TGU – Our situation (part 25)

Tuesday, July 6, 2021

2:40 a.m. Open for business.

Bear in mind what we’re doing at the moment. You cannot possibly have a reasonable idea of your future after 3D if you do not see who and what you are (structure) or how you function or why (purpose). It requires a lot of understanding, to understand anything.

Context, I know.

It is almost more important to not hold mistaken concepts, than to hold accurate ones. Wrong concepts may give you a mistaken sense of certainty that prevents you from seeing what is right there in front of you. But once the path is clear, sparks will suffice.

So, in explaining who you are. You are specific conduits of vast forces, but you are not disconnected either in time nor in space nor in lateral extent. That is, although 3D conditions lead you to see yourselves as existing here, now, alone, in actual fact that is where you focus, yes, but you extend beyond all these.

So, yesterday we were discussing sex as experienced by several lives, each of which became a strand. We did not explicitly say what we should perhaps have said, that it was not a matter of percentages of a given experience, but that each life is a differently experienced nuance. Nuances are not to be compared numerically; they are additive in that each offers an addition to the richness of the inventory; they are perhaps disruptive in that some will undercut or oppose others, but they are not merely a matter of ratio.

But I get that the business about ratios is part of it, that this is one way of assessing things.

Yes, one way; that’s what we were showing. But not the only way, and perhaps not the most illuminating way. It isn’t black/white, but fifty shades of grey, and fifty shades of every color imaginable, and your everyday decisions determine to what extent various colors will express at any given time in your 3D life.

Now remember, this isn’t so much about you, at the moment, but about the forces that express through you. What we sketched about sex we could sketch about all the virtues, all the vices – about every force that is known to flow through the human being.

Interesting. I get a sense of the seven cardinal virtues, the seven deadly sins, but it is much easier to see how you could sketch anger, say, or covetousness – any of the sins – as forces flowing through us, than the virtues, which seem more like ideals than forces.

That is because virtues are seen as ideals to strive for (that is, they require and reward your effort and focus), while sins are seen as pitfalls, snares to avoid. But from a certain viewpoint, perhaps you can see that this is another consequence of seeing things as good and bad.

Hard to see how to put it clearly.

The difficulty is inherent in the discussion. Many people have lost themselves in it. The simplest way to put it depends upon a goal. If you are at sea and have no goal, then perhaps any wind will serve. But if you have a goal, some winds will be good for your purposes, and some bad. They are not good or bad absolutely: Can there be an immoral East Wind? But they may serve or may hinder one’s goals.

Rather than enmesh ourselves in this argument again, let us continue to examine how things manifest, and you can argue out for yourself the ins and outs of it. List the virtues and sins again.

The classic four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. Christians added faith, hope, charity. The seven sins are lust, envy, gluttony, covetousness, anger, pride and sloth, or ennui. [Pride is considered the prime sin. I list them in the order suggested by my mnemonic LEG CAPS or LEG CAPE.)

Each of these is described from the point of view of an individual, you see. (It should be obvious, after all.) They are described as excellences or defects of character. But let us look at them as the result of impersonal forces flowing into and through a personal limited expression of life.

The image that arises is of the Roaring Forties and the Straits of Magellan.

A pretty good metaphor for 3D life, in its way, is it not? Explain the image.

The rotation of the earth creates wind patterns. The conformation of the earth (mountain ranges, for instance) funnels the wind. The 40s of South latitude channel practically unceasing winds eastward, funneling toward the further South because of the mountains. It took Magellan’s ships weeks to pick their way through the Straits between the South American mainland and Tierra del Fuego because they were sailing into the teeth of storm after storm. Had they been traveling eastward, each storm would have helped them on their way, but to go from east to west required battling winds all the way.

So your life in 3D might be seen as such a voyage. Not every day is stormy; neither is every life. But any given day is likely to face storms, and so with every lifetime. If you are traveling westward, you know you are going to have to contend with headwinds and storms, and there is no use calling them hard names. But a skillful sailor knows how to use all the forces to his advantage, and knows what not to do. Thus, the virtues and vices.

But “How do the virtues manifest in your life” is a different question from “What are the virtues themselves, and what are they expressing?” Different questions, you see. We have looked at the former, at another time. Now we are looking at the latter.

So, temperance, say?

No, that isn’t the way to go about it. Abstract discussion only leaves you hanging. Let’s look at how these characteristic may be deduced after the fact, in various lives.

So take John Cotten’s life, the life of shattered expectations leading to despair. You see?

I’m beginning to. In giving up on life, he fell prey to ennui. He hadn’t decided to express it, but that is a word that describes his state.

That’s right. And when, with the older man’s help, he realized that you can’t give up on life, the forces that he relied upon to get back to actively living might be seen as fortitude, and perhaps hope, though it might be more accurate to say faith, in that he had no specific hopes, and only a generalized sense that giving up was a mistake.

Interesting. I see that.

It wasn’t a decision to fall into error, but it was a decision to climb out of it. In that sense, the virtues always require effort while one need only drift to fall into sin. Sin, you will remember, is sometimes defined as “missing the mark.” But, looked at that way, don’t fortitude and ennui look different?

Yes, they look like definitions tacked on to describe behavior, rather than pre-existent forces.

Well, perhaps we should say they are definitions tacked on to describe the sources and results of behavior. But yes, not pre-existing separable forces, except when seen from the point of view of any 3D individual.

Your hour is up, but this isn’t a bad beginning. We can talk more about the vices and virtues as they express in your lives. We are not preaching the same old thing you may have been raised on, so it would be worth your while to be sure to look to your openness, in considering it.

It always strikes me, at the end of a session, how slowly we claw our way along, yet the pages do get written, and the lessons do pile up.

Think of yourself as sailing westward through the Straits, and perhaps you will find our progress less painfully slow. Others – ourselves at other times, also – may have following winds and clear sailing, but if you sail long enough, you sooner or later contend with pretty much any set of conditions.

Till next time, then, and thanks as always.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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