On the 3D/non-3D frontier

Monday, July 18, 2022

1:40 a.m. Endless escaping/being-chased dream, including fleeing to Monticello that was on the crest of a mountain range, getting through the building, out a window – multiple screens – past a dog that turned out to be friendly, and all. It was grueling, even dreaming it. Familiar, too. I’ve had versions of it before. It ended okay, but it was exhausting and I don’t know what it was about.

7:30 a.m. Guys? Anything special in mind?

Just – like Louis in “Casablanca” – take what comes.

Well, mostly I do, with a certain amount of grumbling. But some things do make me morose. I see that Sharon and Jerry Hurtley-Durand, of the old Voyagers list that I sort of rejointed (“sort of,” because clearly I don’t receive all the posts), moved to Russia a couple of years ago. This set off a chain of associations:

• America no longer the land of promise.
• Russia the hope of the world, according to Cayce, once it shed communism.
• The long downhill slide, accelerating every year, since the still-unacknowledged coup of 1963.
• How the plotters thought of JFK as the danger to America, when it was them.
• A stray thought – that I could still, almost, move to Spain.
• Reminders of the history of the United States that I had started, working backwards from the year 2000. Truly, in a way, that year was America at the pinnacle. But, more clearly every day, the pinnacle was a moving target.

Now, I know full well that life is more than the 3D, and I know that the 3D is more than America, and that America is more than my idea of it or my wishes for it. Still, these are hard times to live through. Some newsman wrote his memoirs some years ago (which I haven’t read) and called the book I’ve Seen the Best of It, and I think many of us have to agree. There could still be a miracle of regeneration, but that’s what it would require, a miracle.

And here you are, plopped into this time and place by accident.

All right, that got more than a grin, a slight chuckle. Even so, as they said in “Ordinary People,” “I’ll let you in on a little secret, kiddo: Feelings don’t always tickle.”

Like we don’t know that?

Well, I did say, with a certain amount of grumbling. So make of this what you can.

What do you suppose your dream was about?

I don’t know. The only thing I’m being chased by is the calendar. Every day, one more day to get thorough as best I can. Nothing new there.

Isn’t there a certain quality of endurance in life as you are living it?

Was I running from nothing? It didn’t feel like nothing, though it is true that the pursuing dog turned out to be friendly, or at least neutral.

Why was Monticello (the building) on a sharp Western mountainside, rather than a gentle Eastern one?

I thought it was your job to tell me.

It is our job to help you see, not the same thing at all.

Well, I suppose it gave it more of a frontier quality. Not “Old West” kind of frontier, but like, on the line between known and unknown, or perhaps between familiar and unfamiliar.

So pay attention to the stray thought!

Yes. As I was writing that, a thought came about the series on mind-altering drugs I started to watch.

And interrupted.

Deferred, let’s say.

To watch Roman Holiday again.

And enjoyed it.

No reason you shouldn’t. In fact, that’s part of the point here.

What is?

Season the message to taste: Either, “Do what you want to do,” or, “Long-term purpose does not get deflected by short-term decisions.”

8:15 a.m. Not a very good session. I am not very well centered. Shall we try again, or should I go on to other things? I know it’s my choice; I’m asking for an outside opinion.

Center.

FRCP. All right. (And yes, it is a different mind-space.)

You are on the edge of 3D and non-3D. all of you are. But being there, and realizing you are there, and keeping in mind that you are there, are three different things.

And the living while keeping it in mind is the exploring we are doing.

It is the frontier you are living on, put it that way. And Monticello on a high Western mountain with basically blank space beyond it, means what, to you?

Jefferson was endlessly creative, at a certain level. He was incessantly mentally active, perhaps fearing demons if he stopped, but in any case incessantly active. His personal life and political life – or, say, his inner life and outer – became inextricably connected, at first because he willed it, then because it had a logic of its own. So, a Monticello would be the residence of an explorer-in-place, call him. After all, Jefferson went to Europe, but he never went as far West or as far South as Washington did, for example. His mind ranged freely; his body, less so.

So it is with your fellow explorers who are learning, by living, how 3D and non-3D may be more closely woven together. That is real exploring, and it will ease the path for others not because the  journeys will have been publicized but because they will have been made.

Why was the dream overlain with a sense of exhaustion?

Do we need to answer that?

Wipe that smile off your face! No, I guess you don’t.

Dreams sometimes merely reflect your image to your conscious mind; they aren’t always reporting three-alarm fires.

In other words, just because you nag us, doesn’t mean we have to do anything about what you’re nagging us about.

No, in other words, not every message is a warning that you are about to fall off a cliff, any more than every message announces that you have just won a jackpot. Occasionally (in either case), yes; mostly no.

But bear in mind, Monticello became a world heritage spot. Jefferson became a world figure.  His private and public thoughts changed the 3D world, and, more, the non-3D world that informs the 3D world. What we are saying is that your life, his life, anyone’s life, is never as closed and separate as appearances suggest. Monticello may not be a resting place, but it should be encouragement.

I can imagine someone saying, “But Jefferson was a genius (particularly for a lawyer whose life was spent in politics) and is another order of being. There is no analogy.”

We can imagine someone saying, “But he held slaves and lived in comfort, so nothing else matters.” What would either view have to do with reality? You are each of your time; you participate in your time’s sins knowingly and unknowingly – and why should you expect to be exempt from the burden?

That isn’t how most people think of it.

Always easier to throw stones than to mind one’s own behavior.

Did we end up with a theme, here?

“Living uncomfortably on the frontier,” maybe?

I’ll have to think about it. Thanks, and till next time.