TGU on lives of service

[Rather than a session this morning, this excerpt from The Sphere and the Hologram, because I was led to it in connection with thinking about writing a book on the process of connecting with guidance. I know this looks like it was all about me, but it’s all about us, actually, as far as I can see, using my life only as an example.]

November 20, 2001

Lessons from Frank’s Experiences

R: Frank seems to have had a really good time at this conference he’s been to [Prophets Conference, held in the Florida keys].

TGU: As we did too.

R: Is there anything that occurred that he didn’t take note of that would be worth mentioning?

TGU: Good question. Very good question. The kind of question you might ask every so often. We’ve encouraged him to say “what am I forgetting to ask,” you know.

Actually, not a whole lot, because he lived very nearly all of the time consciously connected to us. Which is one of the reasons for the euphoria, if we may say so. If there were anything that we would call his attention to, it would be that there was still in him the tension between “what should I do, what could I do.” “What’s desirable, what’s possible,” that kind of thing. But actually that’s really not worth mentioning, because every time the temptation came up he made the decision to say, “no, no I’ll trust.” And it’s not the first time, but it’s the first time that he’s ever done it for such an extended period of time. There’s nothing he didn’t see that’s worth talking about. The question will be more in his living what he knows now.

R: Sounds really good.

TGU: It was very good. [pause] You see, to him it was a homecoming. At the end, he looked around and – well, how do we say this? He has said already that this is a time that you all came here for, but it was at a different level of knowing this time. And now to see himself as one of the players; not as a potential player but to realize that he as Hampton Roads [Publishing Company] is already a player, was very validating. And [chuckles] we’ve been telling him for years, “if you want to be a writer, be a writer, but that’s not as important as what you came here to do, which is Hampton Roads.” And he’s had serious resistance to that message! [laughs]

R: But he’s now heard that.

TGU: He heard it. [pause] And appreciated it.

R: That doesn’t mean he can’t also be a writer.

TGU: Well, we never said he couldn’t be. In fact, this might be worth a word, because it has its instructive quality for others. One writes out of what one knows, and what one knows is partly one’s internal experience and partly external. And although it’s not obvious, partly what one knows internally comes from other lifetimes, other experiences, other dimensions. (And, in the case of genius, other things from the larger being are channeling through them.)

So what a writer is flows out of what a writer’s life is. It’s not like a writer has to have an interesting set of external experiences in order to write about something that’s important. But the internal experiences are not divorced from the external life either. So in his case, he has been led, kicked, forced, prodded, encouraged into a life that he never would have chosen by himself, and he chose this life seemingly for other reasons.

He often thought that he was in business in order to support himself and not have to work at a different kind of job, you see. But what was really going on was, this was a part of his contribution toward providing a major axis of realignment for the world. Hampton Roads as a company and Hampton Roads’ books as product, and Hampton Roads’ relationships among its authors and customers, and readers and investors and all, itself provides part of the way for people. This is not what he set out to do, consciously. And often he would have gladly given it up save there was no way out.

And had he had the opportunity to write in those ways (and we wouldn’t have had any objection) it wouldn’t have been much more than the exercise of a skill. Whereas now, by what he has become and experienced and where he is and who he knows, the writing will be more than that; it will be in service.

You asked, “was there anything he didn’t realize, that we’d want to say,” and the answer more or less was no. But – it occurs to us now – had the question been, “was there anything he realized that he hasn’t realized in this context,” the answer would have been yes. Let’s tell it as a story.

He told you about Ilona Selke, and what a great impact she made on him. What he didn’t happen to tell you, only for lack of time, was that he’d spent time in the mornings watching the dolphins in this penned enclosure. Even though it interacts with the waters right outside of it, it’s still penned off. And someone mentioned that Ilona had told them that she didn’t like communicating with those dolphins, it made her too sad, because they were captives, as opposed to the ones that she’s used to dealing with, which are in the open oceans.

And although he saw that point of view, his immediate response was, “no, these dolphins are not having their lives wasted. They are in service. Many, many more people will see dolphins in captivity than would ever see them in the wild, and those who see them can be changed. And so therefore, their life is a dedicated life of service.” And he specifically made the connection to the people who were working at the hotel, who weren’t necessarily thought of by the participants, you see, because they were background. But they were in a life of service as well. Regardless of their intent. They may have been just there for a job. But the effect was a life of service.

The realization that he came to is just that: that the important tasks are tasks of service, not of an attempt to gain notoriety or money or satisfaction or the exercise of skill or anything like that. So it’ll show you how important your questions have been, that a slight nuance in the question elicits an entirely different – sometimes seemingly contradictory – response. We’ve said that you point the question and we sort of coalesce around the point. And so this is an example of that.

R: It’s interesting that I had thought first about asking it in the terms that turned out to be the alternative question, and then changed.

TGU: Yes, and had you done that originally, we wouldn’t have come with this explanation. Well done.