Internal and external (from Jan 21 and 22, 2020)
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Dealing with the “external” world as if it were disconnected to your own internally experienced world is a very common error. We thought it would be as well to provide the point of view that would allow people to correct it for themselves.
The external world has a very seductive solidity; it appears to be firmly there.
Yes, the myth of objectivity that bedevils science, journalism, and every discipline besides.
But there can be no objectivity, if there can be no disconnection.
No, of course not.
Well, you know, I didn’t need any persuading!
Part of you did not. Remember, o individual, there is no such thing as a unity, short of All-That-Is.
We are communities, meaning that different components have different beliefs.
Which means, they have different experiences because they have different beliefs, and means they have different experiences that cause different beliefs. It isn’t circular, but it is recursive and self-reinforcing.
So I have some laggards who still believe in disconnection, eh? I guess that makes sense. In matters of health, particularly, I sense an intermittent battle.
Oh, much more than in matters of health. But that is for us to discuss privately, if you wish. For others, a hint applicable to themselves will have to do. Now, notice that even this seems to take for granted a divide between self and others. In practice, as opposed to in theory, that’s how it is.
You could consider your 3D component as private and your non-3D component as public. Or you could substitute “Conscious mind” for 3D component and “unconscious mind” for non-3D component. A third phrasing would be subjectivity and objectivity.
That is, we’re all separate; we’re all connected, and which aspect appears foremost depends upon – our preference, or our belief-systems, or I don’t know what.
Let’s say it depends upon how you see it at any given moment. So what is the useful take-away?
We aren’t victims and there is no definable limit to what we can do or become, but practical limits do exist, whatever they are. And we should add, I think, that those limits change, or can change.
They change primarily in congruence with your structure of beliefs, and the experiences that flow from those beliefs. Now, this is nothing we haven’t said before, only apply it actively to politics and economics and social control and visible and invisible structures.
That is, reconnect two areas of life that we commonly keep in different compartments. But we find it hard to see how the political-economic structure we are born into can vary by the individual.
It doesn’t. The experience of it does.
That is embarrassingly obvious, as soon as you say it. The unemployed and uninsured live in a different society than do those who have economic security. As I say, obvious once said.
Yes, but go a little slower. What you just said is true enough, but still superficial. It assumes that your position determines your experience. What determines your position? Where is the scope for anything external, if there is no external?
And yet this feels like you are playing with words and avoiding the reality.
We are aware of what it feels like. But if you will give us the benefit of the doubt and look at what we say as if we meant it, where does it bring you?
Well –
- All is one, meaning everything is connected, meaning ultimately there can’t be any “exterior” in the sense of “objective.” Relatively, yes. Ultimately, no.
- But we experience life in duality. There must be some advantage in this. Maybe it is to clarify our vision.
- Greater consciousness allows for greater control over circumstances. Beliefs determine abilities.
- We are each the center of our world; yet the world exists. Important not to forget either half of the statement.
- I think you said somewhere, how we experience the world depends on us, in that we will or won’t have Velcro for any given thing.
- That means, it is awfully important what we pay our attention to.
So now consider how to live in a cruel and unjust world without feeling trapped and guilty and complicit; and how to live in a kind and nurturing world without forgetting that others are experiencing something quite different. Doesn’t it amount to saying, “The world is as you experience it, but how you experience it follows from what you are”? And this would be a simple, self-evident statement if not for the fact that in 3D most connections are invisible or, at least, not obvious.
It is hard, seeing injustice all around us, not to revolt against it in our feelings, despite the fact that there is little or nothing we can do about it.
Yes, and it is this feeling that we intend to address.
Only, you can feel us ready to accuse you of being unfeeling, of advocating submission.
That’s a mild example of the rhetoric that encourages you to feel good about how righteous you feel, and does nothing to assist you in doing the only thing that can assist anybody, which is, increasing your own consciousness and therefore your own effective level of being.
To be clear, you aren’t saying there isn’t anything else we can do to assist others? No way to attack social problems? No way to counter the forces of injustice, selfishness, cruelty, etc.?
This is still mostly rhetoric. Who is stopping you from helping anybody you meet who needs help? Who is stopping you – or ever could stop you – from feeling and expressing love? Those are real things. But for you to bring about world peace, or end world hunger, or redistribute the wealth created by many and appropriated by few – fine, go ahead, as soon as you build a freeway by yourself, or construct a rocket ship or even a motorcar without assistance of any kind.
It isn’t news to hear that fixing social problems requires a coordinated effort.
But perhaps it is news, to some at least, that wishing for a better world is not the same thing as doing anything to bring it about.
Seems to me that’s just the accusation that will be made against you.
Why? Because we advise people to not waste time on what is ineffective, and instead do what is effective?
- What you can change is
- How you change is by putting down some threads and picking up others.
- Just as you cannot convince others, so you cannot convert others, save by your example.
- What is as powerful as personal example? Powerful for good or for evil, because in effect it is a magnetizing of strands within people, a providing of a rallying-point.
- You know the jingle, “One convinced against his will, Is of the same opinion still.” What, then, of political movements?
You are saying here, I think, that persuasion is a different type of thing than mobilization.
Political movements are a rallying of those of similar opinion. They are not out to convince; but to overawe.
Again, to be clear: You aren’t saying political movements have no place.
No, but it is well for you to know what that place is. Don’t use a screwdriver as a hammer.
- Reform movements aim at changing social behavior. But this has dangers.
“Cowards who run away and enlist,” in Thoreau’s words.
Yes. Don’t think that conscience drives people only to good causes.
- You live in the world as you find it, and then you decide what your attitude toward it will be. Only, your judgment is always going to be partial and perhaps myopic.
I suddenly think of Hemingway telling Martha Gellhorn that her problem was that she assumed that people reacted to the conditions they saw in the same way she reacted. She would have remade the world to her formulas, and so she spent her life in perpetual indignation. Hemingway chose to see what was, rather than to only see what ought to be. His sympathies were with those who tried to make a better world, but he didn’t overrate his ability to help them, nor even his ability to know which to help.
That is, it is easier to extract the splinter from your neighbor’s eye after you have removed the beam from your own.
Touché.
But that is also our point. Self-examination, self-reform, self-regeneration is always within your ability to work on. It may or may not be done while you concentrate on nearly any external task. We return to the Eightfold Path, one part of which is Right Livelihood. It can be done, only it doesn’t happen automatically. Unflagging vigilance is required, if you are not to leave the strait and narrow path of working on yourself for the broad and alluring path of working on others.
So the question becomes, how can we work to c—
Freudian slip, eh?
I’ll say! I meant to write, “correct the world’s injustice,” and started to write, “create the world’s injustice.
And that is the snag. Every social problem began as someone’s solution to something else.
So, be careful what we work for.
Look, we would never say, “Don’t try to make things better.” Everyone’s path is different in some way from everyone else’s, because no two people are identical. Some are meant to be reformers, some revolutionaries, some reactionaries, etc. Our point, for those who want to see things as they are rather than as they appear, is that the “external” world is and is not separate from you. It is, in that it preceded your entrance into 3D and will still be here after you leave. It is not, in that what you extract from it will always have specific reference to what you are.
The world is a vast swirling chaos of contending forces. That is the freedom of it.