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Tuesday, November 7, 2017

“It’s always something”

All right, since I have to be up anyway, I suppose we should begin. That doesn’t sound particularly gracious; you know I love doing this, but I’d be just as happy to do it under fewer physical constraints.

It does not occur to you perhaps that this maximizes the use of those constraints. That otherwise you would have the constraints but nothing productive to do within them.

You think I don’t know that, after a lifetime of sitting up reading, rocking forward and back, painful breath by painful breath? I’m not going to go into it, but I’m damn well aware of the advantages of being able to use physical problems as a sort of platform to kick away from. And if uncomfortable nights were the price I had to pay to be able to do this, I’d be perfectly happy to make the bargain. Only, it’s the same unexplainable contradiction I’ve always lived: I know that I should be able to just – turn something, adjust something – and be well, only I can’t find it. And this isn’t just about me, obviously. Everybody wrestles with something; why can’t awareness overcome it?

If you had Aladdin’s lamp to grant you even one wish, let alone three, what good would it do you? In fact, look how much harder it would make your lives. You were told once that if you had an infallible source of knowledge of what was going to happen, you would then be prone to Psychic’s Disease. In 3D, you function under limitations, and if it isn’t one thing, it will be something else.

Well, my father always used to say, in exasperation, “It’s always something.”

Yes, we smile too, but of course it is always something. That’s life. And by that we mean, that is the essence and fabric and value of life: not just limitation, but conflict, problems, difficulty. The very things you may think of as drawbacks are, in fact, demonstrations that all is well, all is always well.

So much easier to see that in other people’s situation, but I do see it. If we are here to choose and to create ourselves (if only by choosing among versions, which one we prefer to live, moment by moment), then obviously there must be things to choose between, and for the choices to matter to us, one must be more attractive, one less attractive. Which implies problems.

That is taking things a little too much at a gallop. Let’s look at it slowly.

I know, I know. Concentrate: con-center-ate.

And you see the first thing that happens?

It seems my breathing improved, only it isn’t quite that, is it?

The overall feeling improved because although the wheezing continued, the circumambient tightening of the muscles relaxed, reducing the discomfort.

I had a definite sense that you wanted me to use “circumambient,” which ordinarily I wouldn’t. Why?

It is more precise, more descriptive, than merely saying “surrounding.”

And that is important, why?

Perhaps your habits of thought and expression are not so uniquely and entirely yours as you may think.

Okay. And I get that that is a real point, not just a comment. In other words, we’re all in this together; 3D and non-3D, individual and what we might call our mental (or at least non-3D) community.

You see, anything widens out, at least potentially, if you concentrate. Slower isn’t necessarily deeper, but it may be. It’s up to what you do with it. Faster may get you safely over thin ice; not necessarily, but maybe. It is, as we say, all a matter of how you live it.

So, to return to my statement that was made too much at a gallop?

No need for us to spell it out for you. Sink into it. That is the advantage of writing, after all; the words don’t move.

It isn’t quite a matter of setting up problems so we will have things to choose among.

No, not Shaw’s “moral gymnasium.” So then, what?

I am forgetting the universal in thinking of the individual.

That’s the right idea, but – slower.

Well, in thinking of the problems we face, it is habitual for us to think of our situation in isolation, because that is of course how it will present itself. And I see the relevance of the allusion to speed. In our day-to-day situations, we are usually skating, having enough to deal with, moment by moment, and perhaps little enough time – even if we have the inclination – to examine it more closely, slower. Maybe any situation, any set of choices, offers insight into larger things, if we have the time and inclination to feel our way into it.

Your lives are never accidentally dropped into circumstances. Inner and outer are the same thing seen differently, remember, one through direct feed via intuition (or, non-3D link), the other through sensory apparatus and extensions. So where is the possibility for meaningless occurrence? Not every choice is momentous; that doesn’t mean that it and its context are meaningless.

So, our lives are bound into the times we live; we know that about our outer circumstances. That means we are equally bound into the times we live internally. Have to be, since it is the same thing. Which means our thoughts and feelings and all are caught in a tide. Have to be. We are not independent, though we think we are; we are independent to a degree, and social to a degree.

This should be obvious to someone who has studied astrology and seen the tides running through the lives of everyone on Earth, not just any one given person. What the tides react on, or let’s say individually affect

The cosmic tides are a sort of background for us all. But we don’t experience it as a common background. We experience the interaction between the tide and the individual we are, shaped at birth at a particular time and place. So, we all live in the same – circumambient, since you like that word – cosmic tide, but the individual is affected by that tide differently depending upon what that tide finds pre-formed [by previous decisions] at any given moment.

Didn’t we posit vast impersonal forces on the one hand, and individual complicated pipes for those winds to play through?

Yes, clear enough now, in this context.

So was it worth while to be rousted out of bed?

I may cease to answer rhetorical questions.

Yes, good. We smile too. But you see.

Well, I see further implications, too, accurate or not. It seems to imply that certain problems can only be worked with at certain times.

Again, just a little slower.

It’s just what astrology would tell us: At any given moment, certain things are easier for the given individual (depending upon his or her composition) and other things harder. Does this quite imply that whatever problem or opportunity surfaces at any given moment is the best thing to concentrate on?

Easiest, anyway. “Best” is a matter of value and judgment.

And there’s our hour. Well, it turned out to be pretty productive, I think. Not what I would have expected.

There is something to be said for taking what comes.

I do know that. At least, for my kind of person. Other types tend to shape things more, it seems to me.

Hammers make poor screwdrivers. Wrenches make poor drill-bits. Every implement to its own uses.

Thanks as always.

[And as a sort of PS, I had already closed the book when it occurred to me – with help? – that this entry is an example of taking what comes. They began where I was and continued as they were able to. Maybe from their point of view they’re always doing that.]

 

Sunday, November 5, 2017

We have hardly begun the subject of who you are, in bodies on Earth, in connection to the larger 3D and non-3D universe. You must continue to remind yourselves of the basics, if you are to make sense of things. For brevity, we cannot keep spelling them out every time. Your work is to keep them current in your active memory.

No absolute divisions, as above so below, etc.

Yes, but the “etc.” is important!

As we said, we will not recite our version of your unsuspected history, lest it encourage fantasizing, incredulity, dogmatism, contention. You have enough of all that to deal with. Instead, we concentrate on what can be emotionally verifiable. In other words, we will suggest relationships and you will decide for yourselves what resonates. That way, you are left with an approach and a task.

Consider: Your situation in 3D as a species, as civilizations, is the same as that of every other species in 3D, regardless whether they are so far away you never come across them. Another system may have entirely different physical rules. Things may operate unrecognizably. Still, you are all compound beings; you are all creations of your larger selves who exist in a greater reality, a realer reality. Just as physical conditions will vary from one place to another, so will social or psychological conditions. Every species has its own challenges and opportunities, and no two are identical between species, any more than between individuals within a species.

Some civilizations may not experience war, or even fear.

Or competition, or the convincing illusion of separation, that’s correct. Not every species ate of the tree of “perceiving things as good and evil.”

Difficult, but attractive, to think of a 3D world that lives without fear, competition, warfare, and presumably the seven deadly sins.

No need to make idyllic comparisons. Every life in 3D is going to have its problems that will be challenge enough for it. Otherwise why experience 3D life at all?

Some will ask, are ETs living on Earth? Have Terrans lived elsewhere? Is physical interbreeding past or present fact or fiction?

You can learn to go deeper into whatever subject matter you look at, because it isn’t the object, but the subject – you – that needs deepening. You can always go farther in at any time. Whether you are talking to us or reading history or talking to someone else or experiencing scenery or even seeking out the author of books written long ago. The path to greater power, greater intensity, always leads inward (in a manner of speaking), not outward toward the seemingly other. And any subject may be examined in a more, or a less, superficial manner. You will find it useful to live at a greater depth of intensity with which you experience. Greater understanding may (or may not) result, but the point is the process, not the result.

Does this come up now because I was still feeling tired?

That provided an opportunity, yes. How do you feel now?

More alert, more centered. I suppose it is useless to ask if I was led to doodle that out whenever it was – a few days ago, I imagine – for this reason.

Not useless to ask that question continually, or rather, repeatedly, in your life.

We should perhaps draw a distinction between consciousness and awareness. You are always conscious, but your level of awareness varies radically and is potentially under your own control. Only – to raise your level of awareness, you need to be aware of the need to be more aware.

Hence the usefulness of communities.

Often, yes. You can be reminded by others when you have fallen half-asleep. Of course, that requires that the reminder be received without resentment – and it assumes that at least one member of the community is aware at all times, which is by no  means always the case. But the point for you (plural you, here) is that living as you do in effective isolation, you need to be your own alarm clocks. Living among others equally prone to sleep is no advantage, particularly if the attention of the community comes to center on rules and practicalities, as tends to happen over time. (Hence the continued tendency of religious or metaphysical communities to decay from the center, a difficulty unrelated to creed or belief-system.)

I was going to ask how we can be our own alarm clocks, and of course it is obvious: The closer our contact with our own non-3D self, the less the danger of falling asleep at the switch.

Yes except remove the nuance of “danger” and the image of eternal strained awareness. Perhaps “alarm clock” does not serve all that well either. We mean to point you toward a calm, even, quietly joyful state of being, in which you are aware amid fluctuation.

I got that last, but phrased it clumsily. You mean, a state of being that will still have its ups and downs – being ordinary life, after all – but will have those ups and downs from a higher level.

That is your intermediate goal, and further prospects will open up from there, as always.

So why did this arise in the middle of what looked to become a discussion of us and ETs?

It is precisely the subjects of greatest interest that have the greatest potential to lead you to forget your own consciousness as part of the equation, concentrating instead on the subject at hand.

And the result is to leave that subject all “in our heads” rather than to really connect it to our beings.

Correct. Once you notice the tendency, the potential pitfall, you see it in operation all around you. Whenever people are the most vehement on whatever subject, you will see that they are forgetting themselves and identifying with their positions. Being to that extent asleep, they will be unable to make the distinction, and they will not thank the person who makes it for them. One might almost say, the greater the vehemence, the greater the preceding drop in awareness.

So, ETs are a charged subject. And we should look to our level of awareness in discussing them.

Not only in connection with this subject. Not even particularly, in fact. Each person has his own sensitive subjects, for of course the sensitivity relates to the person, and is not intrinsically related to the subject matter. This was merely a convenient “hook,” one might say.

 

Friday, November 3, 2017

We’re all pretty eager to hear more about our extra-terrestrial extensions. I suspect objections and requests for clarifications are going to be important assists in getting clarity. But I get the sense you’d rather continue a while.

Objections and puzzlements certainly will be of service to clarity, as you say, but it will be better to try to set out our idea a little more fully, before entertaining them.

“It’s still a question of `which you?’”

Still a question of “which you,” exactly. That single reframing will itself take us a certain way. “Which you?” That’s always the question, and it’s always the question most likely to be forgotten or never considered. Yet so much hangs on it!

So, if you are thinking you are part extra-terrestrial, or are directly connected to one (or more) extra-terrestrials you might have any amount of ideas about it, ranging from physical hybrid to mere psychological resonance. So we’re going to sketch a few possibilities. No telling ahead of time how quickly this can be done or how long it may go on. We’ll see as we go.

• First off, try never to forget, you are 3D entities who are nonetheless the offspring of what is essentially a non-3D entity. That is, All-D you, both your 3D and non-3D components, considered together, were put together by a Sam, which by definition is not a 3D-bound entity.
• Next, remember that you are intimately connected to all other lifetimes you are involved in, call them “past lives” or “simultaneous lives” or even “future lives.” If the same pattern that is your present psyche lived in ancient Egypt, then, in effect, you did, or in fact do. So your definition of yourself may need to be widened.
• Beyond that, remember that every strand incorporated in every individual you connect to in this way is a part of you. You have a very extended family. And among all those lives that are part of your life, you can’t know where all the branches of your family-of-you come from.

In other words, any strands included in your present being may include extra-terrestrial beings as well as terrestrial ones. In such case, your extraterrestrial family connections may be as extensive as those on this plane.

“We have met the alien and he is us,” to paraphrase Pogo.

We wouldn’t propose it as a flat exception-less statement of fact, but often enough, yes.

I know you usually shy away from speculation and abstraction carried too far, but I gather that this means that various families of ETs are interrelated, as well, that in effect all 3D beings, not only the 3D beings on Terra Firma, are part of one thing.

And we have never said otherwise. The universe – reality – is all one thing, divided nowhere absolutely, only relatively.

So, we are perhaps as alien as human.

Why not reverse it and see that aliens may be as human as alien? In fact, this may be a challenge, but

No, don’t put it that way, you’ll raise everybody’s hackles and defenses, needlessly.

You are welcome to phrase the thought.

Let’s just say that we might as well consider all compound beings (I don’t know if it applies to unitary beings) as one extended family, in the same way that we recognize humans as one race subdivided into what we call races which (they being able to interbreed without creating sterile hybrids) are not really separate. You are saying that to consider other alien species as essentially different from humans is something we might call racism. The differences exist, and some of those differences are startling. But all compound being are akin, and sooner or later we are going to come to see it.

In any case, that makes our point. It isn’t really a case of “you” v. “them.” You and they have already interbred. You as humans don’t remember your own origins, but as a species and as individuals, you are the equivalent of the English.

By which you mean an identifiable set of sub-species with a common culture formed of invasions of Celts and Picts and Danes and Angles and Saxons and French and Romans and Phoenicians and God knows what. The result was not a shapeless mongrel race but, over time, a clearly identifiable culture. If the English themselves occasionally overemphasized their supposed Anglo-Saxon purity, still they were pointing to something real, something created in history.

If this did nothing more than shake the idea of “us” v. “them” that continually pops up in any discussion of wider extensions of accepted ideas, it would be worth the effort. You are not hermits living off in the celestial woods, in the back of beyond. Humans are the descendants and contemporaries of far-ranging explorers and settlers, and not all the exploring and settling is physical.

Now I know people are going to want to get a story of our past and/or present interaction with ETs, and I strongly suspect you aren’t going to give it to them.

Any such narrative would be mere assertion. They wouldn’t know – you wouldn’t know – if it were fact or fantasy or disinformation or error or some mixture of them all. And what could they, or you, do with such a tale? It wouldn’t expand your horizons; it wouldn’t give you something solid, something connected to your individual lives, to chew on. It would give you spur for opinion, and if you don’t mind our saying so, you have too many opinions as it is.

Which doesn’t mean some can’t get such information.

Everybody’s access is different, and everybody’s general makeup presents different needs and opportunities. But making flat assertions of fact in the matter is not your path.

No, and I’m glad not to have to form such opinions.

But hear this. When you are told that you are originally not from here, when you are told that Earth is not your home, remember, that is true of everybody. It’s all in how you interpret the words. It might be said, “You did not originate in 3D. 3D is not your home.” You see? Same statement, in a way, but a very different set of implications. And there is your hour, or near enough.

Thanks, and we look forward to more another time.

 

Thursday November 2, 2017

My friends, I got the idea yesterday that today’s discussion might be called something like “geography and the spirit,” or “alien life in 3D and otherwise,” or something similar.

Until now we have been describing All-D life as localized – as indeed it is. As your “guys upstairs” told you, there is a non-physical Canada, corresponding to the physical Canada you know of. In your newer understanding, this meant, the non-3D is a part of the same more comprehensive reality as is the 3D, so of course it describes the same physical space. So, if we’re talking about life on Earth in 3D, we are also, therefore, talking about life on the same Earth in non-3D. How else could it be? Indeed, one reason for adopting the terms 3D and non-3D, rather than physical and spiritual, was to emphasize that it isn’t a matter of one realm being here and another realm being somewhere else, and isn’t exactly a matter of the non-3D being “nowhere.” As Bob Monroe said, “there” is “here.”

Yes, that made a great and convincing impression on me when I read it in Far Journeys.

But of course, if “there is here” in terms of non-3D being in the same space as 3D, in a very different sense “there” is also necessarily “there and not here.”

I take it you want me to explain that you mean that just as the 3D world we experience is defined by geography, so necessarily is the non-3D world, only there are different conditions of movement. Let us for the moment disregard the fact that mind has no physical barriers. If the 3D conditions of perceived separation by distance applied to the mind, we would see that a mind anchored to one place would have to travel to visit another place. It doesn’t; we know that. But what I am trying to clarify is that our minds are anchored by their attachment to a 3D-oriented body.

Whew. This isn’t going to be easy.

No, but you will find, a little at a time gets it done.

So, my non-3D mind is anchored in Virginia at the moment, because that is where its 3D body lives. Yet that mind also connects to other physical locations where other lives were lived – is that correct? So, Egypt, England, other parts of the U.S., places I don’t even suspect? Anywhere a strand lives there is a connection? I don’t have it quite right, I can feel it.

No, but you advanced the argument a bit. The links to other places through other lifetimes is really that those lives are linked to their former 3D existence because, remember, times past don’t cease to exist.

Okay. So, my mind is tethered to Virginia because my 3D body is here. It is also tethered to England and other places because David Poynter lived there. And so on. Does this imply that in the absence of such connections my mind could not travel elsewhere?

It implies that in the absence of such connections it would have to travel, it would not be equally at home, in such elsewheres.

So when we move in 3D, that is why we seem to fit better some places than others? Why some places are recognized as familiar and comfortable, perhaps as exhilarating, and others are not?

You’ve experienced it yourself, moving from your original home through several states until coming to Virginia, and within Virginia moving from one place to another on the tidewater until you came again to John Cotton’s old home. So that’s the mechanism. And now we take the leap.

Yes. And it is a leap. But I was told a long time ago that you can’t leap over a gap by making two half-leaps. So, here goes.

Alien? Terran?

People talk about extra-terrestrial visitors, and they think in terms of UFOs carrying aliens to Earth. It doesn’t occur to them maybe that many people who are 100% Terran (Earthian?) nonetheless have strands, even dominant strands, that tie them to far star systems.

Perhaps you had better let us try it. For this once, it may be easier.

Consider it a thought-experiment, both for the sake of clarity and in order to lower the threshold of acceptability. In other words, we don’t ask you to believe or dis-believe, only consider.

A mind from the Pleiades arrives at Earth and wishes to explore. How does that mind “arrive at Earth”? How does it – how do you – extend your mental world to places where you are not and have never been? You ride your 3D body there. you explore between planets in the same way you explore within planets, by going there.

You live there. Having once lived there, you find yourself in a web of connecting relationships formed during that life. It isn’t only that you get increasingly fascinated, although there is that. You are also progressively “hooked” by issues that arise, relationships that form, possibilities that seem to be uniquely associated with that bit of terrain. Then, you die. Now who are you?

Are you still a being from KT95, as Bob Monroe put it? Are you not equally a person of Earth? And does not any one of your lifetimes connect with all those other lifetimes here, there, and elsewhere, many of them literally unimaginable?

That’s how the universe stays knitted together.

Of course. We keep telling you, in widening contexts, that there are no hard and fast divisions in reality. True, until now we haven’t mentioned that interplanetary lives are part of that rule, but you can only say one thing at a time, and build, and hope for the best.

So now,

• who are the aliens here on Earth?
• And for that matter who are the aliens elsewhere?

How can you hedge reality with meaningful boundaries when you realize that

• geography matters in All-D no less than in 3D, yet
• it is an absolute barrier no more in All-D than in 3D alone.

It matters; it is not an absolute.

 

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Let’s talk about emotion, and drama, and the “why” of it.

Something I do occasionally wonder about. There sure seems to be a lot of excess drama all the time. Drama, or boredom. Never much quiet excitement or interesting tranquility. Why shouldn’t there be?

Except, you are not describing life as you are experiencing it.

Not as I experience it now, anyway.

We remind you that a human being is a complicated set of reactions, connections, associations, through which the divine winds of the universe play. If you can keep that image in mind, if only in the background, it will help keep many a relationship among various facts clear, or anyway clearer.

You are both one, and many.

• Because you are so intertwined in so many ways, sharing and dividing threads in your being, you are all part of one thing;
• Because your consciousness is usually in a divided state (because of 3D conditions and the unnoticed conclusions they lead you to) you are also in effect many individuals.

You are also one or many, depending if you are looking down the scale or up.

• You are (each) one compared to the many elements you comprise.
• You are (each) many compared to the greater being of which you are only one cell.

Okay, I think by now we have all that, even if we don’t always remember it.

When you incarnate you become a note in a symphony, for what you are, how you react, what you suffer or enjoy, the suffering and enjoyment you may cause others – none of this is anything but unique, even though each note is in its own way similar to all other notes. Do you have that?

I think so. Musical notes are all the same few types, but in combination they create hugely different effects.

Yes, and what they produce depends upon where they are placed, how long or short the note, what its predecessors or successors are, and so forth. But although every note is unique in placement, no note ever stands alone. No note has meaning unless considered in connection with the notes surrounding it.

That makes sense to me, though it may be disappointing to any raging individualists in the crowd.

Individualists are a note in the symphony like any others, and, like any other, they derive their meaning from the overall music, not from someone playing a single note and then setting down the instrument.

So what does this have to do with your lives? Understand, if you were not living in 3D conditions which deliberately over-emphasize separation and distinctions, everything would be different. And, since your non-3D awareness knows all this, many of you live a contradiction between conscious awareness and beliefs and unconscious contradictory knowledge. Even the most rabid individualist nonetheless has his or her mind in non-3D conditions, and that mind knows better. In fact, in some people the contradiction is so uncomfortable as to produce fanaticism, as the conscious mind strives to overcome its own doubt.

So why do they have a vested interest in believing what they half-know isn’t so?

There could be millions of slightly different answers to that question. A better question would be, what effect does the conflict produce?

Consider the question asked.

Consider the answer to be – emotion and drama.

I suppose that means that the same universal winds, blowing through non-3D minds, produce very different effects than when they blow through 3D.

But you must try to remember: one world, one reality. The non-3D isn’t elsewhere, it is a part of your accustomed 3D world. So it isn’t a matter of winds blowing here and then there, or here now and there another time. It is a matter of the same universal winds animating this All-D character that experiences itself as partly 3D, partly non-3D – and experiences itself as separate even as it experiences itself as integrally part of one undivided reality.

The result, as usual, looks different from different points of view. From the All-D perspective, it is a symphony. From within 3D, often enough it seems painful, meaningless chaos. But that is only one perspective, from the less real, the only somewhat real, point of existence. Within that only-somewhat-real level of experience, still it need not be experienced as painful chaos. You can learn to hear the symphony.

Give up fear, and belief in meaningless coincidence, and perceiving things as good and evil.

Yes, but that final statement isn’t quite what it seems. It isn’t so much that you cease to perceive duality – you are still immersed in it, after all – as that you cease to take it at face value. You acquire a little healthy skepticism about not only your emotions and reactions, but the reality of what your senses and extended senses report.

“Nothing is good or bad, but that thinking makes it so”?

Well –

[Longish pause]

It is always a difficulty, in discussing reality that involves the pain of others, to speak accurately and yet be heard by those whose hearts already incline them to suspect indifference.

In other words, you’re prepared to be called callous or unfeeling.

It won’t astonish us if it happens, let’s put it that way. It’s natural, because the insight is a slippery and tenuous one, hard for you in 3D to hold. The way to get it and hold it is to tune in not to your reasoning and your 3D reactions, but to your own internal knowing, which of course proceeds from your non-3D essence, from your total All-D essence.

At its own level, evil is evil. No matter (in this context) that at a higher level of reality you are performing improv: Within your reality, real is real. You can’t talk away cruelty, hatred, pain, separation, anxiety, want, any of it. The seven deadly sins are no less destructive in 3D for all that they are not what they appear, and do not manifest beyond 3D as they do within it. So, it is true what you quoted, but it isn’t end of story. It is also true that “What a man thinks in his mind, so he is.” Your thoughts are things, and have weight. Your decisions as to what to be, what qualities to encourage and which to struggle against, make a difference within the context of 3D improv, but much more importantly at realer levels of existence of which you can know little or nothing.

Life in 3D is not merely a stroll in the park, as you may have noticed. It is often difficult or painful, even if it is often exuberant or deeply satisfying. The reason for the depth and strength and variety of emotions filling your lives – even boredom, when that is encountered – is that the winds of the universe, the vast impersonal forces. play the instrument that is you, and at best you can finger the stops or sway to the music, or tap-dance to keep your balance. That doesn’t make it an ordeal or a tragedy (though some do see it that way, of course); it makes it a vivid experience, and your judgments are merely tacked on, after the fact.

Fascinating as usual, and as usual I’m going to have to re-read it to see if it makes sense. No offence – so far it always has! Till next time.

 

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Very well, my friend. Not all deciders or decisions created equal?

Surely it is obvious as soon as broached. It is only common sense, after all.

But if there is one thing this work has taught us to suspect, it is common sense.

Point. Very well, we shall look at it. But it shouldn’t take long. There are decisions that matter and those that don’t. There are people of substance and those of far less substance. You see this every day. The caveat as always is that what you see may not be what you get, but that is a separate point that merely reminds you that your judgments are apt to be fallible. But the fact that you may misjudge does not mean there are no judgments to be made.

And, I presume, “judgments” in the sense of discernment, not of condemnation.

Of course.

• Condemnation implies a value judgment, a measuring of how far a given person or action or situation differs from the judging person’s norm or ideal.
• Discernment is exactly the opposite. It is a clear seeing of what is. Ideally, perfect discernment would precede and inform condemnation; that is, no one would condemn until he or she really, thoroughly, entirely understood what was being judged.

Once one understands, the heat tends to ebb from the condemning impulse. But perhaps the saying is too absolute to be entirely true. In practice one knows the difference between important and unimportant decisions in general, if not always in careful specific. To walk down this or that side of a street, to wear blue instead of green, to drive this kind of car instead of another – usually these are trivial decisions and of no great consequence. Once in a while they might be given greater weight by a specific circumstance, but in general, they do not produce decision-points that matter, because they are not decision-points that matter.

I had to think about that sentence for a second. I guess you mean, being themselves trivial in nature, they are unlikely to lead to more consequential choice-points.

Correct. Occasionally, trivial points are decisive, and you call the result coincidence, or chance, or “for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost,” but mostly, no, and we want to pursue the usual here, not the exception.

There are levels of decision that are in themselves significant but may or may not lead to important choice-points. To stick to externals for the moment, the choice of a career, for instance. For some people, their career may shape their whole lives; all their primary energies may flow into it. For others, it may be of much less importance in that their world centers on other things.

A career as mother, for instance, could be as much a real center of interest as anything else. The much-derided “homemaker.”

Or father. Many a person’s life centers in the family they emerge from and the family they create, and these are often very centered, oriented people. A person’s consuming interest in life might have nothing at all to do with making a living, or conducting a career, or raising a family – might indeed be entirely invisible to the world, and yet just as important. And this is true, but tends more toward the point about being careful in judging the lives of others.

Still moving toward matters of greater significance: Two types of very significant decisions may be one-time or, more usually, continuing. These are what to do, or what to be. (As always in analyzing, we are downplaying ambiguities so as to present distinctions more clearly.) These are the defining trends, in a lifetime.

What to do. Either a momentous one-time choice or an equally momentous but less dramatic continuing choice. A definition of action. In choosing any true either/or, one alters the path in a way that is not done by trivial or reversible decisions. Anything is of prime importance that, if done (or, alternately, undone) will have irrevocable consequences. However, the importance may not be noticed, nor perhaps ever assessed at its true value, either by the person or by others.

Such questions of doing may involve a choice of schools or jobs or relocations that result in unanticipated consequences, such as the people and other opportunities that arise as a result. The life one leads because of a move to Cincinnati may differ greatly from the life one leads if, instead, one remains in Detroit. That decision, to do or not do, may not be made out of a conscious intent to bring this or that result, but the result will follow.

People make significant decisions not consciously knowing what will ride on them. And here, you see, decisions of doing and decisions of being are much alike. Both flow as much from what one is as from what one decides.

You mean by that, I think, that what we are (known to ourselves or not) may have more to say about our decisions than we consciously realize. Our decisions may seem to us to be supported by this and that very logical, very rational reason, whereas in fact those reasons are closer to being rationalizations than causes.

And those occasions when your unconscious motivations tend to balance out present your real choice-points. This is when you affect your larger being, your probability-cloud.

So, free will v. predestination, then? Mostly our decisions could have been predicted by anybody who knew us well enough, but sometimes we can surprise them, and maybe ourselves?

You could put it that way. Mostly you are on a smooth glide-path, but sometimes you have to seize control, for only a minute perhaps, or perhaps for a long stretch, and choose what you want to do, what you want to be.

You have not yet addressed differences in substance among people.

This is conceptually simple, but people’s perpetual temptation to judge (to condemn) comes easily into play.

• Some people are weighty and some are not, you know that.
• Some are one-pointed, all of a piece; some are self-contradictory.
• Some are content to skim the surface of life, living the externals; others may scarcely notice the externals in their inward-dwelling life.

I would say you are working toward a distinction in gravitas, and these preliminary distinctions may tend merely to confuse the subject.

It is difficult to make the point, for lack of jointly understood examples. The externals of anyone’s life may be evident; the internals must always be inferred, which is a tricky business, rich with ambiguity and prone to error.

Let us put it this way. In any trade (to use a more understandable, external, example) you have master craftsmen, journeymen, apprentices, tyros. Right? In any discipline, be it scholastic or religious or philosophical or whatever, you have the same gradations. And in any sense of endeavor, the same. Well, no one who discerned clearly would put equal weight on the opinion or judgment or output of any two stages.

Even those being judged wouldn’t dream of setting different levels of experience and skill on a par.

That is correct. And it is exactly thus when we consider a given soul’s gravitas. Some are more weighty than others, as you would expect if previous experiences and decisions mean anything at all. This doesn’t mean these differences may be fairly and safely judged; but they do exist, and they do matter.

 

Saturday, October 28, 2017

I guess we’re ready to proceed.

Then let us proceed to talk about your very interesting speculation.

Yeah, speculation – or maybe a planted idea?

Does it matter?

I don’t know. Okay, here is my journal entry from yesterday. “It occurred to me that our higher self’s choices may be what matter, and our individual choices on each path may somehow sway it. But this may be confused. We’ll see.”

It is, in any case, an interesting change of focus, is it not? Another instance of the productive redirection of thought that may occur when you move your focus of attention from your 3D level to your – higher self, some call it, others use other names. Oversoul, say.

Is that what Emerson meant by the term? Or, for that matter, Jane Roberts?

Don’t concentrate on other people’s formulations. Remember what we said about using the written word as inspiration, as sparks, rather than as logic or textbook.

Okay.

Well, let’s back up a bit, as usual, to draw context.

In 3D you experience yourself as living one life, making choices as you go. You may believe, abstractly, that the alternative lives formed by other choices exist, but it is hard for you to know it in the absence of sensory evidence. Even those who experience inexplicable changes in memory find it hard.

I think you meant, people who remember things that turn out not to be true, or not anymore, let’s say.

That’s right. Even they will usually have to go through a period of adjustment before they can integrate that evidence with that theoretical construct. After all, your sensory evidence works night and day to persuade you that the world is real, is solid, is one time-stream, and explains away any irreconcilable data. When you arrive at seeing the world as innumerable projected equally sort-of-real versions, your own role in things becomes less clear. Now not only is there conflict between sensory and intuitive constructs, but also conflict between the logical consequences that seem to follow (on the one hand) and one’s feelings about one’s life.

Yes. It doesn’t feel like our choices don’t matter, even though abstractly we may believe that it all cancels out  because all choices are made.

That is one dilemma that may arise. We will not revisit the free-will/predestination argument, but obviously no matter which choice one finds oneself committed to, the same conflict with feelings ensures. If you are not free, why does it feel like you are? If you are free, but for every heads you choose, another version of you will choose tails, what could be more futile?

So your underlying question of meaning could be restated: What is the point of our choosing? What does our choosing actually affect? If you say, “choosing changes you,” the question remains.

That’s a fair summary. We don’t want to feel useless – Sartre’s “man is a useless passion” – but we can’t just decide that we matter by a sort of force of will to believe, either.

So, to explore the subject, always coming back to the very useful reminder, “as above, so below,” let us look at things from the next higher level: the probability-cloud, your higher self, your oversoul, the complete results from the expedition sent into 3D in your time and place, using your body and mind.

Sam?

No, not a Sam. The Sam is a higher level out of which you were created. No, this is you in your true complete self. Well, complete except that to make a compact coherent statement we have to treat “you” – even at that higher level – as if you were the isolated individual that you are not and never could be.

You have the accurate insight that the purpose of your 3D creation is to choose. But that insight was given to you when you had a much oversimplified idea of who and what you are. You thought you were the 3D version you were identified with. We now invite you to identify with your complete selves, your full probability-clouds. (And we lapse into the plural merely to remind your readers that this is to them, not just to you. It does not mean more than one probability-cloud per 3D individual; just the opposite.)

If you identify with the completed self, what is its experience of your 3D excursion/creation? Remember, it has seen, it has lived (at one remove), every single possible choice, trivial or momentous and all the way between, from which sweater the schoolboy would wear to – well, name your own significant decision. What does your probability-cloud get out of all that experiencing, all that splitting off this way and that way?

I suppose it gets an exhaustive knowledge of the possibilities of that particular excursion.

Yes. Why? Does it amount to taking a survey?

I don’t know. I can see that panoramic survey of possibilities, but I can’t see any point to it. It is only my own unshakable knowing that this has meaning that keeps me from Sartre’s futile pessimism, I suppose. The answer has to be choice, but – how?

And here we are at the nub of it. Consider this carefully. (It will be easy to become confused).

You have been thinking of 3D life as choosing, in the way your friend Ed Carter described life as perpetually voting. You each do your bit to sway the result. But that leaves out the intervening factor that will help you make sense of it. Each 3D version, heads or tails, in effect votes by what it becomes, and this is what determines the composition of the higher self.

By that, I get that you mean, determines its values, in much the same way that our individual decisions determine our values.

Determine, but express, either way of seeing things is right enough. It is in exactly the same way, only the higher self is in effect tabulating individual 3D decisions, while the 3D versions are tabulating their own pre-existing predilections, including built-in conflicts.

Now, the most likely source of error in your understanding of this is an unconscious assumption that every heads version contradicts its corresponding tails version. Not necessarily so at all. Obviously trivial decisions, like which side of the street you walk down, usually have no effect on your values. But even important choices of conduct do not necessarily imply differences in values.

You’re right, I was making that unconscious assumption.

What becomes critical are those times when you are the focus of conflicting impulses (that is how you will experience them) and can – must – choose which rabbit to follow. Both heads and tails of many, many other decisions may support the same choice. And sometimes, both heads and tails versions have to choose by deciding within themselves what to do, what to be.

But by definition, don’t opposite choices always get made?

Maybe by definition, yes. But in practice not all decisions or deciders are created equal

And we have to stop here, as you no longer have enough mental energy to bring it through clearly, and it would be a pity to muddle what has so far been useful.