Judging guidance (from Nov. 14, 2019)

Thursday, November 14, 2019

So let’s begin with the commentary you promised yesterday.

[4:40 a.m. Jim Austin read “impersonally originating emotion” to mean impersonal in nature, which I don’t think is what you meant.

[No. Impersonally originating – that is, they did not originate in 3D individuals. But he and his guidance are quite right that the energies are not impersonal in the sense of being neutral in nature.

[Jim’s:

“The gods … are experienced by humans as energy … in urges, “instincts,” tides of impersonally originating emotion …” This sounds like electricity: can be used to keep a new-born preemie alive, and used to execute someone in the ‘chair.’

Guidance says no, it’s not impersonal:
– the energy may be ‘colored,’ thus pushing the recipient in certain directions,
– the energy may be only (or mostly) available to those who resonate with that particular ‘god,’
– there may be other ‘mechanisms’ that encourage 3D users in specific and/or general ways. Nothing is free … if I chose Lucifer’s energy, it’s almost certain I’ll live in 3D differently than if I chose energy from Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah …

It’s unlikely that (most of) us 3D’ers would know “who’s/what’s” energy we’re connecting with … at least at first. Seems like this is yet another area to be observant of/careful about: how does this source relate to my values?

[End of quote.]

We agree with his guidance, but not with his conclusion. Let us begin with our dis-agreement.

And I know where you’re going with this. It is something I have said for some while.

It is but the truth, but it takes a moment or takes perhaps the right words said at the right time in the right way, before the truth of it becomes evident: You can never know the source a priori; always you must judge it, as Jesus advised, by the fruit it produces. However, even there, you must beware of misreading cause and effect.

I can see that this could become a full discussion in itself.

It needn’t, but it is worth saying carefully and completely.

  • On what basis would anyone be able to judge, a priori, what energy one was connected to? Surely it would be first-hand or second-hand.
  • If first-hand, one’s judgment amounts to intuition (which is not verification), or – what?
  • If second-hand, it depends upon someone else’s authority (which ultimately means, someone else’s judgment) or – what?
  • On the other hand, if one judges by the results that source produces, these results may be judged incorrectly:
    • (1) Mis-reading cause and effect so that one cause is credited (or blamed) with an unrelated effect.
    • (2) The results may be properly attributed to the right source, but may themselves be misread, as in the story of “How do you know?”
  • Nonetheless, given that you in 3D can never know who you are talking to, but can only judge by evidence, what choice do you have but judging by the fruits rather than by the claims made?

There’s something slippery here being overlooked or shape-shifted.

Well, slightly. It inheres in the words “You in 3D,” but it isn’t exactly wrong, nor deliberately misleading. It requires clarification.

In that we are never “we in 3D”; we are always in 3D and in non-3D.

Of course, or perhaps a more careful answer would be, “Yes, but no.” You are always existing in both (having no choice), but you do not always function as if in both.

That’s what the lifelong process of mine has been all about, learning to function consciously as a 3D and non-3D being.

One might almost say that is what everybody’s life is about. Factually it is true (you all have to learn to swim) but in terms of what you concentrate on, it is not true, obviously. Some learn to swim, some merely float, some spend their lives using water wings, concentrating on other things or perhaps not really aware that they are in a medium they were only partly designed for.

Or, perhaps, “a medium they were designed for as a part of something more”?

That clarification, you will find, didn’t clarify. But this may: Nobody is ever designed to function in 3D alone. You are designed to function in 3D as well.

Okay. And presumably so are you who are presently in non-3D only.

No, connect your concepts. How could anyone be in “non-3D only” any more than in “3D only”?

For just a second that was a mind-blowing correction. I was mentally sputtering, “But, angels, etc.?” And then something readjusted and it seemed as natural as could be. As you have been saying, it’s all one world.

So then look again. We in “non-3D only” by definition are not in “non-3D only,” yet we do not have bodies – how do you reconcile the fact?

You know how. Everything has a non-3D component, and every non-3D phenomenon has a 3D component.

Yes, but let’s think that through.

  • If something existed that never touched the 3D world, you could experience it only via your non-3D component.
  • But say that were so, how would you realize it? If you were touching something that had no 3D existence, how would you conceptualize it?
  • It is the attempt to visualize “God” and “angels” and even “vast impersonal forces” as if they did not extend into 3D that leads to confusion and to quite arbitrary attributions of quality.

I suppose that one can’t see 3D and non-3D as separate without in effect creating a division in the universe.

Correct.

But if there is nothing “non-3D only,” an awful lot of “spiritual” teachings are wrong.

Or, perhaps, misinterpreted.

I’ll give you one thing, you never hesitate to set up your own authority against the whole world’s.

It worked out all right for Emerson.

It certainly did. In his old age, he marveled that the conclusions he came to on his own as a youth were contradicted by all the world’s authorities at the time, yet in his lifetime people in large numbers came around to seeing things as he did. “That boy was right and the world wrong,” he said in effect.

That’s how it is when you connect (or are born connected) with guidance, and you listen to it, and you reason from it, and wrestle with it. And that is exactly the process this long conversation has been illustrating, and illustrating not for the sake of exalting you or even “guidance” but for the sake of reminding those who are ready but not ready.

“Ready but not ready” –

Sure:

  • Ready but they don’t know it; needing but a wake-up call.
  • Ready but for a final bit of intellectual or emotional connection.
  • Ready but for a want of confidence (or, said another way) a fear of misleading self or others.

I am tempted to stop here, but let’s look back at Jim’s comment. Anything else you’d care to note?

Only note that although you cannot judge the source of your feelings or thoughts or temptations spiritual or physical, you can and do judge the effects, from which you may judge the putative source. So it comes to the same thing in the end, assuming you remain (or become) conscious of the process and its limitations. So it becomes not “How does this source relate to my values,” so much as “How  do these vast impersonal forces relate to my values?” Vast impersonal forces become in effect vast personal forces when they flow through you. but you can and do act as an electrical switch does: You allow or refuse those forces. That’s what free will is.

In the beginning your life tends to shape you; later you may shape your life, if you work at it. But to attain the ability to choose requires prior effort. Free will grows by its exercise; it cannot be bestowed. The possibility is always there, but the individual chooses to manifest it or not. Fortunately, “the individual” always includes a part of yourself with a wider viewpoint than 3D-only would be able to have.

Enough for now, a good morning’s work.

Our thanks as always, and we won’t quibble as to whether we are thanking ourselves.

 

More poems

International

Off the plane, down blank corridors,

Absently herded here, then there,

Down these stairs, out this doorway,

Onto this shuttle, strap-hanging

Past interchangeable buildings.

 

In this terminal door, and now

We’re on our own a weary while

In early-Sunday corridors,

Inhabited by those, like us,

Finding coffee instead of rest.

 

Then an empty time of waiting:

Nothing to do, nowhere to go,

Pinned by lighting and loudspeaker,

Trapped between waking and sleeping

In the country of the airlines.

 

Ramdan

He was the little boat’s crew chief,

An old man, seemingly idle

But always observing, always

Arranging accommodations,

Seeing that matters ran smoothly.

 

I got sick on one occasion,

Spent a day lounging on the deck

Waiting for the wells to refill.

All that long day, and afterward,

He asked me if I was better.

 

Much later I was told that he,

Seeing me asleep in full sun,

Arranged a curtain to give shade.

To those observing him, he said

Only, “It gets very hot here.”

 

Cairo Museum

We have been like crows or magpies,

Choosing among shining baubles,

Stashing, or working at stashing,

This fact, this view, this stone, or that,

Wandering through millennia.

 

But here in this huge museum

Is the ravens’ full treasure trove,

Filled with survivals of the years

(Fragments of forty centuries),

Our own brief scavenging, writ large.

 

 

I am enjoying reliving my Egyptian experience

Aloft

The intermittent roaring flame

Urges us upward. To the east,

The emerging sun paints shadows:

Cairo, suggested in layers;

The Nile, suggested and unseen.

 

Slowly we rise into daylight,

Remembering seeing balloons

As one tranquil spot of color

Floating above the new day’s cares,

Ourselves a promise for others.

 

And still we rise, and rise, and rise,

Seeing the Valley of the Kings

As the ancients never saw it:

From above, in far perspective,

Pasteled, shrunken to a postcard.

 

Our wicker basket hangs in air,

Drifting; frequently in silence.

Words desert us, both among us

And within us, and we absorb,

And each one dreams forgotten dreams.

 

 

A poem about flight

Cabin Fever

 

Our warm lighted bubble drones on

Through waning sun and sky and cloud,

Making its great-circle home.

 

And here, as always, is the life

We lead: The stratosphere beyond

Holds death, but death unnoticed.

 

Here it is music, meals, and naps,

And video screens, to kill time,

To insulate us, from life.

 

 

Of spectators and (other) tourists

Midday, with audio

 

Behind this parking lot’s stone fringe,

A tide of tourists, restlessly milling,

Everywhere, and from everywhere,

Chatting in Mandarin or Spanish,

Arabic or English or Greek.

 

Always the click of cameras or cell phones,

Identical muggings for identical shots,

Endless closed-off interactions, seeming alive

Only to each other. Offstage but not forgotten,

The braying of camels and vendors.

 

Ahead, half-unnoticed, the pyramids,

The unseen Nile, and Cairo’s 30 million.

Like golden sand and pristine sky,

inaudible amid the tourist din; remembered

as cinematic backdrop.

 

 

Another poem inspired by Egypt

In the Valley of the Kings

 

These bright hieroglyphic symbols,

Undamaged, in appearance new,

Transform the arch above our heads,

Filling the eye from every side.

 

Drawn here from around the world.

Rapt, we stare, seeking to engage

What reason cannot comprehend,

Absent eyes to see, ears to hear.

 

For untold decades, for centuries

Mounting into four millennia,

They sheltered, in protective dark,

In the silent tombs, memories.

 

Modern searching discovered doors,

Opened passage, admitted light

For scholars, for tourists, pilgrims,

And still we look and cannot see.