Tuesday, September 13, 2022
3:30 a.m. Looking back to the 9th and going forward:
- The realest things seem least real in 3D.
- It’s all mind-stuff.
- Can’t ignore religious or occult ideas of the past.
- Life looks different to everybody. We each live in a different world.
- The everyday world is timing, filter, culmination, and precondition.
- The 3D world is not separate and not primary.
And you said we would resume today with living a sacred and grounded life.
Yes. And we suggested the bullet summary and perhaps you can see that it may help keep the argument centered.
When you said sacred and grounded, I took that to mean – well, it is difficult to find words for the concept, though it feels clear enough.
After all, this entire conversation, stretching back 25 years or so, might be described as finding words for simple concepts. It is a feature of 3D that words – sequentially employed strings of specifics and abstracts – may affix what otherwise would be felt but not understood. It is the left-brain complementing the right-brain, you see.
I do.
We are suggesting what you might think of as everyday reverence for life. Not woo-woo and exalted; not materialist and uninspired. Rather, putting the 3D world in its proper perspective as a place for the specific working-out of problems in a way that would not be possible in other conditions.
Take your life seriously as a competent actor takes a given role seriously. Live your life respecting your life, let’s say. But the actor knows that there is a difference between a given role in a play and his life beyond the actor portion of that life. He may also have a mortgage, or an ulcer, or hobbies, or children. These other aspects of his life need not interfere with his acting, but they do not cease to exist merely because he is not concentrating on them while he is on stage.
But what would it mean, to live a life that is both sacred and grounded? In asking that question, we do not mean to imply that none of you know. Some of you live exactly that sort of life, instinctively from earliest childhood. Some learn to live it. Some are ready to live it but have lacked the idea of it. As usual, we are addressing ourselves not to any one person, yet, at the same time, to any one of a multitude of types of person.
That came out a little awkwardly, but I think it comes though.
It is an insight that cannot be proved. It can’t be argued into, let’s say. Suggestions and sparks may provide those who are ready with just what they need, but it will be as sparks jumping gaps, not as proofs overwhelming objections.
As usual.
Yes, but even more so than as usual.
Why more so?
Because this is another example of the realest things seeming least real. An attitude toward life doesn’t sound very solid, does it? Doesn’t sound like an achievement, not a skill, nor even a trait. And yet this bit of smoke may prove solid enough to found a life upon, to shape a soul upon.
I see. Not unlike the gift of faith in life.
No, nor courage, nor, indeed, prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude as lodestones.
All of it seeming insubstantial, all of it being vital and invisible.
You say “insubstantial,” and in a way you did not mean, that is it entirely. Substance, being material, is less real than mind-stuff, per se.
But material is mind-stuff too.
Yes, but mind-stuff stepped down, so to speak. Matter is the long way round, and spirit is the direct line. Thus, in the way we mean it, you can see that “insubstantial” might be paraphrased, “not merely material and contingent, but spiritual and thus primary.”
[Transcribing this, I see that the “merely” may be misread as meaning “not only.” They intended it in the sense of material and contingent being less than spiritual.]
Until now you have been shying away from the word spiritual.
We are hoping that after all this time, your readers ought to be able to separate a concept from the prejudicial associations it may have had in their minds.
I guess we’ll see. Some will be able to, some won’t, I suppose.
For those who cannot, or for those who are unable to feel that the material “external” world is not a preexisting thing in itself, the things we have in mind to say will at best be seeds for their future, seeds that may bear new life, unpredictably, at some future time. There is no schedule about it, no wasted lives, no wrong turnings. But this is for those who came here because their non-3D component knew they were ready, or might be ready, or were almost ready, or might profit from this at some future time.
That’s lovely, actually. Comprehensive, helpful, non-directive.
You will find that guidance is always that way, with fluctuations according to the situation.
To return to our earlier point. The things that most powerfully affect the shaping and development of your souls are always, and necessarily, the things that seem least substantial to a materialist mindset. Even to call them “things” is a misnomer. They have no solidity, and are the stronger and more permanent for it.
You know the true saying that no one ever lay on his deathbed wishing he had spent more time at the office. Well, neither did anyone ever look back at his 3D life with satisfaction at –
Yes, it’s going to be misinterpreted unless you say it very carefully, or unless you spell it out after you say it. I know where you were going, but the obstacle to understanding is equally clear to me.
It is a problem with words, not with concepts. It is a simple concept that will mislead when put into words unless, as you say, we do it very carefully. We can only try, and you will clean up after us if need be.
No one looks back on their past 3D life and counts the number of Cadillacs they owned, nor the awards they were given, nor the fame or pleasures or even accomplishments they were in the center of. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these; not that what they did doesn’t matter; not that all these things are not in a way what that liberated soul is. (Say graduated, if you like that better: The sense is that the 3D life is completed as far as that soul is concerned.)
Our point is that what the ex-3D soul will weigh and value will be intangibles. Did it love? Did it live in a way it approves of, after the fact?
No, that isn’t quite what you mean. Not “approves of.”
No, you’re right. We mean, closer, did it live in a way that had results it finds helpful. Even this doesn’t quite get it, but it is closer. It isn’t exactly submitting the life to judgment – certainly not to potential condemnation – but it is a sort of summing-up, a position report. “As a result of that life, I am now X.”
So far.
Yes! So far, for of course a life isn’t over merely because it’s over, Yogi Berra to the contrary. But First Life is. You only get to do First Life once.
Which sounds like the cliff-hanger you often use to round off a conversation.
We did well today. Most of what we have to say here has been said between the lines, and, as Hemingway knew, that is a very powerful method of bringing evanescent things to the eye: They can’t quite be seen clearly, but they hold the attention. We will resume with the question of First Life and endless revision of the manuscript, perhaps.
Our thanks to you as always. Today’s theme?
“Sacred, real, and insubstantial,” perhaps.
Till next time, then.