The context of life’s dream

Friday, March 24, 2023

6:35 a.m. Finished re-reading Jefferson in Power, skipping somewhat, and am moved to ask a question – not rhetorically – that has often puzzled me. (In fact, I suspect prodding, here.) What do I get out of so much immersion in history, given that I also see life as only a dream in a world made of mind-stuff? It’s all important somehow, I can feel that, but – Why? How?

Gentlemen? How has a lifetime of reading and daydreaming history served me? What is it for? Why is it important? Counting from about age 11 or 12 (Daniel Boone and the Opening of the Wilderness) and certainly from my introduction to Abraham Lincoln by age 13, I have spent what, 65 years, immersed in history, and then in alternative history and pre-history. In other words, all studies that take the 3D world seriously. Yet something within me knew there was more than meets the eye, and gradually I came to see that what meets the eye isn’t at all what really is.

I don’t want to point the question, and thus curtail the answer. So, I’ll leave it at this. That’s the background. Commentary and clarification, please.

Within the context of a dram, all is meaningful, is it not? Why would you expect that it would be different in the case of the larger dream that is 3D life?

Let’s put it this way: It is in geology that you will find the stabilizers of the dream, and in your individual and collective choosings that you will find the plot and characters of the dream narrative.

I get that you are going to try something different here. Verse?

Not quite. But your brother pointed out that your recent publications of your journey-notes were like poetry and evoked responses. Let’s see how that goes.

[After the fact, I added bullets]

• Life is but a dream; hence, more than 3D, or rather,
• 3D is more than appears.
• External is internal, objectified; hence, drama plays out at an observable distance.
• Every kingdom plays its part in the dream: mineral, vegetable, animal, human, celestial. Nothing omitted, nothing extra.
  • Mineral conveys stability
  • Vegetable provides expression of life, of living, of growth and decay
  • Animal shows and enables the individual element separating from, cooperating with, the overarching whole.
  • Human adds consciousness of self to the rest, and sees in the 3D something of the context as well as the manifest.
  • Celestial maintains the 3D in the matrix of non-3D realities.
• No one individual, no one group, can know everything, specialize in everything, stretch itself to encompass everything. Hence, all views are partial views, not comprehensive.
• Yet, all together are part of one thing, of course non-3D as much as (if not more so than) 3D. One might say that any one individual or group serves as one reporter, scanning its own chosen field and forwarding the information (as well as receiving reactions to the forwardings).
• Therefore, any one individual or group may concern itself with what it will, and how can the result be irrelevant? If you are called to do something, to focus your attention on this rather than that, how can the call be an irrelevance, or a whim?

So much for why a thing may concern you: It is enough to know that it concerns you; perhaps the why cannot be explained, or at any rate will not be explained. But beyond the question of why this or that is important to any one person or group, how is it important at all? The answer should be obvious.

It sort of feels obvious, though I couldn’t yet state it plainly. I’d say the 3D world is how the world-soul, the all-that-is, battles things out.

Why not think of it as where the all-that-is thinks things out, envisages, daydreams, blue-skys, what-ifs?

That’s an interesting way to look at it.

Life is but a dream. Does a dream feature real battles, or dramas? Is it intended to engage you physically, or emotionally? Think on this.

3D life feels plenty real.

How could it not? It is real within its own terms, and within its own terms is where you live – only, you also bridge to the celestial kingdom, so you somewhat see through things to the larger, realer, reality underlying and underpinning them.

What you say makes sense. I’m not sure it addresses why studying history has been so vital to me.

It could have been biology or geology or anything. It could have been the experience of the moving body; sports, for instance. It could have been the practical manipulation of circumstances: politics, salesmanship, propaganda, mechanics. Many things. But whatever occupies you in 3D life, something will occupy you.

Even if you’re a junkie? Or a sex fiend?

“Nothing human to me is alien.” Do you suppose unsavory activities have their place in life as the result of some mistake in the celestial architecture? What is, is necessary, or it wouldn’t be. If you wish to be rid of it, remove the necessity it fills. But failing that, yes, any human activity fills the individual’s needs, or the individual would do something else.

And nobody ever said every part of a dream is uplifting.

You could say “Life is but a nightmare,” if you wished, and some weaker or jaded individuals have adopted just that attitude. But we do not see the advantage in it. Why assume the worst when you can as easily assume the best?

As you said, we never say a thing is “too bad to be true.”

You don’t, but perhaps you should begin to do so. Your world of possibilities would enlarge.

In effect, life more abundantly does not follow from an assumption that life is wrong.

How could it possibly? An attitude of trust is an attitude of openness. One doesn’t receive gifts with a closed fist, but with an open hand, a receptive palm.

Have we said what you wanted said?

More or less. Remembering that

in a sense life is but a dream, and that nothing is by chance, and that the external is the internal made manifest,

Remembering that 3D drama has a purpose, is not a mistake, and is not as final and stark as it appears,

Remembering that you have a right and a duty to live what you are, choosing as seems best to you,

Remembering that the world’s “unfinished business” is your business but also everyone else’s business, no two people being quite the same,

Where does this leave you, but to live your life unafraid, following your deepest intuitions, not thinking you need to make things come out right, yet retaining the right and duty to have preferences?

So, if you want to spend your life – or, we might almost say, if you feel compelled to spend your life – in this or that pursuit, how can it possibly be a mistake to do so? Even if it leads to results disastrous in 3D terms, sincere integrity will assure that all will be well for you, for “you,” remember, is not an entity confined only to 3D.

And that’s enough.

All right, thanks for all this.