A little more than two years went by after the last weekly session with Rita, and then we did another series of ten sessions in the Monroe Institute’s black box, with both Skip Atwater and Rita Warren in the control room.
This time I am posting one post per session, so that you will be able to read any given session at once rather than waiting as previously for further sections to be posted. This is the first posting of ten.
Edited transcript of a PREP session in the Bob Monroe Lab at TMI held Tuesday May 4, 2004, beginning 9: 30 a.m., Skip Atwater at the controls, Rita Warren accompanying him, Frank in the black box.
Skip: Okay, I’m going to skip right over to the focus 10 frequency. [long pause]
Frank: It’s hard to describe what I’m seeing here. A bunch of cars outside a fast-food place, and I’m conceptually running my hand from right to left over a ribbed piece of metal, I don’t understand it. [pause]
Skip: Sometimes in these states it’s not so easy to figure out or analyze, but you can simply let go and ask guidance, “what is this experience?”
Frank: Mm-hmm. [pause] It’s connected with the series of classes I took with Michael Grosso; that’s where we went to eat afterwards. [pause] Strong sensations in my palms, now. [long pause] I’ve already checked in with Bertram [English monk from the 1200s] and Joseph [Egyptian priest from long ago], just because I like their energy. Different kinds of monks.
Skip: All right, as we move on to the next set of frequencies, it’s been suggested that you might want to pick up where you left off before [in the series of PREP session in late 2000] with the concept of “a place to stand.” Now a place to stand. So I’m going to make the frequency changes and just see if this is an area you’d like to investigate.
Frank: Gentlemen, we’re at your mercy. What’s your pleasure today? [pause] I remember that very well. [pause]
A sense of being a statue. Like that statue of George Washington, standing, just very much himself a pillar. [long pause]
[TGU] There is a stylized movement, gesture, pose in Egyptian statues in which the right foot is always a step forward, although the person is not walking. They’re in a standing position, and their right foot is forward. And this is a symbol of – well, moving forward, always from the right side. In other words, — from your place in which you stand, you move into the world. You interact with the world from where you stand. It is never the case that the left foot is forward, which would indicate having your stance in the world and moving forward inside. It can’t work that way. You always start from where you are, and move out.
The use of George Washington is the symbology of the man of very strong character, whose character, whose composition, was the message. He wasn’t a great intellect, he wasn’t particularly skilled in this or that, in terms of statecraft, but he was – integral. He was himself, he was a known quantity. A mistake to think of him as simple, he was complex but he was unified. It is from being unified and putting your right foot forward that you change the world.
Those statues also showed no sign of movement, although the foot was advanced, because the implication was, you are remaining while moving. You are firmly placed, while moving. And so in a sense not moving at all. [long pause]
This is the time finally in which people’s inner and outer selves must become coherent, must coincide, or the dissonance will shake them to pieces. It is for this time that you all came here. [pause]
Ready for questions.
Skip: [long pause] You’ve done a good job of laying the foundation of setting a stance for moving forward, stepping forward with your right foot, moving into — something. As I adjust the frequencies, is there information about that which we are moving into?
Frank: We’re ready for questions about anything you want to talk about.
Skip: [pause] Describe the world that we move into when we step forward.
Frank: You are moving into a world in which the difference between inner and outer is significantly lessened, because your ability to create is more rapid and the time lag between creation-thought and creation-effect is seriously diminished. Therefore everything gets a little chaotic until you learn how to use it. You have been in a prolonged – from your point of view – training-wheels session in which you have begun to learn to manifest but it has been inconsistent, it has been slow, and it has had gaps in it. But that was as good as anything, because it helps you to learn to do it, before it becomes overwhelming. Now that you’ve gained more skill, and more experience, and just had the habit, of manifesting what you want, now everything gets ratcheted up, of course.
There’s a reason for this, and that is, this is the next step that we’ve been talking about. And you’re in the middle of that step, as we said. So you will not be living in a world in which one’s inside and one’s outside can be discordant without it causing great strain on the person themselves. This is not a good age coming for hypocrisy, or pretense, or self-deceit, or self-division, you see. And this is a good thing, and it’s a very productive thing; you’ll all enjoy it more. But it will seem an entire change in ground-rules and that’s always a disconcerting thing, particularly for those who have no idea that ground rules can change and will see not a change in rules but will see the disruption and the dissolution of all structure. You see, to them it will look like, everything’s coming apart.
Well, when a new thing comes together, an old thing does come apart, but it’s not chaos, it’s just change, it’s restructuring. [pause] Parenthetically, this is one reason why the increased interest in religion in your day, because on the one hand people are looking for certainty; on the other hand, people are looking, and finding, in scriptures, the keys, the clues, that are helping them to surf this transition, you see.
Skip: I can see much in this time of this chaos you speak of as we move towards creation of a new way of being. Is it necessary to – I use the word “suffer – the chaos?
Frank: Hmm. An interesting choice of words. It’s necessary to experience it, it’s not necessary to experience it as suffering. Someone who is white-water rafting will be in a chaotic situation which is very enjoyable unless they’re terrified. Okay?
Skip: Yes, that’s understandable. So it IS necessary to move through the chaos, but one chooses the way in which they might experience that.
Frank: Yes, but it’s also true that the choice is not necessarily on a conscious level. It’s more like they choose their level of being, and their level of being determines whether they will experience it as terror, creation, wonder, great joy, some combination of all those. That’s determined by where your state of being is when you hit the rapids. And where your state of being is, is partially dependent on prior choice, consciously, but only partially. [pause] We can say more if you want.
Skip: I understand what you’ve been saying. There are many that see this period of turmoil as we move towards the creation of a new way of being, they see this turmoil as a permanent state of being, they don’t see themselves moving through this, but they see themselves as being trapped by or being subject to this. It takes on a meaning for them as an all-important aspect — their now-ness, their always-ness – as opposed to seeing it as something to move through.
Frank: We would propose as a very close analogy the years of being a teenager, because from a steady, stable platform of being a child, one goes through shall we say braided chaos. You know, many different streams that intertwine, all involving change, all involving turmoil, and it becomes chaotic, and at the end of it one does not come out of it a child who has experienced turmoil; one comes out of it an adult, or the beginnings of an adult, anyway, who has experienced the necessary turmoil to come from childhood. It is the experience of having lived through the turmoil and been transformed by it that makes adulthood possible.
So, the same thing here. It isn’t that they will always be in turmoil, but it also isn’t that they will be who they are now on the far end of it. If it were, it would be useless.
Skip: That is a very good analogy. And while in the teenage years —
Frank: It seems to go on forever.
Skip: Yes. And it seems to be all there is.
Frank: Mm-hmm. Now, to the degree that a teenager can be in the now without being overwhelmed by the chaos, they will have rich, deep, textured experiences. To the degree that chaos overwhelms their ability to enjoy it, they will have less. To the degree that their awareness that the teenage years are only short and that therefore it’s just a matter of getting through them, they will have less. You see? It’s a balance of being in the now and at the same time holding the sense that the now won’t be like this forever. [pause] It’s not a question of wishing anything away, or enjoying it with gritted teeth, waiting til it ends. It’s a question of – surfing.
Skip: Yes, another good analogy. Is this the under-standing, the place to stand, that Frank remembers?
Frank: [pause] Well, when we finished the last session, when we gave him a place to stand, which he did experience, we were saying more “instead of being on shifting sands and seeing always the flow, now here’s a place where you know where you are, you know who you are, you have a sense of what you are and what you’re here doing. You see, it wasn’t like that was a standing place to not move from, of course, nor did any of you interpret it that way, but it was–
His mental makeup is such that it’s much easier for him to see flow than solidity. It’s much easier for him to see transience and transition than to see any moment of rest or any stability within the transition. So we were sort of underlining that in fact he had a place to stand. [pause]
That may not be clear. We’ll put it a different way. If one were surfing, one’s attention might be more on the wave than on the surfboard, in which case it would be harder to stay on the surfboard. Or it might be more on the surfboard than on the wave, in which case it would be hard to stay on the wave. The trick is to be on the wave, surfing the wave – which means attentive to it and responding to it – and at the same time remembering that one is on a surfboard, a solid place that has to be taken into account. [laughs] Perhaps that didn’t clarify anything but, so much for analogy.
[pause] The place we gave him to stand is that he wasn’t wrong. (That is, not wrong morally, wrong-incorrect.) That he wasn’t misinterpreting, that he wasn’t making it up, that he wasn’t hoping for something that wasn’t real. The place that we gave him to stand was “yes, this is the way you thought it was.” Or well, not quite the way he thought it was, but what he hoped was real was indeed real. That in a way is the place we gave him to stand.
Skip: [long pause] These analogies that you’ve been sharing with us seem clear when applied not only to world events, but we’re wondering if they apply to Frank’s life right now, and the things he’s been experiencing right now.
Frank: Well, sure, but – your lives too. There is not a meaningful distinction between world events and individual events, oddly enough. We know it looks like it, but if you consider that the whole world is a projected thought, and that you are a subset of that projected thought, there can’t really be a distinction. Now it could be that World War II is going on outside and you are in a quiet place tending your garden, but you are tending your garden within the context of World War II.
However, we understand the more limited way in which you meant the question, but we thought it was worthwhile to mention that you are where you are, at the time that you are, and there cannot be any accident-ness about it. You know, everything being a part of everything, you can’t have a thread that’s not a part of the tapestry and is still a part of the tapestry.
Now, in the restricted sense that you meant it, you’ve seen his rapid ability to move and change. Again, we would say, change and movement is realer to him than stasis, or even stability. So [laughs] at any given time in his life, you’re going to find that he’s right in the middle of some big change. It may or may not appear. No, not some big change, some – continued flow, let’s put it that way.
Skip: Yes, that makes sense, and I want to thank you for speaking to the lack of difference between what we perceive as the physical and what we perceive as our personal world, or our own lives, for they are reflections, one of the other. We were just wondering if there was a special message for Frank.
Frank: Well, reminders never hurt, and a reminder that every thread is part of the tapestry doesn’t hurt. But you yourselves are integrally part of this transition that’s taking place, and we thought it as well to remind you, because it’s always possible for people to remove themselves from a context because they think they’re observing it, forgetting that they’re also interacting with it. Not only Frank in the black box, but anything.
Skip: [pause] Yes, and thank you for bringing that up once again.
Frank: [long pause] A repeated sense of the cloisters, in that abbey on Iona. Oh, I see, it’s also a metaphor. Cloisters are an open space, like a garden, more like a lawn, really, enclosed on all four sides by walls that keep the outer world separate. A cloister provides a protected space that is yet open to the sky. This is a metaphor for individuals as well as for your lives.
You see, that metaphor can be used many ways. As individuals you are one inward-facing consciousness. In the life that you create is one inward-facing (in the sense of having external boundaries) part of the world, it’s like a bubble in the ocean. And the metaphor will repay contemplation and expansions. In the absence of cloisters there can be no – we’re toying with the word concentration, but that’s not exactly the right word, and we’re looking around trying to find one. Cloisters, you see, are open to infinite inspiration; they’re closed to mundane disturbance. Let’s put it that way. Your life, your internal life, should be a cloister which renews your spirit. The pattern of your external life should be a cloister which provides you a place to be yourself amidst others.
The cloister has no connotation of a walled fortress. It has, rather, the – soap-bubble wasn’t a bad analogy either, except that it’s not open at the top. A cloister is a protected, open space. As you live in cloisters, you don’t necessarily live in cloisters, you return to cloisters, you know. You go there for renewal and then you return. So it’s not a hiding from the world, either, it’s a periodic seclusion, a place to renew oneself.
[pause] It is tranquil, it is enclosed, it is open to the sky, it is green with new life. Occasionally it has a tree in the center as a central pillar, so to speak, to the sky, and in this you find the metaphor for your central spirit, for the you-ness of you. You know we have said that we regard individuals as convenient fictions. One could almost say that this is the plot that holds together the fiction. That analogy can’t be pushed too far, but do remember the cloisters.
Skip: Thank you, as you were speaking I was able to envision the concept of cloister quite well, and it had a lot of meaning for me personally. It was a good communication. I’d like you to explore the concept of – obviously two or more cloisters share the same enlightenment from spirit, from above, and yet because of their cloistering nature are able to experience individuality and separateness one from the other while still sharing the same radiation from above.
Frank: You’re listening very well, because the next point is that a cloister may be shared by many, actually, at the same time. They are sharing in silence. One could have perhaps half a dozen monks walking around in the cloisters, hardly aware of each other, or rather aware as background but not disturbing each other. But bear in mind that the cloister is physically adjacent to the cathedral, or to the large church, or the abbey, whatever it would be, in which individuals, so-called, gather in great numbers, perhaps in hundreds, occasionally in thousands, to offer joint worship which, at best, is joint – hmmm.
This is a larger concept to describe than we thought when we blundered into it here. Whereas the cloister is an individual sort of regathering his forces, the joint worship, the joining of consciousnesses–but more the joining of heart-energy–is a connection, an extension among themselves and at the same time each of them is extending, as they would say, to God. In other words, they’re extending upwards, to the infinite, to the – wait.
We’re attempting to do this external from Christian terminology because that terminology is more or less dead for your time. In your time you need the same reality described as consciousness, not because the reality is changed but because your ability to perceive, and the emotional connotations and the meanings of the words themselves have all changed, so that “consciousness” is alive to you where “worship,” as an example, is not.
So to put it in consciousness terms, the believers meet in a shared space, they recognize their joint humanity, which implies partaking in the same larger consciousness. That larger consciousness has attributes such as omniscience, omnipresence, etc., that have been ascribed to God. In fact we’re doing very little except walking around the concept of God, for the reasons that we already stated. If you will look at the medieval way of looking at the world, and re-translate it into modern understandings, to strip it from the connotations that have become superstition-alized (if that’s a word) you will see that they were closer to you than either of you is close to say the Renaissance. The reason being, this is a change in emphasis from the rational and the conscious logical thought as final arbiter, and a change in polarity over to the awareness (as opposed to thought) as final arbiter. Those people were opening their hearts, opening their awareness. Their logical concepts may have been quite alien to you, but it hardly matters. The awareness was quite close to where you are today, and where you will be even more so shortly, as you work through the rapids.
We know this is a little long-winded. We are making another polarity between the cloisters in which the individual experiences the connection to the infinite – the divine, if you wish – on the one hand, and on the other hand the community experiences not only their connection to the infinite but their connection to each other. The danger in a cloister is that one may forget the world. The danger in a cathedral is that one may forget the infinite. Okay? Long-winded, we know, but — that’s the way it goes.
Skip: In the way you ended that, I grasped your first statement, that in a cloister the individual may forget the world, and I thought I understood it, and then I was puzzled by the statement in the cathedral one may forget the infinite.
Frank: Well, you see, in the presence of your fellow individuals, their physical sensory presence may overwhelm your awareness of the depth within you. That’s why the Mass was invented. Whatever mystical rites are invented are invented in order that a large community may at the same time be experiencing connection with a non-sensory reality.
You don’t have people in a cathedral in a black box. The black box is closer to a cloister than to a cathedral. And we don’t mean this facetiously at all. In a cathedral, you have sensory input all over the place. Now, in the middle ages, they learned to put in stained glass because the effect of the colors was overwhelming to people who didn’t have so brightly colored a world. Not that kind of color, the dark blues, the dark reds shining in. It was a great sensory input. So is incense. So is chanting. So is group song – choirs, in other words. Now all of that is structured by a Mass which is a ballet, so to speak; it is a structured, familiar, meaningful, non-rational event. And all that was designed and was executed in order to assist people who were in a very different place than you are today. It was using the senses to transcend the senses. That’s perhaps the easiest way to say it.
They didn’t have the sense of an individual world within them that your modern times have. That’s been one of the developments. They were a simpler people And the sensory manipulation involved in the Mass helped create the new consciousness which eventually created the individuals of the Renaissance which repudiated it. But that’s a longer story, we just throw that in for–. You do understand now what we mean by the temptation in the cathedral? The temptation is to be bound to the senses.
Skip: Yes, and especially emphasized by your now use of the word temptation, which was not included in your explanation. But I heard what you were saying in that, although these different things were created from, as the years rolled by it also became an entrapment, and being in the cathedral, where you were then entrapped by your senses there, and my original question is, what do you mean, the danger of the cathedral is to forget God, to forget spirit? And I believe you said it’s because of the entrapment of the sensory impression in the cathedral, of how overwhelming and dramatic it is to the senses, which was designed as an impact impression for the middle ages, also can be an entrapment to forget spirit.
Frank: Now, the Protestant Revolution made the mistake, in stripping away what they could see became superstitious, they made the mistake of stripping away the cloisters.
Well, “mistake.” From our point of view. In terms of process, what it did was produce several centuries of extreme emphasis on logic and mind and rationality as opposed to feeling or intuition. Perhaps we shouldn’t say mistake but we should say either detour or possibly, even necessary detour. But the cloisters and the cathedral are two polarities for the individuating person. Most of the parishioners, of course, never set foot in the cloisters. Nor would they benefit from it.
Skip: You spoke about the possibility, a few moments ago, when I brought up my understanding of the individual cloisters providing a common view from above, and yet an individualistic view from within the cloister and a way to separate one from the other, and then you suggested that there was a way in which that experience could be shared, however. And that’s what started the most recent lesson. What came to mind is an experience that we have today, which is sometimes referred to as a unity experience, reaching a point in consciousness where we have a brief understanding of the interconnectedness. Is this modern way of coming together something that they experienced in medieval times by gathering together …
[change sides of tape]
Frank: … for the average person, because the average person has no interest in cloisters, and cannot really benefit from them. What you are describing, this perhaps momentary sense of unity of all, is not so much your reaching out to others, as the basis for reaching out for others. In other words, it reminds you, “yes we are all one,” and then you in your external clothing in a body, have to interact with your fellows in such a way that reflects that understanding, and that is what is passed. By what you do –
No. Having acquired the understanding that all is one, you then are changed. Your changed being then interacts with others, and it may be having lunch with them, it may be giving them a ride in a car, it may be just a casual conversation that you never think of again, but your changed being will change the nature of your interactions with all others, and you cannot help it if you wanted to – not that you would want to.
We’re saying only that your experience of unity is equivalent to what could happen in the cloisters, but even if it happened in the cloisters, their bringing it to the world depended upon them carrying it in their body, in their person, and having it radiate to others. Not preaching to others, or teaching others, but just by what they were. Not that they couldn’t preach or teach.
Skip: Yes, I think I understand. If they were to have the unity experience in their individual cloisters, the purpose or the value in that was not to return there just to have that nice fuzzy experience, but to objectify that, to make it part of the manifest life that they, when they left that experience, would bring to the parishioners themselves.
Frank: To all around them, not just the parishioners. But yes, that’s right. And it couldn’t help [do] it, really. Now, your layman in the cathedral can have that same unity experience and it would be in a different way. That is, given that chances are they’re a simpler person, they will express through the heart — which is wonderful! The ideal of a church is to produce people who even in an interim level are changed to the degree that they also change others by what they are. That isn’t the reason for it, but it’s a necessary side-effect.
A shorthand would be to say “to produce better people, to help people to be better versions of themselves.” However you want to put it.
Skip: Another avenue of thinking that was stirred from your lesson was thinking about cloisters or what I might call fractal cloisters that we as humanity may have – nationalism, community, family are ways in which units form together to relate to other units with shared sense of values. A couple or a family or a community or a nation seems to have those same parameters.
Frank: Well – well, you may have heard this before, but “yes and no.” We would really say that a nation is a different order of things, because it’s more of an abstraction. No one has ever seen a France, or a United States. Nor can they, really. It doesn’t exist, in a way. It sounds silly to say a nation doesn’t exist, but, start from yourself as an individual. You relate one on one to a spouse or a loved one of any kind: child, parent, whatever. You may relate to a community. And the more you relate to the community, the stronger the community feeling you have. That is, the more dimensions that community has for you. You are part of a political unit called a county or a city and a state and a nation, but those are not the same kinds of interactions that you have on a human level. Now, we’re not at all saying you can dispense with them or they’re not needed – although –.
No, we’re going to drop that right there. We’re not going to say they’re not needed, we’re going to say they’re not the same order of being as the community between yourself and anyone you love and deal with directly. You may have quite warm feelings about your city, you may feel fiercely patriotic about your country, but it is not the same order of thing as what you can feel for another person or persons. An abstract idea of a bunch of people is not the same as people.
So if you’re in a country of 250 million people, you cannot relate to that country the way that you relate to any one given person, or any small group of people – or even a large group of people – that you’re interacting with directly. This is a very common mistake, and it leads to bad thinking, and that can lead to very bad actions at some point, because treating anything as if it were different from what it is, is going to lead you to mistakes. It can’t help it.
Skip: Yes, I understand the distinction. The constructs of county and state and country are artificial constructs where there’s much more realness to the concept of coupling and family; they’re objective things that humans relate to each other and the others are simply labels.
Frank: It’s one thing to love a person, but it’s a dangerous thing to love an abstraction.
Skip: Yes, absolutely. I’m going to make a change to the frequencies that Frank is listening to and I would like to change the tenor of question as well, because it pertains to our perception of world events now. In the rapids that we are passing through right now, there’s a very interesting thing happening to mankind’s understanding here in terms of borderless or country-less offenses. We call it terrorism. In the past known history we’ve had a great deal of concepts of bordered countries. When one group of people would attack another there was a geographical boundary and we could get our heads around the concept that country x, bordered by these mountains and these rivers and these oceans, was attacking country y, bordered by these mountains and these rivers and these oceans, and yet what seems to be happening now is, through the age of communication, borders are braking down electronically, and now it would seem that in warfare among mankind, the borders are also disappearing.
Frank: Well, we think that all of that depends heavily upon the word “seems.” You know we see threads almost more easily than we see individual moments (and that may remind you of someone who’s lying in the booth). But the threads don’t seem to us to have changed particularly. Let’s show it to you from our point of view.
You have individuals or groups or nations or whatever who are in the habit of using violence against each other when they perceive that the other one either has something they want, and they can’t get it, or has done something that they deserve to be punished for, or threatens them for some reason. These are all common reasons for warfare. We’re not saying they’re exhaustive but they’re common.
We are unable to see any substantive difference between bombing a population with an airplane and bombing a population with a hand-held device, other than what is feasible for the person doing the bombing. If one side has all of the technology and the other side does not, the side without technology has to choose between submission or finding a non-technological way to continue the war. Now, of course, those are extremes: You don’t have a situation where one side has no technology whatever. If they do, they’re probably exterminated or made helpless. Put in reservations.
But you are making distinctions between terrorism and warfare that we think blur more important distinctions rather than themselves signify important distinctions.
If you were to take the concept of war as state violence, and were to take the concept of terrorism as state violence, it would be clearer to you the continuity than there is when you say “war” on one hand, “terrorism” on the other. Violence is violence, and so long as people are determined to either get their way or defend their rights, or avenge other people, or take what’s rightfully theirs but isn’t theirs – you know, all of the excuses – as long as people use violence to attain any of those ends, they’re using violence to attain those ends. And whether they have anthrax, B-29s, crossbows, pocket-bombs – you understand our point, violence is violence. So to us we see no difference.
What is changed in the situation is, that it is true, you have more “one world” than you ever had. The coming of airplanes, the coming of electronic interconnection — not only the internet but the radio, all of those things – all of this has meant more porous movement, and has removed any platform—
Wait.
Well, for example. Think of America as one large aircraft carrier. From the aircraft carrier one launches airplanes, and those airplanes can bomb. And those airplanes can cause great destruction. One can carry platoons or companies of Marines, or divisions of Marines, and land the Marines, and the Marines can overcome. As long as one is on an aircraft carrier with no opposition, there is a sense of safety and of protectedness that disappears the moment somebody drops something onto the aircraft carrier or threatens to sink it. So that in World War II, when the Germans had submarines, the submarines attacked the aircraft carriers and the aircraft carriers were still very, very powerful, but they were not omnipotent and unable to be harmed. Same thing in the Pacific Ocean, the Americans had the submarines and the Japanese had the carriers.
You understand our point. You’re now in a situation where America cannot use state violence without the possibility of meaningful return state violence. We actually hesitate on the word “return” because that brings you to the question of “well, he started it first,” and one look at the middle east will tell you that “he started it first” goes back to presumably some dinosaur fighting another dinosaur.
Does this clarify? Obfuscate? Or what?
Skip: Yes it does. All of the above.
Frank: [laughs] Good. That’s efficiency.
Skip: My specific question wasn’t necessarily on the violence or the weapons of war. I’m very interested in your perspective from the way you see things,. I think in asking my question I actually answered it, but for clarity my question was, we in this age – in the dawning of what we call the 21st century – find it peculiar that we find ourselves in a point of violence, a warfare, in which there are no borders and a label that we can put on a geographic border. And I think that I might have answered my question myself and say “but that’s the way the whole world is in terms of, as you brought up, ability to fly in airplanes, our telephones, our computers, our internet, are all borderless interactions of humanity —
Frank: That’s right.
Skip: –and why wouldn’t we expect warfare to also be borderless?
Frank: Now, to turn to the bright side of that, from your point of view, also all of your highest ideals are spread in a borderless fashion. All of your – oh, I don’t know – all of your life-saving machinery, your medicine, your increase in nutrition, your ability to do more with less, the ability to overcome poverty. All it does is point up, in a more pointed fashion, it says, “it is your choice what kind of a world you live in, while you’re in the world, because you can spread this world of luxury, of comfort, of mental stretching – you can have what you want. But you cannot so easily anymore divide it so that the good part of the pie is kept for some, and the leavings are left for others.”
We’re not saying it will come to an equalitarian end, because it won’t, but we are saying there is now a counter-pressure that will force all of you to decide, “who am I really? What do I really believe in? Do I really believe everything is one, and if so, what sense does it make to pretend politically or economically that it is not?” [pause] We know that that’s not what you asked, but we threw that in for free.
Skip: And it seems to me that as you were talking, that going back to stepping forward, of having a place to stand and stepping forward, putting your right foot forward, there is from a positive perspective then, thinking of we are learning more and more about the oneness of the globe.
Frank: Uh-huh.
Skip: In our monetary systems, in our communications, in our travels, in our warfare, there is a oneness to the globe and the artificial boundaries and borders of the countries are going away. And perhaps one day the boundaries of our separateness will also fall away.
Frank: Well the more important boundary is, the perceived boundary between you as an individual so-called, and the rest of the world. As that perception of difference is dissolved, everything will change much more dramatically, much more effectively.
We don’t care about global alignments and national boundaries and all these things that seem so real to you. To us they’re just abstractions. What we care about is, souls in bodies. Because that’s all that there really is. On a human level. The world is much more than humans, but that’s what we’re saying on a human level.
We really don’t care about national boundaries. They’re not real
Skip: My point was that, yes, however, back over our history, they were seemingly – and I know you didn’t like that word before – [laughs]
Frank: It isn’t that we didn’t like it, we’re saying “yes, exactly. `Seems.’ Not `is’.” [laughs]
Skip: They were the stuff of life. “This is the boundary, don’t cross this boundary. My armies stand on this boundary –“
Frank: You’re still doing it.
Skip: “I build this fence.” And yet perhaps the age we’re living in, the communications, the transportation, the monetary world, the warfare, of boundaryless existence now is an indication of moving in the right direction. Having stepped forward with our right foot and as you brought up, the point is to get to a point where we are borderless in our bodies, we understand the oneness of who we are.
Frank: Well, — well, wait. The point is never to get anywhere. The point is always to experience where you are. The getting will take care of itself. That sounds like a quibble, but it isn’t, it’s an important thing. You can’t ride a wave by anticipating where you’re going to be ten seconds from now. You can’t let that overcome your balance. We’re just saying, don’t think of it in terms of “we’ve got to get through this in order to get there.”
Skip: No, I understand that, and I didn’t mean to be going there. You’re right to bring that up in terms of not forgetting that “be here now,” the famous expression. Be on the wave. If you’re surfing you’d better concentrate, else the wave will crash you into the ocean.
Frank: If you don’t, you’ll get a chance again. [they laugh]
Skip: But I was just looking back over my shoulder, so to speak, and saying, maybe this is the right path. Maybe we are on the right path. Maybe are putting the right foot forward. Rather than being down in the doldrums and saying, as every generation says, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, rather than have that perspective, say, we seem to be on the right path.
Frank: Well, all is always well. We know that seems wrong, but all is always well. You can’t – there is no wrong path. You’re going to do all paths at the same time anyway, it depends on where you put your consciousness. You are, right now, in all possible paths. There’s a part of you in each one. The others seem only theoretical and this one seems real, but you can’t help go to all paths. The question is, where are you going to put your consciousness. If you aim – if you pull yourself, shall we say, toward a future in which all are more aware of who they are, more aware of their unity, they have more respect for the earth as a part of themselves, and them as a part of it, and it not being an it so much as a person, you know – that’s what you’ll get. If you have resonance toward a world of increasing terrorism, increasing division, increasing superstition or fanaticism, you get that too. You already are getting it, but you don’t have to identify with that part of it, that’s what we’re saying.
Your focus of consciousness is on one line. It is always on one line at any given time, although you can move it. And so, given that reality in which all possible realities exist, you can’t take a wrong path, no matter how bad it gets. We know that’s counter-intuitive, but it’s an important thing. There isn’t just one reality, and you make a choice and then that chooses the only reality and all those other potential realities don’t exist. That isn’t true. It seems true and it is true in terms of your own consciousness, because you can only ride one line at a time. At the moment. There’ll be a day when you’ll be able to see it wider, but not yet. You’re moving to the next step.
We know that’s all counter-intuitive. Tough.
Skip: I’m now concerned about attending to the body, attending to Frank, and it will be time for him to return. Is there a closing comment for today that you might leave with Frank and all of us?
Frank: Well, just for clarity, remember that I’m right here. I’ve been here all the time. I just let them go right through me. You know, you’re not dealing with them OR me, you’re dealing with them THROUGH me. So I’ve been wide awake and sort of enjoying the show here. Let’s see if they have anything further.
[pause] Don’t forget – not that you would, but we’ll say it for the record – that all of you are here because you meant to be here at this time. You’re here as anchors for others, you’re here as examples, you’re doing work in the external world that is helping people to keep themselves anchored, and that should give you little excuse to berate yourself for being something other than what you should have been, or for having not taken paths you didn’t take. There is another version of yourself that did take those paths. You attend to the one you did take.
All is well. All is always well. There’s no need –
Let’s put it this way, it would be inaccurate to mourn that fact that things are going to hell. What is happening is the breakup of many old structures and the intense shaking out of what is viable from what is not viable. There is nothing to mourn in this. This is the birth of the next stage, and this is a good thing. You’re all part of the good thing, you’re doing your work, just do it with quiet calm assured joy.
And as always we thank you for what you’re doing.
Skip: And we thank you for being patient and sharing with us, and now Frank I’m going to slowly move the sounds back to the point where we began, back to focus 10, so just relax and enjoy the ride.
[end transcript]