Change

Change

Friday, September 20, 2024

7:30 a.m. Okay, Jon. After a false start 90 minutes ago, let’s try. Shall we pursue “What do you want to do?”

Earlier you listed the things you are keeping your cool about. Quite a list. Congratulations, and – Surprise! Maybe all this work has led to real changes, unbeknown to yourself.

Maybe. I’m always prepared to get an unpleasant surprise telling me I’m not as well off as I think I am.

But that is good too. Convictions held without reservation may be a matter of protesting too much; often are. The point is, if all this communication and thought and pondering and readjusting doesn’t lead to real change in the “you” that manifests, what good is it?

Well, I suppose it might have merit in and of itself. I mean, it’s worthwhile learning things, isn’t it?

Is it? Not always. Sometimes knowledge can retard awakening. You have heard that “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” One meaning of that very true phrase is that it can overbalance your larger purpose, by taking on unwarranted importance. That is, it can warp your judgment by insisting too strongly on one viewpoint over all others, thus trapping you in one perspective rather than allowing you to look around from different angles.

I’d think our non-3D components would guard us from that.

They may wish to guard you from that. They may murmur or shout advice – but will you listen? It is always the choice to be made by the 3D personality. That’s what it is there for. Not much point in creating someone to choose, and then disabling their choice.

Well, even if we make wrong choices, I’d think that would be an expected part of the overall pattern.

It is. But we’re talking about what is useful to the 3D being you experience as “you.” Plenty of 3D beings get stuck in one perspective; there’s nothing wrong with it, and in fact one man’s “stuck” is another man’s “ensconced,” or “home.” But for you, a fixed immovable perspective would be not a stabilizing factor but a crippling, an imprisonment.

Looking back, I see you said, “Sometimes knowledge can retard awakening.” I realize, I don’t actually know what that means.

In a sense, each person is potentially everybody. “All is one,” remember. Potentially there is no limit to how far a 3D being can expand its awareness. Practically, of course, there are always limits. But potentially, theoretically, no.

Now, it isn’t in everybody’s game plan to expand consciousness, any more than it is in everybody’s game plan to become a forest ranger or a safecracker. People come into their roles pointed toward a certain kind of life.

“Pointed,” I think you mean, not by someone else nor by that happens to them, but by what they are.

Those three things are less separate than they seem to you, but yes, by what they were created to be by the influences the astrology of their birth permitted, and by their own previous soul-experiences, and by the state of play they find on the board as they enter the continuing melodrama (soap opera) called history.

Some are hell-bent – heaven-bent? – on learning and becoming, on self-transcending, you could say. Others are bent on maintaining themselves as is, despite circumstances. And most are somewhere in the middle. We will confine this to those who want to expand.

But bear in mind, the universe needs all these various ways of being. It is in the nature of things for every moment, every situation, to be a combination of stability and change. Nothing lasts forever, but neither does everything change at once. So don’t in the back of your mind think the universe is secretly particularly pleased with your particular preference (or predicament). You have a valid and important part to play, but so do those representing opposite or tangential qualities.

So what does it mean, to say there is no theoretical limit to how much any given 3D facet may expand to become? Am I saying there are no hard and fixed boundaries? Or do I mean, you are already everything, and it is a matter of realizing it and embodying it?

Both, I imagine.

We have to keep going back to the few over-arching principles that guide this kind of exploration. All Is One. As Above, So Below. When you really sense as well as believe, that there are no fixed boundaries in life, your opportunities proliferate, naturally. And here’s the thing, which you’ve heard many times: it isn’t a matter of changing what you are (which would be impossible) but of changing what aspects you manifest, in what proportions, for what purposes.

Since all is one, you are everything, as is everyone else. And since 3D slows down and separates, you get to experience being separated-from-allness. Your struggle – or exercise, or game, or however you wish to think of it – is to broaden the amount that can be experienced by you without breaking the bounds of the separated-you that your birth created.

That’s very interesting.

It should be. Contained in it is why life is unsatisfying, why it is exciting, why it is interesting and boring and infuriating and inspiring. It’s all wrapped up in that one fact, that you who are all must experience yourself as partial, but can change the dimensions and even the coloration of that partial self.

A lot to think about.

End this here, and by all means, do the thinking, both alone and with your friends, and we can go farther accordingly. Remember, this is not to be memorized and kept separate, but absorbed, tested, lived.

Many thanks. I guess the unrecorded couple of pages from 6 a.m. can stay unrecorded. This is a little short, but plenty meaty. Till next time.