Thursday, April 11, 2019
You said something that I should like to pursue. “At different times, your mind forms a differently charged field, attracting different potential and thus effectively living in a different world.” I feel like I almost understand this statement as it stands, only, not really.
It’s simple enough. Analogies always have not only limitations but unnoticed tendencies to distortion. Spatially-oriented analogies leave the unnoticed impression of being more solid, more permanent, less volatile, than the reality is. Thinking of yourselves as charged fields will lead you to other associations, more dynamic, more transient, than thinking in terms of physical movement. The idea of a polarizing or attracting electrical field will tend to have you thinking of attraction from various directions that may change quickly, rather than the straight-line movement other analogies suggest.
I get that the field you suggest changes, and as it changes attracts different kinds of things, not merely different samples of the same kind of thing. And the very vagueness of my description here ought to show that I don’t really have a handle on any of it, just an inkling.
But you were moved to ask about it, so you aren’t exactly in the dark. More like in the twilight.
Leading me to think of the movie “Twilight,” with Paul Newman and James Garner and Susan Sarandon. And that reminds me of something else. Recently in an email exchange with a friend, I noticed myself saying to him (which alerted me to the fact that I believed) that our detours are as meaningful as our pursuits of an idea or an argument. Thus, when you have someone very mentally active, probably any little thing is likely to tempt him to go off in another direction. No, let me say that more carefully.
No, let us say it more carefully. It is our interruption, after all. (We’re smiling.) The interruption we caused by using the word “twilight” served to illustrate a natural process of the mind, as we intended. But (this is aimed at your friends, Frank, as you will understand directly what we mean) be slow to decide the implications of this. Give us time to explain without pre-judging, which might result in your being unable to receive what does not fit in with what you will have decided. (This is what prejudice does, after all; it defends against revision.) If you think of things one way, certain conclusions will suggest themselves so strongly as to be seemingly self-evident. Think of them another way, or a third, and what is self-evident may be entirely different. So it is important not to create unnecessary obstacles for yourselves.
First, here is our statement. Try to receive it neutrally.
As you process life moment by moment, your mind functions as a charged field, attracting certain objects of attention. The mind attracts certain kinds of thing, and the kind, as well as the specific content, can vary from moment to moment. Through interaction, the mental state that had received the object will alter. That is, the mind will then go on to the next “thing.” If an uncontrolled process (that is, if your mind is functioning as “monkey mind”), it will be one long chain of associations without any direction or purpose. The person living in monkey mind may have a very active mental life – and likely a very active physical life – but the mind’s contributions to the life would be mere chatter, sometimes entertaining, sometimes annoying, sometimes maddening, sometimes neutral, but in no case directed by the 3D consciousness.
In such case, the 3D consciousness experiences the monkey mind in the same way it experiences the “external” world, as something that just happens, for reasons unknown, for purposes unknown, by mechanisms unknown. The monkey mind, like the external world, is not the 3D-consciousness’s doing, as far as the 3D consciousness can see. At best, the 3D person may seem to be a consumer; at worst, a prisoner. And, between the two, not all that much difference.
Objects and mind interact with each other. If it were possible to replay a day’s consciousness repeatedly, your chain of associations might begin in the same place but then would diverge, perhaps slowly perhaps immediately, because your part in the process is that you choose among the bright shiny objects that present themselves as possibilities. Thus if you train yourself to think high thoughts, or if you train yourself to think low thoughts, the paths you choose in terms of relatively free association are going to be quite different!
So it isn’t really a matter of “our” affecting “your” mental processes. We don’t and usually can’t force a card on you. We may say, in effect, “Choose this thought; the resulting chain is better for you.” But who can choose for you? Nobody. That is what you are in 3D to do: to choose. Now perhaps you can see that your choosing is not choosing among paths of action, usually, but among paths of thought, paths of association of ideas. It is about what you want to attract to yourself.
And thus is it about us interacting in advance with our external environment.
That’s a good way to put it.
If we choose different paths of mental association, the “external” world we magnetize to will be different, just as Thoreau said in Walden.
Yes, only now you have a way to see why it should be so.
[The passage, which I have cited before: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him … and he will live with the license of a higher order of being.”]
A word about “monkey mind.” There is nothing wrong with the mind functioning as an association-machine. That is how it is supposed to function. That is how you get ideas, how you get inspiration, how you move into new territory. The “wrong” is in using a hammer as a screwdriver, or in letting a high-powered car drive itself. You are there to drive it. Do so.
Which means, choose what the association-machine chews on.
Well, in practice, isn’t that what you do, directly or indirectly? If you choose a movie or a book, or if you meditate or go for a walk in soothing circumstances or surround yourself with raucous music, are you not providing alternate beginning-points for chains of association? Only, it may be done more consciously or less, and it is to your advantage to make it “more.”
And anything that gives us more control of the starting-point, or of the volume-control, or of the on-off switch, indirectly gives us more control of how we experience the external world, because the external world and our magnetized inner world are the same thing.
A little less certain and sure than the statement would suggest, but yes, that is the idea.
Hence meditation is not a goal but a halfway house.
Yes indeed. Clearing the mind is one thing. Trying to live with it empty would be another. Similarly, learning to recognize the association-machine is one thing. Trying to function without it would be another.