TGU on influencing and being influenced

Saturday, May 1, 2021

5:10 a.m. Very well, my friends. Shall we continue? You seem to be following your own thread, your own line of inquiry.

We are merely pursuing the question of influencing. How one influences others and is influenced by others.

How we interrelate, I suppose you are saying.

Well, it is hardly a one-way street, influencing. It couldn’t be if you wanted it to be, no matter how autistic, nor how dictatorial, one might be. No one in or out of bodies can be (or should want to be) immune from being influenced, immune from influencing. Does a finger on a hand begrudge the fact that blood circulates to it, through it, and from it? Could it possibly function, could it continue to exist, in isolation? Many of what are seen as the ills of 3D life stem from the fantasy of isolation, from a refusal to participate fully in the great exchange of energy.

Especially given that there is no true external, as you put it, only a seeming external world.

Not that you are putting it badly, for we know that you understand us. But you are leaving room for others to misunderstand, either deliberately or otherwise.

Why would they misunderstand deliberately? Wouldn’t they merely disagree?

How do you misunderstand gravity, or electricity?

Well, for that matter, how do you disagree with them?

You don’t: You disagree with the effects you dislike, with connections you prefer not to see. Someone who proceeds from a distrust of life is going to have to choose between

I’m getting this all balled up, I can feel it. Try again?

We say, There are no accidents; everything is connected; what seems external to you is only somewhat external, but is more accurately seen as part of you manifesting among parts of others (shared subjectivity, not a solid exterior objectivity) that may be put to use to increase your understanding. We say, live life more abundantly by continuously reducing your barriers of fear and perceived separation.

Well, how can someone react to that message and at the same time cling to contradictory understandings of the world and their place in it? If you have acquired a vested interest in believing that life is (or ever could be) truly unfair when judged in toto rather than from a limited view point in one time, one space, you will either have to give up that belief or decide to keep it or believe yourself to be unable to give it up. That is, you will have to either deliberately or unconsciously choose to cling to your limiting beliefs, or let them go.

Richard Bach says somewhere, “Argue for your limitations and they are yours.”

Exactly. Now, we are not saying that such a change is always freely natural. Sometimes it may seem like a leap in the dark, or even as abandonment of common sense, or a contradiction of a view of reality that is more persuasive, and in those cases the individual may refuse to change and perhaps they are right to refuse to choose, because perhaps at that moment they would be unable to truly grasp the alternate view. They would release the piece of driftwood they cling to, but would be unable to climb into the lifeboat. Clumsy analogy, true, but the idea should come through. But for those who could successfully make the transition, a much more satisfying life would result. Our concern is not particularly that not everyone can sign on to our view of the world, but that some who could, dare not. Still, it is their choice.

Now, this relates directly to where we began, the unavoidable and in face desirable fact that you and everyone you know or hear of or don’t know or don’t hear of are all part of the same one thing. We have said it repeatedly, and only a few, perhaps, have ever actually absorbed the message, but it is the first thing you need to know if you are to escape the self-made construction that says you are “only” this or that, that your life is “only” this or that. The difficulty is not in our saying it, nor in anyone’s reading the words or hearing them, or seeing them manifest in the world, but in people’s willingness to accept them as real. It is one thing to play with words; a very different thing to take them to heart and allow them to change your life.

You – we – are all part of one thing. You may conceptualize this in many different ways, and how you do so says more about your mental habits and your own self-accepted limitations (boundaries, container walls, cells either prison or biological) than about the reality. If you believe in God, this says God is in everything and you are part of God. If you don’t believe in God, this says nature is all there is, and you are part of it.

Opinions – conceptualizations – can differ widely, but reality remains. How many times have we reminded you, reality contains all contradictions, but is not self-contradictory.

This all seems very clear to me.

Well, we said you understood it. We are merely trying to be sure that others may, if they wish to.

Hmm. In this light, influencing and being influenced have to do with our openness, don’t they?

Of course they do. Openness facilitates communication, and benefits from it.

The usual reciprocating process.

You will find that life works that way. Feedback. Remember, for illustration – “As above, so below.” Anything we describe, you will be able to find in quite mundane examples. Can you find in nature anything that exists in complete isolation from its surroundings? Of course you cannot, because how would you observe it?

Thank you, Mr. Schrödinger.

Nonetheless, it is true, and if it were not immediately obvious, a few minutes of thought would demonstrate that anything that existed truly in isolation could not be observed, let alone measured.

Now, we could pause here or continue.

Let’s go on for a few more minutes, anyway, since I gather you don’t think this covers the ground.

It could form a unit, so we would have been content to pause. But let us add, then, that freedom to choose means freedom to influence, because your life cannot fail to influence others, whether you – or they – realize it or not. People influence in various ways, and to various degrees. People are influenced to various degrees depending upon where they are in their lives. But the influencing and being influenced goes on continually and automatically, as boiling water continuously and automatically moves its molecules around. (Even cold water does the same, of course, but the boiling is more easily visualized as motion and interaction.)

I suppose it goes without saying – but I don’t know that I ever consciously thought this before – that our freedom to create ourselves is also freedom to decide how we will influence others.

That’s the idea. Now, your lives are not there primarily for the purpose of influencing the world. John F. Kennedy, Hemingway, Mother Teresa, did not come into the world primarily to serve as beacons to others, but primarily to live their possibilities. That fact that living their possibilities changed the world does not change the fact that their first responsibility was to themselves, to their own 3D-plus-non-3D selves. And it is the same for everyone. Do the job that is right at hand – choosing who and what you are going to become – and you automatically also change the world, regardless if the world ever hears of you.

And now we shall pause.

Our thanks, as usual, for this very interesting couple of thoughts. Till next time.