how the world works

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

4:25 a.m. Guys, if you don’t have something else queued up, a question occurred to me yesterday. Prompted, perhaps; I recognize that.

Feel free. It will not interrupt.

Well, it’s this: Why do we feel this urge to be more? And if I’m reading it rightly, not just 3D humans, but apparently everything. Why aren’t we content with being whatever it is that we are, if things are perfect as they are?

Do not construe “All is well” to mean “Everything is in a perfect condition at whatever stage it is, at whatever time you consider.” The meaning of All is Well includes the urge to improve, which as you note is innate.

“All is well” does not mean, “Don’t tinker with the formula,” any more than it means “This is the best of all possible worlds.” It means, “Matters are proceeding as they must and should.” It does not mean, “Here is paradise, all passengers disembark.”

I should have seen that. It is the difference between a dynamic and a static.

That is correct. If – as we have said – human function in 3D is, among other things, to be the trickster, the disturber of the peace, how would that make sense if the peace it was disturbing was already perfect?

This is now clear to me, thanks. Will others require more, or will their inner connection bridge over to the same understanding?

Some will, some won’t. but you are asking, do we need to say more here. Probably not. The key is to remember that striving, incompleteness, growth, longing, dissatisfaction are all part of reality, and nothing wrong with any of them as an experience. Lewis and Clark felt them all; it was part of the price to reach the Pacific.

You cleaned that one up economically. Let me press my luck. Tell us whatever you want to tell us about obsessions. Sexual, monetary, any way they manifest. This query came to me Sunday and it too had a vague flavor of having been prompted, that I might in turn prompt you.

This is a very big topic, that will come clear to the extent you keep in mind, as we discuss, that:

• A 3D human is a compound
• In 3D, nothing is complete and settled; everything is in process, if only because everything appears in different context as you move through time-slices.
• Incompletion and other uncomfortable emotions and conditions are – as we said – normal, natural, and therefore essential to the proper functioning of the system.
• You are an integral part of the rest of humanity by being connected to your strands and what they connect with.
• Nonetheless, there is the equivalent of distance in psychic affairs no less than in physical affairs. You are closer to some attitudes than to others. You occupy definite points on various polarities, and that may or may not change, but as a starting-place it is a fixed ratio.
• And, remember, everything affects everything, but there are rules for processes. Things don’t happen at random.
• Thus if you find yourself at war with yourself, it is only a small version of your situation, for in a way it may be said that all tendencies are contending with one another all the time, in many ways. Sometimes this results in peace, sometimes in a cease-fire, sometimes in guerrilla warfare, sometimes in World War III. In miniature, and in large.
• However, remember this is equally true of cooperation and reinforcement among strands, as among 3D individuals: You are involved in romances, alliances, partnerships, marriages of convenience – any form of cooperation you can imagine, you can experience. It is not this or contention; it is this and contention.  Don’t succumb to tunnel vision, seeing only one.
• And of course most important in the context of the question of obsession, remember that you in 3D are partly aware, partly not, with emotion being the boundary between the two.

So, you are obsessed. By what? It could be an emotion itself, or really let’s say by a character trait interacting with the 3D container.

Not clear yet.

You may be born a mixture of traits that cannot equalize.

I waited for more, then figured you wanted that sentence to stand alone.

We wanted it to stand out, yes, for the key to the subject is right there in the word “equalize.”

I was thinking yesterday, no wonder male and female yearn for each other: Each has lifelong access to, and familiarity with, and is personification of, what the other sex does not. I don’t mean accidental personality traits, I mean the essence of the feminine or masculine that is the basis of the 3D person. It is like each is starved for what the other is sated with.

And no way to equalize. That is one valid way to see the situation. And when young, the imbalance is experienced as needing a physical expression to equalize. That is, sex relations will bring what you need. But with time comes the realization that it can’t be found that way, that the yearning or call it the vector toward completion is not merely physical nor even physical plus emotional.

Colin Wilson often wrote that there is a sort of conjuring trick about the way sex works. It promises so much and then when the physical act is achieved, the promise is not kept, and we can’t figure out how it could have been kept. Some people keep looking for it in other people, some in other variations of the sex act, some in other variations of their emotional attitude toward it, but nobody solves the riddle.

That is true as far as it goes, but of course is only one aspect of a tremendously complicated subject. The specific application here is your question of obsession.

Michael Ventura used to write about how sexual obsessions had heir own law, their autonomy, so that they compelled the person to engage them in one way or another, if only to struggle against them.

And, as you noted, obsessions may come in many forms, not just sexual. It is a matter of impulsion toward the unfulfilled.

Well, yes, by definition.

But we have said more than you realize. Sink into it for a moment.

The implication I’m getting is that obsessions have a legitimate purpose.

Let’s say, they are useful indicators. If you are flying an airplane and your fuel gauge shows that you are low on fuel, is it the fuel gauge’s fault that things are other than you could have wished them? Is the gauge an obstruction, a temptation, or is it an indicator?

And an indicator doesn’t tell us what we must do, it merely tells us the state of affairs that exists.

Similarly – like any strong emotion – an obsession.

So then how do we deal intelligently with obsessions, particularly if they pull us toward something we don’t approve of?

One thing you don’t do is look down on it as something evil and unconnected with what you are. It is very likely to be representing parts of yourself of which you are unaware, or which you deny because you disapprove. Heed the fuel gauge! But that is not the same as saying, Do as it prompts you.

No, I get the distinction. Be as aware as you can be, and interact with it.

Yes. Give it the respect of your attention. Engage with it on a peer-to-peer basis, not you looking down from above to below. Do some active imagining.

We predict that if you “show willing” to be aware of it, to understand it, it will change from an obsession to something manageable. How it will change, what it will change into, is not predictable, but getting anything into consciousness is to bring it under control. That’s really all you need to know to deal practically. Theoretical considerations are for those interested; we will content ourselves with this much. Anyone can find herein the way to go deeper into the subject theoretically or practically. It is a matter of listening and paying attention.

Enough for the moment.

Our thanks as always.

 

Monday, May 20, 2024

4:50 a.m. I am beginning to queue up questions against the day you say you are out of ideas. Hopefully no time soon. We’ve gotten nearly 30,000 words so far, in 23 sessions.

Always remember that your bright ideas – in this, in anything – are not necessarily yours as opposed to ours together. We do not encourage you or anyone to distrust your impulses, thinking “That’s only me; it can’t be important.”

Well, as you know, I thought yesterday that sometime I might ask you how to distinguish between things we are being prompted to follow up on, and mere stray impulses, or misguided or even maliciously planted ones. I have always had a problem with this, from my very earliest days.

One’s attitude toward this will reflect one’s attitude toward life in general. Where does someone place faith v. doubt, love v. fear, confidence v. perplexity? In one sense, this is the same question posed in three manifestations.

I suppose that means, it is always a decision: toward further integration, or away from it.

Confidence v. shrinking back, yes. Put this in the proper context, and you will see that it is a question of what kind of future you wish to choose for yourself. Not, “are able to choose,” but “wish to choose,” because aspiration is by nature beyond one’s current perceived limitations.

That’s Thoreau again: Envision a fuller life and the world will seem to change in your favor.

Do you suppose there could have been a reason you were instantly captivated by him as soon as you picked up his book? But this same message has been delivered in millions of ways, millions of times, and this is one more repetition. Life can be seen as a tragedy only if you look at it as separated and truncated. The tale told by an idiot is not life, but the description of life by those who don’t see it straight.

This statement can be easily proved by experience. Remembering that “by their fruits you shall know them,” look at the psychological results of

a) Believing that the world (that is, reality) is whole, sane, purposive, benign, and that you are self-sufficient yet connected, sustained yet striving, curious, interested, or

b) Believing that the world is fragmented, divided, meaningless, cruel, perhaps malicious, and you are helpless or anyway besieged victims, without purpose

Does the question not answer itself?

However, we recognize that you are firmly placed in the camp of those who have faith in life – and therefore in what happens, and in one another, and in yourself. You weren’t born into that position: It is the end-result of a lifetime’s choices. Still, there you are now. This does not take away problems and perplexities, though. Life is always a problem to be worked, in the guise of many interlinked problems. So you are asking not a philosophical or abstract question, but a very practical one: How can you discern among impulses.

Obviously – we hope obviously – there cannot be one answer for every type of person and every predicament.

• Some people are very coherent, their strands cooperating smoothly and almost seamlessly, so that they never express self-division.
• Some are all self-division, struggling to live while in a perpetual internal civil war. What one strand approves, another hates. What one needs, another cannot abide.
• Most, of course, are between these extremes, but the “between” position is itself divisible into many, many different ratios.

Each psychological makeup (for that is how the coexistence of strands will be seen) requires and allows and prevents certain things, and results in many different ground-rules for that life. (In effect, each variety of relationship will experience its own rules of existence that will seem self-evident, and self-evidently true for everyone, which of course they cannot be in reality.)

We don’t want to make firm rules, here. You asked a practical question, and we want to answer it, but in a manner that will clarify the context, so as to be helpful to those of a different makeup.

If you are all of a piece, with no significant internal conflicts, trust comes easily. In such case, trust but don’t forget to verify. Trust is essential but not sufficient, because if you trust without looking out for the chance that you may be in error this once, you risk falling into Psychic’s Disease. (“I feel it strongly, so it must be right.”)

If you are habitually conflicted, your indicated course is the opposite: You need to judge and then trust. Never trusting would amount to an invitation to paralysis, certainly to an effective isolation from guidance in any conscious or semi-conscious form. So – since sooner or later you have to act out of faith – you need to use your judgment and then follow that judgment.

And, of course, those anywhere between these extremes, season to taste.

Now, here is the joker in the deck: What you are will change in effect. That is, what will manifest will change, which will look like a different you emerged. So the strategy that serves you at any one time may be inappropriate at any other time. So you need to bear that in mind.

So far this doesn’t seem all that practical.

It’s extremely practical. If you don’t understand the situation, how will you respond appropriately? Your complaint is that it is not a flat set of rules: “If A, do B.” If you want a flat rule, deduce it from what we have said, and we will criticize appropriately.

It’s circular. I hear you saying, the way to judge an impulse that may be sent from guidance is, trust guidance.

Does that formulation not expose the problem?

It does. I’m thinking of guidance as separate from myself, which it is and also isn’t.

Then try again.

If we are confronted with an impulse, sit with it, feel for it.

Even for split-second decisions to be made?

Well, I suppose split-second decisions express what we already are, since we don’t have time to decide.

Yes. What you are is what you have made yourself by a lifetime of decisions: It is what will express in the absence of deliberation. Your moments of choice come in the decisions you have time to make. That is, those you can hold and weigh in your awareness.

Mindfulness is all. What else have we been saying, all this time? The reason to take control over your hitherto unconscious mental functionings (robots, scripts, filters) is to broaden your effective scope of action. It is to widen the area in which you – and not merely the you that you have created to date – can manifest.

Life more abundantly.

Yes. The freer you are of automatic reactions, the better you can see your opportunities and the more clearly you can see them. That is, instead of seeing problems, you see opportunities embedded in the problems.

What they call the gift in the situation.

Mindfulness is all. And this is enough to be said. What you need is here.

Our thanks as always, then, and till next time.

 

Sunday, May 19, 2024

4:30 a.m. Ready if you are.

Recent conversations – lectures, if you like – have concentrated on the idea that reality is much more interconnected, interactive, than you may sometimes see it. Things relate in time, in space, in psychology, between forms, between differences in size, duration, nature. One of the effects of 3D restrictions is that it can be difficult to hold more than a few things in mind simultaneously, while ideally you would want to be able to hold everything in mind.

This is not to say that that would be possible. It wouldn’t. it is merely to show how far effective communication varies from what would be ideal. Because your RAM, as you call it [borrowing a computer term for available memory], is restricted, you necessarily use work-arounds, such as symbols to associate various elements concisely; such as logic to examine and retain one bit of relationships at a time; such as written or oral memory, to construct and recall sequentially what cannot be held simultaneously.

I’m getting that to some degree this applies in non-3D conditions as well.

That’s what we want to look at, and as usual we will try to keep things practical, sketching outlines only insofar as they will help illumine the nature of 3D life.

In non-3D as in 3D, restrictions apply, it is just that they are a bit different by nature. Still, the restrictions exist, or we should be formless, and nothing that is short of everything can be formless, or – we might equally say – beyond form.

• We range freely among times and spaces, associating as we please (or rather, according to the nature of the material). This is just like your mental process. In fact, it is your mental process, only with vastly greater RAM.
• Our range is huge next to yours, because of not having to overcome the drag of continuously changing time constraint – that is, what you call the passing of time. We cannot be “in a hurry” or “pressed for time.” For us, time does not “run out.”
• Our attention is not subject to distraction from unacknowledged pars of ourselves experienced as “exterior” or “accidental” or even “incidental.” We have only one source of interruption, oddly enough: you. Our connection to 3D tethers us, in a way.
• By that, we mean not that any of us is tethered specifically to any of you, but that we may respond to resonances. You in 3D don’t exactly “wake the dead,” as people say of disruptive loud behavior, but you do get our attention. Bear in mind, you and we are not strangers nor even neighbors nor family; we are part of the same thing.

You can see a few consequences. List them and we will add to them or dispute with you, as appropriate.

I wish you had continued. Things were coming to the back of my mind but I was concentrating.

Trust the process. This will help you categorize, sort, and retain.

Okay, if you say so. The resonance thing got my attention, of course. In fact, the turning of tables got it. We don’t tend to think of us affecting your processes. But after all, what is prayer but an attempt to connect with the non-3D for one reason or another.

Yes, but list applications.

• Prayer, then.
• Memory? Asking our “reference librarian” to access some bit of forgotten information?
• Aptitudes, in a way? Summoning someone who knows how to do something that we may learn it? One of my TMI roommates told me he set out to throw a pot, which can be a difficult skill to learn, and asked “himself” how it would feel if he had done it a thousand times – and threw it successfully, first time. And my brother, throwing a pot, did so keeping in mind stone-age artists like the men who had painted the caves in France, and experienced a sort of union with him, as if the other man were being allowed to flow through his hands as he worked the clay.
• Healing? Could our summoning healing spirits not be said to be the 3D employing non-3D organized energies – minds – to assist us?
• Communication, certainly. This process. One-way in trance-channeling (though perhaps less than we think, I get), and very much two-way in ILC, where active and receptive may alternate between 3D and non-3D many times, not only in which side initiates but also in which side is relatively more active. If I contact you with a question, that’s relatively active; if I begin receptive, the initiative is yours. But either way, we are going to go back and forth as need be, just as in any mind-to-mind communication.
• Flashes of insight. We think of them coming “out of the blue,” but from the non-3D I suppose it looks like “You’ve been asking and asking; here’s your answer.” Wilbur Wright, twisting a cardboard box absent-mindedly while talking to a customer in his bicycle shop, and suddenly he gets a flash answer to the question of how to control an airborne mechanism.
• Flashes of recognition. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain suddenly experiencing himself as part of a great unit called the Army. I can’t remember the details, and I don’t think it had to do with a battle, yet I don’t think it was parade either. For whatever reason, suddenly he identified as a part of this huge army, not only as himself as one unit. This may not be a good example, though.

Oh, but it is. All these everyday experiences are precisely what we want to show you from another angle. Naturally when you pray or dream or get an insight or extend beyond accustomed limits in any way, you will see it from the 3D slant. We merely invite you to see it also as it seems from the non-3D.

And further examples come to mind. Inspiration for plays, novels, scholarship, any of the arts and sciences. It is connection to something beyond ourselves! Obviously.

Don’t forget meditation, Zen, any form of mental alertness devoid of content. This is an extending beyond the (invisible but very real) boundaries of sequence. No words, no sequential processing; at least, potentially so.

How does that call your attention?

We are always ready to help. An attempt to transcend 3D limits always attracts us, always serves to get our attention and potentially our assistance. Don’t forget, we have skin in the game.

Bob Friedman used to say that. What’s your stake in our awakening? And of course the answer is obvious. We  are also you.

Correct.

We are helping you grow, or are hindering you, depending on how you want to look at it.

Correct.

It leaves me speechless, not in the sense of stupefaction, but by not having anything come to mind. So I take it that this ends our session, a little early. Our thanks to all of you, for all of this.

And ours to all of you, for listening. We haven’t said it in a while, but perhaps now our thanks will resonate differently.

They do. Till next time, then.

 

Saturday, May 18, 2024

3:45 a.m. Onward? Did you want to tell us what you meant by the universe making up its mind? Or did you have a different direction you want to go in?

By saying that, we meant merely that the universe is one thing, comprising many things. You will remember, we described the structure of reality as fractal, “as above, so below.” Man is the measure of all things.

I get it. That holds psychologically as well as physically.

We have to smile at that formulation. Don’t you think that’s kind of backwards?

I guess it is, now you mention it. Of course psychologically would be primary, given that the physical is mind-stuff.

So, at any level you care to examine, the same processes are going on, although their similarity may not be obvious. If the life of an individual is choosing, so is the life of any level above or below the individual.

That raises an image of the microbes within us choosing.

As we said, not always obvious. How do you suppose your health fluctuates, if not in response to fluctuations among the microbes that you are?

• They are affected by their environment, physical so-called and, mostly, mental.
• They are affected by their chemical composition, by every combination that surrounds or comprises them.
• They in turn make certain things possible or easy or impossible or difficult in the larger organisms they help comprise.
• And – remember, though this must seem counter-intuitive, given the continuous evidences of your senses – they too are mind-stuff, hence are part of the equation, not afterthoughts.
• Why else do you suppose that your physical health is affected by your choices? We mean, the physical directly responds to the mental: How? You see?
• Be careful not to be misled by the fact that a given phenomenon may be called by this or that name. That doesn’t mean it’s separate, it means it may be considered separately, the way an arm may be considered apart from a hand or a shoulder, but does not function meaningfully outside the context of arm and shoulder, and of course the same for them.

And, as usual, what goes when you look downward goes when you look upward. You may be considered a microbe in a larger organism you can scarcely conceive of. That doesn’t mean that’s all you are; it means you can be seen that way. Everything connects; everything is sentient in this same manner; nothing is unconscious or extra or insufficient to fulfill its function.

Plus, remember, this goes on continually, in the eternal present. It isn’t a matter of past, present, future, except in appearance. So in that sense the choices continue not only in all directions laterally but also temporally.

It’s all alive; it’s all in interactive motion. In that sense, the universe may be said to be perpetually deciding what it is, what it knows, what it is for.

You may want to explain that last. “What it’s for?”

If you as individuals repeatedly ask, “What is the purpose of life,” do you suppose you’re the only ones?

I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose I would have said yes, we are.

Well, then you would be something unique in the world, wouldn’t you? Do you think that’s likely?

We’ve been told that humans are unique in 3D in that we are the ones who change the environment that creates us: mentally, I take it, no less than physically. If we are unique in that, why shouldn’t we be unique in other things?

There’s a difference. Changing your environment by your choices is your role. Trees, minerals, other animals, all have their roles. So in that sense, you are not unique. You are playing your specialized part as everything does. But if would be different for you to be the only ones concerned with the meaning of life.  You would be more conscious than the rest of reality.

Is that so impossible? I thought the purpose of the 3D environment or at least its result, is to increase our focus.

This is ranging a little beyond our intended scope, but since it comes up, we can pursue it.

As 3D affects mental life, it both sharpens and narrows your consciousness. You can perceive only here-now; you can experience only here-now. But that very limitation provides the ability to conceive, to virtually experience, what you cannot experience within the 3D environment. Thus you are brought to your toes, and are given wings. Does this make you more conscious, or less conscious, than those in non-3D?

Not sure where we’re going here. Both or either, I suppose.

And if you, why  not cats? Or elephants? Or fields of grass? They live in 3D constriction. They respond to life minute by minute. They function and their lives are “recorded” same as yours. Is there a difference?

It feels like there is, but I’d be hard-pressed to say what or how.

We would see it this way: Each kind of 3D creature has its specific function – its ecological niche, you might say – and in that sense is different. But they are all part of the same reality.

It’s the usual thing: Do we identify with the actor or the director or the movie as a whole.

Precisely. Where you begin limits how you cans see things. But the cure for that limitation is merely to see it from a different starting-place, and take in the new view, not forgetting or overriding the previous, but adding to it.

As you told us as long ago as Muddy Tracks.

Reality hasn’t changed.

To return to the mental life of microbes –

Here you can see the power of words to channel or limit your perceptions and reasoning. If we said “The mental life of microbes” it would seem artificial, almost ridiculous. But if we said, “The mind-stuff molded into microbes as it was similarly molded into humans,” would that seem such a stretch?

I see your point.

Reality is all one thing. You have to keep coming back to that. If you allow 3D dualistic bias to overcome your ability to intuit unity, you will never come to the greater truth that lies beyond sensory evidence.

So perhaps you can see, in saying that the universe if making up its mind, we mean (among other things) that everything is alive, it is conscious, it is aware, it is questioning, it is deciding (weighing) as it goes along. Each part of reality has its own specialization, but specialization does not mean separation, it means a different emphasis.

“Man is the measure of all things.” If you want to know reality, come to know yourself. You can’t know the mind of a planet, or a star, or a nebula. You can’t know the mind of a cat, or of cats as a group-mind, or a microbe or a piece of granite. But you can come to know you, and in coming to know yourself you can feel your way to the rest. We don’t know any other way to say this that will make it clearer.

I get that you’re ready to stop for the moment, and it has been an hour, but tell me, what do I call this session? What was its center of gravity?

“The universe deciding” would do as well as anything.

Okay, our thanks as always.

 

Friday, May 17, 2024

4:10 a.m. All right, my friends. Do you want to follow up on things begun but not yet ended, or do you have something else in mind? Yesterday’s certainly was great, and unexpected.

Remember, overall we are intending to summarize the salient points and the unmade connections from material given you over 25 years. So massive a task needn’t fit into a strictly logical progression. But we could and probably should clean up as we go along. Perhaps we should talk about how life is, and is not, creating something permanent.

In the interval since you first posed that, I guess an idea has coalesced while I have been thinking about other things. We aren’t able to create anything permanent until we do – and then we are something other than we were while creating it, so you could say it either way. We did or we didn’t, depending on how you define “we” before and after.

As you have been known to say, “That isn’t clear.” But it will serve to start us off.

We trust that we have established that the creation cannot be in any way physical. Even in 3D terms, you are not constructing something that thieves could break in and steal, or rust or other physical process attack. Since 3D itself is mind-stuff, how could anything real be created of something only somewhat real?

Nor could it be particular to any individual. How could it be, when individuality itself is a form of horseback tentative definition, not really accurate?

And, could it be confined to what you see as one species – humanity? The concept of humanity as separate from the rest of nature is another merely approximate definition. You realize by now that part of your mental being consists of plants, clouds, minerals, animals: Where is the boundary line, the frontier, between “human” and “other”?

So then, where is a line that can be drawn? Could it be drawn by time-slices? The Age of Exploration, etc.? There is more to this than first appears, though it cannot be divided any better than can individuals or species.

Still, I’m getting a vague sense of it. We are different in different eras. Our ideas, our ways of experiencing the world, our possibilities, are different.

Yes, and this is what we’re moving toward describing. Just as “Thoughts are things,” so a world-view is a thing.

Ah! And just as an individual life may be seen as creating a flower by what it shapes itself to be (and is shaped), so with civilizations!

Yes, and all the niches between individuals and civilizations.

My, my! I can feel the idea beginning to flower within me, speaking of flowers.

Well, Mr. Amateur Historian, spell it out a little. It will grow as you express it.

Well, take Toynbee. He spent a good deal of time looking at history as the record of different civilizations and how they competed, coexisted, overlapped, succeeded each other, were influenced by each other consciously and unconsciously. He wasn’t concerned with wars and commerce, but with the situations leading to and following wars and commerce. That is, he developed a sort of biography of a given civilization and then it became a chronicle and analysis of the interaction between and among them. He developed a set of laws of interaction that are much more sophisticated than the popular idea of his work allows for.

In light of what you’re saying, I’m seeing this a little differently. Each of those civilizations could be looked at as an individual gathering. Within that gathering are all the ways that civilization could be seen: its moods, you might say.

Provide a few examples, to make it clearer, the distinction you are seeing.

Let’s stick to the West, then. One subdivision is America. I guess bullet points are our best bet here: It’s a good deal of information.

• The Spanish Empire throughout South and Central America.
• The Incas and Aztecs and others that preceded it.
• The nation-states that succeeded it.
• In all periods, the subdivisions that coexisted: castes, classes, religions, linguistic communities, traditions, etc.
• Over time, the gradual transformation of all of these, whether smooth or violent, consistent or erratic, as “the times” changed around them and other influences had their effect. (Foreign intervention by example or invention or conquest, say.)

In any given time, any given place, you could define a group that is smaller than a civilization but larger than an individual family. And you could multiply these subdivisions, or could make larger and larger groupings, depending upon which way you go.

Yes. And you see, this cannot be nailed down by logic nor by careful analysis nor by extensive documentation, because there are no fixed and permanent boundaries. The boundaries are in the eye of the beholder, and in the imagination of the perceiver of relationships. Nonetheless, these are all flowers.

And you could continue to subdivide by less tangible lines of inquiry. People’s attitudes toward plants, toward various animals, toward nature in general. These are very important distinctions, invisible until searched for.

Some people love cats, and some hate them, and some are indifferent to them.

And you could discern similar fault-lines anywhere you cared to look; exactly. Well, every such division  marks a grouping, and every such grouping is a flower.

And, as you say, we could discern such fault-lines in any direction we looked.

Yes, but at the moment the emphasis is not upon the observer but upon the fact itself. You live within a certain way of experiencing the world. You contribute to it, as well, by your choices visible and invisible, tangible and – mostly – intangible.

If we choose to see things one way, we are voting for a change? Ed Carter thought our voting would determine what happened to our civilization. I don’t mean voting in voting-booths, of course.

You might try looking at it this way. Given that all possibilities always exist, your choices vote on which reality you wish to be in.

But that has problems.

Of course it does. No model can escape the limitations of its argument. Change context and you change the facts to be contended with. But it is nonetheless a productive way to see it. Feel your way into it, don’t try to logic it. You choose which reality you wish to inhabit.

Now, choosing isn’t the same as wishing. If you are in the East in the 1840s and you want to go to Oregon, or California, you don’t get there by saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice? I’m going to get there by intending that I’m there.” If you want to go to the Pacific, you have to take steps. On the one hand, every action begins with a decision or an implied intent; on the other hand, that intent is just turning the tiller or turning the steering-wheel. It doesn’t get you there by itself. Sustained intent is essential, but it is not sufficient.

And the same goes for civilizations and sub-civilizations and cultures and communities, all up and down the scale.

Indeed it does. A place to pause. Satisfied we aren’t lost yet?

I’m smiling. Maybe you got lucky. Our thanks as always.

 

Wednesday, May 15, 2024

6:35 a.m. “What’s it all about,” from yet one more viewpoint, this time the interaction of points of view among time-spaces. At least, that’s what I think you meant, last time.

You are accustomed, most of you, to think in terms of future, when you consider questions of purpose. “What is this leading toward? What may we become?” but it is a little more productive to consider the same question of meaning in past and present tenses, as well. It isn’t only, “What does this lead to?” It is, also, “What did this lead to?” And, “What are we actually doing now?”

You see? To understand anything, you need to consider what and how, or you cannot understand why.

It has always seemed to me that this is one of the things wrong with slogans like, “The end justifies the means,” or “Doing evil that good may come,” or even “This is necessary for the greater good.” Besides being convenient rationales for self-serving, they are also short-sighted. That is, wrong morally and wrong factually.

We won’t go into that now, so that we can proceed to the point we hope to elucidate, but perhaps we can look at that in another time. It boils down to: “You ignore context at your peril.”

So, what does the interaction do? What did it do? What will it do?

(Bear in mind that structuring it this way, though it may seem strictly logical to you, seems so mostly because it conforms to your ideas about flowing time. You have changed those ideas in one part of your mind, but the senses and your previous indoctrination preserve the more conventional idea within you, to a greater or lesser degree, depending.)

• Past. You live as you were “assembled.” You are composed of strands each of which “lived” its life, made its choices, became what it became, and serves as partial template for your life.
• Present. You make your choices among these elements within you, and you influence them as they influence you. We will need to say much more about this, but the point is, every element in the equation is functioning now, changing now, becoming the basis for its future now.
• Future. You are shaped by past decisions, but the future you that has been shaped has its input into the decisions that were made, because, again, it is all alive, it is all the eternal present.

The one feature that is obvious, no matter how you look at it, is –?

Impermanence.

Impermanence. Therefore, elementary logic tells you –?

The desired result cannot be to build something permanent. Or is it that, until we build something permanent, the game goes on?

Very good. Both, and neither.

I know, I know: It’s all in how you want to look at it.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We smile. So let’s look at it both ways, first one way at a time, and then, if it proves feasible, both ways at once, and if that proves impossible, one way, then the other, then the one in terms of the other, but this goes on and on, an endless process of what you call stepwise refinement. Better – if we can accomplish it – to show the two aspects singly and together, and leave further refinement to the interested individual.

Permanence. If life is building toward a goal, a structure, what could it be? Given that everything is mind-stuff, it cannot be something that 3D would recognize as a material structure.

That isn’t clear logically.

No, but let’s proceed. The setting-out of the reasons that it is logically defensible would be a longer process than is justified. Take it as given for now.

If life is but a dream, what “solid” result can that dream be after? Couldn’t you say that, in a way, reality is the universe “making up its mind” about something?

That’s both breath-taking and irritatingly vague.

It is, isn’t it? Do you suppose that may be why this hasn’t been spelled out once and for all, long ago?

Or let’s suppose that in fact no such permanent result can be achieved. Does that amount to the universe spinning its wheels? Is it all as the poet had one of his puppets see it, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Treat this as a real question, not a rhetorical one. Your response will help point the way.

Well, you could argue it either way, I suppose. The point of life certainly isn’t obvious to us as we proceed through it. Mostly we have to take on faith the idea that there’s a point to it that isn’t just a fiction in our minds. But for me, anyway, I find the evidence against the “tale told by an idiot” idea to be stronger, and I’ll tell you why. It isn’t any way scientific, but it is experiential. Life feels real, particularly when we experience it emotionally, and particularly when we experience it in positive emotions in terms of others.

Describe your experience.

Well, you know, even at the time it felt like that little moment meant something. I take it this was a set-up.

No, other than helping you experience it consciously, fully, rather than half your attention elsewhere.

I see. That sounds right. Well, I was returning some books to the UVA library, Sunday. From the parking garage to the Clemons library entrance is a good number of outside steps upward – the equivalent of at least two stories, maybe three. I had a lot of books in my bag, eight I think, and it was a lot of steps. I had to pause a couple of times on my way up. I was perhaps two-thirds to the top when a voice from near the bottom asked if I was all right I said, as I do, “I will be,” meaning when I get my breath back, and I thanked him for asking. At the top of the stairs, I was sitting on a bench waiting the few minutes for Clemons to open, so he caught up with me. He asked again if I was all right, and where did I want to go (he not realizing that this was where i was headed). I told him what was going on with me, and no big deal, and in a couple of minutes the library opened and we were inside and went our separate ways. The point here is that I noticed the genuine concern this stranger had. That happens to us all the time. Sometimes we are the recipients, sometimes we are the extenders of the concern, but in either case what is it but a selfless act of love connecting two people for no ulterior purpose and with no tangible result other than the connection itself. I am a white man in his late seventies. He is a black many probably in his fifties. We know nothing of each other but the moment, and the moment both was and was not anything special.

And, you see, the real in that moment is invisible, intangible, and is without setup or result, but it is what was real.

That’s  how it feels, yes. And that’s how it always feels when I’m moved to try to help somebody, or somebody helps me. It is the realest part of reality, but I couldn’t and can’t say why or how.

Ah, but we can. That’s what we are doing.

Oh! I get it!

Yes indeed. It is when you extend beyond yourselves that you experience more of yourself than your self-definition. That is why selfishness is self-defeating. It is a form of fear, a shrinking. Love is expansion.

As simple as that. Obvious, as you say it.

Obvious after we have spent quite a bit of time laying groundwork!

Well, we’re grateful for it, you know. Now, does this answer the question about the point of life? I mean yes, expansion is via love. But still, does that prove anything about life’s meaning?

We smile. It depends entirely upon what you means by “prove.” Logically, of course not. It doesn’t begin to prove it. But viscerally? You tell us.

Of course it does. It resonates. But I’m in the position of knowing what I cannot demonstrate logically or even tentatively.

And this is an obstacle, how? Given that no one persuades anyone of anything, what do you need logical proof to do? Setting out your truth is all you can do, all you need to do. Those who have ears will hear. All you can do – or anyone can do, very much including us – is try to clarify relationships, to hint why what is so is so. That’s all that can be done or need be done, because every individual is a world to himself or herself. That is, you live in whatever world you resonate with. Reality in effect confirms your expectations.

“We create our own reality.”

That is the sense of it, yes.

I think that isn’t the way most people interpret that saying of Seth’s.

So? Interpreting the ideas others express says more about where the interpreter is than it does about what is interpreted.

We’re well beyond an hour, but I feel impelled to say what has been in my mind for this while: “Freely you have received, freely give.” What’s the relevance?

Setting forth your best understanding is a form of love. Turning it into commerce would alter its character. In fact, we will discuss that next time, though it may seem an interruption of our exposition.

Okay. Our thanks as always for all this, a quarter of a century’s worth and more.