Friday, September 27, 2024
I get the sense that I don’t need to address Jon specifically, and that our course of instruction continues to be available regardless if I have questions or any starting point. This makes sense, of course, we’ve been in business many a year before Jon went over, and he said – sort of in jest, sort of seriously – that he would be one of our guys upstairs for anyone who was open to it.
Although I don’t like wasting my time, I found myself unable to re-read any of this for more than a typed page or two, yesterday. I had decided to begin August 1 and take down notes – just a word or two – when any theme struck me. I got just six lines, so far, all from August 12 and the beginning of August 13. Maybe that’s a place to start. What I noted was:
- Limitation and focusing (via limitation and practice)
- Reinterpreting experiences to justify new beliefs.
- Hold your focus until you get what you want.
- We are each potential containers of certain kinds of energies.
- If there is 3D focus, non-3D connection is possible.
- Limitation and perseverance.
Make of that what you can. Guys?
It centers merely on the fact that difference is a valued characteristic made more possible by 3D conditions. Non-3D will give you all you want about what we all have in common; 3D will give you deepened differences. These differences are sought and valued. They are, in a sense, the reason for your 3D sojourn. Isn’t it odd, isn’t it ironic and in a way a pity, that so often in 3D one’s awareness of one’s difference is a source of acute pain.
I suppose we feel the difference between the unity our non-3D experiences, and the separation we feel in the body.
That would be a somewhat philosophical way to look at it. More plainly, you not only feel your incompleteness, you feel your difference from others, and this produces one of two reactions – or both – until you get a handle on them.
One, a sense that you are somehow wrong in what you are. This is experienced by some perhaps as a sense of Original Sin. Not only do you not live up to your own aspirations: Even if you were perfect, you’d still feel somewhat “wrong.”
Two, a sense that others are wrong in so far as they vary from some abstract ideal that seems to you self-evident. Another way to see Original Sin: Everybody is wrong, not just you (or even, in extreme cases, except you).
The two may co-exist, in which case you feel you are a damned sinner incapable of redemption and are surrounded by damned sinners incapable of redemption.
Sort of like Mark Twain, convinced that he had been predestined to hell. (And his wife, knowing his caring heart, said, “Lord, child, if you are damned, who is not?”)
This may explain a few things to you about how religions express inner certainties, and reinforce them. Also, why the job of the psychiatrist is so difficult. Also, why too much attention to the course of the world may lead to despair and rage and even to unsuspected feelings of guilt because you can’t do anything about this or that outrage. Implied in this sense of wrongness of self and/or others is the cause of madness, too.
I don’t think you meant “madness.” I sort of snatched at that.
Well, let’s say the wrongness is a source of guilt and shame and intolerance and self-righteous anger (both as defense against self-accusation and as more legitimate indignation over injustice and inhumanity).
All of them unwanted byproducts of the human condition, I take it.
Not so fast. That statement implies a few things you may not be aware of – and unawareness is always the obstacle. Your sentence assumes that what hurts is bad, thus is unwanted. It assumes that the universe is malfunctioning. Perhaps, come to think of it, we should add to the first two reactions – that you are wrong, or others are wrong – a third, that the way things are, or some would say the universe, or God, is wrong.
You don’t like pain. We get that. Whyever should you? But we remind you, pain is useful. And we also remind you, we told you years ago, you no longer need to learn through pain, you can learn through joy.
A have a friend who is sure that pain is deliberately inflicted on us for non-3D reasons, in a sense milking our 3D emotions.
Certainly it can look that way, but we suggest that you – and he – turn that upside down, look at it another way. Rather than emotions being stirred up by non-3D forces for non-3D use, maybe the emotions are for 3D use.
Pain resulting in greater consciousness?
That can happen, but a more direct cause-and-effect begins not with the pain but with the cause of pain. You will remember, we define emotions as the interface between the individual and the outside world, or – and it is the same thing – between the individual as it experiences itself and that individual’s shadow. You see? Between the known and the unknown, or you could as easily say, between the assimilated and the foreign.
Treat that emotion not as punishment (or, in the case of pleasant emotions, as reward) and instead regard them as indicators, and what happens?
We get indirect markers about our unknown selves, our shadows either as they manifest within us or outside of us. “Within you and without you,” as the Beatles put it.
And, remember what you learned first-hand about headaches?
Hmm. Yes. I learned that if I stopped shrinking from it and instead sort of welcomed the energy in, it loosened and often dissipated, as if it had been only trying to get my attention. I don’t know what it means, but I do know that it has worked, though lately I have forgotten that trick, as it had been a while since I had headaches.
You will find that much of the pain contained in emotions is connected to your shrinking from it, rather than accepting whatever circumstance is causing it.
Do you mean that to be quite such a blanket statement?
We do. And, you see, we do, not primarily so you won’t be in pain, but so that you may move through whatever is causing the pain. If you are in pain for some physical reason, does it help ease anything to shrink from the pain? That amounts to trying to deny the reality. When your father dies, you don’t expect not to feel loss and grief, etc., and certainly that it appropriate. But any additional pain caused by your resisting what is, is unnecessary and often retrogressive.
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
Precisely. It is the resistance that hurts, over and above the facts of the situation.
Now, if you are feeling intractable pain – physical or emotional, either one – that doesn’t mean you are doing anything the wrong way. It may mean merely that the cause is significant and irremediable. A broken heart may be a cliché, but nonetheless people die of it. But no matter how intense or prolonged the pain, you don’t have to add to it. And resisting what is, rather than accepting it, is precisely the way to add to the pain.
Thus, your attitude is within your control, even if it has to be exercised through severe conditions. As a matter of fact, it is the very severity of condition that make it most important that you choose your attitude rather than leave yourself at the mercy of your unconscious reactions, which can never be as beneficial as conscious control. Deciding by default is always the worst way to decide.
Always?
Well, nearly always, anyway. Often enough to leave the point unaffected.
Enough for the moment.
Thank you. Today’s theme?
Maybe, “Feeling our differences”? Or perhaps “Guilt and pain.” Something like that.
Our thanks as always.