Wednesday, June 22, 2022 [What I always call Hitler-Destruction Day, as it is the day in 1941 that he attacked Russia, not the smartest thing that lunatic ever did.]
6:30 a.m. Gentlemen, Louisa asks good questions, and I am getting a general sense of your answer, but I look forward to hearing it spelled out a little. Setting for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
[Louisa’s question: “I really felt very strong aha’s here in this particular share. Such insights. However, as with all wisdom one reads, the practical side and examples remain challenging. While I can well see the value of a loving and softer approach to any polarity, how does one use symbols with another, especially when a person is threatened by what they imagine you represent. For example, say a man unconsciously fears the power of women. When you express what you want directly, he responds by resistance. How could you use symbols in that case to defuse his reactions or create more common ground? Does one telepathically send them in silence? If so for how long? Just some how to’s again.”]
The questions mistake an explanation for a prescription. Understanding is always better than not understanding, but it is not a panacea, nor even, always, increased ability to function. This is particularly so when one misunderstands who can do what, and how the “what” is done, and what are the purposes (and therefore the nature) of the situation being considered.
At this point (prompted to do so by you, I imagine), I took out yesterday’s to re-read Dr. Jung’s passage on symbols and logic. I was drawn to a different sentence than the one Louisa refers to. Assuming it has relevance, I quote it here: “If you wish to overcome evil, you must absorb it and transform it. And this can only come from extension not from contraction, surely. That is, from love, not from rejection or hatred.” That doesn’t seem to respond to her question, but – say on.
The part about entering dialogue by seeking common ground by means of the use of symbols may lead people – as it perhaps has led Louisa – to think it is a prescription for overcoming opposition. But, taken in connection with what you just cited, perhaps you can see that it is actually aimed at the only person you can change.
Ourselves, yes. I was vaguely getting that this was where you would go with it.
This is a fundamental readjustment of attitude that would serve you all well, for there isn’t any use in always trying to do the impossible, when the same effort along different lines would produce magical transformation. But it can be difficult to grasp. Once grasped, it will be obvious, but getting to the far side of “once grasped” can be quite a leap, requiring a lot of self-overcoming.
This is going to take bullets, isn’t it? (Something our relationships often tempt us to consider!)
Very funny, but yes, bullets may help us to set out an array of facts to be considered in relation to one another.
- Symbols over logic is helpful primarily for the person wielding them.
- Who can you change? Who can you persuade? Who can you even understand (though to a limited degree)? Yourself.
- The 3D is, if is anything, a free-will universe. You choose, and choose, and choose again. But you cannot choose for another. You may constrain, but you cannot force choice.
I take that to mean, we can make someone do or not do something, but we can’t make him agree with us.
Surely all your experience tells you so.
- Changing you, however, also changes the equation. You cannot change your vis-à-vis, but you can change what your vis-à-vis has to deal with.
So, is it clearer now? Tell us what you understand us to mean.
We can’t use a change of tactics as a sort of magic wand, to manipulate others. (I’m sure there are plenty of techniques to manipulate others, but that isn’t what you are saying here.) But we can change ourselves, which changes what the other has to deal with. This may or may not resolve a given situation – it may even make it worse, I suppose – but it will help us out of a dead-end.
Yes, particularly the last. It is in thinking that you must, or even could, change another, that you run yourselves into blind alleys. If you could do that, you would cheat yourselves of valuable feedback, hence of valuable opportunities.
That’s an interesting juxtaposition. Evident, as soon as you say it, of course.
Evident only if you remember that the world – the external, the “other” in whatever manifestation – is always the same as you, the internal, the unsuspected or rejected parts of your own wholeness. Remember that inner and outer are reflections of one thing, and it is clear. Forget that, or disbelieve it, and it is not only not clear, it is nonsense.
Yes. It is a matter of how we see the world, which colors how we experience the world.
To be able to change another person at will would be to be able to evade a lot of your own internal contradictions. It would be to lose the opportunity to grow in wisdom. This is why black magicians end badly.
So, given that we cannot change others (except indirectly, by way of our own example, I suppose), how do we deal with difficult situations such as the one Louisa posited?
You give up the idea of using anything you know to change another’s reactions. You use what you know to widen your own self-knowledge, to untie old psychic knots, to calm and reprogram old robots that deprive you of the possibility of exercising free choice.
To have life more abundantly.
Certainly. This, you can do. What you cannot do is determine in advance how others will react to the changes in you. But, so what? You change for your own sake, pursuing a vision (an ideal) of who and what you wish to be. If that changed and changing person pleases or displeases others, if it makes life more difficult or less, if it creates new possibilities or closes off old ones – or both – this is a side-issue. When you are finished with First Life, you will not care about the way-stations that gave you opportunities for growth. You will care about what you did with the opportunity that a 3D life presented.
So, in suggesting that you reorient your thinking toward symbols that have no logical opposite, rather than logical counters that can be – will be – opposed by their opposites, we are not saying, “Try this, it will make your relationships easier.” It may make them harder! But it is a way forward for you. It is a way out of the blind alley that tells you that your life is dependent upon the reactions of others. At best, it reminds you that nothing is by chance, hence there is nothing to fear.
As we say, to some this will be clear; to others, nonsense.
Thinking about what you said, it is a variant of “Be a beacon,” isn’t it?
It is.
On the night of Sept. 11, 2001, the guys told Rita there were two effective responses to uncontrolled external situations (though that isn’t the phrasing they used): 1) hold your center, 2) be a beacon. That is, don’t be pulled off base, and radiate what you are, what you believe.
One can always do these; one can rarely do more than these; one rarely or never needs to do more than these. Anyone succeeding in holding their center and being a beacon can rest content that they have done good work.
As opposed to marching off to a pretended siege of Babylon. Today’s theme?
“The proper use of symbols,” perhaps.
That doesn’t seem to quite get it, but, maybe. Our thanks as always.