[Herein, I said “Icon” but I should have said “Avatar,. “Avatar in the sense of avatars in computer games.]
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
8:50 a.m. I guess I’m tired of many things, my ambiguous position in 3D not least. If I think of myself, I can’t think of myself as icon, nor as the self that would include and transcend it. I’m sort of suspended between the two.
Both demigod and mortal. Yes, that is the human condition. It is why you are not at home in your lives: You know you are something more, but you can’t make that “something more” real and effective. Yet it seems you almost can, if you can only do – something.
I see you haven’t forgotten what it’s like.
You mean, “after all this time”? A little more than seven weeks?
Just making the point, somebody somewhere said you have to have been human to understand being human.
Ed Carter told you that ex-humans are regarded with some respect for having survived boot camp.
And is that what you experience?
That kind of respect? I imagine it is dependent on who you meet and what you’re doing. I haven’t seen any parades in my honor so far, if that’s what you mean.
Smiling. Reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s sketches, can’t remember which, where people in non-3D take turns pretending to be Abraham, etc., so that new arrivals can live out their prior fantasies. In any case, what are we going to talk about?
Isn’t that supposed to be your decision?
Let’s continue on this “demigod and mortal” theme, then.
It is a natural extension of the theme we have been touching, but you have not yet discussed it with your friends even by email.
I put out the invitation by posting our conversation. I can’t force people to respond.
You can encourage, however. Some people won’t think they have anything special to contribute.
I don’t know how to make it plainer than you and others have done already.
You can always second the motion.
My God, Jon, what have I been doing, for 20 years?
The difficulty goes with the territory, don’t worry about it. Remember what you tell people, advertisers know that repetition sells. There’s never any predicting which particular repetition will be the one that hits which person.
So, demigods and mortal.
Remember, going into this or any discussion, it isn’t just about the 3D/non-3D world you know, nor even about aspects of it that you may or may not come to know. It is also rooted, necessarily, in the unknowable.
In the larger reality beyond the 3D/non-3D bubble.
Right. Just as you have to be in all dimensions that exist, because nothing can exist in some dimensions and not in others, so everything in the 3D/non-3D realm is invisibly rooted in the larger reality of which it is a subset. You can see that.
I can, when I remember that the universe is all one thing, without absolute divisions.
You might think of the 3D/non-3D bubble as one dimension of the larger world around it. That introduces as much distortion as it overcomes, perhaps, but some may find it useful as a reminder that everything is part of the all-that-is, and the all-that-is is not confined to the bubble.
I get that. Seems clear enough.
It will be clear (it is not a complicated idea) except when blocked by other ideas or emotional needs. But that may be said of any concept.
But if we’re going to discuss factors invisible to us – we’re going to discuss the influencing factors that result, not the invisible ones we cannot guess. I got the second half of the sentence as an answer to the first half. Very efficient.
In dealing with such questions, combining your left-brain attention with your right-brain openness, you often receive the answers to questions as fast as the questions form. It’s a matter of no interfering filter and no deadening logical process.
So, the influencing factors: What are they?
Like the air you breathe, they are so much a part of your life, they are usually scarcely notices.
I’ll leave off comments about asthmatics not noticing the air we breathe.
That’s very loud omitting.
Smiling again. Well?
Have you ever met or heard of anyone who had his own life figured out? I don’t mean know-it-alls or true-believers. They usually are overcompensating against uncertainty and the necessity of leaving questions open. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone who claimed to know his life, and life per se?
It may be absurd. The name that comes to mind is, Jesus.
Then you might look at it and see why.
Why he knew his life?
Why that is the name that came to mind, as opposed to Gautama, say, or Lao Tse or any of the world’s acknowledged sages.
I didn’t hear you asking about wisdom, I heard, completeness. Integrity in the sense of being all one thing. Lack of self-division.
And why do you trust the stories that have come down about him?
Do I? that’s a good question. I don’t think it is because that is what I was taught as a child, because that isn’t what I was taught. Jesus was taught as God who was made flesh. In fact, what we were taught was very contradictory, though the nuns didn’t seem to notice the contradictions. Nor did we, of course, until later.
You know that some people say he never existed.
As an amateur historian, I can’t believe that. The Gospels are the written residue of two generations of oral tradition. The apostles and disciples were changed men and women. You don’t get changed by legends nor by made-up stories. And those disciples changed the world.
But so did Muhammad’s.
Doesn’t seem like the same thing, to me. but in any case, nobody questions that Muhammad lived. Again, something created followers. Something changed people, who became examples who changed people. But Muhammad’s followers were armed, and Christians – until the movement was hijacked by Roman Emperors – were not. A movement that spreads by example rather than by the sword has an important something extra.
But in any case, you believe that Jesus is something special.
Even historically you’d have to concede that.
But where do you get that he knew his life, and life per se? You were not taught that, as you say.
It struck me a long time ago, his spirit may be the connector among humans that is a sort of halfway house.
That isn’t even close to being clear. Let me cease to ask rhetorical questions, and set it out for you – reversing our usual procedure.
Okay with me.
G.K. Chesterton was closer to a conventional Christian than most popular writers. He converted to Catholicism in the 1920s, a very eccentric thing to do for a prominent Englishman. You have his book The Everlasting Man, which you might profitably reread critically. Although Chesterton’s theological approach is not yours and although he will probably disapprove of most of the way we conceptualize things, you will find great insight as a result of running his thoughts in parallel with yours. He won’t convert you, as you wouldn’t have converted him, but he will strike sparks. That’s what he always did.
You said “will probably disapprove.” Are you suggesting we bring him into the conversation?
Your own awe or reverence or whatever you would call it may stand in the way, but someone who can talk to Lincoln or Carl Jung ought to be able to hold his own with Chesterton.
We’ll need to continue this another time. “Invisible factors,” perhaps?
It would do, or something else if it struck you.
Interesting stuff. Looking forward to more. Mentioning Jesus and taking him seriously ought to set the cat among the pigeons.
“I have come to bring not peace, but the sword.”
I didn’t know you were that familiar with Christian scriptures.
And how do you know how many silent partners are chiming in as we speak?
I always forget that. Okay, till next time.