Habit systems and control panels

Monday, August 16, 2010

6 AM. In the middle of the night I had a thought – or the thought had me – that we could talk about the process of increasing access to guidance, once people know that it is indeed possible. That is, not the process of convincing anybody, but a mental attitude that would facilitate it.

Without censure – if you had re-read yesterday’s work, you’d see that we could just proceed from there.

I’ll do that now. [Did so.] Okay, shoot.

We outlined the reasons why you as individuals aren’t nearly as separate as you think you are, physically or mentally. Now we will proceed to demolish ourselves, in the same way. For how could one produce an atom – an irreducible substance – from other substances?

That isn’t clear, but I know what you mean. If the atom is the smallest possible bit of matter, it can’t itself be made of smaller bits. The fact that those smaller bits were found, a century ago and more, destroyed the basis of materialism as an explanation of reality. For, every time they find new particles, they find that they too can be seen to be made of smaller bits, down to weird-acting bits of energy.

Nor is this the end. We won’t stay to explore it – we would need the mind of a physicist to come through anyway – but “energy” is as much part of the physical universe as “matter,” and so resolving those particles into balls of bound energy still leaves your scientific ideas trapped in materialism. But this is not our field, and not our interest at the moment. It was only a passing analogy, a way to say that we, who comprise – well, let’s start.

You will remember that a while ago we told you that we regard a mind as a habit-pattern. That was shorthand for much that you absorbed later. In outline:

You are containers – rings – through which pass millions of traits that may or may not manifest externally, but do have the experience of working together as a unit during the lifetime of the body.

Each of those traits, those threads, may be considered to extend to others, both in the body and not in the body. Thus the threads invisibly connect those who share them.

Since everyone has millions of them, and since each thread connects with others in and out of body, you can see that you as an individual could consider yourself the center of a vast network of relationships, and so could each of you. We do not mean friendships or blood ties, here, when we say relationships. We mean you are tethered to millions in all directions.

While you are in the body, the manifestation of such ties is limited in time and space externally, but not of course mentally – for the mind, we remind you, is not physical. Nonetheless when, in the body, you meet someone and it is old friends meeting, or instant repulsion, this is not so much past-life stuff, though it may be that as well, as the recognition of connection along a given thread or set of threads.

When you have dropped the body – when you have died, that is – you are no longer under physical constraints on perception or interaction. You know what you are, what you connect with, what infinite, or let us say what vastly indefinite, extents you touch. Non-body (as opposed to out-of-body, which of course implies that you are still attached to a body) communication is unlimited, nonstop, and you will find it fascinating. As we at some point told you,

Wool-gathering. Sorry.

Well, remember that we said that each thread had its own level that was its nature, that it vibrates to. (These are physical analogies but after all that is all we have available.) This means that each set of threads is uniquely connected to others by the combination of vibrations they comprise.

That is clear to me because I got it from inside, but it isn’t going to be clear to anyone else.

Proceed.

I’d say, you have 10 threads, call them 1 through 10. That’s what you can connect with, anything that has any of those 10 numbers.

Good. And thank you for not anticipating the next part of the exposition, because the way it is set out may be as important to the understanding as the facts sent out. The next part is this: Each connection allows just so many more connections as it comprises.

If you connect with something that has one of your numbers – 5, say – and also has numbers 20 to 30 (just for the sake of easiness to explain; there isn’t any sequence implied) then by traveling down number 5, you can also travel down 20 to 30 and anything they in turn connect with.

Exactly. In effect, each part connects, directly or indirectly, with everything. Not only with everything else (seen individually) but with everything (seen collectively).

But each of you is a different collection of numbers. No two will have exactly the same collection, and why should you? (For the purpose of reducing future confusion, we will note here that this isn’t strictly true, but we resolutely look in other directions for the moment, to avoid the unbelievable complications involved in explaining that too when we are scarcely begun on this. You can have little idea what a handicap to communication it is, having to compress extensions and having to reduce subject matter, so as to fit within the limits of a given mind at a given moment.)

Any given mind shaped on the other side – that is, your side, the physical side – is going to comprise a given collection of threads that grew together, in effect, during the living of a life. They got accustomed to each other, you might say. They formed a starship crew, Mr. Spock, or – if you prefer Gabby Hayes – they were a wagon in a wagon train. This habit of working together, of considering themselves as “I,” is why we refer to minds as habit-systems.

Yet – in the absence of a brain and the rest of the body to filter experience through one time and one place, moment by moment, you can see that each mind, otherwise unchanged, functions differently than when it was so tethered. It is not limited to one set of physical inputs. It is not hampered, or shall we say shaped, by limitations in simultaneous processing of data. It does not experience the physical division into conscious and unconscious (which, we point out, from our view is exactly the reverse of the way you see it, in that your “consciousness” is the part that is nearly entirely unaware of the greater reality, and the surrounding “unconscious” is the part that continues to function normally) and therefore its self-definition is far more accurate and useful.

And I hear you holding in reserve the question of how the threads really function.

Yes, habit-systems of their own, but will hold that for a full session. This is too late to begin on that. Let us proceed with the topic you were given in mid-night, so we may dispose of it in the few remaining minutes.

You have used the control-panel analogy to shape and express your intent. You might sketch that briefly.

I heard Ingo Swann respond to a question from the audience as to how to change something in himself – a trait, a bad habit, I forget just what. Ingo didn’t even give it a moment’s thought, but just said, “I’d change my control panel,” and the meaning jumped over to me and, I’m sure, to most of the people in the audience.

You are the captain of your own ship, right? But you don’t necessarily run the engine room or carry out the orders necessary to do what you want to do. You have a crew for that. Well, they get their instructions by consulting the standing orders, and the control panel is where you post them. Mixed metaphor, probably. Anyway, use it as a visualization. I have a bank of slide-switches. You may prefer circular rheostats like the ones that control dimmer-switch lights. Just label the slide switch according to some polarity and number it 0 to 10. Set it – by your intent – where you want it to be. If you don’t know where you are, relatively, in starting, just feel where it’s set. (That’s why I prefer slide-switches to circular rheostats – better visual images.)

All right. So, say you use Frank’s model of a bank of slide switches, and you label them by various traits you would like to develop or reduce or regain control of. First you perceive where the switches are. This knowledge itself is valuable. Say you are examining altruism, or humility, or openness to others. Say you are intent on greater access to past lives, or (better) to guidance. First intend to see where you are. The position of the switch is a very simple, therefore very powerful and potentially very useful, analogy. If you think of yourself as basically unselfish but find that your slide-switch on the altruism scale is at a two, say, it indicates there may be room for improvement! Or, you may be surprised equally to see that it is at a seven when you feared it was only at a four, or even a two. Self-knowledge isn’t always bad news. We smile.

Then you decide how you’d like to be, and if that is your genuine intent rather than a pious wish, you will find (sometime later) that to your surprise you did make strides.

One note. At any given time your slide-switches will probably express not 0 to 10 on any absolute scale, but 0 to 10 in terms of what is possible for your person-group at the given moment in that life. What is a seven at one time might, revisited later, be seen as a four not because you have lost ground but because your range is greater, and your starting-place is more advanced. So, even in something as mundane and seemingly self-created as a set of slide-switches, the rule still holds: Don’t judge yourself. You never have the data. Just do your best as you go along. That’s all you can do, and all you need to do.

And that’s enough for the morning. Thank you for your able assistance.

Yeah, I notice I’m gradually being allowed to do more than clean ashtrays.

On-the-job training. As you always say to others, “there is hope for you.”

I’m smiling too. Next time.