Let’s continue with Dirk’s questions, recognizing that the answers we got to the first three somewhat invalidate the premise from which the later questions spring.
[5.4) Does the choice greatly affect the life lived and the experiences gained?
[5.5) Looked at slightly differently, how large a role does this play in how the life is experienced? (Between these two questions I am asking about a) magnitude and about b) direction or aspects or character – the direction that things play out.)]
- Your life leads you to experience emotion as something beyond your choice. You do not choose to feel this or that; it happens, and you choose to embrace or reject it.
- Oddly, for the same reason (as we will attempt to show), your life leads you to experience thoughts as if they are of your choosing, though in fact you do not choose them either. (Remember, this is not describing the construction of logic-chains; that is thinking as opposed to receiving thought by an associative process.)
- In both cases (emotion and thought), that which is an interaction between conscious and subconscious – in effect, between self and environment – is conceptualized incorrectly, hence is then experienced incorrectly.
I get that you mean, because we have wrong ideas about things, those wrong ideas invisibly warp our perceptions about them.
Of course.
“Of course”?
That is what we have been telling you, these 20 years. It is in order to cleanse your perceptions that you work to cleanse your filters. Better stated, it is a reciprocating process, as so often: Better perception revises concepts; better concepts revise perceptions. That is the value of this kind of exploration, you see: not to provide a sort of gospel to be believed (or rejected), but to provide a thought-experiment as an alternative platform from which you can examine your lives.
We try to listen closely, not continually “correcting” your message to align it with what we already believe, and then we see what we do or do not receive as sparks.
Yes, except for the word “then.” It is a continuing process, not a sequential one.
Understood.
So you see, Dirk’s 5.4 is cart before horse, from our viewpoint. Emotions and feelings do not determine your lives and experiences, but in a sense result from them (in an on-going way).
Well, I don’t know, isn’t it just as true in the way Dirk put it?
Again, a reciprocating process. But in the sense he is proceeding from, the instigating factor is the life, not the emotion.
You can see it clearly if you will reflect that the emotion is a layer resulting from the interaction of inner and outer world. Results do not precede causes. It is true, they then become new causes, but they do not precede them originally. How could they?
Well, couldn’t you say that the very selection of materials for the 3D soul is in effect a selection of causes that are going to create effects by the nature of their interaction with the environment they will be interacting with?
Yes, you could. And that is what generated this question in the form it came. But, as we say, looking at this as sequence is rather cart-before-horse.
I can see that in some ways it is a subtle readjustment. If we look at our initial situation as a given, and our choices as our modifications as we go along, the more closely we look at it, the less real distinction can be made between predestination and free will, for example, or between “our” thoughts and thoughts that come to us, or between “our” emotions and emotions generated by our being.
Yes as snapshot. But as a process, not so much. Because – and we keep repeating, this is the alpha and omega of 3D life – your series of choices continually modifies the situation. Even choices made by default modify the situation, in that they foreclose other possibilities.
Now, looking at 5.5, which, again, comes from a very different way to view life, certain things should appear. You might easily say, without too much distortion, that the role these play are as much indicators as causes. They show you where (and who) you are at a given moment, quite as much as they cause anything.
All right, I can see that. And this prompts me to mention that when I was talking to Dirk last night, he mentioned that the questions came to him, fluently and freely, without his having to think about them or craft them. And the same may be said for what I am doing right now. My responses to you are mostly just as intuitive as yours to me. I take this fact to be an example of what you are saying about thoughts not being generated by us, but received by us. Which raises the question of what we’re really doing here. In a sense, it feels like we’re Charlie McCarthy to your Edgar Bergen.
You might think of yourselves as skilled telegraph operators, whose skill facilitates the passing of messages but does not originate them.
That is, at least, a less wooden-headed analogy. And I suppose we’re lucky not to have you as Senor Wences. (“’s all right?” “’s all right.” “Back in the box.”)
A word about emotions and feelings as indicators. You could, if it is worthwhile to you, look at your reaction to suggested emotion or suggested thought as if from outside the 3D-you/non-3D-you system. That is, you could take an outside view of your life by looking at (not being captured by) your moods, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and seeing what that shows you about who you are at the moment. And of course you can do that in memory, going back to the uncomfortable memories, the painful regrets, the remembered joys, and seeing what they show you now, as opposed to how you felt then.
Is that why, as we get older, memories appear more frequently and often more sharply, for no apparent reason?
Rather than seeing it as a “why,” let’s just say it is an opportunity. As a rule of thumb, opportunities do not arise spontaneously and at random; they emerge from deeper causes, as does everything else in your lives.