TGU — Finding the meaning

Thursday, March 29, 2018

5:05 a.m. So it occurred to me just now, we’re on the trail of what our lives mean, aren’t we? Our place in the great drama of Life in the largest sense, not life in the here-and-now alone, not life in the birth-to-death sequence alone, not life as it is confined to the 3D scale, nor the All-D wider view of the 3D scale, nor perhaps even of the life of successive individual souls. Or – am I getting too grandiose and vague, here?

Not necessarily grandiose. A bit vague, perhaps, but that is only to be expected, given that so far you’ve only seen the distant view through the mists.

And you’re here to dispel those mists.

We’ll do what we can. But here we have to tread particularly carefully, because the question of What Life Is All About is one that has been dealt with by many people, resulting in many belief systems, held with great certainty even though often enough mutually contradictory. So any new attempt to expound upon the subject is apt to meet with almost savage resistance at unpredictable points.

Unconsciously held beliefs, I take it, strongly held but not consciously held.

Well, not quite. Say it a little differently. Strongly held conscious beliefs masking equally strong unconscious beliefs. And of course as in all things what is unconscious is not susceptible to alteration until made conscious, but the making it conscious is apt to produce explosions or icy indifference or suspicion of the motives of the person – 3D or non-3D – causing the discomfort.

I’ve experienced it, often enough. But it may be partly or largely my own clumsiness in speech, which leads me to make broad sweeping statements that aren’t really quite what I mean, as I intuit unspoken objections.

You are better in print, it is true. Anything that slows you down tends to allow for a more nuanced statement. However, the difficulty is particularly inherent in the subject matter.

Now, consider the human situation as you find it in your time – and by “your time” we mean anything after World War II, primarily in Western civilization and, within that, primarily within American and European experience. This is where you live; this is your most familiar 3D mental world. Even those born and living in Asia or Africa find themselves living in that mental world or they wouldn’t be reading this. (To the extent that they came out of a different world and are now living in it, they will have a unique and valuable angle of vision.) What we are saying, put simply, is that we address you where you are, and what we might have said to a man of the Renaissance or a woman of the Middle Ages, or someone in the Roman Empire, would not speak to you. It isn’t that the truth varies, exactly; more that the part of the truth available to you varies in that your ability to absorb it varies. Life and culture is not a simple process of addition, but of swapping this out and this in. If you are going to see life with more of a reddish tinge, you are likely to see less blue, say. Or, if your soup is more salty, it will differ from less salty. Or, high-pitched sounds may accustom the ear to be less attuned to low-pitched ones. These are merely horseback analogies, as you would say, designed not to describe but to suggest. You can never see everything all at once, nor can you attune yourselves to everything you can feel, still less can you express everything you can feel or attune yourself to. So, there can be no one, complete, definitive, statement.

So when you go to look for The Meaning of Life, recognize that at best it is going to be The Meaning of Life As It Intersects My Particular Life. And what we mean by that will take some careful explaining, mostly of what we do not mean by it.

I can imagine someone deciding it means, “Dealer’s Choice: Life means whatever I want it to mean.”

That would be one temptation, but more likely – and you should find this one very familiar – it would be, “Life means what my intuition strongly tells me it means.” After all, what else is it, to live by resonance?

So, if you are not merely warning us of Psychic’s Disease, what?

Every way of living has its unavoidable drawbacks, and if you are to live by following resonances as guides, you will need to be particularly certain that you are following resonances with the truth rather than resonances with what is most comfortable to believe because it best matches where you are already. Look at that sentence closely, and you can see it is a razor’s-width distinction.

Because if we have been living sincerely, we are already as close to truth as we have been able to get, yet our own unconscious bias seems as true, to us, as does our closest intuition.

It’s a little worse than that. Your unconscious bias may be the truth and your opinion of the truth may be the error.

As my friend Charles would say, Yikes!

Nevertheless that is your situation. Otherwise, how could it be that so many sincere searchers after truth did not reach uniform consistent certainty long ago?

Didn’t you just say that our surrounding civilization molds us and makes some kinds of thought impossible?

We didn’t say it in so many words, but yes, in effect.

Then, why should we expect uniformity of opinion when so many differences in the experience of life would naturally separate us?

You are forgetting that you are more than your 3D experience, and your mind is more than your All-D experience of any one life.

That’s true, I was forgetting that for the moment. But then, why should our individual perception be so colored by a given temporal mental environment, if our minds range farther than this one lifetime? (I’m not doubting that they do; I’m saying, since they do, why aren’t we of wider vision?)

This is an example of broad brush interfering with close detail. Your lives are each unrepeatable combinations of first-, second-, and third-tier experiences. You can’t expect to see things the same way even when you are at your most expanded. Your All-D minds communicate beyond 3D limits, but what they communicate is your individual conclusions, say, as much as any shared perception. Everybody is a specialist. Everybody is also a contributor to a common mind. It isn’t either-or; it is both. So, you never can get unanimity even with all participants trying their best, seeing most clearly, seeing most in common.

That last was awkward. I take it you mean, even when everybody is trying to do or find or express the same thing.

When everybody is trying to come to the same thing, as you and your friends are doing here. If everybody does his and her best, the differences among you will bring forth facets of the truth that otherwise might not emerge. It is the cooperation of left and right arms again.

Our hour is almost up. Did you get to where you hoped to go this morning?

Progress is progress. Despite your jokes, we don’t come to this with lesson plans, but with vectors. So we aren’t disappointed when things go slowly and we aren’t exultant when things go smoothly. Intent and perseverance is all. You will find, as you type this in, that we have made more of a start on the next phase of things than you noticed.

No doubt. I often see that. Very well, till next time, and our thanks as always.