Monday, January 31, 2011
5 AM. An appointment tomorrow to see a townhouse in Charlottesville. Could make a few others, to use the time well. Getting impatient, now, to make the move. So, my friends. Topic du jour?
Why don’t we talk about your moving?
Okay with me. I didn’t know it was something we could talk about.
Why not? The “practical” part of your life is not inherently off-limits. Any difficulty in communication stems from your anxiety, as usual. Or – not just anxiety, but a sort of nervousness lest you corrupt the process, allowing your conscious wishes to get in the way. But this is an inherent pitfall for anybody, on any subject.
Well, I’ll be glad of any assistance. Why – in the first place – have I become so impatient to move off The New Land where I have lived, increasingly productively, since 1998?
There are seasons in your lives, and the turning of the seasons are marked one way for some, other ways for others. Raymond Chandler, you know, moved every year or so for most of his life. Your own parents lived in the same town all their lives, and in only two homes in 45 years. You are between the extremes.
The “why” has several components. First, if you do not leave, you cannot write in the same way about those very productive years. That is, some emotional and physical distance assists process of expression. Two, like Henry Thoreau, you have more lives to live. Being out in the hills, relatively far from town, has served you well enough. But now it is time for more walking, some riding perhaps, some interactions perhaps with Charlottesville attractions that have been a little too far away for you to use them easily. The UVA Library, the downtown library, the bookstores, classes.
Three, it is a different kind of life you are moving into, and would be inconvenient in your present remote location.
Speaking and workshops, you mean?
Those are possibilities.
Well, when I get so strong and sustained an urge, I do follow it, or at least I pay attention and consider following it. So what did you want to say about it?
Uprooting yourself – transplanting yourself, we should say – requires thought and methodical planning, but nothing you haven’t done many times. You know by now to pay someone to do the actual work: At 65 you are not in shape to do it. But there are elements of the planning that are new to you. What to take and leave, rather than taking everything. Arranging for things like Internet service. Visualizing, in advance, the way you want to live, and what that will require.
Nothing startling there.
No, but thoroughness is more important than drama, now. You may move – as you all may live – in a new way, now. Move consciously. For that matter, live consciously. That is, don’t obsess, but don’t do it absent-mindedly either. Careful methodical planning involves not only checklists but a sustained visualization of process and result. Some people do this naturally, others don’t. Learning it, using it, is at the same time good practice for your newer way of being, that you are all growing into.
Not quite clear, or, let’s say, not obvious.
In your day-to-day life, some of it you plan – appointments, schedules, obligations, even the planning of doing chores – and some of it you take on the wing. Everyone does. But beyond the surface manifestations is how you transfer idea into reality, or, shall we say, how you turn potential into actual. This may sound trivial as a topic, but it isn’t.
You may sleepwalk through your life, or may compulsively plan everything you can, or anywhere between the two. But no matter how you prefer to function, there is a difference in how that functioning takes place.
You guys need some coffee?
It is a little difficult to express it. We almost need a spreadsheet.
If you had one, how would you lay it out?
Columns would be the range from sleepwalking – living in automatic connection with guidance – to conscious minutely scripted control. Rows would be the other variable, which may take some explaining. The point here is that various modes (described in rows) may apply to various ways of being (described in columns). Thus the diversity of life as you see around you.
Now, the other variable, let’s call it ease of visualization, though that isn’t where we’ll wind up. But if we start here, we have a chance of getting somewhere, and of course if we don’t start, chances are we’ll stay stuck. So – ease of visualization. We mean by that the relative fluidity or fixity of the world as you (as anyone, that is) experience it.
You mean, how much do we shape our world by consciously directed will?
That’s one aspect of it. Another equally important aspect is, shaping it by not-consciously directed will.
By which, I infer, you mean our unconscious portion – our TGU side – helping set the stage every time the scene is to be shifted.
Let’s start again. That isn’t wrong but it risks becoming ungrounded and misleading people, yourself not least.
You know that magic could be defined as the creation of change by guided will. Of course that description is based in many assumptions, and could as well be expressed as “the finding of a reality conformable to intent.” But the point is that life changes according to rule. The rule and the forces producing the rule are not very obvious, and so life is frequently seen as coincidence and chance or as caprice or even as individual design, when in fact it is more like water finding its own level.
If you – knowing somewhat who you are and which strands you wish to encourage or suppress – decide to move your life, you have various means by which to do so. The more conscious you are, the more tools in the toolbox. Yet – having said that – some people are just “born lucky” and things work out for them. Coincidence?
You have read that quite primitive people often succeed in business, because they let nothing get between what they want and what happens. That is not the mark of an evolved person, unless it is! (Have we ever mentioned to you that you never have the data to judge another person’s life?) A close and automatic connection between will and accomplishment may denote a person so simple-minded (emotionally) as to be effectively single-minded. But it may also denote someone who has learned or has come into the world with the knowledge of how to shape reality to conform to the will.
Shamans do it. Saints do it. Common people of all types do it, unobserved and unsuspected even by themselves. The better you do it, the smoother your life runs – other things being equal. (Perhaps the smoothness is only relative to how it would have been without that ability. In other words, perhaps it is smooth relative to the chaos that would have been.)
The hard way, I take it, is to try to use brute force to overcome obstacles.
Yes, given that “brute force” is understood to mean, in this context, the use of willpower rather than magic.
All right, so your rows on your spreadsheet would range from brute force at one extreme to magic at the other, regardless which column we referred to.
Yes, and perhaps you can see why the spreadsheet analogy helps, because the two sets of variables resemble each other closely enough to sound like each other.
I do see that it was confusing. May I summarize?
Please do.
Within our general life-orientation, there are specific situations to be handled. The combination of specific technique within general approach determines how effectively and smoothly our path goes.
Very good. So, given that understanding, and reverting to the topic of your move, you can see that much of your task is to envision your way to your new home. You have to do the work of looking, but not necessarily extensively. Call it to you so that it may call you to it.
Yes, I understand that. Trust God but tie up your camel.
Or, trust the map but ask for a beacon.
Huh. Pretty philosophical, given that were just talking about me moving.
Yes, it would be, if that were all we were doing.
Very funny. Thanks, and till next time.