Wednesday, September 29, 2021
6:15 a.m. You suggested discussing willpower.
First set your switches, and re-read yesterday’s.
All right, I did.
You are feeling a reluctance to proceed, and are attributing it to your back hurting and you being tired.
Bogus issues, I know. So does this imply that I know what you’re intending to open up, and am reluctant to participate?
You tell us.
Well, maybe. I really don’t know. Sometimes I have been reluctant to begin, but the habit has carried me there, and we have had a good session.
The rules of interaction and motive are usually too complicated to be set into reliable expectation. It is usually worthwhile to be aware of complications, but not always worth your time to pursue them. So let’s talk about willpower.
I already know something of what you are going to say, I think. Conflict among strands paralyzes will, or leads to willful changes of direction, perhaps repeatedly, perhaps eccentrically. Lack of conflict may produce a very strong will.
That is all true as far as it goes, and by understanding that, you have saved us a bit of explanation. But there is more to be said, only you need to summon the energy.
Yes, I can feel the drag. And when the available energy is low, I can hear competing strands of attention replaying things I have read. That amounts to a distraction from focus and receptivity, so why haven’t the slide-switches worked?
We know you are speaking shorthand, but remember that the slide-switches are visualizations representing intent; they have no magic in themselves. That is, visualizing does not in itself produce the desired effect. It is the signal flag calling for assistance; it is not itself the assistance.
Yes, I know. But I lose sight of it, I guess?
You saw that fugitive thought go by?
I did. It said, everything in my life goes out of sight. It means, in effect, my relationships, interests, my very nature, I suppose, have a limited shelf-life. Things come into my life, have their time, and fade away from it, or disappear suddenly. Nothing in my life is as permanent as it appears to be.
Nor is your life itself, of course. And even things or people that remain in your life over many changes, themselves change, as you change, and so the relationship changes even though it continues.
That thought spurred because I happened to say “I lose sight of it.”
We love that phrase, “happened to.”
Now, you are thinking, “This is a digression from what they promised. But is it? It’s merely taking it in a direction you aren’t expecting because, as we said, your summary of preliminaries saved time.
At any moment, you in 3D conceive yourselves to be a solid, definite, presumed-permanent unit. Even when you know better, you think that way. And at any given moment, seen as a snapshot, this may be true. But juxtaposition of moments will show that the permanence is an illusion caused by separation of time-slices. True permanence would show unaltered pictures in altered circumstances.
As you say that, I get that the ever-changing nature of the shared subjectivity provides us the opportunity to deal with further aspects of ourselves. Allows us to explore and modify things previously untouched, or perhaps previously approved.
That’s right. Someone who was unchanged in changing circumstances would be one who had achieved a super-human stability.
Or had petrified?
No, not really. One who petrifies emotionally or intellectually has not assured perpetual continuity. Instead, he has guaranteed that sooner or later he is going to be faced with an overwhelming crisis of some kind that will unfreeze him even if by destroying him.
Unless he dies first.
Yes. That would be the only way to avoid a confrontation. This is what extreme mental breakdown is, you know: a confrontation of the conscious attitude by things it cannot live with but cannot suppress. It is a dynamiting of the obstruction, lesser methods of clarification having failed. This is not to say that all such impasses result in breakdown, but to say that all such breakdowns (nearly all) result from impasse.
But a person who achieved a condition of permanence among impermanence, as opposed to being thrust into it by inability to be open, would be ready to move on from 3D life, because 3D life would have no more way to help him.
So – the Buddha, say?
Of course. And a Bodhisattva is a person who is so not because of what he knows, but because of what he has become. With all work on oneself finished, one has the choice of moving on to other realms and continuing to work on oneself, or of remaining among 3D creatures, in an environment that is no longer of use to oneself, in an attempt to help them. Either choice is honorable, and in reality it is not a choice, in that in effect both paths are taken. The Bodhisattva’s internal work is not put on hold until all beings become enlightened: rather, that split-off segment remains and the rest continues. This is misleading, in that nothing actually splits, but let’s move on.
So, like James Joyce and his daughter, the Bodhisattva is living an achieved permanence and the mental patient is suffering from an inability to move, to continue needed changes.
Don’t confuse permanence with inability to change, but in the roughest sense, yes, you could see it that way. A different analogy would be the simplicity that follows absorption of and transcendence of complication, as compared to the simplicity that has yet to encounter the world.
Well, this is extraordinarily interesting. To me, anyway. Not sure it has much to do with the subject of willpower, though.
It flowed naturally, which is usually a sign of connection. Notice, too, that a subject that engages your interest raises your energy level. You haven’t had any trouble.
That’s true.
The relevance of all this to willpower is this: Creation follows intent, and intent follows clarity. If you don’t know what you want to do, it is harder to do it. If you don’t know what you want to become, it is harder to become it. So what do you do if you are a creature of conflicting impulses?
That’s embarrassing, not to have seen it. You choose.
Of course you do. You choose, and until you choose, the conflicts will continue and perhaps bring you to the point of such indecision as to resemble paralysis. But as you do choose, the conflicts resolve into chosen and non-chosen paths. We don’t say everything becomes smooth; it doesn’t. But what does happen is that all your components find a modus vivendi shaped by your intent. How far you get toward harmony depends upon many things, not least how conflicted you were when you began. But choice is how you create order from chaos.
Today’s should be called – ?
Maybe “Choice, change, and Bodhisattvas”?
Maybe. Catchy title, anyway. Well, thanks for this. The insight into Bodhisattvas would be worthwhile in itself. Till next time.