Two views of life
Monday, January 9, 2023
7:35 a.m. Gentlemen, some people think you didn’t answer my question the other day. I though thought you redirected me, pointing out to me that it wasn’t the right question. Perhaps we might continue by looking at free will v. “the nanny non-3D state.” My coinage and my way of seeing the issue, but it only clarified after our talk.
Why don’t you spell out your thinking and we will comment if it seems called for?
Okay. I think we see two ways of looking at life, here. One centers on the 3D world as if it were important in and of itself. The other centers on the individual human soul as if it were important in and of itself.
Other ways of stating the same dichotomy:
- One centers on result (the actual facts on the ground), the other on process (the ongoing formation of character by repeated choice).
- One values result as if life were the one-time thing it appears; the other values the lessons learned, the changes resolved upon, in the context of continual revision.
Your habit of parallelism is getting in the way of a clear statement.
Over to you, then.
A way of seeing the situation that has not occurred to you: holding both ends of a polarity in mind, v. clinging only to either end. Life is pain and suffering and is real in tis own terms, yet it is a dream, and so only somewhat real.
You as 3D beings function as if separate from non-3D, yet you also are of non-3D and function in non-3D, hence are self-divided in effect.
You are in 3D to function, yet it is important to be in it but not of it. This is a tug-of-war that can’t be merely talked away. It is lived, and therefore presents conundrums for you to learn to comprehend.
Lastly (though of course the list could be extended), you are communities of communities, and so you are largely mysteries to yourselves. Your motivations, perceptions, intuitions, biases, inherited karma (that is, ongoing unresolved results of prior decisions) – it all influences you day by day, whether you do or do not realize it.
Should it be a surprise that you all see the world differently?
And – you’re going to say – nothing wrong with it, and every new viewpoint adds.
Do you dispute it?
Not any more.
So there is your response:
- There is no need for (no possibility of) unanimity of opinion.
- Any partial viewpoint may be productive, and somebody will experience it as truth.
- But it would be silly to insist on a “the” truth. That would be saying, “There is only one valid viewpoint and (surprise!) I happen to have it.”
Nevertheless, we predict that is exactly what will happen. When it does, smile and go your own way, unconvinced that you need to give up your point of view just because someone else is sure.
Yet this doesn’t quite serve. One of those competing viewpoints sees us as victims of non-3D interference, perhaps malign.
You provide a teaching moment, for although you agree with us, you do not act as you believe. Or, let’s say, you don’t see things the way you think you do. Or (a third way to describe the same situation), some of your Strands see it one way and others see it other ways, and you do not have a permanent deck officer in charge of navigation.
I can see what you’re driving at, but I don’t quite see the way out of the dilemma.
It is one thing to recognize a point of view, a very different thing to agree with it. Understanding is vital to your growth, but agreement with everything you understand is a recipe for futility and confusion; to identify with all values would be to be unable to live one set of values.
I might argue, what if my value is to understand them all?
Does that become a value saying sympathize with them all? Exemplify them all? You understand cruelty and prejudice and intolerance: Do you wish to live them?
I see your point.
It is an important point. The proper polarity is not between ecumenical understanding and fanaticism, but between such understanding and an inability or unwillingness to understand. But what you act, what you live, is what you make yourself as you go.
And we can’t make ourselves everything.
You couldn’t if you wanted to, and in fact you can’t even want to. It seems like it, perhaps, in theory, but when you get down to it, in practice it means doing exactly what you hate, and just as thoroughly as doing what you love. Why would you want to do that?
All the actors in the improv represent a point of view, and they don’t go swapping roles.
They do if they want to – but how can they be everything at once?
They can’t. all right, I’d say you answered me. We’ll see what our friends say.
You did not state explicitly the difference you saw.
Didn’t I? Perhaps not. It was that if we are here in 3D to choose, we have to be allowed to make blunders and to commit crimes – with whatever ugly results. That means that the world without war or cruelty or suffering could come only if we all grow up, or if the non-3D were to continually restrict our freedom to choose. The freedom has ugly 3D results, but the non-3D nanny-state would leave us perpetually children. That, I think, is “Why God lets these things happen.”
And you may call this theme “A question of focus,” perhaps.
Perhaps. Our thanks as always.