Altered states as a way of life

Sunday, March 13, 2022

3:40 a.m. The process could get complicated. I say, “Let the total self drive,” but suppose the total self wants TGU to drive that day? In the first place, how would I know the difference, in the second place, what difference would it make, in the third place, doesn’t this bring us back where we started, following impulses as best we can and  hoping for the best? These are not rhetorical questions, but do I take it that the fact that I pose them shows that they were suggested to me? Or, what? Setting switches, and let’s see what happens. Guys?

Valid questions, and they serve to point up your situation, which means, everybody’s situation in 3D who tries to be as responsive as possible. It will not have occurred to you that these problems are faced by everybody in every variety of your situation.

I may not be as awake as I thought, judging from that couple of sentences. Try again?

Anyone trying to live life sincerely and thoughtfully must consider the sources of their conduct. Some adopt a moral code, some –

No, this is too general. You do not realize it, but your predilection nudges the answer toward your comfort zone. You are more comfortable with abstractions than with personal examination, and so you nudge it.

Not consciously.

No; we said you don’t realize it. Still, you do it. And this behind-one’s-own-back editing and steering is also an inherent part of the human situation when attempting to communicate with the un-embodied voice in your head, even if the voice isn’t a voice but a feeling, or an impulse, or even words appearing on a page.

So this is why we’re going to be doing more of yesterday’s down-memory-lane stuff? Keeping it specific?

That avenue accomplishes more things than merely one.

And I take it you could probably proceed from nearly everything?

We prefer that you let us steer, at this stage in your life’s experiment.  We’ll waste a lot less time.

If you say so. Well, yesterday we proceeded from memories I woke up with.

You did not. We proceeded from the chain of associations you allowed to come through.

So we did. So I should sit quietly and be receptive, and then jot down what comes?

Yes. Try it. It will be slightly harder if you allow self-consciousness to enter into it. Yesterday you didn’t know what was coming, today you do; that’s the main difference, but it could impede your receptivity, if you were to let it. Don’t let it.

Well, all right, we’ll see. I’ll sit here with my coffee mug and the cat sitting on the blotter, and will close my eyes and try not to clutch the sides of the sliding-board. And as I write that, the cat walks away. A sign?

4. Maybe I’ll lie down and see what happens. So far, I got tags to my conversation yesterday with Charles, and something else, forgotten, and coffee and then Gibbs of NCIS and his perpetual coffee-drinking. Perhaps lying down will let me give over more.

It might, but it doesn’t depend upon physical position. You saw in the Mind Mirror measurements four years ago.

Still, it requires a certain attention to sit up in a chair rather than back in a recliner, as yesterday.

Even this argument will be instructive to people as an example of the new problems that may arise. But please just sit quietly and give the process five minutes.

[Pause]

Okay, I get the point. At first it was hard because I kept trying to seize anything that came; “Maybe that was what I was given!” Finally I realized that the very effort to grab and retain was an example of me – 3D me – retaining control. Letting the mind blank and setting my intent to not-interfering allowed the higher self or whatever I’m talking to, to take control.

Not control.

No, not control, but I allowed an image to form. Or rather, an impression of an image – an impression of a great stone face, without any detail; more the idea of a stone head than the head itself, and the one word, “Samoa.”

Let’s concentrate for the moment on process. You see the ramifications for your life as lived to date? Not worrying, for the moment, about how your life could change, could develop, look at how it has been to date.

You’re talking about living in the present?

We’re talking about an inability to live in continuity while living in the present. Your difficulties and your accomplishment are intertwined, of course. They always are. Indeed, they are part of the same thing –  your life as it proceeds – only, because they are considered from different mental buckets, as you say, they may not be seen as the same thing.

I can’t decide if I am inadequately focused or if the nature of this conversation is sort of diffuse.

You know your intent. Concentrate on sincere intent, always, and you will have done your share of the communication process. You are not responsible for the result, only for the effort.

Okay.

This feels diffuse because you can’t see the point of it. The point is instruction in what it feels like. How else are people to recognize aspects of their own experience that they may not have placed into context?

Now, the abstract content is this: Someone in 3D becomes used to living in an extended, and distorted, and useful, form of the present moment. You retain association from what just happened, you maintain chains of emotional association that masquerade as logical or even as chronological chains. You get used to seeing the present moment only through a haze of associations. Only in moments of crisis or of a sudden focusing for some reason do you experience the present moment as it is – and you call that an altered state. Well, it is altered, in the sense of “different from what I’m used to,” but it isn’t altered, but pure, in terms of actually experiencing the world as best you can while dealing with unavoidable sensory delay.

When you are in this “altered state,” it becomes impossible to maintain those chains of association without great effort. When you come to an altered state through chemical assistance, it may not be possible at all. When you come to it by intent in a protected setting – as when doing a Monroe tape in your CHEC unit, for instance – it would be possible to maintain such links, but chances are, you won’t want to do so. The point of the exercise, after all, is precisely to experience something different from everyday life.

So you, living a combination of intense isolated focus and chronic lack of insight

No, strike that. Let’s try again. You came to live more and more in the present moment without links to past associations except when a specific stimulus prompted a memory. Nothing wrong with this – except inconvenience perhaps – as an interim state, but you now will be moving through that stage, to another way of being that will more closely resemble ordinary consciousness, yet will be different precisely in that you will have returned to it rather than never having left it.

Call this “Altered states as a way of life,” because it isn’t so much about the past as the way forward from here.

And, I take for granted, it isn’t just about me.

Let’s say, “just about you” is a way of saying, “also about everybody, each of whom will experience it as ‘just about me’.”

So we don’t talk about Samoa, I take it.

We’re talking process, so far.

Thanks for this, and see you next time.