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Tuesday, February 21, 2023

5:45 a.m. On Sunday I asked if simpler people had simpler non-3D components. (You had said, “Simpler people experience life as more simple,” and more advanced souls experience its nuances and complexities more.) We deferred consideration when you said a lot of unnoticed definitions were part of the question, hence of the answer. Are we ready to address the question?

Even in restating the question, you see that it was full of questionable statements. Simpler, more advanced, what does that actually refer to?

Well, I did have my doubts about “more advanced.” But “simpler” seemed clear enough. Simpler as opposed to more complex.

There isn’t anything to object to, provided that you remember that these are relative statements referring to how things appear from the 3D perspective that sees boundaries where there are really only gradations. Thus, we discuss souls as if they were separate, temporarily ignoring the fact that they (like everything) are part of all-one-thing. It is a distortion necessary if we are to examine differences, but remember that it is, per se, a distortion. Nothing in the world is really separate. Do you have separate entities within a dream, or do you have various aspects perceived separately?

Yes, that’s clear – and before you say it, I realize that it is clear at the moment, and that I’ll forget it in practice, repeatedly.

Now, within that context, let’s look at what is essentially a simple thing. It all hinges on the fact that a thing looks different if seen from a 3D perspective or from a non-3D perspective, because it will be seen in the context of the nature of the terrain it is seen from. Looking at it from 3D, one will unconsciously see it as sequential, separate, relatively unchanging. From non-3D: evanescent, connected, relatively fluid. Same reality; different filters. And, as in all things, a limitation is overcome by making it conscious. Once you are aware that your terrain’s limitations are skewing your perceptions, you can adjust for it. Then the important variable becomes “How long can I remember the usually invisible filters my mind applies to things?”

We will describe the situation as it appears from 3D, and you can adjust it to see if also from a non-3D perspective, or we can do the opposite.

How about it I phrase how it looks, and how I suspect it really is, and you correct the picture?

Certainly.

I imagine you will say that what looks like division between simple and complex, or perhaps between “young souls” and “old souls” is actually a division between specific combinations as they appear to us; that is, as they are experienced by us, given that despite our best efforts they appear as different individuals.

That isn’t a bad summary, except, it isn’t just that you each appear as different individuals. You actually are different individuals, when considered within 3D limitations. The color yellow is part of an un divided spectrum, yes, but it also is the color yellow as you experience it. An untrained eye will register fewer variations within it than an artist’s eye will, but the simplest person will see it as yellow, and the most sophisticated eye will still see it as yellow – that is, as a distinct part of the spectrum – despite the larger context it can put it in.

So, some souls are simple mixtures, some are complex. Some are relatively straightforward, some are extremely heterogenous, and of course everyone else is somewhere between the extremes.

But we need to remind you what we mean by soul. We are using the word to mean, elements of one or more larger beings, cohabiting a human body for a human lifetime, and either cohering and obtaining permanence or not. As we have said, the elements of course cannot be destroyed. What could destroy them? But there is the possibility of creating what are in effect new units, if the new mixture coheres.

It seems clear that simpler mixtures will be unable to see things that more complex mixtures will be able to see.

It may seem clear, but that is a clear statement of a muddled understanding.

I love you too. (Smiling.)

What is to prevent a “simple” soul from being extremely penetrating? It isn’t as if it needed to learn the ropes, and so was fumbling around, as opposed to the old pro. Simple needn’t mean inexperienced. A “young soul” needn’t mean, “more or less at sea.”

I see how the idea sneaks in. So then, a clearer picture, from your point of view?

Let’s say, a clearer picture from our point of view of your point of view. Young souls, baby souls, advanced souls, old souls. That categorization makes it seem like your school systems, grading people by their age. It may serve as a rough guide, as a crude classification system, but we remind you that you are (we are) within a dream, not within “rocks in space.” How can any part of a dream be younger or older than any other part? One part may be more complex, more profound, more meaningful, more revelatory than other parts, but nobody is a Johnny-come-lately.

What appear to be young or old souls are actually simple or complex souls, and that’s a different thing entirely.

Like the difference between a specialist and a generalist, say.

In a way. Or between a countryman and a citizen. The countryman may be simpler, and deeper. The citizen may be more sophisticated, and less connected to the world of emotions.

For the sake of the studio audience, I may as well say that you are using “countryman” and “citizen” in their original meaning – denizens of the rural or urban environments – rather than the modern usage which would see them as essentially synonymous.

We should think that would be obvious in context, but no harm in stating it explicitly.

So if I get your meaning, you are saying, merely, simple souls are tuned to simple perceptions. That’s what they perceive, because that’s what resonates.

Yes as long as you remember that simple doesn’t necessarily mean elementary. In a sense, Newton’s discovery of the law of gravity was a simple perception set to mathematical music. Einstein’s E=mc² is a simple perception, but hardly unsophisticated: You might look at it as a mathematical description of a simple, if revolutionary, way of seeing beneath the surface of things.

The underlying engine of this discussion, I am getting, is that we should lose the unconscious idea that simpler comes first and complex later, or that souls advance in wisdom only through progressive incarnations.

Yes. There is nothing sequential about it, except from your necessarily sequential 3D perspective.

And that’s enough for the moment.

Our thanks as always.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Private session yesterday. (Why do I feel compelled to write that? Is it anybody’s business?)

Your life is not your own, once you begin to allow people to participate. How far you open the door is, of course, up to you. But if you were to feel obliged to publicize every communication, you would thereby assure that you could not take advantage of this access for your most personal matters.

I suppose it is like any other aspect of life, a resource to be used only with discretion.

You are all private, you are all public.

Okay, so today’s topic?

You will notice your boredom with “Topaz.”

The Alfred Hitchcock movie, yes. I have watched about an hour of it, and it does not grip me. It is supposed to be a suspenseful drama, but I feel myself not much caring.

And you know why, though there is a paradox.

I was prepared to say, “The drama is too external,” then I was prepared to object that I’m re-reading those Lucas Davenport novels of John Sandford, which are just police novels. But I realize, I’m re-reading the novels not for the plot but in order to hang out with the characters, and even their actions are overlaid with their psychological drama.

And that is our morning’s theme: When you get to a certain point, you cease to believe in the primacy of action and instead believe in the primacy of psychology. But you can express it yourself more easily, and we will edit as necessary.

I get that you are saying that once we no longer take for granted the external drama, it heightens our interest in the internal drama. Life-and-death situations aren’t as exciting when death is just death and not catastrophe. If the external world is only a reflection of our internal, real, world, external drama cannot be more than a hinting at the real conflicts going on.

And we’ll take it from here.

• The external world is not only a reflection of the internal world;
• neither is it unconnected to it,
• nor independent of it,
• nor superior in importance to it.

Any of these relationships may seem obvious from a given point of view, but each reflects the limitations of a point of view. A wider view of the reality of the internal/external relationship is what we are trying to provide. Reality includes:

• The personal world you know. Obviously nothing can be more real than that, although materialist science may think it only theoretical because it cannot be measured by instruments.
• The objective world you experience. A thing may be more than can be grasped, without ceasing to exist.
• The unbreakable connection between the personal and external world. Your senses tell you that 3D is all there is, but you cannot disconnect from the All-D context.
• Your deeper reality, the “you-ness” that precedes, co-exists with, and follows your time in 3D. You have an independent place to stand, even if it is not as you may conceive it.
• Similarly, the external world may be said to have its place to stand, independent of any of its components.
• Finally, the forces we are calling the vast impersonal forces exist, and coordinate or potentiate and channel all this into a coherent functioning pattern.

Bear in mind, the external world as you experience it is going to be different for each person, since each person is different. That doesn’t make the external world per se different, only different for each.

All right.

You see,

• the entire universe does not center on any of you. (We state it thus baldly merely to flush out any hidden assumptions.)
• Neither do you exist merely for the universe.

It is a much more cooperative relationship than you commonly realize, and it is distorted by your assumption that one end is real and the other unreal, or that one is important and the other not. We said from the beginning, “Beware of pedestals; they distort relationships.”

I am thinking of Eisenhower as depicted in that excellent film, “Ike: Countdown to D-Day.” His concentration was, and needed to be, entirely on externals. He focused upon the task at hand. It wasn’t the time for metaphysical questioning or discussions such as these. He acted as though what was external was real, and needed to.

He did not, and needed not to.

You may wish to explain that for the studio audience.

He relied upon God’s approval of his motivations. He prayed in his attitude if not necessarily in words. He assumed, and tried to live up to, the fact that the forces he was commanding were doing God’s work. In this he was like Lincoln 80 years earlier. Just because you do not share the form of the connection, do not be blind to the forces involved, like the dictator who asked, “And how many divisions does the Pope have?” If you do not believe in God in the way Ike did, or Lincoln did (or, if you do), recognize with the Sufis that “Words are a prison; God is free.”

One of my favorite sayings.

Which is why we used it. So do you see that, and why, Eisenhower, in concentrating on external forces, nonetheless involved the deeper reality beneath them?

Are you saying he was directing – using – the vast impersonal forces as they flowed through the moment?

Just as Hitler had used them, just as Churchill or Lincoln used them, yes. Just as Dion Fortune’s group began to use them in a coordinated fashion after Dunkirk. Prayer is not self-delusion, nor is it desperation, nor a magic wand. Regardless of its form or apparent intent, it is an alignment.

Prayer is magic?

Magic as in “direction of forces beyond human control,” yes. And as has been said, people are praying all the time, and their prayers are always answered.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

4:15 a.m. Very well, friends, let’s follow up on a couple of loose ends from your disquisition on rebalancing. I think the three images we developed give a pretty good sense of the situation, though no one or even two would do it:

• Sedentary rocks. Our 3D lives as we experience them, moment by moment.
• Water seeking its own level. Our lives as they look not moment by moment, but as a biographer might see them.
• Radio waves. A closer approximation to what is going on than any variant of “rocks in space.”

But you connected rebalancing with psychological complexes, and the results of traumas, and unshakeable habits, and we didn’t stop to pursue that thread, but went looking for adequate analogies. So let’s look at it now, and then maybe say some more about “It’s never too late,” and what that means for us.

This is a way of showing how what is “external” in your lives is really internal. There is not, cannot be, an “external” not connected to you.

We’d better say that more carefully. You mean, I’m pretty sure, we don’t notice anything in the world that does not connect with something within. Most of reality goes on around us, without triggering us, I would imagine.

That’s a common-sense interpretation, but literally wrong, though in practical terms a reasonable approximation.

You often say you confine yourselves to what we can apply in practice.

But we try not to do so by pretending that things are simpler than they are. Just because you can’t experience faint or distant connections, that doesn’t mean they do not exist. Perhaps they may be disregarded in practice; still, a theoretical statement should notice them.

All right.

So, in practice –. No, let’s sketch this for a second.

• You experience life as divided between internal and external.
• But what you experience as external is actually your particular resonance to part of the general “potential energy created by past actions and inactions” [formulated 11-23-2022] that we also call “unfinished business,” that is also common to others.
• Beyond what you experience as external is what you do not
• Only – recognize that these neat divisions do not exist with boundaries and shape; they flow into one another. To define them too closely would be to arbitrarily say X is conscious, Y is in the unconscious, and Z is on the borderline between them. How much use is such division, when a moment’s rebalancing may alter any or all elements being considered?

No need to pursue this, probably, but we thought it as well to put it on the record, since it arose now and is easy.

So it is with you as it is with us, that some things are easier grasped in one moment than in another?

This is true of us insofar as we are dealing with 3D, yes, of course. Your limitations are ours, in a way, just as our difficulty in confining ourselves to a part of a topic without following its connections may be yours.

Understood. So how is the concept of continual rebalancing connected to complexes?

This is the invisible connecting concept between external and internal, don’t you see? The state of your balance is not determined solely by your will, or your decisions. If it were, life would be easy. Rather, your will, your decisions, are thrown onto the scale, but may have a lot to overcome on the other side of the scale. You don’t deal with a clean slate, you deal with the existing situation, which is always the result of innumerable factors in all the Strands comprising you.

Certainly it is true that we have a hard time overcoming our complexes. It makes sense that they are partly beyond our control.

We can almost feel ourselves ready to connect that thought with astrology.

I can feel it. It’s still a fuzzy connection, though.

What constellates at birth are various combinations of forces that the moment allows in. You think of this as different Strands being able to enter, and this is true enough in practice, but what would be clearer is that certain combinations of traits are allowed in, and the Strands that embody these combinations enter. Thus Strands that may have little in common except some shared characteristics (some shared combinations) may wind up sharing a personality.

That is clearer to me in concept than you have yet expressed. I think you should add that the example is simplified, a view as if only one combination were important.

Let’s put it this way. Every Strand is complex. If you doubt it, just examine your own life and see how many contradictory or unrelated or mutually reinforcing traits you embody; see how many unresolved complexes you deal with; see how many physical, emotional, mental habits you live. Each Strand that is a part of you is itself complex, so it isn’t as simple as “The times allow in these units but not those.” It would be closer to say, “The times allow those patterns in, often in connection with other patterns that are not particularly fitted but are part of the Strand that contains the allowed patterns.” That isn’t exactly right, but close enough.

Now, the 3D personality may find itself in quite a pickle! A many-talented person like a Winston Churchill – statesman, writer, painter, orator, bricklayer, even! – may find it almost impossible to fit in. A person with multiple psychological or physical handicaps, same thing. The fact that a combination of traits finds it possible to embody is no guarantee that the result will be happy or even viable. It is potential: the energies of the times create it, so to speak. But not every pot that is thrown makes it through the kiln.

I can see that, but not so easily the tie to rebalancing.

Every Strand is the result of a lifetime of rebalancing. Everything that exists – it’s all mind-stuff, remember – is in a continual state of rebalancing. Every present-moment decision, every act of will, affects the balance, and such acts of will are occurring everywhere at every time. Is this not your experience of life?

Yes it is. It certainly is a way of explaining the complexity and stubbornness of our lives.

Simpler people experience life as more simple. More advanced souls experience its more subtle nuances. Life always appears according to your ability to perceive it. But this goes on always.

And do simpler people have simpler non-3D components?

That sounds like a question that should be easy to answer, but recognize that it depends upon a lot of silent and scarcely noticed definitions.

Then let’s defer the question, and look at your statement that “It’s never too late.”

People in the time of the decaying Roman Empire, or in Persia when under attack by the Huns, or any Eastern country during the time they were helpless to resist Western imperialism, may have felt that their world was coming to an end. Individually, a person at the end of life may feel it had been wasted, had been a series of bad choices, had run into the sand. If life were what it appears to be – a one-time progression from  past to future, a “rocks in space” scenarios, whether thought of as theme park of, more commonly, as grim reality – this might be justified. But life is not rocks in space, but mind-stuff. Interactions are not set in stone except in relation to one time-line. Time does not flow, but is experienced as flow.

Since you can always change if you will to, and since you are often changed by some Strand’s unnoticed rebalancing, and since in effect there are innumerable timelines (as each rebalancing creates new possibilities, not merely future but past, because all in the living present moment) – how can there be any finality?  It can look that way, but so what? As you see more clearly, you realize that the world (that is, reality) was never so constrictive as you thought it was.

Got it. Unless you have more, I’d say we’ve come to a natural place to pause.

Indeed we have.

Our thanks as always. Always good to be in touch, particularly after I’d reconciled myself to cessation.

Saturday, February 18, 2023

7:25 a.m. I get that I sort of slurred over the concept you were  trying to get across, yesterday. The rebalancing isn’t only within each Strand; it is also among the total. I can see that this might be difficult to get into words, though it is simple enough as an image. Care to try?

You will remember, we said there is no advantage to your replacing the idea of one individual (the way you customarily think of yourselves) with a concept of many little individuals (each Stand). You are correct, we mean something a little different. You are also correct in thinking that an image will convey it better than a sequential exposition. So, since you have the concept firmly in mind at the moment, let’s find an image.

Several beakers with various levels of fluid in them? No, that isn’t even clear in itself.

But start with numerous units interacting and interconnecting, yes. It would be even better if we could show those units to be not units at all, but, sort-of-units.

I get, “Water seeks its own level.”

Yes, that will help, only we need also the balancing of forces among many things, not only one.

This is a new way to do this, searching for the image before expressing the idea even vaguely.

New day, new techniques. It is merely an extension into the printed record of processes that usually proceed unseen.

If we could stack several iterations of “Water seeks its own level.” (And I am acutely aware, suddenly, of how none of this can make sense to anybody yet unless they tune in and get it directly.)

Which is what an image does, you realize. An image is a more direct connection than words, because quicker, more like essence to essence.

But I think we’ll get that image sooner by talking about it than by my dredging without words.

That’s a more complex process than you realize. Talking about something keeps it fresh in the minds of both parties and, in a sense, deepens and elongates the temporary joint mind. Thus sparks may fly between them, in effect allowing and noticing ideas that either, alone, might well have missed.

This, even if one of the two is primarily non-3D?

Remember not to put us on a pedestal. We have limited range too, even if the extent and nature of the limits are not the same as yours. Your flashlight, remember, works to bring dim perceptions into greater clarity and focus. In effect, your attention aids our attention. We give you greater scope, you give us greater intensity. None of this is new material, we told you long ago, and many times.

So the image we’re looking for.

• In a way it totals quality X across all relevant Strands.

Damn it, it’s so simple, there must be a way to express it.

There is, there always is. It is not necessarily immediately obvious.

[Tried to draw several beakers, with various strata.]

No, that doesn’t work. Let’s look at strata, except that’s too static.

Remember, often two or more images, each incomplete, will by their juxtaposition suggest more than can be said.

All right. Image 1. Rocks formed by sedimentary processes. Each has strata laid down one upon the other. Each is different even if the composition is the same or similar. The image is static, but each rock could represent an individual 3D life, and each stratum could represent a different Strand, or, alternatively, each stratum could represent a different quality. This is two uses of the one image, because of course no one Strand would equal one quality. Each Strand would be a mixture of qualities, as we all are.

Image 2. A series of pools of water, connected via an underground reservoir, say. Water seeks its own level. Other things being equal, the pools will all be at the same level even though connected only at the source. For the purposes of the exposition, the connecting underground reservoir may be considered to be the present moment, or, alternatively, the larger being. I suppose that in a way that’s saying the same thing twice.

We need a third image, to let the rock strata rebalance moment by moment, but if we could find that, we’d be getting there. Any ideas?

You’re doing all right. Continue.

Let’s see. The factors are

• The beginning balance within each person or Strand.
• The energy of the living present moment, enabling change.
• Individual will, choosing.
• The potential energy of the moment – the “unfinished business” – that tends to bring this or that to the forefront.

Look at it from your own 3D individual’s viewpoint, it’ll come clear.

Yes, I believe it will.

• I am an individual in 3D, comprising communities of communities (Strands).
• In effect I am a collection of containers, each of which is a balance of forces.
• The living present moment provides the energy to allow changes: In effect, it momentarily liquifies the rocks, allowing changes of proportions, as they too (from their perspective) are enabled to change.
• Then the proportions within the various rocks, as altered, become the new norm.

That isn’t very clear, but it’s clearer than when we began.

It at least conveys the sense that nothing remains fixed. There’s never the fixity to things that you all often assume. “Life is but a dream” in this case suggests that. Potentially, you can always change – even after you are “dead” from the point of wherever the living present is, provided that whatever you connect to is in the living present moment.

That is clear in my mind, but I doubt it will be clear to anyone merely reading it.

You can’t know that, and it doesn’t matter. Anything one person gets clearly in mind helps all who are connected.

Which is everybody, in theory, but undoubtedly there is some limit in practice. I’m not sure how important something may be at 60 levels of separation, say.

Think of complex you all are; think how each Strand is a web of connection to other webs of connections. The “all one thing” is more closely connected than you might think if you don’t keep that in mind.

And while writing that, I got reminded that my images are of solid tangible things, whereas I’m looking for something closer to electricity.

One step leads to the next. First you get one aspect illustrated, then you move on to the next. So you got across (we think) the idea of cross-fertilization among Strands, so now merely come up with a more vivid, volatile, labile image to replace that of rock or water.

“Radio waves” comes to mind. This is hampered by the fact that I know so little about it, but someone versed in electronics could doubtless show how complex transmissions composed of different combinations of frequencies interact. They’d need to show that the various broadcasts interact to change one another, and I don’t know if that actually happens, so maybe the analogy isn’t a good one.

It should be simple enough of a spark (if you will pardon the play on words) to get the idea across.

The thing to take away from this is that:

• You are part of “all that is.”
• Your individual existence is unique.
• Everything interacts.
• There is no “ultimately”; there is not “final result.” It all proceeds.
• Your decisions (on who and what you want to be) affect your Strands, creating possibilities for them moment by moment, because they are alive. They were initially shaped in 3D, but they continue to exist in non-3D and are affected by 3D decisions.
• But they also affect you. This too is as allowed by the present moment’s weather and by the weight of the world’s unfinished business.

In a sense, it’s never too late.

In every sense, it’s never too late. Despair is limited perspective. There is always more day to dawn, as Thoreau pointed out.

Well! Not sure how much we accomplished this morning, but something, anyway. Does this round it off, or do you want to add more?

Enough for the moment. Good work.

Our thanks as always.

Friday, February 17, 2023

4:25 a.m. Something inside me may be waking up from a nap. I got up, unable to sleep more, but with my back aching, and came to the desk to sit in the dark, not wanting to wake Lila, sleeping on the futon on the soft blanket I thought she would like. After a bit she woke up, jumped up on the desk, sat on my lap and (because I was still sitting in the dark), curled up and went back to sleep. Sitting there, I eventually felt something wake up, as I said.

I remember somebody describing this experience of something inside waking up. Gurdjieff? Ouspensky, more likely. And of course it may not be the same thing. But – symptomatic of waking up from a long nap – I feel inclined for a conversation about it.

Guys, how about it?

Instead of metaphors like “inside me,” you might reframe it according to your understanding in light of what you have learned over the past few years.

I get the idea, but I don’t know how to think of it clearly. I get that you want me to relate it to the fact that I am a community of Strands.

Sooner or later, that understanding will naturally readjust the way anyone sees anything in life. Every once in a while, you will have a chance to do some thinking about it.

Thinking as opposed to merely observing.

Well –

I didn’t think that would call for thought on your part. Springboard for something more complex, I take it? Or for a boatload of complicated provisos?

It’s an opportunity, let’s put it that way. We could look at the nature of one’s daily mental activity.

I’m game. It’s interesting how clear I feel, at the moment. What really happened? Let’s keep it to me, my experience, this moment. That ought to pinpoint it, shouldn’t it? And we can generalize from there.

Certainly we could do that. We’ve done it that way often enough. Very well, what’s this feeling you have, that you are again awake in a way you have not been for some days?

It isn’t as simple as my having coffee now and not having had it before. I gave it up for a week or ten days, but reintroduced it several days ago, and I doubt that strictly physical cause had the effect of waking up whatever woke up.

Let’s look at it.

• You have felt, not disconnected from us, but disinclined to communicate.
• You have become discontented with merely receiving – that is, with merely reading and viewing – yet have felt no urge to write or draw.
• You have had an uncommon (to you) urge to do the practical things involved in life, straightening, clearing away clutter.
• You have been enjoying your interaction with your neighbors, and, now, their cat.
• You have been thinking about your legacy and trying to envision the path ahead for your remaining time. If not books, in other words, what?
• You have in effect felt like you were on vacation, absent an urge to get something done, to produce, to use your time.
• Your reconnection with your son – “out of the blue” in one sense, but following internal thought, pondering, invisible re-weaving – is reconnecting you to parts of yourself that are not connected logically, but These effects by their nature will become obvious only over time, and in unsuspected ways.

We could continue, but that is probably enough. Now, can you see that this listing silently assumes – as in practice you all do assume – that they have in common one consciousness, one individual in 3D life? Nothing we said is untrue or exaggerated, but see how differently they look when considered in the context not of one individual unit, but of many cooperating societies functioning as an individual unit.

I presume it is not as simple as one different Strand per item listed. That wouldn’t even make sense. Why would one Strand be enjoying communicating with David, and a different one be enjoying the cat, and a third be almost tired of reading?

No, that way wouldn’t make sense, because for one thing, it replaces the concept of one individual with the concept of many little individuals.

I can see the sun lightening the eastern sky, so to speak. I still don’t have it, but I can feel the understanding quietly nearing. (Stupid way to put it, I realize.)

Try thinking of yourselves as a balance of forces. You are always balancing, and the “external” world’s influence – including the times – is always perturbing you, requiring you to rebalance moment by moment. We don’t mean this in any dramatic way, merely the unnoticed background to your lives, as when you are in a canoe and you continuously, unconsciously, adjust your balance in harmony with the little shifts caused by the water.

This is true in your daily lives, continual unconscious (and sometimes conscious) rebalancings. But if it is true in your life, is it not true in the lives of each of your Strands? From your viewpoint, each of them is only – (only!) – internal, not also external, but that doesn’t mean that their rebalancing does not affect yours.

Hmm. Hence so many “unconscious” factors that influence our lives?

What do you think complexes are? Or ingrained results of trauma? Or unshakable habits? For that matter, your very virtues or skills or predilections may have more to do with various unperceived balancings than with anything concerning your willpower or even desires.

We are so much more complicated than we can realize.

“It’s all one thing”: Of course it’s complicated. But, “As above, so below”: Although you can’t grasp it all, you can draw appropriate analogies and get a good sense of it.

So what is our illustrative analogy here?

Suppose you try this one. What if your overall self –

Ah, but I heard you get caught on the question of where would “our overall self” be considered to end.

That’s right. Too firm a statement might mislead. OT1H, all is one. OTOH, you need to have some graspable subassembly to be able to examine it at all. So let us say, merely as an approximation, that your overall self comprises only the Strands represented in your horoscope. Yes, those Strands connect to others which connect to others, but as a workable model, the Strands most active within you will do.

Something like the way we used to think of “past life” interactions.

Exactly like “past lives,” because that is what “past lives” are, Strands.

So, taking you to be your conscious awareness (“yourself” as you commonly experience yourself) plus the Strands that are most activated by your life, what if any given moment may profitably be described as a mood of the larger being?

I was following you until you tacked on “of the larger being.”

Well, in effect each life constellates a larger being; in effect, each combination of 3D consciousness and the Strands active within it are a new being.

Ah. The crystallized unit?

Yes, or rather yes assuming it crystallized. Even if it doesn’t, it functions as one in the meantime.

That doesn’t make any sense. How can something function “as if” a larger unit, then cease to function?

How is that different from a 3D body coming into existence and then going out of existence, though its component elements (its chemical ingredients, for example) remain?

Hmm. So for larger beings it is a question of achieving immortality or merely dying?

That’s a big “merely,” but yes. In a way, remember. We can’t explain every side-issue at length and still make our point.

So – a moment as mood?

Remembering that your lives are mind-stuff and not adventures in some “rocks in space” theme park, you will realize that everything is way more fluid than appears at any given moment. In that sense, “Life is but a dream.”

That cries out for more, but it has been an hour, and I’m getting tired, which affects reception, I know. Shall we continue another time?

As you wish.

I feel like saying, “Welcome back,” but probably you should be saying it to me.

Not at all. We didn’t go anywhere, you didn’t go anywhere. Where would either of us go? There’s nothing wrong with putting your attention to other things.

Or yours?

We’ll talk another time.

Okay. Thanks for all this, as usual.

Friday, February 17, 2023

4:25 a.m. Something inside me may be waking up from a nap. I got up, unable to sleep more, but with my back aching, and came to the desk to sit in the dark, not wanting to wake Lila, sleeping on the futon on the soft blanket I thought she would like. After a bit she woke up, jumped up on the desk, sat on my lap and (because I was still sitting in the dark), curled up and went back to sleep. Sitting there, I eventually felt something wake up, as I said.

I remember somebody describing this experience of something inside waking up. Gurdjieff? Ouspensky, more likely. And of course it may not be the same thing. But – symptomatic of waking up from a long nap – I feel inclined for a conversation about it.

Guys, how about it?

Instead of metaphors like “inside me,” you might reframe it according to your understanding in light of what you have learned over the past few years.

I get the idea, but I don’t know how to think of it clearly. I get that you want me to relate it to the fact that I am a community of Strands.

Sooner or later, that understanding will naturally readjust the way anyone sees anything in life. Every once in a while, you will have a chance to do some thinking about it.

Thinking as opposed to merely observing.

Well –

I didn’t think that would call for thought on your part. Springboard for something more complex, I take it? Or for a boatload of complicated provisos?

It’s an opportunity, let’s put it that way. We could look at the nature of one’s daily mental activity.

I’m game. It’s interesting how clear I feel, at the moment. What really happened? Let’s keep it to me, my experience, this moment. That ought to pinpoint it, shouldn’t it? And we can generalize from there.

Certainly we could do that. We’ve done it that way often enough. Very well, what’s this feeling you have, that you are again awake in a way you have not been for some days?

It isn’t as simple as my having coffee now and not having had it before. I gave it up for a week or ten days, but reintroduced it several days ago, and I doubt that strictly physical cause had the effect of waking up whatever woke up.

Let’s look at it.

• You have felt, not disconnected from us, but disinclined to communicate.
• You have become discontented with merely receiving – that is, with merely reading and viewing – yet have felt no urge to write or draw.
• You have had an uncommon (to you) urge to do the practical things involved in life, straightening, clearing away clutter.
• You have been enjoying your interaction with your neighbors, and, now, their cat.
• You have been thinking about your legacy and trying to envision the path ahead for your remaining time. If not books, in other words, what?
• You have in effect felt like you were on vacation, absent an urge to get something done, to produce, to use your time.
• Your reconnection with your son – “out of the blue” in one sense, but following internal thought, pondering, invisible re-weaving – is reconnecting you to parts of yourself that are not connected logically, but These effects by their nature will become obvious only over time, and in unsuspected ways.

We could continue, but that is probably enough. Now, can you see that this listing silently assumes – as in practice you all do assume – that they have in common one consciousness, one individual in 3D life? Nothing we said is untrue or exaggerated, but see how differently they look when considered in the context not of one individual unit, but of many cooperating societies functioning as an individual unit.

I presume it is not as simple as one different Strand per item listed. That wouldn’t even make sense. Why would one Strand be enjoying communicating with David, and a different one be enjoying the cat, and a third be almost tired of reading?

No, that way wouldn’t make sense, because for one thing, it replaces the concept of one individual with the concept of many little individuals.

I can see the sun lightening the eastern sky, so to speak. I still don’t have it, but I can feel the understanding quietly nearing. (Stupid way to put it, I realize.)

Try thinking of yourselves as a balance of forces. You are always balancing, and the “external” world’s influence – including the times – is always perturbing you, requiring you to rebalance moment by moment. We don’t mean this in any dramatic way, merely the unnoticed background to your lives, as when you are in a canoe and you continuously, unconsciously, adjust your balance in harmony with the little shifts caused by the water.

This is true in your daily lives, continual unconscious (and sometimes conscious) rebalancings. But if it is true in your life, is it not true in the lives of each of your Strands? From your viewpoint, each of them is only – (only!) – internal, not also external, but that doesn’t mean that their rebalancing does not affect yours.

Hmm. Hence so many “unconscious” factors that influence our lives?

What do you think complexes are? Or ingrained results of trauma? Or unshakable habits? For that matter, your very virtues or skills or predilections may have more to do with various unperceived balancings than with anything concerning your willpower or even desires.

We are so much more complicated than we can realize.

“It’s all one thing”: Of course it’s complicated. But, “As above, so below”: Although you can’t grasp it all, you can draw appropriate analogies and get a good sense of it.

So what is our illustrative analogy here?

Suppose you try this one. What if your overall self –

Ah, but I heard you get caught on the question of where would “our overall self” be considered to end.

That’s right. Too firm a statement might mislead. OT1H, all is one. OTOH, you need to have some graspable subassembly to be able to examine it at all. So let us say, merely as an approximation, that your overall self comprises only the Strands represented in your horoscope. Yes, those Strands connect to others which connect to others, but as a workable model, the Strands most active within you will do.

Something like the way we used to think of “past life” interactions.

Exactly like “past lives,” because that is what “past lives” are, Strands.

So, taking you to be your conscious awareness (“yourself” as you commonly experience yourself) plus the Strands that are most activated by your life, what if any given moment may profitably be described as a mood of the larger being?

I was following you until you tacked on “of the larger being.”

Well, in effect each life constellates a larger being; in effect, each combination of 3D consciousness and the Strands active within it are a new being.

Ah. The crystallized unit?

Yes, or rather yes assuming it crystallized. Even if it doesn’t, it functions as one in the meantime.

That doesn’t make any sense. How can something function “as if” a larger unit, then cease to function?

How is that different from a 3D body coming into existence and then going out of existence, though its component elements (its chemical ingredients, for example) remain?

Hmm. So for larger beings it is a question of achieving immortality or merely dying?

That’s a big “merely,” but yes. In a way, remember. We can’t explain every side-issue at length and still make our point.

So – a moment as mood?

Remembering that your lives are mind-stuff and not adventures in some “rocks in space” theme park, you will realize that everything is way more fluid than appears at any given moment. In that sense, “Life is but a dream.”

That cries out for more, but it has been an hour, and I’m getting tired, which affects reception, I know. Shall we continue another time?

As you wish.

I feel like saying, “Welcome back,” but probably you should be saying it to me.

Not at all. We didn’t go anywhere, you didn’t go anywhere. Where would either of us go? There’s nothing wrong with putting your attention to other things.

Or yours?

We’ll talk another time.

Okay. Thanks for all this, as usual.