Rita — justice and injustice and perspective

Monday February 16, 2015

F: 5 a.m. Beginning again, Miss Rita. I think today I’ll leave it up to you where we begin, and I’ll try it in the journal, the old way. Something didn’t work out yesterday, and I’m wondering if it is too many variables.

R: Or could it be that things beyond your ability to observe them make some times propitious and others not, and some times extremely auspicious and other times particularly unsuitable. It is a mistake to underrate the powerful influence of the background influences in your lives. You aren’t immune to them, and how should you expect to be? You are a part of the great beating heart of the world, or a part of the great clockwork, if that more mechanical analogy appeals to you – part of a vast undivided eco-system that extends throughout all of 3D (because of course there cannot be any absolute divisions) and extends throughout all non-3D, as well, which is going to be a different thought to you, therefore an important one.

When in 3D – I remember it well – there is a tendency to think that the non-physical world is unchanging, somehow static. But how could that be, given that the 3D world is part of it, and reflects it, and provides part of the background for it, as the non-3D provides part of the background for 3D? it is all in one’s viewpoint, one’s place to stand, which is the background and which the foreground.

The non-3D world has its tides and its seasons, and they are reflected in the mental and psychic background of life in 3D. and I’m going to leave this for now – think of it as a teaser for coming attractions – and return more directly to the question of good and evil, and of suffering, and of the justice or injustice, the compassion or indifference, of life and the factors that make life. I will talk and you will respond, internally or externally, and I will continue to talk following any sense of the lack of comprehension and the nature of the mental or emotional obstacles to understanding as we go along.

F: This seems to be working much better, pushing the pen across the page as I have done for so many years.

R: Well, as I said, it slows you down a bit, and helps in that way, so oddly enough the extra work of transcription becomes worthwhile. Continue as you prefer.

Now, about good and evil. Remember that anyone reading these sessions in a fixed form – a book, a print-out, a collection of emails, anything – is going to receive a lot of information in a time much more compressed than what it took to express initially. So things that are already ancient history to you – said two weeks ago, and half-forgotten – will come within minutes of this session, perhaps. So will anything remembered through the process of random re-reading, which, by the way, is a process I recommend for making new connections.

So concepts that took some time to establish will be accepted easier not only because initial readers broke the trail for them, but because the sheer weight of material will lend authority, as for instance in the case of Seth’s material.

One such concept is that the world is just. Any given piece of it, seen in isolation, will seem unjust or unnecessary or even downright arbitrary, but this is because it is being seen divorced from context. The ugliest fact is nonetheless part of a seamless whole and has its place. Wolves kill baby deer, if they get the chance and are hungry. Cruel? Well, how about the world if any one species has no natural predators to keep it in check? A herd of deer half-starved because they have outstripped [the carrying capacity of] the environment they live in is not a pretty sight either.

But this is not a lecture on ecology beyond this one statement. Tragedy is not what it appears to be. And if you will walk with me a bit, I can prove it to you.

Near-death experiencers have reported what they went through on their way out of life, and you will notice that in every case, as soon as they were free of the 3D-only perspective, they not only were okay with it, usually they were glad of it, and often enough were extremely reluctant to be returned to life. So much for death as a tragedy in and of itself.

Similarly, such accounts – and accounts by scientific naturalists – notice that the animating intelligence often leaves the body before the actual trauma that ends the life.

F: We don’t feel the splat.

R: We don’t feel the splat, exactly. When there is no need for pain, why experience it? So much for horrible traumatic deaths.

Furthermore, various reports – from NDEers, psychics, etc. – show you that sometimes people see behind the curtain and see the inter-weavings of various freewills that produces apparently random events. It cannot be proven to anyone determined not to be convinced, but then, what can? Nevertheless, it is a fact that nothing happens to people without their consent. And, since that flies in the face of so much experience, let’s look at it.

F: I can hear the howls of outrage.

R: Yes, outrage that I am about to say that all is well. Why? Is there an emotional payoff to believing in what you call the victims-and-villains scenario? Clearly there is, or there would be no outrage at hearing good news. However, that reaction is not to be confounded with incredulity, which is a very reasonable reaction.

That is, it is one thing to think, “You’re going to have to convince me, on this one!” and it is some thing very different to think, “Life is unfair and only those of a lower morality can doubt it; I am not going to be seduced.”

So, for those willing to be convinced – no matter how high their standards of proof – the following. For those whose self-definition is closely tied to a belief that they are more moral, more sensitive, than the creators and maintainers of the world around them, I have nothing helpful to say other than “know yourself.”

Is it fair that cells in a body sacrifice themselves for the sake of the body as a whole? Is that even a fair description of the process, given that the cell’s life and death is as it was planned for cells in general?

Is it possible for a cell to have a purpose separate from the body of which it is a part? I don’t mean, can it have s separate (or relatively separate) awareness; I mean, can it not be part of what it is part of?

Is it unfair that some cells become part of a fingernail and share whatever happens to that fingernail while others get to be part of “something important” like heart muscle? Is it unfair that various cells are sloughed off or sacrificed while others are not?

Of course it is unfair, or at least discriminatory — if you look at it from the point of view that pretends the cell is a valid frame of reference rather than a close-up of one part of an interacting organism. But if you look at the larger picture, the cell’s importance and its proper place in the scheme of things changes. Not that it is insignificant, for it is not a question of number, but that it is by nature a part of a whole, and cannot be understood in isolation.

But 3D life tempts you – all but coerces you – into seeing 3D lives in isolation, and of course life is going to be seen as unfair, chaotic, undirected, painful, meaningless. Is that the fault of the structure of life, or of a constricted point of view?

F: So, trauma, injustice, apparently pointless suffering, and all the results of the seven deadly sins – are they only illusion?

R: No, not illusion. To explain something is not the same thing as explaining it away. But they are not what they seem to be, any more than your lives in general are what they seem to be when looked at from a too-constricted perspective.

Life can hurt. You know it; everybody knows it. The question is, though, what does it all mean: what is it all for? If the millions who die in concentration camps are not victims, what are they? If people suffering because of other people’s indifference or cruelty are not victims of injustice, what are they? Do they “deserve” to suffer? If children, or adults for that matter, spend lifetimes in constricted circumstances because of physical illness, or as a result of accidents or deliberate maimings, are they victims? Do they deserve to suffer? Are they paying for past (or future) sins?

None of these questions can be resolved meaningfully without considering the widest context of life. Any smaller context is going to look like injustice. Context is everything in understanding life.

And we should stop here, as your hour is up and this is a natural place to pause.

F: While we’re pausing, Rita, I have a question. Why are we sticking pretty closely to one-hour sessions? It seems to me that when I was talking to Papa we’d go about an hour and a half. (Of course, I may not be remembering that right.)

R: That was a different process though to you it looks the same. You and he were interacting more; your contribution was based more in what you knew and learned about the facts of his life, which led you to pose questions. But you can’t do that here, because you don’t have any 3D data on my present life, nor what we’re discussing. So you are attending a lecture rather than participating in a conversation, so it requires more attention, which burns the candle faster.

F: That makes sense. Okay, next time then, and I guess I’ll continue with pen and ink, even though it seems like an extra step.

R: No reason not to do what is easiest.