Rita talking to three old friends

Sunday March 15, 2015

[At the TMI Professional Division program. Al Dahlberg, Jon Holt and Richard Werling all knew Rita, they all knew me, and they were interested in my experiments with ILC. After supper, we sat around the table in the Fox Den and they took turns asking a question, and I then conveyed question and answer by using my usual procedure of writing in the journal, and then reading them what I got. This rather public procedure was, of course, quite a change from my normal procedure, but I was curious to know if it would work.]

7 p.m. [Al:] “How’s Martin?”

[Martin, Rita’s husband, who pre-deceased her by eight years, was well known to the TMI community for his work with Rita in conducting lab sessions – that is, sessions in the “black box.”]

R: Martin.is fine—remember, “all is well.”  But seriously, to answer the question in the way it is posed would be to assume the primacy of the individual as he appears in 3D rather than the coalescence of the community that Martin comprised while in 3D. Put it this way – Martin is in “mission accomplished” mode. As we all are, as you all will be, once the difficulty will be forgotten and the achievement more evident.

By the way, I like what you are doing, all of you. I feel your joint presence.

[Jon:] Send my regards. What does she have to say about error on your side? [Meaning, as I found by questioning his for clarification, the possibility that they on their side might err in setting up the conditions of our lives.]

R: We have to say, Jon – lighten up! Nothing is that serious. That is to say, what you see as error comes from your judgment of the difference between what is and what should be. We can’t see it that way, if only because we see all paths equally. But this deserves a fuller answer, at another time.

[Al:] Does Rita have suggestions about the Explorer program TMI is thinking about starting up again, and should it include ETs. [ The Explorer program encouraged people to conduct altered-state sessions in the black box to try to fulfill Bob’s mandate to “bring back something of value to mankind.”]

R: What a great thing to see the Explorers start up again. I am delighted. Okay, these are some thoughts, but of course you in the body are to judge whether to accept any or all of them.

First, remember that the times have changed. What seemed advanced for us in the 1980s would be as deadly dull and [illegible] in your time as you, Frank, found your Lifeline program last year. So – don’t let old structures overawe you in structuring the new program. Use it for suggestion, then follow your joint understandings and intuitions.

Second, remember that your intent is not merely – possibly not even primarily – to gather information. More important is the development of everyone participating.

Plus – everyone listening to the result is to be considered a participant, no matter how much later they listen. Remember that.

As to content – ET’s or any subject whatever – I would say, simply, don’t rule anything out, but follow your joint sense of fitness at the time. And don’t hesitate to change your minds with the times. What you rule out today you may wish back in tomorrow.

[Dick:] Thank Rita for arranging this meeting. Do you have advice for Dick in helping people with death and dying? [Me, on what had been said previously:] You heard Dick, should TMI structure a program to help with death and dying?

R: How many times already have you heard me express my thanks, in turn, for people listening and participating? For

F: Lost it.

R: You know that we in non-3D appreciate the attention from 3D. It can be so satisfying to communicate, and so frustrating to want to help and find no listening ear. So, thanks in return, Dick – and Al and Jon.

About death and dying – you

[blank pause]

F: Where’d you go?

R: your anxiety was interfering with your reception.

[Later, after the others left to listen to the next speaker, I remained at the table with my journal and pen.]

F: Okay, let’s try that again. I am surprised how great the pressure was, just from knowing that people were waiting to hear.

R: Yes, a good lesson for you. A new experience, a new tool in the toolbox.

F: Nonetheless, I’m kind of glad to return to our familiar interaction.

R: The rubber band likes relaxing back to normal, too.

F: Very funny. All right, can we get the answer to Dick’s question now?

R: Yes, and I want to make a comment for you to give to others when you talk about how to do this. Bear in mind, different kinds of pressure affect different people in different ways. A tautology, of course, but it bears repeating. What you find distracting – the presence of other conversations, or the waiting of others for answers, or, hypothetically, the pressure of an audience with you as performer – another type of person would find stimulating. Similarly, relatively few would prefer writing to merely speaking. It is all an adjustment of technique according to predilection. Therefore you can’t lay down hard and fast rules for the process – not that you yourself are thinking in those terms, but it is well to state it for the record.

Now, this has more to do with Dick’s question than might appear. Because the advice I began to give about the Explorers pertains, in the same way.

Don’t make hard and fast rules, or, if you must, make the rule not to make hard and fast rules.

F: I’m smiling. That matches my temperament, of course.

R:: You don’t say!

F: Yeah, yeah. So — ?

R: Well, it is easy to wind up making rules without even quite noticing them. You know how it is. You do something that works and you tend to repeat it, of course, and it is a small step to then assume that that something is essential, whereas in fact it may have been helpful only for some extraneous reason, or only for that moment – or, indeed, may have had nothing at all to do with that particular success.

So, be wary of rules lest they become chains. You remember Joe’s story about his cool-down process.

[This refers to Joseph McMoneagle, who was of course known to Rita very well, and over many years. Every so often it becomes clear that Rita prefers that I summarize something. I speculate that this is because it’s easier on me to record something I know than to quote her. However, that is only speculation.]

F: Oh yes. He said that in his early days as a remote viewer, he began deducing necessary attributes and conditions if he was going to be able to reach his cool-down state [and thus be able to begin remote viewing], and then one day he realized that the list was so long, he would be unable to be of any practical use in the real world. So he scrapped it all, and found he never had needed it.

R: To help people deal with the process of death and dying, your primary audience should probably be relations and care-givers, not the dying themselves. Again, no hard and fast rules, but in general, you want people who need tools, because it is tools you can give them.

The chief tool is their own conscious or unconscious fear of death. Until they deal with this, how can they help others who are in the midst of a process that they or a part of themselves are terrified by?

And how do that? You can’t predictably give them an NDE! Nor an OBE, after so many years of Gateways and Lifelines. Nor does the testimony of others provide conviction of sufficient strength to serve. So what is left?

F: Not intellectual argument, I imagine.

R: Actually, that can be a small part of it, in the same way you start to teach access to guidance by logically destroying people’s reasons for thinking it not possible. Make the intellectual arguments against death being what it seems – but somewhat briefly, almost (not quite) in passing. But then go on to other things.

Deal with the practicalities of dying from the dying person’s point of view, to give the caregivers a heads-up as to where their loved one may be emotionally and mentally. This may not seem like much, but how are the caregiver and the patient to deepen their empathy and support if they are not remotely on the same page?

If you can give them some pointed suggestions – a list, maybe – of practical things that may be bothering the dying, it will give the caregiver the chance to see if these or any of them are on the agenda, and if so, help them deal with them, so that deeper issues may arise and be addressed.

Techniques for talking about fears and regrets and hopes – on both sides – will be helpful.

But all of this is prolog to the real work, the real joy, of lovingly holding the space for a smooth transition. Tell of your Egyptian death [as relived in TMI’s Timeline program in 2003].

F: Too much to write here, but the gist was that the old man knew his time was near, and so did his community. They gave him something to drink that would take him away in half an hour or so. He lay in bed, and the other monks – 13 of them, I think, though I don’t know if the number is important – stood in a big horseshoe-shaped line around this bed and did two things. They toned to provide a smooth background, and they stayed with him mentally as he left, so he would not get lost. This was all done in a quiet, ceremonial, joyous way. Mission accomplished, as you said.

R: So you see why a TMI course on Death and Dying should really be a course in Accompanying the Dying, and it should be severely practical but never forgetting that, after all, the practical result being aimed at is a successful transition. It is not a lack of pain, or love and forgiveness, or minimizing the adverse impact on those to be left behind. All these are good subsidiary goals, but they are subsidiary, not primary. Orient your course around helping people achieve a successful transition, and it will shape itself. This by the way is very good work.

F: More on Al’s question?

R: At another time, gladly. But you’ve don’t enough. [And it was true, I was feeling tired.]

F: Okay. Our thanks as always.