Let us begin our discussion of the forces that influence your lives, and that your lives use to make shapes.
Interesting way to think of it.
Think of the air you breathe. You are not the air, and yet the air is a part of you, but not as a component so much as part of a process. Air flows through you. It is changed in predictable fashion as it does so, but this is not a one-time change, nor an accident, nor an incident: It is a process, and it must continue if you are to live. Eliminate humans and the air continues to exist and be influenced by other beings. But eliminate air and humans die.
So you may wish to think of these “vast impersonal forces” we have been mentioning as the equivalent of air to breathe. And, in fact, the same word is sometimes used for breath and spirit, and that’s what they are talking about.
The soul is us, the created physical beings attached to strands etc. The spirit is the force that flows through us, animating us, interacting with us, but not us.
That’s correct. Spirit both is part of you (because you couldn’t exist without it) and is not a part of you (because it has its own independent existence that would not fail in your absence.) Compound beings are soul and spirit, localized collections of strands and characteristics, serving as conduits for forces forever beyond them. You interact with spirit; you embody soul. So now that you are clear on that distinction, let us look at the forces flowing through you.
The forces of good and evil, I take it.
Well, not quite. Good and evil may be looked at more as effects than as causes.
Huh?
God looked at his creation and didn’t find it good and evil, he found it good. Evil didn’t enter into the picture until a compound being chose to experience the result of perceiving things as good and evil. Dropping into duality, in other words.
But wasn’t “creation” – the 3D world in its widest ramifications – already by nature dualistic?
Only if experienced – seen – that way.
You’re going to have to explain that.
Oh yes, and it won’t be a brief explanation. By the time we have explained it as best we can, many things will appear in different light.
Remember if you can – the 3D world is not exactly a creation, more like a separation from the larger reality. It is a creation in so far as it is gathered together from a larger, more comprehensive, whole, but only in that sense. “The world was created out of nothing” can only mean – nothing like it existed before it was created. That doesn’t mean first there was a vacuum, then there was rubble filling the vacuum.
I get the sense of the 3D world as being a truncated part of reality, and it was the treating it as if it were a whole that is meant by creation. Is that right, or even partly right?
That is a serviceable interim way to look at it. Remember, there is one reality, not two. If 3D had been created out of nothing, in the way people commonly understand the idea, what of the rest of All-D? Considered as a world in itself, the 3D world came into existence when compound beings were truncated to experience only so much of reality and no more. But it is not this simple.
The forces that flow through you manifest as good and evil not so much because it is their nature as because that is your nature. It isn’t spirit that is perceiving things as good and evil; it is your perception. The “vast impersonal forces” that flow through you are themselves a non-human energy transforming what they flow through and being slightly transformed in turn, but they should not be considered to be human energies merely because they flow through humans.
The energy that flows through us manifests as our passions. So, depending on what it is flowing through, it may manifest as one of the seven deadly sins, or one of the virtues. I imagine it may also manifest as mental energy, not necessarily associated with either. How different is it from what Freud called libido?
In the sense that it is an energy that does not originate within humans but flows through them, and in some it flows stronger than others, and in some it may get dammed up here, in others there, it is closer to Jung’s idea. It isn’t in itself sexual energy; it may manifest in that way, and often does, but it is not itself limited to one kind of energy.
Then we should look at it as the source of our animation. Does that mean we each get different amounts, or does it mean our internal makeup means that we each allow different amounts to flow through us?
All differences between people that may be observed are the results of their initial composition combined with the results of their choices on an on-going basis. But one person’s lesser amount of psychic energy flow does not imply a cosmic injustice. Here, as everywhere, one size does not fit all. What some handle easily would electrocute others. What is comfortable for one would cause another to die of boredom, so to speak. Should it surprise anybody that it is as complicated and varied as life itself?
Symbols and idols
Do you mind if we give you a name, just for ease of reference? I realize that behind the name may be a shifting coalition of forces, and that the person responding to the name one day may not be the same person another day, but calling upon “somebody” isn’t an improvement over calling you Jack, or Rover, for that matter. A name you’d like?
We do see the problem, and rather than having you call us Fido, we will agree to a name. but – you select the name. If we were to select it, people would wind up reading things into the name, no matter how often or how emphatically we might deny any implied significance.
Oh, this is the dynamic behind the creating of idols in the desert in the Moses story, isn’t it?
Human nature – we should say “compound-beings’-reaction-to-3D-limitations,” but “human nature” is far more concise – doesn’t change much over time. The Jews wandering around in the desert were uncomfortable owing their allegiance to an abstraction. A golden calf had symbolism; it offered visual reassurance. And, as is typical of human 3D reactions, a symbol became an objectified reality in about three seconds.
Hence the tension over the centuries in religions over representation or iconoclasm.
People who have an ability to perceive abstractly are not as numerous as those who take sensory reality to be “the” reality, and take anything beyond that reality to be debatable, or somewhat fuzzy, somewhat theoretical. So religions using symbols move over time toward a more literal interpretation of symbol, and you have the worship of idols. Conversely, over time every so often counter-forces will acquire influence and will smash those symbols and representations as idols.
Thus the Protestant sects that accused Catholics of being idolaters, and did not allow statues or paintings of individuals. And come to think of it, thus Islam, with its ban on the creation of similar representations in art. And at the other extreme, Hinduism with its vast array of statuary and art, Buddhism with its endless array of statues of the Buddha.
You may choose to look at the tension of opposites as an example of the natural effect of living in a dualistic world. There is no “right” position, and no “wrong” position other than the position that claims unique validity for itself. But even that is an argument waiting to happen, and perhaps our focus today should be less abstract.
Yes, but that was a very interesting side-light. Okay,
Naming
I’m tempted just to call you Friend. But then somebody sure as shooting would read Quaker into it. I can’t use the name of people I respect as pioneers – Swedenborg, Emerson, Thoreau, etc. – for the same reason, to avoid unwanted associations. And you decline to suggest, then?
You can see why, in your own process. It can be very difficult to avoid unwanted accretions by those who come later, perhaps with misplaced admiration, let alone reverence. That is what happens in churches.
Oh, I know. I’ve been explaining that for years to people who think churches lose integrity only by someone’s malicious intent. Superstitions grow from the bottom; they aren’t imposed from the top. But this still doesn’t result in a name. Maybe we ought to just proceed to the business at hand?
Maybe this – and the thoughts it brings up – is the business at hand.
Interesting. Well – Nathaniel. I don’t know where that comes from, but suddenly there it is. Let’s call you Nathaniel.
That’s fine, and we’ll see how long you can remember the caveats about it being only a brand name, only a label, and not an individual.
And don’t go looking for significance in the name.
You just saw, and shared, the process. Ultimately it was like any time you “get” a bright idea: It wasn’t there and then it was, and who is to say why it emerged? But hopefully our spelling out the process of searching for it will discourage people from being too sure of whatever significance they choose to attach to it.