A couple years old, but scarcely outdated.
Friday, October 8, 2021
5:55 a.m. I thought we might look at what I got during our drumming session on Wednesday.
“What is our path to greatest joy?”
Openness, because openness is the opposite of shrinking from life. Joy is the path. Follow your bliss and it increases. First, do no harm. A clear conscience leads to happiness. Again, no need for shrinking (from memories). Live in great confidence.
In other words, openness, which includes openness to joy, innocence as best you can achieve it, and faith. Not so complicated a formula.
Some might say, “Yes, but how do we attain it?”
You don’t attain a formula, you live it. And let’s say, as an aside, that “try” and “intend” may sound like the same thing, but they are not. When you intend, that is following a course, watching your compass to be sure you are going where you want to go. When you try, that is saying you are not succeeding, with the implication not only that you have not yet succeeded, but also that you cannot yet succeed. “Try” is an implicit declaration of inability, you see.
So as a practical matter, how do we assure that we are following a course (however discouraged we may be at any given moment) and not silently saying “But I can’t do this, at least not yet.”
You set your teeth, with or without dramatics, according to taste, and you follow your compass. That’s what intend is, it is being pulled by your chosen future, you could say. It isn’t difficult conceptually; there are no techniques to learn (though each person may find it worthwhile to invent or adopt specific rituals to serve as encouragement and reminder). It is really a setting one person in charge, rather than allowing various people to take the helm depending upon any little change in the weather. You all want to crystallize a permanent being. Take this as a practical exercise. Teach your crew to follow one captain, rather than rotating the conn. And there’s no use saying, “I am the captain.” You are more like the shipowner, selecting and then maintaining the captain. (And if you will not do it, who will?) Choose who you want to be captain; that is another way of saying, Choose who and what you want to be, want to express.
So let’s look briefly at what you got when you asked “What is our path to greatest joy?”
“Openness, because openness if the opposite of shrinking from life.” You should understand this very well. Older people often say the sins they most regret are the ones they didn’t commit. Or, more neutrally, what they regret is far more often the things they didn’t do, not the things they did do. Why is this, do you suppose?
It seems clear enough. The reason we don’t do something we want to do often boils down to fear of some sort. Yes, there may be other constraints, but often enough, we’re afraid, like Mr. Prufrock.
And the two forces in life?
Yes, that’s my point. Love, which is expansion and inclusion – and fear, which is constriction and exclusion. And I don’t know how we can be expanding if we are contracting.
Ergo, a default position of openness is a default position of willingness to love what comes. That may not be obvious, and in some moods may seem to be impossible, but it is true. Now, “to love what comes” does not necessarily mean to greet it with cries of joy, like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”: (“Yes, I’m going to jail, isn’t it wonderful?”) But it does mean, “This comes next, let’s see what it brings.” You are going to the hospital, to the unemployment office, to jail, to bankruptcy court, whatever. Scarcely grounds for rejoicing, but it will be a new experience, and you could choose a relatively calm curiosity about it, a trusting that nothing happens by chance. And there’s no use saying of this advice, “That’s easy for you to say.” Whether it’s easy to say is not the question. The question is, are we right? If it’s good advice, it doesn’t have to be hard to say.
As Sam Spade said, “What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?”
Exactly. Easy or not to say, practice is what is important.
“Follow your bliss, and joy increases.” Surely this is self-evident? Should you expect that the way to increase your joy is in seeking out the things you don’t want to do? It is true that everyone’s life includes things they would just as soon skip, but if you follow where your feelings lead you, it will work out, and probably better than you hope. Just as advocating openness says, “Avoid shrinking from life,” so “Follow your bliss” says, “Not only don’t shrink from it, embrace it, trust it.”
Again, I don’t know why this wouldn’t be transparently evident.
You are forgetting your past in which you did not pursue what would be “too good to be true,” and you are not recognizing the present in which you are still doing it.
Ouch.
Still, you’re right: It ought to be evident. However, like most things in life, it won’t do itself. It can be hard enough to find your bliss, if you look with the wrong tools. (Hint: You want to be paying attention to feelings, not to logic and especially not to “practicalities.”) But once you find it, you still need to follow it, and that often requires a decision of some sort.
“First, do no harm.” You can’t live without doing harm; that is an impossible ideal. But you can intend to do no harm. You can make your life about not doing harm. You can, in short, do as little harm as possible, and certainly you can live by refusing to do harm either consciously or, to the extent possible, by inadvertence. It isn’t complicated, it is merely a matter of having your captain include it in the standing orders.
“Live in great confidence.” We should scarcely need to add anything to this point. Everything we have been telling you, all these years, is to this effect. What Jane Roberts brought through, and Cayce, same message. It is a safe universe, it was made for you (in effect).
🥰