Sunday, November 6, 2022
4:15 a.m. Perhaps a little more abut the lives of the artists who see through the scrim of 3D life, yet work hard through it? As opposed to those who take the reality of the world for granted? Presence, receptivity, clarity.
It is a great mistake people make, when they view other ways of life with contempt. Misunderstandings are inevitable, but charity toward the uncomprehended is a better attitude than contempt. You are all in it together; none of you is markedly better than the rest of you, appearances to the contrary. None of your attitudes or your ways of understanding or your conclusions or your efforts or lack of efforts is “right” and others “wrong.” So, in considering this topic, bear it in mind: The strange (to you) is not therefore the “odd” or “eccentric” or “perverse.” Really, you must avoid judgment in the sense of condemnation, though not in the sense of discernment.
The reason we begin with this elementary reminder is because there is nothing more common than people unconsciously assuming that theirs is the obviously correct way to see life, and therefore all others are less correct, ranging from the self-indulgently wrong to the merely misdirected. We cannot emphasize too strongly how crippling to understanding it is, contempt.
All right.
One might ask, What good does it do life, to have 3D souls living while not believing in what they are living? Why is it necessary, or even helpful at all, that some experience life as a treadmill, and others that –
I get the idea.
You should. And there are those who seem contemned to toil without belief, as others toil without reward.
I am reminded of Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Leaden-eyed,” which went something like this:
Not that they toil, but toil so dreamlessly.
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap.
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve.
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.*
I have always felt the pity of it.
We can expand the inquiry to include that aspect, as well, the dulled, beaten-down endurance that in some respects is the opposite of the poet’s, and in some respects complements it.
Don’t, if it will divert from the thing you originally set out to discuss. Do, if it will not.
Well, consider the range involved. Those who see beyond appearances on one end of the scale, those who see only appearances (and not even meanings within appearances), at the other. Can you see that these help illumine the nature and fate of all, including the great majority who live within the limit of these extremes?
Once again, we remind you that reality is not “things in space” but mind-stuff spinning dreams in the guise of solidity. If you do not hold this underlying reality in mind, you will become misled at some pint by apparent contradictions and constraints and impossibilities. Plato knew things Aristotle never made sense of.
Only, we can’t contemn Aristotle either, according to you.
We smile. Well, you’re listening. But, humor us: Follow our argument assuming that Platonic Substances are realer than atoms.
Go on, then. I do, of course.
If you remember that you are all souls constructed of non-physical components, living connected (consciously or otherwise) to the non-3D at every moment, and if you remember that every “individual” life is not individual at all, but communal in two senses (subassemblies, so to speak, and Strands), where is the excuse for considering some people to be morons and others geniuses, some fully alive and others barely human? Yet this is exactly what you seem to see.
It is. The paradox of it never struck me till you just pointed it out. It is as if we are seeing gradations of the fundamental materials. Yet, the differences are real, we see them every day.
It is another variation on the theme. Differences among people are only somewhat real.
That’s really striking. It’s humbling, in a way, realizing that I have been taking for granted that some are more worthy than others, because that’s how it looks.
Did Jesus or the Buddha ever give you an excuse to think that some are more worthy than others?
That’s what’s humiliating, to see that I haven’t been treating that as a fact.
Your actions have perhaps been better than your assumptions, but yes, this is a very common failing, thinking that whatever you are is the norm, and variations are a falling-off from that perfection, or perhaps a not-yet-attained improvement. But life is not an assembly line, and it does not employ nor require quality-control mechanisms. All life is good. All manifestations are good. Everything is as somewhat-real as everything else, and has its purpose in the dream, or could not manifest.
I remember smiling years ago, when I was wondering if a non-3D intelligence would find it hard to live a life in which the 3D had Downe’s Syndrome or was retarded, and you said, “It’s not that different.” I took that to be a subtle dig at our assumptions of superiority, as well as a straight statement of fact.
Expand it now. Just as you are all sinners and all God’s children, or all ailing and all in perfect health, or all fragmentary and all complete and whole and perfect, so you are all made of the same cloth, so to speak. You aren’t divided into premium and generic. Regardless of your opinions and preferences, you are all manifestations of the same processes within the same rough parameters. There isn’t any excuse for self-satisfaction nor for abasement. You are all – we are all – part of the same all-that-is, we remind you. (The more you hold in mind assumptions and rules of thumb such as “As Above, So Below,” the easier it becomes to see connections usually unnoticed, and draw conclusions from them.)
But the appearances are quite convincing. Who would equate Himmler and Einstein? Stalin and Lincoln? Drunkard and mystic? Criminal thugs and EMTs?
Those are very convincing differences. Nobody can say that 3D Theater does things by halves.
All right, I see that. Still, it is just those appearances that convince us.
Would we need to bother to warn you against appearances that were too flimsy to convince?
Point. To return to the question of artists living while seeing through life –.
That is one stance, as activism is another. Neither is truer, neither is absolutely more useful or desirable. Mostly the difference is in how things look when considered only within a 3D context. That’s where tragedy is contained; that’s where absolute judgments are most easily rendered. You may consider the 3D context as a cutting-off of extremes, so that one’s consideration ceases at either end of the scale, and only the theater stage remains within view. There really isn’t a need to say more; it’s all contained in this paragraph. However, if people require more, let them ask a question and we will attempt to respond to it.
Today’s theme?
“Deceptive differences,” perhaps.
Our thanks as always.
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* Not quite. “Starve,” not “toil.” The full poem:
Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.