TGU on choosing associations

Thursday, April 11, 2019

7 a.m. You said something yesterday that I should like to pursue. No, it was Tuesday. “At different times, your mind forms a differently charged field, attracting different potential and thus effectively living in a different world.” I feel like I almost understand this statement as it stands, only, not really. It is as if it were aimed at one of my technically oriented friends, instead.

Perhaps you are as technically oriented as we need, or, indeed, could employ in this particular task. We are not writing science textbooks, after all. Remember Abraham Lincoln’s advice to his partner – phrase your arguments so that the simplest people can understand them, because the more educated will understand them too, and thus you will reach everyone. Perhaps if you were better educated in the accepted science of your day, you would be less able to entertain what you would recognize as heresies, or, let us say, official misunderstandings. [“Official misunderstandings” seemed clear when it came, but it is less so, as I transcribe it.]

There’s something in that argument. So, given that scientifically I am a simpleton, can you expand upon your previous statement?

We’re smiling. It’s simple enough. Other analogies – spatially-oriented analogies – leave the unnoticed impression of being more solid, more permanent, less volatile, than the reality is. Nothing wrong with analogies, as far as they go, but they always have not only their limitations but their unnoticed tendencies to distortion, and every once in a while it is well to have them corrected or at least mentioned.

Thinking of yourselves as charged fields will lead you to other associations, more dynamic, more transient, but not less effective and transformative than thinking in terms of physical movement. If for no other reason, the idea of a polarizing or attracting electrical field will tend to have you thinking of attraction from various directions, directions that may change quickly and rapidly [I think they meant “often and rapidly”], rather than the somewhat straight-line movement other analogies suggest.

I get that the field you suggest not only changes, but as it changes attracts different kinds of things, not merely different samples of the same kind of thing. And the very vagueness of my description here ought to show that I don’t really have a handle on any of it, just an inkling.

But you were moved to ask about it, so you aren’t exactly in the dark. More like in the twilight.

Leading me to think of the movie “Twilight,” with Paul Newman and James Garner and Susan Sarandon. And the fact that it did reminds me of something else. Recently in an email exchange with a friend, it occurred to me (that is, I noticed myself saying to him, which alerted me to the fact that I believed) that our detours are as meaningful as our pursuits of an idea or an argument. Thus, when you have someone very mentally active, as Dirk is, probably any little thing is likely to tempt him to go off in another direction. No, let me say that more carefully.

No, let us say it more carefully. It is our interruption, after all. (We’re smiling.)

The interruption we caused by using the word “twilight” served to illustrate a natural process of the mind. As we intended. But – and this is aimed more at your friends reading that than at you, Frank, as you will understand directly rather than indirectly what we do or do not mean – be slow to decide the implications of this. Give us time to explain without your pre-judging; pre-judgment will result in your needing to revise your judgment or – much more seriously – will result in your being unable to receive what does not fit in with what you will have decided. (This is what prejudice does, after all; it defends against revision.)

If you think of things one way, certain conclusions will suggest themselves so strongly as to be seemingly self-evident. Think of them another way, or a third, and what is self-evident may be entirely different. So it is important not to create unnecessary obstacles for yourselves.

First, here is our statement. Try to receive it neutrally.

As you process life moment by moment, your mind functions as a charged field, attracting certain types of – well, call them objects of attention. We can’t call them thoughts or ideas or emotions without introducing distortion. The mind attracts certain kinds of thing, and the kind, as well as the specific content, can vary from moment to moment. Through interaction, the thing received and the mental state that had received it will alter. That is, the mind will then go on to the next “thing.” If an uncontrolled process (that is, if your mind is functioning as “monkey mind”), it will be one long chain of associations without any direction or purpose. The person living in monkey mind may have a very active mental life – and likely a very active physical life – but it won’t be directed at anything.

That isn’t what you mean to say.

No. Better would be, “but the mind’s contributions to the life would be mere chatter, sometimes entertaining, sometimes annoying, sometimes maddening, sometimes neutral, but in no case directed by the 3D consciousness.” [In such case], the 3D consciousness experiences the monkey mind in the same way it experiences the “external” world, as something that just happens, for reasons unknown, for purposes unknown, by mechanisms unknown. The monkey mind, like the external world, may be quite active, but it is not the 3D-consciousness’s doing, as far as it can see. At best, the 3D person may seem to be a consumer; at worst, a prisoner. And, between the two, not all that much difference.

And I get that this is what the Freudians’ free-association technique is about. They followed the chain of associations, trying to understand the hidden dynamics between the objects of association and the mind that was associating them.

Better leave that to the processional psychologists, but what is true is that the objects and the mind interact with each other. If it were possible to replay a day’s consciousness, you would see perhaps an identical chain of associations, or, much more likely, a chain that begins in the same place but then diverges, perhaps slowly perhaps immediately, because your part in the process is that you choose among the bright shiny objects that present themselves as possibilities. Thus if you train yourself to think high thoughts, or if you train yourself to think low thoughts, the paths you choose in terms of relatively free association are going to be quite different!

So – and here is our point for the moment – it isn’t really a matter of “our” affecting “your” mental processes. We don’t and usually can’t force any card. [This refers to card tricks in which people are unconsciously led to pick this rather than that card from among those offered.] But it often is our saying, in effect, “Choose this thought; the resulting chain is better for you.” Only, who can choose for you? Nobody. That is what you are in 3D to do, we keep repeating: to choose. Only now perhaps you can see it in a slightly more sophisticated way: Your choosing is not actually so much about choosing among paths of action, but (usually) among paths of thought, paths of association of ideas. It is about what you want to attract to yourself.

And thus is it about us interacting in advance with our external environment.

That’s a good way to put it.

That is, if we choose different paths of mental association, the “external” world we magnetize to will be different. Just as Thoreau said in Walden.

Yes, only now you have a way to see why it should be so.

Yes.

[The passage, which I have cited before: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him … and he will live with the license of a higher order of being.”]

A word about “monkey mind.” There is nothing wrong with the mind functioning as an association-machine. That is how it is supposed to function. That is how you get ideas, how you get inspiration, how you move into new territory. The “wrong” is in using a hammer as a screwdriver, or in letting a high-powered car drive itself. You are there to drive it. Do so.

Which means, I take it, choose what the association-machine chews on.

Well, in practice, isn’t that what you do, directly or indirectly? If you choose a movie or a book, or if you meditate or do a Monroe tape, if you go for a walk in soothing circumstances or surround yourself with raucous music, are you not providing alternate beginning-points for chains of association? Only, it may be done more consciously or less, and it is to your advantage to make it “more.”

And anything that gives us more control of the starting-point, or of the volume-control, or of the on-off switch, indirectly gives us more control of how we experience the external world, because the external world and our magnetized inner world are the same thing.

A little less certain and sure than the statement would suggest, but yes, that is the idea.

Hence meditation is not a goal but a halfway house.

Yes indeed. Clearing the mind is one thing. Trying to live with it empty would be another. Similarly, learning to recognize the association-machine is one thing. Trying to function without it would be another.

And if we have satisfied your curiously about our prior statement, we’ll say enough for now.

Well, it’s always interesting. I never know what we’re going to get into. Thanks, and see you next time, if there is a next time.