Frank, I’m not quite sure what to do with the following, my own take on the question. I have put this on the explorer site, but there are those of us who have been following your lead on this site and if you feel it is useful for ongoing dialogue, do with it as you see fit.
Why Know, and Why Know Now?
To begin with, I believe the question was “planted”, not so I will ask it to get “the answer”, but so I will have to struggle with it and try to understand the surrounding questions that also arise from it. Further, I believe it is meant to be asked over and over as my own state of awareness changes.
I am one of many drawn to material about the nature of reality: Seth, Elias, Rita and Frank before and after Rita’s transition, and I have no doubts as to that being not accidental. It is purposeful. It is experience and knowledge that is up to me put meaning to.
What do I know about this knowing?
I know that my belief system has changed, not just once, but over and over as I spiral through transformation. Who I am, the nature of reality, my understanding of the nature of the entity I used to label as God, my relationship to the rest of consciousness, the nature of Earth Life, are all different. The differences are not just intellectual, because they have been reinforced via direct teachings, and visceral experiences. I do not perceive as I did in the past, and because of that I am myself different.
As our souls are forged by Earth Life experience, so has mine been affected by the nature of my knowing.
“What you call death, we view as consciousness expansion (awareness expansion)” , so said my guides. Rita has pointed out that our level of consciousness doesn’t change when we drop the body, but our awareness does. Living with our awareness concentrated on 3D Earth Life to living as a part of a greater being concentrated mostly in the non-3D requires transition. Some undergo this transition only after dropping the body. I believe I have chosen to start this transition while in the body and it will change the nature of whatever transition will occur after I drop the body, and it will change my initial post “death” experience.
Without implying purpose, two initial effects of knowing are: I will be a different completed soul, and I will experience a different transition.
I am also convinced that there is much more to this knowing, and that it is at a minimum necessary to try to perceive it as best I can from the viewpoint of the greater being that I am a part of.
From that perspective, I will be a different potential “strand” and a different soul than I would otherwise have been. That has implications to broader effects on the greater being than just myself. My own strands are experiencing this individually and collectively (me, being I think the collective). We are one with our greater being, so as I learn, there is learning going on beyond me.
“No part of consciousness, simply by being a part, can know the whole. Even though we can connect as a part, or better said, even though we can become aware of our connections and therefore experience greater parts of consciousness, we cannot experience all. So there is no part of consciousness that is not limited by itself, nor not naturally inclined to want to reduce those limits. So a model that says (we, elements of your greater being) know all and you don’t or can’t yet is not a good model. A better model is that we have broader perspective than you do.”
“And your question of what is the value of you obtaining broader awareness and higher consciousness, you could easily and inevitably ask (in the sense of our being the same thing) what is the benefit of us having broader awareness and higher consciousness than we do? Our awareness is broad, yours is purposely narrow but deep to bring experience in ways that we can’t without that depth. And you bring yourself, which didn’t exist before, but now does. And your perspective (and all others) have uniqueness.”
Does one part of the greater being’s consciousness teach another part?
“Is it really necessary to differentiate? There is higher consciousness, and there is benevolence from above to below, and lower consciousness is vectored from above. As a bird becomes ready to fly, we become ready to know, and the knowledge and use of that knowledge is applicable beyond physical life reality. As “a probe sent out in order to change the mother ship”, or “the chisel that forms the sculpture”, your perspective becomes the sharp end of the chisel.”
Birds incubate, crack open and extricate themselves from the egg, and learn to fly and be a bird. Have we been incubating, now cracking the shell to extricate ourselves so that we can learn how to be a creator, a godson?
“You already have all the capabilities necessary to become a godson, all you need to do is become aware of them and learn how to use them.” (A response I received months ago to a similar question.)
Why come to this awareness now?
“Because there is more benefit in this time frame to knowing versus not knowing. Not knowing brought it’s kind of individuality and uniqueness, or “purity”, having souls generated in an isolated and separated, almost “estranged” environment. Knowing knits us, makes us aware of our togetherness, helps make us whole. We want to be a whole consciousness with a variety of perceptions and perceptiveness. Your lack of interest in a traditional “heaven” or spending time in the Park is symptomatic of our movement to wholeness from a period of parts of us lacking awareness of that wholeness.
Another important aspect is the nature of Earth life experience when it is aware of it’s connections versus unaware. How can that experience not be different? How can that not bring experience and perspective that’s unique and beneficial to the greater being? Did traditional religion change the nature of Earth life experience for those experiencing a life in the last 2000 years? Those experiencing life in timelines before and after was and will be different, and that’s good. Compound souls emerging from a birthing process that has a vast expanse of experience from unconnected to connected, from superstition to knowing (albeit limited by language and space/time constraints), are beneficial to the becoming of the greater being. You are becoming, so by definition is your greater being. WE are becoming. Is there any part of consciousness that is therefore not becoming? If one part of a mind is becoming, isn’t that whole mind also becoming?
Not just becoming, but expressing. We are an expression, and we express, and we enable further expression.
Think about the concept of colors. Break white light up with a prism to see the individual colors and the infinite combinations of the individual colors and the combining of those colors in expressions that are countless and creative—out of something that was just white. Variation versus sameness. Variation is necessary. And if creativity is to be unlimited, then variation must be unlimited. A change in awareness brings variation to the soul producing process.”
Is there more that can be said on the subject?
“Of course there is. But within the constraints or limits set by what you have so far been able to understand, it (my understanding of the question) stands at the same state. Let’s call it an interim state. When you have spiraled further, more of the context will become understandable. It can only be expressed within the context your current understanding, as you are part of this process, not separate from it.”
At this point, there was a strong nagging that I was missing complexity and elements of understanding that were important, even at this stage.
Then this arrived:
“The complexities that you’ve been sensing around this question clarified somewhat in your mind this morning reading the May 18th session with Rita. For it is not possible to separate the “how” and the “why”. In that session, the “how” was summarized as “Divine Grace”, which from your existing viewpoint, is about as far outside your field of control as possible. The implication of this is that the Awakening, or maybe better said, “The Invitation to Awaken” cannot be either sought by the 3D self, or pushed by it’s non-3D components. All WE can control or affect is our openness or willingness to receive it; our acceptance of it. (Didn’t someone say sometime the only sin you really could ever commit would be to reject the invite?)
If you, and this “you” can be pretty extensive in this context, cannot have “control” in the sense of having an Awakening, can you then accept “vectoring” from further above?
So you can work to understand better the effects, as you have tried to elaborate above, and that is productive. However, the core of “why now?” and therefore also the “why?” itself, is above and beyond. And there will always be an above and beyond. So in spite of your desire, the very strong desire, to know and understand and decipher, one must also be willing to accept a component, call it for now “Divine Grace”, that simply arrives. And that will always be the case.”
Thanks for sharing your questioning process, John…I too have been questioning, sometimes to obsession, on “the Big Questions”. Currently, the material which most resonates for me is the “Seth Material”; my wife has been reading those many books for 40 years, whereas I finally started w/ “The Early Sessions”; I had to, in order to “understand the lingo” Seth used.
You bring up “Divine Grace”; synchronicity at work, since Susan (wife) and I were discussing just that subject on the way to dinner last night. Am I to understand that this Grace is always available (I’ve experienced it in my past), or is it bestowed only upon certain individuals? This is also one reason I never have done CIM; one person I talked w/ at TMI during a program we were in together, explained that (to her) a basic premise of CIM was that “we had strayed so far from God, that we are literally cut off from God”. I didn’t think/feel that was possible, but I wonder sometimes, as I struggle, daily, w/ my fears.
Going within for myself, I am finding a few answers. Perhaps I must let go of the struggle, for it is tiring me out. Many more ideas, but I just wanted to ask that one question. Thanks again for sharing your insights.
Craig
Bob always insisted, “You are not your body.” In particular, you are not your perpetually thinking brain, which is the evolutionary result of the drive to survive as a separate being. Your brain is constantly attempting to cover all bases and always fails simply because the world is far too complex. That which you essentially are, on the other hand, is the source of “grace”. There is an experiment, one that has now been repeated many times and refined, that tells much about what is going on: participants are wired all up and asked to, say, move a finger when they so will; the finger invariably moves before the brain decides. Involved scientists have concluded that our supposed brainy willing acts are actually after the fact comments. So, what moves the finger? More generally, what moves the body, say when you are walking while actually your awareness is lost in your thoughts? My conclusion is that “grace” flows and enlivens continually, if we don’t somehow block it by thinking, which is also actually an instance of the flow. We have been incarnated as vehicles by which “grace” flows in 3D in order that “it” may learn and evolve—new pronoun anyone? So my guides-on-the-other side say and as I understand Rita to have said.
Thanks for your insights, Don; they actually help me a lot today, in that they are a reminder of Bob’s “famous” affirmation” (which I use nightly): “I am more than my physical body.” Interesting about the scientific study (at least a few scientists seem “brave enough” to be studying consciousness, w/out relegating it to the dustbin of “pesky epiphenomenon”!); I’ve also heard of a study, done at “Heartmath”, where (at least in serial time) the electrical/magnetic field around the heart shows changes way before the brain registers them, and (apparently) reacts!
Seth goes into this somewhat, and I like his use of “Framework 1” and “Framework 2”; I remind myself often that “Framework 2 is taking care of that” (bodily functions, including “voluntary” muscle action). “When” the decision is made gets tricky, esp. w/ our human concept of “serial time”, but I think (!!) that my “main objective” in “being human” is to Experience, and, as Frank/Rita/TGU, et al. have pointed out, “to provide a unique window/focus of consciousness, which enhances/adds to our Whole Self”. My “life window” seems to be about “tuning my extreme sensitivity”, using it as a tool/method to learn more about the nature of Reality, as well as artistic/writing pursuits.
I, like many I suspect, got well-trained to “trust the Experts” in many life matters; my position being somewhat “odd” in that I find I’m “working my way out of the Materialist/Reductionist boxes”, vs. “Religious boxes” (I often say that, in essence, I was “raised by a Biologist, a Psychologist, and a Philosopher”, and felt I could never aspire to their “level of brilliance”).
Anyway, it feels good to be “back in the hunt”, sharing ideas!
Craig
I should have written: in order that “it” may create, experience, learn, and evolve. An increasing number of “reputable” scientists are equating deity with aliveness in a general cosmos-wide sense—check out the word “emergence”. A curiosity: Check out the Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in any of the Greek Synoptics. What is sown within all is the “logos”, which according to the more ancient Stoics meant that life force within and around us, that which enlivens us and all the universe. Check out also the research papers in HeartMath.org. But, boy, they stick close to the physical, even though when I feel love, as they teach, it is in the center of my chest, not in my heart region. In this regard, I read that those engaged in wandering on the other side find feeling with the heart is the more effective way of sensing there—but that is certainly not with the physical heart. Yet another thought comes to mind, Mellen-Thomas Benedict’s NDE tale; he almost surely died from an extreme cancer attack and his dead physical body laid there long enough for rigor mortis to set in only, then, to fall out of his Hospice bed quite alive, cancer free, and saying “I love my life”. “We are such things as dreams are made on,” a wise man once noted. Another wise man, hypnotist Jack Elias, has noted that most of us are so hypnotized by the stories packing our brains that we are unaware of the aliveness within and around us. Much to think about—NOT!
Craig and Don, I appreciate your comments and the discussion. I also resonate with the Seth Material significantly more so than with CIM. I’m not judging CIM. Early on it became clear to me that there was a source, a force (for the lack of a better word) of love, light and energy beyond my ability to measure or experience completely; however, I knew (or one could say believe I knew) that I was a part of this force, not separate from it. CIM resonates elsewhere.
I would not pretend to be an expert on Divine Grace. Your independently having a discussion about it is the fourth in two days that I am familiar with and that is interesting to say the least.
What I can say is the context of Divine Grace in the direct thought transfer message that I got was narrow and specific to the statement of how The Invitation to Awaken arrives; that it cannot be caused to occur either by the 3D being making it happen on their own, or by the non-3D component of the 3D being causing it to happen either.
This was news to me at least. The fact that this information came to me this way, and the fact that it was new news to me doesn’t make it universal truth.
One message that seems to be consistent among Seth, Frank’s TGU and Rita is trust nothing other than what resonates deep inside yourself, no matter what “expert” says it.
Craig, I can only encourage you to continue to go within yourself. I will add you may not get the answers you are seeking in the way you are expecting. And you might not get the answer you were expecting either. I often found that I would put a question out there (really in there) and then would be synchronistically led to material, for example Seth, or other written material that spoke to my question. Or somewhat “out of the blue” a person would recommend a book or make a statement that hit home. That was much more prevalent with me than the telepathy, or direct thought transfer, or ILC (whatever you want to call it) that is occurring more frequently now.
John
I’ve been staying out of this, watching with interest. i want to add, though, in response to your final graf here, John, that there is a saying that has proved itself to me: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When i was young i desperately hoped this was the case, though it seemed almost too magical to believe. Now i see that it is only what is to be expected, that our non-3D self would give the 3D self what it needed as it needed it. Lovely system, isn’t it?
Thanks for your further insights, John; I am finding, as I go along, that my “personal homing signal” is getting stronger (or I’ve learned–somewhat–to “turn down the static” in order to “hear” the signal). I frequently say to Susan (when confronting someone’s “proclamation of Truth”), “do ANY of us, ‘in-Human’; have that access (to Ultimate Truth)?”. I met Susan on a Seth-related website; we “began our (now nearly 14 years) conversation” there, but it was only in 2010 that I really started to resonate w/ that huge body of work, beginning, as I stated w/ “The Early Sessions”. Currently, I’m into the first volume of “Dreams, ‘Evolution’ and Value Fulfillment”, having read the works in sequence of publication (save for the posthumously-published “E.S.”, “Personal Sessions”, and “Early Class Sessions”).
Frank, I often wonder about that “student/teacher” question myself. I like your idea of “the teacher”, perhaps, as being our non-3-D self; the idea, to me anyway, of “sitting at the feet of a guru”, here in 3-D, “makes me nervous” (to quote one of the facilitators, in part, at TMI). However, when I state the Monroe Affirmation at night, I do add to the part about requesting the “assistance of those individuals”, saying “physically and/or non-physically-focused”, meaning I am opening to the assistance needed coming from someone “down here”, as well as “on high”.
Interestingly, I’ve been re-reading “Muddy Tracks” recently, and your description of going to TMI for the “Gateway Voyage” made me rather “homesick”, in a positive way. I guess it’s finally having been there myself recently. There is definitely something about the energy of the place!
One day (Wednesday), after I’d had a rather dour morning, trying to do the exercises (this was the “NDE-Intensive”, BTW) w/ little (consciously-recalled) results, I finally “surrendered my energy to the group effort”, and relaxed. That afternoon I had a most wonderful massage, which seemed to “open me up”. Later, between a couple of the CHEC exercises during the late-afternoon session, I was rather startled to look out onto the grounds, on an otherwise somber, cloudy day, and noted how everything just GLOWED, esp. the big, pink quartz crystal! Almost hurt my eyes! I “rationalized it away” by saying, “well, yeah, but I just came out of a dark environment (CHEC unit)…” However, this was true of the day before, which was even darker (and rainy), and I noted no such effects.
On the Friday morning, when we were all leaving, I went down to touch the crystal–and maybe this is my “overlay/projection”, but I sensed a palpable poignancy, which seemed to be connected w/ the physical Bob and Nancy. A little like “I’m sure gonna miss this place”, which I’ve experienced elsewhere before. Just wanted to share that observation…
Thanks again to all, for sharing from the heart!
Craig
Thank you very much indeed John.
You must be in touch with “the all-seeing-eye,”and Divine Grace.
ACIM also begins with the affirmation:”You are not The Body.”
There are some “AHA-moments” from time-to-time, and what you are telling here, certainly is among these inner “moments” in time. It is also reminding me of something I read long ago in the old book by Viola Petitt Neal,Ph.D. and Shafica Karagulla,M.D. The book is titled:”Through the Curtain.”The book is “outdated”/-out-of-print, but very expensive copies can be found at Amazon.
Blavatsky said it is up to us in “Lifting the Veil.” Hmm, remarkable what is “labored in the Store-House” of ours!
The book “Through the Curtain” telling about the two women`s Exploration into “The Unknown” territory of Consciousness. They did it much in the same way as Frank and Rita Warren did it before Rita continued with the conversation after leaving the body.
Jane Roberts&Seth too of course.
Yes,absolutely much to think about!
BUT, “Inner Peace” cannot be found other but “to EXPERIENCE” it (It cannot be”explained”in any way)… When the rare “experience” occurs, is it a sort of only “Being” (just “To Be”). Twice in my life i have had the rare “experience” and it happened when NOT expecting it at all…during extreme stressful feelings (long time ago when nearly “losing” the one twin in sickness at the age of 6 years old). The doctors told they could not tell if he would survive the operation… AN INNER PEACE without words “fell upon me” so to speak. And the boy recovered fully.
The second “Inner Peace” happened during a later time when felt the pressure in WHAT to do with my life (at the age of 45 years old, and the three sons moving out-of-the house for good in to continue their own life, which they have managed very well, stop all the worry)… All is Well(Rita).
I`m ever grateful for YOU ladies&gentlemen.
Bliss&Blessings,Inger Lise.
Inger Lise!!!
Good to hear from you again!! I was just in the midst of typing up my latest musings, and thought, “I wonder what happened to Inger?” About that very moment, notification of new comments popped into my inbox, and one of them is yours!
I can relate to those “Grace moments”; they seem to be “all too rare”, but “timely”. One I particularly recall was when I was 30, starting a new job/career, w/ a bunch of other changes happening. I went into an anxiety crisis that I was sure would kill me, and it was only by “determination of will” that I made myself begin my new job, as “shaky” as I felt. On the morning of the day which marked the one month onset of the “crisis”, I was driving to work. Beautiful Summer morning; all my favorite songs were being played on the radio, and I just “flew above the clouds” of my oppressed state. I still refer to that as a “Grace moment”; it “just happened” w/out my “having to earn it” somehow (although, believe me! I was “power-slamming” the positive affirmations in the preceding weeks!!)
Blessings to you as well!
Craig
John, your ” I often found that I would put a question out there (really in there) and then would be synchronistically led to material, for example Seth, or other written material that spoke to my question.” describes exactly as deeper insights came to me, The synchronicity appears to be a way to get my attention, that it can’t be my brain fooling me. Shorter communications came through writing sprinkled with words I’ve never used previously, another way to get my attention it seems. Increasingly, there has been direct contact, usually in the middle of the night, sometimes voice but often images. It would be interesting to know if this is happening to many, as I suspect. God knows we need guidance if we are to have a future. Frank, thanks so much for channeling Rita. Don
Apparently not only does the teaching show up when the student is ready, but it shows up in a way that the student is able to recognize and absorb, and that progresses the student via both content and process.
Inger Lise, I am grateful you brought up the experience of “inner peace”. For me, it is very hard to describe, as is unconditional love, and powerful healing energy that seems to come out of nowhere and overwhelm you. Hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it. It is unmistakable.
You all possess an awful lot of knowledge and experience. So glad you are sharing it.
John
As, of course, are you.
A mentor/teacher once remarked “ ’Why’ is not a useful spiritual question.” Rita and TGU have said a number of things I interpret to be ‘in the same ballpark’, and I’m interested (and gratified) that this conversation moves in (what I see as) the same direction.
In moving beyond ‘why’, Rita’s comment at the end of the session referred to by John’s guidance (May 18) speaks to me: “ … re-examine what you know, what you have lived, what you have at the periphery of your consciousness, and bring it forth to continue to transform your lives in reaction to – in interaction with – the revolution in your thinking sparked by this material.”
Jim