human potential

An article in Edge magazine by my friend John Nelson which references his novel “I, Human” which I liked very much.

http://www.edgemagazine.net/2017/03/how-advanced-technology-can-affect-our-consciousness/

From Chasing Smallwood, brought forth 11 years ago and more timely than ever.

.41. Worldwide Anti-slavery Society

[Sunday, February 26, 2006]

(7 a.m.) I begin to see it, my friend. I got the outline of it, but of course can’t tell the detail or how to make it practical – and I well understand that making it practical is not my job, as it calls for talents I do not have, and would lead me away from the talent I do have. But I will help you get out the word and we will see what happens.

Yes. If people in your time don’t respond, well – like I said – it won’t do itself, it needs people to fight. But this gives ’em a vision, for them that catch it.

All right, Joseph, proceed. And this time I’m going to raise objections and questions as I see them if only to help you to deal with your unseen audience.

Continue reading A way forward for our times?

From Chasing Smallwood.

.33. The challenge of our times

[Friday, February 17, 2006]

All right. It is 8 a.m., nearly, the start of a cloud-heavy morning. If you’re ready to answer [my brother] Paul’s question – what is the real challenge of our time, what is the equivalent of the Civil War to us – I’m ready to hear it.

You have heard it many times, each time in a slightly different context. You have expressed it many times, enough that it is just another of your beliefs. What is your Iona book about, after all?

Pardon us while we circle around the subject. You know how a dog has to circle before it can lie down and sleep, it is a reassuring habit.

Continue reading The challenge of our times

From the Rudolf Steiner website https://rudolfsteinerquotes.wordpress.com/

The more I read of Steiner, the more impressed i am. And isn’t this just what Rita and TGU have been saying?

Physical life is only a small part of spiritual life

ON FEBRUARY 16, 2017 BY RIDZERDIN ANTHROPOSOPHY

A friend who is reading my entire blog from earliest to latest said “I have read this blog post a number of times (as I continue through in chronological order and seem to be stuck  in this general vicinity). This may be the most powerful, meaningful description of us downstairs and them (well, the unknowable us) upstairs that I have come across to date.” So I thought I’d post it again, and maybe others would find it equally interesting.

[Continued from previous post]

R: Well, suppose there’s a world-wide catastrophe like Hitler represented – it seemed to us it was a world-wide catastrophe – would you react with some kind of negative emotion to that?

F: Um, well – we wouldn’t see it the way you see it. Would you react emotionally to an electrical storm, say? Or to – oh, a random number generator generating more ones than zeroes for a while? You know? We tend to see it more as an interesting natural phenomenon than as a life and death battle between good and evil. You see it that way, but you need to see it that way, that’s what you’re there for. But we do not.

R: Do you experience anything like what we would call love?

F: If you could take your understanding of love and divorce it of the — shall we say, warm fuzziness? Yes, of course, that’s what makes the world not only go ‘round, as you say, but it’s what makes the world! But love to us is the interpenetration of being. It is the fundamental oneness of everything. To us, you see, love means not rejecting Hitler, and the war, and the suffering. Love means incorporating that as well as everything else. It’s the binding energy. Gravity worked as well for Hitler as it did for Gandhi, and so does love. We can’t put it better than that. It isn’t quite the same when you’re not in isolation, because your way of judging things is different. Just as to you everything primarily looks separate until you remind yourself that it is not, to us everything primarily looks one until we remind ourselves that it could be seen otherwise.

R: Okay, so your experience of love is the common phenomenon, so to speak. It’s the common state of being.

F: It’s what makes the world – everything; life, the universe – possible. It’s what it is. It is to life what flesh is to bodies. No love, no life.

R: [pause] Okay.

F: We don’t get warmly fuzzy about gravity, either. [they laugh]

R: I shouldn’t have brought that subject up before we came in here. I’m going to bring it up later at a more appropriate time.

F: Gravity?

R: [chuckles] Mm-hmm. Okay. A bit of a change of topic here. Sometimes Frank seems to feel very dissatisfied with his life. How do you react to that?

F: Well, we’re used to it. [pause] There’s nothing wrong with dissatisfaction, there’s nothing wrong with any state.

R: So this isn’t a situation where you might give him some advice, or —

F: Oh, we’ll always give him advice! Will he take it? Or will he be able to take it? And — [pause]

Supposing you have a child and you want the child to perform some intricate task. You might make it harder for them to learn by hovering over them than by giving them a little distance. You might by giving them a little distance reduce the pressure on them, actually. In other words, we hear you saying we could help if we chose to by being closer, but actually not. Not in our judgement, anyway. But we’re always there when he asks. And we’ve certainly given him plenty of clues over the years. Plenty of nudges, really.

R: Do you understand the source of his depression?

F: Certainly.

R: In a way that you could help those of us who care about him, help him out in some way?

F: Well, the problem is, how do you know –how does anyone know — what is good or bad, what is right or wrong, what is helpful or not helpful? We appreciate the intent, but this is really his bicycle to learn to ride, and other than running along with the bicycle holding the seat until he sort of gets his balance to letting go, there’s not much one can do. Otherwise, he won’t really learn how to ride the bicycle. You know? He may get to the end of the driveway, but he still won’t have learned how to ride the bicycle. It will actually have crippled him rather than assisting him. This is not to say that it is bad to offer someone help. Of course it’s always good. Particularly out of the motive.

R: But it sounds as though your recommendation would be to take the same stance you’re taking, which is feel supportive but let him live his own life.

F: Well, you wouldn’t have any choice about that anyway. No one can live another person’s life. Well, I guess what we would say would be –

Frank: That always sounds so funny to me. I hear, “I guess.” And I think “what? Don’t you guys know the difference between I and we?” [chuckles] Get the editorial voice out of there. [A moment’s breathing, returning to an altered state.] Forgot where they were.

R: What I was asking was simply the most appropriate stance for the physical beings in your life – in Frank’s life – is to take the same stance you’re taking, which is to wish him well.

F: Well, we understand that, and that of course is right and good. We’re trying to delve a little deeper here. You could – theoretically – find the source of someone’s depression, or someone’s anxiety, or someone’s rage or any or either strong emotion or dominant emotional pattern, but as we say, it might not be a good thing to –

The impulse to help is always good. The care and compassion is always good. But there may not always be a point of application, and if there is a point of application, it may not always be really what’s needed. So that, supposing one had a fever so that certain germs could be burned out, reducing the fever might retard the process of burning out the germs. On the other hand, reducing the fever might prevent death, you know, so it’s always a matter of judgment.

To give you the bluntest answer, there’s no way that you can get at his sense of the meaninglessness of his life. He fights that out, but no one else can. If it were easy enough for someone to give him an answer, he’d have got the answer.

[interruption]

R: Okay, get settled in again here.

F: [Yawns] [laughs] In my case the Tao is Yin and Yawn. [they laugh]

R: I asked last time about whether the roles that we tend to play in our various lifetimes are the same, and you said no to that. I was wondering about that also in terms of life goals, of overall purposes. Does that tend to be the same, in a series of lifetimes?

F: [laughs] Only if you’re slow learners. [they laugh] No, there are so many goals and it’s – now, don’t misinterpret this, but — it’s so easy to do that you can accomplish a lot quite easily sometimes. And then it’s so hard to do that sometimes it can take a long series of things to work out different nuances of the problem. By “the problem” we mean, to experience not only a complicated emotion or a series of emotions, but the working out of them. Because the working out of them can cause – will cause – other problems, you see. It’s a long, long road. Sometimes you’ll need to be dominant and sometimes submissive, and sometimes downtrodden and sometimes the downtrodder. It’s – you know, it’s nothing new.

Let’s put it this way. You might have several lifetimes in a row in which you were a hard-driving executive type no matter what it showed in. But those lifetimes in a row might be not at all consecutive in terms of time; they might be all over the map in terms of time. So, it’s very hard for you to see a pattern like that.

R: I guess I had thought in terms of overall purpose in life, not at the level of being an executive, but —

F: We meant that as a character trait, not as a career.

R: Okay. But still, well for example, what is Frank’s overall purpose in this life? Can you state it in such a way, or is that just, are there too many to even speak about?

F: Well – there are some things we won’t speak about, only because some things need to be pursued not self-consciously. They need to be done between the lines. But we can certainly say that [pause] an experiencing of life in a very cloistered, almost monastic way, that profoundly alters the balance between this side and that side is a major portion of what he’s doing. We’d rather not say any more than that. He more or less knows that anyway. But, you see, there are things that can only be done if you don’t know what you’re doing ahead of time. For one thing, because it takes all the steam out of it if you know what you’re doing, believe it not.

R: I can imagine that.

F: Now, let’s go a little further here. Let’s say he plans six achievements, and by the end of this lifetime accomplishes anywhere from zero to six. In another expression, they won’t be the same set of goals. Even if they were the same set of goals, they wouldn’t be in the same circumstances. Even if they were the same set of goals in the same circumstances, they wouldn’t be in the same personality that shaped around the new person. So, there’s less seeming continuity than you might think.

But also supposing all six goals were accomplished and we/she/it/we/they, whatever, were to come in again, there would be a new agenda. Or a partly new agenda. Or the old agenda in a different set of circumstances. So, what you’re asking has a lot of logic behind it, but to us it looks a lot different than it does to you. [chuckles] You may have heard that before!

So we would say, no, every time you go in you have a different mix. That’s the best way we can put it. [pause] Now, we’ll put this in terms that are in terms of careers, but we don’t mean it that way, it’s just a way of expressing – Well, alright, we can do it in terms of an emotion! You wouldn’t expect someone to come in choleric, time after time after time after time. At least we would not. We wouldn’t expect one to come in who was scholarly, or monastic, or contemplative or artistic or executive or military. We wouldn’t expect the same thing all the time, although there might be predominant strands– even several.

In fact, look at the way that Frank has been able to discover his other connections, and you’ll see that he started with the ones that were the closest to him now. If you come up with six monks in a row, that doesn’t mean you’re always a monk; it means that’s the easiest thing for you to relate to this time.

R: Mm.

F: We heard you really get that one. [chuckles]

R: Mm. [pause] I don’t know if this is a meaningless question or not. Does the extent to which a person is able to fulfil their purposes in a particular life have to do with the next assignment, so to speak? Or some further assignment? I mean, are there certain purposes that ultimately have to be achieved?

F: Again, you’re looking at it from an individual point of view, and what we would have said would have been, “well, if that particular tool wasn’t shaped just right, there’ll be another and we’ll use that one, and even if there isn’t another, we can make do with something else,” you know? We don’t look at it as individually as you do, because to us the individual is almost an illusion. We know where you’re going – it’s not a meaningless question, at all, but perhaps that’s the theme of these sessions, the difference in appearance from our side and your side.

R: Mm-hmm. Well, then what you’ve just suggested though, that if the one tool doesn’t quite fit, there’s another–

F: We’re always making do. [they chuckle]

R: Does that suggest that there are certain patterns on your side that need to be filled, and that you’re looking for the right tool to fill those?

F: You could say that we’re performing extemporaneous drama, and trying our best to script it despite [laughs] the best efforts of all the actors! And there could be certain events –

Okay. Take a civilization as an event. If we create Western Civilization, with its mechanization and its desacrilization and all of the various attributes that are the west – to create that involves moving a huge amount of pieces on the board, so to speak. Now, if you have to do that at the same time as preserving all the free will of all the pieces, it becomes a very interesting question.

R: [chuckles] Interesting challenge.

F: The other part of that, though, is, all those pieces come in with a part to play. However [laughs] in the middle of the play they forget what their lines are, and they improvise. Or they choose not to play their lines, you know, or they play them badly. So that’s not a bad example. Yes, there’s purpose, is really what your question is. Do we on our side have a purpose on your side. And it is yes, but it’s not so much to get the painting painted as it is to have you all have the experience of painters, so to speak. Which gives us the experience of being painters. That may be clumsy, but that’s the best we’re going to do with that.

R: What about the purposes, then, on your side? You have purposes as well.

F: Well, the overriding long-term purpose is to get everybody back into full connection, so that we can see what happens next. That’s like our meta-purpose, I suppose. But within that purpose are all kinds of specific flavors of experience that we decided, “oh, yeah, if we did this, we could put this together.” Now, [pause] How to explain this?

You have, as you know, a reality in which there are innumerable realities, any of which can be chosen at any given time. Or, a better way to say it is, at any given time, there are x number of realities that can be chosen. [chuckles] It would be relatively difficult for you to walk into Caesar’s Gaul, or into the pyramid or something, physically. But you know what we mean.

Those [pause] shall we call them alternate, or possible worlds, are not quite as real as the one that’s chosen. [pause] But since it’s all in the eye of the beholder, they’re equally real ultimately. And I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense.

R: Well, it sounded more like an individual than a totality responding to purposes here.

F: For each individual, there is a realer and an unrealer path. You’re actually here today. That’s what feels real. To another individual, they’re elsewhere and theirs feels more real. So on our side, it’s all equally real, but on your side, it is not.

Frank: That doesn’t make any sense. [laughs] Does it? Doesn’t make sense to me!

R: We’re almost through, but I wanted to ask just one more question.

Frank: All right. Hang on a second. [laughs] Congratulations, gentlemen, that doesn’t begin to make sense.

R: [chuckles]

F: [re-entering] Okay.

R: How do your purposes get established? It’s just a little question.

F: They emerge. As things happen, they emerge. We know that you’re in the habit of thinking that outside of time-space there’s no time, but – it’s just not the same kind of time, you know? You can’t wait without duration. The argument’s been made by him a lot of times. We grow as you grow, unevenly, in reaction to what happens. And as we grow unevenly, there is felt, there is perceived, a lack, or an urge, and in the exploration of that the next thing emerges.

R: You’re exploring that as a totality? Or are you getting guidance from somewhere?

F: Ooh! [pause] [chuckles] That’s an interesting question. We have experienced it as, “it emerges.” And now you’ve made us very suspicious. [pause]

R: I know my question’s just an urge, and I have big suspicions about that.

F: As soon as you say that it becomes obvious that, in fact, that’s exactly what’s going on. But — why out of our experience would we not have understood that? [pause] Oh, wait a minute. [pause] The suspicion is that there are other parts of us that do understand this. Which means, either we haven’t gotten into contact with them, or it means that we are being [pause]

We may be more specialized tools than we happen to think of ourselves. [pause] We’re going to pursue that, and we’ll let you know.

R: All right. That’s good.

F: By the way, you two – this is just to scratch this itch – you said, and he says it all the time, too, “this may be a meaningless question.” That’s literally not possible. Every question has a unique origin. Even if it’s the same question on two different days. The origin and the penumbra of thought or emotion or experience around it will be different. It doesn’t mean they’re always productive, but it does mean they’re not meaningless. [chuckles]

R: Thank you very much. I appreciated this discussion tonight.

F: Well, thank you for participating.

 

As if by fate, this morning I find a massage in a bottle. That is, I find a notecard reminding me of a communication I had with Mr. Lincoln, or with someone calling himself Mr. Lincoln, or with Mr. Lincoln as I imagined him in my mind (there is never any possibility of certainty in such matters) that came ten years ago, and is even more vitally true today than it was when received.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Election Day. Another step closer to the abyss? A step back? Stay tuned.

I realized, writing to John King, that the stuff I have been given, this past year, is to a point. It was very clear – I lost it again – good thing it is in print, or on phosphors, or whatever.

Very stirred up, of course. Nothing to be done but vote – for whatever that is worth – and see. I have never felt so helpless at that level.

A good reminder, that – for I have never felt more in control. internally. We may have to write off political and economic “freedom” – and then? It can’t be seen, any more than Lincoln could see ahead.

Mr. Lincoln – thinking of you – what can you say to us in the 21^st century?

You yourself are learning that when all else fails you, you find yourself dependent upon providence. It isn’t that you become dependent upon providence, it is that you realize it, if you didn’t realize it before, and you realize it more earnestly, more deeply, if you had. You have read the saying, “man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” You mustn’t think of it as God lying in wait ready to pounce, but as God waiting patiently for your life to bring you to the point where you see how small a thing any one man is and how great the overarching power that fashioned and maintains what you call the garden.

You are in dark times, and darker times are probably ahead for you. There are brighter futures and darker, but the chances are many times to one that you have yet to experience the worst. Now here let me use your own life as an example for people in general. You will remember times when you were caught in circumstances that seemed to grind you down, and the grinding went on for many years. It was only after you escaped these circumstances that you realized that even what you do not desire, what you can scarcely stand – has value to you. Every place is a particular window on the world, and perhaps one window is as valuable as another. If you are in a particular fix, at least explore it with diligence. It may be worth more to you than you know.

Now, you must understand, I have more sympathy with George Bush than you do, for I have been in his place. No one not in that place can know the reality of it. You would do better to pray for him than to revile him. Remember what you read of General Lee, who prayed for his enemies, including me, every night. That did not stop him from fighting with all his strength, but he did not fight from hatred.

Yet the thought of General Lee is instructive as well in another regard. His cause was wrong. Doubly wrong in that it was integrally bound with a giant evil, and in that it was founded on a bad theory that could not have maintained itself, but would have wrecked itself in short order. Is this not the case today? Your people – who of course are still my people, yet very different from the people I knew, very alien in beliefs, habits, thought, values – your people are dividing ever more cleanly on questions that boil down  to love or fear, your Course in Miracles duality. Yet the

Let me start again. The people are dividing. Looking at it as a choice between love and fear, the division is cleaner within individuals but even there is not consistent. How much more confused and confusing, then, to look at the external results of so many individual civil wars.

If there were not so much fear, there would not be so much anger or fanaticism. If less anger, there would be less cheating in order to win at all costs. If less cheating, there would be more reliance on established procedures and traditions – leading to less fear, as the process reinforced itself. You move toward fear or away, continually. There is no standing still.

Do you think it coincidence that the country is so evenly divided between incompatible visions? It is the doing of providence, rather. This eliminates the possibility of a majority disregarding and squashing a minority – there are only minorities in play, neither set having a comfortable margin over the other.

The only way through it to transcend these differences. They cannot be forever papered over, and one will not prevail over the other without maiming the body politic. If the nation cannot survive half slave and half free – and it could not – how less likely that it will survive half fearful and half love-filled? Fear will conquer all, or love will. Can it be any other way?

Saying that love will conquer all is not unrealistic or mystical or absolutist. It is merely one way of saying that they that live in hope may spread their habit of thought, their way of being, so that it sets the tone for the entire country. Or – failing that – fear will drag everything down to the level of control.

What doomed the south, it might be said, is that slavery assured that those who ran society would act always from fear. The north, on the other hand, greatly hoped. It had its machinery, its trade, its vigorous new settlements and – except for the drag of slavery in it southern portion, which then threatened to become national in scope – it faced the future with optimism.

Now, in your time, your two cultural and political sides divide the hope and fear between them – which is why the long stalemate. The thing – the only thing – that will decisively tilt the balance is the issuance – or the non-issuance – within a certain time of an emancipation proclamation.

Joseph explained to you that the issues of states rights versus federal rights were morally balanced; the question of whether free government was possible if parts of it could secede at will was a vital question, but not a moral one. What made the Union cause predominate was that the emancipation proclamation threw into the balance the question of slavery or freedom.

So today you need to peer into the mists of so many issues contending. Find the moral issue that is at state. Throw that onto the pile and you will see the crisis resolve.

Notice I do not claim that it will resolve smoothly and evenly, nor necessarily without bloodshed. The Emancipation Proclamation did not prevent Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and Vicksburg and all the terrible fighting of 1864. But it made victory possible, and made it meaningful.

What principle, turned into practical reality, would make your struggles not only worthwhile but in fact a triumph for America as a whole and humanity in example? This is your puzzle to solve, but some thought should make it obvious enough.

My assumption is that it is a more profound definition of freedom, a clearer statement of the fact that

1) people are more important than abstractions,

2 governments are supposed to serve, not command.

3) “individuals” do not, cannot, exist in isolation but in community.

Yet this does not come clear. I feel like I need a key that I cannot find, though it is probably in front of my face.

Have you not been pursuing a deeper connection for the past 15 years? Can that not be a part of the new equation you are attempting to decipher?

Yes, this very communication process is part of it. And it has given me a different way of thinking about providence and our connection to the other side, which some think mere superstition and others think merely a matter of following orders.

Does not fear stem largely from the belief that you on the physical plane are alone and on your own? Does that not add desperation to the emotional makeup of the contenders?

It adds ruthlessness, for sure.

Churchill, Roosevelt, many of the armed forces leaders firmly believed in providence and believed that so long as they fought for good, they would be aided. It is a powerful assistance, and is not in any way illusion. Of course it carries with it a responsibility to continually examine you conduct to assure that you are doing the will of God, as best you can discern it, rather than merely your own.

This you see is the hidden dimension. This is why a God-fearing people have an advantage over those who do not value or perceive such a connection. It has nothing to do with God being pleased to be recognized, I believe. God doesn’t need our recognition. It has to do, rather, with men being able to put themselves into the right attitude to do the will of God – which will be the best for them. If they know it, they live in a very different world from those who do not.

And perhaps you can see that the question of a belief in divine providence is among the issues that have fueled your culture war. They that believe in God and seek to do his bidding as best they discern it may go very far astray in fact but as long as they seriously question and stoutly attempt to live their faith, they will have a strength denied those who attempt to live as if they were only humans with no greater, more transcendent, connection. Here is the fire that fueled what you call the religious right. They could have been easily countered had their adversaries believed, whatever the specifics of their belief.

One man connected to the other side (one might say) is as a mighty host, and one relying only on his own resources is puny by comparison even if his cause is objectively right.

That is as I see it.

Thank you, Mr. Lincoln. I will send this around – to many who will agree with little or none of it – and we will hope it reaches some who may profit by it.

 

“Gurdjieff was decisive, that his school was a school of individuation, and that a man must find his own work in life. How should he know it, how choose it? That, no one else could tell him. There were certain laws about it, however — three in particular. The goal of achievement which a man decides to aim at must be such that it involves no violation of moral norms. Secondly, he must get something for himself out of it — whether it be money, health and happiness, or honour; some genuine profit must accrue to himself. Thirdly, the task he assumes must be neither too big for him, nor too small. If it be too big, he will incur failure, compensated by megalomania; if too small, his powers will decline even with success and his career will be embittered. But provided these three conditions be fulfilled, it does not matter what anyone thinks of a man’s work. All that is necessary is that it should fit him; and that it should be his true desire — if you like, his whim — to do it. For example, to have the best stamp-collection in the world would not appear to many people to be a life ambition of the highest dignity — and perhaps it is not. But it is a job of a man’s size: and if it is your real whim, you had better live for it. Whether you succeed is, of course, another matter.”