Thomas, Saying 35

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

6:10 a.m. Saying 35

Jesus said: It is not possible for anyone to enter a strong man’s house and take it over forcefully unless he first ties his hands. Then he can steal from that house.

Not sure what this one means. Everything depends upon who or what the strong man represents. The previous saying refers to the blind leading the blind. The one before that, to not hiding our light under a bushel. So I suppose this may mean that if we are connected, we are strong and cannot be overcome, in which case the person who would steal from that house refers not to 3D theft but to something else. Yes?

Of course. Jesus was not promising physical immunity, nor 3D security. As noted earlier, history would contradict the promise, given the long string of martyrdoms that followed. Nor was that anything to his purpose of setting out the promise of 3D/non-3D life.

So look at it. No one can take over the strong man’s house unless he binds the strong man. No one can enter and take over, notice.

Does this imply what is called [spirit, or demonic] possession?

Let’s put it this way. An individual is a community, but is not the only community in the world, considered as 3D or as non-3D or as both. You do not live isolated, even if “all is one.” So you should not expect to live without interaction or interference. In practical 3D terms you know this, only you must apply it to yourselves while realizing that you are both 3D and non-3D, which, in practice, you tend to forget.

It’s true. The concepts seem to sort into separate mental buckets.

It is the process of associating previously separately held ideas that this is about. This is where new insight arises.

So then the question becomes: What makes the strong man strong? Who is the potential intruder, conceptually? What is it the intruder may wish to steal? And, by implication, how does one prevent the intrusion; how does one prevent one’s hands from being bound?

And the answer is –?

Light. Awareness. Connection: These make the strong man strong. These prevent him from being led into a ditch. These also provide light for others, though “others” requires clarification. For the moment, let’s look at it.

You are both stronger and more vulnerable than you realize. Alone and in conscious connection to your source, you cannot be shaken unless that source is shaken. But the source too is vulnerable to the vast impersonal forces we have been alluding to, and hinting at, and keeping at least in the background of the discussion, because here too, we are all connected, not autistic and invulnerable.

I sense that some may become politically offended by the use of the term autistic, as though it were a slur.

Understood, but such reactions are no more helpful to understanding than taking offense at language that is not gender-neutral, or parables that seem to lead to politically undesirable conclusions. It is important to keep one’s eye on the ball. Indeed, if it were not a diversion from the point here, this would naturally segue into a discussion of how misapplying scripture to realms it does not intend to instruct about – science, say, or sociology – leads to radically wrong interpretations. But let us stick to the point of the moment.

The non-3D component of which you are a part does not exist in a vacuum. It does not exist in isolation. It does not exist immune to the vast forces that contend in the universe. (Universe here meaning non-3D as well as 3D, obviously.) We have been a long time getting to this, but here we are. Another moment of redefinition for you, and if you enter into this rabbit hole, your previous understandings once more become so much discarded scaffolding.

We’re going to fall to the ground sometime, presumably, but I’m willing to risk it. Let’s continue.

Scripture, we keep reminding you, is written in such a way (or perhaps we should say concerns concepts of such a nature) as to require multiple interpretations depending upon one’s level of being. You can only get out of it what you are able to bring to it. Sounds circular, but there you are. You might think of scripture less as lessons than as reminders.

Listen, now. All men may be created equal in essence, but they certainly and obviously are not equal in any other thing that can be measured. This should tell you that all men are brothers and that all men are different. Both, not only one or the other. At some level, all are kin; no one is a stranger in the world. At another level, no one entirely fits into his surroundings; everyone is a little bit of a stretch from the (abstract) norm. If true in 3D, true in non-3D no less, though up to this point we have been considering non-3D individuals as though more or less identical.

Wow. This is redefinition, with a vengeance. Yet it is the same old process that you used with Rita, continually expanding the frame of reference to see how different things looked.

There is no other way, really.

So. Take the strong man to be both the non-3D-connected 3D individual (unconnected consciously, perhaps, but connected nonetheless) and that non-3D component considered in and of itself. Two very different fields of action, you see, the former oriented toward the 3D, the latter toward the non-3D as it includes the 3D. The former the more localized-in-time-and-space version, the latter the greater self, the larger being.

Clearly different beings, different fields of interest, depending as usual upon the turn of the focusing knob on the telescope, or microscope. But the results will be the same, in a sense, because it is the same forces acting upon the same objects, in a sense. It is only the scale and the external conditions that vary and thus seems to vary the result.

That’s clear, but a little abstract. Can you ground it for us a little?

You as 3D individual live your life choosing. You come into being incorporating certain values and preferences, and you live your life affirming or denying or modifying; exploring and retreating and pondering and equivocating. At the end of your span you are what your choices have made you by how they modified your original being. Given that no one is identical in composition to anyone else, you are in effect innumerable experiments in being.

These experiments in turn affect the larger being, the non-3D greater self of which they are a part, in two ways: directly, in that they offer direct feed, and indirectly, in that they affect each other, one 3D life bleeding over into another, and not as a one-time thing but continuously. Do you see that this means that 3D beings and non-3D beings alike are affected by the winds that blow through your world?

Now that you point it out. There wouldn’t be much point to 3D existence if it did not affect the non-3D.

And that is one reason why the non-3D is vitally concerned with 3D life, you see.

As religions have always maintained. Or usually, anyway; no way for me to know whether “always.”

You’re learning. But yet, that’s the point. So the strong man may be seen in 3D terms or in non-3D terms which includes 3D within it. But the Saying reads very differently depending upon how you read it.

It does. And we haven’t gotten to the question of what the intruder can steal, nor of who the intruder can be, nor of how the intruder breaks in.

What can be stolen can only be one’s possessions, and what possessions can a non-3D individual have? The intruder can only be another individual, and what can a non-3D intruder be but another non-3D individual? We defer the question of how he breaks in, as too large a question to be treated as an afterthought. But bear this all in mind, in pondering the Saying. It is true that Jesus was not intending to convey the non-3D aspect of it at the time; the 3D aspects would be quite enough for even his disciples to grasp, and his intent was always practical, always aimed at bringing access to “life more abundantly.” Still, the meaning is there, and comes out in other contexts, as we shall see.

Shall we? It will be interesting to see if we do or don’t.

A certain amount depends upon the vagaries of conversational flow, but major milestones will be reached one way or another.

And that’s it for the moment, I gather, it having been an hour.

It is.

Thanks as always.