Rita — a non-3D view of 3D problems

Saturday, May 21, 2016

F: 5:30 a.m. The theme we began on Thursday broke off when I ran out of time and energy and when you, I think, decided we were at a natural place to pause. So, shall we continue, or should I type up what I got then?

R: If you do the labor of typing it in, you won’t be fresh for this. Do this and you can enter both when you feel like it.

F: All right. Not sure I’m up to this, but when am I ever [sure]? You were going to talk about what people like Karen Paddock get from living an incredibly difficult challenge like, in her case, years of pain and incapacity. That much I know. But where you go with it, — well, let’s see.

R: You might re-read Thursday’s, to keep it fresh in your mind.

F: Okay.

[Re-read the entry.]

Did so. Your move.

R: You can easily see that a lifetime spent practicing playing a musical instrument, say, is about more than the production of music.

F: I can. But I get that that could use a little spelling-out.

R: Practice makes, not only perfect (as the saying goes) but also

F: Try it again?

R: The work of repetitive concentration develops channels in the personality. Put it that way. A lifetime of exacting self-control, say, will change the personality so that what was not natural to its expression becomes natural to it. A lifetime of study tunes the student to the material. A lifetime of generosity or self-sacrifice or – more darkly – of selfishness or cruelty or lust or anything may be said to hone the individual, to focus it, to finely tune it.

F: It is the opposite of Shakespeare’s “there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

R: Not the opposite, but the complement. You could say that we come into the 3D world rough-hewn with potential, and we work on shaping that initial heritage. The same rough-hewn logs may be made into different forms by different personalities and the circumstances they bring to themselves.

F: As always, I am aware, as I write this, that others may misinterpret what you mean.

R: That’s part of your job, and your training, isn’t it, editing? And your training was a combination of innate disposition – your heritage from the non-3D you emerged from – and the work you did in 3D, reading, writing, editing. You are, now, what you began as, plus (and minus) the results of a lifetime of choice and application.

F: I was struck by interacting [during the TMI program] with Tom, who has asthma but hasn’t learned some of the things I learned. He and I understood each other at a level that others can do only theoretically, for there is nothing like the living of a thing to give you its essence.

R: And that is what we are looking at. You told more than one person that once a given trial is behind you, its importance fades, or – well, you phrase it.

F: I said, in effect, we forget the difficulty, or anyway it no longer seems so important, and what we got out of it is all that matters. I said the guys had told us – and ultimately convinced us – that

Lost it! Lost my own thought, common enough in speech but always striking here. Anyway –

Oh, re-reading I remember. I said they told us, or anyway I concluded – that they don’t particularly care what we go through as we live – they don’t care about our moment-to-moment scorecard, you might say – but they do care very much about what we come to, what we have produced as a continuing mind (part of the non-3D group mind) by the time our stint in 3D is over.

R: Now, what you just said isn’t really wrong, but it certainly isn’t said as carefully as it ought to be said.

F: And that is your job! J

R: Our job, rather. I inspire and hold the larger picture, you execute and tend the successive detail. Together we produce a statement.

I would say, the non-3D cares very much what happens to the 3D mind – or soul, or personality, or lifetime, whatever term you care to use. Moment by moment we do care, and we are with you every moment. What else is guidance, after all? Where else is the source of miracles and of the unnoticed miracle that is the everyday life?

But we care with a different perspective, one that sees the larger picture always, and knows how to see things in proper proportion, rather than allow the ever-moving present moment to overwhelm all background and future, as it inevitably repeatedly does in 3D life.

When you see things in larger perspective, you see that a stubbed toe, or an F on an exam, or a failed painting or an intractable relationship problem is not the end of the world, and in fact may have little or no importance at all, regardless how it seems in that moment. In fact its only importance, usually, is lent to it by your reaction to it as obstacle. You may react well or badly, consistently or not, constructively or not – but it is what you choose to be in reaction that matters, not the obstacle itself.

Our larger and more interconnected view inevitably sees things differently. But bear in mind, you, living in 3D, nonetheless are a mind living in non-3D as well (for all beings must be in all dimensions all the time, aware of it or not). This means there is a part of you – guidance, you often call it – that identifies with our point of view as well as yours. One might say, you fully embody the 3D viewpoint and at the same time a part of you knows better.

Now, return our focus specifically to an individual facing a problem that overwhelms all other aspects of his or her life. It may be illness but it may equally be a relationship problem, or an emotional bent, or – new thought, surely – a talent or calling that is so compelling as to wash out the rest of life.

In all these cases, and many more that might be cited, what appears to others in 3D may be extremely misleading. It may look like the life was a train wreck. You might see a Bobby Fisher, say, or a Vincent Van Gogh, and think, “what genius, but what suffering, what inability to live a normal and happy life.” Or as with Karen you might say, “how blighted her whole life was, what a waste.” Or, as with you and anyone with a chronic disease that was not crippling but did have serious effects, “Oh, if only their life hadn’t been distorted by the need to deal with that.”

All these reactions are normal, but partial. From the point of view not bounded and circumscribed by 3D conditions, to say that is like saying, “oh, if only they hadn’t had to deal with having arms and legs,” or “oh, if only their life had been about something else.” Besides being impossible, would it be desirable? Would Bobby Fisher have been fulfilled making money on Wall Street, say? Would Van Gogh look back on his life with greater satisfaction if he had been “normal” and had lived a good rentier existence?

Well, it isn’t any different for anybody with anything. You can’t judge other people’s lives, just as the guys always told us, because you can’t ever have the data. You only see appearances, not essences. Nothing wrong with that, but it helps if you keep it in mind.

Life is never a train wreck, even when it is a train wreck.

F: On which note, I’d say we could wrap it up for the morning, unless you have more.

R: There is always more, and there is never any hurry. You might remind people that we welcome questions.

F: Okay. Thanks as always, and I’ll talk to your whenever.