Rita — question 1

Saturday, January 17, 2015

F: 7 a.m. Time to get started. Miss Rita, care to take a shot at Charles’ first question?

[Discussing the matter with my friend Charles Sides, I proposed to that he ask one question at a time, and I would ask Rita. After reading her response, he will then provide another question for the next day, either a follow-up such as a request for clarification (which as far as I am concerned can include quarreling with the answer if need be) or an entirely new question. This takes advantage of his decades of study of metaphysics and metaphysical questions, and frees me from having to alternate between roles, first talk-show host, then guest, so to speak. His first question, sent the night before:

[“Rita said she did not go through a life review but she regained access. She said this would be another thread to follow up on at another time. So…what does she mean by regaining access?”]

R: I think the question may be based on a misapprehension. I meant merely, the same process looks different depending upon the context from which it is considered.

What looks like a past-life review when seen as an extension of physical conditions as you have always experienced them will look like a process, a sequential process: First you look at this, then this, then this. NDE reports can be read that way without either the experiencer or the reader realizing that such a report is a reinterpretation into familiar sequential-time terms of a process that did not actually occur in that way.

What I myself experienced was the same thing in effect, but I realize that it is more accurate to say that rather than my being shown something, I regained access to something I had never been separated from.

Let’s put it this way. We are put into an Earth-life, and we are both a continuing entity and, at the same time, a new entity. Beginning from a pool of potential elements, a relative few are selected to live together in one body, fusing themselves into a new soul, or a new mind, or a new center of localized consciousness.

If you examine that life from the point of view of the elements that comprised it, you will see a long string of “past lives” (not necessarily on Earth) and a long evolution of the soul.

If you examine it from the point of view of the particular mixture that became a new element, you will see a beginning of consciousness, a growth of a sense of self, and a living-out of life in relative isolation from all the other elements that are equally part of it, but which did not manifest with it as part of its particular mixture whose 3D experience was to fuse a new center, a new mind or soul.

The circumstances are the same. It is the appearances that are different. It is the conscious and unconscious context of the viewing (and the report) that may make it appear like two different things.

Now, when we come to die – when we come to move beyond the internal division between things known to the earthbound portion and things known to the entire being of which the earthbound portion is one part – our own assumptions at the time we pass over may color how we experience the transition, in the same way that assumptions color any experience, mostly unconsciously so that to us it seems we get an objective report. If you expect to cross the River Jordan and see Jesus, you will, and that perception won’t be “wrong,” it won’t be “non-objective.” It will be an interpretation shaped by expectations – and this is always so. That’s why, incidentally, people who believe in nothing [that is, believe that nothing follows 3D life] sometimes initially meet blankness. For as long as their soul-perspective governs their perception, they get what they expect to get. Only when the overall being, what you have called the larger being, feeds its perspective does the returning new soul have its horizons broadened.

By the way, that is the retrieval process, though we never thought of it that way. When we in the physical extended to others no longer in the body who were “stuck” or bewildered, what we were doing was getting their attention, true enough, so that they could break out of their unconscious self-imposed isolation. What we didn’t realize was that the “helpers” or the unnamed forces behind our scenarios were actually that person’s own larger community opening the person’s perceptions. What we saw was a soul reacting to a scenario and responding – “seeing the light,” in a word. But what we didn’t necessarily see – I never did, anyway – was that the person wasn’t “going somewhere new” even metaphorically, but was handing over perception to a broader consciousness of which they were a part. Establishing diplomatic relations with the previously unsuspected rest of themselves, so to speak.

I did not go over expecting to see Jesus, or needing to see relatives or friends. My few days of coma provided me with a smooth transition of consciousness. But whether it had been smooth or not, my transition would have been the same process of moving from a limited to a less-limited perspective. As I knew what was coming, I didn’t have to experience it in sequential fashion. I had been relatively closed off and then I was not.

F: I think you are meaning that this is the same for everybody, not that you were relatively closed-off as opposed to relatively open during your life.

R: Correct. I am explaining as clearly as I can – even a bit pedantically, I am afraid – that my “past life review,” like anyone’s, was merely a matter of greater awareness as I moved beyond the constrictions of the physical part of the universe.

But bear in mind that this is still a simplified picture that does not convey various differences in effective consciousness caused by the change of terrain. Our new circumstances lead us to experience ourselves in very different ways, and it is this usually unspoken context that leads to so many misinterpretations.

For instance, while in the body, perhaps mostly unaware of “past life” connections or non-physical connections of any kind, one may live thinking oneself a unit comprising only 3D elements. But our opinions about ourselves do not change who we are, what we are. It doesn’t matter that you think yourself an orphan in the universe. You aren’t and couldn’t be. You were created, you came into being as a unique combination of elements that were to learn to live together, you were continually affected by internal adjustments among various elements, you expressed inherited traits not only from your physical heredity but from your non-physical heredity as well. You were less a unit than a family learning to become a unit, and each member of that family brought along its own heritage, which is why your life was a unique window into existence.

Well, you need to keep this unvarying fact in mind when you consider any other aspect of life either physical or non-physical. To the degree that you keep it in your mind as background, your perception of new aspects will be clarified. And this gradual process of clarification, incidentally, is why these things take time and perseverance to sink in.

F: It is, yet again, that old “to understand A, you have to understand B, but to understand B you have to understand A.”

R: Yes it is. Coming to truth is a continuing process of refinement [of understanding]. You don’t leap toward a greater truth, you edge toward it, clarifying our perception. (That doesn’t mean you don’t suddenly make a great stride. It merely means that becoming clearer is a process rather than a destination or event.)

F: In the past, I have noticed that some people thought my reference to the larger being of which we are a part meant that I was finding a new way to say “God” without using the word God. I don’t know that I was ever able to persuade them that I was saying something different from what they expected, and so they weren’t actually hearing what I was saying, but were cramming it into their accustomed ways of thinking.

R: All you can do is explain as best you can what you are meaning to say. No one can guarantee understanding of what they say: Communication requires two things, expression and reception. Express as carefully as you are able, and leave the rest to your audience. People take what they need, which isn’t always the same thing you said or intended to say. Nothing wrong with that – remember, their other elements may be seizing on things as a clue for the person, and so may be very opportunistically

F: Lost it.

R: Enough for now. You are getting tired.

F: I am, though it has been only a little more than an hour. Very well, I will type this up, send it around, and wait for Charles’ next question, whether it be follow-up or even argument. Thanks, Miss Rita.