Rita on beliefs and believing

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

F: 7 a.m. So, Rita, a simple question. Why should anyone pay attention to anything you say – or, from their perspective, anything I report you as having said? Why should anyone believe any of it?

R: They shouldn’t. it isn’t a matter of belief or disbelief. And nothing I have to say in answer to this question is anything very different from what you have been saying for years. Since we cannot know, we can only provisionally believe, and there is no resolution to it. So, to seek belief as a goal is sort of pointless. The question is not “what can you make yourself believe?” but “what explanation explains and what explanation do I resonate to?”

The Church went wrong (and churches continue to go wrong) when they set out to reassure themselves of their own correctness by measuring how many people could be persuaded (then, eventually, coerced) to believe the same things. It is the mark of truth that people gravitate to it, or toward it anyway, when they encounter it. It is also the mark of truth that it is broader than any mind or set of beliefs can fully encompass; hence, it always appears different to different types of people. But truth cannot be contained. Hence, does not exist within containers. Hence, cannot be fixed, but is fluid.

F: And for those whose psychology inclines them to need a fixed unchanging truth?

R: They will find that aspect of truth, as those needing nuance will find the ever-shifting aspect of truth. The thing to remember is that truth is larger, broader, deeper, more nuanced, more unchanging, than a human mind. Reality is larger than our view of it, as fishbowls are always wider than the space they enclose and give form to.

F: So then, those who despair that they cannot come to an ultimate truth?

R: They could, if it occurred to them, rejoice in a quest that cannot end leaving them without anything more to interest them for the rest of eternity.

[Lest this be misread, note that it could have been phrased this way: “If it occurred to them, they could rejoice in a quest that cannot end and thus leave them without anything more to interest them for the rest of eternity.”]

F: Funny. True, though. We’re not going to solve the mystery and then be bored for lack of a mystery to try to solve.

R: It’s a little more challenging than that. Reality is not a long rainy afternoon to be gotten through, playing in an attic. The things we are led to do take place within the context of reality; they aren’t somehow separate from it. Your quest – whatever it is that you feel impelled to do by your deepest nature – that quest adds to the whole, and stems from the whole. It both changes and expresses potential. You are creating. That’s what the whole dream is about, you understand: You are continually creating; creating yourselves and creating artifacts physical and non-physical. Just by remaining in the game you are creating, and how exactly would you cease to remain in the game?

F: Suicide?

R: Not so. Ask Papa Hemingway if suicide removed him from the game. It merely moved him to another arena.

F: As a matter of fact, then, what of a child who starves to death in Africa?

R: What of a child who starves to death in Charlottesville? It is different only in your concept of it. The short answer is, don’t forget that the child came from somewhere and returns to somewhere. The child is part of a non-physical larger being; it is not an orphan in the universe. It brings back its full experience, as do we all. But don’t get the idea that heaven is full of walking wounded or PTSD victims, or victims of any kind.

[Transcribing this, it occurs to me to make explicit what was obvious to me at the time, that Rita is not saying that such people don’t go to heaven – that is, re-enter the non-3D. She is saying, they are not defined by the condition that affected them in 3D.]

Victimhood is an idea that makes sense only within a 3D context. Once transcend 3D and you transcend the limitations and the partial view.

F: So, no causes over there? [in life, Rita was a great believer in causes.]

R: You laugh, but 3D benefits from charity and reform when well applied; it is the misdirection of such efforts that is the problem and this – like all problems – is best addressed by elevation of consciousness which, by the way, does not mean “look at higher things instead,” as the Hindus are tempted to do, but “continually do the only work you can do, which is to wake up to reality, regardless what you do in the charitable or reformist realms.”

In non-3D, however, you as the soul shaped in your most recent life interact with other families of you that were shaped in other lives. You can see, I trust, that your perspective on your life changes pretty drastically when you change contexts.

F: So a boring life may be a rainy afternoon, in effect, and a scary or painful or tortured one may be the equivalent of a painful or tortured episode in a life.

R: Well, isn’t that a more accurate description? Your life is eternal, which doesn’t mean “a very, very long time” but means “existing outside the 3D time stream.” But at the same time, any given slice of that life is only one slice, not the whole pie. The particular constellation that was Napoleon still exists, still exerts influence, but do you think the elements that were fused into Napoleon were used only for Napoleon? That he has no mundane lifetime he was and is affiliated to, before and since?

F: Let me rephrase that, as I’m not sure we’ve put it as clearly as possible. If I do not mistake, you just said each lifetime is part of many lifetimes – part of meaning both related to and not separable from.

R: Yes, and remember as well, no two individuals are exactly the same in composition – that is, everyone is a different bundle of strands. So don’t let yourself forget that we aren’t really talking about individuals so much as we are of one comprehensive whole of strand-material (call it) that is expressed in different combinations continually, and has adventures in 3D, and returns to add to the full experience.

F: And this description is also illusory or deceptive or misleading in that we don’t go anywhere or return anywhere.

R: True, and good that you’ve gotten to that knowledge being instinctive with you.

So to return to our starting point. Nobody should believe anything we say. Some will find that they do, and they should pay attention to that (and not be dismayed, either, if at some point they cease to believe in it). But after all, this is all that ever happens anyway. People believe (or recognize, perhaps) or they don’t, and neither others nor they themselves can do a thing to make them believe or disbelieve. Belief cannot be coerced, only the expression or suppression of belief.

F: I had a thought – oh, yes. Jefferson said “the earth belongs to the living.” What was the context that applied to? I had it but lost it.

R: It applied to beliefs, for one thing, and to perceptions, and goals, and everything in life. Do not allow yourselves to be embalmed, or, worse, to embalm yourselves out of misguided loyalty to the past, whether it be your ancestral past or your past beliefs. A conscious choice to adhere to the old is as valid a choice as any other – it is the being embalmed I am warning against, not the nature of the choice. But the warning is more or less useless. If someone chooses to remain as they are, how likely are they to have brought themselves to this material?

F: And that’s about it for today.

R: Yes. It’s a good resting place. You galloped well.

F: Sure did. I figure you found some non-3D equivalent of coffee. Okay, next time, then.