Rita: Why life isn’t easy

Tuesday, September 22, 2015
F: 4:55 a.m. So, gentlemen – or, in fact, Rita? I assume you have been following, if not participating in, if not precipitating, this recent return to activity? Your book comes out soon, or the first half of it anyway, and I had the feeling that we would continue after a pause. Our pause has been since May, more or less. Ready to go again?
R: You will notice quite a change in yourself since we left off, as the material sinks in.
F: Yes. I mentioned to Nancy yesterday that you and I had had a place to stand after the 2001-2 sessions, and then you sort of swept it away and constructed another.
R: You assented, in advance, to starting over.
F: I did indeed. And I was told then, and I see clearly now, that it would have been okay whichever way I chose – advance or pause.

R: There is no blueprint for these things. Everybody makes it up as they go along. It isn’t entirely free-form, because sometimes – well, you can’t very well pause mid-leap, your very momentum carries you on.
F: Like Wile E. Coyote when he runs past the edge of the cliff.
R: He is fine until he looks down.
F: Does this imply that just as there are processes that can’t well be interrupted, there are pauses that can’t well be interrupted?
R: You know, I don’t like to lay down rules for things. Just because a relationship often applies, you can’t safely say it always applies, or that it will apply in any given instance. But let’s leave it at this – a pause, or action, may have its own structure, its own completeness, that tends to come into being.
F: I think you said, pauses and actions both can be interrupted, which implies that the interruption is separating two parts that otherwise would be one.
R: That’s fine, provided you don’t push it beyond its limits. Again, don’t make a rule out of it.
F: So where are we now? In a pause, in an advance, or where?
R: Everybody who reads this will be in a somewhat different place. If you are in a pause, you will find nothing revolutionary or incendiary. If you are ready for a new leap, you will. And every stage between, as usual. Coming back to the material when you are at a different point, it will affect you differently, accordingly.
F: Okay. So the text for today’s sermon?
R: Life isn’t easy, and that’s the value of it.
F: That’s going to be a popular sermon!
R: Nonetheless, I think you will find that it rings true. Recall for your readers how children’s bones grow.
F: All right. I see where you are going. Children’s bones alternate growth patterns. First they extend, then growth in that direction pauses while they thicken. Then they extend again, [etc.] until they reach their desired limits. And I will anticipate (I think) by adding that their growth in one direction may look like a pause in the direction 90 degrees opposed to it.
R: Your lives meet obstacles, and dealing with the obstacles changes you, or causes you to resist changing, which changes you in a different way. There may come a period of consolidation which may look like a pause—a breathing space, say. You see the analogy.
Now, when I say your life meets obstacles, a more careful rendering would be, when your psyche has to work to overcome. It may be confronting “external” events or conditions; it may be confronting “internal” events or conditions; it may be confronting stasis. Whatever the obstacle, the effort to adjust, to overcome, is the work being done.
F: I take it you intend to spell out these three conditions.
R: Of course. You know my teaching methods.
F: I do, Holmes. [As in, “You know my methods, Watson.”]
R: External means in this context (only), conditions or events that appear to be imposed from the rest of the 3D world. Internal means those that appear to be imposed by the rest of (i.e. other) the non-3D world.
F: And stasis?
R: I separated that because sometimes it appears one way, sometimes the other, and often enough, both. Pushing against an obstacle that can’t be seen can be more frustrating than anything!
F: Plenty of room there for guilt. “I should be able to –.”
R: Exactly. Not that you have any experience that way.
F: Purely rhetorical expression, I assure you.
R: These obstacles are real. They cannot be wished away, or talked away, or assumed away, or “intended” away. They are real, whether they appear as a stone in your path or an ungovernable leftover emotion.
F: Such as I awoke with this morning.
R: Oh, really? What a coincidence, then.
F: Very funny. But I appreciate the assistance. And as you know, I am thinking of somebody else as well.
R: Yes, but this is not confined to the two of you or either of you. It is a universal condition, problems, and I am attempting to explain why. I remember well enough, first hand, there is a tendency to think that if you “do it right” or “get it” or even if you intend strongly enough, your life will cease to present you with problems.
Just the opposite!
Just the opposite, and – bearing in mind that all is well, just as we were told so many times – you should be glad of it. Problems are opportunities, invited or not, welcome or not. They are the opposite of stagnation, and the cure for it, and the generator of new standings and understandings.
F: I remember a newsman – Bob Considine, I think – saying the chief cause of problems is solutions..
R: That was an accurate perception, but it need not be generated by pessimism, and need not – should not – lead to pessimism. Problems lead you onward.
F: But – on behalf of others as well as myself – what about when you can’t resolve a problem? What about if you keep meeting it and meeting it, and it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t get resolved, it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere but back through the same door it just came out of?
R: You are braced for an answer you may not like, but there’s no need. All really is well. Discovering the mainsprings does not lead to despair. That is, the truth is not bad news. As long as you are still in the body, you are being carried along, and so your “external” conditions are changing, which means your internal conditions are changing relative importance to each other. “Where there is life there is hope” means more than “some miracle may happen,” though of course it means that too. It means, really, life will provide assistance if only by shifting the scenery. What doesn’t work for you today may work tomorrow. What didn’t work in the past may work today. Sustained intent is the key, and if you cannot manage that, renewed intent will do just as well.
This is why, by the way, people say that work on yourself is harder after death. After you drop the body, you realize that you are living in a world in which nothing is “external” to you. It never was, but the moving point of the present moment made it seem so. Without that automatic continual reorientation, you see that if you are to change, it is up to you as it always has been.
F: Fortunately, the “you” of it isn’t only what we experience. [Meaning, our conscious selves are not the only thing in play here.]
R: Correct. And this is a convenient place to pause.
F: Well, nice being in touch with you again, Rita. I know your fans will be pleased, as I am. Till next time, then, and as always, our thanks.