Saturday, February 14, 2015
F: 7 a.m. Late start this morning, though I don’t mind. Well, Miss Rita, I certainly do feel like I am riding a runaway horse, not for the first time. Performing in public like this is bringing in questions faster than we can deal with them, and now Charles is offering me several questions and saying, if not this one, try this one, or this one, etc.
So – just a note on the process as I am experiencing it – there is the pull of the continuity of your narrative (you say, “next time we could begin here”) and the pull of past threads to be followed (“bookmark that and we will talk about it another time”) and the pull of individual responses in the form of email and blog comments (“Rita said x and such, but it seems to me…”) and Charles’ own requests for clarification from me, and then as I say the posing of alternate questions we could ask.
None of this bothers me, and I’m delighted that enough people are taking the material seriously enough to wrestle with it and respond to it. But I’m sure glad to have that naval soundings survey analogy to reassure me that in a sense, we can’t really get lost. And I’m glad to have Charles’ presence as a sheet anchor to windward. I can see that it would be easy to lose all sense of direction, exploring these things. In fact, I wonder if that isn’t more or less what I have done, all these years.
R: In wondering that, you are showing yourself to be a child of the age you live in. So do many of your questioners. I mean by that, you are disregarding the continuing presence in your life of your non-physical self. This is a bit of a diversion from the topic of suffering and good and evil, but it won’t take long, perhaps, and pursuing the thread because it presented itself is an example of a way to live connected.
You have a compass.
What good is a compass to a navigator who doesn’t know it exists, or doesn’t consult it? None. But the compass is there, used or unused. Why should you or anybody fear getting lost, as long as you are consulting your compass? And if you don’t consult it – tacitly or not, that is, doing it consciously or automatically, either one – how can you expect to follow any course?
F: Between us, we’re in a nautical mood today, I see. I take it you mean what the church would call conscience, only in a wider sense than knowledge of whether an action or thought or projected action or thought is good and evil.
R: The physical self forms what we loosely call an ego, and that ego is conscious of what the senses report to it, plus what its reactions to its environment report to it as emotions. As long as the ego’s world remains bounded by such limits, you have a very small boat in a very big sea, terrified of storms, navigating at random, subject to course correction by emotional reaction to any stray circumstance. But when that ego realizes that it has a compass, everything changes, or can change, if the compass is intelligently used. The ego’s higher self (call it) not only can read the compass, it can connect to GPS. It not only knows where the boat is, it knows how it got there, and why, and where it set out for. And – stretching the analogy quite a bit, but true to life – the higher self knows that it is the cause as well as the experiencer of the circumstances the little boat finds itself in. Or, not quite. Let’s say, it recognizes that no storm or difficulty or anything that comes to be experienced is either random or purposeless.
But, let’s drop the analogy at that point. You see that I mean to say that if it were up to you (as it often seems to you) to shape your lives, you would be vastly overmatched.
F: Always outnumbered, always outgunned, as I read somewhere.
R: So in this particular instance, if it were up to Charles as his ego exists or you as your ego exists and neither of you were in connection with your “higher selves,” your non-3D components that have never left you nor ever could leave you, then yes, you’d be lost in moments. But it is the very connection with the non-3D that renders this possible. Renders your lives possible.
F: And in the non-3D part of ourselves we live and move and have our being.
R: Well, isn’t that a perfectly valid way to describe your situation?
F: It certainly seems so to me, and of course I find it satisfying to have a way of understanding the 2,000-year old Christian tradition without having to sign on to their contemporary understandings of it. I mean, all that knowledge and wisdom, couched in language that we find unmeaningful – I always knew it meant something, even if it didn’t mean what it was explained to mean.
R: And where do you think that knowing came from, if not your non-3D extension, or source? You tended to think of it as past-life knowledge, I think, but in that case why can’t you read Egyptian?
F: I’d like to know that myself. But, as you always say, let’s consider that at another time. The hour is half over and we haven’t gotten to the question yet.
R: I think you will find that we have, actually. It’s all tied together. How can we discuss the question of good and evil, and of suffering, and of the question of the meaning of life, if we allow ourselves to disregard the fact that appearances are not accurate, that you are not boats afloat in an unknown sea, adrift, with no origin, no purpose, no projected port, no task, no larger purpose?
F: I remember Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain writing somewhere of a moment during the war when he suddenly experienced himself as part of the entire army. (He was a Union officer in the Civil War.) I don’t know how to say it in few words. He had always experienced himself as an officer in the machinery, so to speak, but at this moment he had a sort of mystical sense of himself as an individual participating as part of one large thing. I suspect he was experiencing something similar to what happens when small boats realize they are part of a regatta and couldn’t get lost if they wanted to. Either that, or they are fishermen as in Captains Courageous and work alone but not lost.
But meanwhile, I’m sure people are wondering when we’re going to return more directly to the subject at hand. So let’s take up where you left off, saying, “Since you are well beyond your hour, we can stop here and continue next time with just that question, which after all is the root of all the questions on the topic — what is the purpose of suffering in the world?”
R: Let me suggest a slightly different way of looking at the subject, that may help some people. To say, “what is the purpose of—” is to isolate something that cannot be understood in isolation. If you were to try to say “what is the purpose of a knee in the world?” you couldn’t begin to answer the question even in the simplest of ways without referring to the thigh and the calf, and even if you left it at that, it wouldn’t make any sense, not really. It might, for instance, be looked at as a weakness in the leg, because obviously such a complicated joint would look like a makeshift, compared to the relative simplicity of the bones it connects. And of course if you want to explain about the mobility it offers, you are going to wind up talking about hips and feet and the body in general, and gravity, and musculature, and blood circulation, and the on-going repair of cells – and there’s no end to the things a simple discussion of knees would entail. And every time you tried to put it into context, somebody would be saying, “but I want to know why there have to be knees in the world, and you’re telling me all these irrelevant things!”
F: Explaining how to make a watch.
R: Yes, except in this case there is no other way to do it, if the person asking the question doesn’t even have the concept of time!
So rather than asking, “what is the purpose of suffering in the world? I suggest it would be better to ask, “what is it in the nature of the world that produces suffering as a by-product?” That may sound like the same statement, but it is not. It is like explaining about exercise, and how the deliberate exhaustion of the muscles’ cells produces pain but also produces new growth. In this case, as so often, context is everything. If you were to decree that nothing should ever produce pain, because you have decided that pain is bad, then what have you just done to life? How many doors have you closed off? How many activities of greater interest and with greater rewards have you just foreclosed?
F: I agree, of course, though I don’t know how it will look after I disengage and our joint mind is not shaping my perceptions! – but I predict that some will look at this as merely an apology for evil.
R: No doubt. But you can learn from a lesson or you can reject it – you can’t really do both.
F: And here we are at the end of an hour, unless you want to continue.
R: No, I am content. I think you will find that this was a better session than you think. Right at the moment, you are thinking, “we didn’t even get to the question until it was half over,” but when you come to look at it, you may think differently.
F: Well, we’ll see. Till next time, then.
Thank you for today’s conversation. To me it’s the whole crux of the topic: the illusion of separation, the inability to see the whole picture, gives rise to the emotions of fear and despair, feelings of “suffering”, which may be serving a larger purpose, but good grief! isn’t there a nicer way to learn than a shipwreck?? (Why is it the rare soldier who gets the glimpse of the Big Picture?) As the Good Ship Martha was getting buffeted by life’s storms, I came across a quote by Emily Dickinson that has kept me from giving up: “The sailor can’t see north, but he knows his compass can”. It has meant that there is a part of me that knows the context for pain and knows the way to calmer seas or a rescue ship and what comes next might be better or serve a larger purpose. I hope so anyway.
I really like this question: “what is it in the nature of the world that produces suffering as a by-product?” and look forward to Rita elaborating on it next time.
Wow, Rita’s answers yesterday were beautiful, and I wanted to use the term “beautiful” in relation to Rita first because now I want to compare her to a spider – the way Rita handled the questions of the Feb. 13 session brings to my mind one of those spiders that can walk across the surface of the water without falling in – they skitter across the top, on the surface tension of the pond – that is the kind of measured delicacy with which she broached the subject of suffering as it relates to our 3D existence vis-à-vis our higher dimensional aspects … what I mean is, this is a subject of considerable depth and lesser teachers would have plunged in too deeply, broke the surface tension and risked swamping us all in depths we may not be ready for yet …
… but Rita provided just enough clarity to allow us some measure of understanding, while the implication of much depth still looms beneath the surface … I like the way Frank and Rita are allowing readers to get their “sea legs” under them as we prepare to dive deeper for greater understanding … so in terms of spiders, there is much more E.B. White’s “Charlotte” than Tolkien’s “Shelob” in Rita, and as for Frank, he remains the ever hyper-cautious Prometheus …
“If you were to decree that nothing should ever produce pain, because you have decided that pain is bad, then what have you just done to life? How many doors have you closed off? How many activities of greater interest and with greater rewards have you just foreclosed?” Simply brilliant! That is a truth that definitely resonates with me.
Thank you Frank.
I`m obsessed with the matter of time, and have been into it in a very long time.
Please, have you ever seen the international photos put on You-Tube and such…? The photos with acclaimed time-travelers? One particular photo from 1920thies(black and white colors of course)showing one lady with a cell-phone(the lady talking in the cell-phone)with modern nowadays clotings among the crowd of 1920 folks walking in the street. The environment of the photo shows the street, people and houses in the same way as it was back then. Acclaimed not to be a fake (of course).
AND here comes the own experience of something similar: Back in the 1990 when of me to be at an airport for a flight somewhere(the airport was situated here in Norway),queue up,and me lining up for checking in (the luggage)….there ALL OF A SUDDEN(out-of-the-blue, so to speak) two young ladies stood dressed as from 1950(or 52), and the two girls stood there almost parallel with me.
I did NOT noticing them on forehand as the outlook of theirs seems absolutely “out-of-context”.The two very young ladies(teenagers?) looked as they came from early 1950(or 1952). The luggage of theirs are two huge old-fashioned hand bags decorated with colorful flowers (sacking-bags of some sorts?). The hair of theirs with “pony-tails” The one girl a blonde, the other a brunette, both dressed in wide skirts, likewise the typical plain shoes with the socks folded about the ankles(the outlook of typical 1950-fashioned teenagers).
Another odd thing, the girls “behaved” as the rest of us was not there….or they could NOT SEE us. The two girls did the conversation between themselves, smiling and laughing, but nothing to be HEARD.
After of me glancing at them a minute or so(cannot remember for how long of course but it cannot be more than a minute)…I had to follow up of checking my own luggage….but when of me turning around to have another glance at the peculiar sight(the two girls),they had vanished.
Remember, this was a little(small) airport in Norway, not many passengers there, and early morning with only a few flights. Out of curiosity of to search for the youngsters about the arrival hall(I had the time enough in doing it),but the two girls with pony-tails and the particular hand-bags had vanished…..they were not to be seen embarking the flights either.
Too bad of not to have had the modern cell phones with cameras back in 1990… then could have taken a picture.
I`m convinced of time travelers are possible, no matter what others says(the Holodeck onboard the Starship Enterprise remember?) I am a big fan of the old Star-Trek series.
Okay, many of the photos might(or can be)be fakes, but I have experienced the weirdness myself.
Timelines and strands: I am listening to what Rita says, and what Rita says are true by no doubt.
Smiles, Inger Lise.
You say, “but I have experienced the weirdness myself,” and to me that’s the key. We may or may not understand what we have experienced, but at least we know that we have expereienced it. It may not be what we assume it is, but it isn’t nothing, either.
aye,aye,therefore your book with the attractive title:The Sphere and The Hologram caught the eyes of mine immediately at first sight,besides The Cosmic Internet.
Smiles, Inger Lise.
P.S. Actually,it must be many more peoples around who have had similar experiences, but have kept the mouth shut because of the fear of considered as insane.
BTW: Back in 1978 a girlfriend of mine who lived (at the time) on an old farm back then(1978), to have experienced (watching) a whole viking-village “to come alive” along the riverbed at the same farm. She was freaking out, and running into the house,waking up the parents (the friend of mine came home late evening from a party)….and the parents woke up….looking out of the window and SAW how the children, the men and woman (the dogs as well) walking about the viking houses with their daily doings. They could HEAR (but somehow very subdued, as if far away) the noises from the village.
“The Sight” lasted about half an hour according to my friend, before the same sight slowly FADED away.
Later on the farmer began digging along the riverbank and FOUND the remnants of a larger viking settlement there. He had to ask the authorities(the law is very strict about it)for the permission to do it, and the archaeologists came of course.
There must be so many of these first-hand stories, all around the world — but the official story is more easily accepted, and makes it hard for these to get passed along except one by one. Thanks. I knew George McMullen, who could see in a similar fashion, and learned to do so more or less at will.
Hi Inger,
Your vision of the 1950s girls in 1990, and your friend’s vision of the Viking village are interesting, and remind me how both Jane (Roberts) and their friend Sue Watkins had quite a few “unofficial” visions of their own. I suspect it happens a lot (just look how many reports from near-death experiencers are “out there”), but how many don’t get reported out of fear (of looking “foolish”, of being “committed”, and of their own worldview receiving a “severe shaking up”)? I can only recall one such event in my current 3D life, that of a stairway suddenly inverting (rather like a “funhouse” illusion) in a neighbor’s house. Quite startling!
Craig
Hi again Craig.
If Frank permitting it that is (smiles). Here comes another story for you who are interesting in flying:
This will be a story told by an English pilot (retired Royal Air-Force guy, who was flying as an navigator in the bomber-squads during WWII). The story was something that happened to him AFTER WWII, when of him to be retired, but flying his own private one-motor,two-seats airplane, approximately about 1959/60. He started on his trip on a clear blue autumn-day.
The one-motor airplane of his was not equipped with the modern nowadays dashboards of course, and when of him flying back home to meet an unsuspected wall with foggy weather over the English Channel (which lasted a long time, no blue sky glimpses of orientation)….which made him to lose all orientation about where he was….AND running out of fuel realized of him to be in a rather “bad position” over the channel (without Parachute or life-raft, or cell phones as it did not exist in 1960 as you`ll know).
AND here comes the Miracle…Out-of-the Blue…along-side his own airplane (all of a sudden) A SPITFIRE showing up (I`ll guess of you to know what an Spitfire is? The most advanced, and famous English combat-fighter during the war). The PILOT in the cockpit of the Spitfire gave the signs of to follow after him.(the Spitfire-pilot using the hand-signs as they used in the war, gave the signal of to put his airplane “on the wing”- as “the wing-man”).
With obvious relief “our man” followed after the Spitfire (“laying” on its wing), without other thoughts than thinking it is one of “the hobby-pilots” with an restored old Spitfire. It is a few left behind of them.
He noticed the markings alongside the plane(the numbers and a name given the plane)…..Okay, it all ended up of him to reach an old closed down airfield along the coastline, used in the war. One of the airfields for emergency landings while the pilots came back home to England from bombing the targets in Main-land Europe.
When of our guy just focused on the safely landing thinking about nothing else but the landing of course. Afterwards of him to jump out of the cockpit to meet with the other Pilot with the Spitfire and of thanking him, saving him from the crash in the canal. But he was gone, nothing to see.
To make it short. He investigated the name and number written along side the Spitfire in the archives, and found the Spitfire and the Pilot was among the numbers “of missing”, or lost. One among the many who did not came back home.
Cheerio…we`ll meet again, don`t know where, don`t know when…but we`ll meet again some sunny Day (a song by Vera Lynn during the war).
Inger Lise.
Fabulously interesting. I’d love to hear other such stories, from you and/or from others.
…and you’ve likely read of Bob Monroe’s account (in “Ultimate Journey”, I think it was) of the time he, friends and family of his longtime friend, Agnew Bahnson, were attending an outdoor memorial for him, near the site where he crashed his Beech 18 (1940s twin-engine aircraft) on approach to the airport at Wooster, Ohio (not too far from where we live now). During the ceremony, a Beech 18, identical in color and markings to Agnew’s, flew low over the assembled group, wagged its wings, and roared off–never to be seen again. Upon looking for records of any flight plans, takeoffs or landings of Beech 18s that day w/in a 300 mile radius, no such records were found…
I wonders Craig….it seems to be “phases” in one`s life where of us “to go through” many changes.
Especially in the younger days(well “younger” will be quite relative) running about to participate in all the methaphysical courses to find, being totally “absorbed” by it.
And then came the phase of to calm down the whole thing(as back then to have three teenagers at home). I felt a kind of “to keep the feet” on the ground. Grounding myself so to speak, in the meantime digesting everything of what to have learned.
It NEVER went away of course, but sometimes it is necessary of “thinking it all over” by myself.
And DID experienced many “out-of-context” happenings all the way. But have had the need in to do “the withdrawal” from it within a long period of time, as it felt of to be too much of “weird happenings.”
AND then was the periods of doubt(which to believe will be very “normal” from time to time). Later on slowly began of to trust myself and the own “inner spirit”(not quite sure how to put it),and felt everything “came in right order”……or as Rita says: All is well.
Hmm, now have begun all over again as it seems.
Smiles, Inger Lise.
Thank you Craig in reminding me of the book Ultimate Journey by R.M. I have forgot the particular story, but now it seems of me to pick up the book again from the shelters to have another glance. It is one of the best books ever as of to recall.
okay, here we goes along…it is Sunday Morning.
Have a nice Day from Inger Lise.
Thanks for your comments, Inger; much appreciated! I have been feeling the need to “ground myself” back into some of my creative activities (esp. since we’re going thru another rather dreadful winter!)
Indeed; when one opens these doors of perception, I don’t feel they can be fully shut again, and this also stresses the need to interact w/ “3D” moreso…
Including what you are inclined to regard as a “dreadful winter”! Ask yourself every day, what is the positive potential in this difficulty posed by weather?
[Of course, it could just be an IQ test you aren’t doing well on, hinting that warmer climes may be indicated!:-)]
Hi Frank,
A fair enough question…must’ve caught me on the day my “Bronco Nagurski” long underwear was in the wash! (Thankx and a hat-tippo to The Car Guys, esp. the “late” Tommy, for this!)
As for the winter Wx, it does allow more indoor time for creative projects, and I don’t mind snow shoveling; it’s exercise, and compared w/ what we experienced in North Dakota, I’d call it “recreational shoveling”!
How’s the Wx in Charlottseville this year?
Well, you know, we always have Mr. Jefferson looking out for us. We usually get much less than neighboring states, and, often enough, considerably less than neighboring counties. Nothing to complain of.
I rather like the analogies used in this post; I’ve often described to my wife how some days I feel “I’m just little ‘me’, in my little, tiny boat, rowing furiously around in a storm.” Perhaps that’s when my ego becomes “troublesome”–I’ve given it too much to do, instead of remembering I have a compass, GPS (with “moving map” capabilities!), and a full complement of reliable instruments (I’m switching to a pilot/plane analogy now) which I can trust in such times (thru meditation, “distraction” thru doing exercise or creative activity, toning or napping). I feel I have to keep reminding myself that I am ALWAYS connected to my Source Self (the “non-3D” Self); forgetting this has caused most of my personal suffering.
Continuing the flying analogy, FWIW. In my pilot training, there was a certain amount of “instrument training” (Sport Pilot–my rating–is a “VFR only” activity), which is essential, should we fly into a cloud, become “spatially disoriented”, and need to get back into “VFR” conditions quickly. The crux of this training is “change of focus”, shifting to looking at the inside of a cloud (a foggy “nothingness”), to looking at/using the instruments, in order to get out of trouble. In this situation, relying on kinesthetic sense only has gotten many a pilot into trouble (on average, I’ve read, they “contact the ground” w/in 3 minutes of getting disoriented). For this example, I look at the airplane’s instruments, compass, GPS, and radio as representing my non-physical abilities brought to the fore, to “put things into perspective”, to help me reorient (and w/ the radio, call ATC for help, if needed–like asking for help from my Source Self).
All “well and good” for a pilot/flying analogy; I need to put these ideas into use more so in “ordinary” grounded 3D living! Again, much appreciation to Frank and Rita for being willing to discuss these “hard” questions!
Craig
Craig, I do agree with what you are telling. The husband of mine was an pilot once (he`s retired).
And many times wishing him to be more “open-minded” as such. But have come to accept him as one of the non-believers,refusing anything about “the metaphysical approach” after almost 50 years of marriage.
Hmmm, therefore to have learned the impossible in to change others….anyway, he is not intruding of my own spiritual “research.” It is good to be independent.
lol,Inger Lise.
Hi Inger,
Yes, one does get used to being rather independent in one’s studies of Metaphysics; I’m blessed to be married to someone who put me onto “Seth” (tho it took me several years, after we met, until I really “caught fire” w/ that material), and we can talk about the “unofficial view of reality” for hours at a time! And we’ve met several people in the community we moved to in 2011 who are interested in this material (and other); we meet once a month at our house to discuss these ideas, view videos, etc.
I’ve found in the “outside” world it does feel lonely at times, when it seems I surrounded by the “officially accepted” Materialists’ worldview (plus what I see as a “worship of Technology”). But again I feel I “manifested” the meeting of at least a few persons locally, who were interested in the “out of the box” ideas (that was one of my conscious affirmations before we moved here from North Dakota in 2011–that I’d “magnet in” those who were interested in talking about Metaphysics)…