Frederick Douglass on choosing our future

Saturday, November 4, 2006

Okay. Who’s up?

[Frederick Douglass] You have heard me knocking at your door.

That’s true. You are becoming very important to me. I hear James Earl Jones’ voice when I read your words though, because of the Ken Burns Civil War documentary. No impediment, except it makes it harder to imagine your voice. As Abraham Lincoln had a high squeaky voice instead of the deep bass one that people often assume, so I thought that you might be like that. Not that it matters. What would you like to say?

You are moving toward the nub of things, which does not inhere in politics or ideology or even religion but is deeper and more personal than any of them.

I’m a little surprised to hear that you think so. All my life I have felt a conflict between concern with inner life and concern with outer life.

And now you are realizing that they are two aspects of the same reality. You realize it, it may almost be said that you know it – but you have not worked out within yourself the ramifications of the fact. Some of them you have, but there are many more layers, more profound – which is why we have been pestering you this past year.

You know well that I regard it as an honor and privilege, if a somewhat troubling one sometimes.

We know that you are willing to do the work, so we on our side are working with you.

It’s quite a lineup, and on so many sides of the same issues. Joseph, and Bowers, and you, for instance.

And Abraham Lincoln and others yet to appear.

All right. So then –

You are edging ever closer to the realization. You have come this far: You recognize that this crisis, this balancing-point, is being manipulated to bring many absolute choices to point. The crisis of fisheries is no less important than global climate change, and so is the crisis of water, of food, of energy sources – of the governance of society, of questions of individual rights and social security (not the program, the concept of society as an interrelation of effort). What is at stake is nothing less than – what is man to be? When you truly feel that, then your fear and hatred fall away and you realize that your politics and economy, too, are being manipulated to bring everything to the point of choice together.

Chaos! But the world was formed from chaos! Chaos may be redefined as energy in the absence of form.

Yes I see that. Your words tell me plainly enough that I have not yet integrated all aspects of my life. Parts of me operate under different assumptions from other parts.

As is true with nearly everyone. Who is all of a piece? And this is a secret you have not quite yet divined about Che Guevara. He forced himself into a unity – a consistent whole – but did it by effectively amputating the poet within him. He had to wall off a large part of himself so as not to be indecisive, or wavering, or self-divided. Yeats spoke of men turning themselves to stone, and this is an example.

I guess I should explicitly mention that I know that when you say we are being manipulated, you don’t mean by the Illuminati or any group of physical beings, but by the other side.

Well, not quite what you call the other side, if by that you mean ex-humans like myself. The level of control is deeper, more profound, than humans. It is at a level of spirit before we become human – or perhaps I should say, more quintessential than our humanity. And in a way it is a level that isn’t human at all. Yet it is not disconnected from humans.

I always say that we are something deeper than American, or male or female, or human. Before all of those things, we are.

That’s right. And it is at that deeper, unitary level that the control of societies exists. As you have heard from your special group, who you call TGU, human experience is designed to enable freedom of choice, and the environment is continually adjusted to bring certain choices to the forefront. It isn’t that “we” don’t have preferences as to your choices, but what would be the point of sending you there to create yourselves by your choices and then manipulating your choice, or offering only seeming choices? However, what is to be chosen among is another story, and this is brought forth continually and seems to you to be the result of the chances of history. In a way, that is not wrong, but a more profound reading would be that the results of any previous set of choices sets the limits of possibilities. One range of choices becomes less applicable, less profitable, and a different range becomes more so. Once Napoleon had destroyed the last vestiges of the middle ages in Europe, the range of questions changes. You don’t see any more religious wars. You don’t see princes contending. You see national and then ideological contests. Had he failed earlier, or not failed later, the resulting questions would have been different.

So, today?

So today you will decide whether humans become more connected or less. The age of belief and beliefs is over. The next age is to be an age of living, knowing.

Some people think we’re going to wipe ourselves out.

It is a possible choice, but a pretty stupid and unimaginative one.

No argument there. But – a real possibility.

Of course. No point in giving freedom and taking it away every time it is to be misused. However – the garden is important. It may be that humans will be largely or entirely removed from the garden, but the garden will not be allowed to be destroyed, regardless what you think is happening. But the souls presently on earth may have to incarnate elsewhere. It is a possibility.