Wednesday, May 2, 2018
4:30 a.m. All right, I’m ready to continue if you are.
You might begin by mentioning your experience in Bruce Moen’s class.
All right. Several years ago, Hampton Roads sponsored Bruce to present his afterlife communication workshop in Charlottesville, and I was one of the small group of attendees. Bruce was a natural teacher, and he alternated talks and exercises. One of the exercises involved our going out to experience someone needing retrieval – at least, I assume so; it was several years ago, and all I really remember is what happened. I found myself in an empty landscape, no one around in any direction. (A desert, as I remember.) Really, I should find my description written at the time, but here’s what I remember, and what I got that you want me to mention. It turned out that the “being” I contacted was somehow attached to the landscape, to that particular place, and was not human or even material in the way we experience beings, but was the energy that makes a sacred spot sacred. I don’t know how to put it any clearer than that.
That will do, though.
And I will look to see if I can find my description somewhere.
But that won’t be needed. If you find it, fine. Our point here was that you experienced something for which you had no concept, but were able to register it and remember it.
The sacred element in sacred spots, you mean.
Well, that’s how you took it, and it isn’t exactly wrong, but we’re going to put it into a new context.
Yes, I imagined that’s what you had in mind.
Every place has its own spirit. This won’t come as a new concept to you. Power spots, flat spots, whatever – what seems to be merely landscape is never only that, any more than a human is only the collection of chemicals it may be said to be by the unperceptive.
But it is more fundamental than that. Every level of being has its own intermediary spirit – call it that – with respect to every other level of being. This is a way the world (that is, reality) is tied together that has not yet occurred to you.
I am beginning to get it, but I’m a long way from being able to phrase it.
Let’s look at it in terms familiar to people. You know that people used to classify the world by kingdoms – animal, vegetable, mineral, with humans sometimes considered as part of the animal kingdom and sometimes held out as a sort of fourth kingdom.
Don’t know that I’ve actually heard of the latter scheme, actually.
For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter. We need you to consider that scheme in relation to the fact that – as we keep repeating – it is all one world, an All-D creation in which every person and thing exists in all dimensions, even if only aware of the obvious 3D. When you remember that, you realize that life is never what it sometimes appears to be, dead matter hosting living.
Of course not, it’s all alive.
But what is an “of course” to some is terra incognita to most, at least at this point. Prior to materialist civilization, the infused aliveness of everything was taken for granted, but that is a long time ago now, from the point of view of the civilization you were born into, which is departing.
I suppose natives in New Guinea or the Amazon or somewhere still think that way.
This is a diversion, and we will keep it short and say, degenerate remains of a former civilization may retain perceptions and even concepts without preserving the underlying philosophic (call them) understandings that tie them together. Ideas and practices retained by what might be called cultural inertia are no longer creative, they no longer look forward, and are in many ways little more than superstition. But we will not stop to discuss this now, as it is a digression from our main point.
We can come back to it someday, perhaps?
We have been nudging you for years – so far, unsuccessfully – to keep a list of things you want us to come back to. It would come in very handy in slack moments.
However. The mineral kingdom has almost no external freedom, as we said years ago; hence has almost total internal freedom. The animal kingdom has much more external freedom, and therefore has to devote more of its internal resources to staying alive and going about its business, and the vegetable kingdom is between the two extremes. (Only, they aren’t the extremes of the scale, only the extremes of what we are considering today.)
But nothing in nature – no matter how widely you spread that definition – exists in isolation or exists without integral connection to something else. It isn’t enough to say, “All is one”; it is time to be asking yourselves, “In what way, in what manner, in what detail, is all one?” It makes a difference. Reciting something as an act of faith is not understanding it – and it is only by way of understanding that you can move on to new integrations. The understandings don’t have to be “right” in any absolute sense – you’d be in a fix if they had to be! – but they have to form a scaffolding.
In the case of the mineral kingdom, for example, there is what we might call an energetic body coterminous with it. Try to explain what you just got.
I suppose I would compare it to the electrical field around a transmitting wire. If you look only at the wire, you see a piece of metal with no obvious connection or interaction with its surroundings. But if you become aware of the electrical field, you realize that the field may be considered to be the interface between the wire and the rest of the world around it.
It is a crude analogy, let us stress that right off, because it breaks down quickly and even at best it only hints at, does not illustrate, the reality we’re getting at. But it may serve as springboard. Everything has its aura.
I think of Kirlian photography.
Yes. That will show you the existence of an energetic signature. In a sense, it hints at the 3D entity’s extension into non-3D. But it does not show what we’re talking about. To do that, it would have to be able to be hooked up to a landscape somewhere and show for the landscape itself, for that particular place, what it can show for a leaf or an animal.
Our initial point here is that every part of the mineral kingdom extends into non-3D just as you do. It has to. Nothing can exist in only two or three or four dimensions rather than in all of them. (And bear in mind, the concept of “dimensions,” though very useful, is a concept, not an absolute. When you look at reality without that concept, things look quite different.) Therefore where the world invisibly connects is in the non-3D oneness, only it extends into the 3D separateness.
I think I get that. You will know better than I will, I imagine, whether I’m really getting it or not.
You are getting it enough to hang on.
Since everything is invisibly connected, you may wish to rearrange your picture of the world, of life, to fully accommodate the fact. When you do, what do you see? You exist in a web of relationships not merely among your fellow humans living and dead, not merely among your fellow animals feral or domesticated, not merely among the “inanimate” things surrounding you such as your coffee mug, your desk, your reading glasses. All these relationships are real, and all have their non-3D aspects, which means they are never superficial in the sense that they may be seen as. But more directly than any of that is the web that may be called “the web of the present moment.” It is more than the accumulated result of past human decisions, more than the result of past physical actions of any kind. It is closer to a magic spell.
That’s going to require some explanation.
Don’t we know it!
The relevance of this to where we left off is not obvious.
No, it can’t be, yet. Only remember that we are painting the interface between human (individual) concerns and the weather you exist among.
I’ll keep it in mind. That’s it for the moment, I take it, since our hour is up and you seem to have come to a natural place to pause.
Yes. More another time.
Very well, our thanks, and till next time.
Hi Frank,
Today’s session fits right in with the books I just finished by Stephen Harrod Buhner, called Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm and Sacred Plant Medicine. He talks about asking the plant spirits directly who they are and how they serve in healing people or even healing the land where they’re located. It’s all alive, with intricate communities on all levels and will communicate with those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see.
Yes, apparently this is what natives do who use Ayahuasca. Narby found that out when he tried some, and the very DNA was talking to him.
Frank,
You and TGU are now discussing things I have ‘known’ for years (but resisted and done little to nothing with), things that don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda about starting in the ‘60s.
Your/TGU’s presentation is pushing me to pull it together, similar to what you said about those things you ‘knew’ years ago but didn’t/couldn’t ‘use.’ Scary and exhilarating at the same time! I imagine Einstein felt like this when he complained about that ‘spooky action at a distance’ (now called quantum entanglement): I more and more see that it is real and true … and still don’t like it!? 🙂 & 🙁
Jim
Care to say some more about this?
Anecdote 1
When I first met my wife we took an evening walk along her usual route. Walking along one (yet undeveloped) street I felt and said “Something out there in the woods doesn’t like me!” She was shocked … had felt that ‘something’ but had never met anyone else who could.
I felt/saw several things:
– it was attracted to her
– it didn’t like me
– it wasn’t human (and maybe not material in ‘usual’ ways)
– (most importantly) it couldn’t move from its ‘spot’ in the woods.
We crossed to the other side of the street and didn’t walk that route again.
Anecdote 2
When we moved into our house we found a large fenced dog run in the woods on the property. Both of us could tell/feel that something ‘bad’ (TGU might say active and hostile) lived there. In the weeks it took to cleanup the area we sustained (I felt but can’t quantify) an unusual number of cuts, bruises, specs in the eye, twig/branch ‘snaps,’ etc.
After the clean up the ‘presence’ seems to drift away, finding (I felt) it couldn’t scare us and we had no use for it.
For those interested in such ‘things’ don Juan Matus’ teachings to Carlos Castaneda are very useful; the nine or so books cover a lot about power spots, spirits, etc. I’m now much more interested in TGU’s concepts behind “Every place has its own spirit. But … more fundamental than that, every level of being has its own intermediary spirit …”
For me the ‘meat’ is in the last large paragraph: “You exist in a web of relationships … and all these relationships are real. [They lead me toward understanding] the web of the present moment … more than the accumulated result of past human decisions, more than the result of past physical actions of any kind.”
This all seems to point toward the following post (TGU — Obstacles to seeing 5/3/18):
“The world – realty – yourself – everything – is alive, full of vitality and potential, unbounded in any real way, and interconnected in all directions and to all depths.” Power spots and spirits are yet another way of opening up to this unbounded interconnected magical universe!
Jim
What a spanking wonderful conversation!
I somtimes feel presences. The old classic question: what do you want? Seems to help moving the situation somehow. And sometimes I just leave. I have often wondered why shopping malls seem to deplete me pretty effectively, making it impossible to make decisions to buy, even. And families spend entire days there. Falling into fear in these situations is problematic because fear can be a sort of autopilot program. Fight/flight/freeze is not an appropriate response when you have a guest in the “house”. I like how TGU say hostile is just other than you.
And now I think how there are mayan cities in Mexico that were completely deserted in a short time.
I have been groping toward some kind of conceptualization like the following for several years now.
“Every level of being has its own intermediary spirit – call it that – with respect to every other level of being.”
And:
“Therefore where the world invisibly connects is in the non-3D oneness, only it extends into the 3D separateness.”
I humbly insist these two statements must be read together, understood together. Consider the implication. The potential for unity to become or develop into multiplicity (for one to become many) is realized in what we know as space. But space understood as a field, a plane, a potentializing condition for “growing” distinction and difference–infinite kinds, types, exceptions, rarities, and anomalies. (Physical) Space makes the perception of separation– where this is not that, where that one is not the same as another one– realizable.
Another way of seeing it: as 3d unfolds, evolves, becomes, develops non3d does so right along with it, in it, through it. Hence there is something like “every level of being has its own intermediary spirit….” Now it seems to me that what we will discover– more accurately, what those who come after us will concretely discover– is that the distinction between what constitutes “physical” space and existence and what constitutes “spirit” nonspace and existence is far more fuzzy and and ill-defined that we can currently imagine.
Again, “every level of being has its own intermediary spirit….” Think (or just feel) about what this means.
Yes, this is what they have been saying right along.
Indeed. They have just never said it quite this way — so far as I know. Or maybe they have and I didn’t “hear” it. Either way, the two assertions I flagged encapsulate a sense/perception/concept (I don’t really have a word for it yet) that is equally empirical and abstract, or equally experiential and conceptual. The composition or organization of disparate physical elements into viable physical forms existing in space produces coterminous “spirit” or non3d forms existing in spirit or non-space (or vice-versa if one prefers). Buddhist thought can help here with concepts like co-dependent arising.
More pointed, I think, is the insight that follows from “intermediary spirits” vis a vis the old division between 3d/non3d. If intermediary spirits exist then intermediary space(s) exists as well. Is this understood? The true continuum of 3d/non3d suddenly becomes much more comprehensible– and also much more complex.
This makes me remember how Jung said in his Answer to Job that Job was teaching god, not the other way round as the narrative is normally presented. Very very interesting things to chew on. Many thankyous for all involved in as many D’s as there are.
Looks like we are all facing things we have always known in some recesses of mind but actively avoided looking at and felt taking the knowing into the life is somehow off-limits. Certainly outside the culturally approved given world-view. Some weather-pattern in the bigger world maybe changing? For me there has been an acknowledgement of a lot of self-loathing about things I have no control over. And a feeling of being able to re-evaluate and contextualise in a more positive way many frustrations. A feeling that we are taking this journey further.
Possibly we’re all waking each other up.
That is a sweet thought
Re-readi g just keeps yielding more delicious stuff to munch on. This: “civilization you were born into, which is departing” – is it really saying this civilization is departing?
And this: ‘Our initial point here is that every part of the mineral kingdom extends into non-3D just as you do.” This brings into my mind the exploretions in alchemy. The sand in some insignificant mound may dream of being the intermediary to insight and clarity – lo and behold – we have eyeglasses that are just sand made into glass made into spectacles. And what I meant to say actually was about alchemy and the explorations Jung and others who could follow did. The transformations of a substance through application of awareness and energy.