Expectations and compulsions

Sunday, August 18, 2024 5 a.m. Ready to talk, Jon, if you are. Clearly the block over the past two days has been on my end.

Yes and so what? There isn’t any obligation. It is a free gift or it is nothing at all.

Well, I feel vaguely guilty when I don’t make even an effort.

Ask yourself why.

Why? It feels like a shirking, I guess.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.  “Shirking” implies an obligation. When did you oblige yourself, and who did you oblige yourself to?  Is this any different from feeling guilty that you haven’t written your novels?

I’m trying to find the most honest answer. It’s hard to sort things out.

Yes it is. That’s why the world has rabbis and priests and psychiatrists, to help people sort things out. So what is your answer?

I don’t know, Jon, I was sort of born with the sense of obligation. I don’t know where it came from.

Your family?

My brothers and sisters don’t seem to have it. We were all helpful to others, I’d say, but that isn’t the same thing. I’m not pretending it’s rational.

No, you think it’s exaggerated.

I do. But that doesn’t change anything.

Is it a compulsion?

You’d know that, better than I would.

It’s very simple. Is it something you have to do, for whatever reason, even if you don’t want to?

It’s something I always think I should be doing, anyway. That doesn’t mean I always do it.

You don’t do it for reward, but for its own sake.

I think I can honestly say no, not for the reward. I did think there would be response and maybe a big success, but that was long ago.

So why do you do it?

Because it is satisfying and because if I don’t do it, I feel like I’m wasting my time, being here.

So you can’t expect others to react the same way, even when they see how easy it is.

Well, I don’t know, it always seems to me they ought to be doing it too. It’s like, Why should I be the only one?

Even though it is a compulsion of yours and there isn’t any reason to expect others to share it.

Jon, the one feeling isn’t any more irrational than the other. If I feel I ought to do it, and I feel others ought to want to do it, what’s different? And of course I hear it immediately: One is about me and one is about others, and others aren’t my business in the way I am my business.

Try this on for size: If other people don’t start doing it, it means you failed to inspire them to do it, so you failed what you came to do, so all your work was more or less for nothing, because of course on non-3D level you already knew how to do the things you spent your 3D life remembering how to do.

And that puts my meaning in the hands of others.

A common mistake. It is hard enough to justify your own life, without having that justification depend on what other people do.

And besides, we never know the full effect we have on others.

You took the words out of my mouth. So, leaving other people out of it, where are you?

I suppose there’s a vague sense of resentment.

Yes. Does this ring a familiar chord?

Oh, I get it. It’s like you thinking your life was stunted because you couldn’t experience the growth you wanted.

And if you assume that somebody somewhere is to blame for it, what is more rational than a certain resentment? After all, whoever it is, they’re messing up your life.

I hope you’re enjoying this.

Not particularly. Did you enjoy watching me suffer from the results of wrong ideas?

No, I sure didn’t.

Did you feel able to do anything about it?

Nothing very successful.

It may help if you remember that the intent to help may easily become interference. We all have to work out the puzzle of our lives. You didn’t interfere and you did listen and give your counter-view. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what anybody’s non-3D component is always doing.

And you spent your professional life trying to help people untie the knots they found.

I did. It’s also easier to help others than to help yourself, and you know why.

Because you can see their situation from the outside, not just from the inside.

That’s right. You are supposed to be inside your life. That means inside your moods, your irrational compulsions, your obsessions, your illogical connections, your disconnects between who you want to be, who you feel you ought to be, and who you are in practice. You might get a bird’s-eye view of your life in addition to the view from inside, but you’re never going to get outside that sphere. (a) How could you, and (b) what would it accomplish if you could? You are there for a reason.

How about you say a little more on that. We have come to realize that our ideas on life are still mixed up, inconsistent, contradictory even.

We aren’t going to clear that up in ten minutes. The confusion and the inadequate analogies and explanations stem from the fact that you have two alternative and incompatible starting-points:

1. An individual soul that wanders from 3D life to 3D life, hopefully growing and progressing.
2. The coalescing at any birthtime of what you’re calling strands or threads – that you might describe as past lives entering with other past lives into a new 3D existence that will merge them.

That’s it exactly. The guys spend the better part of 25 years building up a new model and we see that it’s still just scaffolding.

But don’t forget, “just scaffolding” was required to build the highest cathedrals.

Is this the carrot, to match the stick of boredom and guilt, a promise of a new and even more interesting scaffolding?

You are losing sight of your audience. “Think of your reader,” your editor-boss told you. It isn’t only about how you pass your time. It is also about what only you, or mainly you, or – let’s say – you better than the next available candidate, can bring across.

So my sense of “ought to” is connected with an intuition of irreplaceable opportunities. That rings true.

But in that case, why can’t you be given the help you need?

Exactly.

Why don’t you just assume that you automatically have the help you need?

You’re a fine one to talk!

Do as I say, not as I do.

So what was the theme here? Seems to me we moved from personal to general. I’m going to send it out and not worry about what kind of reception it gests – if any. But usually there is a theme and I don’t always notice it.

Maybe it was about irrational senses of obligation – bearing in mind that “irrational” doesn’t mean crazy, it means, you don’t necessarily know what’s going on or why.

One thing. Don’t you think it’s time for others to be doing this?

Doing what? Leading their lives the way you have led yours? How could they? Why should they?

That isn’t what I meant. I mean, now that they know how, from a solid base of experience, shouldn’t they be able to bring the same kind of information, from their own angle? Wouldn’t that be good for everybody?

Nothing is ever good for everybody, but I know what you mean. My very best advice – and you know I mean this for you specifically as well as in general – is to do what you have to do and not concern yourself with what others do or don’t do. Worrying about the actions of others is a leftover from the idea that everybody is separate and things happen by chance.

Yes, I hear that. Well, it is going to reinforce my worst autistic tendencies, but I can carry on without depending on feedback. I’ve done it all my life.

To you that seems a true statement. You might reserve judgment.

The voice of experience speaking, eh? Okay. And thanks for being here.