Saturday, May 14, 2022
12:40 a.m. Okay, guys, I think I’m awake enough to do this. Setting switches: f, r, c, p. Can you address Martha’s follow-up question?
[Martha’s question:
[“Maybe they could give a specific answer to a specific instance? Yesterday, when Richard entered the post office and it was the first time I’d seen him since his wife’s Zoom funeral a year or so ago, we both experienced a deeply felt grief, resignation to circumstances, and tamping it all down because we were in a public space. How was that experienced by our non-3D components, including, possibly Joanne’s non-3D self, perhaps smiling at us from her new non-3D zafu?”]
Good description of perceived reaction:
Deeply felt grief
Resignation to circumstances
Tamping it down in public
Now you say, how was it perceived by your non-3D, but the real question is, how did the interaction between conscious and unconscious elements produce effects in your psyche? Still, we will reply to the question as posed, first.
The short answer is, “We feel what you feel,” only the processing is different, due to the difference between 3D and non-3D circumstances. But remember, you are in the non-3D, too! In fact, a major cause of the reactions you experience is that you are both in 3D and in non-3D, hence, you experience things both ways at once. This is what it means, that your conscious and unconscious minds, so called, interact.
I think you are saying, the 3D world (our conscious mind) and the non-3D world (the part of our mind that we all the unconscious, which more properly ought to be called the mind we are unconscious of) are the same as what you called the conscious sphere, the smaller sphere, and the larger sphere. You said our emotions were the boundary level between the two.
Perhaps you can see it this way: Every time you experience something, the relation between conscious and unconscious attitudes is reflected in the harmonious or inharmonious emotions you feel. This is why meditation, or anything that keeps the levels aligned, is so important in smoothing out your life!
A case for bullets, here, I think.
- Self v. “the world.” That is,
- Internal v. external, or conscious v. unconscious, or plans v. developments;
- Who you know yourself to be, v. who you really are beyond that self-defined character;
- Your 3D persona v. your 3D-plus-non-3D essence;
- Luck, or chance, or malign fate, v. what had to happen, by the nature of things.
Different ways to say the same thing. In every case, emotion is the boundary layer.
Perhaps you can see, the thinner the skin between the two worlds, the less emotional reaction caused by resistance. Well, it should be evident, in non-3D, we may be (will be; are) aware of the emotions our 3D components experience, but we don’t experience the same emotion, because for us the boundary between known and unknown, etc., does not exist.
Clear to me.
So, you experience a shock. Your 3D personality will deal with it in one way or another, as best it can do, and we will be aware of (will share, in a way) that emotional response. But our awareness, our sharing, will be at one remove. It is the difference between experiencing a burn and empathizing with someone experiencing a burn. We are just as much “there” as you, but we do not have the self-division that is the ultimate cause of all your pain.
So what is the take-away for you who have to live your lives in 3D? Is it, “You don’t understand”? We do. Is it to say, “You don’t empathize”? We do. Is it to say, “You don’t help us”? We help as much as we can, but our help can only be to tell you what you need to do; we can’t do it for you, and it would only cripple you if we could and did do.
And what we need to do is make certain decisions and live them.
That’s one way to put it. What are we continually telling you, but how to live life more abundantly? Have we ever said, “Do this or that, so that God or whomever will be pleased”? Have we said, “These are the rules; follow them or be punished”? No, we’re forever saying, “These effects follow these causes.” Clarify your mind, widen your mental space, live with integrity so that inner and outer will more closely align. Above all – and how many times have we said this? – Be here, now, not half-distracted by fantasies, robotic reactions, endless chewing of the cud of past resentments.
The whole idea is to reduce your proneness to emotional storms by reducing the gap between what you really are and what you perceive yourself to be. The more you do this, the smoother the ride. This doesn’t mean to compare one person’s ride with another’s to see if things are somehow “fair” or ”unfair.” Lives are not comparable, and you never have the data to judge fairly. But your own life can flow smoother or rougher, and it is in your hands, to a far greater degree than you commonly suspect. The key is just that barrier-line, that boundary, between what you are conscious of and what you are not conscious of.
Jung’s statement: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.”
Indeed, it will be fate, if fate is defined as the world intruding on your private space.
That’s an interesting way to put it.
So now, let’s make it practical. No matter what opportunities you may have squandered or profited from in your past, at any given moment you are what you have made yourself. This is the “given” in the situation. It’s what you have to work with. But remember, in that “given” state of affairs, there is always more, unsuspected. The more work you have done, the more conscious resources you will have at your command, but whether you have done much or little, there’s always more available. In effect, you are never alone, never on your own, never at the end of your resources – but you may easily feel so. That’s when you reach inward for reassurance and assistance. The more faith you have, the more easily you connect.
That word “faith” will seem to people that you’re bringing in religion.
Of course it will; that is one thing religions did, they helped people connect. But just because you see things differently than they did, or do, that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same tools for the same purposes. Indeed, there are not different ways to approach the problem, so much as different ways of thinking about the same approach. Don’t let your resistance to religious jargon, or to half-remembered religious instruction, hold you from mastering yourself.
You experience grief. Experience it; feel it; acknowledge it, only don’t identify with it. It is not you. You honor it, because it is there by right. But you do not make the mistake of thinking that it and you are the same thing. You feel the emotion; you are not it.
You resign yourself to circumstances. The more you do this, all the way down, the less will be the internal friction between known and unknown parts of yourself. In a way, this is “Take what comes,” it is having the wisdom to know what can and can’t be changed, and having faith that nothing happens by chance. Things happen against your will; that isn’t at all the same as saying that they happen “for no reason” or by malign fate.
You tamp down your public reaction. Necessary, of course, and not harmful unless you allow this to interfere with your self-knowledge. That is, controlling the expression of your feelings is one thing; stuffing them so that you don’t have to have them in your conscious awareness is something very different. Stuffing is guaranteed to maximize pain and suffering, because it maximizes the difference between known and unknown parts of yourself.
There’s your hour: Go back to bed.
The theme?
“Dealing with trauma, a practical approach.”
Our thanks as always.