Changing one’s external circumstances

Sunday, October 3, 2010

6:50 AM. All right, guys, I’ve forgotten where we are, so I hope you have bookmarked things. I spent much of yesterday re-reading John Anthony West’s wonderful Serpent In The Sky, and never looked at my notes.

You could take the day off.

I’d rather not. Let’s keep accumulating the material. As long as I can defer putting it together, which is the work, this part is not a burden and in fact is something I look forward to. Besides, I’ve got friends looking forward to it too. Can’t be offering them re-runs!

I have a question, come to think of it – I’m rapidly bringing my blog up-to-date, posting these transmissions. I am within three weeks or so of having everything posted. Is there any reason I shouldn’t then begin posting each day’s take right on the IOMOK blog?

We don’t have any objection. Do you?

I just thought I’d check. Ideally I’d like to just post it there so that anyone reading this would automatically swell the numbers reading the blog, thus raising its visibility to search engines (if I understand the process) and perhaps drawing more people who presently don’t know about it.

If you do it, do it in a way that doesn’t annoy your present list. Find a way for them to receive a reminder each day, rather than having to remember, themselves.

As usual, I feel pretty helpless when it comes to drawing people to the material, and as usual I wind up just hoping for the best.

Use what you know. How do you change external circumstances?

Well, how about if you walk me through it? It would be a good example, I suppose. To change externals, change internals. I know that. So I assume I have some robots fixing me in my present position. I suppose the first step is to figure out what they might be, by deduction, and then figure out where they came from, and reprogram them.

Nothing complicated about it, and now this is your reward for so much work on robots with Michael and Nancy. Apply what you know, and we’ll fill in for you.

All right. Well, helplessness is always the first feeling to surface. How can I find people who will like Robert Clarke’s books? How can I get to the people who would love Babe In The Woods? Etc. I look and I see me on the one hand and the vast world out there on the other, and I have pretty good familiarity with one and almost none with the other.

Don’t let it get abstract.

Yes. All right. Helplessness. How can I help them to find me?

And that is rooted in what belief?

Yes, I see it. There’s a part of me that doesn’t really believe that we are all connected, or that we are part of a pattern, etc., when it comes to commerce.

Just commerce?

Well – anything that looks like self-promotion, I guess. And I see why: Thinking in terms of self-promotion, or of marketing, puts me into us-versus-them, doesn’t it? That is, it assumes division, disconnection, a need to span gaps.

And?

That’s the “practical” way of looking at the world! That’s dad, looking at things and dismissing them as “simple,” meaning I think simple-minded. It’s the part of me that still doesn’t quite believe in these conversations.

The part that is half-convinced that we do not exist, and that you are merely fooling yourself.

That’s them.

How do they – how does that attitude that they maintain – serve you?

Keeps me from becoming a flake, for one thing. It makes me cautious.

How’s that working for you?

It keeps me self divided, self doubting, one foot in each world. But that isn’t exactly a bad thing. A difficult straddle, sometimes, but maybe it makes me a bridge, or helps me remain one.

Looking at it carefully, what part of it would you keep and what discard?

I see it. All right, let me think. I don’t want to feel helpless every time I revert to seeing things as if we were all many unconnected parts. But I don’t think I want to move away from that way of seeing things, either. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in it, but it has its value.

What do you usually advise people?

Yes. I tell them to tell the robot, when you see a situation you’re primed to be concerned about, call it to my attention, but only that; don’t dictate my emotional reaction. Bring it to my attention and let me decide. That’s the proper division of labor, here.

And how would you apply that specifically?

I think I want a nuanced judgment, rather than an off/on switch. Right now, I either see the world as all one thing, and trust it, or I see it as a multiplicity of forces to be manipulated, and (because I don’t want to manipulate it or be the person manipulating or manipulated) throw up my hands. What would be better would be to see constructive options while remaining in my preferred worldview of unity.

I did that, come to think of it, when I got Hampton Roads to distribute Robert’s books and The Sphere And The Hologram, because I put those books in the hands of a company that does just that kind of functioning in the business world that I can’t do. But beyond getting it into their catalog and hopefully into their sales reps’ book bags, I can’t think of any more to do.

So do it on your own turf, the inner plane.

Which is what we’re doing now.

Of course. Anything offered to the world has its potential audience – it’s potential market – and you and they are already connected, to the extent that you don’t block the connection by logic or by anxiety or by counter-purposes. How did Hampton Roads come to be a presence in the industry, anyway? A lot of hard work, a lot of effort – but ultimately your readers found you and came to trust you and look for your books, and it was internal division that blunted and distorted that energy. So now, knowing that, are you going to reproduce division by inner division?

I see it. And it isn’t as simple as just “trust,” is it?

It could be; it would depend upon your inner context. If you were saying “trust” but it was really mixed with helplessness of a certain kind, you wouldn’t necessarily like the result. If it were mixed with helplessness of a different kind – the kind that Christian would express as putting it all in Jesus’ hands, so to speak – the results would be different. In other words, one is a sort of overwhelmed “the world is too big for me, what can I do?” sort of feeling, and the other is more like “the world is too big for my conscious self to successfully manipulate, so I’ll leave it to a higher consciousness, carefully being willing to help but not interfering or insisting on control.” There’s all the difference in the world between the two attitudes, though they may sound and even feel the same until examined.

All right, well, the second attitude is very compatible with the rest of me, so now let’s see. The robot within – the helplessness-robot – has been listening to this and is sort of grudgingly persuaded. He has since seen too much in my life to write it off as nonsense or wishful thinking. I can’t quite get his hesitation.

Ask.

What is it that leaves you not quite convinced?

Well, I get that he’s willing to wait and see, and that’s plenty good enough for me. So, let’s put it this way – when we consider influencing the outer world, we’ll assume that anything we do right will meet response and that willing helpers will arise to do their part. At the same time, we’ll listen to suggestions without any pre-judgments about whether it’s practical for us. That is, we won’t assume that it can’t be done by us.

That should do it. You find your way smoothed by magic, when you are not self-checked by hesitations brought forth from earlier programming.

At the same time, I acknowledge the constructive role that robot has played in keeping me from going off into space, so to speak. It’s just that I, rather than he, need to be the one to decide, once he raises the caution flag.

We congratulate you on your metaphors.

Interesting. I see why you guys sometimes mix metaphors so thoroughly. It’s that sometimes you have to concentrate so hard on the message that there isn’t attention left for grammar etc.

More or less.

Well, I think this has been productive for me, and perhaps it is instructive to others as an example of one way to do the robot-work. Till next time.