Monday October 14, 2024
3 a.m. Okay, Jon, I think I’m finally ready to do another session. If I post this – that is, if we get something worth posting – I will throw in a little explanation of what Dave Garland and I did while he was here before his TMI program. But beyond that, what can we talk about?
Once again, you are worrying because you can’t set out a logical agenda. Even after all this time, there is the temptation to think it all depends on you.
I know. But, I’m here. So what do we talk about?
There isn’t any reason not to talk about specifically that little experiment that proved so beneficial. And of course you take for granted that it wasn’t so much “your” idea as your listening to a sudden idea that came from nowhere.
I take it for granted, by now, that there is no ownership of ideas. This is one of those realizations that started off as something told to me by the guys, and I think read somewhere (or intuited by a carom shot off something I read), and then over time becoming convinced as I observed my mental processes more closely. We call them “our” ideas, but they are ours only in that we paid attention. We didn’t generate them.
And that is easy enough to prove. Anybody trying to generate an idea will find they can’t do it. They have to wait for it, and the most they can do is prepare themselves to be receptive if it comes.
I think of Wilbur Wright, twisting that cardboard box absent-mindedly while talking to a customer. God knows he was immersed in the problem he was trying to solve, but he didn’t – couldn’t – reason his way toward the idea that worked. All he could do was keep the problem in mind, consciously and unconsciously. Then, when the analogy suggested itself, he was ready, and snagged it. But he couldn’t generate it at will.
It is a simple distinction, but an important one. And how different is your situation – anyone’s – when you sit down to have a conversation using intuitive linked communication? You may or may not have a topic, you may or may not know where you want to go with it. You may or may not be receptive enough and active enough to do it successfully – but in any case, you won’t know what you are going to get. As you often say, if you knew where you were going to go and what you would see when you got there, what kind of exploring is that? And I’m saying this for your audience, whoever it may turn out to be, because you never can tell when one more repetition may be enough to get the idea through.
So talk a little about what you and Dave discovered in a few minutes, and maybe we will talk about why it could be important and what it could lead to, for any who wish to employ the technique.
Dave and I are well accustomed to working together in short spurts, dating back to the days when he used to come to TMI for a program and spend time before or after, visiting I was living in Rita’s house in those days, so I was right there. Dave is a shaman by nature and training, though I don’t know if he would be totally comfortable announcing himself that way. But that is how I experienced him. He is a very nice combination of openness, curiosity, creativity.
Like so many of your friends.
True. But everyone has his or her own specialty, and Dave’s centers on short journeys, usually involving drumming. Until he and I began working together, I had never known anyone to do drumming sessions shorter than half an hour at least. Dave gets in and gets out in five minutes, and it is highly effective. He has taught our ILC groups that habit by example, which is of course the best kind of teaching, the kind that says, “Here, it’s easy. Just do this and see what happens.”
Which itself is an idea that you pick up from “somewhere,” whether or not you think of it as your own idea.
Yes. Well, we were sitting around in my living room talking, and as usual looking at the things behind the obvious in our lives. “This happened and then that happened and it had this result. And what was the gift in the situation? Well, maybe this. Let’s look.” Etc.
Then we came to a health problem we both have, and I suggested we “go upstairs” and ask what we can do about it, and before we could begin, I said, let’s do it for each other. That is, rather than my going upstairs and asking for insight into my own situation – a process that often comes up with little or nothing – I would ask about Dave’s situation and he would ask about mine, and it worked like anything.
You bypassed the obstacles that present themselves when you seek to get greater insight into your own problems.
Exactly. It’s easy to get for someone else, because the impulse to help is a reaching out, an expansion. It isn’t always so simple when you are reaching for yourself.
And you both saw the implications for future work.
Sure. After all, this was a version of the first exercise they gave me in Guidelines, more than 30 years ago, paired intuitive questioning. One person holds the question, the other offers an answer out of whatever comes to him. Only in this case we both knew the question, and of course we were a long long way from the days when we didn’t know if the process could work.
And so you saw a possible way it could develop.
Sure did. One way would be for any two people who trusted each other to make a habit of teaming up to answer each other’s questions. If they could bear to hear honest answers, they could make huge strides against problems that otherwise might resist their own best efforts for years, maybe forever.
Before we look at the second idea, of pairs that change by situation or by subject, let’s look a bit at what happens. You might ask yourself not so much why the process worked, but how.
All yours. Go ahead.
The psyche constructs filters to protect its self-image, and those filters are very effective. Every analyst learns how well defended people are against change, even change they are paying good money to have happen, change they are desperately hoping for, but can’t bring about.
We’re talking about “Which you?” here?
That’s a way of looking at it. If you as a 3D/non-3D mixture are contending with an avatar-level mechanism that has been set in motion long before, it can seem like you are wrestling with another person. Call it a robot (and calling it that is an advance in that it recognizes that what seems like “you” is not simply you) or call it past-life influences, or the remnant of trauma, or whatever, the fact you are dealing with is that the process of getting information to flow is impeded.
Someone else may know the truth you cannot see (because of these effective filters), but even if they tell you, you won’t believe them, because they will be telling you of something of your shadow, so what they say won’t feel right. It may make you irritated, or even angry, or perhaps indifferent, but you will not respond with “Oh, now I see! Thanks.” You are far more likely to explain to them why they are wrong and are not seeing what they think they are seeing.
But if you are working intuitively – that is, if both of you are working intuitively – you have the chance to bypass the defense mechanisms and get a clear view.
This requires trust, and a certain facility with intuitive rather than merely logical processing, and openness not only with each other but, of course, with various levels of yourself. But given those conditions, you can do remarkable things, miraculous things.
Is this one of those things you said was a puzzle when you were here and is now so clear?
The bypassing of the defense systems is, yes. There’s lots to be said there, if I can find the right person to connect with.
One trained professionally, I take it.
Not that so much as a certain cast of mind, hard to describe. I’ll know it if I can find it.
You said there’s a second idea beyond pairing.
Not beyond pairing, beyond any specific pairing. There are advantages either way.
- The same pair continue working together. They can go deeper and deeper, also can range farther in subject matter – that is, beyond personal subjects – as their teamwork matures.
- Different people can form pairs for one session or more, continual or intermittent or repeated. The flavor of any twosome will be different, as will the possibilities and limitations.
Our theme?
Call it, “The next step,” if you wish, or “Bypassing the robot,” or maybe “Self-helping each other.” That last may intrigue.
Well, a good session, after a couple of days when I couldn’t get started. Thanks and till next time.