Sunday, June 10, 2018
4:20 a.m. At the end of yesterday’s short session, you said this time we will talk about my starting point for the book I should be writing. When I transcribe this, I’ll also transcribe yesterday’s page and a half.
[Begin transcript]
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Very well, my friends, to continue –. As so often, I look back through these pages and cannot see the continuation.
Well, it isn’t up to you. it’s better if we leave you with a starting-point, but after all, we always get moving again.
My friend Charles is quite sure that I should write a precis of what you all have taught me, these past couple of decades. He tried and couldn’t, even though he knows the material and is so well versed in other traditions.
Yes, but maybe it isn’t his work to do. Maybe it is yours.
Maybe so. I guess I am wondering if such a book would do any better than the previous ones have done.
You know the answer to that.
Yes. A, it isn’t up to me, and B, shorter is punchier, and C, pre-digested goes down easier than raw.
So why do you need us to encourage you?
So, our theme for today?
You don’t need to do this today.
Waste the day, instead?
Is that what it amounts to, when you don’t hold a conversation? Is that what life ought to amount to? You have the proposal to work [this referred to a proposal to The Monroe Institute that Bob Holbrook and I conduct a five-day program expanding our weekend AIG program,], and you might begin work on the precis [that is, the book under discussion].
My starting point being?
We will talk about that, next session.
Okay.
[End transcript]
So –?
An outline comprising one chapter for each book’s contents would preserve the progression without including the digressions and the process of gradual illumination, as we have said. However, the most important thing is, what is your slant? What is your thesis, what do you intend to convey? If you begin with this firmly in mind, writing will be much easier.
Muddy Tracks centered on my own personal history, the process of gradually coming to consciousness. It concentrated on the journey itself, and on the conclusions I had come to – my “interim report” – as a result of the things that had happened during the journey.
And you, knowing what you wanted to convey, found writing the book not so hard, though not without a false start. So, similarly today, you need to ask yourself, what is your book to convey? Or rather – How do you want to convey it?
Seems like we go over this again and again, and I get what seems like the way to write it, but then it does not get written, which tells me that what seemed like the way, wasn’t.
You resist setting out a logical thesis.
I do.
Yet – and we have been over this ground repeatedly, we and you – your two most concise, most planned and executed works – The Cosmic Internet and Imagine Yourself Well – were written around a thesis; they were nevertheless stories of your journey, in a way.
Well, I illustrated my point, in Imagine Yourself Well, by what I had experienced. The Cosmic Internet was more like presenting what I had been told in logical sequence.
You do realize, your befuddlement is going to be inexplicable to others and, after a while, to a later you as well.
I wish that later me would pass the text to me so I could write it down. It would save a lot of trouble.
You think that is impossible?
It would be a sort of trance channeling.
Not really. It is merely a matter of attunement.
Sounds like pulling myself up by my own bootstraps, to me.
And your befuddlement seems to us like deliberate blindfolding.
So if I can do it in the future, I can do it now, and save trouble. So, future self, you lucky dog, give me a sense of the approach that finally worked.
And, before we proceed, an aside to the onlookers: This is for your benefit too, as usual. This is a technique you can use. Align your intent, your feelings, your intellectual and emotional attention, on the future self that knows the successful resolution of your difficulty, whatever that may be, and then be receptive to what follows, not expecting to take dictation, but fully expecting to receive what you need, in the manner easiest for you.
I can see that this will be valuable to others as well as to me, assuming we make it work. Very well. It’s a form of pulling oneself into a desired future, or aligning with it, however you want to think of it. So, future self, how did we write the book in a way that finally succeeded?
[Pause]
I guess I’ll assume that the content will arrive as I hold the usual call-and-response format. I am finding it sort of inhibiting, though, as though I expect to be hearing my future self in the way I hear from TGU.
Don’t let definitions get in the way. Just be open to the information – to the knowing, in your case. Other people might get visuals, or words, or auditory words (that is, they might hear the words as if someone had spoken them) or feelings or kinesthetic sensations. Whatever one’s preferred mode of reception, that is how the information probably (but not definitely) will arrive. Your part is not to dictate how it arrives, nor from whom it arrives. Your part is to intend to receive the information. Thinking that it is coming from your own future self is merely a way of conceptualizing the process. If it is a helpful way, fine. If not, there are other ways to think of it. We think this particular process at this particular time will serve you and will serve to suggest a way forward to at least some who read this. But of course it is in the attempting, not in the reading about the attempting, that one learns whether or not a given approach will be productive.
Really, this is just an extension of the process and attitude I have been using all this time: Without attempting to define who I am talking to, I remain open to constructive input. Only now I am doing it while holding an idea of who I wish to contact.
After all, that is what you did with Smallwood and Hemingway and a few others, only it was a shade closer to “expected to hear from” rather than “set out to contact.” A nuance, but worth noting, and of course once your expectation became firm enough through the experience of talking to the one you expected to continue to hear from, it was as if you were directing the process, when in fact it is more complicated than that. Your future self is always involved in anything you do, as a few moments’ thought will demonstrate.
I had never looked at it that way.
What is continuity but cooperation across time?
Interesting.
So, if you will look at it that way, this will seem less a new departure than a logical rearrangement of how you think about a very well accustomed process. Perhaps that will make it easier to begin what otherwise might seem a major departure.
Hmm. Okay, so, how did I finally write the book? Let’s put it that way.
You began by getting firmly in mind why the reader should care. What’s in it for him, or her? Why is your information necessary, how it is helpful, how can it be practically applied?
That’s how I approached Imagine Yourself Well.
Imagine. And you didn’t do it by drowning yourself in notes. Keeping in mind your reader’s benefit is what guarantees that what you say is relevant. It keeps you from saying “x and such” merely because x and such are associated in your mind by how you learned something, or how you think of it. In other words, you pared off the irrelevant associations while leaving the relevant ones. The result was very appealing, and was concise. Then it is merely a matter of setting forth whatever will help, and only that, in any given context.
In other words, the material may be organized into more than one book.
What is it that your theme song has been, all these years?
We are not alone; we are all connected; we are far more than people usually think we are.
So where is the problem?
I see. The problem is my thinking I have to include every interesting thing anybody ever told me.
Your books of conversations do that. This book was the bait that led people to them.
I like the idea of thinking of it as already existing. It helps, for some reason.
For some reason? For the very specific reason that it aligns you with what is to come (from your point in time).
Got it. Seems like this is a good time to stop, then transcribe, and then maybe do some actual work. Thanks for all this.
I’m paying a LOT of attention to this exchange – this topic is a stumbling block for me…I’m frustrated more often than not.
I had to laugh. This morning’s session was unexpected! Just yesterday I sat down to begin a new (nonfiction) writing project I’ve been thinking about for a while. I was working with thesis statement (though I’m always resistant to them), outline, background research. It always helps me to picture an intro. And I always begin with all the usual doubts, no matter how many times I’ve done this–do I really have anything useful to say, will it sell, is there any benefit to the reader, etc. So this session is useful, timely, and inspirational to me. I really like the idea of staying anchored in the readers’ benefit, to protect against my own digressions (which can seem helpful at the time!). The idea of aligning with the future finished product is alluring, too. I’m putting that into the mix. Thank you for this! And best wishes on your new work!
My reaction to this morning’s idea of contacting out future self was “Why didn’t I think of that”. It never dawned on me but it seemed so obvious, and it applies to almost every decision to be made in every category of life:- health, career, geographical location, and perhaps even our transition from the physical. How cool is that?
I wonder if I will have a porch?
Depends: How much do you want one?
Great posting today – Thank you! And very timely. I’ve been wrestling with HOW to overcome a long-term challenge and recently made a huge, decisive choice but still can’t quite see my way through this one. Your posting today, reminded me that I can “ask” my future self to help “show me the way through”.
Argh!! WHY do I forget methods of guidance so often?? So grateful for your reminders.
Hmm. You know, at one level (an unfathomable one), it feels like we already know everything somewhere deep inside…..but we’ve just forgotten. Learning is actually “remembering”….?
Yoiks……
Re: a new book – Go Frank Go!
Thank you very much Frank….But I have found to need the assistance from my former younger, enthusiastic, sporty- the impulsiveness of youth(according to Seth very good to become impulsive), and my healthy self -(shelves?). Where have my enthusiasm gone?(reminds me about your late friend John Wollf telling to become bored and began to play Golf again). I`m feeling as the title of Agatha Christies old novel: “Nothing New Under The Sun.” More or less feeling “overloaded,” of all the information.
P.S. NANCY? You can come to my house – my workalcholic of a husband(age 77 years old)to have begun(all by himself working alone)making a new porch/- a large veranda surrounding the whole house. Obviously his new life (as retired), is to become a carpenter – I have wanted a condo instead, as everybody else at my age, and therefore to sell the house. As he told me: “I`m not leaving this house before I`m dead.” Wonder what Seth would have said about my husband? – MY long gone mother used to tell about my workalcholic of a husband long ago(we have been married in 52 years by now) she commented him as:” He IS coming from another Planet.” LOL.
Edgar Cayce once told: “God is Patience.” Do we REALLY create our own Reality all the time?
Hmm. Is this what “inner child” work is all about? I being my child’s future self. Thank you Frank. You clarify so many ideas.
I don’t know more about the inner child work than what the title suggests, but you raise an interesting point: We here, now, are the future of our past selves. (God, I hope they aren’t too disappointed!)
So we are at once the future of the past and the past of the future, and — WE ARE ALL THE POINTS ALONG THE SCALE.
That must be a little like what our lives look like from outside 3D. Vast interconnections, usually not conscious.
This is so fascinating. Thank you, Frank. Future selves helping us now….. I’ve got some deep “pondering” to do. But your posts always do that…..:)
I’ve been mulling over how prayer and magic ritual are alike — a point I knew to be true when TGU discussed this earlier. Today’s discussion of asking my future self for help feels like it is along the same. Effective prayer/ritual happens when I align my intent, feelings, intellectual and emotional attention on a future outcome, which is a solution to a current difficulty for either myself or another. I ask for a resolution (or I send loving energy) and let go of the need to control what happens. I fully expect that I or another will receive what is needed, and I expect my/their higher self will mediate that request for the best possible outcome. My part is “not to dictate how it arrives, nor from whom it arrives. [My] part is to intend to receive . . .”
I say effective prayer, because I used to try whining, pleading, and negotiating with a deity that I envisioned to be a resistant or unresponsive parent. That never seemed to work. It was basically wrong thinking.
It’s nice to observe just how far I’ve come and how I’ve become a little bit wiser. I think I’ll send my past self some energy and encouragement: hang in there, baby, it’ll all work out, no matter how it looks in the present.
🙂 Thank you all for your wise words, cause here lately I’ve been feeling like I was dropped on my head. Lol.
P.S. Very inspiring post, Frank. A personal favorite.