Saturday, January 6, 2018
Living in faith, working on faith
7:20 a.m. My friends, I am nearly finished in my initial edit (adding subheads) to the book of Nathaniel that I am thinking about as Only Somewhat real. It will take a while to prepare for publication, and then I will have not one but two books reading for press, and the prospect of publishing them only one per year, with It’s All One World not slated till September, and Awakening from the 3D World not even beginning to sell except a few through TMI and my friends. I feel fortunate to have a publisher at all, given how few books sell, and at the same time I feel like I’m working strictly on faith, as the only sign that the books will live is the individual feedback I get (certainly not the sales figures.)
So now I’m toying with the idea of trying to write a book spelling out the new world-view I have been given, these past 25 years – 35 years, come to think of it, if we date from the Shirley MacLaine conference. Maybe it’s too much to ask that people accompany me on the journey. Maybe they need a shorter, simpler precis. So I’m inviting your thoughts on the matter.
Record what you got Thursday and Friday.
[Thursday 8:35 a.m. “My God, this is good stuff, but it’s all hidden! That popped out of my mouth as I was editing the book of Nathaniel. I’m going to have to produce summaries.]
[Friday 8:30 a.m. Editing the Nathaniel book, having to fight despair in two flavors. Despair of ever getting a good enough handle on it to be able to summarize and clarify; despair of ever getting to a larger audience.
[Both sources of despair are the same: the mistaken idea that you are on your own.
[I should know that by now! But I do fall back into it. Thanks.]
Yes, I haven’t lost sight of that, but it isn’t entirely satisfactory. Living in faith I can do. I do. But faith is better for at least a glimmer of hope to go along with it.
Do you want practical advice, or general reassurance?
I don’t think I need general reassurance. I really do trust. But some practical advice is always appreciated. I am practical chiefly in allowing myself to be guided by knowings, and of course it is easy to go wrong along the way, by mistaking an idea or a wish or a fear or an emotional pattern for a knowing. So yes, suggest away.
Keep working, keep open to possibilities, keep trusting that what you need will come to you. The revolutionary turns in one’s life can never be predicted by the 3D mind using 3D logic, or they wouldn’t be revolutionary in nature. But they may be felt, as non-3D knowing is heeded. You do remember what the Church defined faith as being?
Belief in things unseen.
Could you fairly say that faith has ever let you down in your life? Even when you pinned that faith to the wrong specifics? Even when it led you to what looked like dead ends?
No, I can’t. When something got in my way, it usually – maybe always – turned out to be me.
It generally does, because that is the working-out in 3D of the pattern you embody. We keep emphasizing: There can be no problem disconnected to one’s being, because inner and outer are the same thing.
I guess I’ll stop whining, or is it sniveling? Just keep soldiering on, I take it.
90% of life is just showing up. Why do you suppose that is?
Well, I guess if we wind up showing up at the circumstances resulting from what we are, that saying is a restatement of Thoreau’s saying you don’t have to go count the cats in Zanzibar.
Correct. You can relax to the extent of not having to worry about finding your task or struggle or accomplishment or passion in life. Life will provide.
Let’s change channel, then. Given that the process of producing a book through reason and selection is different from producing one by taking dictation, can I look for assistance of a different sort if I do begin to summarize the new view of life that has been given us? I can’t just sit down and listen; it’s different.
The difference is more apparent than real – and of course this goes not just for you and your task but for anybody. Only stay connected and all will go well. Digging ditches is different in nature from pushing paper or designing buildings or operating on a medical patient or contriving theories, but any of these – and any occupation you could name, paid or unpaid, done from necessity or done from love of it – connects the same way. You can live your life connected or you can live your life as if you in 3D were on your own, but the choice is up to you.
How guidance expresses will vary with every individual, and will be the same (in a way) for all. You might as well intend to work without breathing as to work without connection – so what’s the point of worrying about whether you’ll have assistance? A nurse struggling through her shift at work may feel alone and overwhelmed, but her day will go better to the degree that she knows she isn’t alone, not really. And the same for all of us – of us, for we and you extend into each other, we remind you.
And that’s enough for now, strictly because that rounds off the point.
Okay, thanks, from all of us.
Once again, it could have been written to me. As a writer, I feel what you feel. We write and write, because we’re compelled to write. I know I’m not doing it alone–it moves well beyond what I know. Some kind of encouragement or direction or reminder helps. “Only stay connected and all will go well.” Also, “There can be no problem disconnected to one’s being.” I drank these things in like cool water on a hot day. Thanks again.
Jane
Yes, written for others as well as for me. That’s the sense I had.
Frank,
“The difference is more apparent than real – only stay connected and all will go well.” Very profound and meaningful to me also! Several times in reading your conversations with Hemingway, I felt a lyrical tone in your writing that seemed like a melding of both ‘minds.’
I’ve felt for some time that Nathaniel is beginning our graduate education; seems like TGU and you have worked for years to build the foundation/scaffolding for this. I know you don’t have a lot of use for science or academia, but here’s an example from that area that might be useful.
In research (pioneering), the ‘new stuff’ is always beyond what almost everyone can understand. So the first writers have a quandary:
– do they write at the high level necessary to really present the new material, thus producing a book that will appeal to the very few that might understand it?
or
– do they produce books for undergraduates that are greatly simplified but sell a (comparatively) high number of copies?
On approach is to produce the high level book first, seeing it as an important part of really coming to understand/organize the new material for one’s self, while knowing it won’t sell many copies. Then one can produce books for ‘the masses’ from the better-understood material that (potentially) has wider appeal.
I agree that Nathaniel’s information is very important, and I’m delighted that you’re working on how to bring it out. Let us know if there’s any way we can help.
Jim
I like your strategy, Jim, and I guess I have been following it without knowing it. So I guess the next step is indeed to produce an easy or easier to absorb precis.
BTW it isn’t so much that I “don’t have a lot of use for science or academia” as that my talents don’t seem to lie in a direction that runs with those needed in those environments. And, I do express my irritation at their limitations, but left unspoken, I guess, is that obviously every human endeavor has its limitations.
My unnecessarily strong phrase was not meant pejoratively … being familiar with the peccadillos of the scientific/academic community I often express irritation at its many limitations. But there are truths and useful information in that ‘institution’ just as there are in organized religion (as TGU points out).
Guidance ‘tells’ me (and I observe) that this shift in consciousness is accelerating, bringing changes faster and faster every day. Nathaniel’s information has been/is very important to me in understanding and balancing those changes in my own life. As always, thanks!
Caroline Myss wrote a book about Invisible Acts of Power which was more or less about trusting the divine impulse to do, to act, to create and realizing that we often don’t know the effects our actions create in others. We throw a stone into the pond and the ripples go out in all directions, reaching farther shores even if we cannot see them. I find your writings immensely valuable so your “ripples” have reached me. Book sales are not the only way to determine value. Follow your divine impulses and let the ripples rip! Ha! And this is for you and me and everyone!!
Yes, as you point out, ” And this is for you and me and everyone!!”
Every time I start reading one of your books, I feel like I should go back, buy or reread others. They are literally marvel-ous gifts to the world. I am delighted to know you have the desire (and energy!) to write a world view summary.
“You might as well intend to work without breathing as to work without connection”…so why worry if help is here. And there. We know It is.
Thanks for boosting my faith with your stories and reminders of the larger Self at work. Love to you and Yours! I expect I am externally grateful for all you TMI teacher-learners.