Nathaniel on envy

Thursday, February 1, 2018

5:30 a.m. All right, gentlemen. Do we begin on envy (or another of the seven sins or errors or missings of the mark), or do you have other fish to fry?

We can discuss envy, if you wish.

Doesn’t matter to me. I had the idea you were going to go down the line using my LEG CAPS acronym.

You see that at least one of your friends has misconstrued the message.

I suppose that can’t be helped, can it? If I like the plaudits I should be prepared for the brickbats.

Or maybe it isn’t about you at all, but about the message.

Well, yes, I guess I do know that, only isn’t it more how the message and messenger are interconnected, inevitably?

That’s what we are saying. It isn’t about you, but about the interconnection. The message, in the largest sense, is always the same. Reality doesn’t change, in that sense. But it [the message] is always incomplete, because reality is always bigger than any given expression of it, so the aspect given by any one messenger is going to differ, slightly or significantly, messenger by messenger.

Hence, subject to distortion?

It will look that way to some. To others, it will look like a uniquely opportune rephrasing, opening windows. Your own opinion of it could change from one moment to the next, and although that would matter to you, it wouldn’t matter to the message. In other words, you can’t judge an incomplete message, and it will always be incomplete, always, as you put it, an interim report. But what you can do, as we repeatedly have emphasized, is weigh it moment by moment: Does this resonate, does that resonate? Does what did resonate before resonate with me now? Does what didn’t resonate before now seem truer than I had thought it?

Not writing scriptures, I know.

How one deals with scriptures is not any different, in practice. All you ever know, all that ever affects you or offers the possibility of constructive change, is your personal interaction at that moment. What this means is, a conjoining of the stimulus of the present moment with what you are at that moment, in other words, what you have made of yourself to that point. We bid you remember, that means more than 3D elements only; it means how the interactions of cohabiting one personality have affected all the various strands that comprise it.

Now, I’m sure you’ve never said that before!

Haven’t we? But surely the implications are there in the material.

Sometimes it requires a 2×4 to the back of the head, maybe. I’ll speak only for myself (obviously), but I never thought of our moment-by-moment interactions as affecting all our strands, equally moment by moment.

Now that you point it out, we can see that the temptation would be to consider your present life as a unit and each “past life,” each strand, as a unit, and perhaps assume that when you were completed, each of the strands updates their files, so to speak. But in other contexts you saw clearly enough the connection between any decision and the strands, and of course any decision is going to be a matter of that present moment.

Well, actually, there are two ways of seeing it. One, every time you decide, things change all up and down the line. Two, the only change that really registers is what you finally become as a result of a lifetime of decisions. Here’s the difficult part: Bothe ways of seeing it are true, impossible as that may be to fit into 3D-oriented logic.

I can sort of feel it; I can’t say I can reconcile it.

It is like people returning from death, trying to make sense of things that happened outside 3D constraints by fitting them into those constraints. A certain amount of distortion is unavoidable. It is sufficient that you accept the input and let it find its own place; you don’t need to give intellectual assent to it, nor reject it. Truth will resonate regardless whether you understand it.

So let us proceed to the rest of the sins, remembering that we said that very form of harmful error would be found to be mingled with a distorted, harmful, form of pride.

Envy. What is that but a tacit assumption that you are in the wrong place or that your life is on the wrong track? And what is that idea but an unconscious assumption that there can be an external force that can push you, or anyone, out of place?

Yes, clear enough. “He has something I ought to have. It’s not fair.”

And, there is a common saying, true enough in its own context, “Life is unfair.” But it would be better phrased, “Life appears unfair as long as you don’t take into account all its aspects that are invisible to you.” You understand.

Sure. I went into that with what I was then calling the guys upstairs – you, for all I know – back in 1993, when Kelly Neff and I discovered those lives as Marcus and Katrina, two children killed in 1943 by Nazis. I asked why those lives, and was shown how the suffering then readjusted the balance for them, in a sense; how it burned away guilt and burned away isolation from people.

But not everybody came to that realization. To them life may still seem unfair, because they are looking only at the present moment.

I get, any present moment is always going to be unfair.

Is always going to appear unfair. If that present moment could somehow exist in isolation, that would be true enough: Some people are happy and some miserable. Some have opportunities or fulfillment and some do not. Some have the basic necessities of life and some do not.

And it isn’t that “things even out, over time.” To say that would be in effect to say, “It doesn’t matter, life will be unfair to everybody sooner or later.” Rather, life is never unfair. It always is adjusted exactly to every individual’s reality.

That last word seems to have made the sentence meaningless. Could we substitute another?

What we’re meaning to say is that life is always in balance. The visible 3D present moment always exists with the invisible reality of which it is a part. How could anything get disconnected? So injustice, tragedy, accident, again are somewhat real, but only somewhat. Look a little deeper and you see the eternal balance. Life doesn’t get out of order.

Okay. (Though you know some are going to have a hard time accepting that.)

Whether people can or cannot accept an argument or portrait or statement at any given time is not your concern. What cannot be assimilated now will perhaps be valued later. What you can do is set it out, as a vendor sets out the jewelry s/he has made at an open market. Those who are not drawn to the merchandise do not detract from [did they mean “interfere with”?] those who do, and nothing is lost.

Does this sum up envy?

We have said what needs to be said. It is the nature of sins to lead you astray; that is why they are singled out as perils. If you experience envy, it leads you to think that life is not treating you fairly; that things are not as they should be; that you know better than the universe. Is this helpful in any way?

Clearly not.

To strive for social justice is one thing. To strive to change things because one feels envy of others is something apparently the same, or similar, but in actuality very different. It is not necessary – in order to avoid expressing or feeling envy – to endorse whatever social order one finds oneself in. only, as always, be aware of your motivations.

And there is your hour, and next time we may move to another subject, circumstances not overruling.

Okay. Thanks as always.