Tuesday, June 7, 2022
6:10 a.m. We’re starting to queue up questions faster than you can answer them, which is gratifying. The more, the merrier, says I, and the more difficult and challenging, the better.
We still have the last of Martha’s questions from last Wednesday to address. “I’d also love to hear more about how our own lives are shaped, since it appears that being thrust forward or held back isn’t always because of some conscious acts of will or self-sabotage.” You up for that one?
We are if you are. Switches?
As usual. Maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
Again we begin by dissecting the assumptions behind the question. Sometimes that’s the only way to shed new light on a question.
- How our lives are shaped
- Thrust forward or held back
- Not always intentional
- Not always self-sabotage
We are well aware that each of these assumptions has many books and lecturers in support of it. But we would get nowhere if we limited our explanations to what would match the explanations of others. One word on why, and then we will move to the question itself.
Spread yourselves, if you wish: I’m sure many of us have wondered how there can be so many “absolute truths” that contradict one another even though each one is being propounded by apparently sincere and often experienced or thoughtful individuals. It is the same question, I suppose, as why there are so many religions seeing the world differently.
We promised only a word on the subject, and it is this: You are always part of the equation. You are capable of perceiving certain truths and not others. Reality does not contradict itself, just as love has no opposite, but, just as love may experience all manner of emotions, so reality embodies all manner of contradictions. The lower one sinks in perception, the more real the contradictions.
I think that statement is liable to be misunderstood, but I agree that you should stick to the main point. We can hash it out later if in fact it is misunderstood.
So let’s look at the assumptions. In this case, we think that clearing up the assumptions will clarify the underlying problem. It isn’t always so, but we think it will be so here.
- “How our lives are shaped.” It is important that this phrase be interpreted correctly. If you take it to mean, “the processes and conditions in which we live,” fine. Only, don’t take it to mean, “How someone shapes us.” That is, don’t confuse improv with scripting.
- “Thrust forward or held back.” Again, the gist is how you take this. To say it meaning, “whether our lives are assisted or impeded” is not wrong (provided you don’t allow the idea of an outside personality shaping you), but what would be wrong would be to allow the assumption that a life has a goal (or goals) beyond choice. You are not studying for a final exam, you are not even auditioning for a part. You are here, now, You can’t really fail that, and your progress can’t really be measured.
- “Conscious acts of will.” This is as much as saying, success or failure in execution. As we said, this isn’t the case.
- “Self-sabotage.” This requires a word, because it is tangled up with so many things.
All this has in common the assumption that this 3D life is what matters, and matters only between birth and death.
Not quite so black and white, but roughly, yes. And that is the source of many a misinterpretation of life.
I hear, “However –.”
You do, because it is a big however. However, everything we’re telling you applies to a certain type of person (you being one end of the communications) and not others. Truth doesn’t vary, but applicable truth does vary. You will remember, we said some people’s world is so seamless, they never question appearances? What could a person in that condition do with anything we have to tell you? But you serve as a conduit for people whose experience of the world is not seamless, and who seek answers. “The waters of life and health” refers to more than physical well-being.
“Blessed be he who hungers and thirsts for truth,” so to speak?
That’s the idea. Why else have you done all this work, all these years? That is, why have you found it so satisfying? And why did you spend so many years looking, and in so many places? If you are born thirsting for the hidden truth, nothing but truth will slake the thirst. That is why the other things the world holds out to you will not satisfy, no matter how pleasant or alluring they may be. You will drink, and come away still thirsty.
I’m sensing a welling-up of some very sincere, emphatic cleric. Bertram? The Indian shaman? The Egyptian?
Don’t go hankering for story. Story will lead you astray, just as it would in remote viewing. Stick to perception.
Yes. Well, in that graf that began “That’s the idea,” I felt an increasingly strong presence.
A presence that brought you affinity to ex-minister Emerson, perhaps. Again – and said not only to you but to anyone who reads this – resist the temptation to bring more definition to such presences than they themselves bring forth. If it is helpful for you to get some of their story, you will get it. But it may easily be diversion which would not necessarily be helpful.
So, in all this, keep your eye on this one fact: This 3D life – that the Egyptians called First Life – is to be lived for itself, of course, but what you make of yourself is the point, not what happens to you along the way. Anything may happened to be important in your continuous self-shaping, but the things themselves are not important.
A toothache may lead us to cultivate patience or endurance or whatever, but the toothache as toothache doesn’t matter.
Surely it is obvious, once stated? Do you – should you – remember every little thing that ever happened to you along the way? Skinned knees, broken arms, concussions, infectious diseases, anything? Some you may, most you probably will not, remember. But in the moment, every time, you consciously or automatically reacted, and that second-tier reaction helped define who you would become. Some reactions cancel out others; some reinforce each other. But the reactions, not the events, are what produce lasting results.
Now if you will look at the original question, it should appear in a different light. To put it in a nutshell: Your lives are shaped by your moment-by-moment decisions in the context of events allowed in by the times, conditioned by your personal, and by the shared, subjectivity. The “good” and “bad” things that happen to you emerge from the situation. We know some people say it is all part of a plan, but that is looking at things after the fact.
Let’s go into that distinction a little. That may be valuable, even from the vague sense of it I got as you said it.
Many people believe there are life plans you enter 3D to enact. This sees life more a script than as improv. It is a true view from a certain point of view, but only that. We would say improv is a much closer analogy to your true situation.
Well, how can the idea of a life plan e both true and not true?
It is all in how you see it – or, in this case – where you see it from. If you look at the elements of the life and the elements of the unfinished business of the shared subjectivity and the nature of the energies that “the times” will allow in, you can pretty much see the issues that are likely to arise, and even to some extent when they are likely to arise. From a God’s-eye viewpoint – that is, from a sufficiently comprehensive non-3D viewpoint – much can be foreseen as probabilities. From that point of view – expressed to 3D scribes who have their own assumptions about life – the sense of life-plans comes to seem obvious. But that’s only one way of seeing. It helps those who would otherwise be tempted to buy into the culture’s sense of meaninglessness and chance, but it is only somewhat true. It is at least as true – and, we would argue, more helpful – to see life as improv.
And in any case, what we make ourselves is what is important, not what happens to us in the shaping.
The tools on a carpenter’s bench are there for the purpose of being used, not for the sake of display. Your life’s decisions are there as way-stations in your self-shaping; they are not monuments to suffering or joy.
Thanks for all this. The theme?
“How your lives are shaped,” perhaps.
Perhaps. Till next time, then.