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Sunday, September 29, 2024

6 a.m. Jon, in our conversation of Aug. 15, you said,

“I don’t see it the same way I did when I was under the pressure of 3D constrictions and expectations. It didn’t occur to me, what I mentioned the other day, that restrictions are focus. I never thought about it this way, but frustrations can be very powerful focusing devices. I was a concentration of frustrated aspiration, and that energy form remains.

“That last isn’t quite clear.

“I never thought it would be. Let’s let it lie for a while.”

Would you clarify what you meant? Also, why did you want it to be left open for the moment?

It is at once simpler and more complex than the simple statement conveys. I said, “I was a concentration of frustrated aspiration, and that energy form remains.” Looking at it now, what does that say to you?

In context, that our characteristics as lived form a whole, and we don’t get to pick and choose, discarding this and keeping that.

Correct. The time to do that is in the midst of 3D living. And?

Well, since you already pointed out that the defects may be as valuable as the virtues (given that those attributes are merely a derivative from our point of view, which must always be partial, hence never universally applicable), I guess the universe has no discontent with you as product of that life.

Correct! And it won’t with yours, no matter who it is reading this, no matter what a botch of things you think you made, and no matter how you may over- or under-estimate yourself. The world makes use of you as a bundle, not as individual threads. If you think about it, if it wanted threads, it already had threads, so why is it always creating new bundles? The 3D offers the ability to create more and more complex bundles – you might say, more and more complex specialized instruments.

Or perhaps more specialized lenses through which to focus the energies that enter into 3D life, that we were calling the vast impersonal forces?

Yes. And by the way, just because in some discussions we may go beyond previous scaffolding, that doesn’t mean the scaffolding is now useless. A different way of looking at it is, each conceptual framework is one way of understanding things, and offers advantages that other ways do not. If you are able to retain your mental flexibility, you will see that this not only frees you from bondage to any one way of seeing things, it also gives you the powerful tool that is the ability to choose which tool you wish to use. In other words, just as you can choose your attitude toward whatever happens, so you can choose which form of analogy and analysis you wish to employ at any given moment. The carpenter who lays down the hammer and picks up the screwdriver does so because the hammer is less appropriate, less helpful, at the moment. It doesn’t mean the carpenter will or should foreswear the use of the hammer ever again.

Helpful reminder. Got it. And this seems to be linking up with other things.

Yes, go ahead, as easier.

Well, on the one hand we are always being told we are here to choose. And we are told all paths are good. And here we see that no matter what we wind up being, the universe is fine with it, and the implication is, it will find a way to use it productively.

And, remembering that this is all mind-stuff, and that the universe could be looked at as an eternally changing light-show, as changes in one reverberate elsewhere, the implication is that every version of ourselves created and re-created by changing decisions equally forms a model, a channel, for those vast impersonal forces. So there could be Jon 1.0, Jon 2.0, etc., each with a different mixture of characteristics depending upon how you reacted in any given situation. And it is an additive process, not a process of substitution.

That is good thinking. You will see, looking back, that it is less a logical process (though it seemed that to you) than an intuitive one. But yes, the continuous changes are not waste motion, not lost energy; each moment – and the qualities of that moment – exist as much “forever” as any other moment. It can all be used.

I see that as I followed the bread-crumbs, I flitted from scaffolding to scaffolding without attempting to reconcile or justify.

And that is a perfectly acceptable way to proceed. This gives you fullest advantage of all the kinds of scaffolding you have been given. It expands your toolbox and gives you leeway.

And I’m hearing something even larger.

Yes indeed, and for some this will be a liberation and for some a stumbling block. But that is always true. What is also always true, or anyway usually true, is that at first a truly significant, truly revolutionary thought seems like nothing much. It is only as the ramifications broaden out that its truly revolutionary and expansive possibilities reveal themselves.

I can see that. Well, for what it is worth, what came to me is, we already have a multitude of scaffoldings as our cultural history, only we don’t use them alternately, we tend to pick one or another and feel we need to stick to it, or we reject them all and tell ourselves we are strictly rational beings who are beyond such nonsense. I am referring to religious and metaphysical systems.

You are exactly on beam. Continue.

When I say “cultural heritage,” I don’t mean The West. I mean anything and everything any culture we know of. (Also those we don’t, of course, but they’re invisible to us, so why try to include them? If they become visible as some Champollion opens a window, that will be time enough to welcome in those strange viewpoints.)

The fact is that people pick some belief-system congenial to the particular mixture of elements that they are, and tend to say, “That is right, so other systems clearly must be wrong, or at least must be less right. And this forecloses options. Not that treading a narrow path is bad per se, but if you want to break free from unconscious mental limitations, considering alien frameworks is a good way to do it.

Yes, but “considering” doesn’t mean weighing them to see how closely they match what you have decided is the true way to see things. It means, really looking at the world through that lens, as if, for the moment, you were a believer.

People seem to find it hard to do that.

What is hard at one time in your life is easier at another time.

Do you have any suggestions for those who don’t do this naturally, to learn how?

That is a far larger subject than you realize. Can you teach (or encourage) a nail to become a corkscrew, or vice versa?

It doesn’t seem that the answer should be a flat “no.”

It isn’t. But it doesn’t happen without effort, and that means focused intent.

I have a good friend who is very open to anything scientific and most things philosophical, but – as far as I can judge – is pretty much closed to any religious system. What could he do, if he were persuaded of the utility of acquiring an inside view of another kind of scaffolding?

It always comes down to intent. Let anyone become convinced that a given course of action is desirable, and the way will open according to the intent and the application of effort.

I find a tremendous lot in what has been recorded of Jesus’ teachings, and I will never forget something that happened 20 years ago, when after two difficult days with a Christian true believer, I found a book of Sufi sayings and plunged into it with relief and recognition.

It isn’t ever a matter of intellectual logic. That logic divides, as much as it ever synthesizes. But emotional logic will not steer you wrong.

A major caveat needed here, seems to me.

Smiling. All right. Let’s say, more carefully, emotional logic won’t steer you wrong provided you don’t forget the logic part of it.

But in any case, we have all that material available, more than anyone could ever assimilate.

Yes and no. Yes, more than could be assimilated by the 3D version we are calling the avatar. No in terms of what people used to call the higher self. The higher self has a lot more RAM to play with!

Our theme today?

Maybe, “Lenses and scaffoldings”?

Sounds all right. Okay, thanks, and thanks on behalf of others who are telling me how your explanations are resonating with them where Rita’s often did not.

You’re welcome.

Till next time.

 

Saturday, September 28, 2024

7:30 a.m. I am ready to begin, assuming you have a topic. I haven’t been going through the transcripts yet, though I hope to begin soon.

But you must have something that bubbles up to you as you wait for it. Use that.

A very circular process – I remember mentioning it years ago – in which I have to wait for a non-3D source to suggest what I should ask of (perhaps the same) non-3D source.

Well, what do you think intuition is, after all? How is it different from your writing your responses as they well up in you, rather than thinking them out?

And as you say that, I get, “And even if we do think it out, where is the answer coming from?”

Correct. We keep telling you the distinction between 3D and non-3D is turf, not substance. No matter what you think of the distinction, it is only somewhat a distinction. You are not body as opposed to spirit, not 3D person as opposed to non-3D persons. You are one whirlpool in the ocean, partly in 3D, partly in non-3D. There is never a 3D being that does not extend into non-3D, which as we have pointed out would be impossible. More, there is never a 3D mind that is in any fundamental way separated from its non-3D component, because it would be truer to say that all mind is in non-3D, funneled down to include the 3D incursions. It is so simple, so obvious, we cannot understand why people are always forgetting it.

All our sensory experience points in the opposite direction.

It doesn’t. Your interpretation of that experience may.

All right. So even the most logic-bound person depends upon the intuitive mode in thinking.

How could it possibly be otherwise? A thinker – a rationalist – may be a better reasoner, a better perceiver, a better discerner between fact and fancy, truth and error, than someone depending upon intuition alone. Nevertheless, both types function through the mind, and the mind is in the non-3D, not subject to the accidents and limitations of the 3D experience, as we have said more than once. This appears to be an untrue statement, but that is only appearance.

The brain is in 3D, and the brain is what processes mind.

You may think of it that way, though it isn’t really correct. It is a simplification. But this simplification is more true than the simplification that thinks that mind is primarily a 3D phenomenon.

Remember as a rule of thumb: Things are as they are for a reason (and in fact usually for several mutually reinforcing reasons). Before you set out to decry “the way things are,” first be sure you understand the foundations and dynamics of what it is you are decrying. Otherwise you are likely to find – as reformers usually do – that removing or altering a manifestation is not the same as removing or altering the factors that caused that manifestation. Remove the shoot, and the untouched root will produce another, or more than another, perhaps in many unexpected forms.

Thoreau: For every person hacking at the root of an evil, there are a thousand hacking at the branches.

He was hardly the only one whose wisdom discerned the difference between intent and effect.

And I get that this is connected to Jesus saying, ”The poor you have always with you,” which I always resented. And of encouraging people to ignore the world and concentrate on salvation (although I don’t recall if he used the word, even in translation).

Isn’t that what you were led to do, after so many sojourns into “practical” careers and endeavors? You may have thought of it as retreating or even as licking your wounds, but was it not following the golden thread and refusing to be distracted?

I think that would be giving me the benefit of a lot of doubt!

The point is not you, but the situation. To take the 3D world as it appears would be to endlessly defer the only real work you have – to choose your own being – until some impossible time when all would be well in “the outside world.” That will never happen and could never happen as long as there are multiple points of view, because different people want and value different things.

I had some similar thought the other day, but didn’t write it down, and so lost it.

Even if you had written it down, you wouldn’t necessarily remember it now. However, you would have had to hold it in mind longer (the writing takes time) and so might have had it fresher. The nub of it is simply that everybody wants different things, some of which will conflict. Even lack of conflict is a specific value not shared by everyone, and in fact not shared by anyone all the time. Where is the pacifist who doesn’t wind up approving of conflict (not necessarily armed conflict, but contention) in the cause of whatever reform?

So waiting for the 3D world to be “perfect” or even peaceful is to wait forever. It wasn’t created to be an island of peace, but a workshop, a laboratory, an arena.

Stephan Daedalus, saying he was trying to be the smithy forging the uncreated conscience of his race.

More or less. Don’t bet on Joyce signing off on the comparison.

Mr. Joyce, he dead.

To return: Intuition rests in the non-3D. but so does sensation, not to mention reason and logic. If you doubt it, merely look at them more carefully.

Say more.

Everything you perceive, think, feel, decide, suffer, enjoy, is a mixture of 3D and non-3D, because you are a mixture of 3D and non-3D. What 3D conditions do is not separate anything, but separate your awareness. The earth and sea and sky continue to be part of the same harmonious whole no matter how many people experience them separately. (In fact, nobody experiences them separately, but many do separate their ideas about what they experience.)

You are almost saying, mostly we’re just playing with words here.

No, that would be true only if you didn’t mean it. As long as you do mean it – as long as there is sincere intent and focus – we are using words to try to remove the worst distortions in understanding that arise from the necessary use of words.

So what is the practical take-away for us?

Ultimately, to see that what life is, in all its manifestations, depends, for you, upon how you conceptualize it. You have heard that nothing is, but thinking makes it so. A more careful statement would be that nothing is for you but your thinking makes it so. And that is a very powerful statement, reformers! Regardless whether you change the world for others (because, after all, most will be unable to follow your lead), you will change it for yourself. And if you think that is escapism or is trivial, we have been wasting a good deal of time, effort, nervous energy, ink, paper, and electron movement.

Pretty good deal for you: Everything you listed is mind.

You used to joke, “Who promised fair?”

Today’s theme?

“The roots of thinking,” maybe. That doesn’t quite capture it, but close enough.

Okay. Thanks as always.

 

Friday, September 27, 2024

I get the sense that I don’t need to address Jon specifically, and that our course of instruction continues to be available regardless if I have questions or any starting point. This makes sense, of course, we’ve been in business many a year before Jon went over, and he said – sort of in jest, sort of seriously – that he would be one of our guys upstairs for anyone who was open to it.

Although I don’t like wasting my time, I found myself unable to re-read any of this for more than a typed page or two, yesterday. I had decided to begin August 1 and take down notes – just a word or two – when any theme struck me. I got just six lines, so far, all from  August 12 and the beginning of August 13. Maybe that’s a place to start. What I noted was:

• Limitation and focusing (via limitation and practice)
• Reinterpreting experiences to justify new beliefs.
• Hold your focus until you get what you want.
• We are each potential containers of certain kinds of energies.
• If there is 3D focus, non-3D connection is possible.
• Limitation and perseverance.

Make of that what you can. Guys?

It centers merely on the fact that difference is a valued characteristic made more possible by 3D conditions. Non-3D will give you all you want about what we all have in common; 3D will give you deepened differences. These differences are sought and valued. They are, in a sense, the reason for your 3D sojourn. Isn’t it odd, isn’t it ironic and in a way a pity, that so often in 3D one’s awareness of one’s difference is a source of acute pain.

I suppose we feel the difference between the unity our non-3D experiences, and the separation we feel in the body.

That would be a somewhat philosophical way to look at it. More plainly, you not only feel your incompleteness, you feel your difference from others, and this produces one of two reactions – or both – until you get a handle on them.

One, a sense that you are somehow wrong in what you are. This is experienced by some perhaps as a sense of Original Sin. Not only do you not live up to your own aspirations: Even if you were perfect, you’d still feel somewhat “wrong.”

Two, a sense that others are wrong in so far as they vary from some abstract ideal that seems to you self-evident. Another way to see Original Sin: Everybody is wrong, not just you (or even, in extreme cases, except you).

The two may co-exist, in which case you feel you are a damned sinner incapable of redemption and are surrounded by damned sinners incapable of redemption.

Sort of like Mark Twain, convinced that he had been predestined to hell. (And his wife, knowing his caring heart, said, “Lord, child, if you are damned, who is not?”)

This may explain a few things to you about how religions express inner certainties, and reinforce them. Also, why the job of the psychiatrist is so difficult. Also, why too much attention to the course of the world may lead to despair and rage and even to unsuspected feelings of guilt because you can’t do anything about this or that outrage. Implied in this sense of wrongness of self and/or others is the cause of madness, too.

I don’t think you meant “madness.” I sort of snatched at that.

Well, let’s say the wrongness is a source of guilt and shame and intolerance and self-righteous anger (both as defense against self-accusation and as more legitimate indignation over injustice and inhumanity).

All of them unwanted byproducts of the human condition, I take it.

Not so fast. That statement implies a few things you may not be aware of – and unawareness is always the obstacle. Your sentence assumes that what hurts is bad, thus is unwanted. It assumes that the universe is malfunctioning. Perhaps, come to think of it, we should add to the first two reactions – that you are wrong, or others are wrong – a third, that the way things are, or some would say the universe, or God, is wrong.

You don’t like pain. We get that. Whyever should you? But we remind you, pain is useful. And we also remind you, we told you years ago, you no longer need to learn through pain, you can learn through joy.

A have a friend who is sure that pain is deliberately inflicted on us for non-3D reasons, in a sense milking our 3D emotions.

Certainly it can look that way, but we suggest that you – and he – turn that upside down, look at it another way. Rather than emotions being stirred up by non-3D forces for non-3D use, maybe the emotions are for 3D use.

Pain resulting in greater consciousness?

That can happen, but a more direct cause-and-effect begins not with the pain but with the cause of pain. You will remember, we define emotions as the interface between the individual and the outside world, or – and it is the same thing – between the individual as it experiences itself and that individual’s shadow. You see? Between the known and the unknown, or you could as easily say, between the assimilated and the foreign.

Treat that emotion not as punishment (or, in the case of pleasant emotions, as reward) and instead regard them as indicators, and what happens?

We get indirect markers about our unknown selves, our shadows either as they manifest within us or outside of us. “Within you and without you,” as the Beatles put it.

And, remember what you learned first-hand about headaches?

Hmm. Yes. I learned that if I stopped shrinking from it and instead sort of welcomed the energy in, it loosened and often dissipated, as if it had been only trying to get my attention. I don’t know what it means, but I do know that it has worked, though lately I have forgotten that trick, as it had been a while since I had headaches.

You will find that much of the pain contained in emotions is connected to your shrinking from it, rather than accepting whatever circumstance is causing it.

Do you mean that to be quite such a blanket statement?

We do. And, you see, we do, not primarily so you won’t be in pain, but so that you may move through whatever is causing the pain. If you are in pain for some physical reason, does it help ease anything to shrink from the pain? That amounts to trying to deny the reality. When your father dies, you don’t expect not to feel loss and grief, etc., and certainly that it appropriate. But any additional pain caused by your resisting what is, is unnecessary and often retrogressive.

“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

Precisely. It is the resistance that hurts, over and above the facts of the situation.

Now, if you are feeling intractable pain – physical or emotional, either one – that doesn’t mean you are doing anything the wrong way. It may mean merely that the cause is significant and irremediable. A broken heart may be a cliché, but nonetheless people die of it. But no matter how intense or prolonged the pain, you don’t have to add to it. And resisting what is, rather than accepting it, is precisely the way to add to the pain.

Thus, your attitude is within your control, even if it has to be exercised through severe conditions. As a matter of fact, it is the very severity of condition that make it most important that you choose your attitude rather than leave yourself at the mercy of your unconscious reactions, which can never be as beneficial as conscious control. Deciding by default is always the worst way to decide.

Always?

Well, nearly always, anyway. Often enough to leave the point unaffected.

Enough for the moment.

Thank you. Today’s theme?

Maybe, “Feeling our differences”? Or perhaps “Guilt and pain.” Something like that.

Our thanks as always.

 

Thursday, September 25, 2024

7 a.m. I think I’ll start my blog entry by quoting the results of yesterday’s drumming session in our ILC meeting. [ILC: Intuitive Linked Communication.]

“How do we nurture ILC and what does that mean?

“Rather, how do you maintain yourselves through the use of ILC, and what follows?

“The ILC meetings – its future as a technique – will take care of itself, as the times permit. But what is more important is what does it do for you, what do you do with it, as an individual – remembering that in this context “individual” means “the totality in a nutshell.” Holographically, what happens to all happens to one, and vice versa. You are never alone even when – we would almost say particularly when – you are alone in appearance and feeling.

“Tend your own fire. Keep yourself on your own inner beam. Intend the best version of yourself that you can intend – and thereby you will be doing the most effective things possible. This, regardless if it is combined with quietism or activism. The tending your own fire is the essential, and it is all you can do and all you need to do.”

But, having decided to quote the drumming result, I find I have no idea how to continue. I will assume someone – Jon? – does.

At this point you need to spend some time re-reading the material you have been bringing in, and pondering it. You will find that it pays to change your daily routine now, to change the ratio of time spent pondering and the time spent reading or doing crosswords or whatever. You are at a time when you can make a good deal of progress by working the material you once brought in.

I get a sense of rhythms, like the tides going in and out by the law of their being.

Assimilation and digestion, yes. It is one thing to bring a blank slate to each day’s sessions; it is another to bring questions. There is a time for each aspect of the process.

I have asked for others to pose questions, but haven’t had much response.

Well, this is an interesting topic, perhaps: How much value is input from your own pondering and how much is input “from left field,” as anyone else’s will necessarily be.

I’d think they’d both be of value. Mine result from digesting what I think I know. That from others serves as inspiration from an unexpected viewpoint.

Yes, but the percentage of the mixture makes a difference.

That doesn’t sound like a stop-the-presses insight. Clearly someone who works alone is going to differ from someone in a newsroom.

Anyone thinking is thinking alone. Anyone choosing input (which book to read, which program to watch, which person to associate with) is thereby creating a unique mental environment. It can’t be avoided and need not be avoided. But by the same token, anyone thinking is thinking as a part of the whole, equally inevitably.

Again, no big “aha!” We are individual and we are part of all-that-is”; of course we are going to function in a way that could be seen as either solitary or communal.

But what changes the way it appears to you?

Our point of view at the moment.

Certainly. Which means – ?

You’re going to say something about our awareness, but I don’t yet have it.

In a sense, your life is what you think of it. Or you could say, your life means what it means to you when you look at it in a certain way – and the way you look at it depends on where the momentary mental “you” is standing. And that tends to change. Are we beginning to get through to you that we’re moving to new ground?

I’m willing to take it on faith. Still don’t see where you’re going.

Tending your own fire doesn’t mean sticking your head in the sand. It does mean, extend your awareness as avatar-self into territory previously obscure and light it up

Deal with our shadow.

Yes, but the point here is that dealing with your shadow is work that concerns not only you as avatar but everyone, for it is truly said that you are members in each other. Everything you do shapes you, and you are always a part of the general equation, hence your changes affect the rest, as theirs do you. This is why people experience what is called “mass consciousness” as if it were something else, yet they experience it.

[I see in transcribing this that “Something else” may not be clear. In context it meant “something other than themselves.”]

We experience ourselves as only a tiny bit of a huge thing.

Size is a false characteristic, a misleading idea. Quality must not be confused or melded with the nature of Quality. Quantity is a 3D term. Quality is a 3D/non-3D term.

Say some more about the distinction between 3D and 3D/non-3D.

You experience it all the time. Something strictly limited to the time-space restrictions imposed may be seen as 3D-only, even though in fact nothing is disconnected. In fact, never disconnected, but in effect, they may appear so, and may be investigated so. Thus, the non-3D implications of color or sound or substance may be ignored and even unsuspected, and so may be investigated as if 3D only.

Galileo, stripping off any characteristics that could not be measured.

Roughly, yes. Different eyes would see that color and sound and substance reverberate, let’s say, in non-3D, resulting in correspondences in 3D that may be experienced but not seen.

I think you meant, experienced but not recognized, not noticed.

Dismissed as accidental, yes. Quantity per se is always a 3D measurement. Let it pass into non-3D as well and you will find you are discussing quality. Thus, in 3D you are one in seven billion, a negligible factor. Seen from non-3D as well as 3D, you are unique but you extend in ways that cannot be measured quantitatively.

Sagan and others – Asimov – always irritated me with the stupidity of us being insignificant because we were on a fourth-rate planet circling a third-rate star, or whatever it was they said. It would be like comparing Einstein unfavorably to an elephant because he was so outweighed.

But they were saying that for effect, trying to correct what they thought of as errors exaggerating human significance.

I know that. They were still irritating.

And you yourself said, a few minutes ago, that you experience yourselves as tiny.

Touche.

Either way is a somewhat valid way of seeing things. Somewhat, because limited. An argument that does not appreciate and accommodate its opposite is always going to be merely partial, hence somewhat wrong.

To return to dealing with our shadow –

This has the advantage of always being immediately to hand. You never have to go across the ocean to count the cats in Zanzibar: You always have your own intricate and infuriating and fascinating puzzle to work, which you experience as “you in the world.” And working that puzzle, as we say, is never egotism or autism. It is your proper work. Some will work it alone, some will work it through engagement with the world, but either way, working the puzzle is the real work.

Today’s theme?

Nothing wrong with “Tending your fire.”

No, I like it. Thanks as always.

 

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

8:40 a.m. Somehow the telephone thing is a sort of last straw. I cannot imagine it actually resolving, though I will go to Comcast in person in an hour or two to try again, which quite possibly will result in it getting fixed.

But there are too many unnamed unlisted things that spell doom. I do not feel like the soul, merely the avatar, and not a very powerful or autonomous avatar, at that. It is as if all I can really do is talk via ILC to whoever it is I do talk to. I have a feeling that depression instead of explosion is how I am being affected by all this upset. Depression and a feeling of helplessness and isolation and wrong-paths-chosen. (Lungs let up recently, though.)

Oh God, what am I going to do?

Just continue being you, refining away any part of “you” that you’d rather not play.

Is that even possible?

Isn’t it choosing? You are not being driven into explosion, mostly because you brought that under your conscious control.

I could do the same with depression?

Do you have any reason to think you couldn’t? It is a matter of reinterpreting a mood, into seeing it as a mood rather than reality. And you have been doing that for a while now.

Viktor Frankl again.

You recognizing that it is the key is itself a key for you. Frankl’s external life didn’t change as a result of the decision, but it did change and as it changed, his changed-resolve (call it) led him to make choices in a continuous direction, restoring and preserving his sense of being not a helpless chip floating in eddies but, say, a passenger observing the voyage. Still not under his conscious control, but his attitude toward whatever came at him altered the experience and what he could get out of it. It is not control that is the point here, but input.

I searched and searched for that final word. “Input” isn’t right, but I had to end the sentence somehow. What is the right word?

As usual, when we get stuck, we need only step around the obstacle and continue.

That’s what I’m doing, giving you a chance to step around.

We’re making a point for others who may encounter the same problem. When you can’t find the word or the concept, start again a few words or sentences back, and see what comes.

We’ve told people that before.

Repetition, remember.

The point about Frankl’s approach was that life – his life, your life, anyone’s life – is not about you controlling it, it is about you getting what you can from it. Absorbing experience, drawing conclusions, changing your mind if it seems called for. If you think you should be controlling what happens to you, and that greater mastership will result in greater control, well, that is one possible path. That is the lure that tempts people into white – and often enough into black – magic. But it also leads easily to depression or disbelief or despair, or all three.

If instead you concentrate on absorbing what happens to you – letting life drive, so to speak – you are concentrating not on manipulating the outer world, but on shaping and reshaping your inner world.

And look carefully at that! That amounts to saying, you in paying attention to the inner world, so called (the you-ness rather than the world-ness, other-ness) are taking the more direct route, though we know it will sound backwards.

No, I understand what you mean. If the outer world as we experience it is for all practical purposes our unknown self, our shadow, then in concentrating on externals we are trying to manipulate the reflection in hope of the reflection changing the original. But if we stay focused on the original, and see the external as the reflection that it is, we can know what it is telling us we need to (or anyway have the opportunity to) address.

We don’t know how many people will be able to follow what you just said in the way you said it, but yes, that’s the idea. All paths are good, remember, but in practice one or another particular path will be good for you. Your construction as avatar will have made you in such a way that you will naturally prefer this or that as more natural to you. (And some will choose what is less natural to them, they seeking the challenge.) So for some, close engagement with the outer world as reality; for others, engagement as symbol. Whichever you choose, you may do well or badly, efficiently or not, consistently or not. But any path per se offers opportunities.

Well, I don’t know if it is the content of your talk or the experience itself, but I do feel better. Soldiering on is something I can do.

But you don’t have to be quite so grim about it. Life also contains coffee and chocolate, you know.

Smiling. Thanks.

 

[Herein, I said  “Icon” but I should have said “Avatar,. “Avatar in the sense of avatars in computer games.]

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

8:50 a.m. I guess I’m tired of many things, my ambiguous position in 3D not least. If I think of myself, I can’t think of myself as icon, nor as the self that would include and transcend it. I’m sort of suspended between the two.

Both demigod and mortal. Yes, that is the human condition. It is why you are not at home in your lives: You know you are something more, but you can’t make that “something more” real and effective. Yet it seems you almost can, if you can only do – something.

I see you haven’t forgotten what it’s like.

You mean, “after all this time”? A little more than seven weeks?

Just making the point, somebody somewhere said you have to have been human to understand being human.

Ed Carter told you that ex-humans are regarded with some respect for having survived boot camp.

And is that what you experience?

That kind of respect? I imagine it is dependent on who you meet and what you’re doing. I haven’t seen any parades in my honor so far, if that’s what you mean.

Smiling. Reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s sketches, can’t remember which, where people in non-3D take turns pretending to be Abraham, etc., so that new arrivals can live out their prior fantasies. In any case, what are we going to talk about?

Isn’t that supposed to be your decision?

Let’s continue on this “demigod and mortal” theme, then.

It is a natural extension of the theme we have been touching, but you have not yet discussed it with your friends even by email.

I put out the invitation by posting our conversation. I can’t force people to respond.

You can encourage, however. Some people won’t think they have anything special to contribute.

I don’t know how to make it plainer than you and others have done already.

You can always second the motion.

My God, Jon, what have I been doing, for 20 years?

The difficulty goes with the territory, don’t worry about it. Remember what you tell people, advertisers know that repetition sells. There’s never any predicting which particular repetition will be the one that hits which person.

So, demigods and mortal.

Remember, going into this or any discussion, it isn’t just about the 3D/non-3D world you know, nor even about aspects of it that you may or may not come to know. It is also rooted, necessarily, in the unknowable.

In the larger reality beyond the 3D/non-3D bubble.

Right. Just as you have to be in all dimensions that exist, because nothing can exist in some dimensions and not in others, so everything in the 3D/non-3D realm is invisibly rooted in the larger reality of which it is a subset. You can see that.

I can, when I remember that the universe is all one thing, without absolute divisions.

You might think of the 3D/non-3D bubble as one dimension of the larger world around it. That introduces as much distortion as it overcomes, perhaps, but some may find it useful as a reminder that everything is part of the all-that-is, and the all-that-is is not confined to the bubble.

I get that. Seems clear enough.

It will be clear (it is not a complicated idea) except when blocked by other ideas or emotional needs. But that may be said of any concept.

But if we’re going to discuss factors invisible to us – we’re going to discuss the influencing factors that result, not the invisible ones we cannot guess. I got the second half of the sentence as an answer to the first half. Very efficient.

In dealing with such questions, combining your left-brain attention with your right-brain openness, you often receive the answers to questions as fast as the questions form. It’s a matter of no interfering filter and no deadening logical process.

So, the influencing factors: What are they?

Like the air you breathe, they are so much a part of your life, they are usually scarcely notices.

I’ll leave off comments about asthmatics not noticing the air we breathe.

That’s very loud omitting.

Smiling again. Well?

Have you ever met or heard of anyone who had his own life figured out? I don’t mean know-it-alls or true-believers. They usually are overcompensating against uncertainty and the necessity of leaving questions open. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone who claimed to know his life, and life per se?

It may be absurd. The name that comes to mind is, Jesus.

Then you might look at it and see why.

Why he knew his life?

Why that is the name that came to mind, as opposed to Gautama, say, or Lao Tse or any of the world’s acknowledged sages.

I didn’t hear you asking about wisdom, I heard, completeness. Integrity in the sense of being all one thing. Lack of self-division.

And why do you trust the stories that have come down about him?

Do I? that’s a good question. I don’t think it is because that is what I was taught as a child, because that isn’t what I was taught. Jesus was taught as God who was made flesh. In fact, what we were taught was very contradictory, though the nuns didn’t seem to notice the contradictions. Nor did we, of course, until later.

You know that some people say he never existed.

As an amateur historian, I can’t believe that. The Gospels are the written residue of two generations of oral tradition. The apostles and disciples were changed men and women. You don’t get changed by legends nor by made-up stories. And those disciples changed the world.

But so did Muhammad’s.

Doesn’t seem like the same thing, to me. but in any case, nobody questions that Muhammad lived. Again, something created followers. Something changed people, who became examples who changed people. But Muhammad’s followers were armed, and Christians – until the movement was hijacked by Roman Emperors – were not. A movement that spreads by example rather than by the sword has an important something extra.

But in any case, you believe that Jesus is something special.

Even historically you’d have to concede that.

But where do you get that he knew his life, and life per se? You were not taught that, as you say.

It struck me a long time ago, his spirit may be the connector among humans that is a sort of halfway house.

That isn’t even close to being clear. Let me cease to ask rhetorical questions, and set it out for you – reversing our usual procedure.

Okay with me.

G.K. Chesterton was closer to a conventional Christian than most popular writers. He converted to Catholicism in the 1920s, a very eccentric thing to do for a prominent Englishman. You have his book The Everlasting Man, which you might profitably reread critically. Although Chesterton’s theological approach is not yours and although he will probably disapprove of most of the way we conceptualize things, you will find great insight as a result of running his thoughts in parallel with yours. He won’t convert you, as you wouldn’t have converted him, but he will strike sparks. That’s what he always did.

You said “will probably disapprove.” Are you suggesting we bring him into the conversation?

Your own awe or reverence or whatever you would call it may stand in the way, but someone who can talk to Lincoln or Carl Jung ought to be able to hold his own with Chesterton.

We’ll need to continue this another time. “Invisible factors,” perhaps?

It would do, or something else if it struck you.

Interesting stuff. Looking forward to more. Mentioning Jesus and taking him seriously ought to set the cat among the pigeons.

“I have come to bring not peace, but the sword.”

I didn’t know you were that familiar with Christian scriptures.

And how do you know how many silent partners are chiming in as we speak?

I always forget that. Okay, till next time.

 

Monday, September 23, 2024

7:05 a.m. Okay, Jon, shall we dance? Do you have a preferred topic?

You aren’t sharing everything that happens.

Should I?

No, just put it on the record [that I don’t post everything]. If people feel left out, they know what they can do. Everyone has access, it’s just a matter of doing the work and not pre-judging the result.

Some people say they can’t.

And you don’t believe them, rightly so. But if they don’t think they can’t, they can’t until they decide they can.

I am tempted to put in my brief exchange with JFK, that was spurred by my thinking again about rewriting Eddie’s book.

There is no “should” either way.

Looking back, Friday’s session seemed to end abruptly.

I advised you to think – alone and with your friends – about your situation in 3D, limited yet remembering that the limits weren’t absolutes. And have you done the thinking?

Not thinking, but feeling, anyway. The other day there was a moment when I remembered. But I couldn’t do anything with it and I couldn’t prolong it.

Then let’s think together.

Yes, that seems to work best for me.

First, remember that nothing in your life can be chance, no matter how it goes, no matter how it feels. That is not the same as saying “preordained.” It means, everything is connected in the world, and the world at large, “out there,” is as real as you are in this context. And although you at this moment understand what this means, you should spell it out to keep it, or you will find that it becomes cryptic as you lose the key.

I take it to mean that I as a 3D person born when I was born, born where I was born, of my particular biological parentage, etc., etc., am not the real me, but a construct, a sort of icon that represents me in the 3D game. Mostly during the game we identify with our icons, but we have the ability to both identify with it and transform it. As it transforms, we continue to identify with it and we continue to transform it.

Very good. That “icon” metaphor will serve you well, going along. So you see, “you” as you appear in 3D are, like everybody else, “somewhat real.” You have a deeper reality that 3D life cannot touch, though it can influence it. And how [can it influence it]?

Because our reactions to what happen to us lead us to change. I hadn’t quite put that together. I am a certain way: My icon is, I mean. Things happen via the world. The icon reacts, either automatically or consciously, and every such interaction presents the possibility of change. But it is a matter of the icon’s choice, because change is a matter of what we will, not what is forced upon us. Yes, if we allow ourselves to be shaped by events, in effect we are shaped by something outside ourselves (outside our icon’s self). But in fact really this means only that we chose not to choose.

There you go. So you see – once again, but you keep forgetting it – the way you think is via pen and paper. Others may think via other ways. But everybody can think productively on these things. The question is, will they?

It’ striking. A lot of progress in a few minutes.

Now, not to beat a dead horse, but that is the value of intuitive linked communication as opposed to passive reception of messages, much less trance channeling. ILC is designed – was given to you – to help you think. It involves the left brain with the right brain, or, you could as easily say, it lets you put words to intuition, or, it lets your 3D component communicate consciously with your non-3D component. Or, it lets your icon talk to the shades of other icons. When you get good enough at it, it will restore people’s ability to talk icon to icon abstractly rather than by using the senses. In other words, telepathy.

Now, this is good progress, but think some more, alone and with friends.

I’m feeing impelled to record the brief conversation I had.

As I said, no reason you have to, no reason you shouldn’t. Up to you.

It feels like I’m being nudged, though, and also like I’m reluctant for the usual reasons.

Then think about that. In fact, that’s a good rule of thumb: When you notice something going on “within” you, think about it. Feel for it, examine. If you learn nothing, what have you lost? But maybe you will learn something.

Yes, I see that. I suppose the nudge may come from more “me” and the resistance from the icon. (I can see how useful that metaphor may become.)

You generally defer to your upper self, except when the icon’s emotional resistances are too great. Others might defer to the self’s impulses only very occasionally. It is a matter of style, as much as anything.

Interesting. All right, I’ll think about all this. Maybe I’ll call the one “Thinking.” Thanks, Jon, and till next time.