Getting to the heart of the matter

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

7:15 a.m. All right, gentlemen. You said you had a larger topic queued up. Still have it?

You might consider it fairly major. But you need to relax about it.

Using the nebulizer eased my breathing. Does that mean – of course it means, body/mind connection. If my health deteriorates past a certain point, that will be the end of this even if I live another 20 years afterward.

So take care of yourself as best you can. That variable exists for everyone, of course.

The key question for many, in your time and throughout time, different in different places and cultures, sometimes assumed, sometimes assumed to be unanswerable, is: Does your life matter and if so, how?

Sure. You’ve been talking about that right along.

We have, for of course that is the question we set out to answer, long before you consciously posed it in this context. That is, it will have looked like we were conducting a tour d’ horizon [an overview]: Here is human life; here are things you can’t know first-hand; here is the meaning of things you do know when seen from another perspective, etc. But this has been in the service of the one goal of showing you (not telling you) how your lives matter, and to whom.

And I hear, now we have cleared away the shrubbery, we can get to the heart of the matter.

More like, now we have told you the things you were likely to find easiest to accept, we come to the things you have real resistance to, because they require that you lay some threads down and pick up others. That is, you cease being spectators, or students, and choose to become participants, or practitioners.

I remind people that years ago, in the sessions that became The Sphere and the Hologram, I think, the guys said we are in effect rings holding millions of threads, some of which we express, most of which we don’t. In this excess of potential over actual lies our freedom to change. As they said, we can choose to lay down certain threads – that is, cease to embody them actively – and pick up others, somewhat in the way we pick up certain threads when we choose to learn a new skill for which we have aptitude. Aptitude per se is potential; developed into a skill (practiced, that is), it becomes actual.

Yes, and of course here we refer to character traits rather than mere superficial manifestations such as skills or even habits.

You can choose. In fact, in 3D you cannot help choosing; that’s what 3D is. But you may choose at random, or by default, or inconsistently. Better to fasten on to an ideal and choose in accordance with that ideal.

You distinguished between a function and a virus. Really I suppose instead of “function” we might say “program” or even “app”?

Doesn’t matter much. The point is that not every impulse is beneficial, not every habit leads you toward your goal. This of course presupposes a goal, or, as we put it, an ideal.

And you have long reminded us that an ideal is something than can only be lived toward, it cannot be encompassed.

It is your pole star, keeping you oriented. Navigation needs to know where North is; it doesn’t go only North and maybe doesn’t intend to go anywhere near North, but North tells the navigator not so much where s/he is, but which direction s/he is facing, in traveling. And that is the important part! You could know exactly where you are, but if you head off in the wrong directions, you soon won’t know. You could be entirely mistaken as to where you are, but if you can go in the right direction (or rather, if you know which direction is where), you can find your way eventually. It is direction, tendency, that matters, far more than any particular place you happen to find yourself.

Like Dante waking up and finding himself lost.

Precisely. The trick is finding Virgil to orient you. [As in “The Divine Comedy.”]

And the bitter medicine you are preparing to administer?

Not at all. It isn’t bitter medicine nor non-bitter medicine. But it requires mental and – shall we call it moral? – effort. It isn’t anything we haven’t been asking of you right along, but it is in an area more sensitive. What is familiar is, the effort, which

Try that again? It isn’t going to read every well.

You do it, then.

The familiar part is the effort to see things differently, to readjust our mental categories to incorporate a new viewpoint which includes some elements previously excluded.

Yes. As we have said, a new view will include things excluded by the previous view: Not all of them, but some, and so it will require an effort, like Carl Jung forcing himself to study alchemy and eventually finding the solid productive generative core that had been buried.

The unfamiliar part is that the guys are exhorting us to take religion seriously.

That’s a shorthand way to put it, but it really should have more. We don’t care what you think of religion per se, in general or in terms of any given religion. What we do care about is your openness or otherwise to the things religion concerns itself with! And here we know we will encounter massive resistance precisely from those who are potentially most able to receive what we have to say and to benefit from it.

You know the phenomenon of projection? Well, when your conscious mind has one firmly settled idea or group of ideas, and an unconscious part of your mind has opposing ideas, it creates a tension. The greater the internal (unacknowledged) tension, the more intolerant the expression. Repressed homosexuals are among the most vicious of gay-bashers. People half-convinced of a political argument are among those denouncing it most hysterically. Believers in “reason” as the alpha and omega of human rationality (if that is not a redundancy) may become screechingly irrational at external opposition that happens to reinforce their own unacknowledged doubts.

So. Look within. You do want to come to the root of things. You do want to discover who you truly are, what your limits and possibilities truly are. You do want to grow. Well, we guarantee you, there are counter-forces within you that want the exact opposite, or sometimes a slightly or greatly diverging goal. The first step in dealing with them is to become aware that they exist. And how do you do that?

Simple. You observe what pushes your buttons.

That isn’t the whole story, but it certainly is a strong first step. Only, because your buttons are pushed, it becomes hard to remain present enough to observe it.

Which is what our non-3D is for.

It is if you don’t ignore it, yes.

And some of these button-pushing words are God, Jesus, Allah.

Sin, duty, surrender, sacrifice, sure. To permit ourselves a vast generalization, we would say that anything people label “religious” rather than “spiritual” offers the opportunity for growth because it presents button-pushing structures and allows them to be examined.

Only for many people, the button gets pushed so effectively that that’s the end of the inquiry.

Say that’s so, so what? Let’s concentrate on those who are able to continue, rather than focusing on those who are not. This isn’t a popularity contest. We don’t need to be voted “Best liked spooks.”

Here’s the thing. Saying you are “spiritual but not religious” is one thing when you mean you take the spiritual world seriously but you don’t want to be (or can’t be, or won’t be) bound by any religion’s rules and dogmas. It is another thing, and not a helpful one, when it morphs (unconsciously, usually) to become “I take the spiritual world seriously, so long as I don’t need to learn anything of how it interacts with us and don’t have to limit my actions.”

That may not be quite a fair summary. For many people it is a fear of drifting into a situation where they find themselves bound by the rules and dogmas.

The reality is this. Truth comes with a duty toward the truth. Once you know the truth, you have a responsibility to live it. No, you will never get to “the” truth, but at any time in your life you will have a closest approximation. That is, you always have “the truth as you know it.” You can’t go beyond that, but you can get closer to deeper truth, higher truth, if you put in the effort (and are “lucky” or “blessed” by unmerited or apparently unmerited psychic and spiritual gains). But you can only attain more truth by living the truth that you have already come to.

Is that perhaps what Jesus meant by saying that the only sin that can’t be forgiven is a sin against the holy spirit?

If you rephrase it, it will become obvious: You can’t move North by moving South. You can’t benefit from wisdom by ignoring it, or by contravening it. Or, to put it another way, nobody is going to turn you around. You have to do that, and the preceding step is to decide to do it, or, let’s say, to decide to cease to resist doing it.

This is an awkward place to pause.

No, a pretty good place, actually. Till next time.

Thanks, as always.