What you called our inheritance of lives: I get that it means more than that each life continues to be alive in reference to its own time, but I can see we’re in for some redefinition.
It may become tedious, before we have spelled it out to our own satisfaction. So many changes in viewpoint require continual checking to be sure that people are still on board, and since such checking cannot be done orally, it can only be done by redundancy. Let us begin by using your own strands as example, bearing in mind that, as usual, our explanation is going to be less precise in the beginning, because terms will need to be more carefully defined and delimited as we go along. That means, initially we must use terms loosely, or else you could not follow us.
Rita’s old “To understand A, you must understand B, but…”
It is a fact of life, like alternation of consciousness, or perspective shifts, or gravity. It is just one of the constraints imposed by 3D existence. So, let’s begin where so many explorations begin in your life, with the continuously present but mostly taken for granted presence of David Poynter.
The Welsh journalist and psychic investigator, who I think used the name Peters as his pen name.
His tendencies, many of them, shaped your life, and he was the one who introduced you (at your suggestion) to Joseph Smallwood, remember. His continuing existence within you was manifest to you in London that time, when you experienced his grief and anger when you looked at the war memorial that said, merely, “July 1, 1916.” It was his voice you were able to capture on the tape recorder, standing on Dun I, on Iona. He had an interesting life, of much significance to you, but the life he lived did not cease when that body died. This, you know. It is the nature of its subsequent immortality that is somewhat different than you have been imagining.
Now I am thinking of Voltaire’s sardonic definition of the soul in the Christian concept as “an infinite stick with one end.”
Yes, the idea that a soul could come into existence and then remain in existence forever seemed ridiculous to him. It did not occur to him, perhaps, that this is the nature of creation. Notre Dame, the Roman Colosseum, the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, even lesser works such as Monticello or some of the architectural masterpieces of Louis Sullivan, did not exist, and then they did. Once they came into existence, they could not cease to exist merely because they were damaged or destroyed. Creation is forever, in that sense, and it is as true of human souls as of intellectual constructions such as architecture or music or theorems.
But aren’t all creations merely the bringing into 3D existence of something that existed in possibility all along? Plato’s archetypes?
There is a difference between potential energy and kinetic energy, between what always might have been and what ever actually was. Everything – hence, anything –exists in potential, but only that which is made manifest in form exists in reality.
Now, you know that’s going to get us into trouble.
It is mostly a matter of slogging through, as usual. Most potential misunderstandings sort themselves out, given persistence and at least a modicum of Beginner’s Mind.
Anything is only potential until it is made manifest. This doesn’t mean, exactly, “until it is put into physical form.” It means, more, until somebody has thought of it. It isn’t the playing or the transcribing or even the initial notation of Beethoven’s Third Symphony that brought it into existence, but Beethoven’s capturing it in his mind. Once he had done that, something new existed in the world, and would have continued to exist even if no one had ever heard it played. Even if he had never written it down (but had it firmly in mind). We have been through the successive levels of manifestation with you before, and more than once.
Yes. Conception, realization, then various levels of sharing with the world.
You took that explanation to be an explanation of the various levels of influence one could have on the world, and that is accurate, but it is also an example of 3D creation of souls. Creation is creation, and it is very little different according to the materials one works with. Bach’s children were his musical works, no less than his physical offspring. Very different materials, very different results. But the same creation according to the laws of creation.
Here is the law that ought to sober you as well as encourage you, given that your entire lives in 3D are lives necessarily filled with creation: Once created, created forever.
But since everything exists in potential, how is our bringing it into manifestation a turning point? I mean, how can bringing anything into 3D existence really matter?
Creation in 3D is not merely material but intellectual and emotional. The non-3D is no less a part of the All-D in which you live than is the 3D, so things that you “merely” think or imagine or envision are no less real than those that can be cobbled together in material reality. That is, the Moonlight Sonata is as real in its intellectual conception (with its emotional properties) as in its notation on paper or its performance on instruments. Non-3D creation is creation, merely of a different order than 3D creation; 3D creation in the non-material (such as ideas) is as real as in the material (such as written manuscript).
Manifesting any given potential is choosing this over that. It is choosing.
Yes, I see. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it is obvious enough now. What we create is what we prefer.
It is what you prefer to encourage into existence.
Hence the church’s admonition that we may sin through our thoughts, I suppose.
That was the original idea, when it was still realized that to live in 3D is to be an active creator. But when the idea decayed into a continuing test of obedience to a set of rules, you can see that it became an attempt to enforce conformity, rather than a guide to responsible creation.
And in resisting coercion we fell into undisciplined creation without any sense of consequences.
That you did. And that is one of the things we hope to correct.
“As a man thinks, so he is.”
Yes. That didn’t mean, “Think this way, or else.” It meant, “You are what you eat,” intellectually, and, even more, “Your fruits proceed from what you are in essence, not merely from what you choose to manifest.”
Now, consider. Once created, always created. It is true for human 3D lives no less than for human intellectual creations. The reason why you may communicate with Joseph the Egyptian or with Hemingway or Lincoln is not any connection with what you think of as “past” lives, but with a continuing present life. The various categories of lives that we said you could potentially communicate with were spelled out as a way of expanding your concepts. Now it is time to look more clearly at the subject, because to continue to be bound by those concepts would be to be constricted rather than expanded.