December 2, 2015
Why it is so hard to gain knowledge about Reality
Frank graciously asked if I was interested in using his microphone as a guest blogger on a more regular basis. I couldn’t help thinking, “If he’s crazy enough to ask, I ought to be crazy enough to accept.” The following is offered from the heart with no expectations.
There is a treasure-trove of information in the material that Frank has brought us, and I believe there is much more to be learned by marinating it and internalizing it in ways that enable it to make a substantial difference in us. My hope is that by resurfacing some of the material from Rita, TGU, Jung and Hemingway, and adding to it with some of my own, we will develop new perspectives on specific topics of interest. I know that some readers review Frank’s material on a regular basis, and hopefully this process will complement that.
Any comments are greatly welcomed, especially if you have changed your own point of view on the subject.
With some help from my friends, the topic is, “Why it is so hard to gain knowledge about reality.
Before I share “their” answer, it would be productive to review Rita’s most recent input to Frank on September 22, 2015 on Why Life Isn’t Easy. Excerpts from that are provided below.
F: 4:55 a.m. So, gentlemen – or, in fact, Rita? I assume you have been following, if not participating in, if not precipitating, this recent return to activity? Your book comes out soon, or the first half of it anyway, and I had the feeling that we would continue after a pause. Our pause has been since May, more or less. Ready to go again?
R: You will notice quite a change in yourself since we left off, as the material sinks in.
F: So where are we now? In a pause, in an advance, or where?
R: Everybody who reads this will be in a somewhat different place. If you are in a pause, you will find nothing revolutionary or incendiary. If you are ready for a new leap, you will. And every stage between, as usual. Coming back to the material when you are at a different point, it will affect you differently, accordingly.
F: Okay. So the text for today’s sermon?
R: Life isn’t easy, and that’s the value of it.
F: That’s going to be a popular sermon!
R: Nonetheless, I think you will find that it rings true. Recall for your readers how children’s bones grow.
F: All right. I see where you are going. Children’s bones alternate growth patterns. First they extend, then growth in that direction pauses while they thicken. Then they extend again, [etc.] until they reach their desired limits. And I will anticipate (I think) by adding that their growth in one direction may look like a pause in the direction 90 degrees opposed to it.
R: Your lives meet obstacles, and dealing with the obstacles changes you, or causes you to resist changing, which changes you in a different way. There may come a period of consolidation which may look like a pause—a breathing space, say. You see the analogy.
Now, when I say your life meets obstacles, a more careful rendering would be, when your psyche has to work to overcome. It may be confronting “external” events or conditions; it may be confronting “internal” events or conditions; it may be confronting stasis. Whatever the obstacle, the effort to adjust, to overcome, is the work being done.
F: I take it you intend to spell out these three conditions.
R: External means in this context (only), conditions or events that appear to be imposed from the rest of the 3D world. Internal means those that appear to be imposed by the rest of (i.e. other) the non-3D world.
F: And stasis?
R: I separated that because sometimes it appears one way, sometimes the other, and often enough, both. Pushing against an obstacle that can’t be seen can be more frustrating than anything!
R: These obstacles are real. They cannot be wished away, or talked away, or assumed away, or “intended” away. They are real, whether they appear as a stone in your path or an ungovernable leftover emotion.
It is a universal condition, problems, and I am attempting to explain why. I remember well enough, first hand, there is a tendency to think that if you “do it right” or “get it” or even if you intend strongly enough, your life will cease to present you with problems.
Just the opposite!
Just the opposite, and – bearing in mind that all is well, just as we were told so many times – you should be glad of it. Problems are opportunities, invited or not, welcome or not. They are the opposite of stagnation, and the cure for it, and the generator of new standings and understandings.
F: But – on behalf of others as well as myself – what about when you can’t resolve a problem? What about if you keep meeting it and meeting it, and it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t get resolved, it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere but back through the same door it just came out of?
R: You are braced for an answer you may not like, but there’s no need. All really is well. Discovering the mainsprings does not lead to despair. That is, the truth is not bad news. As long as you are still in the body, you are being carried along, and so your “external” conditions are changing, which means your internal conditions are changing relative importance to each other. “Where there is life there is hope” means more than “some miracle may happen,” though of course it means that too. It means, really, life will provide assistance if only by shifting the scenery. What doesn’t work for you today may work tomorrow. What didn’t work in the past may work today. Sustained intent is the key, and if you cannot manage that, renewed intent will do just as well.
This is why, by the way, people say that work on yourself is harder after death. After you drop the body, you realize that you are living in a world in which nothing is “external” to you. It never was, but the moving point of the present moment made it seem so. Without that automatic continual reorientation, you see that if you are to change, it is up to you as it always has been.
Back to the corollary question, Why is it so (darn) hard to gain knowledge about reality?
Answer:
First we would point out that you are potentially trapping yourself by believing that a) you can actually (eventually) know most everything about reality, and b) that the knowledge itself is all important. The fact that statement a) is a fallacy may seem obvious in retrospect, but that’s not the worst of it. You may actually NEVER know enough about reality. If you contemplate Rita’s words again, it will become apparent that this is not a bad thing; in fact, it’s important for your eternal development.
Secondly, perhaps you should start every morning by reminding yourself: this day and everyday is all about making you. In the long run, it’s not about knowing, it’s about being. (This is a tough message to swallow for an engineer.)
To simplify, there are two kinds of knowledge: that which has no internal effect on you, and that which changes what you are. Any piece of knowledge could be in either category for any human. Most would agree that knowledge obtained on the direction to the nearest supermarket is unlikely going to change you. But knowledge about who you really are and your place in the Universe is a different story.
Knowledge that changes you is not about having THE answers, it’s about moving you to a new perspective, which impacts all of you, and that’s a lot. That knowledge becomes a part of you, so that like experience, you and the knowledge are one and inseparable.
Knowledge that changes you pulls you away from your comfort zone, drags you out to sea, and sets you adrift to flounder until you work your way into a new understanding. It’s very discomforting to know that your previous “place of being” no longer exists, and your new one is still out there somewhere. But you will never get beyond the horizon without losing sight of home. It’s hard work.
Now wouldn’t it be nice if there was a “Handbook on Reality” which started at the Dick and Jane level, and was complete in its description with a vocabulary of 2000 words or less? Or maybe better yet, that there would be a wisdom pill: “Take this with water once every morning, and in one week you will possess all wisdom about everything!” Ludicrous and sarcastic, but perhaps it will clarify by contrast the difficulty in trying to understand a reality that is highly complex, unbounded, simultaneously part and whole, completely interconnected, not governed by the apparent laws of 3D, and not describable accurately in the English language.
Be thankful for the discomfort; be thankful for the hard work required; let the knowledge change you step by step.
John
Thanks so much Rita, Frank and John. Change is now so rapid that I’m breathless. I can’t understand why this wobbly eighty year old is so important, but the press is on from the other side it seems. An hour or more every night around 3AM appears to be reserved for lecture. Then, there is a pile of homework. I’m now learning more every day, more of value, than any time in my mathematician/engineer life. I just so wish I’d been to this point when I was twenty. Yes, yes, “I”, “I”. That’s the topic of the moment.
Don, who else should you be equally concerned with? You are the only person in the world charged with responsibility for your own development.
Don, as an 86 year old I empathize with your comments. Same thing seems to be happening here, although my experience is different.
Lately I’ve been “working at Focus 27” with the concept of “soul fragments” — which seems to be consistent with the information Frank has been getting. Also, a bit with folks who have physical dementia symptoms, again using Hemi-Sync.
But Frank has given us plenty of new material to work with for a while!
Dick Werling
I appreciate the comments. It’s most difficult to really think of and value ourselves for what we really are. As we change ourselves, we are impacting everything that we are connected to, and that’s a ton! It’s just not visible.
John
I do believe Frank have done a good choice with bringing you along here John !
And it is fantastic written in every way John, thank you very much…Ait is felt true with my own concepts so far: As the inner entity/core in life seems to be all about the widening extension in consciousness. It rings true with me.
I have listened to the YouTube interview between Frank and Michael Langevin about Rita`s book.
VERY NICE indeed.
Thanks again.
B&B, Inger Lise.
Inger, thank you. I am hoping that you would add some of the applicable Seth material from your recent course.
John
For me the question is “Why is it so hard to KNOW that I create my reality … even when I accept and join into ‘reality’ seemingly created elsewhere and/or by others.
‘To say, “I’m on this particular path, but I want to change this,” is true enough, but it’s no more meaningful than saying “you’re in a maze of freedom and you can go where you want to go.”’
“Stretching Consciousness” The Sphere and the Hologram
Jim
I’m being pushed to join the conversation…
Me: All right.
Not-me: Consider this a supplement. It is not meant to supplant what has been said. It cannot be stressed enough how local and limited are the terms of John’s question. Now, this does not negate the value or perceived difficulty of actually living with such a question. However, what we want to emphasize is that the inherent limitations of being human create distortions. Yet such is what enables change, permutation, and novelty. The limitations of an extremely localized perspective/experience are highly valuable for creating realities.
Me: Let me see if I get this–
Not-me: You wish to “know reality”? We say the limitations you find so painful are artificial and temporary impositions which facilitate basic creation. Not unlike a lab experiment.
Me: Well, I can see that, but I for one do get a little–what, bored? tired?–of the injunction that the “medicine” is good for us.
Not-me: Hmmm. It seems to us that what you tire of is your own attachment to and preoccupations with these limitations. Do not mislead yourself on this point. We’ll offer an analogy: Consider any sport or game and its participants. Do the participants play the game well if they spend the allotted game-time bemoaning or arguing over the rules, structure, and limitations of the game? Of course not. That is safely done outside the confines of the game itself. When the game is on the participants simply play. And there is no game without rules/limitations anyway.
Me: Okay, fair point. However, knowing the rules and limitations is helpful wouldn’t you say?
Not-me: Simply hold the analogy as a guide to what we wish to convey. Do not run away with the analogy. But if wish us to address the question we say: You know very well what the rules are. What you really want to know is how might the rules be broken.
Me: Pretty much. We’re trying to get better at this game here!
Not-me: Then concentrate less on the limitations that make the game possible and more on what the game is about. That is,as we said, creation.
Me: Okay, but there’s something paradoxical about what you’re saying, no?
Not-me: Perhaps from your perspective it is, but it needn’t be. You are thinking that creation or even knowledge is freedom from limitation. But remember what the limitation is for. It creates conditions in which the potential for creation, novelty, and change are increased. Again, the point is your focus. Do you want to focus on the limitations or the creative potentials that exist b/c there are limitations in place? We understand what you are groping for in your feelings, but perhaps you should say it.
Me: In short, rules are meant to be broken. The “limitations” can’t be laws or inviolable otherwise creativity and change would cease.
Not-me: That is right. We are only pointing out that too much focus on what limits occurs at the expense of what is possible. We carry no brief for what holds all of you back or limits your knowledge and awareness! Go beyond, go far beyond the limits and difficulties. Break all the rules! We only note, humbly, that rules are not broken by a committee constantly fussing and worrying over the rules. Rules are broken by those playing the game. Moreover, the game is changed only by those willing to play it. That is enough for now. Go play.
This is very good. One suggestion. Instead of Not-me, maybe Me-plus?
I’m grateful that you and your friends weighed in. It (Earth life) IS all about creation, creating ourselves and new perspectives. It has also been said by Rita, TGU and others that when we drop the body, we may have fewer limitations, but some (and that may be a lot) knowledge will still be beyond our reach, and that condition is motivating for continued growth.
Thanks Cat’s Paw, that’s exactly the ‘kick in the pants’ I need … “When the game is on the participants simply play.”
Not-Me’s last paragraph is dynamite!!
Jim
Thank you, Cat’s paw. Just love what you have contributed here. And I like the clarity of your not-me voice.
I particularly liked this line, “…remember what the limitation is for. It creates conditions in which the potential for creation, novelty, and change are increased.”
And this, “…rules are not broken by a committee constantly fussing and worrying over the rules. Rules are broken by those playing the game. Moreover, the game is changed only by those willing to play it. That is enough for now. Go play.”
Yes, yes, yes!!! Thank you!
I’m halfway through Rita’s World. It is seemingly not only confirming long held beliefs about the afterlife but taking them to levels I never suspected could be, thus shattering the old cast-in-concrete concepts. This is how it should be I think.
If one wants to know more about the subtler realms one should have to employ subtle thinking and feeling. I love how this material challenges one to let go of older concepts and habitual thinking in order to get on board with ideas of how things might be once we “graduate”.
Before I ramble on too long here’s my question. In so-called 3D life I find less and less to enjoy as far as popular media goes. Thus I cherish good music, quality intellectual stimulation, deep conversations, powerful thought-provoking movies, and so on. Those becomes the highlights of my week.
In the afterlife will we be intellectually stimulated or is that too much of a 3D way to put it? Will we laugh? Will we enjoy music or whatever it might be at that level? In the absence of good food, weekends, parties, and naps (I know this all sounds silly), will our earthly delights be elevated such that we will never miss he 3D ones?
Those are good questions. As Bob Monroe used to say, “go find out and come back and tell me and then we’ll both know.”
I second Frank’s motion. I think the material in Rita’s World, starting with “Visualizing the afterlife” is good pump priming for helping you find for yourself information about what you are seeking.
P.S., somewhere in Frank’s Hemingway material it is said that he continues to enjoy one of his earthly pastimes of fishing.
Dear John & all.
Now(at the time being),we,the course participants are into the Seth recommendation about changing our sleep pattern. It is on chapter eight in the book Seth Speaks(my Amber-Allen published books 1994-1996), page 97 and 98. And Quote Seth: It is a concrete method into creating your own reality:
….” as a result of a more frequent, briefer sleep periods, there would also be higher peaks of conscious focus, and more steady renewal of both physical and psychic activity. There would not be such a definite division between the various areas or levels of the self. A more economical use of energy would result, and also more effective use of nutrients. Consciousness as you know it would also become more flexible and mobile. Thus would not lead to a blurring of consciousness or focus. Instead greater flexibility would result in a perfection of conscious focus.
I am jumping a bit further down the same page:
” There are many variations, in fact, that would be better than your present system(within the sleep-pattern). Ideally, sleeping five hours at a time, you gain the maximum benefit, and anything else over this time is not nearly as helpful.
Those who require more sleep would then take, say, a two hour nap.”( I love naps )
Sitates ends.
I came to recall the Edgar Cayce Readings have told the very same as Seth, telling about the benefits in doing the recommended sleep-pattern.
And quote Seth a bit more as Seth says further down the same page:
” You have trained your consciousness to follow certain patterns that are not necessarily natural for it, and these patterns increase the sense of alienation between the waking and dreaming self.”
Well, we, the participants of the Seth-course, will seemingly be a very mixed group….among us many being “as old-timers” in the metaphysics… and many “newcomers” in the Seth Material.
And now, at the time being, I am to change my sleep pattern all over again. Once upon a time, back in the 1980/1990 thies, did the same exercises as a habit(and much “happened”).
Bliss & Blessings to you and all. LOL, Inger Lise.
P.S. Two more weeks to go…
Thanks for reminding us. I remember reading this and thinking about its benefits. I’m interested in how the new pattern works out for you.
Thank you John.
“…you are potentially trapping yourself by believing that a) you can actually (eventually) know most everything about reality, and b) that the knowledge itself is all important.”
You (and isn’t *that* a bigger word than we knew!) know me so well! How much we look to the external for a saviour, a path, someone to parent us, a better government, just … “HELP!” Or maybe that’s just me. We are so externally programmed, because of course relationship with all that is is fundamental.
I know I’m still fixating on direction, I am a little obsessed with knowing how to be the person I want to take with me when I go, but when you can hold a level of relaxation in your current state instead of being frightened you’re missing a vital fact, there’s a perceived shift of something coming home and feeling all IS really well, instead of that lonely wandering (apparently, but not really) lost.
Re: “I am a little obsessed with knowing how to be the person I want to take with me when I go” I think you are already there, just not focussed on it. When you sense home, all does feel well. Nice thought.
All,
This thread has given me a lot; my great thanks to John and all who participated.
To paraphrase Galadriel (to Frodo in LOTR), “To be human is to not KNOW!” But we’re shown over and over that through intent and effort and perseverance we can and will grow into understanding.
“Rules are broken by those playing the game. Go play!”
Jim
Thanks, John, for your contributions. Great thoughts. I look forward to more.