Friday, April 27, 2012
4:15 PM. Nancy asked what was meant that the celestial kingdom is not the same as the nonphysical world. I gave my understanding of it, but would welcome amplification or correction.
It is not complicated. The affairs of earth – of the physical realm, whether one planet or star or another – are somewhat circumscribed when considered in the light of the whole of reality. The sky over Tennessee is a part of the entire air-ocean, but the air-ocean is concerned with vastly more than Tennessee. An analogy, hence imperfect, but you see the application. There is more to heaven than lack of a body, and perhaps much of heaven is scarcely aware of the existence of the physical.
I have never been able to receive from the guys a description of heaven or of the nature of life in the nonphysical.
Nor will you get it here and now. At some other time, perhaps it will be appropriate for you to receive such thoughts, and if that occurs, you will be dealing with other messengers.
I see. Well, how about your statement that we humans half belong to the animal kingdom?
Is this so difficult? Are animals discontented, neurotic, criminal, poetic, inspired? All these are evidences of dislocation, or shall we say non-nativity. To be human is to be discontented with their very animal life into which it is born. You don’t quite fit. You are restless, vaguely displaced, always, even if you are content with your own lot in life. You are only half contained by your bodies; you are also something else in uneasy alliance. Surely this is plain as stated.
Well, the other half?
Call it a divine discontent you suffer from, or enjoy. Your non-animal portion is spiritual, it is a non-animal spirit coexisting with animal nature.
Not very helpful. I suppose I am not properly tuned.
No, you are well enough prepared at the moment, but you lack concepts.
Can you not provide them?
If you come from the nonphysical world to live in these restricted conditions and you know it, the very memory or half-memory is going to distract you from full participation. You cannot be single-minded when your focus is continuously split between sources of information, different habits, competing instincts, call them.
Animals do not have this same division. That is why they are not neurotic, and not poets. The difference between animal and human is not level of intelligence. It is not lack of self-awareness. It is not lack of language nor lack of tool use. It is simply and irremediably the difference between a single focus and a split focus.
A pet or any animal accustomed to dealing with humans closely may have its personality enhanced – by that we mean it may become more individual than it might otherwise have been – but it will not ponder the meaning of life. Such discontent is beyond it. It may if unfortunate suffer many things – deprivation, abuse, injury and incapacitation – but its sufferings will not lead it to write the book of Job, nor ask any of those questions, even in any inchoate manner. That is beyond its nature.
There is nothing good or bad about the situation, it is what is. Humans are unique in being not merely animals, not merely spirits, but an uneasy evolving fusion of the two. Can you think that this occurred by accident? Can you think it too bad? Can you think it an interruption, or distortion, of the great plan of creation, the fact that humans ponder, interfere, attempt?
I seem to remember that we were told at some time that mankind is the trickster in the universe – the great embodier of the force of disruption.
A good description. Like trickster, not necessarily malicious but often inadvertently distractive. Yet trickster has its place and must have its place, else there can be no perfection, just stagnation.
My friends are very concerned about the destruction of the ecosystem whereas I tend to trust that all will be well.
All is always well, to quote your friends, but what does that mean? It isn’t as simple as “every play has a happy ending.” It’s more like, “if things end badly here, they’ll end better elsewhere.” That is, no disaster is complete and none is final. That doesn’t mean that you will necessarily like what happens locally.
“If you come from the nonphysical world to live in these restricted conditions and you know it, the very memory or half-memory is going to distract you from full participation. You cannot be single-minded when your focus is continuously split between sources of information, different habits, competing instincts, call them.”
A question: if we have one foot in the physical and the other in the spiritual, and have split focus…..and if we try to learn detachment (giving up trying to control life), how do we not end up feeling as if we are a cork bobbing about on the ocean? Waiting for the next choice to make….? That can’t be all there is to life….there must be more. Some balance between detachment but still finding something worth focusing our intent upon….and does the act of focusing intent negate the intent of detachment?
(Argh….what was IN that cereal this morning….??)
I think the way it was phrased may be misleading you. It said “If you come from the nonphysical world to live in these restricted conditions and you know it,” but perhaps it would have been better phrased “and were perpetually aware of it.” They didn’t mean “knowing it” in the sense of “being intellectually aware of it” but in the sense of “living perpetually in the midst of a tornado of perceptions incompatible with what we perceive as 3D reality.” That is, we would be distracted from the movie by the noises outside the theater.