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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

My friend Frank Pasciuti, knowing that I have misplaced or lost my copy of Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret Egypt, surprised me yesterday by giving me a copy he had just bought.

9:50 a.m. If I can read Brunton slowly enough, I’ll get more out of it than the first time. And if I sit quietly long enough, I will get something too. Surely I have waited long enough! But maybe waiting is mostly what I have been doing.

Not quite that flat and dire. You have learned as you went along, it wasn’t just waiting.

I think my record of whatever progress I made has been warped by my automatic assumption that things must be put into words, when some things can’t be put into words.

Travelers’ tales always have the same obstacles to overcome. How make words or even pictures convey the reality that is so much deeper, less tangible, less defined?

You do the best you can. But that isn’t necessarily very good.

How would you know how to mark your own paper?

The end-result of so many decades of endless searching  – no matter how often I was diverted to other things – ought to have amounted to more. I am resigned to dying ignorant, but I wish I could at least have come closer to my sense of what is possible.

You – and anyone still identified with 3D consciousness – are entirely incapable of judging.

I know, I know: We never have the data.

Well, you don’t. not because of lack of effort or ability but because of the circumstances. One could say 3D is not for understanding but for action.

Splendid. Action out of ignorance, always swinging in the dark.

That is how it may look if you pretend for the moment that your 3D component could be disconnected from your non-3D component. But how could that happen? Regardless what you are aware of, or are willing to listen to, the connection cannot be broken, because it isn’t really a connection at all, except conceptually. 3D and non-3D components are part of one thing, not two. They are a polarity, not a set of fraternal twins. How would you et out to fracture a unit along its polarizing line? You might imagine it, but it can’t really be done. So, you are never alone as a 3D-only creature, regardless how it may sometimes feel.

So, we’re swinging in the dark (no 3D clues) but are being guided by non-3D radar.

You could put it that way. Disorientation is not the same as being lost and alone.

Well, I’ll keep keeping on, hoping that what I feel is guidance and not robots or fantasy.

There is always that risk, but even if you stray from the beam, you can always find it again, and go back to following it. As you know, for most of an airplane’s journey it is off course, and it doesn’t matter. Little course corrections will get you there, and that is vastly more practical than trying desperately to stay on course every minute. Navigate by your pole-star, and relax a little.

 

A suggested technique for going deeper, and initial results (or non-results, if you want to look at it that way), for what they’re worth.

Saturday, March 29, 2025

[David Poynter was one of my “past lives,” the Welsh journalist and psychic investigator who I feel has been one of the most prominent influences in this life.]

8 a.m. I wonder, is David Poynter less prominent [within me] and one or more others more so? I still think in terms of writing and of psychic exploration, but that isn’t what I do. I talk to Charles, I read, I ponder my life.

David, are you still here guiding?

Observing, more. What makes you think you need guiding at your advanced age?

My advanced age, mostly! I can see what a mess I’ve made of the practical side of life.

But if I was your guide then –

Well anyway, what’s our current relationship?

You always have what you need, if not in one guise, then in another.

Meaning, I take it, that if we leave off pursuing one thing, other things are always in the stack.

It would be a poor life that could be fully expressed.

So what is my current program? Amateur psychotherapy?

Not so bad a way to put it – on yourself as much as on others. As you noted, the insights come in for you as your express them for others.

I wish I had access to my history. I‘d like to experience some of those “past lives.”

Sequential processing – reading – won’t do it.

Yes, I realized that yesterday. In fact, reading may be just exactly the wrong thing to cultivate. So am I driven finally to meditation?

Just as you didn’t do channeling the way others did it, so you don’t need to do meditation as others do it. Sit quietly at your desk, with eyes open and mind blank, and proceed from there, noting down what comes and when it runs dry, then going back to sitting empty.

Allowing the larger “me” to drive.

Yes, but you in the passenger seat with eyes open.

I will try it. I realized yesterday, reading interferes not by giving me plots and characters to run around in my mind. Presumably it is the sequential nature of the activity that is the problem.

That causes and exaggerates the problem, yes.

So now I’ll try your suggested method.

[A couple of images.]

Can’t write every thought.

You can get the important ones – only how do you know ahead of time which are important? You don’t need to spell out the connectors, that’s what would take too long.

[A few more entries.]

So far, not a very productive meditation.

Remember George Chiari [the protagonist of Messenger, who learned meditation in a chapter I called “The Monkey”], and keep at it.

Eyes open prevents fantasy. Provides the alpha bridge, too, I think.

[Further entries.]

So many examples of my not running intellectual and emotional lives in sync. Very clear now. Listening to the literal words, not getting the meaning. Suddenly seeing that others had that problem with me – and I didn’t suspect it. They heard the words and not the intent.

[Tried again a couple of times during the day, ending with this entry.]

8:30 p.m. I haven’t had much luck so far. Some input, please.

You need to think of your readers. You are leaving your readers with no new entries to read.

 I am. But I don’t feel like working.

Not the point. You are trying to get to another level. Think of your readers.

Work for their sake, you mean, which is ultimately for my sake?

Seek, and record your seeking, as usual.

Since I’m not receiving input – other than what you’re giving me right now – I suppose I could describe the process and the hope.

Have you ever done anything else?

I don’t know what it amounts to. Something, not nothing. But what, I don’t know.

 

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.

 

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.

 

[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.