Friday, July 1, 2022
6:15 a.m. I had thought to sleep later, but friend cat thought otherwise, and at 5:45 I capitulated. So, no public session yesterday, but progress on the novel. Only a tiny bit, but in the right direction. Any need for a session today, beyond staying in the habit?
Need is on your end. Desire is on ours. Feel free to skip, if that’s your preference.
I did wonder, a moment ago, who is it within me, and what right does it have, to be always reminding me of panful moments, of lost opportunities, of wrong choices or no choices, of awkward or abrasive exchanges with others? Why can’t it be equally fond of reminding me when I did good things for people, or did things well, or had good decisions, pleasant and constructive exchanges? There have been plenty of these too: Why always keep hitting me with bricks?
Those are very good nested questions, if you can hear the answers.
Add that to the list: Why is it so hard for me to hear helpful truths about myself even from you, whose integrity and benign intent I trust from experience?
Restate the questions, then, numbering them, and let’s see what we can do with them. As always you can keep the results to yourself, so it isn’t like you need to not know in order to not spread the word.
- Who is it within me.
- What right does it have.
- Why always reminding me of the negative.
- Why not also reminding me of the positive.
- (Perhaps redundant.) Why keep hitting me with bricks?
- Why is hearing about myself so hard.
As you re-read this list, it doesn’t clarify anything for you. Yet it may be that after we look at it, things will seem obvious; will seem to always have been obvious.
That has happened often enough, and I’m sometimes surprised and always gratified. If you can clarify this, I will be very glad. I have wondered why, for a long time, but it is only today that something clicked to make it possible for me to ask.
You will remember – now, as we tell you! – that this morning in bed you were comparing the satisfaction of creating your own world – that is, constructing a novel – with the difficulties of living in the 3D world. Does this way of phrasing it shed light on the difficulty?
Only in so far as you are saying that the non-3D is more interesting, more attractive, to me than the 3D.
Easier to deal with, too.
Well – except when you’re looking for a plot and can’t find it!
No, look at what we just said. Dealing with the non-3D is easier, because you are not dealing with cross-currents in quite the same way. As you look at it carefully, you see that even in creating in non-3D, you are constrained – or, let’s say, channeled, herded by circumstances – by the unfinished business you bring to the creation. Either way, 3D or non-3D, you are not alone in a universe of your own making nor of someone else’s. Always, you are an individual element among all the other individual elements (sometimes seen as if all one thing, sometimes seen as swarms of individuals).
You are saying, I think, we can’t escape the shared subjectivity and its unfinished business merely by turning inward.
That is almost accurate. Let’s say, turning inward may reduce the volume of the input from “the world,” but of course it will not eliminate it entirely, because you carry it within you, or let’s say, you are carried within it. Still, reducing the volume makes it easier to deal with the non-3D than with the 3D. If.
Yes, big “if.”
If you are in the habit of living with the non-3D as an accepted and welcomed part of your everyday psychic world. But why do you think we are encouraging everybody to do just that? Not so they can all write novels, and not so they can retreat from the outside world, but so that they will have so much larger a field to play in while they are still in 3D.
So now, to your questions that you find so puzzling.
(6) Why is hearing about yourself so hard? Why else but because you are afraid of what you may be told? Think of Hemingway as you reconstructed him in your novel.
Yes, that’s true. When you expect to be condemned, that’s what you hear, pretty much regardless of what is said. And if you have internalized that criticism sufficiently, it looks like the only valid judgment that can be made – even if you consciously object.
So, (3). Why are spontaneous memories usually negative. (We know you said “always,” but that is an exaggeration.) You are being fed “the truth” as it is seen through your filters that are already set up to assure that you see yourself as condemned and worthy of being condemned.
(4). Spontaneous memories aren’t “always” negative; hence, they aren’t “never” positive. But you aren’t capable of weighting them equally, because of that same set of filters. If someone compliments you, you shrug it off. If they insult you, you take it to heart, probably agreeing with it even while disagreeing, and resenting it.
(5). So, the answer is, simply, your filters are set to pass negative thoughts, memories, feedback, etc., and obstruct positive ones. Clearly this isn’t a conscious process: Why would do this consciously? But, equally clearly, because it isn’t conscious, it is beyond your control. The good news is that once you fully admit the process into your consciousness, you can decide to change it. Can change it. But it must first be conscious. Decisions cannot be made without consciousness, except by default, which is the worst way to make them.
So now, looking at (1) and (2) together, perhaps the situation is clearer.
It is. The punisher is a part of me, and its right to do so is that that is its function. Set up by me, by default? Set up by the combination of strands that came into 3D at a particular time? Setup as an interaction of personal and shared subjectivity? It would have to be this last, I suppose.
You haven’t yet gotten this into focus. It isn’t a “punisher,” it is a filter, or set of filters. That is, it doesn’t intend to inflict pain (though that often is a result); it intends to do what it was set to do.
Hmm, I get the memory of that slave some Roman general employed to keep whispering in his ear during a Triumph, “Remember, you are mortal.”
Well, that does put things in a different light, doesn’t it? Remember, these conversations are between us, but they are also for those who can benefit from them. Therefore, it can seem like we’re painting with a pretty broad brush, but that doesn’t detract from out intent nor from our execution. People may come into the world with great gifts and an inadequate sense that they are special but so is everybody else. A set of filters to torment them with knowledge of their own shortcomings may be useful to them until they come to consciousness about it. Once you take for granted that you are not infallible, that you are going to make mistakes, that you are going to disappoint your own expectations of yourself, everything can change. In effect, you can shrug at painful memories, and say – and mean – “It happens. It’s the kind of thing that happens in 3D.” Once you realize that you are only human – once you give yourself the same easy tolerance you give to others – why do you need someone inside you saying, “Remember this? Remember that? You sure messed that up. Is that the best you can do?”
The goal here is not to shut up the inner critic. That is a side-effect. The goal is to realize that your performance is par for the course, and nothing wrong with it.
And – we repeat explicitly – this is for anyone it applies to.
Theme?
“Internal criticism.”
Yes, that may do. Thanks, and, as you predicted, what was opaque is now clear. More than that, what was depressing is now hopeful. Again, thanks.