Thursday, May 16, 2024
4:05 a.m. Gentlemen, your choice. You said yesterday you wanted to discuss giving freely vs. charging for information we get for free. But I counted three other things you began and have not finished:
- Creating something permanent
- The universe “making up its mind”
- Life’s meaning
What’s your pleasure?
We haven’t lost track. That said, it’s good for you to keep track as well. It is a complex argument to set forth, and we’re easily side-tracked. However, it all evens out.
What we want to say about freely giving isn’t actually an interruption. It proceeds from our motivation of expansion through giving. You understand, we’re talking here about life more abundantly, not the acquisition of things or of talents or of accomplishments or of the love of others.
I am seeing the distinction ever more clearly as a distinction between self-definitions.
Very good. Yes. Life more abundantly means, expansion of who and what you experience yourself to be. It does not mean a smoother track of the life and the self-definition you have already.
Discussion of the pleasant helpful exchange with the man who was concerned for a stranger led to this. But so do so many things we have discussed over the years. Our sketching of emotion as the boundary between the known part of you (the ego-self) and the not-yet-grown-into parts (the unconscious, according to Jung, which we would say is what you are unconscious of; your unknown functioning that is also potential). The redefinition of 3D humans as communities of strands rather than as the units they seem.
Your friend John Nelson had his character in the novel say (in effect), “It’s always the same thing. They come to me to learn how to change without changing.” We would say, yes, that is the problem, seen one way. Seen another way, it is more that the idea of having to change is the problem. You don’t need to change what you are (you couldn’t anyway); you need to change which parts of yourself express, which makes it look like you changed, but in fact what changes is expression. If your life has been the living-out of ten things, and then becomes the living-out of those ten plus two more that you had previously not suspected you also were, will your expression to the 3D world not change? Yet you will still be what you were, only more so.
I think that could be said more simply.
It is usually easier to restate concisely than to feel your way into an initial expression. Feel free.
I get that you are meaning, we are always more than our idea of ourselves, and that the more selflessly we act, the more of ourselves we can come to know. I gather that this is because love, expansion, leads naturally to growth, while self-absorption merely reinforces the definition we begin with.
Stated a little too flatly, but more or less on track. It is in the nature of things that reaching out is the way to growth. Think of the children you once were. Can you remember the outflowing energy, avidly interacting with the world? The state of expectation? The free enthusiasm? All that is consistent with a default state of growth. Children expect to grow. They have no other experience of life but growth. Although they are very aware of what they learn to do, the learning isn’t the center of their attention, it is the new wonder that each year brings.
“Except you be as little children, you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven.” Is that the meaning?
That is one meaning. Obviously a grown-up cannot return to a state of ignorance, but can return to a state of innocence. You can’t go back to not-knowing; you can go back to a default state of expectation.
Ah. “Life is good. All is well.”
Every child begins with that knowing. What child ever came into the world grumbling, or depressed, or lost, or jaded? It is true, a harsh life may soon warp them, but they didn’t start that way. And neither – o grownup human reading this – did you. And you can return to that earlier state.
It is a decision, as much as anything.
Haven’t we been advising you, from the very beginning with Rita so many years ago? “All is well. All is always well.” Now see it in this new context.
Let me connect a couple of dots. I’m getting that the underlying key here is, “Life is good.” Not, “Life would be good if only,” nor “Life will be good as soon as,” but “Life is good,” period. That feeling of affirmation – somebody called it the Everlasting Yes – is the key to our growth.
Not just to your growth (which implies a future state) but also to your functioning right here, right now.
Will you allow world affairs or politics or natural disasters or tax difficulties or physical problems or relationship issues or mental stagnation – or anything – to persuade you that life is anything but good? That all is anything but well? To the extent that you allow that feeling in, you hamper your own natural flowering.
And our reaching out to others is a way to preserve that knowing?
You aren’t wrong, but we offer a caution here: Be careful not to devolve into doing good for someone in order to get something, even merit. Jesus said the person who does good and gets praised for it has had his reward. One thing he meant by that little parable is that there is a big difference for you in giving for its own sake and giving in hope of some return. The latter is still good, but it isn’t the same order of thing as the former.
Your wellbeing is in growth, always. But what does that mean?
That no matter what happens to us, we can use it.
Superficially, yes. Looked at more closely,
- Nothing “happens” to anyone. Life is not chance, no matter how it seems.
- Therefore by definition nothing “happens” by accident. You know this with one part of your mind, but connect it to this:
- Growth has patterns, possibilities. Therefore, different sequences of events (inner and outer) are part of different patterns.
- Therefore – and how many times have we said it – it is up to you to choose what you want to be, what you want to grow into.
- By 3D logic, this is a future-oriented process. But really, it is about the present, of course. Your choice is now, always. When else could it be? It will affect present, future, and past, though that may seem logically impossible. Choosing is how you create your own reality.
- “Choosing your own reality” may be restated, “Choosing your own growth path,” or “Choosing your own ‘external’ influences as you go along.”
If you will go through the Gospels reading what Jesus said and interpreting it by way of these thoughts, you will see that you were given a trustworthy and subtle guide to growth in awareness. He did not explain any of it in these words: How could he have done so? Who could have followed? It would have been only words, and inexplicable words at that. But you have the way to read him that the very apostles did not have. Use it. Do for him what you did for the Gospel of Thomas or for Bronson Alcott. Instead of criticizing (as many do), seek for the inner thought, and use it.
Enough for the moment.
Yes, thank you. Till next time.