Rita on teachings

Friday, July 14, 2017

6 a.m. Rita, if you don’t have something else you’d prefer to begin on, we have a question from Bob Keefe.

Let’s begin with that. If your readers haven’t realized it yet, dealing with questions as they arise is as good a strategy as proceeding to lecture a la Seth. The questions are going to be based in the situation as it is in the moment. Thus, they will always be timely. And I remind you once again, all roads lead to Rome – assuming that the guide knows where Rome is! That is, assuming that the person being questioned keeps it in mind. Given that, any question may be turned to account.

Okay. Here it is, then.

[Bob Keefe: Today’s posting once again stirred up a question I struggle with, the issue of oneness vs. the many. Today you offered this clarification: “…millions of souls – minds – means millions of individual windows on the 3D, each a little, or a lot, different. That is of course an advantage, and one reason why we are sent into 3D in the first place.”

[I study a lot of spiritual teachings, and some really push the idea that “we’re all one”. These teachings would have me try to totally ignore my ego-mind generated feeling of being separate, and instead keep an awareness of a universal Essence constantly in my mind. They often imply (or state) that the ego is a big mistake.

[Obviously, I’ve reached the point where I realize that I’m more than my physical body, and that it’s of value to be aware of as much of my total self as I’m able to. I also see great value in diversity of experience, rather than uniformity.

[So I guess my question is, what’s behind this teaching of “we’re all one” that I’m missing? Rita always says, “as above, so below”, and hasn’t been reporting non-3D as a homogeneous blob, but rather as larger organizations  of beings, which themselves are part of even larger organizations of beings.

[What’s the best state of awareness to be in to be of most benefit to Life?]

[Rita:] That isn’t one question, but two. The second is easily answered. The way to be of most benefit to Life (which I take to mean, to all that is) is to do the one thing no one else can do: Be yourself. You cannot be duplicated. You are a unique window on the 3D world for the larger being you exist within. You are the product of your own personal chain of lifes, and therefore you are the author of lifes to come, equally unique. You have been entrusted with the task of local responsibility for being you. Be equal to that responsibility. This is both simple (almost unavoidable, in a way) and difficult (depending upon how aware you attempt to be and to remain during that life.

As with so much I have to say, that doesn’t sound like much, does it? Since you cannot help being yourself, why advise you to do so? Only, it isn’t quite that simple.

It’s a matter of honing the instrument.

Well—

I’ll have to hold the discussion to the consideration of the version of your life you are aware of, or it gets too complex, so let’s just pause and remember that this simplification is in effect. But, within that simplification, here is the situation. You bring your pre-3D-life identity into your current life. You live it making choices as you go. Those choices may, or may not, be guided by an ideal, a motivating goal, an ambition (call it) to become something definite. I don’t mean an achievement or even a career, in this case. I mean an ambition to be a certain way, to embody certain characteristics, to damp down certain contradictory characteristics.

George Marshall, say, or George Washington, or so many famous people we know of, training their character throughout their lives.

Yes, bearing in mind that the process has nothing to do with fame or external success (that is, nothing to do with them in this context), but with the individual’s honing what he or she is. That is what carries over to the non-3D, what you are, not what you did.

So you may look at my advice, Be Yourself, as saying Be Your Best Self. Use your freedom-of-choice time to choose consistently, and present yourself as much as possible as your Ideal Self, when you leave the 3D.

You see the distinction? If you drift through life, you will shape yourself somewhat by default, and if that is what your pattern leads you to do, fine. As the guys told us long ago, the drunk who dies in the gutter still has created a flower (his life) for the next life. But this is addressed to those who want to do more. The answer is, Live Your Ideals to the best of your ability, and you will have a happier life and a good result.

If I can find the Emerson quote I have in mind, I will insert it.

If you find it, fine. But the point is made, I think.

[“What are your sources of satisfaction? If they are meats and drinks, dress, gossip, revenge, hope of wealth, they must perish with the body. If they are contemplation, kind affections, admiration of what is admirable, self-command, self-improvement, then they survive death and will make you as happy then as now.”]

Now, there is the question of why so many others lay store on All Is One and on laying down the ego (though they may not see it quite that way).

As I paused to get some coffee, it occurred to me, the reason you confined your answer to the one version of our life that we are aware of is that by definition other versions are making other choices, and it would blur the example.

Each version may be pursuing an ideas; equally, each version may be drifting. The sum of you that re-enters non-3D is quite different from the one splinter of your true self that you can experience. But what you can do is limited (at least seemingly) to the versions you experience.

So, then, about All Is One.

When considering any teaching, keep in mind the intentions and limitations of the teacher, and the starting-place of the students. Such variables always exist, and they are going to make a difference.

Suppose you are a teacher beginning with a class of individuals who believe that All-Is-Obviously-Separate-and-Disconnected, as their senses report the world to be. All Is One is one entry-point to lead them to understand that their senses don’t know everything (so to speak) and that the world may be seen as intricately interconnected in obvious and also in subtle ways. From such a starting-place in the student, the teacher has it all to do. They don’t know the letter B, and there is all the alphabet to learn. So perhaps you start with All Is One, just as you might start with As Above, So Below, and given time and diligence and the right confluence of events, light may dawn upon at least some of them, and they may proceed to try to learn C, or they may rest on their laurels for the lifetime.

However, once such teaching is established in form, it is subject to decay from within. Or, that isn’t the way to put it.

Teachers teach by rote, not knowing the reason for the teaching.

Yes, that, or facing innumerable students at that same beginning level. Either way, the effect is the same: a codified belief-system more often parroted than wrestled with.

“On the other side, there is no time.”

Exactly. In this way, many a true statement becomes falsified, not by intent to deceive, but by not knowing and not being aware that one is not knowing. And, as you are about to point out, it is the same thing with religions, and for the same reasons.

So we may consider ourselves to be at the point of studying to learn the letter C.

Some of you may be even up to D or E! I’m smiling, as you know. and that is enough for now. Good, helpful, questions.

Very well, less for me to type, all the better. Thanks, Rita, and we’ll see you next time.