Then act like it!, etc.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

4:45 a.m. You really got my attention with that “Then act like it!” I even wrote it on a 3×5 file card and put it on the wall in front of my desk, along with my preceding sentence, “The larger being is clearly not centered in 3D, and we are each contained in it.” So I’d ask you to spell out, a little, what it would be like for us to live “acting like it.” Not that I don’t think you intended to do anything other than that!

Well, it got your attention; that’s good. But give yourself credit – give your selves credit, we hope – for being in a position to hear.

If we are, it is partly or largely due to the nudges we are given. In any case –

What does it mean in practice, acting like you are who you are, day by day? Wouldn’t it turn your priorities back right side up? Wouldn’t it discredit many unworthy goals and show the real worth of many things currently undervalued?

What comes to mind is, that is what Jesus was doing; that’s what his message was all about.

Of course. And you were ready to add, and Buddha, but perhaps Westerners should stick to Western messages, and leave other traditions for those with the advantage (and disadvantage, true) of having been raised in it.

I take it you don’t mean by that quite what it sounds like. What about “Nothing human to me is alien”?

You see here an advantage of this 3D/non-3D cooperation. If nothing else, it checks extravagance on either side, or misunderstanding. Yes, we are not setting rules in general. But for you at this time in this place, it is better to stick to what you really know viscerally, resisting the temptation to add intellectual bits that may serve only to shallow out the effect.

Let’s stick to the salient point. Yes, Jesus was turning people’s values, was reminding them – or suggesting for the first time, for some – that the 3D world both is and is not the center of human existence. Is, because that is where you are; that is where you will find everything appropriate to your awakening and your growth, but is not because all the things of life are meant not as ends so much as means. It is not for the sake of having memorized the times tables that you were set that task, but for the sake of having at your instant command a powerful aid to future calculations. It was not merely for the purposes of propagation of the species that the powerful sex urge was implanted, but also to assure that you would be interested in one another, involved with one another, to an intensity that otherwise could not be accomplished. It was not for the sake of producing masterpieces of art or science that your concentration is employed, but for the sake of the process itself, and potential masterpieces are in a sense a bonus.

These are my own thoughts, my own examples. I’ve said this many times.

Yes, that’s why we said, “Then act like it!”

Meaning, put our money where our mouths are.

Exactly. And that does not mean, “Stop being hypocrites,” for that is less common a problem in these circumstances than you might think. It is more like, “Pay attention to your life and stop being so inconsistent and wavering in your attention.” We don’t care much what you do, except as a result of what you value, but we do care what you choose.

I take it that means, what we choose to be in the long run, more than moment by moment.

Yes, but of course the long run is composed of moment by moment. So, yes we don’t care about any given decision per se, but we do care about that same decision as it forms part of your course.

Wavering execution matters less than wavering course, wavering goal.

This could hare off into unproductive hair-splitting. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.. The reason we would return you to examining religious thought is that it centers on what matters, and social thought, scientific thought, mundane thought, may not.

“May” not, rather than “does” not, which I was expecting?

Anything may lead you in the right direction. We’re always prompting you, it’s up to you how you respond. But you know how it is said that anyone may be an instrument of providence? That’s what it means, or anyway that is one thing it means. Any event has meaning, but you invest the meaning, it isn’t inherently only one thing or the other.

Is that paragraph as you would want it? It seems garbled.

Let’s press on. If people get the central idea, other things won’t matter. In fact, that is precisely what this is about: If you get the central idea of life, the life you live and the abstract idea of life that you hold, many things will not matter, or will matter less.

Career? Wealth? Status? Domestic happiness? Achievement? Learning? These are all good things in their own sphere, or may be, but not if they are put into a place more central than they should be, for that by definition displaces what should be in that more central place. You see? It isn’t offense, it is disproportion.

[This may not be as clear in words as it was to me receiving it. I got that it meant, it isn’t like “God is offended by your choice,” but that your aim is inaccurate.]

And that is how we would have you all rearrange your thinking about religious teachings. It is not a matter of what has been commanded, but of what works, what is accurate, what is helpful. The fact that the teachings of Jesus have been interpreted in one way does not mean that they were (or were not) meant that way exclusively. It means, that is what people were capable of extracting from them at the time. But if human nature does not change, or changes exceedingly slowly, human society changes much faster than that, and therefore presents new opportunities, new problems, and therefore new perspectives.

So what people 2,000 years ago could hear is very different from what they heard 1,000 years later, or we 1,000 years after that.

Is it not obvious, once said? To communicate, you need one to speak and one to hear. But if the one to hear is different, then the message will be different as heard even if it is the same as delivered.

The effect of the various ages of the great sidereal year? The Age of Aquarius, for instance?

Yes provided you do not fall into the simplistic thought that the nature of an age is going to solve all problems, change human nature to be all light and no dark. What a change of season brings – and from our non-3D point of view, it is closer to a change of season than an epoch-making event – is new or different channels through which the same old forces express, or good and evil.

Good and bad, good and evil, good and not so good?

Evil is not disposed of by defining it out of existence. Even though the world is not divided ultimately, it is divided proximately, or, let us say, in any near-term that people can live in. You do not cease to live in duality merely because you are tired of living in duality. However, changing your thoughts about it will change your experience of it.

So, let’s rest here. The point is that you can take the message of Jesus, which is very concisely put in the gospels – the gospel of Thomas not least – and begin to (or continue to) use your discernment to read them in a different way more appropriate to your condition.

Would you do that with us?

If you like.

I’ll think about it. good session, this. Thanks.