The ragged edges of a new advance of consciousness

Monday, November 4, 2024

2:40 a.m. You say we are at the ragged edges of an advance of consciousness, and don’t know what to do with them. This feels true but doesn’t yet explain causes or effects of anything. But I guess I’m not going to get this at the moment. Maybe later.

9 a.m. Proceed.

Your ideas of consciousness and awareness and higher consciousness and higher mind and greater access, etc., are skewed by unconscious assumptions. As usually, we mean not you alone but “you” plural.

In this case meaning everybody, or some of us on the quest, or what?

That is more complicated than may appear. Let’s just say, for the moment, that we are making a general statement of the state of affairs at the early 21st century in the West and in those parts of the non-Western world most heavily affected by Western culture. That ought to be broad enough! But no statement can be universally applicable, you know.

All right.

We should do this in bullets, for the usual tactical reason: much to associate, little way to organize it initially, and some disadvantage in organizing it prematurely.

We can work better if I am not trying to discern or construct patterns as we go along.

Exactly: That tendency would close off avenues, because you would not see the relevance. Better to keep input open and sort it out later.

Or actually, usually, watch as it sorts itself out.

It must look like that. In reality you and we are both perceiving patterns as we go, and the way becomes clear. But as you feel (and rarely say), we too are often somewhat in the dark as we begin, only finding our orientation in the general drift.

That implies you are being guided by a higher or deeper intelligence.

Who is to say we are or are not? Try not to forget, “As above, so below.” It always applies; it is a fractal reality. Find the patterns, find the analogues, hence find the clues.

So, to it, and we’ll see how well we can do. We know where we want to wind up, but we don’t yet know how we will get there, or what we will include. Because we work at associating as we go, we too get surprised by the connections we make, and the paths such successive connections lead us on. You tend to give us more credit for pre-knowledge and therefore less credit for intelligent feeling-around, then we perhaps deserve.

  • It is not really a matter of mental “states” meaning separate, divisible “locations.”
  • You don’t move between layers, though it can feel like that.
  • No ultimate divisions, remember, either between minds, or within minds. “All is one” means all is one, not “All is many but sometimes they cooperate.”
  • No “old souls,” and “young souls” and all that, except in a certain context, and even then more notionally than really. It depends on what the word means, and people tend to slide over the problem if they even see it.
  • So what is the difference – because there is a difference, you can feel it, and even before you feel it for the first time, you may intuit it: “There’s got to be more to life than this.”
  • Why do your moods fluctuate? Why does your level of physical energy fluctuate? Why does your level of intellectual curiosity or ability to perceive, ability to reason, vary?

We are in 3D, and life is continual movement.

True, certainly. But does that clarify anything?

It seems to say the external world affects us, as clearly it does, even if you define the external world as the unknown part of ourselves.

Let us go very slowly here, for it may finally be the time when we can clear this up.

“This” being –?

More bullets, slightly different subject:

  • Internal and external worlds. Non-3D and 3D components. Unconscious mind (that is, the part of the mind you are not conscious of) and conscious. “Altered states” and “ordinary reality.” All the same thing.
  • Hence, external influences – the astrology of the moment; the interplay of others on the world-stage; interactions between “past” and “present” and “future” lives. Hereditary traits, lingering results of traumas, “unfinished business”: all part of you.
  • You – we – are greater than can be described, because the descriptions are geared to separations which are only somewhat real, and at that, not very.
  • “It’s all one thing” means, it’s all one thing. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, energetically, any way you can think to divide it, it is a false division, as the Buddha figured out. Make a distinction, make an error. Of course in practice, life is making distinctions: How can we write without distinguishing this word from that word, and choosing which to employ? But remember, it is only somewhat real. Keep coming back to that and it will keep reminding you not to get carried away, not to let yourself be blinded by appearances.

Now put these two sets of associations together and let’s see if we can come to greater clarity.

Me do it?

Yes. We’ll both know better how it struck you and what you did or did not misinterpret.

I get, no obstacles. Everything is connected, so any obstacles are – not of our own manufacture, exactly, but let’s say they exist with our unconscious connivance.

Very good. Unconscious connivance is a good way to look at it: It takes away victimhood, it reminds you of your own still unsuspected range of abilities (there is always more to do), and it hints, accurately, that the waking-up is part of a game. We mean “game” in the sense of an organized cooperative activity. Can you guess why?

I’d guess that the journey is the reward. Not that we’re correcting an initial error, necessarily, but that what we experience as we go along is itself worthwhile somehow.

We remind you, the purpose of the hamster wheel is not to deceive or frustrate the hamster, but, on the contrary, to let him joyously exercise his muscles.

So we are developing, somehow.

Oh, don’t you know it? Don’t you feel it in your bones? The poet that said, “Life is earnest, life is real, and the grave is not its goal” knew something, Hemingway’s later derision aside. You know that your 3D life is only a part of your life. You know that the things that happen are always opportunities. You know now – after many years when you could not have said so – that all is always well. It may be a vale of tears, but it is also a terrifically useful and effective hamster wheel, and its goal is not frustration, any more than it is the grave.

And the word “soul” needs looking at. People say “old soul, young soul” as if they knew what they were talking about. Before obsessing over the adjective, it would be well to have some understanding of the noun. Birthdays are 3D events, not non-3D events.

Now, to end this for the moment. Do you now see – or anyway suspect – what we mean by your being at the ragged edges of an advance in consciousness?

I think I do, actually. For whatever reason, accustomed ways of thinking are dissolving and I am finding that where I had experienced boundaries I now see doorways. I’m almost out of gas, but let me say this much, anyway. I am looking back at my life dispassionately, not cringing or hurting, not apologizing or regretting, but looking at things with interest, seeing past situations as algebraic problems I was enmeshed in, rather than I being either victim or villain. Somehow the drama has drained out of it; I’m seeing more clear.ly

And there’s more to be said on that subject. But meanwhile, good work today. If you hadn’t been able to stick with it, going slowly, we could not have done as much as we did.

You did fairly well yourself. Clearly I’ve been teaching you well.

We’re smiling too, but actually there is something in that – and of course, as usual this is not confined to you as an individual (so called) but to everybody.

Thanks for many years of cooperative rambling.

 

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