So You Think Your Life Was Wasted (28)

Why relying on guidance is practical — and how to do it

Saturday, April 7, 2007

8 a.m. My friends, what have you to say about my blog, or self development by choice, or past lives, or your ongoing project working through me, or the price of eggs?

The more pointed the question, remember, the more pointed the answer. However, we take your question to be in effect “what is the thing you would most likely to know and perhaps to communicate today?”

Close enough. And the answer is?

We realize that it seems irresponsible even to you for you to be blogging without consideration of how that is to translate into income for you. But the operative word, as you like to say, is “seems.”

What is practical and what is not depends upon many factors, most of them hidden from you most of the time. That is why it is practical to rely upon the guidance, once you have sorted out your issues around “is it me downstairs or is this guidance?”

You are separated by time and by space and by the shell (call it) between yourself and any other. All of those things make it harder for you to calculate. How do you factor into your calculations things that are going to happen to you in the future — next month, say — that have cast no shadow before them? How can you take into account things happening across the world from you — or across the street! — that you don’t know about? How can you predict what others are doing, thinking, feeling that may lead them to affect your life?

The short answer is, you can’t.

The somewhat longer answer is, you can to some degree, by tuning your awareness — by “remote viewing” your life, so to speak. But you’ve seen how fragmentary a process that is. Why not do it the easy way and rely on the part of you that isn’t confined in one bit of time and space? And that is what guidance is — the course-corrections that are offered you from a perspective that takes into account the things that you can’t see or sense.

Why would you need guidance to help you count your spoons? You wouldn’t. The data is at your fingertips. But guidance is awfully handy when you need to get a hint as to which way to turn — which thread to follow — when the answer can’t be calculated by rational means.

And after all, what are hunches but spurts of accepted guidance? What is luck, but unconscious living in accordance with guidance?

A very persuasive case, if I needed persuading. I will pass it on, of course.

A new way of being

You have come to a new way of being that is firmly rooted in the old. That is the only way that grafting works. No firmly rooted stock, no base for the new to get its grip on life. That is the difference between your specific task and the task of others — psychics for instance. They can do it but they can’t not do it, they can’t remember not doing it, they can’t be frustrated by being unable to do it — and so they can’t be the bridge. You — among many others — can.

Yes that is what I am consciously attempting to do on my blog.

Of course. You of your own knowledge — which means to your reader “maybe I can get my own knowledge and judge whether he is right or wrong.” And when they get good at it they’ll realize that it is “when he is right and when he is wrong” and they’ll maybe escape Psychics Disease.

Well, I suppose that I have demonstrated that I am willing to blog pretty tirelessly with no prospect of it producing income. I’ve posted well into May already, with them set to detonate (as I like to think of it) at the rate of two a day. Chasing Smallwood is already up to post 46.

Is it work or fun?

I am not conscious of a distinction, in this case. It is a hell of an effort, and very satisfying. And this is a post in itself.

9:15 a.m. You gentlemen have any more to say about things?

It’s up to you, really. We are always available, and we tend to lend you a sense of urgency when we need you to do something timely.

Yes, I have figured that out, finally. Of course, under the circumstances I get suspicious of impulses. Yet as I have no objection to doing your bidding, I act even when suspicious of whose idea it is. I expect due credit at least for being willing to be a dupe if need be.

Cat’s-paw.

Whatever. In my case, preparing so many past sessions to be postings has revived my interest in doing morning sessions, as I did last year. Was it only last year?! But I think that rather than resume with Joseph I will take advantage of my increased access — and I see now why you prompted me with that bright idea — to talk to others at the same depth if possible. If anything it should be easier so long as we stay away from factual matters that may be checked.

But – whom? Joseph the Egyptian comes first to mind, but then I think of Bertram, and John. Do any of you are all of you have a preference? What am I saying, of course you have a preference, and you are leading me like a tethered donkey. But that’s fine, let’s go. Proceed, friends.

We do approve your attitude — including your levity, which might be named anti-

Sorry, got lost in side trails as memories surfaced. You were saying —

We appreciate your attitude, your approach to the work. An attitude of skepticism, or of true-believer-ism, or of excessive reverence, or of insistence that certain fences must be absolutes and remain absolutes, would make all this far harder for you. Such attitudes have their advantages, and are worked out in other personalities, but you have found a style that works well for you.

Born into exile

So who is up?

[Joseph the Egyptian] Your mind and mine run more closely together then you might expect if you considered only the great difference in our backgrounds. “Separated” as we are by gulfs of time and space, in cultures that make our very way of experiencing the world nearly incommunicable one to the other, if it were not for the threads we share we could speak only through chains of intermediaries, each of which would necessarily (by his very function) increase miscommunication.

I am the source of much of what in you is so strange to your companions. My way in the world is to a great extent your way, and it is very far removed from what has been common in your world.

I lived in a high point in the culture that lived in the Two Kingdoms. You live in what seems to be a high point in your civilization. Yet how different your circumstances from mine! I was a part of the civilization; you are a dissenting seed.

That is badly said. Let me set the idea more firmly in your mind, and you will be able to better translate it.

You see? I was maintaining ; you in representing and fostering the same value as an orientation are revolutionizing. My times supported what I am. You came into being, with so many others, to turn your society to something that will support what you are.

The working out of this requires that you — and so many others — in effect be born into exile. Your lives are a working out of the progress toward opening —

Try again. Stay a little deeper. Until our connection is as automatic as yours with Joseph [Smallwood], you will have to concentrate more and resist meanderings. At the same time and for the same reason the temptations into meanders, into daydreams, will be greater now than later. So merely focus your attention half on the slide switch that you have set to greater access.

Yes. You were born as one going into exile. When you came of age (at about seven; that is, when you had formed a soul and were ready for an injection of spirit that would orient you to your life’s task) you realized unconsciously that you were not in congenial surroundings. We are not criticizing your parents or family or immediate circumstances, we mean that you were formed to fit into a society that did not exist, and you felt the divergence by your own inability to fit in to what existed. This does not refer to transient difficulties but to your fundamental orientation in the world.

This is an unavoidable if painful accompaniment to a life that is intended to break new ground. You could fit in or you could not. If you fit, then every movement toward what would come into being would be a painful stretch. If you did not fit, then every movement in the right direction would reduce the stretch, would be a clear indicator that it was the right direction.

This is said to you and for you, but also to and for so many others who have lived their lives in painful exile. It wasn’t accidental, it wasn’t unnecessary, and it wasn’t fruitless. But the working out of it is now! It is what you are moving toward. It is not a resting place but a vector. And I smile as I know that you don’t quite know what a vector is, but I use it through you because at some level you do know it — think of it as motion or inertia in one given direction. Your technical friends will cringe but that is close enough for our purposes. You are not going to be as comfortable standing still as you will be moving in the one indicated direction. And what direction is that? The one you are inclined to move in! That is what guidance is, you know, a pointer toward the right direction for you.

Hmm. I’m pretty tired already and it isn’t 10 a.m.

No need to wear yourself out — great need to not wear yourself out, in fact. Steadfastness, not spurts and inconstancy. But steadfast does not mean unceasing, only unchanging in intent.

Thank you, Joseph. My correspondent says Joseph means “God’s servant” which I like very much.

We can all be Joseph. It is our choice.