Sunday, January 2, 2022
6:05 a.m. Gentlemen, that was quite a ride, yesterday afternoon and last night. As I strongly suspect that it was not merely an inexplicable illness – something that “just happened” – I thought, even while I was in the midst of it, that I’d ask your take on it. This had to do with breaking into new territory, doesn’t it, and perhaps being unprepared.
You should describe here what you experienced, for as usual one’s description of a perceived event will say worlds about the subjective end of it.
That was clumsy enough to remind me that I have not set my switches for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
Particularly presence. And notice that your ears are suddenly ringing. Pay attention to incidentals. All right, sketch what you experienced on the first day of this new year.
A wonderful morning, very light and cheerful. I used my colored pencils to color four of my old sketches, and was very happy with the result. (I think I am acquiring the technique pretty quickly. I have done more than 100 so far.) But sometime in the afternoon, with no cause I could perceive either at the time or in retrospect, I was hit with terrible back pain, the kind of back pain that leaves you almost incapable of moving around, that leaves you unsure if you can actually stand or, if standing, can safely take a step. The kind of pain that requires you to adjust your position in bed by fractions of an inch at a time, with much bracing and caution. At the same time, I got cold, and couldn’t get warm even by going to bed fully clothed with all the covers pulled over me. And everything hurt.
I stayed in bed from mid-afternoon until a little before six a.m., with intervals to painfully get up to use the bathroom. I see that I noted here at 9 p.m. two or three lines saying I was sick, trying to get through the night. At 10:30 I noticed that I was coming out of it, and hoped to talk to the guys because, “It is as if suddenly everything opened up, and I am not yet able to handle it.” At 2 a.m. I listed the symptoms as I could remember them, and said, “Not just a sudden illness. Connectedness progress, I suspect.” And from about that time the pain went away and I got several hours’ sleep. Enough?
Yes. It gives the flavor of the experience: unexpected and unexplained; intense; yet even in the midst of it, you intuiting that it was other than it seemed.
Well, it wouldn’t make much sense to take dictation about superhuman abilities and then, a few hours later, revert to a view of life as accidents and coincidences and innocent victims.
No, it wouldn’t. Speaking of connectedness –
Meaning, I take it, I didn’t jump from one world-view to another when circumstances changed.
What you mean is right, but what you said is not.
More carefully, then. I didn’t have one ship captain leave and a different ship captain take the conn.
You see? You were intuiting, in the midst of your experience, that it was somehow linked to connectedness with your other strands. You thought, “Somehow this is because I opened up and I don’t yet know how to handle the energies.” That’s one way to see it, and not incorrect. However, it may show you a more useful way to think about it to say, you have begun to integrate the various sub-personalities within you, so that you don’t lose sight of one when circumstances change and, in the past, would have tempted you to allow a different one to take charge, you not noticing the hand-over.
And if I get the implication of what you just said, thinking of it as integrating strands and thinking of it as integrating sub-personalities is the same thing.
Yes it is. Different conceptualization, same facts.
And I know that “events” fit in here too, though I can’t quite fit it.
Events are a part of the shared subjectivity that the times allow to manifest. Events as you experience them are that part, specifically mingled with your personal subjectivity. This is why no two people experience the same thing, why everyone’s life is lived, in effect, in an individual show.
I think I drifted. Again?
Any two people’s reaction to even the most impactful external event will be somewhat different, regardless how much of the immediate emotion may be shared. You do live in the same world, and you don’t. It is a matter of how closely you examine life. An illness, though, or any physical condition – a fall, a continuing disability, whatever – is not a shared event but a personal event, so it may be experienced differently. That is, an event in the public sector – a plane crash, a riot, an earthquake – is an event shared by many people, even though, as we just said, each will experience it somewhat differently. An event tied strictly to one’s body (including mental illness) on the other hand, is not shared, but is experienced obviously one at a time. A hospital ward full of sick people is not a shared event in the way an airplane crash is; it is a collection of individual events taking place in adjacent space.
Couldn’t you say that of anything, though?
Yes, perhaps. But the distinction we are concentrating on is that to one who is experiencing illness or any bodily related event, it is the personal rather than the shared aspect of the event that will seem to be predominant.
We’re having a hard time getting to your point, it seems to me.
That often happens, as you know, in first setting out even simple points. Let’s try again.
- Events are the shared subjectivity’s unfinished business, manifesting as the energies of the moment allow.
- But everything out of the shared subjectivity mingles with the personal subjectivity; you all deal with life one at a time.
- The resources you bring to events are determined partly by whatever work on yourself you have already done. What you have available depends partly on what you have been accumulating.
- A physically-determined event, that is to say, an illness, or anything seemingly confined to your own body, will still be connected to the energies of the moment even though your attention is on the personal. You ask, “What did I do to bring this on?” You much more rarely ask, “Why is this manifesting at this moment (rather than at another time)?” yet perhaps a combination of questions would be more productive.
I have just come off a year of concentration on the body’s illnesses. I was not tempted to think it involved anyone but myself, but I admit, as you say this, I never thought to ask “Why now?” Or if I did, it would have been in the context of “What did I do that it should manifest now?”
Well, you would. It’s natural. How many people think of accuse the whole world and the shared subjectivity for the fact that they have a headache?
Very funny.
But it’s said seriously, as well. In the normal course of events, you tend to assume that things of your body apply only to yourself, as if you were a closed system within a larger system. After all, you had to learn not to think of your minds as closed systems. This is just burrowing a little deeper.
So now, we have burned an hour, but I think this is incomplete. Can we round it off?
You are not wrong to suspect that your sudden inexplicable physical event is connected with a sudden breakthrough into new openness, new fluidity. And you are right that new circumstances require adjustment so that you learn to deal with them. And, finally, you are also right to see this as a good thing. If you are going to explore out of sight of land, it is possible that from time to time, you will get seasick. As you intuited, this connects with superhuman abilities. People rarely stop to realize that superhuman abilities would require superhuman wisdom and experience to keep them in balance.
I think you just called me the sorcerer’s apprentice.
That would be only if you were trying to do something illegitimately. There’s a difference between learning to ride a bicycle, say, and stealing an airplane and trying to fly it without having had lessons.
Today’s theme?
“Moving into new territory,” perhaps. Or “Personal and shared subjectivity,” or even “Events and health.” You decide.
Okay. Our thanks as always. Maybe next time we can address the final topic you brought up the other day. Till then.