Thursday, November 7, 2024
6:15 a.m. I’m not sure I quite made the point, in yesterday’s ILC gathering, that our reaction to the election results is valuable chiefly not as an indicator of coming attractions but as an indicator of our idea of coming attractions. If we are filled with fear, or joy, or mixed feelings, or whatever – it is the feelings that are real, and that are valuable to us as illuminators of part of ourselves of which we may not be very conscious. If people are in fear, the things they fear may or may not be, or become, real – but what is real right now is the fear itself, and it is always worthwhile to know what we usually cannot know.
But I am seeing that what is obvious to me may not be coming out of my pen all that obviously. You guys want to take a crack at it?
The concept is not complicated, but the understanding of it may be impeded until people remember that they themselves are real; the 3D world and the events and their own body and life in 3D are only somewhat real. That is, the events are shadows; the feelings they reveal within you are substance.
Yes, that says it more clearly, thanks.
Some will think you are wishing the world away, or, let’s say, are defining it away. But until the distinction is made between 3D world as theater and your life in 3D as reality, shadow is always going to be taken for substance. It is only “common sense,” after all.
Than which there is nothing more misleading, sometimes.
Of course. Common sense reflects the accepted understanding, and has no way to get beneath that understanding. In face, common sense is the chief obstacle, often, to penetrating beneath the deceptive surface of things. It is adjusted to a certain way of seeing things. Why would it want to encourage “nonsense” or – at best – a problematic way of rearranging the mental formations?
Any advice today for people who are not happy with the elections? Or, for that matter, for whose who are?
We subscribe to your mother’s saying, “Don’t holler before you’re hurt.” And for those currently traveling hopefully, we remind you of the perils of counting your chickens before they hatch. Life in general usually provides less than it seems likely to deliver – but that is less of evil as well as less of good. Don’t take counsel of your fears, but don’t let yourself be discouraged if the onset of the millennium is delayed. A mental construct easily projects expected consequences in a simplified and exaggerated form, casting shadows on the walls: goblins or angels.
Naturally life is not going to measure up to either the fears or the promise. Life is full of cross-purposes, internal contradictions, compromises, evasions, constructive adaptation, a million things. You all know this, for the good and sufficient reason that this is you. You, not that “external” soap opera that seems so self-evidently real, are life. The elections of 1828 – how real are they now? Yet the souls who were shaped in those days persist, so which was realer, the event or the spectator? Not quite that simple, but almost.
Yet the event is not meaningless, either.
Of course it is not. But it doesn’t mean only what it may seem to mean. Vox populi is the voice of God, you will remember.
Interestingly, in that little pause I suddenly remembered how Lincoln would have the confidence of the common people, and how they would sustain him.. Trump is no Lincoln, but I can imagine that what we are seeing is the people, stubbornly trying to get their government back.
And, you see, that is you getting caught up in the “external” drama and temporarily forgetting to keep yourself at the center of your life.
Is it?
Well, all right, it is and it isn’t. It is, in that you are looking at the social situation as it appears to be, rather than remembering that you are integrally connected to anything you can see. It isn’t, in that what you are seeing does exist on its own regardless of how it reflects yourself to yourself. Both.
So the point is not the situation or even my own personal situation as it may be reflected to me by my reaction to the situation. It is that I am in danger of forgetting my relation to life.
“Danger” is too strong a word, but temptation, yes. Any strong soap opera has the potential to suck you into the drama. In fact, that is what it is supposed to do. But this can be either productive or not, depending upon how you get sucked in.
If you lose yourself in a tale of victims and villains, and high drama, you lose an opportunity to remember to learn what it may teach you if you apply it to your own life, your own being. But if you lose yourself in the drama while being aware of your reactions to it, you may learn something.
Decades ago, I decided that good fiction does not leave us unchanged, but teaches us something about ourselves and the world, and if it doesn’t, it is the equivalent of chewing gum.
And so, life. If you follow the story line told by outside events and do not relate that story line to yourself, you are missing the point.
I can hear people thinking, “Escapism.”
Ironic, isn’t it? What could be more escapist than ignoring the deep currents of one’s own life because of the distracting allure of external events? There is no reason to follow or to not follow current events: That is a matter of taste and priorities. But what matters is being conscious of your life, being aware of your situation, being alert to your opportunities, and you can’t do that very well if your attention is elsewhere.
Well, thanks for all this.
You have perhaps forgotten that for years, you would say to yourself, “Life is good.” Could it be that the reason you have forgotten about repeating it is that the message sunk in?
Quite possibly. It seems self-evidently so, to me. Makes it harder to get into a blue funk, crying, “Woe is me,” or “The end is near!” One sighs for all that lost drama. 😊 Till next time.