TGU on creating a more stable platform

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

6:50 a.m. Have I lost the connection I had? Am I no closer to what I wanted than I have ever been?

It depends on what you mean.

Definitions?

At any given moment, your 3D consciousness will be in a different “place,” or “space,” as it is phrased: 3D metaphors for what cannot be easily understood in other terms. We would say something more like, “At different times, your mind forms a differently charged field, attracting different potential and thus effectively living in a different world.” Bear in mind, this too is only an analogy, though the nature of the metaphor is more subtle, perhaps.

We’re a moving target.

No, it’s more like you are a moving shooter, with an enduring reality your target. It is not that reality moves, but that you (seem to) move in relation to reality, thus continually making it as if you live in an ever-shifting set of circumstances.

Are you saying that explains our continually changing mental states?

Let’s move a little more slowly, here.

Your physical apparatus cannot be overlooked in this process. That is, you cannot overlook the part that physical circumstances play. That is, after all, the purpose of having you in an “external” world. You, Frank, have a tendency to underrate this factor in your mental constructions of the world, a trait you share with some distinguished company, such as Hegel or Emerson. However, sharing errors with distinguished men is not necessarily to your advantage.

Yes, I’m smiling too. But go ahead.

The moment by moment fluctuations in your “external” circumstances result in your having to balance, so to speak, and continually rebalance as currents shift. You are closer to riding standing on two horses, as in a circus, than standing on any kind of sturdy platform. Surely you can see this once it is pointed out.

I do.

So, your first task – anyone’s – is to create a stable platform. And how does one do that?

I suppose by learning to depend more on the factors that are less dependent upon external circumstances.

Yes but no. Mostly yes, only, what are “external” circumstances? What makes them external?

Not so easy a question to answer. It would have been easy, once. But you can’t absorb Paul Brunton’s understanding of the world and see the word “external” in the same way.

Well, try [to answer the question].

It will be different for everybody.

Yes it will. But try.

External refers to things we don’t seem to produce by what we are.

That is actually a very sophisticated definition, but you need to spell it out and continue from there.

Well, I guess by now it has come to seem obvious to me. If internal and external worlds are the same reality experienced by different means (intuition and senses), it is hard to see how anything could be both connected to us and not connected. In absolute terms, it couldn’t be. In practical terms, I suppose it is a matter of degree, and everybody will draw the line in a different place, but it will always be an arbitrary line.

Now cite the thought that just came to you, before you lose it.

I may have lost it in writing out your sentence.

You don’t have to write out everything, you know. You could take it as given and proceed. This isn’t a transcript, nor scripture, in the sense of every word needing to be recorded. But – what was the insight?

Take a thunderstorm, say. Clearly it is external to ourselves in any practical sense. We don’t create the weather around us, yet we have to live in it.

But –

But given that all possible realities exist, and given that we have the ability to change timelines at will – which amounts to the ability to choose timelines – then we can in effect change the weather by choosing a timeline in which the weather suits us. (So much for the pathetic fallacy, English majors.) And if we can chose something as “external” as the weather, what can’t we choose?

Nevertheless, when you cannot breathe, you cannot just wish the condition away.

No, but that doesn’t invalidate the statement.

Then, reconcile the two ideas: that you can choose which reality you wish to experience, and that you can’t.

That sums it up succinctly. We can and we can’t.

So, reconcile the two, remembering that either is not a fact, but a point of view.

That’s a very interesting way to look at it.

Well, one of the underlying problems is that you all tend to over-concretize “external” facts. This helps you to remember that you have that tendency. So –?

So I suppose it is a matter, as so often, of “Which you?”

Yes it is. Now re-read what we have done to this point. You, and anyone who reads this.

Okay. [I found it hard not to skim, but I did re-read it.]

You see? You are a moving platform, and you see the potential advantage of resting upon more stable platforms. To do that, you would need greater control not over “external” events, but over the effect such events have on your balance, your mental condition, your choice among realities.

We need to crystallize our personalities! This is what Gurdjieff was talking about!

Yes, but go slowly.

If we allow the relationship among the strands that comprise us to remain fluid, we remain fluid, which has its advantages and disadvantages. If we lock them into position, then we are a more definite unit than before.

That’s your idea of going slowly?

Very funny. Well, you do it.

Fluidity and fixity each has advantages and disadvantages, as you said. But why must it be an either/or? Why must it be a choice once and for all? Why must you (in effect) lock on to one reality forever?

That’s very interesting.

Thank you. It’s an interesting problem. The difficulty here is that one must hold in mind many conditions that are not always remembered [at the same time]. This is why the process of learning or even of remembering “how things are” is so slow and tenuous: You have to have gotten a firm grip on several preconditions, if you are to make sense of things. If, while considering one aspect, you cannot remember another, you cannot see how they interact; hence you will have only a distorted view of either. (And of course if you see the two in relation, there are always larger relations to be considered, so, it’s never a fixed result. But it is possible to obtain an ever-more sophisticated understanding.)

So, in some realities we crystallize, and in others, we don’t.

Sorry, but not quite.

I know, it’s not that simple. When is it ever?

It is simple as soon as you decide, “Hold, enough.”

Okay, MacDuff. Meaning, we can come to a place where things make sense, and stay there.

No shame and not even any particular disadvantage to saying, “That’s as much as I can (or as I care to) absorb for this lifetime.” This isn’t a test. It isn’t a prerequisite for other things. It’s all in what you want. That’s what free will means.

Well, so – “not quite that simple”?

Within any particular reality – on any one timeline, from any one point of view, however you want to phrase it – it looks like a wilderness of choice and an anarchy of different selves choosing different realities. But that is mostly a matter of one path judging other paths by the differences and similarities among them. You can’t make sense of it from the same level – you need to move to the next level higher (metaphor, remember) to obtain a platform stable enough to put all these alternative selves into proper perspective.

But you are not merely any one version. How could you be? You are all versions, and since “all versions” cannot be experienced from any one version, that should tell you that somewhere you know that you are more than any one of them, or how could you know?

I can’t decide if that is circular logic or not, but it makes sense to me. What I get intuitively is, the crystallization we’re wanting occurs at a higher level than any one timeline.

Yes it does, and every timeline’s version may have its own opinion of the process!

Huh!

Enough for now. You and your friends will want to chew on this for a bit.

If you say so. Thanks, and next time.