Rita on living the changes

Sunday, March 22, 2015

F: 5:15 a.m. Well, Miss Rita, I sent around your talk with Al, Jon, and Dick, and posted it to my blog and Facebook. That catches us up except for yesterday’s brief exchange, which I will send in turn, if only for its reminder about the source of non-communication when it occurs. But you know all that, and you know that my life is in a state of disorganization at the moment, though things are looking up. So what shall we talk about today?

R: Let’s use your situation as metaphor.

F: Okay

R: You suppressed the joke. No need to; don’t let this become too solemn.

F: Well, but when I make a joke here, I know I’ll also have to be the one to type it out, and about the time when I start typing things, I start begrudging every unnecessary word.

R: That could be said of spoken words and the energy of the psyche, as well. That’s one reason people talk more – chatter, sometimes – when nervous. They’re burning nervous energy off. And on the other hand, silence concentrates, as you know from experience.

But I was thinking about your move, with its attendant disorganization, as metaphor. If you want to move, you must be willing to pack up whatever you will bring with you, and carry it, in one way or another, and then blend those possessions into your new unfamiliar surroundings. The life you resume leading may be as near identical to the old one as you can manage, or may be as different as you can manage, or anywhere between the extremes, but one thing is sure; it will not be identical with the former life because your new environment will not be the same, and everything will interact with it in ways obvious or not. This, just as any relationship with people will change if either of the two change.

But isn’t it just precisely what you want, change? And of course, Frank, I’m not speaking only to you. You can’t want to change – or, no, let me put it another way, to avoid possible misunderstanding. Change involves change. You can’t change without changing. You know the line from John Nelson’s book.

F: From Matrix of the Gods. The guru says, more or less, “oh, it’s the same old thing, they all want to know how they can change without changing.”

R: And of course, put that way, the absurdity is obvious to one and all. But in everyday life, it is easy to favor change as a goal, yet criticize or groan under or fear change as an on-going process.

F: You’re talking about The Change.

R: The Change, yes, in the sense of the great move forward that the guys talked to us about, before I became one of the guys. But don’t let yourself unconsciously fall into the trap of thinking in terms of one big change, like changing your clocks to Eastern Enlightenment Time and that’s it. That isn’t how life works. Life is not an earthquake, though earthquakes happen, but a daily incremental process of growth and decay. Change, in short.

So, yes, The Change, a change in how the human experience interacts with the non-3D and – don’t forget – with other parts of itself while still in body. But also change, process, flow. Life, in a word.

F: I am hearing, life goes on, transformation or not.

R: How else could it be? People get tired, conceptually, and they give way every so often to a longing for things to stop changing. But is that really what they want?

F: No, they want things to stop hurting.

R: May I suggest, they have a headache and want people to stop banging a drum next to them. It isn’t that they want things to stop, paralyzed, in their tracks, but that they want the volume turned down. And you know the answer to that.

F: I do. I was always surprised you spent so much time watching CNN, even though I realized that your active mind needed something to fix on. But – the news? And, particularly, the news day and night? Yet it never turned you negative, never dimmed your optimism in any way I ever noticed.

R: My outer life had been reduced to minimal demands. My mobility was limited, I had people to take care of the everyday needs for me – I was very fortunate in that. Therefore, the barrage of reported strife and chaos and recurrent crisis and rumor of crisis to come did not add to an already burdened psyche.

F: I do see the difference. And I suppose you weren’t really a news junkie, you just needed to keep your mind active.

R: You helped with that, you know. Our time together was very good for me, because there in the house was this energetic, optimistic, expressive personality with one foot still in the outer world of authors and thinkers and the other in my own world of the Institute and our joint pursuits and fascinations. So you’d come “bouncing down the stairs,” as Little Rita used to say [“Little Rita” refers to Rita Fisher, for many years Rita’s – Big Rita’s – caregiver in many small practical ways], and it would be a gust of fresh air with something new – part of your novel about Gateway, say, or your latest conversation with somebody, or ideas that had come to you for us to consider.

F: Not to mention our weekly sessions with the guys, which was your idea, remember.

R: It was my idea in so far as I suggested it, thinking we would be recreating the booth sessions more conveniently for me, in my own house, and more conveniently for you, after the end of your work day. Neither one of us, I think, had any idea what lay in store for us.

F: A total rearrangement of how we saw the world.

R: And, gradually, how we lived in the world, as ideas settled in.

F: Those were good times.

R: Yes they were. And had there been less of an age disparity between us, people would have suspected we were lovers.

F: They probably did anyway! Your daughters did, or pretended to. But we certainly did love each other in the agape sense of the word. Are we off-topic, here?

R: I’m smiling, metaphorically at least. From the non-3D end of things, there is no “off-topic,” because everything leads to everything else and there are no artificial divisions that 3D and especially the ever-moving present moment tempts you to see as real.

But even in 3D terms, we aren’t off-topic. The topic is, or could be seen as, living the change as it comes along and making a thousand incremental adjustments or – depending on one’s conscious or unconscious preference – a few major jolts, or any combination thereof.

F: And the connection?

R: Read The Sphere and the Hologram! It’s all there. That’s the process that moved us into a new way of experiencing the world.

F: Are you advising people to read it as their way to move?

R: No, I’m saying to you, Frank, that the implicit connection between the topic and our pleasant reminiscence should be obvious to you if you will re-read or at least look into our sessions again after what will seem to you a long time. In essence,

F: Lost it. And getting tired though it has been only 50 minutes.

R: Almost done for the moment. I started by using your relocation as metaphor for living amid change. Then I said, people get overwhelmed by its manifestation around them. I reminded you that you and I created a different sub-set of the world centered in love and in mutual interest and, behind our own backs you might say, we created a body of work that proved to be more enduring than we would have expected when we began it.

That’s what people can do. Create their own community in love, as for example, many TMI program participants do. Keep a connection with the non-3D world for emotional balance and intellectual stimulations.

F: And turn off the television!

R: I’m smiling again. That’s the point – I never did turn off the television, but I balanced all that tension and negativity with the positive aspects of my own life around me. Your own path isn’t for everybody, you know.

F: One of the Three Great Lies: “One size fits all.”

R: And don’t forget it. But it is true that anyone’s path may serve as example to others. Only remember that Thoreau himself told people not to blindly imitate him, but only take a hint if it happened to apply. Okay, that’s enough for the morning.

F: And it has been just an hour. Thank you, Rita. They were eight good years we had. Till next time.