Three ways to choose

Monday, February 17, 2020

6:05 a.m. I had the thought that maybe this was the end of this series of conversations. Can’t remember why I thought that, if in fact there is a “why.”

It could be. Things aren’t fixed, and we have made a coherent picture, perhaps. But the question would be, are you ready to resume work as you did on Papa’s Trial in the absence of these conversations?

You mean, really, because of the absence of these conversations. I find I can’t do both. Perhaps I am fooling myself, but it seems I can either do this in the mornings, or I can do a project, but I can’t do this now and a project later in the day.

We have no preference; we say only (what you know anyway), that you are happiest when you are chipping away at a task. Be it this, be it something else, makes much less difference than you might think.

Well, let’s look at that in light of what you have just been telling us.

Good. Good. Use the viewpoint, use the information. That’s what this is for.

Well, you have been saying look at things from three viewpoints. Kindly look at me, at my projects, from three points of view.

As an extension of your own higher being, your larger self, the non-3D part of you that remains in close connection with all the rest of what you are, your life is an extension of the work in progress that you are. It always is. That view of your life sees how and why your 3D life, lived out in interaction with the shared subjectivity that seems to be “external” to is, has opportunities and constrictions, both serving to inform your choices. To this first point of view, what you do is unimportant except as a reflection of how you do it.

The second point of view, your life as it seems to you, moment by moment, usually decides by feelings. You feel your way through life, saying, “I can do this, or I can do that, but really this is what I want to do, if I can just figure out how to do it.” From this point of view, you finish a manuscript and arrange to have it submitted to a publishing house, and then you hope for the best. This point of view finds it hard to hold everything in connection. At best, it lives in faith that “all is well,” but it often wishes it could have a little more concrete evidence!

And the third, the point of view not from your non-3D nor your 3D viewpoint, sees your life as it meshes with all the rest of life seen and unseen. It looks on your life objectively, so to speak. “Regardless what he intended or thought he was doing, here’s what his effect actually was.”

So from the first point of view, we would say, “Do what feels right. Consider as many things as you can, but do what feels right all things considered.” We are concerned not with your actions nor with your effects so much as with your continuing self-shaping decisions.

From the second point of view, we would say, “Calculate. Weigh carefully. Strategize. Not only what feels right but how to work toward it. It is in 3D that you learn to work with constricted time frames and constricted circumstances. That is, in the crucible you learn to make wishes into desires, desires into efforts, efforts into results. All we can say here is, “Work hard. Be conscious. Notice your life, as you live it.”

The third point of view is always a rumor to you until your race is done. You guess at your effect on the world. You sort of experience its effect on you. But really, did Abraham Lincoln at age 19 guess the Emancipation Proclamation? Did you at age 19 guess that you would even see age 60, let alone what you would have experienced and would have done by that time? Your non-3D self can give you helpful hints as you go, but the important point is, helpful hints. It isn’t hard to get to “too much information,” where input, instead of being helpful, would tend to constrict your actual functioning in the moment-to-moment.

So in terms of my preferences, you are saying I should feel as deeply into it as I can, and should think as deeply into it, and not worry about consequences that in any case I wouldn’t be able to foresee.

That is a serviceable paraphrase, if rough.

It is a weighing of what can be weighed, intuiting what can be intuited, and deducing what can be deduced.

That’s a very good summary, showing why these elements of decision-making coexist.

More, I guess, showing why acting in the absence of any one or two of the elements of perception tends to be flawed, or anyway chancy.

Good. We did not say, explicitly, that these are elements of perception, but that is exactly their effect on you; that is exactly their importance to your lives. To only think or to only feel or to only try to guess would be to navigate half-blind. To use them all is often a slower process, but a surer one.

Too little feeling, rationalism. Too little thought, Psychic’s Disease. Too little consideration in terms of the life and others – what?

No need to pursue that merely for the sake of rounding out a statement. The point is, there are always three points of view from which one can triangulate one’s position. Not everybody needs to do it, and even for those who do, they do not need to do it all the time. But the cross-referencing can be useful in times of perplexity.

Well, I think maybe I’m ready to leave off doing this for a while, and go back to working on a specific project. My history book comes to mind.

Whatever you do is fine, only do it as mindfully as you can.

Understood. All right, what shall we call this one?

“Three ways to choose” would do.

Very good. Thanks as always.