Monday, June 17, 2024
4:50 a.m. Did I have one of those dreams? [I had gone to sleep intending to have a true dream from the Gates of Horn, as will be described below.] I was expecting something like a film, a narrative, but maybe I got something more like a presentation of memories and thoughts. In the little while between finally getting up at the cat’s behest, and now, all details or even outlines are gone. But I think I’ll try again tonight. I wish I’d stop thinking Lion’s Gate (a film company) instead of Gates of Horn.
I am going to copy Jane Peranteau’s email of Saturday, as I get the feeling it is directly connected to the question of our relating to ourselves, whatever that specifically means, that you ended with yesterday.
[Seth:
[There is something that I would like you to do. During the week, before you sleep, tell yourself, if you want to, that you will have a true dream that will come from the Gates of Horn. Now that is an ancient suggestion given by the Egyptians.
[The Gates of Horn.
[I do not want to tell you what it means yet, simply to ask you to give yourselves the suggestion – those of you who want to – a true dream that will help harmonize the portions of your being. Now that is part of the suggestion. Ask for a true dream that comes from the Gates of Horn, that will help harmonize the portions of your being.
[Now such dreams will help you recognize some of your beliefs and will charge your being with energy. The class is quickening. I am giving you assignments. Some of you will follow them, and some will not.
[But the means will be here for those of you to follow who want to badly enough – I should say, goodly enough – but those of you who are willing to take the time and the energy, those assignments that you have not as yet discussed in class are important.
[It is important that you do them, whether or not they are discussed in class, though many of them will be. The time of quickening is here for many of you, so take advantage of it.
[I return you, therefore, to yourselves. And those of you who will trust…give the suggestion that I have told you…will find some excellent and even astonishing results.
[It is very important that you read the undersides of class…that you read the undersides of class…and not skim along what you think of as the surface.
[I return you therefore to the integrity that is your self, and I challenge you joyfully to recognize it!’’
[ESP Class, May 28, 1974. © R. Butts 2010]
If you want to leave this at that for the moment, that would be useful enough. Those interested would have time to make a preliminary experiment before we comment. But if you wish to continue now, that is all right too. There are always valid alternate routes toward the same goal.
Well, how about a clue or two?
You don’t quite have a way to put into words your image.
I do now, and oddly enough it is someone’s description of General William Sherman as a powerful engine with a few screws loose. Today when we say somebody has a screw loose, we mean he’s a little crazy, or at least eccentric. But I think that guy meant that the soldier who was sometimes called Old Brains had a very powerful thinking apparatus and worked under high pressure that loosened the things holding the machine together. The excess steam blew off as temper, and if it had had no way to be released might have blown the boiler. But I get that image of us as having many large component parts only loosely coupled, thus leaving great play between and among them. It is as if we are makeshifts until the connections can be tightened and tuned.
That image will do very nicely. Combine it with the underlying idea of many previously independent strands coexisting in a new unit. You can see there would be friction involved.
And the Gates of Horn exercise is designed to help aid the connections?
There are disadvantages to using mechanical analogies to describe 3D living, yet in some ways it is very appropriate, for 3D conditions by their nature require and produce rules, routines, grooves. You don’t just wing it. So it can be instructive to think of yourselves as mechanisms, so long as you do not carry the analogy too far. You are not machines; your lives are not mere cause-and-effect obedience to pre-programmed instruction. There is an element of this, but only an element. It is, once again, the difference in nature between 3D and non-3D, and you partake of both.
Looking at your lives mechanically, you could say you are packages containing ingredients that come in bundles. But it’s confusing if you let the analogy become too specific, because, for instance, the bundles have things in common that might be viewed –
I see your problem. If one life had X percent of a given trait, and another had a percent of the same trait, if you look at the total one way, it is this previous life and that one, etc., but if you look at it another way, it is this cumulative percent of this trait (adding from all strands) etc. Same reality seen from different angles.
Yes, that’s right. So the analogies should be kept loose. As usual, multiple analogies or images for the same thing brings clarity, but you need to do the thinking: What do the analogies have in common, where to they differ.
Consider your lives:
- Multiple strands contribute to the making of a new individual. But this is not stacking bricks to make a wall, it is more like finding inspiration in various models.
- A strand is not a thing, even as much as you might be seen as a “thing.” It is a pattern, a template, a set of predilections.
- Different patterns coexisting will each respond somewhat differently to inflowing energies of the changing astrological moment. (You understand, we are using “astrological moment” as shorthand for the combination of energetic conditions moment to moment.)
- How can the emerging consciousness of the new unit experience these coexisting patterns save as multiple? They are multiple. It is the individual’s task, and fate, to coordinate them well or badly by successive decisions.
- But people change. Indeed, that’s what you are there for, to change. How does change come, but by rebalancing of internal energies? We have said “putting down some strings and picking up others,” but you can see that is pretty crude. Really, change is rebalancing of relative strength.
- As you change your mind, you change your effective being. Think a moment on this statement.
Now, just as life is not about peace and quiet but about expression and growth, so your internal changes are not necessarily aimed at harmony and order. For all you know, your ideal result will be very one-sided. Balance is all well and good, but balance overall is not the same thing as balance in every part. An imbalance one way here may compensate for an imbalance another way there.
Indeed, we could almost say that imbalance is desirable for movement. Just as physical organisms move away from pain and stress, so mental – spiritual, if you will – organisms move away from what is less desirable to what is more desirable. Perhaps not the end-point but the movement is what is important at any given time.
And what is the mechanism for such readjustments? We will resume there next time. Meanwhile we encourage you to experiment with the “Gates of Horn” exercise.
Thanks as always.