Spending time accomplishing many little practical things is not a waste of time, is not “killing” time. Neither is doing nothing in particular. The idea that one must be continually doing something in order to be productive is a mistake rooted in the idea that one earns one’s place in the world. But you don’t earn a place; you are here by right, each of you. (Each of us, remember – for we remind you, the separation of 3D and non-3D worlds is only one of degree. The separation is no greater than the identity. That is, yes, separate, to a degree. Yes, identical, to a degree. One world, one people, so to speak.)
You do not earn your place in the world. It is a gift. You may treat that gift well or badly, but gifts do not have to be earned, and in fact can’t be earned. Strictly speaking, they can’t be deserved or undeserved. A gift is free, or it is no gift but a bargain. Therefore, do what pleases you. Do what is true to your own nature, and you will not go wrong. However, knowing what is true to your nature does not mean, “run riot,” nor “I am the only person who counts,” nor, “Follow any whim.” Just as we often ask, “Which you?” so should you ask of an impulse or a pattern, “From which ‘me’ and for what purpose?”
That will sound contradictory to many people.
Practical life will clarify it. In day to day life, there are abiding urges, purposes, and transitory ones, whims. They don’t necessarily pull in the same direction. They may cut against each other, or may represent an alternation of energies. You realize one day, you don’t feel like working on your book, nor reading. You’re feeling cooped up, and you are tempted into wandering for a couple of midday hours in the nearby woods. Is that a whim or a deeply rooted urge that is worth listening to? How can you know?
In practice, usually the rest of the pattern of our lives indicates.
What of a situation where the breaking of bounds is the best thing for you? Everything might (and, likely will) make it difficult for you to break these bounds: Does that mean that breaking them would be a good thing? A bad thing? Can you safely depend upon the world’s guidance in such things? Can you safely depend upon your own unexamined reactions?
I begin to see the point you are moving on, here. Don’t proceed in one direction only, but remember that the opposite direction has its own validity.
By all means follow your intuition, only don’t discard common sense. Wisdom lies in using both halves of your brain, logic and intuition.
How do you differentiate intuition and other non-rational impulses? How do you avoid reductionism without becoming a flake? We would like to say a word on the discernment process. A close connection to your non-3D component, with its sure access to knowledge from other mentalities, is certainly a resource to be developed. But what of the interaction within you of so many strands, be they “past lives” or tendencies? These may mesh smoothly or conflict bitterly, or anything between the two extremes. Surely you can see that this complicates the question of listening to guidance.
Sure. Carl Jung said that his anima tempted him to say that his drawing of mandalas was not science (analytical psychology) but art, and he had to insist that they were what he felt them to be. He said that if he had accepted the anima’s judgment, she might later have said, “Nonsense, they are nothing of the sort.” I take it that he was expressing something of what you are saying.
In the day he lived in, only so much could be said and conceptualized. He was doing his own bursting of bounds, personally and on behalf of his culture, and so had limits on what he could think or experience or express, as is always the case. This is why people are only as wise as their times allow them to be, and people who live in later times may surpass the insights of the giants who preceded them, even if they themselves are inherently less wise, less experienced, less learned. Too much reverence for past wisdom and accomplishment and insight may distance you from your own perhaps more germane understandings.
It is not always easy to know the difference between valid and invalid, appropriate and inappropriate, germane and irrelevant. The existence of different strands within you means you do not have a platform from which you can deliver objective judgments to yourself. You may “get carried away”; you may find yourself unable to transcend certain prejudices; you may become overcome by desires, whims, ideas that seem self-evidently true at the moment, and perhaps self-evidently false not so much later.
In short, we have no infallibility. That isn’t news.
Well, you have no infallible way to discern which impulses or biases stem from an infallible source and which do not. That’s why judgment – discernment – always comes into play. It isn’t safe to follow every whim; neither is it safe to follow every rule, internally or externally imposed. Life is more complex than that, by design. Therein lies your freedom.