Consciousness and intent

Sunday, January 23, 2022

7:30 a.m. Still reading Walden. Am at “Brute Neighbors.” Let me focus, then perhaps we can talk about the Transcendentalists, etc. and what we’re up to here. Focus. Receptivity, clarity. Presence. (None of which I felt particularly, yesterday.)

If occurs to me, two things, really. 1. It has mostly been said before, probably many ways. 2. Most of what we’ve brought forth, I may have read decades ago, so how could I ever know for sure that this hasn’t been an elaborate game of fooling myself? But I know the answers: (1) of course, and (2) there is no ownership of ideas.

Besides, many a theoretical construct that we have given you – or, say, that the mathematics between you and us opened up – was not read from older sources, because it could not have been read, not having been known in other days. But here is the only useful point – for you, and, as usual, for anyone it fits: Sparks can ignite only such fuel as is there. Suggest a million things, from a million sources, and only the one spark that lands on something combustible will produce any more than a momentary effect. If something moves you, there’s a reason for it: Something within you was there to be moved.

Late last night I was regretting the fact that yet once again I have lost the plot. The lapse of time between installments allows so much temporary understanding to leak out! It amounts to filling a leaky bucket.

What you really mean is that you find it is impossible to follow the plot with your conscious mind. Each day’s nail drives out the previous nail, and each day’s endless minutes drive out the exaltation of any particular minute. But maybe you are trying to fill the wrong bucket.

Hmm. As opposed to –?

Changing your life is slower and more thorough than changing your mind. Or, more to the point, holding intent is easier than holding an idea, or a set of ideas. Recall the difference you spelled out in your little healing book between body and mind in maintenance and change. There is an analogy with intent v. ideas.

I begin to get the idea. In Imagine Yourself Well, we discussed health as a ratio between mental state and physical state. Mental states are mobile, easily changed intentionally or otherwise; physical states are more stubborn, slower to change. This means it is easier to change the ratio quickly by adjusting our mental states, but hard or impossible to change anything permanently that way. Changing by adjusting the physical is slower, harder, but when a change is made, it tends to persist. And obviously, the ideal is to have mental and physical work as a team rather than as opposite sides in a tug of war.

There is a close analogy with intent v. ideas. How many people would like to change their lives in this or that particular! And how few figure out how to do it. Surely life more abundantly must include the ability to change when one desires?

I’d think so.

Well, the potential is there, innate in every human being that ever was or is or will be. How can you have free will without the effective ability to change according to your will? So why is the potential so often frustrated?

I would have said because we harbor contradictory desires, which perhaps fluctuate in intensity, with now one, then the other, steering the shop.

That is certainly the case, often enough. But it is not the whole story. One may desire change without knowing how to effect it.

I don’t quite see how that is possible, though it is clear enough that it happens. Why can’t we know from our non-3D component what to do?

That non-3D component that is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful?

Oh, yeah. I keep falling back into that more primitive idea, don’t I? Well?

If one’s non-3D component knew everything, merely because it was existing outside 3D restrictions, what in the world would be the point of your being in 3D at all? Play-pretend? Dress rehearsal after the play was already performed?

Obvious once you say it. So then, since our non-3D can’t automatically give us the answer, you’ll have to do it (I hope): How is it that we can desire to change without knowing how to do so, even in the absence of internal contradiction?

How far do you get, pushing on a door that opens toward you? Or turning a screw with a hammer? Or going North by heading East? None of these would be a failure of character, but a failure of prudence. You just aren’t going about things the right way, not because you aren’t “enlightened,” nor because you are an unregenerate sinner, nor because your eyes are blue instead of brown or brown instead of blue. It’s merely a skill you haven’t picked up.

You read something and perhaps it makes a great impression on you. Years later you read it again, and realize you had long forgotten the words, but had absorbed the underlying point of view. Is this failure? How could it be a failure, when it changed you? But then – you ask – why did you not remember it? And we answer, for the very reason that mental change will not permanently change your bodily health.

Consciousness fluctuates. That’s what it does; that’s how it functions and is meant to function. But consciousness is not the same as mind, obviously, and yet the two are often confused one for the other, when you go to do (or, more, to think about) something specific. Thinking about changing your life is, by its nature, transitory, fluctuating, unstable, impermanent. Intending comes from a deeper, more permanent place, (though of course not absolutely permanent, since it can be changed).

What of a desire that may be conscious but is nonetheless recurrent, perhaps over years?

A conscious desire that does not move from consciousness to a deeper level must remain fluctuating, even if the fluctuation brings it back to the surface twice a day. You can’t change by thinking about changing; you need to intend to change, and it is not the same thing.

Intent is tied to some action, however small, however often lost sight of.

It is. It is, you might say, the second-tier reaction turning into a third-tier reaction. That is, it is a decision to become X, made more permanent than a momentary desire. (And “momentary” does not mean “only once”; it means transitory, no matter how frequently it occurs.) Tying an intent to an action is a way of countering your mind’s tendency to overturn everything with every revolution of the days, so to speak.

The metaphor is a little strained, but I get it. I suppose this is a reason for religious ritual in people’s lives, to hold them on their desired course.

When not done merely by rote, as a habit imposed from outside, yes. Your continually revolving minds need all the aids to stability they can get.

That’s the habit of writing in my journal, isn’t it?

At one level, it is. (People don’t usually do things for only one reason.) The sheer repetition of ritual is important. For that matter, invoking your four associated qualities as if they were slide-switches is a ritual that has the effect of bringing you back to the same intent.

So, to make this as practical as possible, how do we maintain intent when we cannot hold it in our consciousness from one day to the next?

Aha, but you see, the way you just phrased that shows you haven’t grasped the distinction. At least, you haven’t grasped it in theory, though you have, in practice.

Intent is renewed continuously by being sewn into your life. It is not required to be, nor could it be, perpetually in your conscious awareness. Intent is what you  live, not what you think of at any given moment. You don’t necessarily think “I intend to be x and such” while you are heating your dinner, or going for the mail. You may, but you may not, and that doesn’t matter. But at the level of continuity that is beneath consciousness, you stay on course or you don’t.

And what is this submerged gyroscope?

As we said, it is your intent as it is sewn into your life’s fabric. “As a man thinks, so is he,” but that also means, “As a man thinks, so he expresses in a thousand ways, mostly unnoticed by him,” and those ways are a continuity; those ways express his intent and maintain his intent, until changed.

So much of what you tell us turns out to be just common sense, but common sense explained from an unfamiliar viewpoint.

It would be a terrible predicament if people could act sensibly only if they first could follow such involved reasoning. “Common sense” might be called “rules of thumb.”

True. So you’re saying, if we want to become X, act like it.

That’s what we have always said, and we defy you to find a time when we said the contrary. You did not come into 3D form to be put into an impossible condition. That is, nothing can ever be asked of you that is beyond your ability. Your life’s task may be difficult, may break you. Still it will not be too much because it cannot be too much, or you wouldn’t be faced by it.

Now, we are well past your usual hour, but we can feel your sense of incompletion. What can we say that will satisfy you?

I remain concerned about remembering day by day, let alone year upon year.

Rely upon habit, as we have often said. In your specific case (not necessarily applicable to everybody), use written reminders aimed forward. That is, write now what you wish to continue with later. We have been doing that sometimes when you ask for the next day’s theme. Even getting a TBA helps you in that it releases that part of you that wonders anxiously if it is forgetting something – losing the plot.

Also, you may wish to try returning to your work more often, even if only for very short times. This may help. But enough for now. Next time, TBA.

Today’s?

“holding the plot”? “Continuity”? Perhaps “Consciousness and intent.”

Yes. That sounds like it. Very well, my thanks for all this: 75 minutes, not a record but still a pretty good length of time. Till next time.