Nathaniel on Anastasia’s question – 2

Thursday, November 30, 2017

1:15 a.m. Okay. To continue –

The question under consideration is why, of all the possible paths in existence for each of us, are we on this one?

We said, remember, that Sam experiences all its creatures’ lives minute by minute, not in summary form afterwards. We made the analogy to your own awareness of your own subsystems with their different level and quality of consciousness. We described reality as being analogous to a decision-tree structure, wherein all relationships are automatic rather than forced; that is, things relate by the nature of what they are, rather than having to conform to some external pressure.

Yes, and it took the whole hour to get what you just summarized in a paragraph.

So it did, but nothing lost. It isn’t a sprint, but a marathon.

You now have to correct your views – painfully acquired at a different stage of inquiry – of choices, and alternate time-lines, and personal growth. This may have something of the flavor of hauling yourself up by your own bootstraps, as they say, because while believing one thing you need to entertain another thing that will at first seem to contradict it. As always in such situations, the key is to hold your beliefs loosely and see what happens. What you get at any one moment – including this one – need not be your touchstone forever.

Okay.

Well, it is easier to assent to the general principle than to actually do it in practice, but let’s see.

When a world, a universe, a reality – call it what you will – is created, all possible paths are thereby created. You have been told this. All the uncounted either / or decisions that anybody could be faced with, depending on what happened previously, all spring into existence as possibilities. But this does not mean that someone’s planning is revealed; rather, we’re saying the possibilities of the situation are implicit at the moment of creation. That doesn’t mean anybody could foresee them all, or would even care to try to do so; it means only that they exist.

You and I are on the same side of this particular difficulty you are struggling with. I know that you are trying to say something very simple and are concerned that it not be misunderstood. But I can’t think of a way to say it that is better than what you’ve said already. The possibilities exist that are inherent in the structure of the 3D / non-3D universe. That doesn’t mean they all manifest, merely that they are all potential paths. I used to use the analogy of a game being played on a computer. All possible paths exist in the game’s programming, but only one path is manifest at any one time, and it manifests as a direct result of the player’s on-going series of choices.

It may be that we cannot say it any more clearly than that. If people misunderstand and communicate, perhaps we will find a way to make it clearer. But for the moment we will proceed.

You have been told that at every decision-point, one version of you takes the “heads” path and another the “tails.” This is true and yet not true, and if we can clear this up, many things will become clearer.

Well, I hope so. “Yes but no”; it has a familiar ring.

The difficulty concerns versions. You have been thinking that every choice is taken both ways at every time, hence resulting in a probability-cloud that balances out (since for every heads taken, there will have been a tails taken). That is true over time – and here is where the difficulty is. That is why we are looking at it from the Sam’s point of view, not the creature’s.

The Sam receives continual feed from all its creatures. This one aspect of its life (that is, the aspect that amounts to its parental role) is not the only aspect there is, but we will confine ourselves to the aspect in the hope of making a clear statement. Only – remember. Your Sam lives through you, yes; but you are not its whole life. It has more things to do than monitor the health of its blood cells, so to speak.

The information the Sam receives changes every moment. Remember that. Nothing is static. All its components – its “children” – potentially interact, which in effect means that nothing is ever settled. When one piece changes, it thereby potentially causes any or all other pieces to change, in direct or indirect reaction to it. And this is considering only pieces of the one Sam, interacting! It doesn’t begin to consider interaction among Sams, nor will we at this time.

I’m getting a very hazy idea of where you may be going with this. If we post ourselves on the way it appears to the Sam, the sequence looks different.

It is intensely interactive, and different paths light up in reaction to different interactions.

Let me try. Because A over here changes, a different version of B lights up, which may not only interact with A but with undetermined others. The version of Frank’s life that lights up depends partly – maybe largely – on what happens elsewhere.

So far, so good. But we need to go a little bit slowly. You say “version” but actually what lights up may be a decision-point, and that decision-point, considered broadly, may affect many, many versions.

And from our point of view, such a decision point may be a moment of particular consciousness for us?

May cause greater consciousness for that moment, yes. You will in essence “wake up” a bit. You will be more alert, less sleepwalking your way through the action.

I get, though I don’t get the logic of it, that those lit-up choice-points – choices already having been made, and maybe more than once – represent a testing and an opportunity.

It may be easier to grasp if you consider the effects on your present life of “past-life” experiences. By experiences, we don’t mean external events, we mean how that life changed in response to decisions precipitated by those events. Given that those other lives connect with yours, and that you influence each other in this eternal present moment, anything that happens and changes any of you has the potential to change others of you. This much is clear?

I had to realize that all lives share the living present moment. Once I did – and that was some while ago now – my understanding of “past lives” transformed. So, this is clear to me, at least. Whether to others, I guess we’ll see.

Well, can you see now that your previous understanding was a little too static, too fixed? The continuing interaction and continually recurring decisions mean you are, yourself, the probability-cloud that you understood to be the sum of all either / or decisions. That way of looking at it was correct in a limited sense, but it looks different when you concentrate on the interactive nature of things.

Seems to me our ideas on the probability-cloud and all were fed to us via these conversations.

In which your consciousness was an integral factor, and in which scaffolding was constructed that, you were told, was going to be removed at some point.

To make way for more scaffolding.

We don’t know of any other way it can be.

I’m not sure that explains why any of us are on this rather than other possible timelines.

The short answer is, because you are not autistic. That is, your life is shaped by outside forces as well as by your choice. Once you absorb that you are parts of a much greater whole, some of the limitations and possibilities of your existence will appear in a different light.

Enough for now.

I look forward to re-reading this later today, to see how it holds up in cold blood, so to speak. At the moment it seems pretty good. Okay, till next time.