Friday, March 16, 2018
5:45 a.m. Well, friends, shall we continue? You indicated yesterday that we could do this either of two ways. I could provide the initial question or you could start. You start, por favor.
Very well. All we are doing in this small series is coordinating two ways of seeing the world, so that they may illumine each other. The large-scale view is – What is the structure of life as we know it; what is The Big Picture. The small-scale view – but not in any way a less important one – is, What is my part in the grand scheme of things? One says, What is the overall picture. The other says, How do I make sense of what I experience locally, so to speak.
You say, “in this small series.” Meaning our present occupation, or meaning since this began 25 years ago?
Both. it’s merely a matter of interpretation. The point is, we want this to be intellectually satisfying (and challenging) and no less emotionally engaging. We are for building the castle in the air and putting the foundation under it, a la Thoreau. It has much less to do with any of you in this generation – that is, at this time centered on the change of civilization – than on what is to come.
You are asking us to create your part of the new mythos.
That’s said badly. Center and try again.
You are providing us with a way of looking at things that will clear the way for new perceptions, hence new experiences, and this is a developmental process that will broaden with time beyond what we here and now will experience.
Better.
And a part of that rejiggering is to call our attention to the living elements of the old mythos.
Well – that is one way of looking at it. Let’s put it this way. Seth’s major impact upon society will be the casual and effective undermining of the contemporary position of meaninglessness. His work – which, notice, has yet to reach its full effectiveness, being barely 50 years on the scene – came at a time when the decay of the old mythos was clear to some (though not yet to most) but no way forward was indicated. That is, Seth’s intent and effect was to help clear the ground by creating an intellectual path forward. You see?
I think you are saying that Seth’s work was for the early adopters, the people whose intuition led them to recognize the truth, but that most people will take a much longer time to appreciate what they [the early adopters] got intuitively.
More (and, go slowly; it’s better), like Carl Jung’s work, or the work of any true pioneer, it is mostly unintelligible at first, because people necessarily come to it while functioning from their precedent assumptions, which makes it difficult to apprehend or incorporate anything sufficiently different. Only with the passage of time does some of that new influence move into the culture, hence giving new people a vantage point closer to that of the pioneer like Jung, or, in art, like Picasso, say. That is, the slow diffusion of the innovator’s influence makes it easier for later-comers to see what is there to be seen.
All right.
Necessarily, therefore, the innovator’s initial influence will be limited, in two senses. Limited in the number of people who can apprehend it, limited in the amount of his innovation they can apprehend. Initially, only a few will be able to follow. Initially, those few will be unlikely to see the accomplishment in its full extent. There is nothing wrong with this; it is how innovation diffuses without unnecessary upheaval. Note we said without unnecessary upheaval. That is not that same as saying, without any upheaval at all.
But when someone comes in and accomplishes something, one thing you may be sure of. Two things, actually. It will not have been finished, and it will not be continued in exactly the same form as it was begun. So Jung said, “Thank God I am Jung and not a Jungian,” and Seth would have said something similar.
Understand this well. To imitate one who has brought in something new is not flattery and is certainly not contribution. Imitation is the opposite of innovation. To continue the work, it is necessary to continue in the spirt of the original, which was fearless exploring of the path which presented itself. Jung’s path will not be yours – no matter who it is who reads this – nor Seth’s nor anybody’s. Your path will arise out of your own humdrum boring unsatisfying puzzling life, just as everybody else’s did.
All right, I think we have the idea.
But it is easy to lose sight of the fact, because admiration for the innovator, combined with self-deprecation and undervaluation of the familiar, may tempt you (anyone, you understand) to leave the pathless path of the explorer unknowingly, and wind up instead following the path (or what seems to be the path) of the admired predecessor.
So, to return to the primary point. The old mythos, call it the Age of Pisces, centered around a way of seeing the world that no longer leads forward because imitation is not pioneering. You see?
I do. The content of the Age of Pisces led forward into uncharted waters, or say it was an advance into an unknown wilderness. As long as it was a pioneering, it was an advance. As soon as it became an imitation of itself it began to die.
That’s a little too broad, but it will serve as orientation. So, the Age of Aquarius will explore a different forest, will live in a different world because it will bring new eyes to old scenes. But what it will not do is bring a return to the Garden of Eden. It will not bring the events of the Apocalypse, the last battle against evil and all that. Instead, it will pose old problems and opportunities in new guise, and will pose new problems and opportunities, arising from new ways of seeing.
And – here is the nub of it; here is why we went over the sins and virtues glancingly along the way – new ways of seeing do not come about by ruthlessly discarding everything that has been seen and experienced prior to date. They come about by seeing those same things with new eyes.
Note that: New eyes, but not new facts.
So, to throw away the spiritual heritage of humanity – the scriptures, the philosophies, and the unallocated wisdom, call it, that doesn’t fit into any of these structures but nonetheless has captured truth – to throw all that away and start from scratch would be not so much pioneering as imitation-by-rejection.
The Age of Aquarius is going to be much more head-centered than the Age of Pisces. Knowledge, not just belief. Does that mean it would be wise to discard what the human heart learned, these two thousand years?
At the same time, the past 500 years began a transition. What is the scientific and materialist revolution of the past 250 years but a seeking for truth outside of religious structures and strictures? What was the Protestant revolution that enabled and preceded the scientific revolution by 250 years but a seeking for truth in individual conscience rather than institutional consensus?
The dominant characteristic and the rebellious counter-characteristics are all to be accounted for, subsumed, in what is to be created, only they may be unrecognizable, in that they will be seen in a different light.
So, you see? You can’t throw out science, or materialism, or piety, or religion, or art, or poetry, or human passion or anything, if you wish to understand life and your part in life. You don’t need to be able to see ahead of time what the new mythos will be – which is just as well, given that you wouldn’t be able to! – but you can live your truth, discovering it as you go, and this will serve you as 3D individual, and you as All-D individual, and you as collocation of strands from various epochs (who of course will change as you change) and you as part of a 3D first-tier civilization that will be the established “given” for future generations. That’s enough of a life-purpose, wouldn’t you say?
And that’s enough for the moment.
More here than I can immediately absorb, I think. Thanks for it all, as always.
I think there’s more here than I can immediately absorb, too, but I thank you for it. It’s dense but also clarifying. I love that TGU encourage us to fearlessly explore our own pathless paths rather than get caught in being followers of another. This time of change is a call for pioneers. That’s particularly useful as I contemplate new projects.
Again, I really enjoy TGU. Thanks to all involved.
Liking this very much!
What comes to me is an image of a school of fish or a starling murmuration. No individual is a leader. When one moves, all move. For this to be viable, individuals cannot be followers of anything. They all have to move in synchrony with the impulse – whatever the impulse may be.
Helps in my own sorting process concerning teachers and teachings. A live current of inspiration is indispensable – and yet – what you make of that spark is the only thing that matters. And in this culture, being your own guide through the darkness – definitely not the easy easy path. No amount of creature comforts can compensate for the reality of no community and no share in the stories of success and meaningfulness that the culture provides as givens. You have been handed a bread that just happens to be made of stone. No nourishment there, so you just go and find something that will relieve hunger. Disorienting in certain perspective, but shifting the focus into different aspects can bring forth an entirely different story. Maybe time of stone-eating humans is over, and the new food needs to be found now. In Jungian world, the old king is sick or dead already. How does the new king find his way into his own place?
And afte writing this went off looking at otium indignitatis – expression Jung used about the following kind of folks, and came upon this: … “instead of a brightly colored picture of the real world we have a bleak, shallow rationalism that offers stones instead of bread to the emotional and spiritual hungers of the world…. the picture that unfolds before us is one of universal spiritual distress, comparable to the situation at the beginning of our era or to chaos that followed A.D. 1000,… Jung (1954)” And now I am thinking are there any individual thoughts at all?? Or is it that we are all elaborating our own curlicues upon an impulse that started off somewhere in a galaxy far, far away… Making the best of the particular stones we happen to have instead of the nourishing bread. Interesting thoughts, thank you for the inspiration Frank & all!
Kristiina, Where is that discussion in Jung? What volume of his collected work? I want to read it. It certainly seems like the same idea.
Hello,
that quote is from this article http://jungiancenter.org/life-at-the-end-of-an-aeon-and-natures-support-jung-on-navigating-the-tumultous-years-ahead/
There’s a very nice collection of articles there, which I had not seen before. The one I started with, that quotes the otium indignitatis-paragraph is this http://jungiancenter.org/components-of-individuation-3-internalizing-a-locus-of-authority/
All with footnotes and bibliography. Such fine work! Making my life almost too easy. Saving me the steps to the bookshelf and taking the trouble to browse the indexes.
Thanks.
“Innovation diffuses without unnecessary upheaval” – that chemical process – is it called titration? You keep adding a substance – call it pinkness – and nothing changes. The liquid just seems to eat up the pinkness. Keep adding and adding and nothing changes. And then the one drop – the whole liquid turns pink. So for quite a while there will be secret agents of pinkness wearing colourless outfits. Unable to recognize each other because of the undercover process. Ha! Funny. Just turning the knob a little to catch the fun, adventure aspect of what is going on – reframing – what a difference.
This is getting embarrassing…can’t stop it seems. So, doing my little spanish excercise on the phone app (starting a new language is way interesting and i did not expect to do that anymore). It pops to my mind this is how you lead into new things. You keep repeating into frustration the new things that do not quite make sense. The body/animal needs the conditioning to feel safe. So the new needs to be anchored in the old. Babies can and will take all in without this process but it is as if the adult brain is set up so that it needs a gradual shift, easing into the new. We know so much about learning now, how to make it as effective as possible. As if we are preparing to become super-learners almost on par with babies. Absorbing as opposed to translating.
The 3D first tier makes me wonder. There are other tiers and we are part of the continuum. Is it as if we can be a bit leaky between the tiers?
Why embarrassing? Both analogies, titration and learning a new language, are useful and I’m glad you shared them. The titration analogy is particularly helpful, and hopeful.
I realize thinking about this, that what comes to me feels a bit like throwing up, puking: something comes from my inside that I don’t really know what it is. Whales puke up precious amber, cats puke hairballs&half-digested mice. It feels like it is maybe better not to bring it to open – it can always be a partially digested mouse, that is an embarrassment to all involved. But I could try reframe: it is a well that pours out something. Part of the earth doing its job. Thank you for pointing that out!
So I got the impression that we’re stirring the stew and bringing new ingredients to the surface, but we don’t want to throw out any of the ingredients that went into making the stew in the first place. (Or maybe we’re adding a few new ingredients along the way?)
Both, I suspect.
I was struck by TGU’s comment “Seth’s intent and effect was to help clear the ground by creating an intellectual path forward.” If you resonate with (what TGU calls) that ‘intellectual’ path, you might take a look at the (voluminous) information from Elias at http://www.eliasforum.org/index.html.
Elias’ information rounds out the lines of knowledge from Seth and TGU for me, adding sparks for my interaction and work with Guidance.
The Elias Forum is big, representing an immense amount of work: a lot of effort went into transcription (Vicki Pendley and others), and (I’m guessing) site organization by Paul Helfrich. Paul’s introduction (http://www.eliasforum.org/intro/introduction_overview.html) is a good place to start, and I found his comparison of Seth and Elias interesting (http://www.paulhelfrich.com/library/Helfrich_P_A_Seth_Elias_Comparative_Overview.pdf).
Elias began his ‘energy exchange’ sessions with Mary Ennis in 1995; he speaks to small groups in a very personable, friendly, supportive way. The first three thousand or so session transcripts are in the Forum, with very useful ‘digests’, a search facility, and other discussions. The later transcripts are in Mary’s present site (https://www.eliasweb.org/Default.aspx); they go through 2/18/18, so I’m guessing the ‘energy exchange’ continues.
Jim
“Intellectual truth will not make you free, you see, though it is a necessary preliminary. If this were the case, your walls would fall away, since, intellectually, you understand their rather dubious nature. Since feeling is so often the cohesive with which mind builds, it is feeling itself which must be changed if you would find freedom from your particular plane of existence at your particular time. That is, changing feeling will allow you to see variants…” (Seth: Dreams and Projection of Consciousness, Jane Roberts, Stillpoint 1986, p. 83).
Also, I’m a fan of Elias as well, thanks to Jim.
Jane P
Seth: “Intellectual truth will not make you free, you see, though it is a NECESSARY preliminary.” (caps mine)
Elias repeats that we’ve come through the ‘Age of Religion’, roughly from the time of Jesus to the beginning of the 20th century; feel that’s what TGU is calling the Age of Pisces. Age of Faith might be just as useful as a designation, in the sense of “Don’t question/think about it, just believe/have faith in what we (church/religious leaders) write and say!”
I hear TGU (like Seth) saying that the intellectual component, while not the answer, IS important … at least for the folks they resonate with, like those of us in this blog. “ … we want this to be intellectually satisfying (and challenging) and no less emotionally engaging.” Seems like we always get back to the B-word: balance …
Jim