Thomas, Saying 36

Thursday, June 13, 2019

6:20 a.m. Heavy dreaming. I awoke thinking that life considered only in itself, as one life in matter, makes no sense. People’s sense of an afterlife and of other dimensions is not based on wishful thinking but on sure instinct, and perhaps memory. This fragmentary life is only a part of the story, and cannot be understood as if it were a whole.

Saying 36: Jesus said: Do not worry from morning to evening or from evening to morning about what you are going to wear.

Friends, any comment on this? The striking thing to me beyond the obvious is the “morning to evening or evening to morning” and as I write this I wonder if that doesn’t mean, “from 3D life to death” to “life to death in the non-3D,” which from the 3D point of view would look like an invisible time, from death to life again. [In transcribing, I put the phrases in quotes in an attempt to make it more understandable.]

You might restate that.

I sure might! But it’s a simple thought. Maybe it means, don’t worry about appearances (or protection? or concealment? – anything clothing may represent to us) during life in the world nor life in the next life. But although that seems symmetrical as I think it, or, say, envision it, when I try to write it out it doesn’t quite make sense.

And that is a good example of the difference between intuiting and reasoning. Reasoning is a good check on intuiting, but neither function is complete in itself.

Tell me, then.

Life in 3D in and of itself – as you woke up thinking – makes no sense. That is, it makes no sense as any kind of complete whole; clearly, any given life is a fragment rather than a complete thing. The question is: a fragment of what? But you and anyone who feels into it know that life itself is a fragment. That is an important piece of knowledge, upon which much can be built.

Negative evidence, in a sense. We may not know what else there is, but we know that this cannot be all.

Negative evidence, yes, and a firm foundation, for, as you say, this 3D life you are leading cannot be all. To know that is to have your feet firmly planted, even if you never get any farther in figuring out what the rest of it is.

The previous saying, which I gather we hadn’t finished with, though I forgot that when I began this one, seems to indicate that we are well advised to take precautions against others; this one says, don’t worry about what you will wear. So, connect these dots for us, please?

Also the one before that, about the blind leading the blind. Only, bear in mind, to do this properly you would need to be able to bear them all in mind at the same time, which is not possible in a 3D mind.

Where’s NZT when you need it?

[The movie and later TV series “Limitless” postulated a neuro-enhancing drug, NZT, that gave the user access to 100% of his mind, thus making him, in effect, a genius for as long as the effect lasted.]

That is actually truer than you know. A glimpse of the world through the cleansed doors of perception that Blake referred to would be worth a lifetime of earnest research in a library. But we must work with what we have, what we are.

I sometimes think, this must be so frustratingly slow for you.

As for yourselves. However, slow and steady wins the race, as the saying is. This is why it is so important to absorb rather than merely memorize or study or continually refer to past teachings. What you absorb transforms you, and you no longer need to hold it in your mental RAM [that is, active memory], so to speak. Self-transformation is the only way to get around the inherent limitations of life in 3D.

Does that apply in a larger context?

You are getting cryptic to your readers as you get into closer synchrony with us. This is a continual problem that is experienced in reading poetry, for instance.

Yeats especially! But I’ll bear it in mind. What I was asking is, may our entire 3D lives be seen as a long process of absorbing a point of view? (I didn’t mean to write “a point of view,” so – over to you.)

A 3D life is a point of view, properly seen. It might almost be considered a mood of the larger being.

So to stick to the point, is our whole life the absorbing of something?

Spell out the implications. At this point the difference between Frank and TGU is more an arbitrary illusion than any kind of hard and fast reality.

I’ve felt that, creeping up over the years.

That’s of course what we and you have been working toward. It is what anyone working on increasing access works on, know it or not. So, continue.

Well, let’s look at 3D life – which we just said is incomplete looked at as if it were a unit – as a long effort to absorb. That means, to changeand grow so that new information has room to change and grow so that it can absorb more. If this is the case, we really are

Hmm. Lots of things arising from that thought. I’ll need to recalibrarte, take it slowly, if I am not to be overwhelmed.

What if our larger non-3D being, that we are often tempted to think of as perfect and all-knowing (if only because it clearly knows so vastly much more than we do) and even all-powerful, for the same reason – is in fact what we keep hearing it is: an individual that (like us) is also a community; a sojourner, a student, a neophyte, an explorer, a stumbler in the dark, a bringer of light, a contender among others.

What if our non-3D component is like to our 3D component that we are somewhat (if incompletely) familiar with? Maybe that is part of what Jesus was trying to get across to his disciples who were already stretched by what he could get across. But this is a long way from the Saying we came to explicate.

No, it’s a long way from where you expected to go. There’s a difference.

All right. Let’s look at it. Saying 34, the blind leading the blind; 35, the strong man can be overcome and his possessions stolen, if an intruder can tie his hands; 36, don’t worry about what to wear.

You can see that, considered separately, they make no sense, or may be made to make a kind of sense, but the more they are considered together, the les consistent they will appear unless one’s point of view changes to make sense of them. Try to apply them to the accustomed obvious 3D context and you get nonsense or truisms or impractical advice or social lunacy. This, by the way, can be used as a guide. When scripture appears to make no sense, that’s a good sign that you are understanding it from the wrong vantage point, the wrong state of mind.

So where are we?

Suppose you look at 3D life not as a school for the 3D individual so much as a source of input for the larger being, the non-3D being of whose substance the 3D being is made. Not God in the sense of the creator of All That Is. Not demigods or demiurges, though some have understood them that way. Larger intermediate beings, partaking of 3D insofar as they have (comprise) 3D souls, but themselves pre-existing the souls and having their own lives. Suppose these larger beings – not perfect and unchanging, not all-knowing parents waiting for their 3D children to wake up, certainly not judges marking 3D scorecards – suppose these larger being are and are not you, in the way that you are and are not your toe or your kneecap.

It’s difficult sometimes to apply the recommended “As above, so below.”

But that is why it is a touchstone, because it is continually useful when applied.

So if the larger beings contend, and are subject to non-3D conditions not entirely dissimilar to 3D conditions we are used to, only presumably not constricted in application like time and space [do to us] here – what are the implications for us?

You should bear it in mind. If you are part of something that is contending and living and growing in its own environment, and your decisions can help shape its course – that’s quite a different thing from your stumbling along in the dark, equally likely to pursue any course, in that your life has no meaning beyond yourself.

So we’re right back in the question of The Meaning of Life.

Is there any other question? Everything is a subset of that one question.

Yes, I guess it is. But, the clock ticking, have we actually dealt with Saying 36?

No need to get mechanical about the process. It was a good discussion.

Still –

Enough for now.

Okay. Thanks.