TGU — The geography of the present moment

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

3:30 a.m. So I have been re-reading The Sphere and the Hologram and finding that it holds up. Very reassuring to me to see that things said then – nearly 17 years ago – are not in opposition to things as I understand them today, and that they still make sense in light of everything I think I’ve learned since then.

You’d think it wasn’t you, making it all up.

Yeah, you would. Well, I don’t regret my long period of suspended disbelief. I still think it was better than just automatically believing everything would have been. For one thing, that state of prolonged suspicion alerted me to the condition that was explained as a temporary group mind. That, in turn, enabled me to explain to others why new material would seem so entirely like our own thinking while it was coming in, and only later reveal itself as strange. Even if the temporary group mind concept turns out to be an epicycle, it was a very useful one.

Every concept is an epicycle, in that it isn’t as universally true as it looks, and many are nonetheless useful, in that they help you absorb a little more of reality than previously. The important thing is to be able to discard them when you have seen beyond their provisional nature.

I made a note to myself last night to suggest that we begin with “present moment everywhere,” unless you have some other path you’d care to tread.

Nothing wrong with starting there. By those words – which now seem pretty cryptic, do they not? – you meant to suggest that we expand a little upon our suggestion (made many times over the years, but not really followed up to any extent) that every passing present moment is alive and interactive.

Not my idea entirely [to begin with “present moment everywhere”], I take it.

Not quite. But it may be a difficult topic to put into words, so be prepared with objections, questions, qualifiers.

Yes, I hear you. Calibrating.

Okay, here it is. You – anyone reading this, no matter when, and no matter how often at different times you may read it again – you, right now, are here, now, as Ram Das tried hard to get you to realize. It is always “here,” it is always “now.”

Not so hard to understand, right? I mean, you absorbed that. Well, but then, add to it – not substitute for it, but add to it – the fact that that ever-moving present moment does not cease to exist, and you get into deep waters.

Okay, I get where you’re going, but you haven’t said it yet, or do you want me to hold off until you say a little more before trying for clarifications?

As we go along is fine. But state what you got that is implicit but not explicit in what we just said.

You are meaning, I think, that each given moment exists forever; as you first told us years ago, the past does not cease to exist – when seen from outside 3D space-time – merely because the moving present moment has moved on. So Jan. 10, 1850 (to pull a date out of my hat) is as alive as today, and always will be. We got that, but I’m hearing now that the “moving present moment-ness” also remains there, remains everywhere. And this I had not gotten, and will be interested to see you reconcile.

We may have to do a little surgery on your epicycles as we go. You’ll see. Very well, take the time you intervened in Joseph Smallwood’s life (and disregard the fact that you are increasingly sure that that wasn’t his name. That isn’t important in this context).You, Frank, in the 1990s – on one specific day in the 1990s – intervened in the life of a man in the 1860s – on the same day, only not the same year.

July 4, 1994 and 1863.

You, in what was your present-moment (of course, for when else could you have acted) intervened in his present-moment (for when else could he have reacted). How can that be?

Similarly, [Bob] Monroe and various Monroe teams via Lifeline retrieval techniques, intervened from their present-moments to assist people who were in their own present moments, although not confined to 3D.

You mean, those needing retrieval needed it because they weren’t aware that they were no longer constrained by 3D.

That’s right. Well, look at those conditions carefully. Can you see that you haven’t been looking deeply enough, that your accepted explanations are a little too much founded in everyday assumptions rather than in your deeper knowings?

I hadn’t, but I’m getting there pretty quickly now. Our own present moment isn’t any more real and distinctive than theirs, it is?

That’s just a little too fast, but you’re on the right track. What happens if we jettison the concept of a moving present-moment as an epicycle, and replace it with a better understanding?

Okay with me, though I can’t quite see what you’re going to replace it with.

If you could [see it], why wouldn’t you have done it yourself?

Point. So? –

You have been proceeding upon the idea that the present moment is the point of application, the point of power to act. But implicit in this concept (which is correct as far as it goes) is another assumption which is not correct – that all other moments of time are somehow frozen in place, perhaps more like monuments than like living moments. You modified this idea to say that such other moments could be brought to life, so to speak, when in contact with the living present moment – that is, whenever an actor chose in his or her present-moment to interact with that previously-frozen moment. We don’t say you ever quite consciously thought this, but it is implied in what you did think, combined with what you unconsciously assumed.

It looks a lot less reasonable as you restate it.

Well, that concept was your epicycle that enabled you to move from the conventionally accepted idea of the past not existing, the future not existing, only the precarious fleeting present existing for a split-second before also ceasing to exist and being replaced by another transient present. You see, your new epicycle enabled you to move from a more unreasonable counter-factual idea to a less unreasonable idea. That’s the nature of epicycles. A politer word for them is scaffolding, intended to be discarded after they have assisted you to do the job.

So now we say, look at life this way. Not, nonexistent past or future with a fleeting moment in the middle, such as your dominant culture still clings to. But not your epicycle, either, of a living ever-moving present moment and all possible past and future moments equally in perpetual existence but without the ability to choose that is the outstanding characteristic of moments in the living present presence, so to speak.

Instead, every moment is alive with potential, always. It isn’t the moment sliding by, so to speak, but you sliding by, so that wherever you are is what seems to be the uniquely alive present moment.

What I’m getting is that what I got so many years ago was true; it wasn’t just me making it up.

It was you picking it up. Something you read threw a spark and it ignited something in you. But spell it out.

The sense I got was that all time exists laid out in space, and that where we are in space – where the planet has carried us – determines where the present moment is.

No, you didn’t think in those terms then.

Well, you tell it.

No need to tell what you did think. Tell what you think now. Absorb it and then express it, letting go your previous ideas.

Here’s what I think I see. Let’s imagine outer space as a sheet of paper, and the sun proceeding across the page, dragging the planets with it. As we follow along, our long curving path – I don’t know what it would be called, but it isn’t a circle relative to the sheet of paper, because the sun is pulling us along – our regularly cyclical path drags us along the paper, and each place we are dragged to is experienced as the unique moment in time we call the present moment. But we never go back to where we have been; thus we never go back in time. We never proceed in a straight line; thus (I suspect) our lives have patterns associated with cycles rather than with straight lines. Astrology has the idea, only it seems to be concerned primarily with angles formed by various planets, rather than earth’s progression across the paper.

Now, mentally.

Well, as I said, we can’t go back in time, physically. Mentally, we can and do, but we do so while remaining coupled to the body, obviously, so we can’t experience any other moment in the same whole-hearted way (so to speak) as we do naturally wherever we are dragged to.

And it’s a good thing the hour is up, because I can sense that we’re going to get dragged into deeper waters, here, and I wouldn’t have the energy for the additional hour or more that it will take.

Nevertheless, a good start. A couple of reminders. Your scaffolding served you well. Others may have different scaffolding. It is always well to be gentle in your approach to “helping” others see “the truth.” Kicking down their scaffolding because you can see its provisional nature helps nobody. Merely providing alternative scaffolding is enough. Those who can’t use it won’t, but won’t be harmed by its existence.

Okay. Where do we begin next time?

The 3D and the non-3D and its application to this idea.

Okay. Looking forward to it.