Looking at life and death

Thursday, October 13, 2022

9:25 a.m. This morning I chose, more or less “at random,” from saved-up citations of past conversations, and sent out “Connection and the Age of Aquarius,” from Sept. 3, 2019. At the end I notice that you said my realizing that the Age of Aquarius would have its negative side, no less than the Age of Pisces had, “though not entirely new and seemingly not particularly important, may take us far.” Did we ever follow up on that?

By implication, yes, repeatedly. Perhaps not in so many words.

Care to elaborate, then?

We could.

You have something more topical, then? Something you’d rather address? Feel free.

More on your mind these days is the ending of life. Yours, Jon’s, anyone’s. and that is the same thing as weighing the evidence of your life as lived.

Presence. Receptivity. Clarity.

It is a matter of perspective – and perspective is a limitation (one point of view, only) as well as a way of making sense of chaos. So you live always a hair’s-breadth away from the non-3D, or “the other side,” or the life that follows First Life, and abstractly, intellectually, you know this. People say “Life is uncertain,” or “In the midst of life we are in death.” This is true, this is known, is often experienced emotionally, but it is only half the story. For you also live day by day, generalizing from the years past, anticipating your future, as though you were going to live forever. This is also true, and often known, and often experienced emotionally, but of course it contradicts the reality of death always being at hand.

If I didn’t know you had something up your sleeve, I’d have said the sense of death as always a possibility refers to our bodily life, and the sense of invincible immortality belongs to the life in us that is only visiting 3D, so to speak.

That logical, common-sensical way of seeing things is, of course, mostly a way of believing two contradictory  things together.

It is?

When you identify with the body, you feel one way. When you identify with the soul, you feel another way. Each way of seeing things has its own persuasive logic. We are going to attempt to help you see the underlying unity.

Hmm. It’s all mind-stuff, so the division between body and non-body may not be as real as it seems.

Indeed not.

I can see that this is part of the key to it. As long as people consider the material world to be something that exists on its own, they can’t possibly resolve the duality.

A horse and its rider may function as one thing, but sooner or later they will have to be considered separately, as the two different animals they are. A horse and rider do not make a centaur.

Refocusing.

If your 3D life is not bounded in the way it appears to be bounded, what is it?

I guess, a continuing existence bound to the moments it lived. Those moments continue to live; we continue to life. At least, I can’t see how else it could be. Joseph Smallwood (whatever his name may be) lived, and the times moved on. He doesn’t live in the times beyond the moment of death – by definition – but he does not cease to live in all the moments between his birth and his death. He isn’t a statue, nor a simulacrum, but a living presence, responding to changes in the Strands he comprised.

Correct. The 3D life, the First Life, was bounded in time between birth date and death date. Caesar doesn’t live in the 21st century, not as Caesar. But Caesar is alive, responsive to Strands, as he ever was. This sense of your immortality is entirely closed to anyone who thinks that past moments cease to exist. There is no way to fit this into that way of seeing things.

Some people believe in ghosts.

Yes, but what they believe in around ghosts shapes their perception. To think that a ghost is a remnant of someone who died is not the same thing as believing that a ghost is a manifestation of someone still living.

Yes. I see that. It still takes for granted the idea that the 3D world in the present moment is all that is real, and everything else has vanished.

You can’t come to the truth with that assumption – yet it is that assumption that underlies the “modern” viewpoint, quite as much as it ever did.

Certainly. Who was it? Somebody with insight called the 19th century (that he was living in) “the darkest century yet.”

You can see, the assumption that the 3D world is primary blocks any way to the truth.

Now, if your 3D life is bounded by non-existence prior to and after your short span of years, yet continues to live within those years, then what? For it is also true that your essence is not bounded to those same years. After all, what is “another life” but another span of years in which you participate actively in 3D?

A second form of immortality.

That’s one way to see it. Another would be to see your essence – your spiritual life – as unbounded and multi-formed, and your soul life being bounded in one 3D life. Not either/or. Both.

I’m trying to summarize it, to hold the elements in mind for clarity. Let’s see if bullets will help.

  • It’s all mind-stuff, so there is no real, ultimate, division between 3D and non-3D, between body and spirit.
  • Within 3D, we are body, soul, spirit, all three.
  • The body and soul function within a given span of years. The spirit participates (provides the life, I suppose) but is not bounded or restricted in any way.
  • Spirit cannot be restricted by 3D conditions nor by our will. Spirit participates in much more than any one life.
  • We – whatever “we” means – may identify with body, or with body and soul, or with body and soul and spirit, and what we identify with will help shape our experience.

So ask yourself, is it likely that Spirit will look at your life and grumble that, “It’s not fair!” or will say to the passing moment, “Stay, thou are so fair”? Won’t it much more likely take a fairly objective view, casting “a cold eye on life, on death,” as Yeats put it? Might you not sometimes experience it as ruthless, or unfeeling, or insensitive to your pain, or whatever?

You know we sometimes do, or at least are tempted to do.

Is it likely that a body-and-soul view of life will be as accurate as one that includes all three elements?

Obviously not, but it isn’t always so easy to feel that third element.

What in the world do you think you are doing when you talk to us, or for that matter to anyone?

Say more?

It is through spirit that everything connects. Clearly it can’t be through the body. And the soul, though it connects, connects through a bias, you might say. (Indeed, that’s the purpose of a 3D life, to create and express a bias.) It is Spirit that over-arches everything created (3D) and uncreated (non-3D).

You are saying something just outside my range of understanding.

Why is it that communicating regularly with non-3D presences changes you?

It brings us a little out of our accustomed self-definition, I suppose.

Look at it this way: It puts you into active communication with Spirit, not merely with other Souls.

We will pause here, for that to sink in.

Our thanks as always. Totally unexpected. Theme?

Something like, “3D life, its limits and possibilities.”

“Looking at life and death”?

Fine with us, if with you.

Till next time, then.

 

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