Conversations June 29, 2010

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

5:30 AM. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” running through my head.

A dream in which I and many others had gone — and paid — to hear — Carl Jung? Colin Wilson? — speak. I had spoken of it to dad and he was there — several of my family were there, I think. Jung, not Colin. He spoke briefly and then disappeared and the audience waited and realized he wasn’t coming back. I went after him, climbing up into the bleachers to try to see where he had gone. Went around back somewhere. Was told he had gone, and felt quite bitter about it — it wasn’t fair that he should arrive, speak a few sentences and leave. I said, I think, it was just what Colin did, or was Colin’s fault (meaning, for letting himself be over-scheduled).

Went out to find my car covered in snow needing to be dug out (like all the other cars, of course).

What was that all about, pray?

You are forgetting other bits. You were trying to give your father a glimpse of your inner world, but circumstances not of your making prevented. You felt cheated, for of course the situation wasn’t typical of such occasions, wasn’t the way things are done, wasn’t right. And you were mightily disappointed because you’d wanted to hear the speaker, had hoped to absorb some of his wisdom. And then there was the chore of digging out from under that accumulated snow, so that you could drive away, suddenly ahead of you.

Disappointment followed by work meaningless but necessary, I hear.

Disappointment followed by hard searching followed by work in order to get on the move, yes. Don’t forget to transcribe our little interaction of last night.

[Begin transcription]

9:15 PM. Gentlemen, I hope I am going to be worthy of your trust. This is shaping up to be a big job, and I don’t know if I’m industrious enough, organized enough, to accomplish it.

“The difference between doing it and not doing it is — doing it.” Michael [Langevin, whose saying it is,] is right.

I’ll tell him. But — how can I do it when I can’t seem to give it more than the initial session and the transcription and sending it out?

Habit will make it easier, as it made conversations easier.

Well, I hope so.

Righteous persistence —

I know. All right.

[end transcription]

Very well. I notice, looking back, that toward the end yesterday you mentioned that allowing for more than one viewpoint “preserves your internal freedom of motion.” That seems connected to the car being covered with a deep layer of snow.

What is snow but frozen water that precipitated? Not ice that is also frozen water but formed standing, but frozen water from the skies. And water well represents the emotions, as something from the skies may represent messages from the gods.

That doesn’t seem entirely right. Dr. Jung, can you help me see this?

In this case you might look at it this way. Are you not feeling “snowed under” with the work you have ahead of you, with the sheer volume of material from the heavens? And was it not unexpected, did not come to you out of the blue? Taking the car as a representative of your earthly vehicle — your body — do you not need to do the work of freeing it from the burden of the snow that renders it unable to proceed even when the way has been cleared? In other words, are you not having to take care of your body — tending to your teeth, changing your patterns of eating — while doing all this?

Thank you, that is remarkably clear, given that I couldn’t make sense of it earlier — as in, when I set the pen to learn what you would say about it. And the earlier part of the dream?

You have felt yourself unable to get your family any glimpse of what you live — with the exception of one brother and sister who, you will notice, were not among those there. Here, you thought, was your chance, particularly to perhaps get through to your father, and he was there wanting to hear. And the speaker gave only a few unsatisfying words and so the opportunity was lost. Your searching for him did not result in your finding him, for he was not there to be found. You associated him in your mind with your friend and original inspiration Colin Wilson, who does too much and over-commits.

That is, you cannot count on others, however famous, to give those you care about what you think will help them. And, in working at delivering the message yourself, you know not to over-commit. And this was followed by the practicalities of getting out from under.

Thank you. That’s remarkable. I take it I might as well send all this out as part of the messages?

You are not the only person feeling overwhelmed by the burden of messages from the skies; not the only one who has looked outward for someone to explain themselves to those they loved, only to be disappointed and ultimately to realize that they themselves must do it if it is to be done. So, yes, this dream is no more merely personal than anything else in your lives.

Yes. While you were writing that — or I was taking dictation, whatever — I thought of a couple of people on this list specifically. If they take it as meant specifically for them, well, who’s to say it wasn’t?

All right. Are we still on the topic of the interaction between politics and psychic exploration?

The entire topic could be summed up thus: Given that person-groups reflect and interact with social-groups, there is nothing more effective than healing one’s own person-group, and nothing more seductive and distracting than putting off working on one’s person-group in order to pretend to correct one’s social-group, or, even worse, other people’s social-groups. This is not work but a pretense of working. It may be and often is an evasion of working.

“But,” I can hear people crying, “are we to do nothing about the world situation until we ourselves are perfect? That’s a formula for doing nothing.”

And indeed it would be. No, that isn’t quite what we mean. After all, you don’t hear us objecting when you interrupt this to pour another cup of coffee, or empty the dehumidifier, or do anything of life’s many little things to be done. Should we say, “no more coffee until you have resolved all your problems?” But on the other hand, neither would we say, “pouring a cup of coffee is good work; emptying the dehumidifier will help solve the oil blowout, or will resolve the political deadlock.” You see? Not everything one does in the world is an evasion — but don’t confuse it with real work, either.

Working to resolve social issues can be very good work. How do you do it, rather than pretend to do it? We are saying, perhaps your most effective actual, practical action is internal, healing the splits that resonate up and down the scales.

If, doing that, you also work in government trying to avoid problems through regulation, or if, doing it, you also work at the oil business, trying to avoid problems by better practices, or if, doing it, you also work at the business of harnessing public awareness, trying to avoid problems through effective pressure on those more directly involved, well and good. But if you do any of those things while not working for your internal harmony, your person-group [internal] action may be contributing more toward making the problem worse than its external actions contribute toward making it better. You have heard “as above, so below”; it may equally be said, “as within, so without.” And — a footnote, practically, because to us it seems so obvious that we need to remind ourselves to remember to mention it — the worst, most harmful attitude of all would be to harbor and nourish and aggravate internal civil war by looking on at social problems and becoming fixed in condemnation.

I remember, maybe half a dozen years ago (I can’t remember just how long) realizing that I needed to stop where I was going, for I was moving ever closer to hatred of George Bush and all he stood for and all he was doing. At the time I thought it was purely personal. I didn’t want to (couldn’t afford to) live in hatred. Now I begin to see that our inner selves — even if unexpressed — do manifest in the outer world, just as religion has always said. And I remember Abraham Lincoln saying he could not judge Bush as harshly as I was doing, because he had been in that position and I had not.

That is so for you, and it is so for everyone looking on at anything they have not personally experienced. It is safe and fair and scarcely to be avoided, that you judge (discern) consequences. It is neither safe nor fair — and can be avoided — to judge motivations and attitudes. That is, love the sinner, condemn the sin. Light the candle, don’t curse the darkness.

And “lighting the candle” is working to heal ourselves, first and foremost.

That work is always there at hand for you to do. Done humbly and willingly, it is always good and effective work — and, in a sense, you don’t care what the result is, or whether resolution ever seems any nearer. It is the working toward wholeness that is the work, ultimately.

Of course, there is no need — no, nor any possibility — of waiting, to do good work among your fellows, until your internal (or seemingly internal) problems have been resolved. For one thing, it is in interacting with others that you work on yourself. For another, given that the distinction between individuals is only fictional, in a sense, and certainly is not real in the way it is commonly supposed to be, working with others is working on yourself, if done from the right motives of love, charity, concern, sincere desire to aid your fellows in your common journey.

What would be not good work — would be worse than an evasion of your true task — would be to try to fix somebody. Help if you can, and as you see opportunity, but do not presume to know another’s situation as well as they do, however much you from outside may see that they from inside do not. Remember that they from inside live what you can not, and cannot perceive, much less judge, much less condemn. What else do you suppose that Jesus was saying when he said, before you try to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye, first remove the huge obstruction to vision from your own eye? You can’t do real work by pretending to work, and you can’t help by avoiding your real work.

A lot here, this morning, all starting from a dream! Thank you.

Some time you might look at that “starting from.” Causation isn’t as simple as it appears to you.

Nothing is, I notice. Well, see you Thursday. Thanks again.

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