Saturday, February 12, 2022
Dad’s 107th, Mr. Lincoln’s 213th.
3:50 a.m. All right, gentlemen, anything in particular on your minds? Want to continue where we left off yesterday morning, cat allowing?
Yes, continue, but I think abandon our thought-experiment and attempt to address the subject directly. So let’s consider the dynamics of your life in 3D, you being 3D and also non-3D, as, indeed, is the world itself. If you cannot remember that there are no absolute separations in reality, you will be unable to prevent certain distortions coming in.
All right. Setting my switches for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence. And it is still remarkable that every time I use this simple visualization, saying “presence” does seem to change my state of awareness. So, let’s proceed.
The task you face – any of you, all of you – is the same as that faced by Emerson or Bogart or anyone you could ever name. You are a community of threads, learning to interact consciously as one, with the intent of eventually becoming a strong enough habit-pattern that you survive the dropping of 3D constraints (which served to hold your bundle together). As part of the life you lead, you live in a world of factors of which you are unconscious; you live among others; therefore you all work on your own issues and you also contribute to, and borrow from, the sea of unlived possibilities and unfinished business that we are calling the shared subjectivity. This sea is “the world” that comes at you, moment by moment, seeming to be external to you, perhaps even hostile to you. Given the slowed-down separated nature of 3D living, it is inevitable that you will experience life this way. To you it seems you inhabit not one world, but two: one internal, one external. The two seem to have different values, proceed along different rules. It is as if the two worlds have only you in common, as, in a sense, really they do.
We have been over this before. The right-brain/left-brain split; the perception through non-3D as opposed to perception through senses (intuition v. sensory evidence); the dream-like world of the internal life, the seemingly more determined and fixed nature of the external life. This is all a given. That’s what your life is. (We omit consideration, for the moment, of moderating factors such as the interpenetration of 3D and non-3D phenomena.)
So how does it play out? For, surely you can see that each of you has an entirely unique (even if overlapping) experience. The 3D world you inhabit is different from that experienced by anyone else, let alone everyone else, though this isn’t always obvious. Different space, different time, because always experienced through a psyche shaped only partly by 3D, shaped initially by whatever patterns and combinations of threads were allowed into 3D by conditions delineated by astrology.
Clear enough. But, as you say, not something we always remember. The unconscious temptation is always to assume that we each live in the same world, the same times. In a way, we do; but I can see that in a way, we don’t because we can’t.
All right. So your particular combination of traits, as determined by the possibilities of the threads that you comprise, meet the events of every day. The same events as everybody else? Of anybody else? Certainly not. What you experience of the world is so highly colored by your temperament, emotional condition, experiences, etc., that it could never be exactly duplicated by anyone else, much less everyone else.
It is at about this point that discussions about life tend to go drifting off into space, becoming abstract and not very useful.
Very true, and that is a tendency we fight against continually. It is a natural tendency when you consider material that is not bounded by 3D limitations. “Common sense” can’t operate very easily in the absence of the imitations that common sense relies on, knowingly or not.
So, you are unique, living in a world that in effect was created specifically for you. At the same time, you are one of a family – humanity – living in a world that in effect goes on its own way, leaving you to adapt or die.
I am reminded of the doggerel that Andrew Johnson liked, which I think I can remember.
Whatever you may sing or say,
The world rolls on in the same old way.
And he that would possess his soul
Must hang on tight, and let her roll.
Something pretty close to that, anyway.
Well, it is a bit of folk wisdom. The world is bigger than anybody, and can be affected only so much by anybody. Even a towering figure in a climactic time, like Abraham Lincoln, can only affect the world so much. Most of the shared subjectivity’s inertia is well beyond being altered or even affected by any one person’s efforts.
But we are not here to advise you on how to pretend to affect the world, but on how to do the only thing you can do that will really affect it.
And that is, work on ourselves.
Well, “work on,” yes, but in this context we’d say, more, express yourselves. Live your values. Change (or maintain) the only piece you have charge of, be it piece or pawn. We remind you, your role cannot be duplicated, cannot be inessential, cannot be weighed internally or externally.
But what do you do, facing a world that seems exterior to you? A hint or two:
- Be aware that what infuriates or demoralizes you when seen in “the world” needs work within your own inner world.
- Find in yourself those things you would correct in the world, and correct them in yourself.
- Live a public life if you are so called, but don’t forget that the world is, in effect, your reflection.
- Live a private life if you are so called, but don’t forget that the world is, in effect, your reflection. In other words, public or private, use the shared subjectivity to gain insight into the unseen aspects of your own nature. Correct what you dislike by working on it within you, regardless if you are called to work externally or not.
- Paradoxically, the things you hate most in the world are your own tendencies, perhaps unrecognized. Do you hate bigotry? Hypocrisy? Hatred itself? Cruelty? Indifference? Look within yourself in that context. That is, using the 3D manifestation of reference, gain insight into your own dark places.
- Throughout the process remember – or take on faith, if that is the best you can do – that truly all is well, all is always well. It is well externally; it is well internally. There is a difference between unfinished business and tragedy. There is always unfinished business, or what are you doing here? That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong.
- In this context, remember that the 3D world – everything you experience as oh-so-real – is projected from a higher level of reality, and is only somewhat real. You don’t despair because a movie plot shows desperate situations; don’t despair because the larger 3D movie does the same.
All that seems practical enough, to me. And, speaking of practical, the cat is getting fairly vocal about being ignored, and she’s up on the desk, so I guess that’s it for the moment. Or maybe not – I see she is settling down to watch again.
Doesn’t matter. We’ve said our say. To make our point explicit: The reason your attitude creates your experience – the reason you “create your own reality” – is because you change the end you can change, the tiny, seemingly insignificant person – and the entire equation changes for you. Not for everybody, or it would be unmanageable. Or, let’s say that more carefully: Nobody else’s version dictates yours, nor therefore does yours dictate anybody else’s. You may affect another person, directly or indirectly, and of course you are doing that all the time. But you do not dictate their world, much less the world. A Napoleon, an Eisenhower, may have an outsized effect on how things manifest, but as Napoleon himself realized, in a larger sense they are pawns in a much larger game, and can be knocked over at any time for any reason that may or may not have much to do with their specific decisions.
The world is bigger than we are.
It is, and it is not dependent upon you for its continuation or direction. More the other way around, as long as you are in 3D bodies.
All every interesting, thanks. The theme?
“Living interior and exterior lives,” perhaps. Or “Clues for living.” You’ll think of something.
I will. Again, our thanks.