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Monday, July 23, 2018

You won’t remember, probably, but the process of your coming to the strands theory was not as straightforward as you think. In fact, the process was a mixture of us and you, as is almost always the case except in trance channeling, and even to an extent there, for the information still has to come through the channels the mind’s familiar processes will have set up.

In trance channeling, the 3D conscious mind does not participate in the way it does during ILC or during ordinary consciousness in its less well perceived aspects. Still, it is the structure through which information flows. Thus Cayce’s information is couched in archaic Biblical language, and Jane Roberts’ material is still bounded somewhat by what she could admit, and by what was a natural trajectory, one might say. As a side note, the fact that she and Rob and Seth were friends before Jane and Rob’s physical 3D lives smoothed connection considerably, as did your prior association with Rita.

By contrast to trance channeling, your ILC practice involves the active participation of the conscious 3D mind, which is an advantage and a drawback. OT1H, you can increase the clarity if only by objecting that something is not clear. OTOH, as you know, there is always the question of whether this or that element has been added by you, slightly or greatly altering the meaning we intended. You have become pretty good at watching for this, but of course it is always going to be a problem.

The problem is particularly acute when the information is farthest from your expected or familiar understandings. And the concept of strands is a good example of such a problem.

In 2001, near the beginning of your joint explorations, we began by saying that to us, the connections between separated units appear as obvious as the units. We wanted to explain to you and to Rita that, and how, you in 3D are not what you assumed yourselves to be. Not individual, not separate.

You used the analogy of the threads in a tapestry, I think. On the front side – the 3D side – color appears as different non-connected dots. But this is matched by the threads on the reverse – the non-3D – side, connecting the dots that appear on the obverse.

That’s right. And we encouraged you, assisted you, to paint the painting illustrating the concept, only by then the concept had subtly changed, and now we were talking about the 3D individual as the dot and past-life connections being the invisible connecting threads.

I remember.

And at first you were taking the threads to be individual characteristics such as red hair or bad temper or artistic disposition, with the individuals being, in a sense, strung along the threads of all the traits.

Yes. I got that we comprise millions of such threads, not all of which are, or ever could be, active. Our choice as to which of them to activate is what shapes our life.

And this idea shaped your ideas about life in general, and after a time you grew dissatisfied with it and began to consider each past life – rather than the traits each might have – as the threads.

I have been alternating between the two concepts, haven’t I?

You have been silently wavering, yes, and the usual reluctance to make a firm decision has served you well, because it prevented you from deciding that a base camp would have to be the destination.

So now we are going to redefine not only the distinction between traits and what we might call 3D units (“past lives” and also present lives), but between the elements of a given 3D life and the group nature of that same life.

The latter being the insight or the beginning, anyway, that I got early yesterday morning. Separate but connected eternal life.

Let us begin by straightening out the confusion between choices of traits and inheritance of lives.

So, choice of traits:

• Yes, each of you comprises millions of potential choice points and millions of predetermined choices, many of which may be reconsidered and altered. Your physical characteristics are not quite as stubborn as you might think, though, in practice, stubborn enough. People don’t usually change the color of their eyes, say, or their height or body type. However, examples of people whose eyes do change color, in connection with multiple personalities, may demonstrate the point, not central here, that things are a bit more fluid than they commonly seem.
• Among those millions of traits are many that are subject to change by choice. By careful training, by willpower, by established habit, by selection of environment, one may become more what one wishes to be, in certain categories (particularly mental and emotional, though expressing as behavioral).
• This is all true, but not the point here. The difference between you as a 3D unit and you as a 3D community is what we wish to focus on, at the moment, and this bears on the insight that came to you in a moment of clarity.

And here we redefine what you understand in one way, to show you that you must also understand it in another way. Not this instead of that, but this and that.

The “this” is the concept of your 3D existence as a ring holding together strands each of which was a life. As we told you in those earlier sessions, your choices in this life determine to what extent one or another strand expresses. You form who you are going to wind up being by your choices as you go along. By now this concept should appear natural, even obvious, but at one point it represented a major readjustment.

The “that” is the concept you came to yesterday, that we have never expressed till now, which is that each strand that was a 3D life continues to be a 3D life even though contained within another life as one strand.

And that is a big redefinition.

It is, but we have scarcely begun to spell it out or even clarify it. That can wait till next time. It has taken till now to clear the shrubbery, as you like to say, so that we can see the ground we’re going to work. We will continue next time.

 

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Guys, the moments of sudden clarity seem to be coming regularly. A couple of hours ago, I got two concepts that, I take it, were planted to elucidate your current themes.

No need to over-determine things. One path is as good as another. But since these things came to you (not necessarily force-fed by us, you see, but still, here they are), let’s look at them. Copy the note you made.

[I wrote in my journal, an hour or two previously:

[“Superimposition of the ever-moving present moment over an underlying timelessness. Like the clock hand over the dial. But, more complicated, each strand living a separate-but-connected eternal life. That’s going to take some explaining. I hope I will have energy enough to do it.”]

So, you see,

• The ever-moving present is a true perception.
• Time that does not move or pass away is also a true perception.

And so simple an analogy as a clock suffices to illustrate the fact, once you realize that the clock face is as important as the clock’s hands.

I don’t know why this wasn’t clear to me before. I have lived with clocks all my life. But suddenly I got it. And I wasn’t even looking for it; it just welled up during a moment of clarity amidst moments of sleep.

Realize, though, that the analogy does not explain, but merely illustrates. If one does not “get” the underlying concept, one is unlikely to be brought to it by reading about the relationship between the hands and the face of an analog clock. However, for those who do see the dual nature of the temporal experience in 3D, the image may serve as a concrete example. Even in the mainstream view of time, it is clear that the present moment in some way traverses cycles of time. Seasons and days mark the movements of sun and moon. There is a regularity to be measured.

But successive years, decades, centuries, millennia, are closer to constructs than to natural (and naturally measured) phenomena. So, for that matter, are hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds, etc. They can be measured, but unlike the natural markers (day/night, the season, the month) measurements such as hour and its subdivisions, and years and their multiples are constructs. The Romans subdivided the day into hours which were of different length at different times of year. That is, their hours evenly subdivided their daylight, where your hours are fixed and of arbitrary length.

Your point being, I take it, that our ideas about the nature of time are reflected in (and shape) the way we measure it?

Let’s say your ideas about the nature of time determine (and are shaped by) what you pay attention to, and the meaning you infer. The analog clock was invented during the Middle Ages. Prior to that were things like the water clock, that left no hint that time was anything but something that flooded by. An analog clock, unlike a water clock, unlike a digital display, reflects a view of the world as a place of eternal recurring cycles. It still measures the movement through time, but it adds a sense of periodicity. An analog seven-day clock adds awareness of a longer cycle. If you had a 365-day clock, it would extend that sense of cyclical passage through time even farther. And, of course, you do, only you call it a calendar, and it begins measuring where an analog clock leaves off. And calendars too are subdivided, from the daily calendar divided into hours to the perpetual calendar with the pattern of months laid out in a pattern peculiar to each type of year.

(A perpetual calendar refers the user to a different page depending upon what day of the week January 1 falls on, and whether it is or isn’t a leap year. Fourteen calendar patterns cover all the possibilities.)

And you see, a means of measuring time that emphasizes predictable alternatives within predictable cycles produces in those who live within it (taking it for granted) a very different sense of the world than is produced by a digital display in a somewhat artificial environment. A simple clock, but its presence or absence will have its effect.

And it may or may not nudge us to realize that time per se does not merely move, does not arrive or disappear, is not created or destroyed.

It needn’t, but it may, in a way that other systems are less likely to do.

I am a little surprised that we have spent three-quarters of an hour discussing clocks and time. I thought it would get a brief mention and we’d be on to the second insight that came to me.

It was time warranted, because the point of view will be unfamiliar to many. Nor would you have lasted through the second discussion. This alpha state may be more comfortable, but it is not a cure-all.

 

Friday, July 20, 2018

Gentlemen, you were going to be redefining our ideas on the nature of the guys upstairs.

Perhaps we should begin with you laying out your current understanding of the situation.

I have the impression that I in 3D extend to the non-3D, the non-3D parts of me constituting part of my guys upstairs. Clearly any part of myself that is the rest of my All-D totality cannot be alienated from me. I gather that anybody whose nature I resonate to, in whole or in part, may be accessible to me temporarily or for all I know permanently, depending on how deep the resonance and how of the essence.

I was told that all my blood relatives are part of my guys, and past lives – though that concept seems to keep fluctuating – and anybody I resonate to. That means that in effect I connect to everybody, and everybody else also extends to everybody, so – as you’ve told us more than once – we’re all one thing.

All right, that will serve as a jumping-off place. You will agree that your previous mental world experienced quite an expansion by these ideas. Cleared up a lot of perplexities. Reinterpreted things you had heard, to make sense of them, and introduced ideas that were entirely new to you that also made sense.

You know they did.

Anything you or anyone can ever learn in 3D is scaffolding, though. You realize this.

Abstractly. I think I get it, but I suppose that using scaffolding relies at least in part on believing that it is truer than just a provisional way to see things.

Perhaps we should change the analogy, and think of base camps on the way up a mountain. You hike and climb and gain new perspectives at the cost of lengthening the distance from your source of supplies. If you are on a long enough climb, you walk into a nourishing situation prepared for you in advance, where you can rest and may proceed again when you are able.  Nobody in his right mind would come to a new camp and complain that it was not (what it had never pretended to be) the ultimate destination. They would be glad for the assistance, and would leave off climbing until they had recuperated, even if their rest was brief. This is only an analogy, but perhaps it is a somewhat less stiff and static analogy than scaffolding, which itself was less discouraging than previous ones.

I remember being at such a staging-place some years ago, and you guys told me that if I wished to leave it at that for this lifetime, I could.

And you said no, let’s push on, and we were pleased, and as you see, by pushing on we pretty thoroughly redefined what you had thought you knew. And another time, previously, you had said, “I think I’ll pause,” and we did that. It’s all in what you’re willing to do.

This latest opportunity to push on comes courtesy of your Mind Mirror experience, you see.

I see that it’s so; I don’t yet see why or how it’s so.

That experience firmed up your understanding of the situation emotionally, as well as intellectually. A better, more careful and ultimately more descriptive way of saying it: Different parts of your compound being were activated; the entire equation was rewritten. And this in turn not only allows but mandates changes in how you experience the world physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, because the very “you” of you is not the same.

I’m not with you yet, but I’m following. Go on.

A born-again Christian, a materialistic deterministic scientific atheist, a mainstream Christian, a practicing Hindu, a Hassidic Jew, a secular or socialist or devout Muslim, a Western modern agnostic, living without religion but without a strong anti-religious bias…. The potential combinations are endless: Can they all live in the same mental world? Surely not.

I guess we tacitly assume that our non-3D components take a broader view of things than our 3D personalities that are shaped by our genetic and social surroundings.

But this is only fuzzy thinking on your part. Could a devout practitioner of Shinto really live in the same mental world as you?

Presumably he can live there Upstairs, considering that his past lives may include any or all of the others.

Well, here you begin to bump into the results and causes of cognitive dissonance. And it is going to take a while to sort through.

Neither a detour nor a short day-trip.

Not unless you get tired or scared and decide to return to your familiar campfire. If you do – for a while or for the rest of your life – there is no penalty nor any implied or express criticism involved. It truly is up to you. A pause is not permanent until you run out of time to continue.

I have become a little too concerned with the problem of getting the message out, haven’t I? It diverted my focus.

No, we’d say it diverted your idea of your focus. But maybe what you have in mind isn’t what your larger pattern has in mind. If we had to choose between you continuing to explore silently and alone, or you ceasing to explore in order to clarify and expound upon what you have come to so far, why should we have a preference? It’s up to you, and what you don’t do, someone else will do differently, but that doesn’t mean better or less good, only different.

Well, let’s keep going, and I’ll do what I can to keep at least a cadre of like-minded souls with me.

Even Jesus didn’t try to change the world by changing the world, remember. He changed a few people he lived among, and they changed others who changed others. None of those successive ripples of change came from what anybody said, particularly; it was what they radiated, what they were. Jesus didn’t have to do prime-time TV. He worked in a remote corner of the Roman Empire, for only a few years. Wrote no books. Founded no movement. Organized no protest. But what he was, overflowed, and changed everything.

Today his prospective publishers would tell him he needed a platform if they were going to take him on.

But you see, that is precisely the mental barrier you have allowed to be constructed ahead of you. You say to yourself, “The road to the success of my message is barred until I become a salesman.” So in other words, the structure of the book-selling part of your society is holding up the message the non-3D wants to put out. Does that make sense, put that way?

No, not really.

When you saw that the electronics validated the idea that you were actually doing something, rather than (as you sometimes still suspected) “just making it up,” it consolidated the ground you had covered all these years. Now you can start living without another layer of apologizing.

I know what you mean. I was doing healing work on Rita intuitively, continuously saying, “I don’t know why I am move to do this or that,” and when she told me to stop apologizing, it began to flow much more freely. You’re saying my own improved level of confidence will improve what I can bring through.

Well, that and it will also improve your level of confidence in the things you – not we – know. That in turn smooths the way for further advances, because it means we can deal with you with you on firmer footing.

Let’s go back to “cognitive dissonance.”

We referred to the fact that at some point our new information is going to conflict with what you have become accustomed to, and that may cause difficulties for you.

And I get, mostly if I try to tie things up prematurely.

That’s right. We have warned of the pitfall of tacking new material on to an accustomed framework and forcing it to fit. Ultimately, reality doesn’t contradict itself, but at any given moment it may seem to, and if you let the fear of contradictions overwhelm the new insight, things go badly.

I also get that the farther ahead we push, the greater the reluctance to give up what we think we know, hence the greater the temptation to add to an unchanged structure rather than to reevaluate the structure.

We wouldn’t say temptation, more like a scarcely evitable process. That’s why it is difficult to preserve, or regain, Beginner’s Mind, and why alternation of exploration and consolidation is necessary. At some point it becomes impossible to keep adding material to a previous position. At some point you need to tap the kaleidoscope and see it all anew. And it is difficult to do this while on the march.

Is the next stage, then, you reinventing the wheel for us?

Maybe it is for us to divert you from the wheel to the airplane, or from 3D to non-3D, or from relativity to magic, or from what you know to what you think you know is not so.

Saturday, July 21, 2018

So, guys, more on cognitive dissonance?

Yes, but in a direction you haven’t much thought about: cognitive dissonance among your (everyone’s) non-3D components as they interact not only with the 3D but with each other. But this requires that you be able to see things differently, in order to understand. The misunderstanding that persistently warps people’s understanding is that you keep thinking “we and they” in inappropriate situations. It is important that you realize that things interact, and that “all is one” does not preclude conflict, but assures it. Just look around.

The second point I get intuitively, but the first point is not yet well stated.

Well, think of it. You define yourselves in contradistinction to the rest of the world. Whatever “we-ness” you are thinking in terms of, the rest of reality is made to serve as the “they-ness.” If you say “we men,” the they is women. If “we humans,” it’s non-humans. If we channelers, or we roofers, or we Democrats or we fans of Colin Wilson or whatever, choosing a “we” automatically constellates a “they.”

I’m with you so far.

You do it with “we in 3D” versus “they in non-3D”; “we Terrans versus ETs”; “we of one persuasion, of one ethical value system, of one set of rules of conduct,” etc. It may not have occurred to you: As long as you are defining yourself or others, in any one way, unintended corollaries are going to come into play.

So, you’re thinking of yourself for the moment as an American, say, or a student of history, or a fanatical or mild or indifferent participant in politics or religion or science. While you are thinking of yourself in that context, it makes a difference if you think of yourself as 3D only or as All-D. If the former, you are never going to consider the ramifications in the non-3D; if the latter, you are going to see any distinction, any source of conflict or separation, differently.

It isn’t that suddenly conflicts will be defined away as nonexistent or meaningless: It is that suddenly they will be seen to extend farther than you used to dream.

You are not what you think you are. Yes, you are more than your physical bodies; yes, you are an extension of something greater than your present 3D persona; yes, you are part of All That Is. But now it’s time to look at things a little differently. It is at once simple in concept and difficult to explain in a way that is not likely to be instantly misinterpreted. That is to say, it may take a while.

The thing I got right away is that war on Earth is a reflection of war in non-3D. Conflict of values means conflict of being, in a sense, and that is not a matter of conflict among 3D puppets but of conflict in non-3D spilling over into 3D, since non-3D is primary and 3D secondary.

That is a precipitant way of putting it, but perhaps it will advance the argument. Remember what we told you, a good while ago: Reality contains all contradictions, and must balance every negative and plus, with nothing left over. We don’t mean “negative and positive” only in moral or emotional or any other terms, but we do mean it in each of them. There is no point in papering over the discord and seeing only the harmony. There cannot be only one half of any dichotomy.

Nor can you have love and light without fear and dark, or how would you recognize them? Conflict is built into all situations other than homogeneity, although it is also true that conflict implies cooperation, another set of linked opposites dependent upon one another.

This being true, remember that you are not denizens of 3D only, but of All-D. Your own consciousnesses are not confined to 3D only, but may expand beyond it at any time to experience more of the rest of your being. Then, how can you be subject to conflict in 3D and not also in non-3D? Conflict is not a matter of limited perspective and perception of separation, alone. It is also a matter of being what you are, in a reality largely consisting of beings who are not what you are.

In other words, the afterlife is not going to be harps and clouds, love and light and perpetual rest.

It is not going to be only those things.

How long would you want perpetual rest? How long will love and light satisfy you, given that fear and darkness continue to exist and have their rightful place in things? How long before harps and clouds – that is, harmony and non-material non-shape – satisfy someone who remembers the joys and sorrows of an ecstatically pointed 3D existence? “Heaven” as a way-station, sure. “Hell” as a place of (self-inflicted) punishment for one’s sins, sure. “Purgatory” as the burning-off of dross so that one can get back to the pure metal, sure.

But these are processes, not destinations.

Life is movement, growth, choice, change, development. It is also conflict, cooperation, every emotion, every intellectual achievement, every stage of self-mastery. Is love and light, clouds and harps, going to top that forever? Should it?

Anything less than everything is going to be partial. This is as true of non-3D as 3D and should be obvious, if you will keep in mind that “spiritual” and “physical” are not separate but are merely relative polarities within a greater unity. Your 3D self is part of a greater All-D self. What affects you in 3D affects you in non-3D, and vice versa. What you become by your choices affects the non-3D in turn. These are not hard concepts, but may be unfamiliar, hence require being spelled out a little.

War in the non-3D among the adherents of different values doesn’t mean armies and weapons, any more than it necessarily does in 3D. But it does mean conflicts of values, of views, of advice and counsel and assistance. Ultimately all is love, all is one, all is well. Only, neither you nor we live in “ultimately.” So hold on to the reassurance, but don’t count on experiencing it before you become one with All That Is. And that implies surrendering your sense of individuality, which you aren’t ready to do yet, and why should you? And who is going to make you do it?

 

 

 

Monday, August 27, 2018

Okay, guys, we haven’t talked in a while. I got the prod a few minutes ago, and I’m certainly willing. Your move.

It is important for you to note publicly that you are as prone as anybody else to depression, a feeling of wasting time, a sense that life has passed you by and continues to pass you by. You aren’t famous but you are somewhat known for your ability to connect and your willingness to teach and encourage others to do so: All the more reason to remind people that this particular asset or knack or secret is not the magic wand that miraculously makes your problems disappear.

I can do that. But acknowledging it in public (not for the first time) doesn’t necessarily help me.

Nor do you need help. Nobody needs help, ever.

I think you will find that concept to be a hard sell.

Experience and reflection will demonstrate otherwise. It’s all a matter of viewpoint. “Everybody needs help sometimes” is the same thing as “nobody needs help especially.”

Did I add that “especially,” or did you? That is, is it what you meant or did I modify your message?

Both, in a way. You – we– are all standing on our own two feet, 3D or non-3D. Nobody is a helpless or disabled or inadequate being. Yet everybody at some stage of life would have been unable to exist without assistance, if only as an infant. What is true physically is even more true psychologically, despite appearances.

So, hark back to teenage years. Everyone, regardless of how well they could fit in with the crowd, feels an urge to, a need to, do so. It is a time of being massively other-directed. So, for those who cannot fit in, it may be intensely painful. For those who do, it may be a time of extreme insecurity. It is never a time of being comfortable in one’s skin. Too many things are changing; too few things may be counted on, and inexperience provides too few ways to judge what may or may not be counted on. In those years, one’s attention is drawn to the self and the herd, regardless of whether one is “in” or “out” or on the fringe. Later in life, regardless how one lives it, such a question tends to be taken for granted, as experience has shown what position is comfortable for any given individual. Other problems take priority, successively.

As you mention this, I am remembering, for the first time in a long time, my thirties, when entirely new problems and preoccupations replaced those of my 20s, which had replaced those of my teen years. And I suppose that a little introspection would remind me how my platform and my problems changed, decade by decade. There is less continuity seen in my internal life than I usually assume, I guess.

Everyone’s life has an arc of development. But we need to remind you,: Nobody is capable of judging anybody else’s life, for the same reason that leaves you unable to accurately judge your own.

“We never have the data.”

Yes, but that means more than perhaps you have realized to date. It isn’t just “You don’t realize everything that was involved in the things that happened.” It is also “You don’t know the overall arc of development: You don’t know the kind of things that may be supposed to happen to develop the theme that is that life.”

Are we edging back toward predestination?

No, and not toward free will either. We have said more than once that what looks to you in 3D as an either-or choice looks that way only because 3D conditions tend to push your mental apprehensions and perceptions into dualism. If your mental processing persists in seeing everything as an either-or, then the essential unity of a process or situation will be seen as “this part” v. “that part.” It is a condition of life in duality, not a description of life as it really is. It is always good to offer assistance to another (though never good to force assistance), but the fact that one is offering and the other is (or is not) receiving says nothing about their relative independence, their relative

I got it (though I can’t find the word you/we were groping for). The image that came was the young Dalai Lama needing assistance to escape from the hands of the conquering Chinese in 1958 or ’59, whenever it was. He needed the assistance. Doesn’t this cut against what you said, “Nobody needs help, ever”?

It cuts against one interpretation of what we said, which is why the historical example. But the statement stands, depending (as so often) on the question of, “Which you?”

• You as a 3D individual in a given moment may well require assistance. (And, it will be supplied, recognized or not.)
• But you as an All-D part of a larger, mostly unperceived individual, cannot want, cannot be unprovided for, cannot be isolated or lost or in error.

As I was writing what you were saying, I thought, that’s what Jesus meant about us being as well provided for by God as are the sparrows or the lilies of the field.

When you see scripture that apparently contradicts your everyday experience, it is well to reconsider the meaning of both. Obviously people do starve, they go unprovided-for. And of course Jesus recognized this in reminding people that the way to honor him was to be charitable to those in need. But he wasn’t setting up a social service agency, nor a charitable enterprise. He was concentrating on opening up to people their deeper possibilities, not merely patching up their external circumstances.

In the larger sense, nobody needs help ever. In the immediate 3D sense, anyone may need help at any time. These are not contradictory statements and they do not describe contradictory aspects of reality. If you do not understand this, you don’t understand much that we have to say.

So give us something practical to help in moments of discouragement.

More practical than showing you the way it is?

Well, you know. something tangible for people to remember.

The very first thing that changed your life was the vision that had, as its refrain, “You are not alone,” in a landscape in which no one else was visible. If you keep that in mind, as a symbol perhaps of the fact that you, yourself, are more than you know or can know, it should be all you need. Your life need not disappoint you.

Thoreau again. He said something like, don’t call your life hard names. It is better than you are.

He knew a thing or two. And he had the constant temptation to compare his fate to his friend and townsman Emerson, who was famous in two countries.

Point taken. We never know.

Nor do you ever need to.

 

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Okay, guys, Judith Pennington says, [in her report of a session in which she monitored me with Mind Mirror while I wrote, talking to the guys]: “… it’s interesting that the water [which I drank during the session] distinctly lowered your heart rate. Perhaps you could ask TGU why this occurred.” So – why? I certainly don’t know.

And, as you are aware, you have always been moved, in talking to TMI participants at Guidelines, to have two glasses of water, from which you sip as you go along.

Yes. Two glasses, no more, no less. I just followed instinct there, which I take it means it was your idea.

Think of it as a means of removing the stress of dealing with an audience.

Robin Williams did that, in a video I saw. He had a huge pallet of bottled water which he chugged as he went his high-powered way.

Yes, only you aren’t functioning on cocaine.

So, the relationship between water and heartbeat?

It smooths things, but don’t ask us for the medical explanation.

Actually, I thought that is what I was asking you for.

Well, don’t; we can’t give it.

That’s interesting in itself. Why can’t you? My limitations?

No. We have brought through information outside of your comfort zone before.

Yes, you have. So why not this time?

Maybe we don’t know.

Maybe you could go ask.

Well, we won’t.

That’s very odd. Why not?

We just won’t. It wouldn’t be good for you.

Because I’d get all egotistical about my ability to get the information? After all this time?

No, nothing to do with ego. Just continue to drink lots of water.

This is the damnedest thing. Here we have a request for information and you are refusing to give it. Not saying “We don’t know,” just refusing.

Yes, puzzling, we know. But we have told you what is important: Water relieves stress. You don’t need to know how.

Well, okay. This is seriously weird, though. (And I hear, “Get used to it.” Is that you, or a stray thought?)

How would you know the difference, and what good would it do you?

My, aren’t we in a cranky mood! Okay, maybe later.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

So, guys, what’s the story? Your “won’t tell” intrigues me, and not only me.

Yet you do not allow it to shake your faith in our good intent.

Of course not. I have never gotten a feel of malevolence or even mischief, even when I have been most strongly disappointed by results, or by lack of results.

You are fortunate.

Yes, though to a degree it is a conscious decision in the way “Life is good” is a conscious decision. If you are fooling me, if you have other items on the agenda that to some extent cut me out or go against my interests, you can probably blow this right by me, and I won’t know. For me, at least, the alternative is too self-crippling. I don’t want to be a fool but it’s a risk I prefer to being a cynic.

The optimal place – at least for you – is indeed between the extremes. We agree. And, we appreciate what it costs you, to maintain yourself there.

If I had been able to hold myself there in relation to other people, it would have made my life easier.

Easier in some ways, maybe harder in others, maybe less productive. But the point is, this attitude serves you, and we wouldn’t like to discourage you.

Only, I can’t figure out why I shouldn’t know how water smooths things. The technical details don’t interest me beyond a certain point, as you know, but up to that point, they do, and I cannot see any reason for your caution, if that is what it is.

If our refusal did no more than demonstrate to you that different people face different limits to their access, it would be worthwhile.

I suppose.

Not everyone has the access you do. While it is very useful for you to encourage others, it is technically incorrect to say, “Anybody can do this,” implying that everybody can do so – even potentially – at the level of proficiency you have obtained.

I never quite say that.

No, but your de facto attitude is, “If you can’t do this as fluently as I have learned to do, you’re not trying.” That is useful for a few who can; perhaps it is frustration for the many who cannot.

But the problem is, people for a variety of reasons are too prone to assume that they are among those who can’t. and how can they learn whether they are or not, save by assuming they can, and trying? It worked for Dirk, for example. If I had not strongly prodded him by my assumption that he could do it, would he have ever discovered that he could? Maybe yes, maybe no – and don’t think I don’t recognize being used as an instrument of providence, so to speak. But the point is, my working on the assumption that any given individual can do it is better for them than their own tacit assumption that they can not.

So, you are willing to frustrate the many for the sake of encouraging the few.

Well, the many don’t have to respond with frustration. They could respond with redoubled determination. Or with the awareness that whatever their limits are, they pushed against them, and at least now they know. And anyway, frustration may be different things in different circumstances. Sometimes it leads to “I give up,” sometimes to “Grr, there’s got to be a way to accomplish this.” It’s always up to the person. Besides, I assume that only people that this is important to will be drawn to it, and those for whom it is not their path will be left uninterested.

Not a bad assumption. Another is that for some people, frustration in a certain way may be productive.

Didn’t I just say that?

You did. We are agreeing.

I am struck by something Judith said in her report that amounted to, “in this state, the boundaries between Frank and other are less important.” Not her words, and it may not have been quite her intent, but what I got out of it was, such boundaries, between our 3D selves and our All-D selves, are arbitrary. They don’t refer to anything other than horseback distinctions, perhaps drawn to enable us to function in 3D without confusion while we learn the ropes. Therefore the boundaries are nonexistent in any absolute sense, and only come to play when needed.

True enough.

So, isn’t that what I tell people? “You can do this.” Only the silent caveat is, “unless you are so constituted that you shouldn’t, in which case you won’t be interested anyway.”

That isn’t 100%, but close enough to being, empirically true. In practice, anyone who is drawn to a given subject is drawn to it for a reason. Invert that and you get, “Anyone who has no reason to be drawn to a given subject, won’t be,” and that is mostly true. It functions as an automatic safety valve.

Now why shouldn’t I know how water smooths things?

We ought to withhold information more often. It certainly seems to spur your curiosity.

Yeah, well, don’t. And the answer is –?

Maybe it is as simple as protecting you from your own psychological reaction to our saying, “We don’t know and can’t find out.”

If you were to say that, I’d have to agree that it could be necessary sometimes, only I’d think we would be far beyond that stage. The Mind Mirror verification was huge for me. I don’t know who or even what you are, but after all, for 25 years I have been willing to apply Jesus’ test: “By their fruits you shall know them.” You’ve never given me thorns in place of nourishment. So why should I now panic and say (as I might have said, decades ago), “Oh my God, they don’t exist! I’ve been making it all up!”

No, that’s true. Perhaps we are underestimating you. We are only partly you, you know, so to some extent our group opinion is one of outsiders looking on rather than insiders participating.

That’s kind of a big monkey-wrench to throw into the works, isn’t it?

Needn’t be. It is only a minor tweak to your belief system. And maybe you’re ready for a bit of refinement of the picture. Next time, though. This will repay a fresh start – that is, starting when you are fresher.

 

Saturday, July 7, 2018

A moment to describe what just happened, then back to the council room, I hope.

I lay down with sleep mask on and assumed the eagle, flew up to the council room in a tree, shifted to a point of awareness, and when I got the Jessica Williams piano tune to stop playing in my mental background, I was back in the calm space I experienced at the Discovery program. I tried to talk to my council, and found it hard to stay there. The temptation to give in to sleep was strong. Judith Pennington had explained that this sleepiness was delta waves, overcoming the alpha bridge that allowed continuing consciousness of such states. Her advice was to bring in some sensual experience, to reinforce the alpha bridge. So by pressing my fingertips against the bed, envisioning myself as pressing them against the tabletop, I held on. But it was difficult rather than easy, and I realized that this process, writing sitting up with eyes open, gave me the sensualization I need – as long experience demonstrates.

So here I am at the desk again.

Now, gentlemen and ladies of the council, let me bring my awareness back among you. What is it that I realized, and realized I would lose if I continued to try to do it the ordinary shamanic way?

You would lose the whole proceedings, for one thing. You were thinking of yourself as the executive officer of the ship, or alternatively as the most junior officer, invited to speak first so that his opinion would not be inhibited by prior expressed opinions from his superiors.

Yes, so I was. I don’t even know what should be on the agenda.

No, but you’re excellent at listening, despite what you and others sometimes think.

I’m willing to listen, anyway.

If you begin to visualize our sessions differently, they will of course change correspondingly.

Is that in our best interest?

We like the “our.” Yes, it is, because you are at a new stage, a point reinforced when you listened to tapes of yourself from more than a dozen years ago.

All right. Should I give over to you?

You can’t really do it, and it wouldn’t be good if you could do it. But you can be guided.

Well, that’s the name of the game, isn’t it, guidance?

It is if that is what you accept, if that is what you want. It could be other things.

Such as?

Pure information to assist you on a pre-determined course, for one. It isn’t for us to choose for you, though we may set out the choices.

In setting them out you may make my choices all but pre-determined.

You might think so, but free will is more to us than a buzzword or a sham. The goal is for you to choose. What you choose is not nearly so central.

Then let’s go about it in a different way. What is the most valuable thing you can offer me today? How do we proceed?

You don’t yet quite realize it, but this change in procedure is itself a new departure.

Immediately, I think, “I’ve got to share this with Dirk and Jim.”

That is part of your function, networking awarenesses and understandings.

So, today’s agenda?

Your long-held desire is closer contact with other parts of yourself. “Past lives,” at first.

Yes, and the difficulty has been (1) knowing, rather than visualization, which makes verification impossible, and (2) no over-arching concept to help me get a sense of it.

No over-arching concept? What have we been doing, all these years?

Clearing ground in preparation, I would say.

Yes, true enough – but it is somewhat staggering to think that you really have no idea.

Why should that come as a surprise to you? You know my mind from the inside, presumably.

Well, yes and no. The effective points of contact aren’t the same as the sum total of theoretical points of contact.

You mean, it never came up. But even that surprises me. How could I be aware of it for nearly two weeks, and you not? Am I getting bad information here, or making bad interpretations or something?

Who you are is one thing. What you think is another, and what you feel is yet another.

Sort of like Bob Monroe envisioning the mental and emotional bodies separate from the physical and energy bodies.

It was a way to experience different aspects differently, yes. Well, your mental categories come to us in the context of where you are at any given moment.

It still doesn’t explain why you wouldn’t know where I was or am mentally.

Let’s drop the subject.

Really?

It can’t be productive. Let’s move instead to a useful structure for you to use as scaffolding, in place of previous scaffolding which, we see, has evaporated in the light of recent experience. You had flirted with this new awareness in Luigi and Thomas’ class, but it did not hit home until you sat down to work last month.

I have been thinking of 3D-me as part of All-D me, an emanation from an All-D Sam.

Good enough as far as it goes.

Yes, but when I came to consider past lives, etc., where do they and I fit together? I may be a ring comprising strands that are other lives, and I in toto may be a strand for other lives, but that now seems both too simple and too complicated.

The difficulty surfaced when you began to see yourself as a point of awareness.

Yes, so it did.

So who is this around the table?

Precisely.

All right. But you do realize? The difficulty you are experiencing is due to incongruities in an accepted framework, and will change if we change framework. You are still you, think of yourself how you will.

Still, a new scaffolding ought to be useful.

We’ll see.

Anything to make my new acquisition more permanent, and more useful?

We can do that. Consider first, who is it around this non-3D table?

Various members of my guys upstairs, I presume.

Suppose you couldn’t presume that. Then whom?

Past lives, I assume. Any part of my total self that I am not consciously aware of.

You see – or rather, feel – the problem?

I am beginning to. If I do the defining, I cannot transcend my own conceptual limitations. So why don’t you do it for me? That’s more or less what I’m asking.

But this requires thought, and a fresh mind.

I’m still suspicious of how you can not know what I know. Your preliminary statement strikes me as doubletalk.

We are aware of it. Perhaps we can fold that explanation into the new scaffolding, whatever it turns out to be. Remember, from the beginning we have turned out to be other than what you expected – which is the same as saying, than how you had conceptualized us.

Yeah, I hear your wisecrack: “Remarkable, given that we may not exist.”

Not entirely a wisecrack. Enough for now.

[Later]

Your move, guys. [Vague visuals and associations from the visuals. A round table, Camelot, the musical, reflections of the faces on the tabletop]

Mistake to think of them as individuals – more like representatives of qualities. So, Hemingway in his fifties, writing (the picture on my wall) is more certain aspects than him as a package. Not packages at the table, so much as personifications, qualities. By listening, we can absorb those qualities for the moment. The longer we listen, the longer we borrow the qualities. At some point they are also your own.

You are a point of awareness surrounded by influences and resonances. Not one individual and other individuals though that is how it seems. One focus of consciousness among all others. You personify what you are, and thus represent those qualities for others. They don’t exactly experience you as an individual but more, your qualities that resonate with them.

But – relatives and friends we connect with?

That’s different. Compound beings are both individual and yet representative of qualities.

We interact differently depending on if we seek out (for conversation) the individual or the qualities (for guidance).

That’s roughly correct.

So the mistake is in seeing ourselves and others as too individual.

As exclusively individual, and as too particularly individual. Frank and Margaret did not share lives in Spain, but they are connected to those who did. Drawing on the connection, they draw upon the lessons and wisdom of those lives; that doesn’t make them “past lives” in the way people think of past lives.

You’re going to have to make it clearer than that.

Give us a clearer conduit.

All right, delta was flooding up, only now I know to fight it. Forcing myself back awake may do it.

You have new tools and can learn to employ them. But it may take time.

Still., it is a new tool, that knowledge. I’ll have to tell Judith I’m grateful for it.

So now when you envision yourself as a point of awareness, think not of self as a point in a vast cave or bag or total, but as the entire container whose

Geode!

Good image. Your awareness extends to the whole thing, but you are one concentrated part of it. You can extend without changing.

Still fighting waves of sleep. There is much more to get if I can learn to fight it off, isn’t there?

You don’t need an answer to that.

No, I don’t. But I need a way to remain here without struggle.

This can be part of your next novel, once you master it.

That doesn’t help me now, though.

Still you got what you need. You may have to work it a bit – and realize that an understanding that suits you won’t necessarily suit everybody.

I’m fighting these waves of sleep, and I think just pausing may do it. But it is a struggle.

What comes up?

The council room,, the delegates – just an approximation, an image, a visualization of what really is.

Do you need a visualization?

It would help, I think.

Will the geode help?

Colin talked of waves of sleep in The Outsider, I think, or in Religion and the Rebel.

Yes, it isn’t effort, it is transcending energies inflowing, that brings the delta.

I don’t think geode will quite work.

It could, if you remember the split geode Dave Garland brought you long ago, filled not with space but with crystals.

Maybe.

Now flirt with sleep – with hand in the air, maybe, to wake you up – and see if there is more.

A bit from Colombo – the diver’s car.

[Then as I held myself on the edge, my hands were filled with energy. I turned them toward each other, and they were buzzing, so to speak. I thought, healing hands. I used the energy experimentally, and I’m sure it’s what I need. At this point I had a headache, as I have had at other times at the edge of sleep. I wrote: “Need to release the energies, I think,” and just as I wrote that, the CD from Discovery ended, and I stood up and walked around, awake, if a little spacy.]

 

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

What goes on when I’m ready to communicate and there’s nobody on the line? I sometimes tell people as a joke, I expect someday I’ll get “Your call is very important to us…” but I do wonder why sometimes instead of connections, we get blankness.

Timing. You don’t fully realize it yet, but sometimes the wheels have to mesh. You continue to think we are freer of context here than we are. For that matter, you continue to think it is a matter of “here” even though in another category of your mind you know that our “here” and yours are the same “here,” only with a different set of dimensions accented.

You are saying that the non-3D and 3D are both part of the All-D and therefore are different aspects of the same thing, and therefore are closer than tied together.

Slowing down will help both comprehension and expression.

Okay. [Pause.]

I get that astrology measures the timing of the forces affecting 3D life, and therefore non-3D life. The non-3D aspect of reality –. Oh sure. The non-3D is tied to us as far as we are concerned.

The aspects of the non-3D that you can experience (or contact; same thing here) are those that are in relation to you. So, you might as well look at it as if the non-3D were as affected by 3D reality as you are. That isn’t really a very complete way to look at it, but it will lead you toward something productive.

So, the 3D is affected by what we might call objective conditions: weather, the interaction of vast impersonal forces with our personal lives. And the part of the non-3D that we interact with is, by definition, in effect a time-bound part of non-3D.

That is twisted, mostly by linguistic difficulties, but yes, that’s the idea. That’s why “on the other side, there is no time” is so misleading as to be worse than erroneous. The other side as you can experience it is always going to be in relation to you yourselves, and you are always going to be enmeshed in a 3D moment. Hence, someone in the 1800s connecting to ancient Egypt, say, is going to experience them through a filter of the 1800s, as you will experience them through a filter of the 2000s. Ancient Egypt isn’t changed, but the equation is changed because your end of it changes as the clock ticks.

Well, say that’s so, does that explain why I can be ready to communicate, and you on your end not?

But that isn’t what happens. You in 3D are never a stable unmoving platform. You always move with the present-moment, and each present moment is slightly different, as astrology charts.

“Charts” being a verb, here.

Yes. The vast impersonal forces may appear to you like a hurricane, but they much more often are a mild persistent breeze, with little dust devils and cross-currents, etc. The weather, like the time, is always in motion, even if one moment is identical to the preceding moment.

That is, even if one is identical to the next, they are still each one different, distinct.

That’s right. So you, being creatures of time, cannot stand still. Do try to express what you just got.

Let’s say, each of us is a part of every moment we exist in; we are a vital piece of that moment. You couldn’t take us out of it without leaving a hole in the fabric. I was born in 1946. From 1946 until my last moment, I belong to that time; I am a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and it wouldn’t be complete without me. And, obviously, this applies to each of the billions of people who are in 3D on earth at the same time.

You in 3D are part of the landscape of those moments. You are objective facts, say. Abraham Lincoln is a known fact, like Queen Victoria or Napoleon or anyone famous – but the same is true for all the unknown men and women who lived in that century. You are all integral to the fabric, and of course as 3D creatures you are also non-3D creatures tied (from your point of view) to that time. You are each part of the objective fabric of every present moment you exist in. If you in 3D are affected by the weather, then by extension you in non-3D are affected by the 3D-you which was affected by the weather.

And so in a sense we are transducers of the vast impersonal forces.

How else could it be?

And therefore we are affected by the non-3D as well as the 3D conditions, and in turn affect them.

Same statement.

So we are impacted by 3D conditions, and decide how we will react, what we wish to be, and our resultant being is what translates to the non-3D.

To the All-D, rather. Don’t go separating the 3D and non-3D to any great extent, it will only cause confusion.