A message in a bottle

[Found this, thought I’d post it.]

A message from the total self

Thursday, March 10, 2022

5:10 a.m. Very well, gentlemen, I thought we might try something a little different today, and I don’t know how to go about it, or even if the idea makes sense. This morning, instead of a dialogue between you and me, I’d like to see if it can be steered not by me but by what Monroe called the total self. Is that possible? Let’s find out. Of course I’m aware that what I’m taking to be my bright idea may well be yours, or its.

The difference will be not in the means of exposition but in the choice of subject matter – the choice of contexts, one might say. Your first-person exchanges have served well to humanize the process. Perhaps now it is time to hint at how much farther people can go, once they get themselves up to speed.

You underestimate yourselves. You also overestimate yourselves. It cannot be helped; it is a concomitant of the 3D situation. But – knowing that you do so – you can (and might make a habit of it) correct for it. That is, not so much continually redefine yourselves, as look more carefully at who you think you are at any given moment, and compare it to external evidence. That is, am I fooling myself, am I pretending, am I missing things?

As in most of life, how you do this is as important as what you do. That is, do not be continually looking at your life wringing your hands, saying oh I should have done so and so, I ought to be thus and so, I wish I hadn’t done or not done this or that. Don’t lie in the dark and weep for your sins, as Whitman said. And don’t be awarding yourselves medals, either, or starting your own fan club dedicated to your ideal image of yourself.

Consciousness. Awareness. Actually living your life. That’s the goal. You can’t do it wrong, but you can always do it more, in one or another sense of the word. Whatever your situation, there is potential for more. More experience, or more satisfaction, or more wisdom, or more introspection, or more fumbling attempts to learn new things, or more outreach to other parts of yourself in this or other lives.

Understand: We are not exactly saying, “Excelsior!” We don’t mean you ought to live continually in a keyed-up nervous state. There is such a thing as a state of expectation that is calm, placid, deeply joyful. It is as available to you as any particular hell you might choose instead. We merely state that it is well for you to remember that it is available as a choice.

Remember, if you remember nothing else we say or have said or will say – you are loved! You are loved because you are worthy of being loved! You are loved not for what you do, or even for what you are, though it can look that way, but because love is to existence as oxygen is to your 3D body.

Let’s say that again, in what will seem a different way. “You are loved” might be restated as “you are love.” Love is what you are made of. It is the air you breathe, the blood flowing though your body, the thread of consciousness that you experience as “you.”

Therefore, anything in your life that leads toward love is going to feel natural and pleasant and in fact joyful. What leads away from love will feel grating and anxious. That’s all the orientation, all the clues, you need. It tells you what you are and how you want to be.

Does that mean that you can move entirely to the “love” end of the “love-fear” continuum? In practice, within 3D conditions, perhaps not. But isn’t it useful to have an infallible compass?

[Me again.] Whew. That came all in one fluent stream. (Fluent means streaming, of course. I’m fumbling for words here.) By the clock it took 22 minutes including my initial paragraph. But I think I’ll stop here. How much could we add to that? Anything more would be dilution, I think.

 

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