Practical application

Sunday, September 8, 2024

6:25 a.m. Jon’s final two points form last Monday: “All is one,” so all relationships of any kind are provisional or illusory, and yet in effect the world is as we experience it. Go ahead, Jon.

As you are feeling, in a way these are the same point, looked at from either side. It is essence versus “essence as experienced.” If you’ll let it sink in, you’ll see reconciliations where maybe you had seen puzzles.

All dualities are actually expressions of an underlying unity. Whether a person sees duality or unity is a reflection mostly of that person’s mental habits. But that is actually an encouraging thought, or ought to be, because how you perceive things is under your control if you do the things you have been taught that teach control.

It may seem circular, but it isn’t, really. How you perceive the world determines the world you will experience. But how you perceive the world may be either only a limitation, or a limitation that affords you the possibility of transformation.

Change your belief, change your perception. Change your perception, change your reality. Change your reality, change your possibilities. In the end it comes to what the guys have told you from the beginning: You are here to change yourself (shape, or reshape yourself) by means of the decisions you make. But it is deeper than perhaps you realized, because implicit is the fact that it is only by choosing – consciously and unconsciously – that you pull yourself up the great chain of being, by your own bootstraps.

Now, that’s really all we need to say about the final two points. List the seven as I gave them last week, not in my words then but in your words now, and see what you make of it.

I’m going to have to go back through the pages to do it, I couldn’t do it by memory.

Fine.

Life is not in any way dependent upon 3D concepts. It is neither material nor made of time.

Consciousness is subtractive, not additive. Our brains filter out most of reality, and we progress by removing filters.

Life is not substance in any way, regardless how it seems. It is made of mind-stuff.

Within the context of 3D/non-3D, what happened shapes us. Within its realm, the world is real.

All of life’s polarities are the result of our perceptual structures. They are true within a context, but not without it.

All relationships are provisional and illusory because divisions are provisional and illusory. But, we live within our world-view, which defines what seems real to us. Therefore, all possibility of growth depends upon our seeing differently.

Print these out without numbers or bullets, to lessen the temptation to memorize, and increase the possibility of grasping (which, as you know, involves letting go).

Okay.

Now, taken together, this will give some people all they need. Some won’t have needed it, and some won’t be able to profit from it, but for some it will serve. If people once get the reality of the fact that the 3D/non-3D system sits on a self-contained floating island in a reality that has very different rules, two things happen:

• Intellectually, they will see more clearly. But more importantly,
• They will know, not just hope or believe, that they can really direct their lives.

That second point is begging to be misunderstood.

Yes, and it isn’t easy to clarify. Clearly I don’t mean the ego-level self taking over and getting what it wants. Yet, in a way, that is a good description of the possibility. The key is the change in the composition of the ego-level self.

If you look at the ego-level self as the chooser of ways in the 3D wilderness (or fun house, or however it seems to you), a change in the sego-self’s understanding of the world is the only way to change the kinds of choices that are made, and the reasons for the choices. In other words, you aren’t trying to bypass the ego-self; you want to transform it. If you didn’t have a non-3D component, it would be hopelessly circular, because the ego would want what it wanted, and only rarely would it stop to question why it wanted what it wanted. But, you do have a non-3D component, so the indicated solution is to increase access, that the ego may get better perspective, and make better decisions.

The joker in the deck is that the ego-layer is very apt to misinterpret non-3D guidance, or defy it. In such case, increasing access may result in acute short-term disharmony far worse than previously existed. But, you can see, that is a short-term result. Longer term, it is the only possible way forward.

I suppose that is true at whatever level we are on. We’re never going to understand what we haven’t yet experienced, so with the best will in the world we’re going to warp the message.

You have been given enough instruction, over the course of human history, in how to gradually purify your perception and understanding. If you get out of the “sin and retribution and atonement” mode and look again at religious and metaphysical teachings, the helpful hints will stand out clearly enough.

“Though your sins are as scarlet, you will float over them,” etc.

Again, you have to look at things with new eyes. Humanity’s age-old scriptures will mean different things to different kinds of people, depending on where they are. You and I are talking about people who find no assistance or sustenance or even sense in older understandings of these things.

And that’s probably enough on this theme. You might suggest that people make their own summary in their own words, tailored to their own needs. That will automatically result in them taking what is most helpful to them.

At the risk of them taking only what fits in with what they already believe.

It’s always that way. You have to work from where you are. The reminder to watch over their own shoulders ought to be enough to help them guard against the ego-level self overreaching.

Well, it has been quite a week, Jon. Many thanks.