Friday, February 17, 2023
4:25 a.m. Something inside me may be waking up from a nap. I got up, unable to sleep more, but with my back aching, and came to the desk to sit in the dark, not wanting to wake Lila, sleeping on the futon on the soft blanket I thought she would like. After a bit she woke up, jumped up on the desk, sat on my lap and (because I was still sitting in the dark), curled up and went back to sleep. Sitting there, I eventually felt something wake up, as I said.
I remember somebody describing this experience of something inside waking up. Gurdjieff? Ouspensky, more likely. And of course it may not be the same thing. But – symptomatic of waking up from a long nap – I feel inclined for a conversation about it.
Guys, how about it?
Instead of metaphors like “inside me,” you might reframe it according to your understanding in light of what you have learned over the past few years.
I get the idea, but I don’t know how to think of it clearly. I get that you want me to relate it to the fact that I am a community of Strands.
Sooner or later, that understanding will naturally readjust the way anyone sees anything in life. Every once in a while, you will have a chance to do some thinking about it.
Thinking as opposed to merely observing.
Well –
I didn’t think that would call for thought on your part. Springboard for something more complex, I take it? Or for a boatload of complicated provisos?
It’s an opportunity, let’s put it that way. We could look at the nature of one’s daily mental activity.
I’m game. It’s interesting how clear I feel, at the moment. What really happened? Let’s keep it to me, my experience, this moment. That ought to pinpoint it, shouldn’t it? And we can generalize from there.
Certainly we could do that. We’ve done it that way often enough. Very well, what’s this feeling you have, that you are again awake in a way you have not been for some days?
It isn’t as simple as my having coffee now and not having had it before. I gave it up for a week or ten days, but reintroduced it several days ago, and I doubt that strictly physical cause had the effect of waking up whatever woke up.
Let’s look at it.
- You have felt, not disconnected from us, but disinclined to communicate.
- You have become discontented with merely receiving – that is, with merely reading and viewing – yet have felt no urge to write or draw.
- You have had an uncommon (to you) urge to do the practical things involved in life, straightening, clearing away clutter.
- You have been enjoying your interaction with your neighbors, and, now, their cat.
- You have been thinking about your legacy and trying to envision the path ahead for your remaining time. If not books, in other words, what?
- You have in effect felt like you were on vacation, absent an urge to get something done, to produce, to use your time.
- Your reconnection with your son – “out of the blue” in one sense, but following internal thought, pondering, invisible re-weaving – is reconnecting you to parts of yourself that are not connected logically, but These effects by their nature will become obvious only over time, and in unsuspected ways.
We could continue, but that is probably enough. Now, can you see that this listing silently assumes – as in practice you all do assume – that they have in common one consciousness, one individual in 3D life? Nothing we said is untrue or exaggerated, but see how differently they look when considered in the context not of one individual unit, but of many cooperating societies functioning as an individual unit.
I presume it is not as simple as one different Strand per item listed. That wouldn’t even make sense. Why would one Strand be enjoying communicating with David, and a different one be enjoying the cat, and a third be almost tired of reading?
No, that way wouldn’t make sense, because for one thing, it replaces the concept of one individual with the concept of many little individuals.
I can see the sun lightening the eastern sky, so to speak. I still don’t have it, but I can feel the understanding quietly nearing. (Stupid way to put it, I realize.)
Try thinking of yourselves as a balance of forces. You are always balancing, and the “external” world’s influence – including the times – is always perturbing you, requiring you to rebalance moment by moment. We don’t mean this in any dramatic way, merely the unnoticed background to your lives, as when you are in a canoe and you continuously, unconsciously, adjust your balance in harmony with the little shifts caused by the water.
This is true in your daily lives, continual unconscious (and sometimes conscious) rebalancings. But if it is true in your life, is it not true in the lives of each of your Strands? From your viewpoint, each of them is only – (only!) – internal, not also external, but that doesn’t mean that their rebalancing does not affect yours.
Hmm. Hence so many “unconscious” factors that influence our lives?
What do you think complexes are? Or ingrained results of trauma? Or unshakable habits? For that matter, your very virtues or skills or predilections may have more to do with various unperceived balancings than with anything concerning your willpower or even desires.
We are so much more complicated than we can realize.
“It’s all one thing”: Of course it’s complicated. But, “As above, so below”: Although you can’t grasp it all, you can draw appropriate analogies and get a good sense of it.
So what is our illustrative analogy here?
Suppose you try this one. What if your overall self –
Ah, but I heard you get caught on the question of where would “our overall self” be considered to end.
That’s right. Too firm a statement might mislead. OT1H, all is one. OTOH, you need to have some graspable subassembly to be able to examine it at all. So let us say, merely as an approximation, that your overall self comprises only the Strands represented in your horoscope. Yes, those Strands connect to others which connect to others, but as a workable model, the Strands most active within you will do.
Something like the way we used to think of “past life” interactions.
Exactly like “past lives,” because that is what “past lives” are, Strands.
So, taking you to be your conscious awareness (“yourself” as you commonly experience yourself) plus the Strands that are most activated by your life, what if any given moment may profitably be described as a mood of the larger being?
I was following you until you tacked on “of the larger being.”
Well, in effect each life constellates a larger being; in effect, each combination of 3D consciousness and the Strands active within it are a new being.
Ah. The crystallized unit?
Yes, or rather yes assuming it crystallized. Even if it doesn’t, it functions as one in the meantime.
That doesn’t make any sense. How can something function “as if” a larger unit, then cease to function?
How is that different from a 3D body coming into existence and then going out of existence, though its component elements (its chemical ingredients, for example) remain?
Hmm. So for larger beings it is a question of achieving immortality or merely dying?
That’s a big “merely,” but yes. In a way, remember. We can’t explain every side-issue at length and still make our point.
So – a moment as mood?
Remembering that your lives are mind-stuff and not adventures in some “rocks in space” theme park, you will realize that everything is way more fluid than appears at any given moment. In that sense, “Life is but a dream.”
That cries out for more, but it has been an hour, and I’m getting tired, which affects reception, I know. Shall we continue another time?
As you wish.
I feel like saying, “Welcome back,” but probably you should be saying it to me.
Not at all. We didn’t go anywhere, you didn’t go anywhere. Where would either of us go? There’s nothing wrong with putting your attention to other things.
Or yours?
We’ll talk another time.
Okay. Thanks for all this, as usual.