Saturday July 1, 2017
7 a.m. All right, Rita, I’m ready if you are. Do you have a course of instruction prepared, or do I begin with questions? I hope the former.
You don’t mind if we smile at you from this side do you? After “all this time” you still wonder how much of this is you making something up.
Well aware of being at least the conduit, because there isn’t any other way it can be. But you know I accept that as part of the process, now: I have even taught a weekend course in how to do it, that involved realizing that you can’t have a process (other than trance-mediumship, maybe, I don’t know about that) where there is no flavor imparted by the consciousness bringing in the material. So yes, I still wonder if any given thing comes out of my own subconscious – and as soon as I write that, I in turn smile. I’ll see your smile and raise you an “aha!”
Yes, because what functional difference is there between what you call your unconscious mind and what you call guidance, or TGU, or some of what you perceive as “other” spirit helpers?
That’s the conclusion I came to, but I didn’t connect that thought with this process until now.
[In the following sentence, I first wrote “psychologists” and later made an asterisk and added “many.” My change? Rita’s?]
Psychologists would say that your unconscious mind is incapable of making up stories. The Hawaiian mystics would say that that part of your total self is equally unable to make up stories. That is a function of the conscious mind. But in that case, how about bright ideas, overnight realizations, creative reformulations?
Yes, what about them? And I can feel my own uneasy participation in that last paragraph. (“Is this right? Is that what psychologists would say?” Etc.) But enough of process, unless that’s your theme today.
Not really. Let’s talk about the “afterlife” or perhaps we should say the “after-3D-life.” But the initial floundering around (as it seemed to you) is actually a good introduction to the theme, because it sets up the background to the problem of communicating.
I see it. Did you plan that?
Did you? And if neither of us did, there is another insight into the process. A side-trail but an important one: How is the generation of ideas, of conflict, of interaction in general, analogous to sexual reproduction?
The immediate answer being, I take it, that it is the synthesizing of a new combination using contributions from two different existing combinations.
Two, or more, but yes. When two or more people interact, the result is something identical to none of them, but is something new. That is the essence of drama, remember: conflict. It is in conflict among existing forces that new combinations forever take form.
I can’t decide if this is mere truism or a new insight. It has the flavor of “obviously” – yet I don’t know that I ever thought of things in quite this way.
And what was your definition of genius?
Brilliance, I think, not genius. I said it was something that, as soon as you hear it you say, “Of course, that’s obvious,” only it isn’t something you’d ever realized or would be likely to have recognized.
Yes. Well, the over-arching theme will be this: Humans have been bringing back descriptions of the afterlife for uncounted thousands of years, but the descriptions don’t match. Rather than conclude that they were deliberately constructed fairy tales, it is worthwhile to consider whether they all, or (to give ourselves wiggle-room) most, were sincere attempts to describe what had been experienced or dreamed or received in some altered state such as trance or shamanic summons or other process.
And everybody’s descriptions are tainted, or let’s say colored, by their own mental processes, just as when we talk in this way.
Can you think of any other way it could be? For we need a word or two on the fact that even the unconscious comes filtered through the conscious mind.
It does? I thought the value of dreams etc. is that they don’t get filtered by the conscious mind.
We need to go a little slowly here, because words easily mislead.
Tell me about it!
Unconscious contents come welling up in dreams without your conscious control, and that is, indeed, their value (and their danger to the unprepared). But control is one thing. Environment is another. Your mind—
Yes, I see the difficulties here. I hope you can sort them out. I don’t know how we ever get anywhere, there are so many side-trails and necessary shrubbery-clearings. But, I notice we do, eventually.
You lay it out and we’ll proceed.
I got that each of our minds – the mind particular to each individual – may be considered as individual itself, and each one has its own flavor, derived from the particular combination of elements that we are. So each of us constitutes a unique localized mental environment through which even archetypal contents come up. We are filters even at that level.
And this is not an accident, or a side-effect deplorable or otherwise. The creation of such localized mental environments is precisely the point of creation. Yes, it is true that different physical bodies create actors for the play, so to speak. But the creation of different localized minds (souls) creates the unique filters, not merely unique windows. You see the distinction?
I do because we are connected at the moment, but we should spell it out a bit. Localized minds not only report differently, but experience differently. They aren’t just windows or weather-stations, but are — well, what is a good analogy?
I don’t have one either, at the moment. Words are your job, I remind you.
Very funny. It is the difference between reporting what you’ve seen and experiencing it differently in the first place. Well, let’s go on.
The larger point is this: You are unique not only in having a separate body; you also have a separate mind, or soul. All divisions are relative, in that everything is ultimately connected and, as people say, it’s all energy. But the fact that all bodies are carbon and seawater does not explain them away. They still exist as (relatively) separate entities. Similarly, minds, or souls. We are all one; we are also separate. If only the first half of the statement were true, it wouldn’t be a “we,” would it? And our value and opportunity lies in the fact that we are relatively separate. It allows – requires – that everyone experience the world differently. (“The world” – meaning all the world, not just the 3D aspects.)
Let us pause here, because it would be well to leave this particular point clear and emphasized. Much hangs on this initial understanding.
All right. Thanks, Rita, and if my novel never gets reshaped, at least it will be your fault and not mine. [smiiley]
I remind you, after I did my Gateway, nobody was able to guilt-trip me afterwards.
Damn! [smiiley]