Saturday, June 18, 2022
6:05 a.m. I had a night of dreams about Sept 11th, my unconscious mind playing with themes for the novel, as best I can tell. But I woke up thinking – as I had thought yesterday – how June 18, Waterloo Day, is mostly forgotten after 207 years, but it shaped our world in ways that are only now, perhaps, beginning to wear off.
Napoleon’s 25 years of warfare destroyed what was left of the medieval mind-set in Europe, but it was the triumph of the English that replaced what had been (feudalism with its bad and good aspects) with what would be: capitalism, with all its bad and good aspects. But deeper than that, a change more profound than capitalism, was the mindset that made capitalism possible, a combination of materialism and dogma that removed the divine from the affairs of humans.
We tend to forget, America’s origins were entirely in the medieval world. Not only Spanish and Portuguese America, but French, Dutch and English too. By the time of Waterloo, France, Spain and Portugal had been in the New World for 300 years. Even the Johnny-come-lately English had been here 200. That is a good deal of time, when a generation meant maybe 30 or 40 years on average. If you look at American history particularly, you’ll see a radical change of assumptions and ambitions, roughly timed to the death of Washington, just before 1800. Washington’s generation considered itself enlightened, secular, practical, forward-looking as it compared itself to its fathers. But Jefferson’s, say – and Jefferson wasn’t really of another generation chronologically, being only 11 years younger than Washington – was very different in kind. The world had very different fish to fry in the years following Waterloo, and it is only in our time that we are realizing that the smell of burning fish may have something to do with our not having realigned our thoughts and values.
We don’t feel comfortable in the world we were raised in; we don’t want to return to the medieval world even if we could, which we can’t, so (as usual) we find ourselves exploring, partly by desire, partly perforce. But it is clear to me that it is as the guys have said, a new age takes from previous ages some things that have been believed and some that have been discarded, and comes up with a new way of existing that would have seemed chaotic and half-superstitious to people of the age that died out. Thus, moving into the next age is always a stretch, always somewhat uncomfortable.
It’s a sense I often get, guys – that your mental world and ours touch at places but are not nearly identical. I suppose to you these conversations are like it would be for me to talk to a man of the middle ages. And as I write that, I feel you laughing. Yes, I get it: That’s what I have been doing, as when I interact with Bertram, for instance.
Anyone in 3D is a time machine, because you all extend beyond your 3D bounds by way of the invisible strands from so many associated “past lives.”
We don’t tend to think of ourselves that way, of course. We think of ourselves as more unitary than we really are.
That is one of the mental bonds we have been working to free you from. Every wrong self-definition tends to limit your scope.
What are the practical effects of us being time-machines without knowing it?
That is actually two questions, and we will answer them that way: how you are, and how you are, not knowing.
I see that. Consider them asked.
The practical effect of your being time-machines is that you have automatic access to other ways of experiencing life; other codes of conduct; other sets of values. The effect of your not knowing it – of your not thinking of yourselves this way – is that you do not have that ability under control. Existing only in your unconscious, it controls you when it manifests. Make it conscious, and you control it. This is nothing new.
Can you give us an example of how we might live if we did have the time-linking under our control?
Perhaps you should refocus. That phrasing indicates a misunderstanding of what we are saying.
Okay. Maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
It isn’t exactly a function; it’s more like an awareness. That is, it isn’t a tool to be employed, so much as a means of perception to be taken advantage of. A nuance, but an important nuance. We are talking about not a skill but a way of being. You don’t learn to connect to other times, you learn to recognize the connection that already exists.
This somewhat explains differences between us [in 3D], doesn’t it.
One source of differences, yes. You each connect to different combinations of souls. Therefore you are each naturally, instinctively, more in sympathy with some ways of experiencing the 3D world than with other ways. It is one way in which everybody differs from everybody else. And of course, conversely, those who share connections to a given worldview will feel that shared understanding. Really, this – like most things we can tell you – is only what you already know but think of in other categories.
Well, I’m sure Napoleon and Wellington are glad to be remembered.
You are jesting, but it is true enough. Attention from the 3D is like a flash of light to the non-3D, because your attention, though brief and narrow, is concentrated. That’s one reason to think of your dead, to give them a little light, a little extra energy. Life is more complicated than that, but that is one way to think of it, as if we were all separate even while all being connected.
To answer your question (that you half forgot you asked), if you learn to recognize input from other lives, you see more clearly. You know better who you are, including – importantly – what pulls your strings unconsciously.
In effect, we learn how to disconnect some buttons?
That’s one way to look at it, yes: Your automatic reactions come more under your control. But another way is to think of all those other experiences in how to be (for that is what a life is, is it not? Experience in how to be?) as additions to your road maps. You get the benefit of vicarious experience, in a way. You know without having to retrace those steps in this lifetime.
A retracing that would be impossible anyway, I suppose.
Reality is not a theme-park. You live where you live, nowhere else – except in your mind, which is the point.
Today’s theme: “Time machines”?
Could be that. “Increased access across time” might work, too.
All right, our thanks as always. See you elsewhen.
You might mention your stray thought.
It came to me Thursday, that I could have a dying man saying, “Well, so long. As they say in spy movies, I’ll see you on the other side.” It would indicate a matter-of-fact attitude that’s pretty foreign to a civilization that thinks 3D is obviously real and everything else is conjectural at best.
And that thought is an example of a connection across time: Not transferred thoughts, but transferred attitudes, feelings, experiences.
I see. Okay. Till next time, then.