TGU – initially, a shock

Saturday, June 5, 2021

3:10 a.m. I often think, “This is an impossible task.” I wake up with the prospect ahead of me of producing more material about a subject I know nothing about, in words that haven’t come to me, heading somewhere (I hope) without map or outline. It takes a tremendous amount of faith, sometimes, that this will really continue to work. Yet usually it does, and often enough someone else will respond to it. A remarkable thing, all in all.

Very well, gentlemen, we await your next installment.

There is a safety factor involved here that you sometimes lose sight of, and that is this: There is an undefined number of ways to approach the material. Everything connects. Anything can lead to anything else. This is one reason why our talks can be so topical, can hinge on the most trivial connection, and still hit home. Intent drives the exploration, not predefined game plan or road map.

Yes, I see that as you say it. And, as you say it, the ringing in my ears is back, and I take it as a companion, almost, a reassuring reminder that I am not on my own here.

And even as you write “on your own” you realize that it is a meaningless phrase in that nobody is ever on their own. But it is not meaningless in that often a 3D consciousness-focus may make a person feel as if on its own.

Yes, of course. And I wasn’t kvetching, as you know, just saying how it is with me as we proceed.

And how it is with you is how it will sometimes be with others, so it’s just as well to get it on the record as one of those mental-habit obstacles that arise from time to time.

Which is how I can justify our taking ten minutes of our time to mention it. In any case –.

When you die, the you that dies is a little different than appears.

Had to re-write that sentence on the fly; I don’t know whether you were re-thinking as we went along, or I was fighting you, substituting one thing that seemed more probable than another. So let’s try that again.

A word on process, that perhaps neither we nor you has mentioned in all these years. It is normal for you to carry on a sort of semi-conscious editing process as you record. Given that you are not taking dictation in the sense of writing words you actually “hear” – usually – but are expressing the sense of the knowing that comes, as it comes, it is a natural and unavoidable part of the process that you choose wording and even phrasing as you go. Sometimes the knowing is smooth and fluent, and the problem does not arise. Sometimes you are not sure of what we mean; sometimes you need to know what comes next in order to know which word or concept to choose, and so there are missteps and corrections. None of this is “wrong” or “bad practice” or “lack of skill” or your “making it up.” It is part of the process that cannot be avoided when it proceeds via transferring knowings rather than specific words. Other manners of proceeding do not involve this ambiguity in this way, but in other ways. For those who process like Cayce or Jane Roberts, for instance, the hesitation over words or concepts comes not from the scribe but from the conduit. Thus, Rob Butts did not choose among words, but Jane Roberts did, internally or externally (Seth rephrasing), regardless whether the process was or is obvious. Our reason for spelling-out the process is, of course, as encouragement for those who begin to do the same work on their own (in 3D terms), without an external instructor.

I much regret that the little weekend course I developed for TMI didn’t catch on. And I hear, “But you could put it in YouTube or could di it virtually via Zoom.” Interesting thought. But will you try again to say what I didn’t get very well.

The “you” that dies out of 3D is not the “you” you think it is, any more than the “you” living at the moment is the “you” you think you are. Not a terribly profound statement, not a terribly hard concept to convey or absorb, we should think. Surely you are not still under the impression that you know yourselves.

Implying (I take it) that no model is ever adequate, even yours.

Can a model ever replicate the original? A model is a simplification for the purpose of enabling you to do something. That is, it gives you a way to look at whatever is being modeled, so as to help shape your on-going approaches to decisions to be made.

Perhaps not entirely clear, but let’s push on rather than spend another block of time clarifying.

We’re smiling. When you’re feeling pressed for time – slow down. We repeat, for the benefit of the studio audience: When you feel pressed for time, slow down. And if you will think about it, you’ll know why.

I do, only I forget from time to time. I learned in that amazing year after Gateway that stretched on and on that the more conscious we are, the slower time seems to pass; that is, the more we fill it with. Or, not quite that. More like, the more content (of all kinds: mental, emotional, even physical) each moment can contain.

Or, more accurately, the more content you are aware of, and can process.

So again it is, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

As we were saying, a model is there for the purpose of clarifying your concepts. It may or may not be relatively accurate and useful, but one thing it will never be is complete. Given that everything connects to everything else, how could any model of anything extend to all its ramifications? You would have to model the entire universe. So, no matter how sophisticated your understanding, when you die you are going to be in for a surprise, and not necessarily an unpleasant one. The fact is, you are all far greater, more ramified (if that’s a word), more significant to the world than you dare dream. Realizing that things are better than you had dared hope is pleasant, but still can be something of a shock.

Like winning the lottery, I suppose.

A reasonable analogy, yes. You’re glad of it, you may even have hoped and wished for it, but it’s going to change your life and anyway you never really expected it.

So as you try to absorb our model of what you encounter (and how, and why), bear in mind, you aren’t going to experience it in a matter-of-fact, marginally-bored way. A gasp of astonishment, more like it.

Then why do we have so much testimony (and first-hand experience, some of us, doing retrievals) with people lost, isolated, disoriented, sometimes self-tortured?

That is one effect of the de facto split within you between the divine and the human. That is not quite the same as saying between non-3D and 3D. This is a different split, and it may take some doing to explain.

Despite having taken so much time on process, we still have a few minutes.

Your mind – which seems to you to be a unit, though you know better – is a community in more senses than one. It is the product of many sires, as Emerson said. It is a cooperating village of sometimes contentious elements. It is also divided by function. (At least, that’s one way to put it.) There are sub-communities that specialize in seeing detail, and others that specialize in constructing or perceiving gestalts. There is all manner of specialization of focus and of function. Some members concentrate on coordination, others are scarcely aware that they are part of something larger.

Sounds like us in 3D, actually. “As above, so below” in this case too?

Very much so, but it is rarely applied. That’s what we are doing. Those parts of your mind that are only marginally coordinated with the rest tend to experience life in their own context. When the binding that is a 3D body is removed, perhaps they have difficulty recognizing that they belong to a community that functioned together for however many years. They may need an external reminder because they are still focused on 3D.

That’s very interesting and I have to think about it. In [the TMI program] Lifeline, we were considering life as if we were units. We went after someone (or, let’s say, we were placed in scenarios to lure the attraction of someone) thinking of them as the person they had been, not as a part of a person.

And how much explanation would you have needed to have, if anyone had tried to explain to you that, “Appearances aside, here’s what you’re really working with”?

I see your point.

Now, your own experience is a good model in itself. You in 3D, using your non-3D perception anchored in your 3D body, extended toward a disoriented personality, walked into a scenario created not by you but stepped into, got that personality’s attention, conceptualized escorting it back into connection, and then you left the scene, never knowing or needing to know what came next for that personality.

These were your experiences. You were there. You did that. And now we are telling you, your way of explaining it, even of experiencing it, was vastly oversimplified. Does that mean it didn’t happen?

And you’re saying it’s much the same for us when we wake up from the 3D trance.

Yes. It’s a nice shock, to know that things were always more under control than you feared, but it is still a shock.

I always worry a little that too much procedural detail slows down our exploration, but I notice it tends to even out. Okay, our thanks as always, and see you next time.