Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Bruce Moen died yesterday, apparently peacefully, after many months’ slow approach to his transition. I presume that he was as well prepared for it as anyone could be. My friends, any comment on that?
You are finding it more difficult, these conversations being neither private nor public, but a mixture of the two.
Indeed I am. I presume my difficulties are no greater than others may experience.
Each person’s experience will be slightly different from anyone else’s, as the individuals are slightly different. Each will be similar, as you all have many things in common. This is so in all aspects of life. And, you see: part private, part public.
I don’t see what is to be done about it.
Who said anything is to be done about it? Be aware of it, make the adjustments as the need for them indicates. What else could you (anyone) do?
Very well. So, today’s theme?
You must now learn to express a deeper part of yourself. This means letting it well up within you, thoroughly mixing with what it finds as it does so.
I get the image of something boiling up through a liquid, roiling and mixing as it rises, sort of tumbling things in waves.
It is a good image, conveying process, steadiness, disruption becoming transformation, injection of additional energy, plasticity of form.
I keep thinking “ice cream” but that doesn’t have any of those characteristics, a fermenting, slow-boiling process that is just out of reach.
Not everything that may be perceived or conceptualized need be named. The important point is that they be followed. Fingers pointing to the moon, not the moon itself, not even the finger itself.
Yes, I get that. Life precedes understanding.
Well, sometimes. It is a reciprocating process, sometimes one leading, sometimes the other. This is an example of the fact that the work can proceed in the absence of clear understanding or precise description.
Another image comes: river rapids. It’s all water, of the same salinity, chemical composition, etc. The difference is in what happens to any given part of the water as it is tumbled. Some gets aerated; gradually I suppose it all gets aerated.
Wild ride, sometimes; perhaps even wild for water.
If there is a theme here, I don’t see it. We have mentioned expressing a deeper part of ourselves, but the mention is all we’ve gotten to.
You are painting a self-portrait as we go along, all the better since it comes out in asides and unconscious allusions. It is well for anyone doing the work to remember it is okay to be a normal human being, in fact unavoidable. Only, normal doesn’t necessarily mean typical, and typical doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all except a vacuous abstraction.
Stirring is another image that comes to me. Stirring one element into another, producing a new homogenous liquid that is neither the one nor the other. I’d say it could be solids stirred, too, only there isn’t the sense of transformation that liquid has.
Stirring will do, so will boiling or churning. The general idea is more important than the specific clothing.
[Much later, I realized that the word I wanted was “Swirl.” That’s why the vague idea of ice cream, I think, a subconscious association of words.]
There is something I intended to ask or say, and it keeps almost appearing, then disappearing again. Presumably you know what it is.
We do because you do, on an equally non-3D level. But if you cannot receive it through your own internal channel, why would you expect to be able to receive it from an “external” channel still internally received? That may apply in cases where you have not been paying attention, but scarcely when you are.
That is a puzzling aspect of things, come to think of it. It applies to the whole process.
You must remember not to fall into the habit of thinking yourself in control of the process, merely because necessarily the material must come through your mind.
It is a temptation, that’s true. Sometimes it is obvious that I am interacting with a different intelligence; sometimes that it is me; and sometimes not clear at all. Despite that, there is the unconscious tendency to think it is or ought to be under my own control, when of course, that is the last thing I’d want, and the last thing any genuine interaction could be. But. We’re all interconnected. You and my mind are linked, or we couldn’t be having the conversation. So why wouldn’t you be able to tell me things like what it is I am forgetting?
The question expresses a certain lack of clarity, if we may say so.
Abstract reasoning is not my best thing. But I presume that you know how to bring more clarity to the question.
Not at the moment. You’ve been at this 50 minutes and there isn’t really time for more. You do the best you can. Remember always, you don’t know, nor need to know, who will get what from any of it.