Rita – a deeper redefinition

Friday, March 4, 2016
F: 5:35 a.m. Onward?
R: You are feeling somewhat at sea, but we are moving steadily and I haven’t forgotten what we want to accomplish.
So, to continue the probable course of the soul’s journey after separation from the link to the 3D. As I said, at some point – not necessarily right away, and not necessarily ever, in a way (in that loitering may go on essentially forever, even though it doesn’t usually) – the ex-3D soul will realize that it is holding itself back from realizing who it really is (so to speak), and will again let go of the sliding board. And then it will know that it is only relatively real.
F: Now we’re getting somewhere.
R: Yes, but you have the advantage of a more direct linkage to my mind, so you intuit what I mean. Just as the preceding exposition was necessary if what I am about to say was to be understood, so a considerable amount of careful definition is required here.
F: Well, I’m right here, pen in hand. I’m not complaining and I’m not champing at the bit. But it is nice to see that we’re getting to new territory.

R: Let me explain what I mean when I say “only relatively real.”
F: Sounds to me like saying “in a manner of speaking,” or “a convenient way of seeing things.”
R: Well, let’s proceed a little more carefully. We’re at the nub of a lot of things right here, and we don’t want to blur anything unnecessarily. At the moment, it is all a matter of definition.
In life, you never really have a very clear definition of who and what you are, but the question only arises with the most philosophical in nature, because of course you always have the body to act as your locus, your orientor in time and place. You can get by with just a rough idea and a few approximations as to conduct.
When you first lose contact with the sensory world
F: Not the way to put that, I know.
R: When your sense leave you, and you lose contact with the 3D world, you get by at first on your memories. They provide your world in so far as you have no external contacts, no external connections. In effect, you are alone and blind and deaf, and all you have is your lost and probably lamented world of 3D.
When you allow yourself to experience the ways in which you – probably at this point still defining yourself (experiencing yourself) as the self you knew in the body – extend in ways you may not have suspected, you realize that you are extended to others, and to a past and present reality, and “internally” so to speak, to your non-3D component. But at this point you are still experiencing yourself as the “you” you thought you were in 3D life, only more.
This time, when you let go of the sliding board, you see, as I said a moment ago, that this definition was never real, only relatively real. Your intrinsic nature was only in a way shaped by 3D life. You could see yourself in quite a different way, and, with a gulp perhaps, you now allow yourself to do so.
Of course it need not be a plunge. Some people jump into cold water to get the transition over with all at once, others put their toe in and get in inch by excruciating inch. It is only a matter of preferences, which way it happens. (But remember, the question of whose preferences rests on the question of “who’s in charge here,” and that may differ with each person.)
As a matter of fact, the way people get into the water – fast or slow, thoroughly or carefully [gradually, I think she meant] – will make their experiences seem different if not carefully described. Let’s concentrate, instead, on where they come to.
F: Except that “where they come to” implies a final destination, and any intermediate destinations would be different.
R: John Maynard Keynes said, “in the long run, we are all dead,” as you know.
F: I should! You stole that from me just now, I imagine. I don’t think Rita-in-the-body knew much about economics, or cared.
R: True, and irrelevant. The point is, Keynes didn’t realize that in the long run we move beyond being dead and there is always a longer run. There is never a “final” destination. At most, only an end-point to our curiosity or patience. But if we don’t at least provisionally fix temporary end-points to our discussions, it is hard to see where we have gotten to. End-points are no more than gripping the sliding board for the moment, perhaps, but they do help us keep our bearings, moment to moment. Perhaps a better analogy would be long stairways with landings. Every so often we pause on the landing to catch our breath before climbing again.
The landing I want to look at now is the one that follows relinquishment of the idea that we are primarily the “I” that we knew in 3D. We have already expanded that definition considerably, but now we abandon it (in effect) by allowing our viewpoint to shift from the 3D-consciousness to the larger consciousness that created and maintained it.
F: Not the larger being per se, I take it. Guidance? Our higher self?
R: Well, this may be tricky to really convey, because even in saying “our” higher self, or guidance, you are referring it to your 3D self, you see. Not that you can well help it, but be aware of it.
F: It reminds me of the time you had me in the black box and wanted me to step aside so you could speak to my higher self (though I don’t think that’s how you expressed it). I tried, but I had no idea how to do it. How do you (i.e. how does one) enter trance-consciousness and still speak? It didn’t make any sense to me, and still doesn’t. I can’t imagine how Jane Roberts or Edgar Cayce were able to do it. And this seems similar.
R: That is a valid point, and it points us to another aspect of the same difficulty. The process of moving from 3D-oriented consciousness to a consciousness not rooted in 3D involves a change in perspective that you in 3D find hard to really envision.
F: It’s like the Irishman in Abraham Lincoln’s story who told the bartender he had promised his wife that he would stop drinking, and he intended to keep that promise, but he would be glad if the bartender would put a little whiskey in with his drink “unbeknown to myself.”
R: Well, that’s the problem, in a way, yes. But you have the advantage of also being the bartender.
F: Well, that’s a thought! I hadn’t considered that.
R: And if not, how do you think you would be able to understand any of this? But everybody has their own non-3D component, and even if you can’t shift your vantage point to that non-3D part of yourself, you can accept feed from it, Can and do, and it’s a good thing you can!
F: And that is why we can intuit what we can’t necessarily define or prove or even do more than hint at! That’s Hemingway’s crap-detector, that knows what’s false even before it knows why it knows.
R: There you go. So now, let go of the sides of the sliding board. It isn’t dangerous, and it is fun, and it was designed to be slid upon, not clung to.
F: Next time?
R: We can begin now. Between when you read this (or, in your case, Frank, write this) and our next session, express your intent to let go of the self-definition that says “I am me,” and allow yourself, or even request, to experience the sense in which it would be better expressed “I am not me.” In other words, you want to experience the part of yourself that has been excluded from your self-definition, the part that was not born into one time and place, that perhaps was never born at all.
Only realize, “you want to experience” still leaves 3D-you as the focus. It’s a tricky redefinition, but you want to experience you not experiencing.
F: As I said. How?
R: We’ll go into it, but meanwhile make the experiment. It begins with willingness, not with technique.
F: That’s true in general, isn’t it?
R: Of course. Nobody starts out on anything by being already expert at it.
F: Obvious once you say it. The first thing has to be not knowledge or skill, but the desire for them.
R: And before desire must come the sense of possibility. You don’t desire what you don’t suspect exists.
F: Unless your non-3D component is prompting you with what Thoreau called “divine dissatisfaction.”
R: Would we do that?
F: Clearly not. Okay, till next time, then.
R: Till next time.