[It is sometimes so rewarding, re-reading old stuff that I’ve forgotten. These two entries belong together, and repay being read together.]
Virtues and sins, effort and drift
(from July 6 and 7, 2021)
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
2:40 a.m. Open for business.
Bear in mind what we’re doing at the moment. You cannot possibly have a reasonable idea of your future after 3D if you do not see who and what you are (structure) or how you function or why (purpose). It requires a lot of understanding, to understand anything.
Context, I know.
It is almost more important to not hold mistaken concepts, than to hold accurate ones. Wrong concepts may give you a mistaken sense of certainty that prevents you from seeing what is right there in front of you. But once the path is clear, sparks will suffice.
So, in explaining who you are. You are specific conduits of vast forces, but you are not disconnected either in time nor in space nor in lateral extent. That is, although 3D conditions lead you to see yourselves as existing here, now, alone, in actual fact that is where you focus, yes, but you extend beyond all these.
So, yesterday we were discussing sex as experienced by several lives, each of which became a strand. We did not explicitly say what we should perhaps have said, that it was not a matter of percentages of a given experience, but that each life is a differently experienced nuance. Nuances are not to be compared numerically; they are additive in that each offers an addition to the richness of the inventory; they are perhaps disruptive in that some will undercut or oppose others, but they are not merely a matter of ratio.
But I get that the business about ratios is part of it, that this is one way of assessing things.
Yes, one way; that’s what we were showing. But not the only way, and perhaps not the most illuminating way. It isn’t black/white, but fifty shades of grey, and fifty shades of every color imaginable, and your everyday decisions determine to what extent various colors will express at any given time in your 3D life.
Now remember, this isn’t so much about you, at the moment, but about the forces that express through you. What we sketched about sex we could sketch about all the virtues, all the vices – about every force that is known to flow through the human being.
Interesting. I get a sense of the seven cardinal virtues, the seven deadly sins, but it is much easier to see how you could sketch anger, say, or covetousness – any of the sins – as forces flowing through us, than the virtues, which seem more like ideals than forces.
That is because virtues are seen as ideals to strive for (that is, they require and reward your effort and focus), while sins are seen as pitfalls, snares to avoid. But from a certain viewpoint, perhaps you can see that this is another consequence of seeing things as good and bad.
Hard to see how to put it clearly.
The difficulty is inherent in the discussion. Many people have lost themselves in it. The simplest way to put it depends upon a goal. If you are at sea and have no goal, then perhaps any wind will serve. But if you have a goal, some winds will be good for your purposes, and some bad. They are not good or bad absolutely: Can there be an immoral East Wind? But they may serve or may hinder one’s goals.
Rather than enmesh ourselves in this argument again, let us continue to examine how things manifest, and you can argue out for yourself the ins and outs of it. List the virtues and sins again.
The classic four cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. Christians added faith, hope, charity. The seven sins are lust, envy, gluttony, covetousness, anger, pride and sloth, or ennui. [Pride is considered the prime sin. I list them in the order suggested by my mnemonic LEG CAPS or LEG CAPE.)
Each of these is described from the point of view of an individual, you see. (It should be obvious, after all.) They are described as excellences or defects of character. But let us look at them as the result of impersonal forces flowing into and through a personal limited expression of life.
The image that arises is of the Roaring Forties and the Straits of Magellan.
A pretty good metaphor for 3D life, in its way, is it not? Explain the image.
The rotation of the earth creates wind patterns. The conformation of the earth (mountain ranges, for instance) funnels the wind. The 40s of South latitude channel practically unceasing winds eastward, funneling toward the further South because of the mountains. It took Magellan’s ships weeks to pick their way through the Straits between the South American mainland and Tierra del Fuego because they were sailing into the teeth of storm after storm. Had they been traveling eastward, each storm would have helped them on their way, but to go from east to west required battling winds all the way.
So your life in 3D might be seen as such a voyage. Not every day is stormy; neither is every life. But any given day is likely to face storms, and so with every lifetime. If you are traveling westward, you know you are going to have to contend with headwinds and storms, and there is no use calling them hard names. But a skillful sailor knows how to use all the forces to his advantage, and knows what not to do. Thus, the virtues and vices.
But “How do the virtues manifest in your life” is a different question from “What are the virtues themselves, and what are they expressing?” Different questions, you see. We have looked at the former, at another time. Now we are looking at the latter.
So, temperance, say?
No, that isn’t the way to go about it. Abstract discussion only leaves you hanging. Let’s look at how these characteristic may be deduced after the fact, in various lives.
So take John Cotten’s life, the life of shattered expectations leading to despair. You see?
I’m beginning to. In giving up on life, he fell prey to ennui. He hadn’t decided to express it, but that is a word that describes his state.
That’s right. And when, with the older man’s help, he realized that you can’t give up on life, the forces that he relied upon to get back to actively living might be seen as fortitude, and perhaps hope, though it might be more accurate to say faith, in that he had no specific hopes, and only a generalized sense that giving up was a mistake.
Interesting. I see that.
It wasn’t a decision to fall into error, but it was a decision to climb out of it. In that sense, the virtues always require effort while one need only drift to fall into sin. Sin, you will remember, is sometimes defined as “missing the mark.” But, looked at that way, don’t fortitude and ennui look different?
Yes, they look like definitions tacked on to describe behavior, rather than pre-existent forces.
Well, perhaps we should say they are definitions tacked on to describe the sources and results of behavior. But yes, not pre-existing separable forces, except when seen from the point of view of any 3D individual.
Your hour is up, but this isn’t a bad beginning. We can talk more about the vices and virtues as they express in your lives. We are not preaching the same old thing you may have been raised on, so it would be worth your while to be sure to look to your openness, in considering it.
It always strikes me, at the end of a session, how slowly we claw our way along, yet the pages do get written, and the lessons do pile up.
Think of yourself as sailing westward through the Straits, and perhaps you will find our progress less painfully slow. Others – ourselves at other times, also – may have following winds and clear sailing, but if you sail long enough, you sooner or later contend with pretty much any set of conditions.
Till next time, then, and thanks as always.
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
3:45 a.m. I have just spent a few minutes leafing through the past three sessions, trying to remember where we were going next, and failing. We neglected to leave a marker, last time.
You will remember, we said we would talk more about how the virtues and vices manifest in 3D lives. Isn’t that marker enough? At least, it will be, once you release unconscious expectations of control!
Is that what I’m doing? Thinking to control it?
More like, feeling you need to control it, lest there be no one at the helm. But it is not the helmsman’s responsibility to summon the wind, only to respond to it.
Always interesting to see examples of my working behind my own back.
It’s common enough. Now, let’s proceed and we might as well begin right here. The present little difficulty is an example en petite of problems that arise on a larger scale when the 3D self tries to, or feels it has to, function in ways that are properly the sphere of non-3D.
We get in over our head, you mean.
There’s no blame to be attached, not any implication of recklessness. It’s just one of those things that happen. So be aware of it.
Remembering to set my mental slide-switches to maximum receptivity, maximum focus. And immediately, I get that this is why Pride is considered the first deadly sin.
Yes if you look at it in a certain way. The assuming a greater competence than you actually have or could have: That’s pride, in this sense. We are not talking about such manifestations as pride of accomplishment or pride of position. In their place, there is nothing harmful or misleading about such things.
That is, you aren’t discussing vanity, but a misunderstanding of one’s place in the scheme of things. Or do I have it wrong?
That’s close enough. Remember, we are looking at these things as natural phenomena, not as moral failings. So, this morning you mistakenly took on something that seemed to be, but wasn’t, your responsibility, and this interfered with your doing what you really wanted to do. Is this a sign of moral turpitude, or merely of mistaken application? You see?
Lust, envy, gluttony, covetousness, anger, sloth or despair or ennui – aren’t they all going to appear natural, unavoidable, sometimes? They may be sins in the sense of missing the mark, but they are not sins in the sense of destroyers of character, unless actively embraced and considered to be good rather than failings. If there is one thing more than any other single thing that discredits Christianity and turns a helpful belief-system toxic, it is the seeing things as good and evil – which quickly degenerates further into seeing people as good and evil, rather than seeing them as desirable or undesirable, or as useful or harmful.
Yes, it isn’t discernment but condemnation that is the problem.
It is. What is more discrediting to thinking people than the concept of hell, where an all-loving God tortures souls forever? It is not only morally repugnant, it doesn’t even make sense. And it is necessary only if one looks at things through the fruit of Seeing Things As Good and Evil.
But as soon as you look at the same facts in a different light, you see that the scriptures are spelling out how these forces affect you, insofar as you experience yourselves as separate 3D individuals. Then once you extend your self-definition to something closer to the extensive network of traits that you are, the same definitions are seen in yet a different light, and they continue to shine a helpful clarifying light.
So now, turn to the cardinal virtues, and look at them in the same light as yesterday – as choices, not as mandates. As assistance, as tools, as attitudes.
As apps, I suppose the younger generation would say.
As apps, why not. So in your attempt to maximize your life, to express your potential, to grow to whatever extent you can do – and, to help heal your extended self – employ the virtues.
That italicized phrase –
Well, naturally discussions of growth and morality and health don’t ordinarily remember that your present life reflects helpfully or harmfully on many connected “past lives,” but of course it does, as they also do you. Your choices matter in terms of what you become, but they matter, too, in terms of what you help your larger being to become.
Huh! New idea, but at least at first blush, it seems reasonable. If we are here in 3D to choose and thereby decide what we will be – and at the same time who we are reverberates among all the other strands which we comprise –
Haven’t you often wondered why the universe (so to speak) should care about your own little life? Well, the answer is that there isn’t any “own little life”; you all extend in all directions – we all extend in all directions, remember; it isn’t in any way 3D and not also non-3D. So, if you want to change the world, change the people in it. If you want to change people, change yourself. Anything else is secondary. It’s easier to preach and to try to change people’s behavior, but the real work is changing (or maintaining) your self. That’s all you can do and all you need to do.
I realize that you are not saying that external works are useless; they flow from what we are.
Yes, but “They flow from what we are” amounts to, “Can a good plant give forth bad fruit?” What you are is your moment-by-moment creation; everything else flows from it, though it may also flow back into it, as a feedback loop.
So now look at how practicing the virtues – choosing to live the virtues – may have its effect.
Justice. Prudence. Temperance. Fortitude. To the degree that you live these attributes, do you not send helpful messages down the line to all your strands and all their strands? Living in faith, living in hope, living in charity of mind and judgment as well as in deed and activity – are these practices that can be futile?
No, it’s very striking, the practical light you show them in.
They always were practical. Do you think the ancient Greeks, the old Romans, would have bothered with meaningless abstractions? But wisdom disconnected from understanding does appear to be mere words. It is, in part, to help you reclaim the sense of living truth that they embody, that we have been traveling this long road. When you looked at the Gospel of Thomas, when we went through the sins and virtues, it was all necessary preparation. And of course one could always use more preparation, yet one always already has enough to hand.
I am reminded of someone’s saying that all the equipment in the laboratory is only for the purpose of turning the scientist’s gaze in the right direction.
Yes. We’re just trying to get your attention long enough for distractions to fall away, so that you can recognize and remember what you know. In a sense we are saying, “Do pay attention to the man behind the curtain!”
I presume most people will recognize the allusion to The Wizard of Oz.
We’re all about looking behind the curtain, seeing “What Is,” as best we can, and sharing the view.
So, next time?
We are still setting our context for life after 3D, remember. Today’s thoughts should help. Next time, maybe we will glance at what actually happens when one 3D life impacts another. Not necessarily as dramatic as you and Joe Smallwood at Gettysburg; maybe more like the old man’s [spiritual] healing of John Cotten as it reflected to you. So much “time” intervened. So many “lives.” Your own character was already forged and half a century of it lived. What’s the mechanism here?
And after you clear that up, we will have gone five or ten minutes and will have nothing left to say.
We can play pinochle thereafter, except you don’t know the rules and we can’t handle the cards. Checkers, maybe – and in fact, maybe we’ll talk about checkers and Joe Smallwood. Till then.
Till then, and thanks as always.