So far and no farther – the limits of communication

I awoke this morning missing my communications with Rita and, earlier, with Papa Hemingway. (I would add, “and with myself,” except I talk to myself all the time.) I went back to read Rita’s last communication, and remembered that there had been a couple of paragraphs I hadn’t shared. I had awakened from a dream that led me, by a process of association, to words “An Affectionate Farewell,” which had come to me during my attendance at The Monroe Institute’s Professional Division meetings. I thought, “An Affectionate Farewell,” probably a title or subtitle for this book we’re writing, or, maybe not. Maybe it was Rita’s way of indicating to people that three books is all they get, rather than an open-ended series. So, I asked.

F: 3:30 a.m. You were saying?

R: You might think we have scarcely embarked upon our journey of exploration and exposition but in fact most of what needed to be said has been said. Now it is for each person to apply the lessons as they have been given. What we have done, in this little collaboration, is twofold, and consists partly of the information itself, partly of the method of obtaining it.
We could, I suppose, continue for quite some while to add detail and even to add entirely new realms of concepts, put it that way, and there would be value to that. But nothing comes free. The more we spell out, the greater the danger of becoming seen as authority – which

F: Yes, I see it. It’s always a balance, isn’t it?

R: I don’t know about “always,” but often enough, certainly. This is the nature of conveying information.

F: I suppose it’s worth a little spelling-out.

R: Smiling, as you say. Why, what a splendid idea!

F: Yeah, yeah. As I also say, “ I feel so used.”

R: And you love it.

F: Of course. But you were saying?

R: Just as you have come to see the process of gathering information as a two-step reciprocating process – perception alternating with interpretation – so you might see the process of conveying information, similarly, as a two-step reciprocating process, only this time information versus

F: Yes, hard to find the word for it. Processing? That isn’t quite right.

R: Perhaps we cannot yet summarize it in a neat antithesis, so let’s spell it out.

F: As you were about to do when I interrupted.

R: No harm done. And perhaps I wouldn’t have found it so easy to continue the sentence.
Our balance is between the
[Pause]
That dialectical approach isn’t working, even though it is a very simple concept. You try it.

F: I got it easily enough. The information itself is one thing, the effect on the reader is a different thing. If you don’t (if one doesn’t) provide enough information, the reader may not have enough meat to chew on and so may not be assisted in transforming his or her view of things. But if you provide too much, you risk weakening people, rather than strengthening them, by allowing or encouraging them to become too dependent upon an “outside” source rather than deepening their own use of their own resources.

R: Yes, that’s it. Of course the concepts of “not enough” and “too much” are impossible to cram into definitions or even into rules of thumb, because not only are they different for each person, they are different for each person at different times of their lives.

F: “You do the best you can.”

R: It was never any different, whether you are talking about scriptures or detective stories. On the one hand, you are creating a new window onto the world; on the other hand the real object is to help people see through their own windows, not yours.
So for instance, you know that Bob [Friedman] wants a firm picture of day-to-day (so to speak) life in the afterlife, and eventually you realize that the very phrasing of it as “afterlife” contains hidden assumptions that mislead. What are you to do? You see that someone else is trying to intuit “the meaning of life” and after a while you realize that that meaning varies with each person – and I don’t mean the interpretation varies, but the meaning itself, person by person. You see that someone else wants guidelines for how to live his or her life in the best way possible – perhaps the wisest goal of the three – and you see that anyone clinging to anyone else’s description goes off their track by just that much (as opposed to allowing themselves to be struck by something that resonates, and following it where it goes) and you see that the very process of helping people see carries the unavoidable side-effect of raising your own prestige as a messenger – which to that extent invalidates and changes the message. What to do? When to stop? What caveats to set out that will not become dogma?

F: And so it is always a tension of opposites.

R: That’s practically a definition of life.

F: If I don’t mistake, I’m feeling that you are seriously considering ending this series of conversations, or lectures, or whatever.

R: Notice the day?

F: Yes, a nice symmetry, eight years later. [That is, eight years after Rita’s 3D life ended.]

R: Let me say only a few words more, then.
Help is always available – especially in so far as one helps others. It encourages the flow, so to speak, and it reminds you that the help you receive is peer-to-peer, just as in the half you give. In other words, you are not a worm, you are not a god, and neither is anybody else you interact with. You are – we are – peers. Relatives, in a way. Associates. Don’t bow down to others, and don’t let them bow down to you.

F: Is that why I have such trouble acquiring disciples for the First Church of Frank?

R: It is why you make jokes about it, to keep your elbows free. It is a good instinct, if not carried too far. You remember that Lincoln told you.

F: I’m not likely to forget it. “Too much respect is as distancing as contempt.”

R: It is always a balance. Life is always a balance, after all, a tension of opposites in every direction, and you deliberately left free in the center, to move as you wish. No matter what you do, you will not run out of opposites surrounding your new position. Always there are new choices to be made.

F: I feel this valedictory mood so strongly, yet I feel that in some ways we have scarcely begun.

R: That is always so. Remember Thoreau, though.

F: Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way. He left Walden and didn’t quite know why, and often wished himself back there, but “perhaps I had more lives to lead.”

R: You will not get your remaining projects written if you continue to do this in the mornings. There isn’t enough “you” to stretch.

F: No guarantee I’ll do them anyway, of course.

R: No, but pretty close to a guarantee that if we prolong this kind of conversation, you won’t do them, and perhaps you would regret that. So, without promising or threatening that this is goodbye forever, at any rate I can say goodbye for now.

F: I have had Mr. Lincoln’s words in my mind this last week.

R: Yes. I bid you an affectionate farewell.

8 thoughts on “So far and no farther – the limits of communication

  1. I’ve been re-reading the Rita material, and the comment sections, too. Immensely important and the conversation is truly fruitful. Seems the whole thing has been stirring up stuff in most – many say something like: When I woke up, I had this [new thing] in mind… To me, Rita feels like a mentor of sorts, although I don’t have personal connection to her. It is just that the impulse from her has been so effective, I’ve been propelled to new places in my world-view.

    A picture that has been a lot on my mind lately: https://taniamarieartist.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/amaru-and-mallku-condor.jpg It’s a condor standing on a man’s shoulders. It feels to me this is how we are, just that the condor is invisible to us humans. And living our lives pretending the condor does not exist, or does not matter. But parting ways with the condor means giving up one’s power or fullness of life. And trying to make the condor go where I want will make me fall flat on my face (my personal favourite). So, eat humble pie and learn to feel which way the condor is heading. One may be able to affect the direction a bit, and maybe, with practice, it will be possible to be quite good at it.

    Dreaming life has gotten much. much more active. Things are coming up all the time, all kinds of things – some that I inquire about and some that just pop out of nowhere. But my long-time favourite question: what are viruses? I am not getting any progress. It is just so active right now as I am having one of these almost-ill phases, weak&achy but no “normal” symptoms of cold. I say to the virus: in-form me…usually something comes, but nothing that gives a feel of what the beinghood (hoping that is a word..) of a virus is. It is a bit strange, I choose just to live with the discomfort (which is not such a big deal) it just bugs me no end that I don’t know what it is that is chewing me.

  2. Frank,
    Very glad you reposted this; the intervening time and rereading brought me the sense of closure I’ve been missing.

    “… most of what needed to be said has been said. Now it is for each person to apply the lessons as they have been given.” So real, so true, and so painful … particularly so for me as I can see and feel my growth and change in the last 16 months. Perhaps something like adolescence, except not driven by biology but by … awareness? All of us have been through this before (graduation from school/college, leaving home, etc.); perhaps this time we’re just more aware of the endbeginning?

    In a sense you’ve gotten your “disciples for the First Church of Frank,” if that means following what TGU, Rita, and you ‘preach’: listen to and connect with my own guidance! As always my profound and deep appreciation!!
    Jim
    Be as fearless as you can about what comes next.
    Avoid getting stuck in your own constructs.
    Be fully human while you are human.
    Be complete in your soul making experience: that leads you toward wholeness.
    Live in the strength of being fully engaged in life … you are in good hands. All is well.

  3. Rita`s conversations with us (through Frank of course) are worthwhile indeed, just because it is about SHARING worldviews.

    Frank has a rare gift in “being a member of the human family” seeing himself no different than all other family members, no more no less.
    And that was something I felt (really FELT) in the very first time reading one of his books. And after having read 4 more of Frank`s books… it was confirming the same to me… The honesty in everything is Frank.

    It is phases during a lifetime.
    The life-changes in every one`s life all the way no doubt about it… as a child, a teenager, the adult life, and in the end … another consciousness (or more) added to it.

    Within the former Edgar Cayce study groups in us discussing WHY we do NOT recall everything when we are born ? And then somebody suggested we do remember, it is all laboured in the subconsciousness. We are here awakening from the hypnotic dream (of sleep).

    ..it is never a farewell just a homeward bound, “we`ll meet again, don`t know where, don`t know when…?

    or maybe we do know after all ?
    And smiles,
    B&B, Inger Lise.

  4. I like knowing that I am part of consciousness that resides somewhere between a worm and god.

    We could accept this “fond farewell” as Rita and Frank having provided a higher platform of knowledge for this place and time and our current level of comprehension. But there is also the flavor of there is more to be learned via our own connections and from each other.

    How the material takes root within us is in our 3D future. As we internalize it, our thinking changes: the mind that graduates after absorbing this understanding is not the same mind as it would have been. It thinks differently. Furthermore, as each of us internalize this material, we will make it uniquely our own, and that’s the idea of course.

    I would like to think of it as the lecture part of the class is complete. Now as they say, “The ball is back in our court.” As we apply this knowledge we will find more meaning to the material, and I hope as that happens it will be shared.
    John

    1. Your last graf here is important, too. The one who is student today is teacher tomorrow (while not ceasing to be student, of course), and so we pass on what we know and think and suspect and feel.

      1. Thank you very much indeed Frank.
        It is so very true.
        Our identity changes along the line always.
        The core within us to become the same though (as to have learned by now that is).

        Hm, I came upon a book on my desk this morning by Wilson Van Dusen. The book title is “The Natural Depth in Man.”
        Wilson Van Dusen, PhD in clinical psychology (1923-2005) spent his professional years working with schizophrenics. As a psychologist, he gravitated toward the depths of human experience, with a special reference of God.
        His later books on the spiritual universal that transcends cultural and doctrinal differences.
        His books include The Design of Existence, Returning to The Source, and Beauty, Wonder, and the Mystical Mind.’

        Wilson Van Dusen drawing from the insights of the eighteenth-century Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg about self-reflection, dreams, hallucinations, and the mystical experience.

        …hmm, learning from all these men & women who have walked the same path before us… (and in “the afterlife” trying “to reach us” through the veil), such as Rita and Frank.

        Here the other night I “heard” a sentence upon awakening, and it said clearly: “You have it all in your book-shelves.”
        I couldn`t but laugh !
        Bliss & Blessings,
        Inger Lise.

        1. I hadn’t realized that Wilson Van Dusen had died. That book — The Natural Depth in Man — was a huge influence on me, and was what introduced me to Swedenborg, back in the 1970s or 1980s sometime. That is among the best and most influential single books I ever read. Asto the message you got in the middle of the night, it’s so true.

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