Not theories about living, but living itself

Saturday, September 11, 2010

6 AM. We sort of went off on a tangent yesterday when we started discussing the virtues, didn’t we?

Tangent from what? Tangential to what? There are a million ways to convey what we are trying to convey, some of them seemingly irrelevant. But we can go back to where we took the turn, if you wish. Before we hared off on your particular case, we were saying that the volatile person-mind’s ringmaster is in a situation in which it naturally perceives the world as divided between self and other, yet that division has no fixed or firm boundaries. What it experiences itself to be (for as long as it considers itself to be a unit) changes, and responds to vague undefined influences.

May I rephrase?

Since you think it necessary.

You’re saying, I think, that the person-mind emerges during our life, and that it has a central identity (the ego? Is that what you mean?) that mistakes itself as being one thing when in fact it is a moderator of the many things, many unsuspected, that actually comprise the person’s consciousness.

Yes, that’s what we said. Nor do we object to the rephrasing. You are the only one in your position of intermediary between us and others, and so you will know better what we mean than anyone else can. So when you slightly shift your position on the balance-beam and we move down a little and your consciousness moves up, the rephrasing may well be more accessible to others. This is so for anyone bringing messages in from the other side, of course, whether they know it or not.

Okay, good.

It is in this sense that each incarnation represents the birth of a new soul, for no two-person-groups can be the same, any more than any two physical genetic-and-time-and-space signatures can be the same. Not only does each soul – each mind – begin differently, it makes different choices as it goes along, and so necessarily shapes itself and becomes, so to speak, continuously more unique because of the concatenating of results. If someone makes ten choices, perhaps someone else makes the same ten. But the odds against identical choices go up drastically as the number of choices multiplies. Can you expect the same hundred choices? 100,000? And your lives are millions of choices, most small but not all. And of course, as we say, no two start off from identical places anyway.

But suppose two person-groups with substantially similar composition. You might think that similar forces in similar environments would produce similar choices, and similar results. Maybe, maybe not, for it truly is a matter of choice, not of destiny. And what each individual does with the cards he or she has been dealt is what it is all about.

So what of the sense of continuity we feel, that feels like past lives?

In a real sense, they are past lives, but it doesn’t mean quite what you have been told it means, because the facts have always been interpreted as applying to individuals in a way that can’t be accurate because the understanding of the nature of the individual isn’t accurate.

I begin to sense it.

If a clairvoyant were to look into your aura and read your past lives, what would actually be being read? Results!

You mean, I think, that the end-result of a given life produced (or is?) the thing that is one of our strands.

Good. We will spell it out a little. Your person-mind contains many strand-minds, of differing complexity and nature, just as external nature has rocks, plants, animals, spirits etc. (Yes, spirits are part of nature.) That is, everything that exists comprises elements of varying complexity. Again, remember, it’s all one thing ultimately. There are no ultimate divisions in nature.

Well, one such strand-mind may be the person-mind that emerged from a life. It is the result of the choices that person-group made in its life. You see? The results of one life enter into another life as part of a new mixture. And everyone contains so many strand-minds as part of their person-mind: If they were all active and clamoring for attention you would be bewildered, and indeed this is some people’s situation. Or, at the other extreme, if you were unaware that your consciousness is actually a moderation of competing forces, you might think yourself a unity while actually being at the mercy of every “mood” – and this also is many a person-mind’s situation.

Regardless the awareness of it by the person-mind, the existence of these strand-minds is the equivalent of the existence of past lives within you, for what exactly is the difference between what we are saying here and what so many people believe, except the concept of the individual? If you see the individual as a migrating soul, that’s one thing. If you see the individual as a person-group including previous person-groups, that’s somewhat different. In either case the existence of memories, traits, associates, affinities etc. is the same.

I can hear someone asking, then what is the point of existence, if it isn’t self-improvement, self-development?

As in evolution?

Sure. That’s the big metaphor in our time, and you know the difficulties I have gotten into with close friends who assume evolution to be evident to any but the ignorant, and have a hard time with my disbelief.

Within the concept of evolution or outside of it, the question remains: what are we talking about? [I.e., what is a person?]

But that’s the point! If the individual isn’t a unit reincarnating, how can it evolve? And if evolution isn’t the point, or isn’t real, what is the point?

After all, evolution wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with individuals. A person-group serving as strand-mind to another person-group could be quite as easily fitted into the scheme. It would still feel like growth and striving to the person-mind; it would still contribute to complexity in the group-mind (from its standpoint) to which it contributed.

As to what’s the point, the answer is self-evident. You and everybody who reads this knows what the point of existence is, you just may not know it intellectually. That is, your life knows; your concepts may not. Life is about living, and if you can provide a more all-inclusive definition of life purpose than that, we’d like to hear it.

Each person-group’s definition of life is going to be different, appropriately to that group. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. One person’s absorption is another person’s boredom. But each one knows; it’s just that the ringmaster may not know, or may be so distracted by other people’s definitions that he forgets or discards what he knows.

You want to know what your life is about? Look at your life! You want to know what you “should” do with your life? Look what you are doing! It’s almost too simple to be said.

We are not getting into your arguments about evolution because (a) who would it convince and (b) how would it aid anybody? But we will say this, merely. The question of evolution has no more to do with your purpose than the geography of West Virginia.

Come again?

Theory, and knowledge, have nothing to do with your life except perhaps to orient or confuse you. All this theory we are giving you is merely to try to counterbalance some of your mental environment’s voice. The only thing that matters is not your theory about why you’re living, but – living. That is, living out what you are. And what choice do you think you have? How are you going to live someone else’s life?

No, your person-group is whatever it is, where wherever it is, when whenever it is. There can never be an identical group in an identical place and time. Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to live. Obviously, living anyone else’s idea of life is not what you’re here for (except in so far as what someone says or does resonates within you; influence is not the same thing as advice).

To return to where we began. The ringmaster finds itself moderating a congeries of forces – of strand-minds. He does what he can. In so doing, the life of that person-mind emerges. The question of contention among these strand-minds is a worthy subject that has many aspects to be explored.

Each time we do this, I feel like the session is mostly wasted in rehashing the past statements, and yet we do cover some ground. Very well, I take it our session is over for the day. A little shorter than average.

But the same 75 minutes. Fast or slow doesn’t matter. Persistence does.

All right. Till later.