Choose wisely

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

4:35 a.m. I thought I’d start working [on Part Two of Papa’s Trial], but I went back to sleep for a while, and as I sit here, I am at a loss. I haven’t hit my stride. Part Two isn’t coming yet. Plus I just got a sense to communicate here. So – what’s up?

We didn’t want you to forget that sense of “not enough happened” that you got a few moments ago. Specifically, yes, Egypt. But more than that, your life. It’s really more a case of “not enough was noticed.” Case in point, two days’ illness, another incident in a long lifetime of such illnesses.

Hemingway never detailed his illnesses, either.

Has it occurred to you that the very specific kind of illness that terrified him centered in the lungs?

It hadn’t, actually. He was thinking of the flu, but I take your point. He feared his lungs filled with fluid.

More. He feared. You haven’t really connected with his fears of death and of “external” hazards such as illness. A mistake to allow him to continue to hide from it. It doesn’t help him and it distorts your portrait.

Help him?

It isn’t too late. Didn’t you help Joseph [Smallwood], and Bertram?

[Joseph, on the morning after the last day of the battle of Gettysburg; Bertram, at an unspecified time, working to alleviate his TB or whatever it was.]

 My lord, I never thought about it in that context. If we all connect –

And there is vastly more you can do. Obviously, not Frank DeMarco alone, or particularly, or even as one of few, but – everybody.

We are carriers of the vast impersonal forces you began talking about last year.

Remember we said the same forces could be regarded as impersonal or personal. It’s more a matter of viewpoint than of an essential distinction, and it’s more a matter of what and how they manifest than viewpoint.

All humanity is one thing, and is part of something even greater. There are no absolute divisions in the world. Even the division between  3D and non-3D is only a relative rather than an absolute distinction, as you know. So, looking in one direction, all is one and everything interrelates. Since non-3D is an integral part of 3D, time is not the absolute barrier that it appears to be when reality is considered only in 3D terms. So relating across space and across time is not only not impossible, it is in fact unavoidable, and the only question is to what degree such relations will be conscious rather than unconscious. And that depends upon decisions, individual decisions.

And that is the second, related, way to look at things. Just as all is one, looking in the direction of integration and interrelation, so also everything is distinct and separate and individual, when you look down the opposite end of the telescope/microscope you put on life. Though no divisions are absolute, still they are relative, and this is so in the interest of complexity.

You said years ago, the non-3D wasn’t just undefined jello.

So, you see, if you keep in mind both aspects of reality – all is one, everything is differentiated, you get a clearer picture than if you concentrate on either and lose sight of the fact that the compensatory other aspect does not cease to exist merely because you have your attention focused elsewhere.

So. Healing. You all have the ability to help heal the world, so to speak, or to help curse it. None of you – fortunately! – has the ability to do so single-handed, so you needn’t fear doom and you mustn’t rest on your oars in complacency, but none of you is powerless to do good or evil considered strictly in terms of who and what you are in essence; not dependent upon what you do externally. Remember if you can, the external as you experience it is secondary to the internal as you experience it. You are 3D/non-3D beings, hence are not pinned to one time and place although for the sake of understanding things you must experience life that way. But you can know better; you can see beyond appearances, and it is time and past time that you wake up fully to your part in the vast cosmic drama that is human life within a continuing storm – or perhaps we should merely say a continuing weather – of non-human forces manifesting within human life.

Do you choose to curse the enemies of what you hold dear, or bless them? This is not as simple and self-answering a question as it may appear. What results is your addition to the total of a human cursing or a human blessing. Which do you suppose is more therapeutic, seen in all?

I have always been impressed that Robert E. Lee prayed every night for his enemies as well as for his friends. It accounts for that vaguely saintly aura that he shares with Lincoln.

Yes. Neither man slackened in his efforts to have his side prevail, but neither (despite whatever personal weaknesses) ever chose hatred over love.

So when we see politically divisive characters such as Donald Trump or George W. Bush (and in light of recent events, it is hard to remember how divisive his presidency was) or Bill Clinton, etc., we may regard them as opportunities to discover who we are, by our reaction to them.

That is one effect, yes. Lincoln did not approve of Lee’s actions;  he did not slacken his efforts to vanquish him and his cause. But he found no need to add hatred to the total of hatreds that had been disfiguring his country for so many decades, and were now playing out in killing 600,000 young men. And nor did Lee.

This came a long way from the simple entry I thought it might be. Glad to be in touch, as always.

To bring it back to Hemingway, and at the same time to remind others of their own possibilities, remember that from your point of view at any time, the external present manifests as the eternal now, the point of power, the place of application. But just as you may bless Lincoln or Hemingway or whomever, so they (in their continuing point of power in the eternal now) may bless you.

You – any of you, all of you (and in saying “you” we are in a sense of course saying “we” ) – continually act as conscious or unconscious conduits of blessings or curses. Choose wisely.

Yes. Thank you for the reminder.