Guidance

Something practical came out of all that angst about verification.

[Thursday, January 12, 2006]

9:30 a.m. I thought last night that we need a Missouri Compromise today between left and right, between conservatives and liberals, between religious and anti-religious. I cannot see how we can proceed otherwise. The Missouri Compromise was not perfect but it did give the union thirty years, and a little more, that otherwise would have seen a complete break. Too lazy to think what terms to suggest but the central idea is easy enough – each side has things vitally important to it; trade tolerance on one for tolerance on another that is important to the other side. Bad analogy, perhaps.

My friends, as I go through past journals I see much wisdom from you, chiefly on how I should lead my life. And I see moments of blankness that I – you? – have filled lest you be shown not to know everything. But it has been represented to me – why should you be expected to know everything? Where did that expectation come from? And one of my correspondents suggests that I unconsciously picked that up, as an attribute of God, in my Catholic boyhood. Comment? Continue reading Verification, Filters and The Control Panel

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

8 a.m. More, then, on perception versus story? Or do you want to start another rabbit running?

So, you wish more on perception versus knowing, and you remember that there were several threads, and you can’t remember any of them, and you worry lest we be unable to dredge them up — though it ought to be obvious that for us it is not a matter of dredging.

We spoke of the subject — the difference between perception and story as you learned by experience at the remote viewing class at the Monroe Institute — in terms of certainty and in terms of morality. It ought to be obvious that this pertains to your major subject — the subject of your blog, of your book, of your quiet teachings with others — of the fact that truth converges, when approached from many sides, and that descriptions that seem to go diverging ways Continue reading Story versus perception – 3

This long thread began with my request to my friends upstairs to help me tell people how to get into touch with guidance, at least as I personally have understood and experienced it. I shuddered to think of beginning an epidemic of Psychic’s Disease, but still it is no less dangerous for people to rely on external authority when they will have to choose which authority, not having any basis to do so! It amounts to them depending on their guidance to find a source of external guidance. Perhaps not so bad a plan, but not without its eccentric points.

[Wednesday, January 18, 2006]

So – friends – I don’t know quite what has been going on this past week – is it just a funk, or what? For whatever reason, I certainly haven’t done much work. I did note, yesterday, a decision point early on, when I picked up a John Sandford novel to finish re-reading it, rather than buckling down. And I suppose there was another, later in the day, when I picked up [Joshua Lawrence] Chamberlain’s The Passing of the Armies rather than work. A lot of reading as in the old days. I don’t much like it, though: It is as if I have a bad choice, of wasting time reading, or reading what may be worthwhile (Robert Johnson) but it’s still a diversion, or anyway killing time – or doing work that has lost its savor. I suppose the easy obvious answer is just to do the work – yet it can’t be that simple emotionally, or I would do it, ever if after some hesitation and delay. Continue reading A New Model of Consciousness in Space and Time – 1

Perception and Morality

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Alright I guess I am finally ready if you are. Perception versus story, part 2 — which aspect now?

Nervous in the service, for fear that we won’t know our lines? It would have been more instructive for you not to have reread the first installment so you wouldn’t know until you came to enter it into the computer whether we were repeating ourselves. The more faith you bring to this, the easier it goes — validation comes after you have something to validate, not before! Continue reading Story versus perception – 2

[Saturday, January 14, 2006]

Well, I’d like a companionable chat. Which of my friends shall I talk with today?

You call me Joseph.

[This is not Joseph Smallwood, but an ancient Egyptian, some kind of priest.] Yes. Welcome, friend. You know that one of my friends this life was startled that I was so respectful of you.

This is because he does not understand what he observes, in this case. Your reverence, I am well aware, is not for me as an individual – as your civilization always puts it – but for what my state of being represents for you. In reverencing me you are reverencing that part of yourself, and this is as it should be. I recognize this, of course, having the advantage of the inside position (if you will forgive a mild joke). Like Gordon, I would not approve of your giving reverence to an individual rather than to the qualities and to the achievement of embodying those qualities. Not all will understand these words, but some will. Continue reading Judge not, especially yourselves

Data vs. knowing

[April 13, 2007] All right friends, let’s talk a little about “story” versus perception as it comes to psychic exploration. I can see this as at least a post to the blog, as I think it is an important insight bearing on — that is to say, clearing up — many things that have plagued me about the process for years. This, unless you have something else in mind for us to discuss. But I rather suspect that this is you knocking on the door anyway.

True enough. You will notice that it was in rereading one of Joseph’s posts — knowing that some of it has to be wrong — that you felt the urging to get off the screen and back to this journal book.

Anything you know, you can know only relatively. There is no such thing as absolute knowledge, and beware of anyone promising it to you. Everything existing in context with everything else, there is no room for anything to stand alone, unaffected and unmodified by context. Continue reading Story versus perception – 1

My friend Richard and I met at a Monroe Institute program, Lifeline, a dozen years ago. Since then he has gone on to do several programs with shaman Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill. (Rich presently writes a blog that I have mentioned before, http://thesacredpath.wordpress.com/. Well worth a visit.) When Rich and I met, it was old friends meeting for the first time in this lifetime, and that hasn’t changed. As it happened, he and I were involved in a little private experiment that broadened the Lifeline experience for us. [This is adapted from my book Muddy Tracks.]

During a tape one morning, The Gentlemen Upstairs suggested to me that it would be productive to have several people talk to them together. They said, “Pick them carefully. Or rather, let them pick themselves.” So I took my tape recorder and sat in the lounge at midday. TGU had said they would self-select, and they did. First Rich came over, then, one at a time, five others, and we wound up recording nearly 90 minutes of tape. Continue reading Learning to Connect