All right, friends, last time you said we should begin with Dirk’s 5.8: “Is one of these [factors] agreements with others we will interact with during each life?”
Anyone exploring these questions begins somewhere. However they may have gotten to their starting-place, there they are. And whether that starting-place consists of well-formed concepts (perhaps inculcated by education or by osmosis from the environment they were raised in) or a jumble of half-thought-out ideas and reactions, still, there they are. As they explore, they sift through what they know, what they experience, what they instinctively believe, and that sifting process changes the world they accept.
They choose what they believe.
Yes. Not “choose” in the sense of arbitrarily deciding to believe or disbelieve this or that, usually; “choose” in the sense that adhering to one thing may mean automatically (perhaps unconsciously) relinquishing a hold on something else. But, choosing. That is your life, as we have often reminded you. Even the person who clings to the idea that everything is predestined is thus choosing (by the clinging) to believe in the impossibility of choice.
So, perhaps you begin by believing in heaven and hell and judgment at death.
As we write that, I find myself realizing, that needn’t be confined to Christian terms. What is Anubis, after all, but judgment? Only, it is not followed by heaven or hell, but by another life or not.
Buddhism teaches an unending succession of lives, but implicit in the idea of rebirth at the level you have earned is the idea of judgment. Not so much what you did as what you became.
Examples could be multiplied, but no need. The point is that belief-systems are a mixture of perception and beliefs and a logical working-out of relationships. If the perceptions change, or the beliefs, the logic will change or will be superseded, or will cease to be seen as relevant.
All of this is preliminary to discussing the question, but is not therefore irrelevant. (We did say the question would serve as springboard.)
So now let us look at the question in light of this reminder. Look how many tacit or explicit assumptions that short question embodies.
- Agreement with “others.”
- Prior existence of self and others.
- A script to be enacted in 3D life.
Agreement with others implies first off the existence of others, or there is no one to agree with. It implies a setting-up of a situation backstage (a writing of the play). It implies that you yourself exist, of course, but not as the you that you presently experience yourself to be; as the you that precedes this incarnation. You may say, “obviously,” but think with us. “Frank DeMarco” as such did not exist before Frank DeMarco was born in 1946. That is, the soul (considered as the specific mixture of spirit and pre-existing soul-stuff from the higher self in the All-D) did not exist as Frank DeMarco until inserted into the specific time-space-location.
This is not just playing with words. Listen.
The “you” that any of you in 3D experience yourselves to be is a mixture of what you were prior to this 3D life and what there is of you that is specific to this 3D life. It is always a mixture. That’s the point of 3D life, or anyway one point.
Do you, Frank, think that your underlying soul (your reality before and beyond your specific 3D identity) is always left-handed, always has your temperament and talents and infirmities? Do you suppose other lifetimes that went into the composition of you all dealt with asthma, all immersed themselves in history, all were or were not family men or monks or recluses or bon vivants? Once you look at it, it is obviously not so. But then, where is the “you” who may be making agreements with “others” concerning a 3D life to come?
I get the distinction, and I am willing to take your word for it that this is not merely playing with words, but I don’t see the significance of the distinction.
You don’t?
[A sense of their puzzlement.]
I’m waiting while you sort it out.
Let’s look again at the implied or explicit postulates:
- A “you” to make an agreement.
- An “other” or “others” with whom to agree.
- An offstage director, and at least a shooting script.
What these amount to depends upon the belief-system you bring to it. As we said at the beginning of this session, concepts change as experience changes you. We didn’t put it quite that way, but that is what we said. Therefore, those three elements – you, an other, a script or plot – will be interpreted very differently by people filling them into different belief-systems. Similarly, heaven and hell, judgment, afterlife, reincarnation – they all look different depending upon the filters on the lenses thorough which you perceive them.
This is not a cause for despair as in, “There isn’t any way to get to the truth!” Actually, it is your only hope, for it amounts to, “There is always a way to see as much truth as you are willing and able to see.” If you could not know truth when you saw it unless it was “the” truth, your position would be hopeless, because you could never get high enough to see it. Fortunately for you, truth is not part of a binary “true/not true” system. It is more like a rheostat, capable of being tuned up or down.
So to return to the question at hand?
We never left it. The truth or falsity of the statement – or, better, the accuracy or degree of error of the statement – depends entirely upon the platform from which you view it. (This is, of course, always the case, whether realized or not.)
We suggest that rather than looking at such statements or questions as susceptible to “yes” or “no” answers, you look at them closely, as we have been doing here, not trying to logic you way to what you believe, nor merely feeling your way to a reaction, but weighing it, pondering it.
It is the most destructive idea, to think that “right and wrong” is a binary phenomenon. It destroys your ability to see nuances and variabilities and relative relationships.
We’re back to the results of eating from the tree of perceiving things as good or evil.
Precisely.