Only Somewhat Real: Naming

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Three questions queued up:

Henry Reed: Many ancient cosmologies point to a dualistic interplay of opposites that produce creation… light, dark, yin/ yang, creator/destroyer … any relation to what somebody is referring to? Is somebody’s perspective shared by everyone in all-d, or are we interacting with something that expresses relative to its history?

Subtle Traveler: I am wondering if a more focused question helps expand the conversation here. What are the underlying forces of lust? Desire? Attraction? Ever expanding (pro-creation) Consciousness? Something beyond human language?

Jane Peranteau: We are affected by the forces as they come through. Do we affect the forces in any way, other than by how we express or channel them? In other words, you could say they hone us. Do we hone them? Or is it just about honing us?

Symbols and idols

Somebody? – And, do you mind if we give you a name, just for ease of reference? I realize that behind the name may be a shifting coalition of forces, and that the person responding to the name one day may not be the same person another day, but you see how we’re situated. Calling upon “somebody,” as I have done, isn’t any improvement over calling you Jack, or Rover, for that matter. A name you’d like?

We do see the problem, and rather than having you call us Fido or something, we will agree to a name. but – you select the name. If we were to select it, people would wind up reading things into the name, no matter how often or how emphatically we might deny any implied significance.

Oh, this is the dynamic behind the creating of idols in the desert in the Moses story, isn’t it?

Human nature – or perhaps we should say compound-beings’-reaction-to-3D-limitations, only “human nature” is far more concise – doesn’t change much over time. The Jews wandering around in the desert were uncomfortable owing their allegiance to an abstraction. A golden calf had symbolism; it offered visual reassurance. And, as is typical of human 3D reactions, a symbol became an objectified reality in about three seconds.

Hence the tension over the centuries in all the religions over representation or iconoclasm.

“All” might be a little too broad, but in general, yes. People who have an ability to perceive abstractly are not as numerous as those who take sensory reality to be “the” reality, and anything beyond that reality to be just words, or anyway either debatable or somewhat fuzzy, somewhat theoretical. So religions using symbols move over time toward a more literal interpretation of symbol as itself the thing symbolized, and you have the worship of idols. And, conversely, over time every so often counter-forces will acquire influence and will smash those symbols and representations as idols.

Thus the Protestant sects that accused Catholics of being idolaters, and did not allow any statues or paintings of individuals. And come to think of it, thus Islam, with its ban on the creation of similar representations in art. (I wonder how they deal with photography, let alone the Internet.) And at the other extreme, Hinduism with its vast array of statuary and art, Buddhism with its endless array of statues of the Buddha.

You may choose to look at the tension of opposites as an example of the natural effect of living in a dualistic world. There is no “right” position, and no “wrong” position other than the position that claims unique validity for itself. But even that is an argument waiting to happen, and perhaps our focus today should be less abstract.

Yes, but that was a very interesting side-light. Okay, I’ll call you – let me think –

[pause]

Naming

I’m tempted to say Moses, in the hope that you will lead us out of the wilderness of our own confusions. But Moses never saw the promised land, come to think of it. Or, he saw it, but he could never get there. that was left to others.

I’m tempted just to call you Friend. But then somebody sure as shooting would read Quaker into it. Ridiculous to spend so much time on something totally arbitrary anyway, but for some reason this seems important. I can’t use the name of people I respect as pioneers – Swedenborg, Emerson, Thoreau, etc. – for the same reason, to avoid unwanted associations. And you decline to suggest, then?

You can see why, in your own process. It can be very difficult to avoid unwanted accretions by those who come later, perhaps with misplaced admiration, let alone reverence. That is what happens in churches.

Oh, I know. I’ve been explaining that for years to people who think churches lose integrity only by someone’s malicious intent. Superstitions grow from the bottom; they aren’t imposed from the top. But this still doesn’t result in a name. Maybe we ought to just proceed to the business at hand?

Maybe this – and the thoughts it brings up – is the business at hand.

Interesting. Well – Nathaniel. I don’t know where that comes from, but suddenly there it is. Let’s call you Nathaniel.

That’s fine, and we’ll see how long you can remember the caveats about it being only a brand name, only a label, and not an individual.

And don’t go looking for significance in the name.

You just saw, and shared, the process. Ultimately it was like any time you “get” a bright idea: It wasn’t there and then it was, and who is to say why it emerged? But hopefully our spelling out the process of searching for it will discourage people from being too sure of whatever significance they choose to attach to it.

Okay, we’ll see.

Duality

So, let’s go to work. Henry’s question?

[Henry Reed: Many ancient cosmologies point to a dualistic interplay of opposites that produce creation… light, dark, yin/ yang, creator/destroyer … any relation to what somebody is referring to? Is somebody’s perspective shared by everyone in all-d, or are we interacting with something that expresses relative to its history?]

Two questions, actually, the second quite incisive. The first is easily dealt with: The dualities he cites are examples of people’s interpretation and representation of the dualistic nature of reality as experienced in the constricted awareness you are calling 3D. Everything expresses as part of a duality, and it was the contribution of these ways of thought to see that duality extended to the non-physical world (as they thought of it, most of them) as well as manifesting in the physical world they experienced.

But as to the second question, that is not so easily answered. Superficially, yes, we could say – and will say – that everyone observing the same conditions will describe them more or less in the same way, and so what we are setting out would be obvious to anyone in the All-D – that is, anyone whose perspective is not constricted by 3D conditions. But at a deeper level, any agreed-upon view of anything, seen more closely, resembles a compromise rather than a definitive view. Is the color orange really a color at all, or a compromise between red and yellow? And the same question applies to red and yellow, of course. So, for all practical purposes, everybody in All-D sees what we see. But if you look at that shared agreement more closely, it would break down somewhat. We will not pursue this farther, as it is a distraction in context, save to note the fact.

Subtle Traveler’s question is going to be an involved discussion, I imagine, so how about dealing with Jane’s first?

Interaction of forces

The short answer is yes, it is a mutual interaction. But don’t take that to mean that 3D choices will—

Well –

The closer you look at this, the more complex and nuanced it is. As usual.

If we stick to the human level as commonly experienced – that is, if we consider only the effect of 3D decisions upon the forces that blow through them – then you could say, no, there is no effect. Hurricanes are not much affected by whether you do or don’t leave a lawn chair out on the deck. The lawn chair will be affected! But the hurricane, no. The disparity of forces is immense.

However, 3D experience indirectly affects you in 3D – that is, the real effect is in your changes, which are decisions express or implied. In turn, changes in you result in change in your overall being, hence in your Sam. Again, the disparity of forces is great, but there is an effect, especially considered cumulatively. And – we aren’t going to go into it – changes in Sams in effect result in changes in the winds sweeping through 3D life. But that is all we’re going to say about that, as well.

And we’ll defer the third question for another time.

Yes. This was better work today than perhaps you realize.

Well, if you say so. Thanks, and more another time.

 

 

One thought on “Only Somewhat Real: Naming

  1. I’m grateful for that answer to my question. It reminds me of how Seth talked about how we create weather in “The Nature of Personal Reality”:
    “A rock in a stream will divide the water so that it must flow around the impediment. Your emotions are quite as real as rocks. Your collective feelings affect the flow of energy and their force — in terms of natural phenomena — can be seen quite clearly in a thunderstorm, which is the exteriorized local materialization of the inner emotional state of the people experiencing the storm.”
    Maybe our effect on the forces is better seen in terms of our final contribution.

Leave a Reply