Wednesday, July 17, 2019
5:10 a.m. More dreams. I forget what they were, but it is as if I am waking up again. High time.
Saying 88. At this rate, we’ll be through the entire Gospel of Thomas before too long. But as I thought, it will have taken all summer.
- Jesus said: The messengers are coming to you with the prophets, and they will give you what is properly yours. You then should give them what you have. Say to yourselves: “When will they come and take what is theirs?”
“The messengers are coming to you with the prophets, and they will give you what is properly yours.” Remembering the previous Saying’s purport –.
Saying 87, we decided, meant basically, Remember that you are on your own in this business. Not that there won’t be help or cooperation, but that your own working-out of your purpose is your own job, and can’t be delegated or assumed to be the responsibility of others.
Which is more, actually, than you had gleaned yesterday. Side-note, by the way: There is more than one way to “think about” these things. It doesn’t always have to be done consciously.
However, to the point: Now relate this explicitly to the first sentence of Saying 88.
Messenger is one name for angel. I don’t know if angel is what Jesus meant here, but maybe. It would mean we have assistance from non-3D – angels – and from 3D – prophecy. I could accept that meaning.
Then, continue. “You then should give them what you have.”
Meet assistance with sincerity and effort and open-handedness.
And the final line?
When will they come and take what is theirs? It sounds like a fair exchange, somehow. They – the messengers and prophets – give us what is “properly” ours. We in turn say to ourselves, when will they come and take what is theirs? So what is that? Us – 3D souls interacting with them? Something else?
Ask yourself, more deeply, what is theirs? What can Jesus have meant, that was important enough –and was understood to be important enough by the disciples – to be included in the book of sayings?
I think, they have helped us develop what we are; they are part of us as we are part of them; our lives are a process of choosing, shaping, creating out of a given starting-point. What else do we have to give but who we are? Ourselves, in other words.
Your personalities? Your essences? What?
I think our personalities are more like a role an actor is playing, than the actor’s life itself. The roles the actor played is a part of his life, as they are part of his career, but they are only his life secondarily, not primarily. Primarily, the actor is the man playing the role, not the other way around, no matter how it may appear to the theoretical audience or other members of the cast or even to the actor himself if he is really caught up in the role. So, who we are includes our personality, but does not consist of it; personality is only one aspect of who we are, and not the primary aspect except under 3D conditions. (Of course even in 3D it is not primary, but often it appears to be.)
So, to sum up in a word this saying that yesterday conveyed no meaning?
Angels and human instruments are available to help us; in return, we should be prepared to give the gift that is who we have chosen to be.
Good enough. This one too will repay further pondering. Next saying.
- Jesus said: Why wash the outside of the cup? Don’t you know that the one who made the inside also made the outside?
I could take this a couple of ways. It could mean, why wash only the outside of the cup, and it would counsel against hypocrisy at one extreme or at least undue concern for appearance at the expense of essence. Or it could mean, don’t think the outside is any less important, any less valuable, than the inside. I am inclined, at the moment, to think it may mean both.
And in each case, what would outside and inside signify?
At one level, us, our being, our 3D- and non-3D-ness. Our “subjective” and our “objective” life. Soul and body, say.
In which case the connection with the previous saying would be what?
Well, I guess, that what we have that we can offer is not only our thoughts and intentions and inner nature, but our words and actions and outer nature.
That’s well said, and as you can feel, it is more than you knew you knew.
Yes. I am always inclined to downplay appearances.
To undervalue the 3D world you live in, in fact.
Yes..
Well, having been alerted to the tendency, stop doing it. Do you not know that the world is not a patchwork of sacred sites, but is sacred? Nothing in 3D is less sacred than non-3D or anything else, regardless of appearance. How else could it be? Could anything in 3D be dead, when it is made of living being? This is one of the mistakes in perception that Jesus was out to correct: The world, not any one part of the world only, is sacred. Therefore attempts to separate it into “Holy Land” or “holy spots” or “holy buildings” only result in comparatively devaluing the rest.
The South Bronx, the nuclear waste repository sites, the sea of floating plastic, the dead or rather deadened areas created by human neglect or malfeasance or inadvertence are all as sacred at Mount Shasta or Glastonbury or what have you. It is exactly similar to the fact that the most vicious piece of malevolent human garbage is in fact a role being played by a method actor, and the actor is as much a valued member of the cast as those playing more sympathetic roles. Proceed.
Saying 90 is familiar to us from the synoptic gospels.
- Jesus said: Come to me. My yoke is easy. My mastery is gentle, and you will find rest for yourselves.
Look at this familiar saying in light of its predecessor in order. See if that does not produce at least one new nuance.
Perhaps in context it means – beyond what is obvious – that it is restful to be who we really are. Or, to put it better, that it is a strain to live as if we were divided, and an easing of the strain to live united, inside and outside in alignment.
Again, worth looking at from time to time. Saying 91.
- They said to him: Tell us who you are so that we can believe in you. He replied: You analyze the appearance of the sky and the earth, but you don’t recognize what is right in front of you, and you don’t know the nature of the present time.
I take this to mean, It is easier to judge (to weigh) the 3D world by appearance and in light of experience than it is to see what you aren’t used to seeing, or don’t know how to recognize.
And, “you don’t know the nature of the present time”?
That sounds like us. Maybe it’s always that way? You expect things to go on as you think they always have, and you don’t see that it isn’t so.
There is another meaning.
Yes, I see it now you mention it. They weren’t looking at the 3D world in light of what he had been showing them. They were still caught up in appearances, to large degree.
Always a concern. Very good work, very easy, was it not? We may resume at another time.
Okay. Our thanks, as always. That isn’t just an empty phrase.
Sometimes it is, though. Sincerity rests upon consciousness, which varies.
Till next time, as you said.