Wednesday, September 21, 2022
5:35 a.m. Gentlemen, two things came up yesterday while Jane Peranteau and Jane Coleman and I were talking, and I’m hoping you will explore with me. Setting for maximum presence, receptivity, clarity, contributing. First, can you clarify the nature and relationship of Strands and Guidance.
You straightened that out yourselves, in the course of conversation. However, it is well to remember that any one way of seeing things may be superseded by an entirely different way, without necessarily falsifying either. As usual, so much depends upon the angle of vision provided by where you stand relative to what you examine.
So, your present understanding is, as Jane Coleman pointed out, vertically oriented for Guidance, horizontally oriented for Strands. Spatial analogies, but that can’t be helped, and the idea comes across. Another way of saying it is, you regard Guidance as a higher power, Strands as peers. As a rough and ready standard, nothing wrong with it. But as you look closer, problems – or, let’s say, nuances – emerge.
I start to see that, as you say it. So much depends upon definitions.
Guidance is non-3D, surely. Yet we have pointed out that non-3D is inextricably part of 3D (and of course vice-versa) except for the purpose of analysis. Like opposite ends of a polarity, they are opposite relative to one another, like the positive and negative poles of a magnet. They are not two separate things; they are, at most, opposite ends of the same one thing.
This being so, how can your relationship – 3D-you to Guidance – be said to be vertical, with you slogging around in 3D and Guidance soaring above the fray? That’s a valid way to see things, but only one way to see them. It would be just as accurate to use a different spatial analogy and say Guidance is your far interior, your core, and 3D-you is your exterior, your surface. (Indeed, “superficial” means surface, and what could be less superficial than Guidance?)
Or, to look at the other comparison, your Strands are as non-3D as Guidance, relative to you. Living in their own living-present, unreachable by you corporeally but intimately connected spiritually – or, to put it in other terms, inaccessible by 3D and inseparable in non-3D – they are as matter-of-fact and as magical as are you yourselves.
And remember – have we mentioned this? – You’re all mind-stuff, living among mind-stuff. Where is the distinction to be drawn between your lives in 3D, ruled by the ever-moving present moment, always in connection (recognized or not) with non-3D, and with the life of any or all lives on any or all Strands that comprise you?
This is clear as you say it.
Separating into Guides and Strands is convenient, useful, true – and equally awkward, obstructive, and illusory. It’s one way of seeing things. Use it while it serves you; discard it for different scaffolding if it no longer serves you.
Yes, I get, as I write that, the Church had (has, I guess) saints and guardian angels and I don’t know what else, all spiritual beings available to help those in life. A different way of seeing things, one we’re no longer comfortable with.
The Romans and Greeks had gods; Hindus have thousands of them. Animists see them in all aspects of life. Trying to decide which way of seeing things is “right” and which is “wrong” is – from our point of view – somewhere between tedious and futile. Use what works for you; stop wasting time judging what works for others.
Frank Sinatra was quoted as saying he was for whatever gets you through the night, be it booze or religion.
That isn’t quite the same point, but close enough. So, to sum up: Guidance is a non-3D influence on your present-moment life that may be called upon consciously or may be relied upon implicitly and even unconsciously. Substitute the word “Strand” for “Guidance” and the sentence remains true. It’s time, perhaps, to replace older scaffolding with a new image.
I agree. Such as?
Raisin bread? Chocolate chip cookies?
We in 3D being the raisins or chocolate chips, and the non-3D being the surrounding matrix we exist in?
Not a great analogy, in that it posits a difference in substance. Raisins, chips, are not dough. You are welcome to come up with something more helpful.
What comes to mind is a galaxy, a nebula. If you think of the stars as very compact portions of a field of energy, the aliveness of it all seems obvious, and it seems a lesser differences between the nodule and the matrix.
Better might be a brain.
Yes! And I guess the word “nodule” sparked you as it did me, even as I wrote it. If we look at reality as one great brain, it consists of all that material – Hercule Poirot’s “little grey cells” – and within it, part of it, those uncountable number of synapses, neurons, all that.
Probably an analogy – only an analogy, remember – more suited to your present understanding of things than what you have been using until now. Less of a sense of different things cooperating; more of a sense of one thing, looked at analytically, which means separated somewhat artificially for the purpose of enhanced understanding.
This being so, how can Guidance and Strands be seen as different in essence? What need remains to distinguish one from another? You may, if it interests you, just as some people enjoy exploring genealogy, but it is not necessary to dissect your experience of guidance and inspiration, in order to employ and profit from it.
Yes, I see. Very helpful. Unexpected, too. This is not where I thought you’d go with it, but I’m glad you did. So let’s see what kind of curve ball you can throw when I ask our second question, which is: I got the sense that any one other life (not to call it a past life) might directly connect more than one present life. The answer seems obvious as I write it out – Why should Strands not string together more than one concurrent life as easily as they do consecutive ones? – but I put you the question.
You can see that the brain analogy will make the question look different. It is more three-dimensional than linear, more dynamic than static. In that, it is a closer representation.
My mind strayed to a movie I watched last night. Now I am attuned to wonder: Distraction? Unnoticed connection? But neither way does it facilitate this communication.
Not immediately, but we encourage you all to pay as much attention to what goes on along the back channels, so to speak, as on the channel you are concentrating on. This may require you to develop a talent that may seem less mindful rather than more, but if successful you will open access to parallel processing that already takes place but may be mostly unnoticed.
Einstein apparently had five or six lines of thought going on at a time, until he got older, at which time he complained that he could only hold two or three.
Holding more than one line of processing is a human ability. The fact that even one person demonstrated it would be enough to prove that. But in fact it is more commonly experienced than reported.
We’re almost at the end of an hour. My second question, more directly?
If Strands and Guidance are merely abstractions for understanding relationships, do you have any reason for thinking Strands are limited in some way that Guidance is not? Specifically, if a Strand ran through Joseph Smallwood and runs through you, do you imagine that there’s some law that says it can’t also run through another person living while you do? It isn’t physical, after all; it is, you might say, a spiritual affinity. What is to stop it from manifesting in as many people as genetics and the times allow?
Seems clear enough. Very well, great session, fast hour. Our thanks as always. Oh. Today’s theme?
“Guides, Strands, and models”?
That should work. And tomorrow’s?
The day will bring what the day brings.
Again our thanks, and see you next time.