Tuesday, March 22, 2022
5:15 a.m. “Actions and consequences (4),” presumably. Focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.
As usual, you experience difficulty in trusting that a given line of development proceeds smoothly.
I know that if it depended upon me for continuity, we would likely fail. So I look back, try to get the sense of it in my mind – and still it feels like I am flying blind.
Perhaps that is how a passenger often feels, being driven in the dark, with no access to the controls, unable to judge if the pilot really has the feel of the machine amid the specific weather conditions. What can that passenger do but trust, and try not to dilute the pilot’s attention?
That’s about the feel of it sometimes.
We will remind you that the Mind Mirror patterns for extending consciousness into altered states stresses the importance of the alpha bridge. In a way, that is the function of writing, and even more, of actively questioning: It keeps open the alpha bridge. You don’t “click out,” in Monroe terms, or slide off into sleep, or emerge into ordinary consciousness.
Meaning, I take it in context, that I pretty much ought to feel like I’m flying blind. Daniel Boone in the woods, not lost, but “confused for three days, once.”
Don’t worry if it seems to you that each segment is somewhat disconnected from previous segments. We’ve done all right so far, haven’t we? And if strict logic becomes important to you, you know how it is to be constructed: Use daylight mind: Outline. That isn’t what we are doing here. But enough of process. To return to our exposition.
The individual in 3D is responsible for his or her own development and welfare. We said a while ago, the more external freedom, the more responsibilities. You have to learn to maintain a body, to live among others, to be your own self, to decide who and what you uphold. The greater your resources, the greater your responsibility.
But at the same time, you don’t do it alone. Or, let’s put it this way, you aren’t bounded in quite the ways you think you are. You have learned long since that you are more than your physical body. You learned that your mind, too, is greater and more complex than you realized. We have spent several months accustoming you to the idea that the “external” world is not external in the sense of discontinuity, or of connection between unlike things. Using the term “shared subjectivity” and “personal subjectivity” was designed to remind you, amid discussion centered on other aspects of life, that the oh-so-solid 3D world is mind-stuff, and is all part of one thing, not many different things. It is true that “All is one”; it is equally true that you as a 3D human being are a piece of it that functions as if it were more or less separate. You know this in everyday life. It is important not to forget it when you go looking for The Nature and Meaning of Life.
You are in the position of acting as if on your own, when in fact you depend heavily upon others, constantly and unavoidably.
Ayn Rand to the contrary.
She overdrew her portrait of the individual v. society, but perhaps she was a necessary counter-force to those who saw only the collective. And, you will remember, for a while that emphasis on the individual was attractive to you.
Yes, but like measles or other childhood diseases, its ability to affect me waned.
It was a useful counter-irritant nevertheless. You learn by absorbing various extreme views, and letting them contend within you, until the ones most suitable to you emerge triumphant. Naturally, no two people will come out with identical sets of beliefs. It is probably impossible and certainly is not desirable. Two people may agree entirely on six things and diverge on a seventh. It is normal and, as we say, it is desirable.
So now consider some things together.
- That is, what the times allow or don’t, encourage or discourage. Timing, the basis of astrology, which as a scientific art was never the delusion or hoax that it appeared to be once people decided that the world was a collision of random elements.
- The personal subjectivity. You, as responsible for your microscopic part of all-that-is. A constructed organized bit of the whole, functioning as if separate, by design.
- The shared subjectivity, with its attributes we mentioned last time. You might think of it as 3D-all-that-is (as opposed to “all that is” that obviously would include so much more). This is an important concept. The shared subjectivity is the 3D world in general, in all its seeming objective existence. Rocks, trees, animals, people: all the kingdoms, and their invisible “Spiritual” components, mind-stuff appearing solid and outer, but actually expressing the real content of the 3D/non-3D world., and thus in its existence providing the continuity you experience as “the world.”
We could add more factors, and at a later time we may, but this will do for the moment. The picture we are painting is conceptually simple, but, being far from people’s ordinary ideas, may require careful exploration.
At the creation of the world, everything that ever could be is mapped into existence in potential. We have compared it to the parameters of a computer game, that includes all possible moves and situations in its own structure. But which ones emerge depends upon the moves made. Every move manifests some, suppresses others, leave still other unsuspected, because behind too many unopened doors. (They are there; they are not necessarily perceived.)
At the creation of the 3D individual, the game is already in play. The moves of previous players have shaped what you find as you enter. Your moves help shape what others find as they enter. You can easily see this in physical terms. Europe after Napoleon was quite a bit different from Europe before Napoleon.
You can see it easily enough in intellectual terms. The discovery of the concept of zero; the codification of data that resulted in discovering the laws of genetics; analyzing data and deducing the fact of physical evolution of species, etc. in all these cases, the mental world available to newcomers differed from what had been available previously. It works the same way with lost knowledge, too. When you can no longer use lost connections, you perforce make your own, or do without.
It is true, as well, emotionally. The actions of prior players affects the possibilities you find. Do you suppose that every age is equally open to the same set of virtues and sins? This difference appears to be cultural, but it is cultural only as a secondary effect. In reality, it is one culture’s response to previous choices as they play out. Thus one speaks of “Spanish cruelty,” or “Italian subtlety,” or “Irish irresponsibility,” or whatever. To some degree these are merely casual over-generalizations, but usually they contain a nub of truth. And what made them true? That cultural history; the things that happened to them; prior decisions and reactions.
You see, in all three realms – physical, intellectual, emotional – the 3D player lives in a game that has been shaped by previous play, among other things. What does this amount to, but saying that the individual is an indivisible part of the whole? Obvious, really. But not the whole story, by far, for this deals only with the conditions one faces vis a vis the shared subjectivity. It doesn’t yet address the timing of events, or the moment-by-moment interaction of the two forms of subjectivity.
Are we still on the track of the source of monsters of cruelty among us?
We are. Trust us. As we said, you won’t come to new insights without associating previously separated ideas and realms.
Well, I do, but there’s another hour gone, and we don’t seem any closer.
Hold in mind that timing is as important to this discussion as are the individual and shared subjectivities.
All right. Well, see you next time. Thanks for the continuing effort.