles] We’re always on Plan B.
R: Well as I’m hearing this, I’m wondering, what’s the advantage to free will?
F: Because free will is what allows you to create. Free will gives you the opportunity to choose what you will be, what kind of flower you’re going to present to us.
R: But you’re doing so much of the creation on the other side, —
F: We’re creating the matrix for the free will. [stutters several times] In the reality – don’t forget, now – oh, okay here’s the – oh, now we see the – You’re saying to yourself, “that isn’t quite fair, we have free will but you’re pushing us in certain directions,” and that’s true if you look at it in any one reality. But you need to remember, if you can, that it’s happening in all realities, and you can move to the reality you want to move to. Well, theoretically.
R: But it seems like since you have preferences about how we choose and how we move, that you’re creating the situations– What is this process all about?
F: All right, we’ll talk about that. Let’s make a theoretical example. Supposing you as an organism came into this world intending to get a little experience with selfishness. Both the satisfying of it and the overcoming of it. We and you – but you will no longer remember, because you’re down here in it – we and you set up an endless series of obstacle courses that present you with those situations in which you will choose about selfishness. And choose and choose and choose and choose and choose. Now your choices might cancel out! Or they might radically alter you, or they might leave you the way you were, you see? Don’t forget, you’re in on this process, it isn’t us doing it to you except that in any moment of time, it’s us doing it to you because you’re functioning in the moment of time, and so we’re the ones holding the —
R: A plan that we’ve agreed to.
F: Yeah. Exactly. And you know what? “We’ve agreed to” isn’t quite right, it’s “we are agreeing to” continually, because you’re continually up there with us as we’re modifying into Plan B. But some of you Downstairs do and some of you don’t connect Upstairs to be part of that planning. There are actually people who remember the planning, moment by moment. And you could too. It’s a matter of applying yourself. Just a matter of requesting access and going and getting it. You might find that an interesting. Takes a lot of the blame away, though. [laughs]
R: I’m asking myself “how’d we start on this process anyway, and in the larger sense what is this all about?” Why are we doing this?
F: We remind you that you don’t like being bored.
R: Oh. [they laugh]
F: You are seeing calculus that was invented because people mastered the times tables. Okay?
R: I see.
F: And as we master calculus, then we’ll move on to other games. They’re not meaningless games, but they are games. They’re games in the sense of stretching our abilities, of enjoying it, of playing it, you know. They’re not games in the sense of one wins and one loses, but they’re entertainment. They’re engaging, let’s put it that way. Remember that the next time you get bad news on the television set, it’s better than being bored. [they laugh]
R: Okay, I think I’ve run out of questions for tonight, is there something else that you would like to comment on?
F: Well, we know we’re a broken record on this, but we want to say it again, this is a very valuable process. You’re thinking of it now in terms of a book and we can steer it that way, but it’s valuable just for its own sake. Valuable to us. Valuable to you. And as your little bonus for the evening, we will tell you that you could, when you go to bed, give yourself the instruction that you want to remember your participation in the planning. If you do. And do that a little bit on an on-going basis, and then we’ll talk. [laughs]
R: Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
F: Thank you very much. [stretch]
Frank: We now return to our normally scheduled programming.