Nathaniel on free will and predestination

Nathaniel on free will and predestination

Friday, October 27, 2017

5:45 a.m. We have a few questions queueing up, but I’m anxious to hear you on predestination and free will.

Very well, it’s very simple – or very complicated, depending upon which end of the stick you pick up.

It doesn’t seem so to us. To us it looks like it ought to be an either/ or.

But, remember what you noticed repeatedly whenever Rita would find a contradiction. The universe contains all contradictions, but does not contradict itself.

But is this a contradiction of fact, or only of opinion?

Well, a contradiction of opinion is usually either a mutual seizing of partial evidence – that is, neither party considering all factors, each choosing only those factors most agreeable to it – or

Sentence went on too long in time [that is, it came too slowly]; I wound up wool-gathering.

No great loss, but you aren’t quite here yet.

I’ll focus. Hold on. [Pause] I hadn’t realized. Go ahead, then.

Free will means, in essence, that in a given set of circumstances – at a given moment in the ever-flowing river of time carrying you along in your 3D life – you seize choices. That is, you have the real, not theoretical, ability to go this way or that way, like the lassie in the old song.

Now, I know that was me finishing the sentence, because that isn’t even what the song means! Try again to finish the sentence?

No harm done. Yes. You have a real, not a theoretical, choice. You really can choose heads or tails, A or B. You and Rita were told, first thing, that free will is the point of 3D existence, so that you will develop as you will, not as puppets, not as chips floating in rapids.

Predestination means, it’s all well and good to say you have freedom to choose, but your whole history leads you to choose one way rather than another. Not only your past but your future pulls you in a certain direction – or, one might say, holds you as a piece of iron might be held in an overwhelmingly strong magnetic current. That piece of iron won’t even be able to tumble end over end, though it might perhaps rotate on its forward-aft axis. To say that you have choice is to consider yourself as if you were in isolation; to say you are predestined is to see yourself as one tiny element in an overwhelmingly powerful, continuing organizing system; a rapids; a hurricane; a magnetic field. (Organizing systems aren’t necessarily calm or even apparently stable, but they channel immense forces.)

Swedenborg said humans were artificially suspended between equalized forces in order that they might have real, effective, free will. I think that is a fairly accurate summary of what he said.

Let’s set that way of seeing things to one side for the moment. Swedenborg was a great seer; so was Cayce; so were uncounted individuals known to the world and unknown. But nobody else’s experience and thought and conclusions can ever prove anything for anybody else. What they may do is spark a recognition, and of course that is what we are trying to do here, say things that some will recognize and profit by.

Thoreau said something similar once, that nothing was ever true to him because somebody else said it, but only because it whispered itself in his ear.

And that thought, expressed, in itself appealed to you, you see. It sparked a recognition. That’s why people find favorite authors; their minds run in parallel.

Now, bear in mind, free will and predestination – seeming opposites – both depend upon one way of seeing things, namely that there is one time-stream, one consciousness, one individual will, for each person. When you change those assumptions, everything changes; consequences differ as circumstances differ.

Why is this hard slogging, suddenly?

Because you are nervous, wondering if we are going to make sense.

Yes, I suppose so. Well – onward, then.

In a reality in which the physical world was what it seems to “common sense” people, there would be only one time-stream. The physical world would be solid, substantial (as it appears) and obviously could not be multiplied millions of times every day as all those people made all those decisions. One reality-stream; real and irrevocable consequences.

In such a one-timestream reality, the free will / predestination argument would naturally arise as people seized on this set or that set of unarguable facts that cannot be reconciled, for in such a system, there could be no reconciling them. It would have to be an either / or, and yet the evidence would be too great on either side for the contrary assertion to be sanctioned. Deadlock, you see.

So the clue is that the world is projected thought.

Projected consciousness; formed not so much into thought as into awareness. There is life without thought; there is no life without awareness.

Okay. The world is projected consciousness, and, as we have been told repeatedly, all possible paths exist; all are waiting for us to walk them, and somehow we do walk them all, choosing heads and tails, time after time, with our awareness restricted somehow to only one path, the others remaining only theoretical to us. It often seems only a fanciful idea, even after nearly 20 years.

That is because you have the wrong idea of who “you” are. You are identifying with the pac-man eating obstacles, rather than with the player playing the game. Or if you don’t like that example, another analogy would be you are identifying with the character and not the actor, or the movie-goer viewing the final film rather than with the film editor choosing among possible scenes.

We get the idea. Pretty hard not to identify with what we experience every moment, though.

You also experience the other level, when you don’t filter out the evidence as impossible or fantasy or hallucination or merely inexplicable.

Yes, I have a few friends who experience alternate realities poking in, every so often.

A more accurate statement would be that you have friends who are occasionally conscious of it, for you all experience it; only they do not always screen out what they experience but may have no framework for.

In any case, when you realize – or even, for the moment, theorize, pretend, envision – yourselves to be the one, single, undivided you that takes all paths, rather than the fragment-you that you customarily experiences as taking one path only (whether or not free to choose), you see that there is no real contradiction at that level. Of course you are free, but not free to take only one path: free to identify with this or that part of yourself. Of course it is all predestined: the paths existed from the moment the world was created; all you could do was fill them, or as it seems to you, walk them.

And all this has ramifications.

Because all paths exist, it is easy to see and even visit the future. (And how could anyone see the future if it was not already pre-formed?)

Because you change timelines – reality-streams, if you will – it is easy to cease to have one future and have another. (How else could real seers nevertheless predict futures that “don’t happen,” like Cayce predicting so many physical catastrophes that did not occur, instead of World War II, that did?)

We keep coming back to the same simple (but not necessarily easy) statement: You are not what you think you are; the world you exist in is not what it appears to be.

We do know that. Our questions mostly amount to, but who are we, then, and what is the world? And we’re glad for your assistance in orienting us.

Bear in mind, it is a continuing enterprise, because you – and we – may come to a resting-place, a comfortable way of making sense of things, and that’s all well and good, but ultimately there is always more to learn, always a deeper way of seeing things.

So we’ll never be bored, I know.

That isn’t the purpose, but it is the effect, yes.

Okay. More, or is this it for now?

This will do. Our thanks for your attention.

And ours, for yours.

 

8 thoughts on “Nathaniel on free will and predestination

  1. Thank you for your continued morning postings. I find that your blog has joined my morning coffee for my daily wake up. I was intrigued by the idea of other timelines not always being filtered out. I’ve had a few experiences in the last five years or so when I’m confronted with evidence that things I remember happening clearly did not happen, at least in the path I’m currently living. It’s disconcerting.

  2. This one seems easier to understand than some others. The idea of free choice is best realized in a vacuum. It is true, ideally.
    The “forces” or “tide” surrounding the entity has great sway, so you can almost predict the choices. Also, you are free to choose only among what you are aware of, so the description of restricting awareness has its effect on the freedom of choice.
    When we add the variable of “who” (character, actor, playwright) is choosing or aware, now new questions arise for me when I find myself being incomprehensible to myself

  3. The content today was fantastic!

    “As you go out on the way, the way appears.” – Sufi saying

    It makes more sense now as all choices (all ways) are already existing. The path continued to appear with each step (differing choice) because its already there. This both confirms and changes some things (for me).

    Thanks to all involved!

  4. First of all I’d like to express how greatful I am for this material. For me, after reading this, one question comes to mind which I am unable to shake off.
    Since all the paths and all the consequences of our choices/ decisions exist at all times, what determines which path/ set of consequences our conscious awareness will experience? Why is our every day awareness rooted in one path/timeline and not another, since all of them exist equally, and what determines which path that is?

      1. I will chime in here. I can provide a very general (but rather popular) example from another teaching. And, I can tie in some of the language that Frank’s contacts use.

        Abraham (Hicks) would hold forth that is ‘law of attraction’ at work. What you are pointing to as multiple timelines is what Abraham might point to as “the vortex”. Abraham talks about “getting into the vortex”, and in concept this is what Frank’s guys have called “being on the beam”. I have also heard Abraham use this same term (being on the beam). Rita, in response to my question about this exact topic, called it “keeping you eye on the ball”. I think that was back in August here.

        I do have personal warning about learning “law of attraction” (if you choose that). There are a lot of people promoting their versions of law of attraction around the world, but they leave out the most critical element – the non-physical element (e.g., being on the beam) or what many around Frank might call working with “guidance or your own TGU”. So, if you find ways to resonate (throughout the day) with “being on your beam” you will be much closer your multiple timelines and the natural non-physical flowing that comes with that vortex. Remember, this is the All-D – not physical and non-physical separately.

        Finally, I can provide something initially very helpful to me from Abraham. Abraham teaches that this 3D world is based upon the premise of “the more you do, the more you are worth”. However, we come to this world already worthy. How the All-D (or Universe) works is this: “the better I feel, the more I allow.”

        I need help with not blocking this allowing. I use daily meditation and some affirmations to reduce my resistance to the non-physical flow of the All-D. So, this is what I would suggest focusing on initially, as you get a better feel for “being on your beam”. If you just do that, things in your vortex will begin to arrive as you resonate with them, and then you can make adjustments with your desires as you discover.

        It is about creating, not the creation. Hope this is helpful.

        1. Subtle Traveller, thank you, this certainly is helpful in a way of understanding the connection between how desirable we perceive the events in our life/ how happy we are or how we are attracting certain events based on the Law of Attraction which can also be seen as switching timelines from TGU language. The topic of awareness/ focus however feels slightly more complicated than this as you dig deeper, which is normal and is the case with any topic in itself. For example, are all timelines experienced by somebody? Meaning the infinite number of options which all exist, do they have to have a ‘central protagonist or character’? It would seem that they do, in order to be experienced. And would that mean there is an infinite number of versions of me.. In that case, if I (and you) make a certain decision A which as a result takes me to a certain timeline which I experience, in choosing A am I forcing the other protagonist to choose B by default and vice versa? But that would get complicated, as no one version of me should be more ‘in control’ or get to choose first in theory… Perhaps I am looking at things too deeply, but none the less it is food for thought..

          1. Hi Anastasia … 🙂

            Yes. My response only spoke to part of your question.

            I might suggest continuing to formulate “your better question for a better answer”. Then give that question to Frank to ask. Frank has been very good at fitting people’s questions into his conversations.

            Many here benefit when someone presents a question.

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