Expectations and access

[Thursday, January 12, 2006]

My friends, as I go through past journals I see much wisdom from you, chiefly on how I should lead my life. And I see moments of blankness that I – you? – have filled lest you be shown not to know everything. But it has been represented to me – why should you be expected to know everything? Where did that expectation come from? And one of my correspondents suggests that I unconsciously picked that up, as an attribute of God, in my Catholic boyhood. Comment?

You are coming a long way in a very short time, and none of this need be wasted, though you also needn’t copy this all down verbatim for your book on healing and guidance. You will see, though, that as you ask better questions – and ask them more widely – you do get more illustrative answers. What is better, you get some from one person, some from another, and you, being the common factor, obtain a picture different from any or all who contribute.

The prime advantage to this way of proceeding is to escape the inhibiting effect of mental filters. Mary Ann does not have the same filters you do; nor does Rich: Their contributions to your thought are promptings that we would be little able to get across. You see, then, how communities may function for the betterment and instruction of all.

(It occurs to me – on another wave-length – that politics has no third reconciling factor, which is why it is so unstable a situation; constant warfare between polarities leading it to ever more bitter extremes. In the absence of a reconciling force, it can only do this.)

That side-trail was not a side-trail but merely another connection in a different direction – well, a side-trail, sure enough – stemming from the same point. Only instead of concentrating for the moment on the advantages of alternate viewpoints, you shifted swiftly to the disadvantage of politics leading people to think only of opposition rather than cooperation. Then, to what would fill that need. This is the kind of associative thinking you do well, and often.

But to return to your question. Who did the expecting, if not you? Now, it is true that you think and perceive colored by what you are, which includes us, so, yes, one might say that we shape your expectations. True, but insufficient. We shape them, and you shape them. It isn’t done in isolation because there isn’t any isolation. You might think of it as a benign tug of war.

So think what this does, for instance, to the question of contamination. How can psychic material be “contaminated” by Downstairs input if you see yourself – as we do – as being Upstairs and Downstairs connected by links of greater or lesser clarity and strength depending upon the time and circumstance.

We are saying that the entire question of access and contamination and reliability is bound into the very nature of your assumptions about what is going on. Those assumptions vary wildly among you – so your experiences vary equally wildly, and your interpretations even of similar experiences. And what is true among you is also true within you, as your inner community of diverse forces and attitudes interacts. You believe x at some levels and not at others. You pledge allegiance to y at some levels and not at others which in fact may hate and fear y! So you could not expect consistent results even if “external” circumstances did not vary or waver.

Now, apply this specifically to your expectations that we would know everything. Knowing – well! – that you believed this, unconsciously, what were we to do when you began to learn to contact us consciously and began to ask us for information we did not have and could not get – and that sometimes did not exist (when you, assuming only one version of reality, asked what “would” happen), how could we respond? Eventually we were able to put across the fact that there is no one reality — hence no “would” about it. We could give probabilities (that is, relative counts) but if you took that as a sign that we were hedging rather than responding, what were we to do?

Now, access to Smallwood. Access to David’s book. Access to all the minutia of other lives, looking for evidence that it is not all fairy tales. We understand, we approve, and the question remains, why can’t we do it? The answer has to be, we can. For, if we don’t have access to these memories, what are we?

Except, not quite so fast. If you don’t have access to them, you don’t regard the fact as proof positive that they don’t exist. You think either it isn’t real or for some reason you haven’t the key, or haven’t it yet. This is true as far as it goes, but it’s true in both cases. In both cases, via us and via your-Downstairs-self, you need to have and use the key.

The key has everything to do with your own control panel. You knew this when you heard Ingo Swann describe the control panel a couple of years ago, but you forgot it in the press of events until you came across it again today. (Coincidence, no doubt?) You consciously set your access to other lives at 20% — starting at 10%, then moving up. Then thinking to set it to 100% but backing off lest the result of internal chaos. So the indicated solution to your great difficulty?

Yes, of course. I’ll go in and set it higher. Can I master 50% now?

You can.

Higher?

Better start with 50% and after a bit you can go higher. Bear in mind, results will come faster now. It’s a cumulative thing. Harder to get moving from a dead stop than to increase the motion.

Hmm. Are you saying that you would not provide greater access, or could not, whichever, because my internal settings represented my free will, which has priority?

It’s your life to be chosen from within the situation (though it is initially set up outside, of course). So yes, you might look at it this way – we will respond as best we can but your filters will block a good deal of our response – as we know beforehand, of course, so don’t think the frustration is all on one side! – and those filters are not only mental or emotional, they are sometimes the result of pre-set “switches.” You have the right and the ability to re-set them as you please, as Ingo Swann showed you and your journal preserved for you against this time of need and opportunity.

[I went to the recliner, sat there covered by a down comfort, with my sleep mask on, and returned to my journal a few minutes later.]

–Freezing cold! So, good contact.

Set past-lives contact at 50%.

ESP, contact with others, at 80%.

Shut off diabetes, heart, asthma problems, set them to zero.

I did a couple of other things, too, but have forgotten. I am freezing so I know something went on.

There was something I set at 100%. Friends, what was that?

You have forgotten so soon? Perhaps you do not exist.

Very funny.

Illustrative, though. Lack of through-put does not mean that one end of a channel has ceased to exist.

Yes, I get it, of course. Wow, what bone-chilling cold. Lovely, even though I don’t like being cold.

You set your access to ESP, and to contact with others especially, at 80%, thus putting yourself in the paradoxical position of having your past-life access continue to lag! (For, past life contact was at 20% and ESP etc. was at 75%.) Yet this is not by chance. Past-life contact for you must lag, slightly, for you to report on the process of developing access.

It is so difficult sometimes to see continuities when time-slices divide up our lives so sharply.

Yes. And your indicated solution is?

Easy – I’ll set the control panel to give me 100% access to this-life memory.

Excellent. A suggestion, though. Perhaps set it to 100% access to this-life input from past and present both, but leave future input significantly lower.

Maybe past and present at 100%, future at 50% like past-life recall and connection?

That should do fine.

Back in a few.

— Back in scarcely any, in fact. My coffee isn’t even cold. [sketches of control-panel settings, to serve as visual reminders.] Oh yes, it was love I set (not without a slight hesitation) at 100%, and openness to others.