Friday, June 17, 2022
7 a.m. It is always a problem. When I start a project, I throw myself into it – often at an unsustainable rate, but anyway using up a lot of horsepower – and the temptation is to lose sight of myself, looking instead outwardly at the project. This is a particularly tempting diversion, in that whatever I am writing will seem to be more or less the same thing as being aware of myself here, now. So, Monday’s half session, answering Bob Paddock’s questions, is the last time I’ve tried for a regular session for others to overhear, so to speak. Instead, it has been directed to the practical aspects of writing my final novel. But in my old age I am learning balance, so let’s see where we go.
I don’t see other questions queued up, though it is possible I missed one. In the absence of questions, do you splendid gentlemen have something on your non-physical minds?
Good that you remembered balance. It is another variant of a problem you have always had to deal with: structure v. lack of structure. Easier for you to fill in a structure, yet you often feel constricted and confined by the very structure you work in.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
How would your lives look if you all began saying, instead, “Blessed if you do, blessed if you don’t”?
Hmm, like when you said we never say a thing is “Too bad to be true.”
Exactly. Why expect the down side all the time? What you concentrate on, you magnetize yourself to, and soon it appears as if – and we mean “as if” – only the down side is real. Have you ever seen a roll of duct tape that had only one side, either the sticky side or the non-sticky side? Exactly what could you do with it? Yes, two-sided sticky might have specific uses, but you get the idea. Don’t nitpick the metaphor.
“Please don’t bite my finger, look where I’m pointing.”
Yes. So, looking at your push-pull around structure – and of course not dreaming that nobody else in the world has the same problem – a few words.
What is 3D life itself, if not a confining structure? The existence of an ever-moving present moment, the perception of separation by time and separation by space, the very limited mental world you are constrained to remain within: What is it but a box? So of course you sometimes find it confining. That’s what it was created to do, to confine your consciousness into a (relatively) tiny point, to bring you to choose, moment by moment, in a way you would never do (really, could never do) in the absence of such confinement. However, it’s only temporary. As you were born into it, so you will be reborn out of it. If you can keep in mind that it is only temporary, you will find it easier to remember that your task, your joy, your reason for being, is to be here, now, wherever and whenever you find yourself.
Some people call it the Earth School, some call it boot camp. I’m not particularly fond of either analogy.
Life is what it appears to be. This goes for everybody. Since everybody has a different idea of how it seems, everybody experiences life differently. Surely this is obvious. Same life, different perceptions. Only, you could as easily say, different perceptions lead to your experiencing a different subset of life, hence, in effect, a different life. So, if you insist on saying a good thing is “too good to be true,” what does that do to your chances of leading a magical life? If you say “damned if you do or don’t,” how does that help you choose joyously or even neutrally? How does it help you attain life more abundantly?
And yes, I get it: Invert those statements and we get a very hopeful result. I will attest, anyway, that it has been true for me. My life for many decades was hard. I didn’t realize how I was living in such a way as to make it hard. It just seemed like I was stuck in a life and a world where I did not belong, did not know the ground rules that everybody else seemed to know. Until that message in Gateway, I really did experience myself as being alone.
You would have said, in those days, that you were a victim of your surroundings and your circumstances and the people around you, maybe.
Yes, overlooking one small environmental factor that just might have had something to do with it: Namely me, as Daisy Mae used to say.
Not that this is particularly unusual. Given that the whole point of 3D is to restrict your consciousness to one point, to concentrate you, let’s say – such feelings of aloneness, lostness, despair, unfocused anger, tedium, etc., etc., are frequent concomitants of the situation. Fortunately nothing around you has to change, only something within you. And that isn’t so much a change as a decision.
Live in faith that all is well despite appearances.
That’s one way. Another, for those who can’t get there from where they are, is to say, “This is what I am, these are the values I uphold, this is what I wish to become.” Only, it is better if they don’t try to apply their values to someone else’s life. You all work out your own salvation, as the Buddhists say. That’s your task and it is your freedom, for no one else can take it from you.
Now, we know that you are tempted to cut this short, but we would rather you said a word or two about the novel, though that is not your practice. It ties in closely to what we’re saying here.
It’s usually dangerous to talk about what you’re going to write; it can bleed the steam right out of it.
You’ll know how much to say or not say.
It is a sequel not to one novel or even two, but three. Messenger told of George Chiari’s 17 years in Tibet after his U-2 flamed out in 1962. Babe in the Woods told of George’s brother Angelo doing an Open Door program at the C.T. Merriman Institute in 1995. Dark Fire told of George and Angelo working together with C.T. and others to save the CTMI from government interference and possible destruction. This fourth book, that I am thinking about as The Stone and the Stream, will center on the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, as it affects both individual and societal life. That’s about as much as I care to say at the moment. I spent the past three days rereading the three books, making notes on the characters, themes, foreshadowings, and events. When I get through doing that, there is all the material I have been gathering, brooding over, forgetting, remembering, to try to bring into note form. When I do all that, then I can begin to find the plot. I don’t expect to be finished in the next few minutes.
There is one more thing we would have you mention, central to all.
First Life.
Yes.
C.T. realized, at the end of Dark Fire, that his life’s work had gotten diverted from his insight during the NDE that led to the creation of the institute (via his best-selling book Extraordinary Potential). It wasn’t merely that we are more than our 3D, it was that this 3D life is the preliminary to life; it is the initial shaping, by choices made, of a structure that lives forever. I read somewhere that the Egyptians referred to 3D life as First Life. And that’s why they kept their attention on the life that would follow. As far as I can see, we have entirely misunderstood them.
Holding that concept in mind will reconcile many seeming oppositions and contradictions.
Today’s theme, then?
“Shaping life by choosing”?
Possibly. Our thanks as always, for this and for all of this.