Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Have I lost the connection I had? Am I no closer to what I wanted than I have ever been?
It depends on what you mean. At any given moment, your 3D consciousness will be in a different “place,” as it is phrased. We would say something more like, “At different times, your mind forms a differently charged field, attracting different potential and thus effectively living in a different world.” Bear in mind, this too is only an analogy, though the nature of the metaphor is more subtle, perhaps.
We’re a moving target.
No, it’s more like you are a moving shooter, with an enduring reality your target. It is not that reality moves, but that you (seem to) move in relation to reality, thus continually making it as if you live in an ever-shifting set of circumstances.
Are you saying that explains our continually changing mental states?
Let’s move a little more slowly, here.
You cannot overlook the part that physical circumstances play. That is, after all, the purpose of having you in an “external” world. The moment by moment fluctuations in your “external” circumstances result in your having to continually rebalance as currents shift. You are closer to riding standing on two horses, as in a circus, than standing on any kind of sturdy platform. Surely you can see this once it is pointed out. So, your first task is to create a stable platform. And how does one do that?
I suppose by learning to depend more on the factors that are less dependent upon external circumstances.
But what are “external” circumstances? What makes them external?
Not so easy a question to answer. You can’t absorb Paul Brunton’s understanding of the world and see the word “external” in the same way. External refers to things we don’t seem to produce by what we are.
That is actually a very sophisticated definition, but you need to spell it out and continue from there.
If internal and external worlds are the same reality, experienced by intuition and senses, it is hard to see how anything could be both connected to us and not connected. In absolute terms, it couldn’t be. In practical terms, I suppose it is a matter of degree, and everybody will draw the line in a different place, but it will always be an arbitrary line. Take a thunderstorm, say. Clearly it is external to ourselves in any practical sense. We don’t create the weather around us, yet we have to live in it. But given that all possible realities exist, and given that we have the ability to change timelines at will – which amounts to the ability to choose timelines – then we can in effect change the weather by choosing a timeline in which the weather suits us. And if we can chose something as “external” as the weather, what can’t we choose?
Nevertheless, when you cannot breathe, you cannot just wish the condition away.
No, but that doesn’t invalidate the statement.
Then, reconcile the two ideas: that you can and can’t choose which reality you wish to experience. Either one is not a fact, but a point of view.
So I suppose it is a matter, as so often, of “Which you?”
You are a moving platform, and you see the potential advantage of resting upon more stable platforms. To do that, you would need greater control not over “external” events, but over the effect such events have on your balance, your mental condition, your choice among realities.
We need to crystallize our personalities! This is what Gurdjieff was talking about!
Yes, but go slowly.
If we allow the relationship among the strands that comprise us to remain fluid, we remain fluid, which has its advantages and disadvantages. If we lock them into position, then we are a more definite unit than before.
That’s your idea of going slowly?
Very funny. Well, you do it.
Fluidity and fixity each has advantages and disadvantages, as you said. But why must it be an either/or? Why must it be a choice once and for all? Why must you (in effect) lock on to one reality forever?
The difficulty here is that one must hold in mind many conditions that are not always remembered at the same time. This is why the process of learning “how things are” is so slow and tenuous: If, while considering one aspect, you cannot remember another, you cannot see how they interact; hence you will have only a distorted view of either. And if you see the two in relation, there are always larger relations to be considered, so, it’s never a fixed result. But it is possible to obtain an ever-more sophisticated understanding.
Within any one timeline, it looks like a wilderness of choice and an anarchy of different selves choosing different realities. But that is mostly a matter of one path judging other paths by differences and similarities. You need to move to the next level higher (metaphor, remember) to obtain a platform stable enough to put these alternative selves into proper perspective.
But you are not merely any one version. How could you be? You are all versions, and the fact that “all versions” cannot be experienced from any one version should tell you that somewhere you know that you are more than any one of them, or how could you know?
The crystallization we’re wanting occurs at a higher level than any one timeline.
Yes it does, and every timeline’s version may have its own opinion of the process!