TGU – Our situation (part 20)

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

4:40 a.m. Before yesterday’s clarification about the nature of strands, we were going to talk about how our unknown or under-recognized strands have their rights too. Not exactly sure what that means, but that was to be on the agenda, so you said. Or rather, so I gathered. You didn’t say it in so many words.

Yesterday’s discussion seems to you to be a side-trail, but we assure you, it isn’t. It is a necessary loosening-up of concepts so that you may look at this from a different place. The fact is, the 3D life – the soul – is vastly more complex than usually thought, even after Freud and Jung and those who followed them opened up so many previously unsuspected doors. If you remember any one thing, remember this: It is inherent in 3D life that you will experience yourselves as if you were units, but a unit is one thing you can never be.

Except, that’s going to require a lot of clarification.

That’s what we’re here for. You, us.

You can start by tying that statement in with yesterday’s discussions, I suppose.

Or you could, since you get our drift. But you can see that words are going to be a problem, as so often.

Yes, I can see the value in General Semantics that Jon Holt occasionally references, only how can we conduct any meaningful conversation if we have to carefully define our terms continually? And at the same time, how meaningful can a conversation be if it is conducted in terms that each person unconsciously defines for himself?

That is the dilemma. That’s why our informal discussions like this must be conducted with a view to striking sparks, rather than attempting to prove anything.

Of course. Obvious, once you say it, as so often.

Careful, plodding, well-buttressed argument is there to be found [in the literature of the world], and your intuition will help you find it when you want it. Paul Brunton in your case, Frank, but everyone can find something closely tuned to their requirements. People have been thinking about these things for a long time! However, closely reasoned argument is not for everybody, and is not for anybody at all times, only occasionally. Far more efficient to leap from one insight to another, mostly. Proving things is a specialized need, that comes and goes.

And can’t be done anyway.

That’s almost true, not quite. Within the limits of any given belief-system, things can be proved. However, “proved” means more “proved to be consistent with the assumptions and boundaries of this belief system” than “proved as absolutely so, forever and ever amen.”

Looked at that way, proof can be seen as a limitation, really, an encouragement to remain within your belief-system rather than explore beyond its limits.

An interesting way to look at it, and you aren’t wrong. But don’t assume that it is always appropriate either to remain within bounds or to explore beyond bounds. Everything has its season.

So, you will remember that there was a time when we offered you the choice of continuing to explore (breaking the bounds of the new understanding you had come to) or leaving things as they were for the moment.

Yes. I couldn’t say when it was, but I remember clearly saying, “Let’s pause,” and being a little surprised that this was my preference.

And at the proper time, we resumed our explorations, breaking the mold of the understanding you had come to. If we remember rightly – and we think we do! – we used the analogy, at some point, of children growing.

I remember. Bones lengthen, and the lengthening pauses while the bone fills out, then there is another lengthening.

It is a process of regular alternation. Constructing and refining understandings proceeds quite similarly. Pauses for reflection and assimilation are as important as the moving into new territory, or you can lose the use of whatever you have learned. Or, let’s say, it will remain beside you, but not become part of you.

In the past, you would have become impatient by this time, thinking that this discussion of process was getting in the way of discussing substance, and of course there is no such dichotomy in reality. Process sheds light on whatever is being discussed, and of course sometimes vice-versa.

It is often hard – as now, for instance – to see the connection.

That’s because you are not always keeping in mind that we – you and we – are working in two directions at once. There is the material to be covered, and there is the way of apprehending it.

I take that to mean, there is the subject matter per se, and there is the mind that is absorbing the subject matter, and we’re working on both.

It is always so, but particularly with us. Your affinity to Paul Brunton’s explanations was in the fact of how he proceeded, quite as much as in what he examined. You see?

I do. For some, his material will be dry and tedious, I suppose. For others, ungrounded and speculative, maybe. It depends as much upon the mind coming to the work as it does upon the mind that created the work.

So let us proceed to the question of your unknown selves. And do so, if you can, not in the sense of “Finally we get down to it!” but in the sense of “This will connect somehow with what has just come; it’s up to me whether I find the connection.” Only, don’t assume that this is a scavenger hunt. The point is not to be collecting clues, but to not be discarding things right and left as if they were irrelevancies.

With two-thirds of our time gone, I would hope it hasn’t all been irrelevant!

Bear in mind, the distinction between “you” (any of you) and “us” is at best a tentative one, a sorting-out for the purpose of clarity and of giving you a way to process. You will notice that Paul Brunton did not rely upon dialogue, but proceeded as if everything he said had been produced by his local mind. Jane Roberts on the other hand proceeded as if none of it were from her local mind. Each of you in every moment is an active functioning intelligence employing non-3D abilities within 3D conditions, and how you conceptualize the process is as much a reflection of your preferences as it is an objective description of limits and possibilities in your life.

I keep hearing the ridiculous refrain, “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.”

That isn’t what we meant when we said “Bear in mind.”

Terrible pun. I like it.

But, you see, that saying was in your mind. Why? Who put it there? Us? You? Clearly not. But then, who else is there?

I begin to see.

Yes and this would go better with the help of a good 3D analogy, so if one occurs to you, we’ll try it on.

The sense is of so much material available and so little that can get into consciousness. psychology apparently lumps what doesn’t get through the filter as “unconscious content,” with the little that does get through as “conscious content.” But that way of seeing things severely distorts things, doesn’t it?

Let’s say, it strains the bounds of your particular belief-system, and is not helpful. That’s why a different metaphor than “unconscious v. conscious” – for it is a metaphor, really, though not seen as one because not dependent upon visual image – will be of assistance.

It has to involve contention, I see. Competition.

It does. Your attention is an absolute, even if variable. [That is, it always has limits, even if the limits may vary from one moment to the next.] When you have as much as your attention can hold, there is no more room. That’s the value of periodically clearing your mind from time to time. It’s a leveling of the playing-field, offering possibilities for the previously excluded. Possession may be 90% of the law, but it is also 90% of the problem of learning new things.

The subject is very much more important than it may seem, and we are going to approach it from an unfamiliar viewpoint, hoping to shake loose some accustomed blinders. Hence this long preamble. For next time, let your mind – our mind – loosely dwell on the need for a new analogy to replace “conscious/unconscious” and we’ll see where we go.

Okay. This session particularly has a curious feel, being both clearly directed and yet not seemingly directed at what it was said to be addressing.

You will see. Be well.

Thanks, you too. Till next time.

 

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