Tuesday February 24, 2015
F: 4:30 a.m. All right, Miss Rita, ready if you are. Shall we begin with Suzanne’s question?
R: All right with me.
[Suzanne: A few sessions ago, you closed by saying Be Well, and Rita said to add it to your list of questions. Interested in hearing more so wanted to make sure that question was added to the list.]
I was merely noting that life outside 3D is not unvarying bliss the way some people imagine it. True, we don’t get colds and our limbs and joints don’t ache, but still there are stresses, and the results of stresses.
F: I take it you don’t mean physical stresses left over from 3D life – that is, the non-3D equivalent of phantom-limb pains.
R: An interesting analogy, that, actually. Let me think if I should pursue it.
[pause]
Let me say it straight, and then we’ll see if I want to pursue the analogy. What I intended to make note of is that we are still compound beings, even after we have dropped the body. As a matter of fact, the tensions between various components may sometimes be stronger, more evident, without the body’s buffering intervention.
F: Is that what Yeats meant when he wrote of being thankful for “the body and its stupidity”?
R: I can’t answer for Mr. Yeats, but it may have been at least a glimmer of the truth that spirits contend, both in the body and no less outside the body. Don’t think of eternity as a place of eternal rest, necessarily! That is as much failure of imagination as anything. Hence, harps and clouds and all that, that discredits the idea of a non-physical world among the non-religious.
An angel – a unitary being of any sort – is incapable of being self-divided, for the very good reason that there is no diversity of internal content to form sides.
But compound beings – and by that I mean anything created in 3D by sexual reproduction uniting different strains, incorporating in one body different strands each of which may itself have been a life lived as an individual by what had been a community – compound beings are not only capable of being self-divided; they can scarcely escape it. And this is a function we have not yet touched on. Compound beings, by their nature, are both battleground and reconciling force for opposing forces. They live a battle (and perhaps a reconciling) and they become a potential way forward. In short, they not only complicate the non-3D world by presenting new possibilities, they also help hold it together by sometimes reconciling the polar opposites they may learn to live.
F: I sometimes wonder if this or that that we get in these sessions is merely me echoing something I’ve read – but not in this case! I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anybody describe us or our function in the larger scheme of things in just that way.
R: Remember, “3D,” “the world” – even “people,” many times – does not mean only Earth. You may tend to think that humans on Earth are radically different from beings also in 3D who live elsewhere, but perhaps you tend to exaggerate the differences and underrate the commonalities. The same non-3D being may very easily incorporate elements from various parts of 3D, just as humans may have ancestors from different genetic strands, or different ethnic groups, or different races. Depending on the extent of difference, the internal diversity – and perhaps the internal stress – will be that much the greater. But this is a side trail.
The central point here is that 3D life is integrally connected with non-3D life, and if you can keep that in mind as you examine anything, it will gradually reorient your thinking in new and productive directions. Trust your guidance as you consider ideas. Entertain fanciful connections as they arise, and consider that they may be arising not at random, as they appear to be, but in some sequence not apparent to you, but aimed at assisting you to new integrations.
F: So when I said “be well” as a sort of generalized sign-off gesture, and you in effect said, “not necessarily,” it was to provide an entry-point for you to point out that on the other side not all is beer and skittles – and as soon as I wrote “the other side,” I went, “oops!”
R: It is hard to reorient your thinking all at once, and I recognize that three months is still pretty much “all at once.” But you caught it, that’s the point. And you see, perhaps, why I began with that point that it is one reality, not two. There is a casual utility in thinking of “this side” and “the other side,” but it too easily tempts you into disregarding all the unbreakable links that are more obvious when you remember that you are observing one being functioning partly in, partly out of, the 3D environment.
“Spirits” as you often think of them, have passions no less than “physical beings” do. How could they not? They have self-division, values, motives. No, they don’t commute to work or mow the lawn or clerk at a store, but they share human life in its essentials, and what is essential about human life is not the externals but the internals. However, naturally these things express differently in different surroundings.
F: Meaning, I take it, in surroundings where consciousness is not led to exaggerate the always-moving present moment.
R: That, and the continual sense of separation, and the ability to go for long periods of time not recognizing the results of a given thought or attitude.
But values remain; passions remain; one should say, I suppose, life remains. The guys told us we would find them emotionally chilly next to us in 3D. True, but not the whole story. We “here” are seemingly more chilly because not riding that exaggerated present moment. But in essence we are more passionate, actually, because not distracted by the innumerable cross-currents of human existence.
F: I’m getting more than has been said so far.
R: Go ahead, if you want to try. You know the limitations of language and the starting-point of visualization.
F: What I hear between the lines is that our non-3D component shares our emotional makeup to a larger degree than I would have thought, because I would have thought that the Larger Being would be more neutral, as it incorporates more than one of us. (“Incorporates” is the wrong word literally, but I mean it includes many 3D beings.)
R: Yes, but there is a difference between the Larger Being and any individual’s non-3D components; that’s the point.
F: I see it clearly now, but I think I was hazy on it till now. So our non-3D component is our representation in non-3D of what we in 3D are, including whatever moves us.
R: Yes, but it is a two-way street, and the 3D world represents the non-3D in a way and to an intense degree, that I did not suspect while still in the body.
F: That’s because you weren’t raised Catholic.
R: Well, maybe so. I can see there is far more in Christianity than I was willing to concede. And I admit to suspecting that you were still in the thrall of that early training.
F: I don’t think so, but how would I know. I know that it seems to me to have had explanatory value that is usually underrated in this formerly Protestant and now functionally atheist culture.
I thought you’d waltz right through Suzanne’s question and get to the three Charles posed to come after that. But we’re running short on time today.
R: Take it as a good lesson on the value of people asking the questions that occur to them. There may be a reason why they are prompted to ask them!
In fact, a word on that. This question-and-answer format has the advantage of what I might call multiple entry-points. Since you are not a trance medium, it might be very difficult for me to introduce a surprising topic, or a surprising twist on what seems a familiar topic, without questions providing an entry-point.
F: Because questions do not have to be justified as the logical continuation of a chain of thought.
R: That’s right. They can serve very easily as points of departure.
F: And that’s why “the better the question, the better the answer”!
R: Yes. A really good question – I don’t mean, necessarily, a particularly clever question, or a well-thought-out question, but a question emerging from someone’s sincere wanting to know – will provide more entry-points for material that otherwise might have to await some on-ramp.
F: Well, well. You’ve joined the information superhighway. I still remember your struggling with computers.
R: That’s one thing we don’t have to contend with here, fortunately – technology. And I’m very glad of it.
F: Well, I think you’ve provided us with an entry-point to a host of entry-points, Miss Rita. Anything else before we close up shop?
R: Only this Everyone who reads, everyone who thinks about, everyone who contributes questions to or objections to the material, contributes. I hope you will all realize, there is no way for you to know whether a given question is “only you” or is being prompted by another part of yourself. It is, in fact, nearly a meaningless distinction. So don’t underrate your participation.
F: Thanks, Rita, and we’ll see you next time.