Judging the sources of guidance

Thursday, November 14, 2019

6 a.m. So let’s begin with the commentary you promised yesterday.

[4:40 a.m. Jim Austin read “impersonally originating emotion” to mean impersonal in nature, which I don’t think is what you meant.

[No. Impersonally originating – that is, they did not originate in 3D individuals. But he and his guidance are quite right that the energies are not impersonal in the sense of being neutral in nature.

[He said:

“The gods … are experienced by humans as energy … in urges, “instincts,” tides of impersonally originating emotion …” This sounds like electricity: can be used to keep a new-born preemie alive, and used to execute someone in the ‘chair.’

Guidance says no, it’s not impersonal:
– the energy may be ‘colored,’ thus pushing the recipient in certain directions,
– the energy may be only (or mostly) available to those who resonate with that particular ‘god,’
– there may be other ‘mechanisms’ that encourage 3D users in specific and/or general ways. Nothing is free … if I chose Lucifer’s energy, it’s almost certain I’ll live in 3D differently than if I chose energy from Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah …

It’s unlikely that (most of) us 3D’ers would know “who’s/what’s” energy we’re connecting with … at least at first. Seems like this is yet another area to be observant of/careful about: how does this source relate to my values?

[End of quote.]

We agree with his guidance, but not with his conclusion. Let us begin with our dis-agreement.

And I know where you’re going with this. It is something I have said for some while.

It is but the truth, but it takes a moment or takes perhaps the right words said at the right time in the right way, before the truth of it becomes evident: You can never know the source a priori; always you must judge it, as Jesus advised, by the fruit it produces. However, even there, you must beware of misreading cause and effect.

I can see that this could become a full discussion in itself.

It needn’t, but it is worth saying carefully and completely.

• On what basis would anyone be able to judge, a priori, what energy one was connected to? Surely it would be first-hand or second-hand.
• If first-hand, one’s judgment amounts to intuition (which is not verification), or – what?
• If second-hand, it depends upon someone else’s authority (which ultimately means, someone else’s judgment) or – what?
• On the other hand, if one judges by the results that source produces, these results may be judged incorrectly:
• (1) Mis-reading cause and effect so that one cause is credited (or blamed) with an unrelated effect.
• (2) The results may be properly attributed to the right source, but may themselves be misread, as in the story of “How do you know?”
• Nonetheless, given that you in 3D can never know who you are talking to, but can only judge by evidence, what choice do you have but judging by the fruits rather than by the claims made?

There’s something slippery here being overlooked or shape-shifted.

Well, slightly. It inheres in the words “You in 3D,” but it isn’t exactly wrong, nor deliberately misleading. It requires clarification.

In that we are never “we in 3D”; we are always in 3D and in non-3D.

Of course, or perhaps a more careful answer would be, “Yes, but no.” You are always existing in both (having no choice), but you do not always function as if in both.

That’s what the lifelong process of mine has been all about, learning to function consciously as a 3D and non-3D being.

One might almost say that is what everybody’s life is about. Factually it is true (you all have to learn to swim) but in terms of what you concentrate on, it is not true, obviously. Some learn to swim, some merely float, some spend their lives using water wings, concentrating on other things or perhaps not really aware that they are in a medium they were only partly designed for.

Or, perhaps, “a medium they were designed for as a part of something more”?

That clarification, you will find, didn’t clarify. But this may: Nobody is ever designed to function in 3D alone. You are designed to function in 3D as well.

Okay. And presumably so are you who are presently in non-3D only.

No, connect your concepts. How could anyone be in “non-3D only” any more than in “3D only”?

For just a second that was a mind-blowing correction. I was mentally sputtering, “But, angels, etc.?” And then something readjusted and it seemed as natural as could be. As you have been saying, it’s all one world.

So then look again. We in “non-3D only” by definition are not in “non-3D only,” yet we do not have bodies – how do you reconcile the fact?

You know how. Everything has a non-3D component, and every non-3D phenomenon has a 3D component.

Yes, but let’s think that through.

• If something existed that never touched the 3D world, you could experience it only via your non-3D component.
• But say that were so, how would you realize it? If you were touching something that had no 3D existence, how would you conceptualize it?
• It is the attempt to visualize “God” and “angels” and even “vast impersonal forces” as if they did not extend into 3D that leads to confusion and to quite arbitrary attributions of quality.

I suppose that one can’t see 3D and non-3D as separate without in effect creating a division in the universe.

Correct.

But if there is nothing “non-3D only,” an awful lot of “spiritual” teachings are wrong.

Or, perhaps, misinterpreted.

I’ll give you one thing, you never hesitate to set up your own authority against the whole world’s.

It worked out all right for Emerson.

It certainly did. In his old age, he marveled that the conclusions he came to on his own as a youth were contradicted by all the world’s authorities at the time, yet in his lifetime people in large numbers came around to seeing things as he did. “That boy was right and the world wrong,” he said in effect.

That’s how it is when you connect (or are born connected) with guidance, and you listen to it, and you reason from it, and wrestle with it. And that is exactly the process this long conversation has been illustrating, and illustrating not for the sake of exalting you or even “guidance” but for the sake of reminding those who are ready but not ready.

“Ready but not ready” –

Sure:

• Ready but they don’t know it; needing but a wake-up call.
• Ready but for a final bit of intellectual or emotional connection.
• Ready but for a want of confidence (or, said another way) a fear of misleading self or others.

I am tempted – you are tempting me? – to stop here, a little early, but let’s look back at Jim’s comment. Anything else you’d care to note?

Only note that although you cannot judge the source of your feelings or thoughts or temptations spiritual or physical, you can and do judge the effects, from which you may judge the putative source. So it comes to the same thing in the end, assuming you remain (or become) conscious of the process and its limitations. So it becomes not “How does this source relate to my values,” so much as “How  do these vast impersonal forces relate to my values?”

The difference is there, I can feel it, but it is slippery.

Vast impersonal forces become in effect vast personal forces when they flow through you. but you can and do act as an electrical switch does: You allow or refuse those forces. That’s what free will is.

Yes, I see it. Don’t know why it seemed a slippery distinction.

In the beginning your life tends to shape you; later you may shape your life, if you work at it. But to attain the ability to choose requires prior effort. Free will grows by its exercise; it cannot be bestowed. The possibility is always there, but the individual chooses to manifest it or not. Fortunately, “the individual” always includes a part of yourself with a wider viewpoint than 3D-only would be able to have.

Enough for now, a good morning’s work.

Our thanks as always, and we won’t quibble as to whether we are thanking ourselves.