Saturday, June 4, 2022
6:15 a.m. Morning, gentlemen. I’ll set for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity and presence, and perhaps you can answer Martha’s question.
“I’d love to hear more about how dreams are shaped and how the dream weavers put together plotlines and props. Maybe they’d do a session on the mechanics of dreams?”
A session on the mechanics of dreams. The following paragraph is actually directly relevant to the question. You should cite it as well.
“Re: memories…I’m currently reading Michael Singer’s new book Living Untethered. He uses an analogy of a t-pipe at the level of the heart, and says that our usual thoughts and emotions are generated by our Self so that we’ll heal them. When they’re healed, they no longer color our world through the middle of the T, through a closed heart. The mind and emotions get quiet and there’s a clear flow of energy from Self to self, straight through the open heart. He says that since suffering is caused by the contrast between what we’ve mentally decided we wanted and the reality unfolding in front of us, the way out of suffering is to accept whatever is unfolding. When you do that, you don’t generate thoughts and emotions about what’s happening. It just comes and goes. So maybe the things that we remember and don’t remember, and what generates strong emotions, are relevant to our healing process.”
Without signing off on the “t-pipe” analogy, which some will find confusing, we can say that dreams and opportunities for healing are directly related. Only, as so often, words as counters get in the way of understanding. The word “healing,” for instance, implies woundedness, and perhaps it is time to discuss healing, injury, and preference. Just because something happens to you that you don’t like, it doesn’t mean it is an injury. Just because something hurts, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how long it hurts, doesn’t mean it is an injury in the sense of injuring you, though language makes it seem identical. Sometimes things that hurt, heal, or at least present the opportunity for healing. Surgery, for instance. Sometimes things that are crippling, either in terms of intensity of pain or of disabling of one’s life, are not what they seem. In fact –
In fact there are no accidents, and outer and inner are two aspects of the same reality, and thus nothing can happen to us that does not address our unfinished business. No accidents, no meaningless pain, let alone meaningless tragedy.
A little more slowly. It is easy to draw conclusions that are more sweeping than are strictly warranted.
Have you ever known me to do that?
Once or twice. It is a frequent concomitant of enthusiasm. But what you said is mostly true, just, not quite as simple as it may seem, because some of the unfinished business may be not so much from the personal as from the shared subjectivity that one happens to reflect in one’s person. Thus, things may “afflict” you apparently without relation to who and what you are. They seem uncaused, random. There really isn’t any such thing as “random” if you look at things one way; there is if you look at them another way.
- No such thing. Everything connects, plus inner and outer are the same essence. Where is the room for “random”?
- But there is, in effect, because what parts of you happen to be activated by the times operating on the shared subjectivity will look random from your viewpoint. Things will be activated in no particular order if observed strictly from your private point of view. So, in absolute terms, nothing can be random. In relative terms, it may often seem that way.
A better way to end that might have been to say that in relative terms, considering only the personal, things will be randomly experienced. It is only when we remember that no man is an island that we broaden our scope to see the pattern behind the seeming chaos.
Yes, you understand our point. But even with this caveat, the larger point remains: Things that happen to you always happen for the good.
Oh come! Tell that to Anne Frank!
Can you know what that brief unhappy 3D existence produced as an enduring non-3D soul? We are not talking about the good her diary did in the world; that is a separate effect. We are saying, Anne Frank’s First Life shaped a soul in an extraordinarily concentrated crucible. Her choice was to continue to believe that people are basically good. That third-tier choice was valuable. Do you think that soul regrets that the First Life didn’t get to have a normal life, with children and love and all that she missed?
To be clear, I get that you are not saying that everything that happens to us is the best thing that could happen.
In the first place, who is to judge “best”? But yes, we mean something a little different: Everything that can happen to you offers opportunity. Sometimes it offers you a choice; sometimes it brings to your attention (if you agree to look!) things you need to see but resist seeing. You are never being punished; you are never the victim of random actions unconnected in some way to your inner life.
My mother used to say, “Never is a long time.”
As does your mother’s son. But this is one case where we can’t see an exception. Perhaps one will arise, and if so, we’ll both learn something.
Well, suppose we substitute for the word “healing” another more neutral word.
Choosing. What people call healing is usually the restoration of the ability to choose in some particular matter. When you are frozen in rigid behaviors because of robots or undealt-with traumas, you can’t choose. If something painful has been relegated to the unconscious because you can’t stand remembering or feeling it, you can’t choose. Life is the ability to choose. The more areas of your life you open up to that possibility, the more abundant life you live. So try substituting the word “choosing” where you would have used “healing.” See how it changes things.
Well, I see it. It’s true, it changes the flavor of things. Less “victim.” Less feeling of wasted time, wasted opportunity, wasted life. I’m thinking of my friend Bob’s wife Karen, whose life became hell because of a medical problem. From a 3D perspective, her life was a train wreck. But from the point of view of her soul, she must have burned a tremendous amount of karma, as the Buddhists say. Her First Life must have created a soul of enormous strength of purpose and self-reliance.
You can’t ever know, of course, but your trend of thinking is correct. As we say, suffering is neither uncaused nor uncompensated, however little you may see either. Things don’t happened by chance except in effect (that is, except that you can’t always see the connecting tissue). Life never short-changes you, and you never short-change life, despite appearances.
So now – looking back – how do you link this to Martha’s question about dreams?
The simple answer is that your dream elements are selected to point up the elements in your life that are cued up. In any given moment, some things can be worked on easily, some least easily, and everything else in the middle. So, in a sense, a given time shapes the batting order, and given unresolved elements of your life step up to the plate. But daily life isn’t long enough, full enough, for all this to happen only in 3D. As much of it as can be dealt with between the lines, so to speak, never needs to come to consciousness. After all, not every adjustment in your life requires conscious decision. Most, in fact, do not. The dreams you remember are only a portion of those you dream. And the elements that get worked into a dream are themselves only a portion of the elements adjusting themselves as you go. It is a mistake to think that dreams are always addressed to the conscious mind, or require conscious intervention.
We only got to Martha’s first question, but I have plenty of pens left. Tomorrow, maybe. Today’s theme? I thought it was going to be dreaming, but I get, maybe not.
“Healing and choosing” might be better.
Yes, I can see that. Very well, our thanks as always.