Looking for helpful images

Monday August 8, 2016

[1:30 p.m. As I was at the Villa, I tried to puzzle out our lives, specifically how to include the old opinionated loudmouth at another table. I’ve heard a million of him, and I can tell you without knowing one thing about him that he will vote for Trump with great conviction and probably anger.]

4 p.m. Ready?

Yes. Several discrepancies in previous descriptions were allowed to slip in unremarked, because as usual it was a choice between flow and interruption. Luckily for the process of communication, there is plenty of room for slippage. What if everything had to be accurate? It would be equivalent to writing a first draft that was also a final draft: no room for corrections, no margin for error, no room for improvement. But those discrepancies can serve as guidepost.

So if we discard 3D v. non-3D, what will it leave? If we cease to think in terms of your mind while in body v. your mind when it “comes over to non-3D” at death, what do we have? If we remember that everything takes place in one place, how do we reconcile that to the thought that of course place changes with 3D time? And there are plenty more, some of which may occur to us at unpredictable times.

The bridges you have already crossed brought you a long way, gave you a place to stand that was more congruent with your experiences and intuitions. This may be as far as some people can go, or want to go, and there is nothing wrong with that. Everybody’s timing is different. But for those who want to (or need to) keep on, it becomes time for some rearranging of scenery.

Now, realize this will be in some ways the most difficult visualization or conceptualization yet, because it has little to do with commonly perceived 3D reality. It is harder to come up with everyday similes, and similes if not overdone provide symbolic counters for the mind to play with. Thus, if we say something is like a canoe being swept over the falls, that is a vivid image and an emotionally memorable one. However, it is important not to let the simile take on a life of its own, leading to arguments about canoes versus kayaks, or haring off into concerns for water safety! You understand. Every tool has its proper use and its limits.

Consider the difficulty in producing a helpful image. Can we even begin to list them?

  • You in body, but also part of something that predates you, extends farther in all directions, and has a life and purpose of its own, not always identical to what we may call 3D-you.
  • But also, 3D-you in all your past moments in this lifetime, not a sequence of superseded stages but a collection of equally existent beings, so to speak.
  • 3D-you extending into other lifetimes whose threads you share (though we may need to revisit this concept, too).
  • You as a community of somewhat independent intelligences with different values, experiences and, often enough, agendas.
  • You as both the coordinating maestro of this orchestra and, sometimes merely one of the players. (Think “moods” for one clue.)
  • You, as practitioner of the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins, with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, so to speak.
  • You as an absolutely independent being, enmeshed in a society which primarily sees you in your various personas – the sex, age, race, and nationality you wear; the social graces you do or do not have; the particular talents and disabilities that characterize you. you are not those masks, yet you cannot escape being confounded with them by others.
  • You as a loyalist for whatever ideals you hold, whatever impressions you have of what is fitting and right. It is those you love whom you have not met, and the causes that enlist you even if you never lift a finger on their behalf.
  • You as a living breathing representative of so many things, some chosen, some inherited, some thrust upon you.

You are accustomed to  thinking about such things (if at all) in isolation from each other. That won’t do. We haven’t even touched upon your chosen beliefs, your chosen values, as opposed to those you more or less took over in taking life. And, there is the desire for more consciousness, for a sense of greater meaning. Call it a homesickness for a state of being you can’t remember having had.

And all of these things may be investigated singly without a lot of trouble. It is the light that they shed upon each other that we’re after here.

And this will have to do for today. You will have to find other ways to occupy your time. You can’t do this all day long, even with pauses.

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