Striving (from December, 2020)

Saturday, December 5, 2020

In considering emotion and our lives, two inputs, one from Bill Ebeltoft, one from Dirk. How about it, guys? Compare and contrast? Or at least comment?

[Bill suggested that we don’t so much change our emotions, as interpret them through our own filters. How we choose to react can change the filter, and thus change our subsequent reactions. He reported his guys as calling this a reasonable interpretation, if a bit simplified. “But a good place to start.”]

It is an interesting starting-point, the question whether in your 3D lives you

  • change the emotions you experience, or
  • interpret and react and, in your reaction, you change your end of the interface.

May I rephrase? I think you mean, “or do we, by reacting, change what we are, which changes the equation.”

Same thing. Let’s rephrase the whole situation.

Emotions are the boundary between small 3D-you and either the “external” world or your larger 3D and non-3D you, whichever way you choose to see it. So emotion per se is beyond your control, in the way the weather is beyond your control. You can carve out a greater amount of control over how you react, but that isn’t the same thing.

In other words, the emotion you interface with may be regarded as a constant that you cannot affect) but your reaction to it, hence your degree of freedom, is a variable that is potentially under your control, in that you by your second-tier reactions can change the equation. The same input may express differently depending upon what it interfaces with.

George Washington controlling his temper by a lifetime’s rigid self-discipline.

Yes. To look at it merely externally for the moment, would an undisciplined Washington have experienced the soul-searing experience of the winter at Valley Forge in the same way that in fact he did? And would such a version of Washington have been able to command the respect and allegiance of his officers and men? Life in 3D is not primarily about externals (though it looks like it is), but here is one external that should illustrate the point.

So in response to Bill’s interpretation we would say it isn’t exactly the filter of perception that you change. Rather, it is the mechanism of reaction that changes.

Not so much that we perceive differently but that we choose to react differently.

Yes. By choosing how you will react to something, you choose what you will see subsequently. You change the world coming at you, hence you change the emotional layer interpreting and intervening in your life. The laminal level – the smooth or turbulent connection between inner and outer world (for this is how it appears to you) – changes automatically if one or the other end of the equation changes, or if both do. It is a boundary and a bridge, an energetic, dynamic, barrier and bridge, not something solid or static.

So, moving on to Dirk’s analogy to physical systems —

[Dirk said that when engineers want to change laminar and turbulent flows, they have choices in how to do so. He asked if similarly we might have many ways to change our emotional interface.]

One way would be to consider the habitual reactions you can build, the second-tier reactions we discussed. What is that but redesigning aspects of yourself so that the same input from the emotional layer will meet a different you, hence express differently.

[Pause]

That’s it?

You need more?

I don’t know, somehow I expected it would require a more in-depth discussion.

We don’t see the need, but if questions arise, you know where to find us, as we said earlier.

Anent that, since we have some time, Bob Washburne’s email of Nov. 16 said he had used TMI’s Gateway Experience CDs many times, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.  “That is, I can readily attain the different levels at will without the CDs, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything with them. For one thing, I never see anything but black.  No images, no sounds other than the ringing in my ears, no voices, no emotion downloads. Just black. Second, my awareness seems to be nailed right behind my eyeballs and nothing can shake it loose. So is there a self-help group for slow psychics?]

And as you know, many people experience excruciating difficulties in connecting.

Yes, they do, and being individual they respond in different ways. Some take it personally, some assume they are at fault, some travel hopefully, some despair.

And many of us move from point to point along that scale, until we succeed or we concede failure. I well remember the two or three years  before I did Gateway, using the tapes, trying, intending, hoping and not succeeding.

Your second-tier reaction to that long preparation served you well. You did not get angry, nor did you despair.

I sort of hoped against hope.

Righteous persistence did bring reward. But remember, what you learned at Gateway was that you had been expecting things to appear in the wrong guise. Your unconscious expectations added to your difficulties.

Very true, and after nearly 30 years of experience, I have learned to advise people of some of the usual pitfalls. But a listing of obstacles, and a listing of suggested ways to overcome them, does not amount to a magic formula.,

If there is a magic formula, it is “Persist, live in faith, live your life knowing that although it may not be what you wish it were, it is right for you.” Not so easy a formula to follow, yet not impossible.

You can understand that to us in 3D it sounds a little like “It isn’t under your control, so ride with it.”

And is that erroneous? Your life is not under your 3D control, and it is well that it isn’t, or your life would be a maze with no exit. What is under your control, we remind you, is how you react to what happens to you. Seen in a certain light, that is no different from George Washington continually molding his character.

So what of someone trying sincerely and seeming to get nowhere?

The operative word – as you knew when you wrote it – is “seeming.” But life can require a lot of patience and faith, because often what you are really working on is not what you think you are working on.

Yes, I’ve seen that often enough in my life.

It’s an inevitable effect of your 3D consciousness being less than your larger consciousness that has a better perspective. You may strive earnestly and diligently and seem to get nowhere. But the striving itself is “getting somewhere,” if you can realize it.

So our life is not so much Sisyphus, everlastingly pushing a rock uphill, only to see it fall to the bottom, making him continue an endless fruitless labor. It is more George Washington, a life presenting endless possibilities to work on character?

Don’t carry it too far, but yes. Success in what you want is not necessarily the same as (or worth as much as) success in what your intent and actions make yourselves.

 

Leave a Reply