Tuesday, May 24, 2022
3 a.m. Guys, let’s move to the final point of the eight you bulleted last Saturday, or Friday, whenever it was. “Whether you are lost depends not only on where you are but where you were and where you want to go. ‘Confused’ is not the same as ‘lost.’” Setting for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
You have gotten the sense of this as you have dealt with the others and pondered them and this one.
Yes, I think I have. But we’d rather have it from you.
It is to be considered in context of the other points. Good and evil are judgments; light and dark, and other polarities, are conditions. There’s a difference. Reality (3D and non-3D together, not merely 3D or any particular aspect of 3D) is a balanced system of polarities that constitutes an ecology. Considering any element or elements of an ecology as if it or they were not part of a greater whole must result in a distorted understanding.
Funny how we can boil it down to a short paragraph, once we have expounded at length.
That’s the difference between a summary and an initial exposition. So we come to the final point, which is: If you don’t understand the purpose of a system, you can’t fairly judge it. If the word “purpose” is too directive for you, we could say “the results of a system,” but the moral of the story remains. It might be quite difficult to fairly imagine an elephant by looking at an array of the muscles and organs that comprise it. But even if you were able to put the elephant together in your mind, you might still be puzzled as to what in the world it was for; why in the world it was built that way.
Interesting point, though I don’t know if elephants have a reason for existence other than to be themselves.
You may trust that everything in an ecology fills some niche, obvious to you or not. But the purpose of elephants is not the point here: We use elephants only as a neutral example. The point is that analyzing a system may gain you an understanding of how it functions; it may or may not give you an understanding of what it facilitates by its existence.
And you’ve been telling us what it’s for, from the very beginning, 20+ years ago.
We have, but sometimes the same thing needs to be repeated, and in different contexts, before it is rightly understood. The 3D was created to facilitate the process of choice so that new elements could be continuously created, changing what is. The slowed-down, sectioned, fragmented (in effect) 3D world is never separate from the non-3D of which it was created. This, despite all the appearance of separation stemming from 3D conditions of time-slices and physical separation.
It is clear to me, but you haven’t quite said it, I think. Allow me.
By all means.
The 3D world we live in consists of all these polarities, constantly interacting, coming at us all the time. We, living our lives moment by moment, have to continually choose who we want to be. Will we support this? Will we oppose that? Do we wish to embody this quality, or that one, or the other? It’s a continuous testing, not by others, nor by some Great Marker In The Sky, but by circumstances. The shared subjectivity interacts with our individual subjectivity – that is, the world impacts our own psyche – and we decide, explicitly or implicitly, who we are and who we want to be.
Yes, and the point of it? This time you haven’t yet said it.
The 3D world is what the Egyptians called First Life. It is where we create the continuing consciousness that goes on to exist in the non-3D. I’d call it the Eternal Life, if that term hadn’t been so corroded by overuse and misunderstanding.
Still, that is a good summary. Your 3D life is preparation. The non-3D life is culmination. The vast majority of humans are ex-humans. Only a relatively few at a time are in 3D existence. After you have completed your 3D time, do you suppose you will follow the 3D news in quite the same way? You will have other things, realer things, to interest and occupy you.
But you see, if the 3D world was created to provide the opportunities for choice, its extremes delimit the opportunity. The narrower the choice, the less the opportunity for growth. If you experienced only the results of positive emotions, how could you choose positive over negative? You wouldn’t even know negative existed. “Well,” you say, “wouldn’t that be lovely?” It might be lovely while you were in 3D, but the truncated opportunity for growth might be bitterly – and futilely – rued once you were back in the larger picture, the real world beneath and beyond the 3D.
My old friend Ed Carter used to compare 3D to Marine boot camp. He said 3D grads were highly respected over there.
Suppose you were to see boot camp isolated from its context. You’d see boys being harassed, yelled at, driven to exhaustion, humiliated, and for what? In the absence of context, you’d never understand that the process was designed to create a stronger individual. It would look like sheer brutality, and for no purpose. You’d never understand why it could produce an esprit de corps that could last a lifetime. That is, you’d never really understand what it was all about. You might judge – might judge harshly or leniently – but your judgment would be uninformed if you did not see it in context.
That’s why so many people see life as meaningless torment.
You should know. You’ve been there, and lingered there long enough. Do you remember cursing God, when you were young?
I do.
Did that young man have the full picture?
He didn’t have a clue. He just knew what hurt.
It isn’t any different for others today. It takes a certain amount of faith that all is well, and that comes as a result of a decision. Yes, you heard us say, “All is well. All is always well.” But that didn’t mean you had to agree. It didn’t mean you had to see how that could be, in the face of so much that is obviously not well. It did mean that you had to take it on faith for a while, until your new viewpoint showed you a new world, a world you had always lived in, but had been blind to.
I can remember the sisters talking about “the gift of faith.” Of course they were talking about faith in the context of religion, but it is true, isn’t it, that those are lucky who find having faith natural to them. Others have to learn it, or have to have faith despite appearances.
Nothing comes for free; everything is a gift. Both halves of the paradox are true, or it wouldn’t be a paradox. But you might find it more productive to think of faith as a process than as a gift. It is a tool to be used, like a compass. A compass won’t get you where you want to go – you have to do the moving, if you want to get there. But it will tell you how to find your way home.
That felt like an end.
It is. A little early, but the point is made, and that is the time to pause.
Today’s theme?
“Purpose, perhaps.
We’ll see. Our thanks as always.