“What do you want to do?”

This came last week, along with another little session on Saturday which I will post later. What we want to do, and how to do it: not trivial questions.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

I woke up from a nap because of what seemed persistent knocking at the door. When I got downstairs, nobody there, of course. Was it, by any chance, you guys? If so, I’m willing to talk if you are.

What happened to sitting quietly, consciously, rather than reading?

What usually happens. I changed channels.

That is, lost focus.

If you’d rather put it that way.

Well, the “you” that is writing this isn’t the “you” that changed the channel.

No, it’s more the guy who has been too sluggish, too only half-there, to do anything.

You are retired. You can do or not do whatever you wish. But – “Which you?”

Tell me about it.

So what do you still want to do?

That’s a damned good question. It could be subdivided into “if only” and “settle for.” If I had the energy and focus and patience and a lot of other things I don’t seem to have any more, I would complete unfinished business. As to settling for, my life is comfortable enough, if not inspiring.

So which is it?

Both. If you want me to do something, you’ll have to provide the ifs.

You still haven’t earned the standing ovation the psychic promised you, years ago.

No, I haven’t, and I don’t see how I ever will. Not that it matters.

Get out of the mental rut; go higher, and you will see more clearly.

That’s helpful. Okay. [An effort] All right.

What makes you drift?

Lack of mental energy. Energy enough to read or fool around, but not to think or create.

Energy enough to experience, though, if you set your mind to it.

To be receptive, you mean?

That’s one half of creativity, receptiveness.

Including receptivity to incoming energy.

Correct.

It is a form of recalibrating.

It is.

And it depends on, and fosters, good habits.

No point in raising energy only to fritter it away purposelessly.

Purposeless seems to define my life at this point.

And Rita was 80 when she met you.

Point. We never know what’s coming next.

As we said, receptivity.

 

Continuity

Monday, March 17, 2025

5 a.m. This endless struggle with weight. I see, looking back, that I actually topped 230 one day. I struggle, regain ground by inches, but every time I do, the base camp is higher. I don’t remember when, but I remember that I was within sight of being less than 200 once, and lost the battle. Maybe there is a reason for it. Maybe the extra flesh serves a purpose. Women channelers are notoriously though of course not unanimously heavy.

I spent some time yesterday with the Mind Mirror report from the program I did in 2018, but I need to coordinate it now and it is in that intermediate stage of being a mess.

Guys? A word?

You know that continuity is your besetting problem. You have, from time to time, looked for some way to provide yourself a workbook or a chart or some physical device to remind you of what you want to do, and it has rarely worked because you nonetheless “changed channel,” forgot, went on to other things or other non-things.

Guilty as charged, or perhaps I should say, unfortunate as charged, because God knows I don’t like my predicament. Just like trying to lose weight, come to think of it. I hare off elsewhere. And ironically, I remember, we have discussed this before, in the context of Gurdjieff’s idea of multiple “I”s taking over the helm.

So what can be done?

A very good question indeed. And the answer is?

Clearly it can only involve consciousness. Even if you (or we) could invent a way to keep autonomisms conscious, what would be the point? The trick is to widen and lengthen as well as deepen, your consciousness.

And we do this how?

Haven’t we been working with you on this for years? What do you think Life More Abundantly is? Why do we seek to help you make your robots serve a consistent conscious will, rather than serving obsolete or intermittent versions of past conscious or unconscious moments? Why have we been talking about sins (missing the mark) and virtues? Why giving examples like John Tettemer and Carl Jung and Bronson Alcott? Why nudging you toward essentials rather than distractions?

It seems that to you all this is part of some overarching pattern. I almost get it, but not quite. It seems like it needs one last key element to make it gel.

Your own discontent with your life is the most powerful solvent, if used right. If only fruitless regrets or memories of past emotions, what good can that do you? But if you use the data as data points should be used – as raw material for the perception of patterns – then what a wealth of information you – anyone – accumulate in the course of a lifetime!

And our Upstairs component is the data cruncher.

Can be. Depends on the strength of your connection.

Okay, I think it’s coming a little clearer. Let me try. Our hope of greater consciousness (which includes greater continuity, not less than greater breadth of field and depth of insight) depends upon our having (1) a good connection Upstairs (to provide us with insights) and (2) a relatively clear field for analysis, unobstructed by defenses, prejudices, obsolete robots, bad habits, and what I might call unwholesome preferences.

All true.

And of course that means we have to keep working on ourselves.

Working on yourself is the only work there is. Out of that work may come great good for other individuals and for “the world” in general.  Think of the eventual influence of Thoreau or Emerson, for instance, if only in sparking and encouraging others. Their influence on the world followed their work on themselves – in this life and in prior life – and if it became a reciprocating process, still the intent had to come first. Who ever did good before deciding to be good? Who helped, not intending to help?

Seems you’re getting on shaky ground with those last couple of statements.

Leave them, then. The rest should be plain enough. But you see, you do understand what we are saying.

This is Thoreau’s “divine discontent,” isn’t it?

In part. But none of you needs to model yourself on famous others except in so far as it helps you recruit your own powers. Your uniqueness will mean that you automatically fail to be anyone else! And the person you wish you were like may have wished s/he was like you! You can only be yourself, but within that limitation, you will find scope enough for choice, because there’s many a different you that can develop, depending upon your choices.

Not that we haven’t been saying all this, year in and year out. We don’t mean, “You haven’t been listening.” You have. But still it bears repeating.

You are also saying, between the lines, as you long have said, Cherish our individuality, because change isn’t necessarily progress or regress, just new opportunities for expression.

Also true.

Of course, this still doesn’t give me access to greater continuity of intent.

No, you have continuity of intent. What you lack is continuity of execution, or let’s say continuity of consciousness.

Which you can’t help me with.

Not in the sense of magic formulas. We have given you plenty of concepts and hints and proposed habits, over the years.

Which I continually forget.

Stay as close to your unconscious as possible, but at the same time live in the 3D world: Put your attention there. That’s all you can do, all you need do.

If you say so. Well, this has given me a blog post, anyway.

You’re welcome.

Our thanks as always. What should we call this?

“Continuity,” surely.

Done.

 

Mere everyday stuff

[A few years ago, when I picked up my author’s copies of Awakening from the 3D World, I had a thought perhaps worth preserving. and then i had a welcome visitor, and one thing led to another. Thinking about the book, I said to myself:]

Look at it one way, I did it all myself. Look at it another way, by myself I couldn’t have done it at all.

Both true. Probably both a model of our lives here.

It is up to us to decide what to do, moment by moment, and then do it; but we live in a vast invisible web of support that we may disregard (“I’m a self-made man”) or recognize (“Thank God for my friends”). Equally true, which means, in both cases, only true in relation to one another, not true as absolutes.

[A familiar “voice,” not the one I expected!] You are feeling pride in our accomplishment. Nothing wrong with basking.

Hi, Rita. I guess that’s why I browsed the introduction [of Awakening from the 3D World] and re-read the conclusion, huh? And now I see why I was moved to think back on all the work we’ve done. The primary person I didn’t mention – not the only one, but the primary one – was you, of course. But I doubt you are here for the purpose of getting your film credits.

No, but our case is an example of how little we know our life’s shape ahead of time. We didn’t meet until I was already 80 years old and bored with life. Who knew what lay ahead?

We did those sessions, and more in 2004, and they didn’t seem to come to anything in terms of the outside world beyond the Voyagers Mailing List and our own friends. And then because you did the initial work, the path was open for us to work together in this new way over the past three years, and it continues to stretch ahead as a possibility. But the intellectual work could not have been accomplished without the other work which was not work but a natural joy, and how shall we describe it?

In a way you could say we were taking care of each other. You were mothering me, I was the dutiful affectionate son you never had.

That emotional trust and intellectual and spiritual companionship laid the basis for what we did, because as you know, these things proceed not from intellect alone (where they may easily turn rancid) but from the heart.

Where there is trust, there is no room for fear, for one thing.

Yes, but more, where there is trust, there is assurance, there is a sense of being guided. Almost the same as what you just said, but not quite.

Remember, at least as important as any information you bring through is your encouragement of others to do their own equivalent thing. So the more glimpses behind the scenes they get, the more they realize, you are just another guy, just as you say but they don’t always hear. Of course, you are but you aren’t. What distinguishes you is that you do the work; you follow where it leads; you are willing to serve. But that should encourage, too, for that is a decision open to anybody to take. It’s up to them.

Everybody’s circumstances surround them, obviously, and since their own unimportant boring surroundings, the flat and unprofitable details of their lives, cannot match anybody’s they read about, the temptation is to say “I’m nobody and I can’t expect to really do anything.” And of course that is wrong.

The fallacy of insignificance, somebody called it.

Your own life always looks relatively flat and humdrum in a way, even when it also feels exciting and even dramatic, because you yourself are at the center of it, and so where is the room for the drama of the unfamiliar? But drama is not a sign of significance any more than heartburn would be. Your own judgment of your life is unlikely to be an accurate one, because you cannot usually get any perspective on it. But if you are doing your best, and are living your truest impulses, and are following where it leads, how can you be wasting your time even if it feels like putting in time is all you are doing? The mother raising her children may feel like the days are going by without anything in it for her; that doesn’t mean that is the judgment she will come to when she looks back on her life as a whole.

If our readers don’t realize that that paragraph was aimed directly at them, well – I’m pointing it out.

There is an aspect to pioneering that perhaps they have never considered, and that is that your own true path is never obviously important, never obviously the path to significant achievement internal or external. It usually looks like “mere everyday stuff.” When you come to know that “mere everyday stuff” – speaking primarily internally – is the gold, your appreciation of your life will change. Everybody has a unique gift to offer. No two gifts are identical, any more than any two gift-givers are identical, so while you may use models for your conduct, use them as models of character, not as models of circumstance.

Nobody’s life is identical to anybody else’s, and nobody’s is redundant or insignificant. You know what Bob [Monroe] said.

“You do the best you can.”

I don’t know what more anybody could do.

A little more Alcott

February 13, 1848:

“When a man’s own culture falls behind that of his time, he is conservative. When it outstrips and enables him to over-see his time, he becomes a reformer.”

&&&

January 3, 1851:

“Foreseen and premeditated discourse seldom serves me for occasions, and I am happiest when left to the methods of intuition. The initial thought is all, and the rest follows according to the genius of the moment and the present company. The power comes, and comes only, when unsought. An abandonment to the instincts appears to be the state of mind necessary for the largest reception of the Spirit. Conversation is a gift of divine grace; and if the mind will but wait, it shall be filled and overflow.”

&&&

January 10, 1851: [In which Alcott, unbeknown to himself, laments that he was born before the invention of tape recorders, which do for us now exactly what he wished could be done for him then.]

“’Tis a thousand pities that we have not caught the secret yet of daguerreotyping our thoughts as they are spoken in conversation. That would be a discovery worth while, and outlive all predecessors in the arts. … I shall not say as good things, much less write as good, about the Memory and Plato’s reminiscences, again, as I did today when conversing with my cousin…. O for a Hermes to report us!”

&&&

January 10, 1852:

“’Tis so easy to blame and denounce; but for truth’s, for righteousness’ sake, as for that of charity and good manners too, let us abstain from pushing his duty (if duty it be) very far or frequently. Even good men may damn themselves in denouncing the damned.”

&&&

March 11, 1852:

“The child’s body is a recollection of ancestral particles from seven generations preceding; and the like of its mind’s memories also. All instincts are recollections of foregone lives.”

&&&

May 1, 1864: [Observing his young grandson.]

“To conceive his acquirements as originating in nature and dating from his birth into his body, it to me an atheism that human stupidity alone could entertain; an idiocy which our shallow metaphysical culture could alone have made possible in these days of such marvellous material knowledge, such victories over the natural forces.”

&&&

Of course these are only bits and pieces, but perhaps they provide a hint of the richness and depth of his mind, the sureness and balance of his instincts.

 

Alcott on Jesus and Plato

If you had asked Alcott, “Was Jesus divine?”, he probably would have said, “Certainly, and so am I, and so are you, and so are all men and women on the face of the earth.” That would have been a good answer, hardly acceptable to most of his contemporaries.

But then, Alcott’s thought processes, his core assumptions, his perceptions, were often far in advance of his contemporaries. Even today what he writes may seem at first glance opaque, even meaningless. All I can say is, if these quotations seem at first indecipherable, sit with them a little, and see if they do not begin to open up new lines of thought.

&&&

June 11, 1839: “Jesus.

“This, of all lives, is the most refreshing. It quickens hope and faith. What a noble fact this man is! He is the grandest hero of all history. He is the epic genius, developed in all its magnanimity and grandeur. I read of Jesus with the deepest delight. He demonstrates my most exalted ideal of true heroism. He is the bravest of men.

“His grandeur is in his meek self-trust, his constancy to the Soul. How vital his faith in it! How noble his reliance upon it, under all the varied circumstances of his grand life! He carried his principles into practice. He tested them on every occasion. His life was an experiment of the omnipotence of the Soul; and his death was divine!

“Alas, how few apprehend the depth and grandeur of this man’s character! Christendom has made its lofty epic beauty of no effect by its vulgar traditions. I will yet divest it of these, and reveal its glory.”

&&&

March 28, 1850: “My dept to Plato is greater, perhaps than to any mind – greater than to Christ, I sometimes think, whose spirit is an element of humanity but whose genius I did not entertain and comprehend till Plato unsealed my eyes and led me to the study of his fair performance. It was in studies, however, for presenting the mind of Christ to the apprehension of my children in the Masonic Temple – a pleasure and a privilege greater than I can express – that I grew enamoured of the beauty and grandeur of his character, the delicacy and force of his genius, the simplicity and efficacy of his methods. Plato and Christ interpreted each other and the mind of mankind.”

 

More Alcott

For the past few days, I have been living among the thoughts of Ibrahim Karim and Bronson Alcott, almost to the exclusion of the world immediately around me. On Sunday, I went to UVA’s beautiful Shannon Library (formerly Alderman) and borrowed Alcott’s Journals and his Letters. A few excerpts. I could cite many more, but there’s only so much writing and typing one wants to do.

&&&

October, 1838: “History is useful to me no farther than I am conscious of the same facts in my own existence. It is in the light of these that I apprehend the facts of history…. Erudition is not insight. It is not what I take upon my memory that sheds light until my soul, but what I see by self-intuition, that makes me wise.”

&&&

April 13, 1839: “Vox populi is not Vox Dei, save where interest or passion are silent. It is the still small voice of the private soul that is authentic. Multitudes always lie. The single man’s oracle is alone authentic.”

&&&

April 22, 1839: “[Theodore] Parker asked me today, on my saying that men must have behaved well in order to have such fine sunshine, what I would do with the Mosaic account, which gives the priority of creation to the elements. I said that was the historical, not genetic, account of the matter. It was the story told in the order of the senses. The man and nature are. The senses begin in the concrete, and analyze from the surface to the center. But this is not the order of generation. The Soul is prior to the elements of nature. It was the Soul which said ”’Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Light is generated from the Soul, and is the base of matter.”

&&&

October 18, 1839: “Individual is the basis of general improvement. The democrats talk of improving the masses, but take small interest in individual reform. They seem to fancy that two or more men together become invested with powers not their own when apart—have somewhat superadded; and so speak of the might and majesty of masses, not of individuals. A rabble is respectable, God-inspired! A man is base, influenced by Beelzebub! Men possess the Godhead in their collective capacity, but apart are demons, whom the State must watch lest they rend it asunder, and the Church disown.

“I read men quite otherwise. I look for the Prince of the Devils in the midst of the mob; for God, in the seclusion of a single soul. Beelzebub rules the masses, God individuals. The Kingdom of Truth is within, not out there in Church or State. Vox populi, vox diaboli.

&&&

January 14, 1848: [A little premature, but we’ll get there.] “The age of insight and intuition is fast evicting that of observation and inference. From using contentedly the old eyes of a circuitous and painful logic, men are finding the superior power of a direct and instant intuition in all investigations of nature and spirit.

“New eyes for discerning the old things! New instruments for the old implements!

“It is easier to repair the eyes than to mend the spectacles.”

&&&

June 24, 1849: “To say that all things were once created out of nothing is saying nothing has been created, or is.

“The assertion denies, as it undermines, the grounds of all existence, namely Spirit and God, as premise, and is puerile, atheistic, and impious. Spirit creates out of itself.”