Sunday, January 27, 2019
6:50 a.m. I had a fleeting perception last night that involved this life and the afterlife, or 3D and non-3D, or however one thinks of it. Guys, help me out here.
What you remember is the vast disproportion between you and the universe, so to speak. It is all well and good to see that you are intrinsically part of all that is; that there is no wall of separation between unit and container – that there is no “unit and container” save in a manner of speaking. But that is not the same thing as to say that you will not be broken into pieces and absorbed. At least, it may equally well be seen that way.
What is trying to come into your continued consciousness is that this life is all one thing in all its many aspects. The clearer you can perceive that, the better.
Egypt?
Egypt held a clearer view of the power of life. Today’s Egypt is not that culture, nor even that climate, but it is that part of the time-space combination.
It will help me get into contact. That has been my hope.
Your life need not be seen by you as primarily for others – that is, as primarily a vessel through which you can explain or even exemplify or even encourage. Neither is it primarily for you as if one lifetime were the self-contained unit it appears to be. Rather, it is a chip in the rapids, as you saw, and also a calm set of eyes on the show.
This feels like my accustomed mental habit of saying neither/nor, both/and.
Nothing wrong with a good habit.
But I mean, am I making up part of the message – filling in the blanks, call it – after receiving part?
It remains a distinction without a difference unless you deliberately override what you are being given. It occurs to us, you may never have heard us say this; we may never have said it explicitly.
If you have said it, I have not registered it. that’s a very interesting distinction.
Return continually to Jesus’ helpful suggestions, all of which were meant to give you reliable ways to proceed. He preached integrity – that is, being the same thing inside and outside. In other words, don’t do things behind your own back. Know your intent and hold to it.
I don’t think the relation is clear yet.
When listening for the small still voice, or talking to the guys, or trying to know what the right thing to do is, the key is not to fool yourself. And how does one do that — that is, how does one assure that he is not fooling himself? You can’t do it by judging the content – that is circular logic, like the person who only accepts what is reasonable to his own previous definitions of what is possible. What you can judge is whether you proceeded honestly and consciously, as best you could. Good fruit grows from good stock: good information proceeds from good intent and good execution.
In other words, I think, we don’t need to worry nearly as much about fooling ourselves as we do about wanting to fool ourselves, or being willing to fool ourselves.
That’s what it comes to. And you can always be aware of your own true intent if you are in the habit of being honest with yourself. Only, this isn’t always as simple or easy as it may appear. If you were the units you appear to be, it would be relatively simple. (And how much good is it to do only simple tasks? Much more interesting and more productive to do harder things.) But you are not units, but communities, and not even communities of units, but communities of communities. That’s a lot of cross-purposes!
I just thought of a new way of thinking about Jesus’ saying about not putting new wine in old wineskins, nor old wine in new wineskins. I don’t know if it applies to our lives, our consciousness, our task of bringing our constituent parts into alignment during our life, or not. But it seems in a way like maybe it could.
Well, if you try to cram old perceptions into new circumstances, or new perceptions into old categories, you can see that it probably won’t work very well. Jesus need not have meant the analogy for it to be true nonetheless.
So if we want to be honest with ourselves, how do we avoid being led astray by our internal contradictory elements? Some do it by adopting a rigid code, I see now, but for those who can’t or won’t?
A first step is to be clear about the distinction between you as present-tense keeper of the ring – the person who has the right and responsibility to decide – and you as arbitrator among so many constituent agents. Same you, different functions.
And how do we distinguish? Intent, I suppose.
Exactly. In your intent as to what you wish to be, you have your guide.
The way some people say What Would Jesus Do, for instance.
That’s an example. The fact that a technique may be misused, or may not fir your own composition, does not mean it is mistaken or worthless. And after all, if Jesus is too exalted an example for you, the world is full of examples. Who do you admire? (We’re talking of character, here, not achievement or renown.)
And I see that we could take this from one, that from another. To use presidents as example, Lincoln for honest, clarity and humility, Washington for character and obedience to perceived duty. Jefferson for lucid intelligence and all-devouring curiosity, Teddy Roosevelt for sheer vigor and energy and determination, and so on and so forth. Obviously we could do a similar choosing among any who were important models to us, regardless of their fame or obscurity, their field of activity, their nearness or remoteness to our actual lives.
Certainly. One’s grandfather or brother or cousin might serve, or a friend. There is no limit to who might serve as model, and, after all, the qualities one infers from observing another may or may not be actually present in that other. That doesn’t matter. What matters is not the source of one’s ideal but the nature of the ideal selected (or recognized).
And I assume it is taken for granted, but ought to be said as a reminder, that one cannot live up to an ideal, but can only live toward it, else the ideal is not high enough.
Of course. Striving toward an impossible perfection is essential to welding an intent. But expecting to attain an impossible perfection would lead only to guilt, disillusionment, and perhaps renunciation.
Choose what you want to be, and live toward it, nonetheless retaining the sense that you will not attain the goal and shouldn’t (else the goal was not set high enough). If you do attain the goal, merely set another, higher.
In other words, no guilt or discouragement, but no self-satisfaction either.
Well, that is a rule, and rules are misleading. Let’s leave it at this. In order for you to set an intent and live it, you need a compass. Or, reverse the statement. In order to have a compass, you need to set an intent and live it. you may or may not know who you are, but it is essential to have some clear idea of who (and how) you want to be; who you want to become, who you hope to see in the mirror, looking back on your life. This isn’t for the sake of meeting an expected judgment by others or by yourself, it is for the sake of keeping you oriented along the way.
By the way, notice that everyone has intent one way or the other. If one does not set it deliberately for oneself, one may perhaps accept it ready-made, in a social convention, or a religious creed. But for people like you, deliberate choice is the only practical path.
Well, this turned into more than I expected. Thanks as usual, and I’ll see you next time.