Wednesday, March 23, 2022
8 a.m. I think I’m going to take off today, and spare myself an hour of transcription. Though, come to think of it, I could do a session now and transcribe later. But, maybe not. When I do, though, I should remember my graf on “Heart of Darkness” from last night.
[Tuesday 9:10 p.m. So, I am re-reading “Heart of Darkness” for the sheer pleasure of reading Conrad, and I stop short when I realize that of course the story bears directly on our conversation about evil. I will mention it tomorrow morning, see what they say. Merely esthetically, Conrad’s prose and Mueller’s woodcuts – what a combination! But while “Youth” was as enjoyable as ever, “Heart of Darkness” was never one of my favorites. Reading it this time was reading it for the first time, in several ways. What a metaphor for the impact and nature of Western Civilization, which served its purpose, finally, but certainly had its ugly features, and not mere individuals but intrinsic to the process.]
11:15 a.m. I’m a little lost as to where to begin, so I hope you’re prepared. Setting switches, inviting my total self to run the show.
Rather than imply a straight line of development, we proceed as the moment suggests. That is, each moment is optimized for certain things and not others, so why not go with the flow, rather than trying to tack into the wind? One can do either, of course; it is a matter of choice.
Individual and shared subjectivity, and timing. When the three are considered in reference to one another, a slightly more sophisticated understanding can emerge. Add in the vast impersonal forces as input to the system, and you will see even farther. But let us begin with the first three.
You as 3D being naturally experience the shared subjectivity in relation to your own inner and outer life: that is, to your personal subjectivity. As has been pointed out, your world revolves around you, in a way. This is not egotism, nor autism. It is the way the system functions, in the nature of things. You might as well expect to live beyond the limits of the horizons around you, as expect to experience the world from any point of view other than you at the center. (Yes, you can imagine doing it, but you can’t really do it, and you certainly wouldn’t be able to live that way.)
The shared subjectivity might be seen as a vast pool into which innumerable individuals are continually dipping. Or you might say it is an unlimited stream filling the canals that lead to all those individual fields. It is its own center, of course, and all the 3D beings dependent upon it are the periphery. Of course, bear in mind that the shared subjectivity might equally well be seen as a vast well, into which individuals contribute their bucketsful of water. Three analogies, all of them illustrative, no one of them exclusive.
We are pointing out that although it is convenient, even necessary for our purposes, to consider individual and shared subjectivity as different things, in fact they are two ends of one polarity. To examine either as if it were not also part of the other would be to distort a vital connection.
And then there is timing. Some wit said that time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. This is true, and is more profound than may appear. Consider the physical relationship over time as an elaborate filtering mechanism. Some times are propitious for this, some for that, some for a third thing. The changes in the filter are not arbitrary, nor chaotic, not dependent upon 3D action or inaction. You may choose to think of it as a great machine, or else as a great organism, with its own procedures and sequences. The 3D world is shaped by thee rhythms, it does not shape them. Your life responds to opportunities and deprivals, it does not create them. The passage of time with its distinctive features for each moment is not just reflected by planetary motion, it is that.
If you’re saying what came to me many decades ago, that last didn’t quite say it.
We are. You might visualize all reality, all time, as one impossible map. The suns and planets are continuously pulling earth – hence, you – into new places, each of which has its own characteristics.
I used that as the final paragraph in Messenger, as long ago as 1979, though I didn’t spell it out. I’ll quote it when I transcribe.
[From my novel Messenger:
[Tomorrow night the moon will be full again, and my eyes will automatically seek it out. It will be there regardless what happens to me or to America or to the human race or to the world. As it always has, it waxes and wanes and waxes again, following its cycle as do the planets and the seasons and life itself. And, like life, it never sails through the same space twice, any more than the earth does, for the earth pulls the moon along as it circles the sun, and the sun pulls the earth, and the rotation of the galaxy pulls the sun, and on and on. All that cyclical motion: No wonder we can’t ever return to where we were.]
But you see, understanding this, ties together several anomalies
- Movement through time and space
- Astrological predictive ability
- Cyclical motion
- Interaction between inner and outer – between personal and shared subjectivity – not as a sometime thing, but, by nature.
This may give you an intuition about why certain energies can express only at certain times, or – same thing seen differently – certain energies cannot express except at certain times.
That’s how karma builds up, I suppose.
Nice deduction. Yes, that’s one way. If something needs to be balanced out, but the energies of the time don’t allow it, it goes into the “pending” file, perhaps. It isn’t quite as cut and dried as that, because life is amazingly flexible, but conceptually, yes.
So to discuss monsters of cruelty among us –
We haven’t forgotten. It is critical that you not approach the subject as if the individual and “the times” were separate and did not affect each other. And of course by the nature of things, the individual is going to be affected by the collective far more (in frequency and in intensity) than the collective will be affected by any one individual.
Common sense, of course.
Yes, but it may be forgotten, so we remind you.
Our free will is exercised within more stringent limits than we usually think, isn’t it?
Yes. And no.
Yes, in that you live within a sea of influences, most of them unperceived or seen only in fragmentary form. You may think yourself a rational being, unswayed by emotion, capable of calculating the forces around you. Captain of your ship, master of your fate. It is only somewhat true. You can’t add a cubit to your statures, the scriptures remind you.
No, in that the shared subjectivity is always mirroring your essence, most notably what you need most to know, because you are not conscious of it. The same situation that bounds your choices also assures that such choices as do arise will be relevant and potentially transformative..
In other words, we have no reason to complain about the way things are.
Correct. But it would be a mistake to see things only one way. You might see yourself as living only one 3D life (which would be true) or living many lives in that you extend to others (which also would be true). You may look at the shared subjectivity as your own well of unfinished business, which it is – but what are the boundaries of “you”?
I’m starting to get what you’re driving at. If there is individual karma which we each incur, and various group karmas in which we may participate, (and more than one, it seems), then how can we think to be immune to anything?
There’s much more. If the timing allows (“allows” can look like “forces”) certain feelings and traits to manifest, can the individual be immune to it? Maybe yes, maybe no, for any given input – but it is a certainty that no one escapes expressing everything. A part of your struggle in 3D is whether to express this or that or the other or none at all.
I suppose that’s the nature of temptation.
Yes, that’s one way it appears. You feel compelled to express certain things at certain times, and perhaps you don’t even approve of them. So, do you express them, or don’t you? Sometimes it is more like “Can you avoid it or can’t you?”
Which is not to excuse the people who decide to express the cruelty, say.
Well, here you have a genuine dilemma, something that can’t be resolved in those terms. Jesus said woe to the man through whom evil comes into the world – but nonetheless it is inevitable that evils do come, only woe to him who lets himself become their conduit.
I could probably find that passage without much trouble. If I do, I’ll cite it.
[Richmond Lattimore’s translation of Luke says: “And he said to his disciples: It is impossible that there should come no causes to make a man go astray; but woe to him through whom they come. It is better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the sea than to cause one of these little ones to go astray. Watch yourselves.]
So you’re saying, the shared subjectivity is going to express, subject to timing, and it is going to express through us.
What other channel is there to express through?
Edgar Cayce’s earth changes?
That’s a longer discussion. Let s pause here. That doesn’t mean we will necessarily resume on this point.
All right. This is “Actions and consequences (5),” I take it.
Yes.
Our thanks as always.