Spirit and the living present

Friday, July 30, 2021

1 a.m. Might as well proceed. You said last time that it may be said of the spirit – as of the soul – that we don’t take into account who and what we are. Willing to be instructed.

It is mildly frustrating to know how a simple but unfamiliar concept may be twisted (in good faith, with the best intentions) to sort of fit in with someone’s existing but radically different concepts. This spirit/soul split is particularly simple, particularly susceptible to mistaken elaboration.

The soul is, you might say, the predestination end of your existence, firmly enmeshed in causes and consequences, in time and 3D relationships, in specific combinations of characteristics. That is, everything is so contingent upon other things, it’s hard to see how you can carve out an inch of room to move.

The spirit, by contrast, animates, but is not bound by, the soul’s existence. It participates in a way, but in a way at arm’s length. The joys and sufferings of a 3D life – its intricacies and accomplishments, the very ability to change and be changed, is all alien to the spirit except in so far as the spirit cares for the soul.

I get the sense of spirit being more a father’s traditional role in a child’s life, and soul the mother’s.

Not a bad analogy, and you will notice that Jesus did not say “mother/father God,” but said, “our father.”

I take “mother/father God” to be a politically correct way to try to overcome gender expectations. But I have never had any success getting my point of view across, so finally stopped expressing it. It seems to me a serious muddling of an important distinction. “Do you say mother/father Earth?” I used to ask. But people get very entrenched in their political statements. As I say, it was no use. It was like trying to get an earnest materialist “rational” person to concede that scriptures might be more than superstition or manipulation.

And you are still arguing.

Well, I don’t know, I thought what you ware saying about spirit was supporting my view.

Whether it did or did not, still it would be argumentation rather than striking sparks.

Conceded.

What is a worthwhile realization is that indeed you (anyone in 3D) are dual; there is an inherent polarity, that could be expressed as masculine/feminine, though that would not exhaust the subject. Jung saw that biological women contained within their psyches a male counterpart that he called the animus, and biological men contained a feminine counterpart, the anima. This shouldn’t surprise anyone; it is completeness within a polarity, after all.

But let us look at that polarity a different way, looking at spirit as a masculine characteristic and soul as a feminine one.

Is this useful? Seems to me we’re merely going to lose people to their political hot-buttons.

You may be right, yet we are reluctant to pretend that an aspect of reality is not so, merely to avoid contention.

Well, go at it your own way and maybe we can clarify where I think we’ll lose people.

Spirit is not enmeshed in consequences. Neither is it a cause, not in the way soul is. Spirit is the electric current running through the wires; soul is the motor using that current to do whatever it is that it does. You might say that spirit is the God-ness of you, as soul is the human-ness.

I share your frustration. It is a simple distinction but it freezes as we try to fix it in words.

Try thinking of it this way. When Bob Monroe described his “far journeys” as AA zipping around an undefined universe, following whim, unfettered by responsibilities, that was a rough equivalent of spirit. When AA got sucked into successive incarnations by its fascination with M-band noise, that was, roughly, spirit uniting with the moment to produce soul. Soul produces consequences, but soul without spirit is impossible; it would be a statue of a soul, a dead portrait, not a living being. It is spirit that animates. And this returns us to the point we hinted at earlier: That extra energy provided by the living-present moment (as opposed to every other moment not experienced as living) – does it have no connection to spirit? Do the two concepts – living-present and spirit – not illuminate each other?

As so often, it feels like I almost get it, but not quite. I can sense an affinity, but I can’t link the two conceptually.

Sure you can. They are both uniquely alive.

That may be clear to you. The connective tissue is not clear to me, not quite.

Something moves in the universe and where it is, the living-present-moment is experienced. Once! Not again. The year 1865 is not returning to life in the way it had its life while in that radiance. It didn’t cease to exist, but it is not alive in the same way. If contacted from a moment that is in the living-present, it may alter; it may have a sort of ghost of its former life. But it is never coming back to front and center.

What does this mean?

Again, I almost get it, but not quite.

The living-present-moment is where the spirit is. Thus, where the spirit is, there is the living-present. Does that make it clear?

Unfortunately, no, it doesn’t.

The key to everything is:

• The difference between the living-present and all other moments.
• 3D life as a progression of consequences, causes, and more consequences.
• 3D life as choice, which can be experienced only in living-present moments.
• Spirit as the animating force that makes that present-moment different. That is, the force that provides the extra.

So that it is only the presence of spirit that makes living-present moments special?

Yes, but it could equally be said that it is only the living-present moments that allow the influence of the spirit. You needn’t choose between the two ways of seeing it, just be aware that they are equally applicable, and may shed more light on things if pondered.

I suppose it’s like our experience of life in general. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Spirit animates us moment by moment, and we can not re-animate past moments, nor experience future moments before their time.

That’s right. You can remember; you can anticipate, but you cannot by willpower make a different moment into a living-present moment. “The spirit listeth where it will,” you will recall.

Yet we experience life as a smooth progression of days, unvarying, routine, almost mechanical in nature.

No you certainly do not. You may remember your days that way; you don’t experience them thus. Some days fly, some creep. Some are full of meat; some are empty and hollow-feeling. Some are long stretches between moments of consciousness; some are dense and productive stretches of continuous or nearly continuous experiencing.

Like that year that followed Gateway, that stretched out forever.

We told you at the time that the more conscious you are, the more time seems to slow, because you can and do put more into it (or, to look at it a different way, you get more out of it). And thus, again, as Ram Dass told you –

Be here now.

The fact that the statement has become a cliché does not make it any the less important. To the degree that you are here, now, you are in closer touch with spirit. Now we wonder, could there be any advantage to you in being in closer touch with spirit?

Nah, probably not.

But you see, the fact that the close connection is desirable may feel obvious – but what is it in detail? What does it mean? And (remembering our larger goal here), what light does it shine on your life after 3D?

Which I guess could be paraphrased, our life after we are no longer being carried by the energy of spirit.

Or perhaps, after that energy is no longer obstructed by the structures of soul. We haven’t exactly exhausted the subject. We will continue here next time: Spirit and the living-present-moment, and then spirit after the living-present is no longer applicable (because you are no longer encased in soul).

Thanks as always. It’s very interesting to splash through these shallows with you, trying to mark navigable waters. Till next time.