The guys, on living the present

Monday, March 18, 2024

8 a.m. You boys seem to enjoy putting the cat among the pigeons, and every time you do, it seems some people profit by it. So, anything on your minds today? How about continuing from where we left off?

Perhaps it is worth saying on your behalf that we do not experience your questions or comments as stemming from discouragement or desperation, but from curiosity and often perplexity.

I have often said as much to various friends but for some reason it seems to come across as an emotion I am not feeling – much like when people sometimes experience you as chastising me when we are only joking or when it is an even, straight, exchange. But given the limitations on using words, I don’t know what can be done about it. Nothing, I imagine, and so what?

Well, there is a line to be walked. OT1H you don’t want to give up on the idea of conveying a sense of atmosphere; OTOH, just realize that precision is not to be had outside of telepathic contact, and even there the “flavor” of the minds  involved will flavor the soup.

I’m not worried about it if you aren’t. It just seemed something to be mentioned.

A mention, yes, not a full-length disquisition, unless for some reason that becomes warranted.

So – more on why we’re still here, or on vertical community?

Let us return – continually return – to the practical. Any theory or even any description of the way things are that we may engage in is always aimed at practical use. We don’t want you (plural) building castles in the air unless, like Thoreau, you intend to put the foundations under them. So everything we have given you in 25 years has been intended to help orient you to the way things are, so that you may better live your potential. Not so you may admire an abstract scheme, but so that you may use the scaffolding to get a bird’s-eye view, the better to work from.

If you are not in 3D to live, what are you there for? But of course, the question is, what does “live” mean for you, in this moment?

I hear you saying, All paths are good: scholar, adventurer, soldier, idler, whatever. The externals of our life aren’t what you are concentrating on.

No. you will each shape your life by a combination of the existing possibilities (predestination) and what you do with them (free will). But from our point of view, your internal life is what is real.

That didn’t come out right, did it?

It was hastily put, let’s put it that way. Your internal life and your external life are, of course, part of one life. Either may be considered in the absence of the other, but it is only a partial view.

Bullets?

Perhaps. Let’s see.

  • The internal world is your life as experienced intuitively.
  • The external, as experienced via the physical senses.
  • In effect, right-brain internal, left-brain external, and they are designed to complement each other.
  • Thus (this will be obvious to some, and we have said it many times), inner and outer worlds are not different, nor disconnected, much less one real and the other not. They are one reality, experienced in alternative ways.
  • This identity being so, which way of looking at life should be considered more profound? You will have a preference; the answer may seem obvious. But in fact, it is dealer’s choice and depends upon your psychic composition.
  • We, based in non-3D, naturally see the intuitive, gestalt, non-sensory perception as realer, more reliable, than the sensory, detail-oriented, sequential view that is channeled through physical senses.
  • But again, it isn’t that simple. (You could print that out and hang it on the wall: “It isn’t that simple.” It never is. Anything can always be explored more deeply.) Your view of the external world is inextricably mixed with your thoughts, emotions, complexes, etc. Your experience of the inner world is highly variable depending upon your physical circumstances such as fatigue, disorientation, etc.

That seemed to go well.

Yes, good suggestion. Now, the question remains for you, for anybody: What are you doing with your life right now? What you did yesterday, what you might do tomorrow, may be interesting, but they are not centered in the way anything is centered that deals with here, now, because that is what is real in terms of –

Yes, I was wondering how you were going to finish that sentence.

Well, it’s the usual problem with words, less “How do I say it so as to be understood” than “How do it say it so as to lessen the chances of being mis-understood?” That’s why we’re always circling around a subject, to sketch enough context to hopefully orient the reader to look in the right direction.

Bullets again?

Maybe not. Let’s put it this way: Your entire life, past, present, and future, is theoretically available and interacting with you at any moment. This is true, if counter-intuitive. But it is also true that your only moment of application is in whatever “now” you find yourself. You can choose now, no time else. The confusing thing is that every moment is experienced as now when you are in it; still, your awareness is in one “now” no matter how wide a net you cast.

Yes, I have been aware for some time that we need some bridging concept to make clear to us how it can always be “now” and yet each other moment of our lives have its own “now.”

We doubt if it can be contained within 3D awareness. You can grok it, perhaps. We doubt you can establish it as a law of nature. (However, we could be wrong.)

Hold this in mind. Different angles of vision from the same place produce different vistas. That is a function of vision and perspective, not of some contradiction in reality or some flaw of observation.

So, looking one way, we say every moment of time is as if separate, just as you in each of those moments are as if different from what you are in other moments. Looking another way, we say nothing passes, least of all time. There is only the one living moment, so therefore you – we – live only in that one living “now.”

Put the two seemingly contradictory views together (you can intuit its truth, even if you can’t build a logical structure of it). You will see that’s your life. You in the present can learn to range backward and forward, but the only time you feel fully alive is when you are consciously in the living “now.” We said consciously in the living now, notice. You are always there (as there is nowhere else to be) but if you are distracted by daydreams and old tapes and robotic repetitions, you may not be living in the present in effect.

The present is life. Awareness is life. Choice, delight, pain, all the experiences of the 3D, are life. A greater non-3D awareness while you are still in the body is life.

What does any of this have to do with the externals of your life? Viktor Frankl had a hard life while in the concentration camp, but you can see by what he brought out of it that he lived. Can any of you say that your life is harder than his? And, if it were, would that necessarily be a bad thing? Maybe it would be life more intensely.

Interesting thought.

Hold this: The practical thing to do is always to live as awarely as you can. All the details will vary from one person’s life to the next, but the common factor will be, “You are living this life. Live it as you please, but live it.” And if you can live it in calm joy, so much the better.

Our thanks for all this, as always.

 

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