Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

 

Saturday, November 23, 2024

7:40 a.m. Reading Oliver Sachs, The River of Consciousness, I had ideas for a blog entry, probably gone now, but let’s see. Jon Holt, you were a psychiatrist, you were an explorer like us, what say you? For that matter, are you in direct contact with Sachs?

I can be. As you should know, anybody can be, if they have the sympathetic resonance. Just because he and I are both dead, so-called, doesn’t mean we are any closer or farther away than when we were in the body. The difference is in the distractions life throws up in the 3D world of separation.

Our language tempts us to think that once outside the body, our minds are less focused, less conscious, than they were.

Yes and no.

Heard that before!

Well, most things are a matter of how you look at them. In the 3D, you tend to get seduced by one way of seeing things, just as Sachs says in what you just read. Confirming evidence piles up; contradictory evidence tends to be forgotten or repressed. It requires a certain amount of awareness and determination to remember that one way of seeing things can never be the whole story. Nor two, for that matter. The closer you look, the more nuances you see, and so the more exceptions you find to your generalizations, until you have Swiss cheese and then maybe only crumbs without much connection.

So yes, the non-3D mind is less focused – until it is. And no; the non-3D mind is also less distracted once it is focused. both halves true, neither half the whole story.

So Oliver Sachs and I may coexist without consciously communicating in any way I could describe, and yet we wouldn’t be separated, we’d just be – well, coexisting. But then a friend contacts us and holds us in mind at the same time, and there is a connection. Did anything change? Well, yes and no. We are still what we were; our “vibes” aren’t any different, we haven’t been changed. But we have been brought to each other’s mind, you could say, and so although we aren’t changed, our shared awareness is a change. So, yes but no.

And I get that one of the functions of the 3D is to facilitate just that kind of non-3D to non-3D interactions. Hadn’t thought of that before.

You contact Lincoln and the mind you call Smallwood, and Carl Jung and Lincoln Steffens and Hemingway and various people you knew in the body. These are all the equivalent of neural pathways you have facilitated. Perhaps Lincoln and Jung and Hemingway would never have had any reason to work together, or (more likely, in fact) two or more of them would have “come together” from someone else’s 3D associations. It is a real construction of a non-3D link.

Probably for purposes we can’t grasp.

Purpose that isn’t any of your business, maybe. You do what you do for your own purposes, and yet everything you do has other effects, most of them unsuspected by you if only because of geographical or temporal distance. Everything ripples, and nobody knows all the patterns, nor needs to.

So let’s talk about my half-forgotten theme that came to me, reading Sachs.

You sure you want this in the open, on the record?

I wasn’t thinking it would be anything particularly sensitive.

It is all about what you see yourself doing.

Ah, I get it. Delusions of grandeur.

Accusations of delusions of grandeur. Within proper limits, what you have in mind is perfectly appropriate. And, you do keep it within limits. You are not deluded into thinking you are more important than you are. If anything, you are in the direction of the fallacy of insignificance.

In any case, I see the need.

Sachs was describing why certain ideas may come to nothing, or may come to nothing for 50 years or more, and he was showing how the scientific mind no less than the artistic mind is vulnerable to error for various reasons, not all conscious ones.

And I have been saying that our next civilization will be based on many things, some of which we have discarded as superstition.

[And I remember, typing this, that actually this was originally something we got from the guys. I have believed it long enough now that I am regarding it as my own idea, not that there is ownership of ideas.]

His point is that there are reasons why the truth in some things cannot be seen at a certain time or from certain intellectual standing points.

But the thinkers don’t usually recognize their own blind spots.

Considering the amount of psychic energy that goes into creating and maintaining those blind spots, that’s hardly surprising!

But I don’t have the background or the training or the time or the energy to do the shuffling though all the data that must be out there. No one does.

No, no one does, but civilizations aren’t built by any one person. Even an Einstein, a Newton, an Emerson, a Yeats, can make only a tiny contribution to changing how people see things – but nothing wrong with that, as your guys always say. A tiny bit of work carefully done, leads to future possibilities.

One thing there I see I would have disagreed with Sachs, he seems to have believed in luck, in chance.

That is one way to see things. It is only wrong if taken to be an absolute. Similarly, your way of seeing things is only wrong if taken as an absolute. By now you should know, nothing can be said that cannot be contradicted truly. Life contains all contradictions.

And does not contradict itself, I know. Sort of hard to see how a thing can be true and not true.

Instead of saying “be,” try saying “seem.”

Aha!

Yes. Most of what people know is actually how something seems from a point of view, not how it is absolutely, world without end amen.

And that’s why we need to be re-examining what we think we know.

If people could get into the habit of thinking, not, “This is how things are,” but “This is how things seem,” they’d find it less disruptive when they were forced to go with the flow. And your times – that were my times too, obviously – are plenty strong on flow.

Any concluding words? This doesn’t feel complete but I don’t know what if anything it is missing.

The reason you have been led toward uncovering your unconscious impulses, your habits and screens and scripts and all the unconscious filters that separate you from the here-and-now is so that you could be able to do just what we’re talking about:  to reexamine your mental and spiritual world in light of a wider, freer consciousness. Living in a freer spot amounts to living life more abundantly – and that more abundant life enables you to ask better questions, experience deeper meanings.

Clear, as soon as you say it. Okay, Jon, thanks. I trust that you will contact us if we can somehow help you, and in return we’ll keep an ear to hear you if you come prompting.

 

Friday, November 8, 2024

1:40 a.m. I don’t know that I ever saw so plainly how an event like an election provides a fleeting opportunity to learn something about our own obscure processes. Nancy woke up on Wednesday, heard that Trump had won, registered the fact sort of neutrally, and snapped the radio off again. I learned of it at 2 a.m. or so, when I was up and browsing. Similarly, I shrugged. Not surprised, but not dismayed either.

Others, though, are responding in great fear, or in prospective apprehension, or in reasoned and reasonable worry – or, if they are on the other side of the divide, they are in hope and even excitement.

I have tried to get people to see that their reaction tells them nothing about whether or not they are feeling the future, but it tells them a lot about who they are right now. Only, you have to look and be willing to see.

It puts me in mind of the election of 1828, when sitting president John Quincy Adams was defeated by iron-hard, intolerant, self-righteous Andrew Jackson. That was not merely a lost election but the end of a way of doing things, the end of caucus elections among a small number of representatives, away from the cultured, somewhat insulated world of an Eastern and Southern aristocracy. It was the irruption into political life of the raw West, of the common people, of the previously excluded. It was a true revolution, and to the educated of the day it seemed the crack of doom. Could Jackson even read? Would he become a dictator? Would he not sweep aside the rule of law and become a sort of king?

Not every criticism of Jackson was wrong; not every fear of Jackson’s rule was warranted, not every one that was warranted was borne out in fact. An old saying has it that no dish is ever served as hot as it is prepared. Nor of course do we ever have the facts as to what another person’s motivations and hidden inner springs may be, given that the person himself may not know!

But people’s fears and their hopes are very high, unbounded by any realism yet. The sky will fall – or the promised land will be attained – and life’s unavoidable contradictions will not be allowed to spoil it this time (or, on the other side of the fence, will not save us this time).

All the tea-leaf reading, all the certainties! And what is it but Psychic’s Disease? “I feel this so strongly, it must be true.”

Well, you know what you feel. Is it too much trouble to examine why you feel that way, what it says about who you are? Don’t put it on “the objective situation.” It isn’t that you feel the way you do because “any reasonable person would.” Step back from the “objective situation” and pay a little more attention – a lot more attention – to your, subjective, situation. If you are in fear, how are you in fear? What does it say of you, that your belief in the world, in life, does not uphold you? Does your fine philosophic understanding vanish in the face of “real life” events? And, if so, how much is your precious philosophy worth? If it vanishes in the mist when you face something you’d rather not see, is it real? Was it ever real?

But there’s not much use in saying all this, though I may as well, since it came pouring out. It is the strangest thing to me, but people can’t see that the objective thing is not what they think they fear, but that they fear. What you think may happen may or may not turn out to become fact, but either way the one fact that you can bank on is what you are feeling and what it is based on within your psyche.

It is so odd – and so accustomed a situation for me – I can see the hopes and fears of both sides, and to me the processes and flavor are pretty similar, if opposite sides of a coin, but to either side, the other side consists of fools and knaves. There are plenty of fools and knaves, all right, but they aren’t conveniently lumped in only one party. Yet people seem comfortable only when they can tell themselves that ii is that way: They are angels, their opponents are fools and knaves.

It’s like living among people who have been hypnotized, who think they are in normal consciousness. And the one thing they are likely to agree upon is that this way of seeing things is mistaken, or wrong-headed! Blessed be the peacemaker, for he shall be shot at from both sides.

You guys want to add anything?

You seem to be doing well enough on your own.

Am I going too far?

Not too far in expressing your opinion. That doesn’t mean your view is the only way to see things, of course.

What? What?! Okay, which are you, fool or knave?

Yes, very funny, but it is worth remembering that even the most accurate analysis of anything must fall short of comprehensivity (if that is a word) because there are always more ways to see things, each of which can provide further education. So, your stricture not to confuse one’s fears with analysis is well placed, but not the only thing that may be said, because of course people’s fears also have an objective component. Yes, their fears will show them who they are, if they will pay attention, but there isn’t any difference in this than in any analysis of a situation: One hopes and one fears, and sees what happens. The one side is afraid of the destruction of certain safeguards. The other side is afraid of subterranean manipulation subverting popular will. They are not unreasonable fears. The danger is – as always – when fear swamps cool judgment and persuades it that fear is the only rational response.

Certainly we can see the indirect evidence of people always wanting to divide people into camps, presumably so that the situation can be manipulated. It seems to me that both camps see some of the same worrying problems, but they are prevented from joining to attack them constructively because analysis of the problem gets short-circuited by demonizing the presumptive villains behind the scenes.

Remember the Maharishi Effect. Remember the unbreakable connection of your non-3D components. Remember that All Is One. It isn’t hard to keep the world together, if that is your intent. Just don’t expect to enlighten the world to its own nature by some peaceful process, all love and light and never Sturm und Drang. As long as souls will coexist in 3D to work out their destiny, there will be contention and cooperation, strife and peace, triumph and tragedy. If you don’t set your heart of what is impossible, you won’t get it broken when what can’t be, isn’t. But if you live in faith that life is good, that all is well, you reap the reward of at least relative tranquillity.

And you guarantee being called escapist.

So what?

Oh, I agree, but still, there it is. Pretending a siege of Babylon is always in fashion as hard-headed common-sense. Seeing what is, is rarely in fashion.

Let’s not get to feeling sorry for ourselves.

Smiling. No. No reason to. Well, this is one of those sessions where I’ve done all the lifting. Nothing special to add?

Patience. Have patience with those who can’t see things as you do. You do not know but that you may change your mind, or may see things you don’t see at the moment. We don’t say you will; we say always, you may, so it is well to leave yourself allowance for it.

Okay. I get the feeling you have more to say, another time, and if I hadn’t run on so long, you might have said it here. But there’s always another time, until there isn’t. Till then.

 

Thursday, November 7, 2024

6:15 a.m. I’m not sure I quite made the point, in yesterday’s ILC gathering, that our reaction to the election results is valuable chiefly not as an indicator of coming attractions but as an indicator of our idea of coming attractions. If we are filled with fear, or joy, or mixed feelings, or whatever – it is the feelings that are real, and that are valuable to us as illuminators of part of ourselves of which we may not be very conscious. If people are in fear, the things they fear may or may not be, or become, real – but what is real right now is the fear itself, and it is always worthwhile to know what we usually cannot know.

But I am seeing that what is obvious to me may not be coming out of my pen all that obviously. You guys want to take a crack at it?

The concept is not complicated, but the understanding of it may be impeded until people remember that they themselves are real; the 3D world and the events and their own body and life in 3D are only somewhat real. That is, the events are shadows; the feelings they reveal within you are substance.

Yes, that says it more clearly, thanks.

Some will think you are wishing the world away, or, let’s say, are defining it away. But until the distinction is made between 3D world as theater and your life in 3D as reality, shadow is always going to be taken for substance. It is only “common sense,” after all.

Than which there is nothing more misleading, sometimes.

Of course. Common sense reflects the accepted understanding, and has no way to get beneath that understanding. In face, common sense is the chief obstacle, often, to penetrating beneath the deceptive surface of things. It is adjusted to a certain way of seeing things. Why would it want to encourage “nonsense” or – at best – a problematic way of rearranging the mental formations?

Any advice today for people who are not happy with the elections? Or, for that matter, for whose who are?

We subscribe to your mother’s saying, “Don’t holler before you’re hurt.” And for those currently traveling hopefully, we remind you of the perils of counting your chickens before they hatch. Life in general usually provides less than it seems likely to deliver – but that is less of evil as well as less of good. Don’t take counsel of your fears, but don’t let yourself be discouraged if the onset of the millennium is delayed. A mental construct easily projects expected consequences in a simplified and exaggerated form, casting shadows on the walls: goblins or angels.

Naturally life is not going to measure up to either the fears or the promise. Life is full of cross-purposes, internal contradictions, compromises, evasions, constructive adaptation, a million things. You all know this, for the good and sufficient reason that this is you. You, not that “external” soap opera that seems so self-evidently real, are life. The elections of 1828 – how real are they now? Yet the souls who were shaped in those days persist, so which was realer, the event or the spectator? Not quite that simple, but almost.

Yet the event is not meaningless, either.

Of course it is not. But it doesn’t mean only what it may seem to mean. Vox populi  is the voice of God, you will remember.

Interestingly, in that little pause I suddenly remembered how Lincoln would have the confidence of the common people, and how they would sustain him.. Trump is no Lincoln, but I can imagine that what we are seeing is the people, stubbornly trying to get their government back.

And, you see, that is you getting caught up in the “external” drama and temporarily forgetting to keep yourself at the center of your life.

Is it?

Well, all right, it is and it isn’t. It is, in that you are looking at the social situation as it appears to be, rather than remembering that you are integrally connected to anything you can see. It isn’t, in that what you are seeing does exist on its own regardless of how it reflects yourself to yourself. Both.

So the point is not the situation or even my own personal situation as it may be reflected to me by my reaction to the situation. It is that I am in danger of forgetting my relation to life.

“Danger” is too strong a word, but temptation, yes. Any strong soap opera has the potential to suck you into the drama. In fact, that is what it is supposed to do. But this can be either productive or not, depending upon how you get sucked in.

If you lose yourself in a tale of victims and villains, and high drama, you lose an opportunity to remember to learn what it may teach you if you apply it to your own life, your own being. But if you lose yourself in the drama while being aware of your reactions to it, you may learn something.

Decades ago, I decided that good fiction does not leave us unchanged, but teaches us something about ourselves and the world, and if it doesn’t, it is the equivalent of chewing gum.

And so, life. If you follow the story line told by outside events and do not relate that story line to yourself, you are missing the point.

I can hear people thinking, “Escapism.”

Ironic, isn’t it? What could be more escapist than ignoring the deep currents of one’s own life because of the distracting allure of external events? There is no reason to follow or to not follow current events: That is a matter of taste and priorities. But what matters is being conscious of your life, being aware of your situation, being alert to your opportunities, and you can’t do that very well if your attention is elsewhere.

Well, thanks for all this.

You have perhaps forgotten that for years, you would say to yourself, “Life is good.” Could it be that the reason you have forgotten about repeating it is that the message sunk in?

Quite possibly. It seems self-evidently so, to me. Makes it harder to get into a blue funk, crying, “Woe is me,” or “The end is near!” One sighs for all that lost drama. 😊 Till next time.

 

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

5:40 a.m. I am suddenly struck with the idea of contacting Mr. Lincoln about what is going on, it has been so long. I was feeling my deep weariness and it put me in mind of him saying there was a core of tiredness in him, toward the end, that nothing could touch. And that reminded me of our conversations of nearly 20 years ago.

Mr. Lincoln, if this is appropriate, a few words on the deeper things going on in our country?

You will remember, they are all your countrymen. There isn’t one legitimate set of opinions and everything else error and wickedness.

Yes, I do know that. Learned it a while ago.

Some never do. But you are not wanting to counteract a feeling of despair, I know. You are wondering, where does this all lead?

I am. I take the politics of it to be only the surface phenomena. As usual, I’d want to know what is going on beneath the surface of things.

You know that already. Nothing has changed.

Since the last time we talked, you mean? I don’t remember how long ago it was, but a while.

Nothing has changed in the order of creation. The world still turns, and it turns despite us, and regardless of us – and yet it hinges on us. And that isn’t so easy for people to understand. They may see it one way, occasionally they are able to see it two ways, but in my experience, only few can see it from every side. It is like saying, God is personally interested in you, and God has other fish to fry, and God will grind you for your own good if need be. The three things seem to contradict each other, and people can’t make sense of it.

It’s all in how you look at things.

It is – but the other ways of looking at things are still valid. That’s the thing. Any way you look at a thing, there’s always another way you might look at it, and see it a little better, a little fuller.

Your specialty in life, seems to me.

If you can’t see the other fellow’s views the way he does, you can’t understand him. That doesn’t mean you’re going to agree with him, but at least you will know why you don’t agree, and how you don’t agree. If you don’t see things as he does, your opposition or even your support will have its flanks in the air, you won’t be rooted in anything, and you are likely to keep getting surprised.

So, all this polarization. My own metaphysics would say it reflects what we are as individuals, including a whole lot of unconsciousness.

Now if you will look at people’s reactions as individuals, you will see that no two people are reacting exactly the same. Some are outraged, some despondent, some scared, some indifferent. This isn’t because they do or do not understand the situation: It is a reflection of what they are. Are you all upset by the elections?

I can’t put much stock in any of it, for some reason. It doesn’t seem vital, the way it did for so much of my life. It feels all superficial and unknowable.

So you see, that is your reaction. That is what the election is to you. At other times in your life you would have been affected quite differently.

Oh yes. I wasted years of my life on politics, rooting for the team, believing that events followed the politicians rather than the other way around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I can’t believe in it anymore.

And perhaps that is a stage that many go through, putting their eggs in a political basket and worrying over the basket. Have you thought of politics as a displacement activity?

Surely not a phrase you ever heard in 3D life.

I have had time to learn a few things eavesdropping, you know.

Smiling too. Well, displacement activity? Meaning, keeping people busy while other things happen?

Yes, but not what you may think. Not a magician’s trick to pull the wool over your eyes while he does some sleight of hand. A way of channeling energies that exist and must be dealt with but perhaps cannot be dealt with so easily on their own terms.

I’m getting that you mean energy generated by life that may be discordant and might even be dangerous if not led into safer channels.

When politics breaks down, you get wars sometimes. When wars get out of control, you get an end of civilizations, sometimes, as happened in 1914 and 1939 and even in 1861. None of those wars could ever have left the societies involved as they had been.

I sort of remember us discussing that, a long time ago.

It is better to hash things out in all their ugliness than to let them simmer beneath the surface until they break out uncontrolled.

So, the anger and the fear and contempt and all that are actually being vented by campaigns, so that it acts as a safety valve?

Is it not obvious? Your politicians ride the wave, whatever it may be, persuading themselves that this expresses their deep belief, but you will notice how conveniently the belief changes in the face of any demonstration of a new wave. But nobody creates the wave. They may ride it, may encourage it, may fight it – they don’t create it. This is something vastly larger than human scale.

Yes, I see that. The astrology of the moment determines the mixture of forces in play. The combined psychology of all living humans determines what is at issue. The contemporary manifestations of these energies (culture, media, popular feeling, etc.) determines roughly what the bounds of the arena will be. We as individuals are way smaller-scale than that. That is the playhouse we step into, to do our best.

You can find the same sense of things in my speeches, if you know how to read them. But of course they were my words to my contemporaries. What else did I have to offer them?

I suppose you might have mentioned displacement activity. (Smiling.) I’m sure The Times of London would have commented in a learned fashion.

Or The Times of New York. But seriously, it’s all in my state papers, between the lines. I said I never tried to steer events but to be guided by them. The one would have been beyond my strength, and the other was plenty. It seems to me the prudent course is to do your own proper work, to tackle each day as it comes, to remember to reflect, looking for larger meanings and subtle opportunities, and to trust in God. I was never a conventional Christian but I could tell that our affairs were somehow a working-out of something larger, and I didn’t and still don’t know any more appropriate way to say it than to call it God’s purpose here below. I know that grates on some people, but they are free to rephrase it however they like. It’s still the same reality: There’s something always being worked out, on a scale larger than human but somehow tied to human, and the individual- so tiny in the scales – yet is somehow important in the working-out.

Well, I feel it too, and couldn’t have put it that well. I suppose it is one more special case of All Is Well.

In my blackest days, I never knew a day when all was not well – but sometimes it required a copulate change of mood before I could see it. Obvious now.

I am always moved to say it just this way, don’t know why: God bless you, Mr. Lincoln. And thank you for this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

4:35 a.m.  Reading Jeff Shaara’s Last Full Measure, purchased yesterday at 2^nd Chance Books. Why I am reading it through the night, I don’t know, but I am suddenly moved to interrupt that and do this instead. (At 11 p.m. I had wanted to continue on consciousness, but I got, “We would, but you cannot sustain it. Wait till you are again energized. It involves more than willingness.”)

So – consciousness. I got a sudden stab of insight that led me to put the book down, but of course by the time I got upstairs to my desk, it was gone. Presumably your filing system still functions? I get the feeling you haven’t really said what you want to say.

That’s true. If it were easy to convey, it would have been said – and heard – long ago, but as you will remember, Thoreau pointed out, it takes two to speak the truth, one to speak and one to hear. It is not enough to say something true in a way that you yourself understand it. It is necessary and not always possible to say it in a way that your auditor will hear. Since you never know if words mean the same to others as they do to you, some care is required, particularly since most people usually assume the words have only the meaning they themselves assign to them. That is, the words seem self-evident, so that any different meaning can only be fanciful or deceitful in nature.

How well I know it!

You know it, though, from both ends, because of course you are no exception to the rule of assuming you know what the other person means when you hear the words.

Hence the value of person-to-person contact, and non-3D to non-3D contact – of intuition complementing sensory data.

And hence the desirability of remembering that plodding has its valuable place in exposition. Since words cannot be pinned down to only one meaning, a second-best is to hedge them in by careful pointing out what is not intended. Bus as people see, it is a tedious process. Hence, first we plod, then later we condense, then sometimes we offer a symbol, a non-verbal equivalent.

So, consciousness –

It isn’t like we have forgotten!

But we don’t seem to get any farther forward, either.

A little plodding, as reminders:

• Consciousness is subtractive, in that reality is entirely consciousness, but no compound being can encompass it all.
• The rings of protection you have thrown around your conscious awareness are there not to torment you, nor frustrate you, but to foster and protect and nurture you.
• As you grow in – character, let’s call it – your ability to experience yourself grows, and so various defensive rings may be allowed to come down, widening your field.
• Every time you widen your field, effectively the world changes for you.
• Bruce Moen talked about belief-system crashes, and sometimes cascading belief-system crashes, resulting from one inexplicable experience or thought or realization too many. This is one way your world may change.
• Others experience an increase in consciousness gradually, like the sun rising peacefully in the morning.
• Some receive a jolt from the so-called outside world: an experience of psilocybin, peyote, LSD, whatever.
• Some receive a physically or mentally traumatic experience – an NDE, a debilitating stroke, a shattering loss – that forces them (enables them, as they sometimes realize) to experience the world – that is, experience themselves – differently.

There are a million ways you are led toward waking up. It happens all the time, even to those who think their lives are watching television and drinking beer. But not every opportunity is seized, and – perhaps this has not occurred to you – not every opportunity need be seized, even should be seized. The opportunities are inherent in your life of continuous choosing, and there are no wrong choices.

Perhaps you can see from this incomplete list of possibilities that the nature of someone’s “enlightenment” is going to be radically different depending upon how it comes. Trauma and gentle sunrise do not have the same flavor. And you should also remember that what you receive cannot be separated from what you are. It is the same thing. We repeat, for the sake of the studio audience: They are the same thing. What you are is what you get. If you cannot intuitively feel the truth of this, you have a few things yet to learn.

And I see that the same person may easily experience different modes of expansion at different times in his life.

Certainly. You are not who or what you were at 20, or 30, or 40, etc. Your life is not an endless repetition of the same song. If life offers anything beyond continuous change, it is diversity of experience.

You wouldn’t expect a person who had a mescaline-fueled awakening of the senses – as I did at age 24 – to experience further openings by other means (as I also did, and continue to do) that produce the same results, the same kinds of expansion.

Certainly not. Although, for some people, repetition of experience, progressive deepening of familiar grooves, may be quite appropriate. For you, no.

So what have you told us, here? Anything revolutionary?

What we gave you today will be quite revolutionary, for some. For others it will seem to be (will be) merely common sense, and the revolutionary aspects of seeing things this way will not be apparent. Some will shrug, being unaffected, and say, “Nothing new here.”

But they will be wrong.

Wrong, right – the words mean less than meets the eye. People find what they need when they’re ready for it. All is always well.

What I draw from this is that new sensations (peace, tranquility, assurance, whatever) may be enjoyed and need not be figured out.

Nothing wrong with figuring them out, if that’s what you do. But no, not necessary, either.

Well, I’m very grateful to have come to where I am. I couldn’t have done it alone.

OT1H, as Dana Redfield pointed out, “Nobody crosses alone.” OTOH, how could anyone ever be alone? You are individual and separate in a manner of speaking, only. You – we – “they” – are part of the All One Thing. Don’t you suppose that fact is going to come equipped with consequences?

I do, actually. Saying “alone” is mostly a manner of speaking. Yet, there is a sense in which we are alone. “Somewhat” alone, I guess.

Somewhat alone, in a world of 3D that is somewhat real, yes.

My thanks – and the thanks of others – for all of this. I suppose it amounts to thanking ourselves, and that – come to think of it – amounts to the thanking God for the day and the world that is at the heart of all true religions. Till next time, then.

 

Monday, November 4, 2024

2:40 a.m. You say we are at the ragged edges of an advance of consciousness, and don’t know what to do with them. This feels true but doesn’t yet explain causes or effects of anything. But I guess I’m not going to get this at the moment. Maybe later.

9 a.m. Proceed.

Your ideas of consciousness and awareness and higher consciousness and higher mind and greater access, etc., are skewed by unconscious assumptions. As usually, we mean not you alone but “you” plural.

In this case meaning everybody, or some of us on the quest, or what?

That is more complicated than may appear. Let’s just say, for the moment, that we are making a general statement of the state of affairs at the early 21^st century in the West and in those parts of the non-Western world most heavily affected by Western culture. That ought to be broad enough! But no statement can be universally applicable, you know.

All right.

We should do this in bullets, for the usual tactical reason: much to associate, little way to organize it initially, and some disadvantage in organizing it prematurely.

We can work better if I am not trying to discern or construct patterns as we go along.

Exactly: That tendency would close off avenues, because you would not see the relevance. Better to keep input open and sort it out later.

Or actually, usually, watch as it sorts itself out.

It must look like that. In reality you and we are both perceiving patterns as we go, and the way becomes clear. But as you feel (and rarely say), we too are often somewhat in the dark as we begin, only finding our orientation in the general drift.

That implies you are being guided by a higher or deeper intelligence.

Who is to say we are or are not? Try not to forget, “As above, so below.” It always applies; it is a fractal reality. Find the patterns, find the analogues, hence find the clues.

So, to it, and we’ll see how well we can do. We know where we want to wind up, but we don’t yet know how we will get there, or what we will include. Because we work at associating as we go, we too get surprised by the connections we make, and the paths such successive connections lead us on. You tend to give us more credit for pre-knowledge and therefore less credit for intelligent feeling-around, then we perhaps deserve.

• It is not really a matter of mental “states” meaning separate, divisible “locations.”
• You don’t move between layers, though it can feel like that.
• No ultimate divisions, remember, either between minds, or within minds. “All is one” means all is one, not “All is many but sometimes they cooperate.”
• No “old souls,” and “young souls” and all that, except in a certain context, and even then more notionally than really. It depends on what the word means, and people tend to slide over the problem if they even see it.
• So what is the difference – because there is a difference, you can feel it, and even before you feel it for the first time, you may intuit it: “There’s got to be more to life than this.”
• Why do your moods fluctuate? Why does your level of physical energy fluctuate? Why does your level of intellectual curiosity or ability to perceive, ability to reason, vary?

We are in 3D, and life is continual movement.

True, certainly. But does that clarify anything?

It seems to say the external world affects us, as clearly it does, even if you define the external world as the unknown part of ourselves.

Let us go very slowly here, for it may finally be the time when we can clear this up.

“This” being –?

More bullets, slightly different subject:

• Internal and external worlds. Non-3D and 3D components. Unconscious mind (that is, the part of the mind you are not conscious of) and conscious. “Altered states” and “ordinary reality.” All the same thing.
• Hence, external influences – the astrology of the moment; the interplay of others on the world-stage; interactions between “past” and “present” and “future” lives. Hereditary traits, lingering results of traumas, “unfinished business”: all part of you.
• You – we – are greater than can be described, because the descriptions are geared to separations which are only somewhat real, and at that, not very.
• “It’s all one thing” means, it’s all one thing. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, energetically, any way you can think to divide it, it is a false division, as the Buddha figured out. Make a distinction, make an error. Of course in practice, life is making distinctions: How can we write without distinguishing this word from that word, and choosing which to employ? But remember, it is only somewhat real. Keep coming back to that and it will keep reminding you not to get carried away, not to let yourself be blinded by appearances.

Now put these two sets of associations together and let’s see if we can come to greater clarity.

Me do it?

Yes. We’ll both know better how it struck you and what you did or did not misinterpret.

I get, no obstacles. Everything is connected, so any obstacles are – not of our own manufacture, exactly, but let’s say they exist with our unconscious connivance.

Very good. Unconscious connivance is a good way to look at it: It takes away victimhood, it reminds you of your own still unsuspected range of abilities (there is always more to do), and it hints, accurately, that the waking-up is part of a game. We mean “game” in the sense of an organized cooperative activity. Can you guess why?

I’d guess that the journey is the reward. Not that we’re correcting an initial error, necessarily, but that what we experience as we go along is itself worthwhile somehow.

We remind you, the purpose of the hamster wheel is not to deceive or frustrate the hamster, but, on the contrary, to let him joyously exercise his muscles.

So we are developing, somehow.

Oh, don’t you know it? Don’t you feel it in your bones? The poet that said, “Life is earnest, life is real, and the grave is not its goal” knew something, Hemingway’s later derision aside. You know that your 3D life is only a part of your life. You know that the things that happen are always opportunities. You know now – after many years when you could not have said so – that all is always well. It may be a vale of tears, but it is also a terrifically useful and effective hamster wheel, and its goal is not frustration, any more than it is the grave.

And the word “soul” needs looking at. People say “old soul, young soul” as if they knew what they were talking about. Before obsessing over the adjective, it would be well to have some understanding of the noun. Birthdays are 3D events, not non-3D events.

Now, to end this for the moment. Do you now see – or anyway suspect – what we mean by your being at the ragged edges of an advance in consciousness?

I think I do, actually. For whatever reason, accustomed ways of thinking are dissolving and I am finding that where I had experienced boundaries I now see doorways. I’m almost out of gas, but let me say this much, anyway. I am looking back at my life dispassionately, not cringing or hurting, not apologizing or regretting, but looking at things with interest, seeing past situations as algebraic problems I was enmeshed in, rather than I being either victim or villain. Somehow the drama has drained out of it; I’m seeing more clear.ly

And there’s more to be said on that subject. But meanwhile, good work today. If you hadn’t been able to stick with it, going slowly, we could not have done as much as we did.

You did fairly well yourself. Clearly I’ve been teaching you well.

We’re smiling too, but actually there is something in that – and of course, as usual this is not confined to you as an individual (so called) but to everybody.

Thanks for many years of cooperative rambling.

 

Sunday, November 3, 2024

2:15 a.m. (Standard time again). I had the feeling earlier that you wanted to talk, and I put it off till later. The extra hour caused by changing back from DST means I have slept as much as I am going to for a while, so let’s go. What is on your mind?

What is on your mind, is the question. You are experiencing the ragged edges of an advance in consciousness, and you don’t know what to do with them.

A primer: Clear your mind of active thought, holding an intent to communicate. Remember to not press, but allow. Follow anything that then arises. If you have once cleared your mind, things that arise will not be chatter but will be the matters of the immediate moment. And it is this process that is what we want to talk about, either in passing or at length, depending upon how we go.

Again: Clearing. Receptivity. Development of what appears.

Clearing. As we indicated earlier, the goal of meditation is not to leave you with a mind devoid of thought; it is to give you control over the association-machine by making you aware of its presence and characteristics. You want, not to kill the drunken monkey, but to get it sober. Thought-association is of course a valid method of mental functioning; you wouldn’t want to lose the ability to construct (or even to follow) chains of associations of ideas and sensations and memories. But ideally you will want to be able to experience this on your own terms.

Once you realize that this mental behavior even exists, you are better off, because this allows you for the first time to realize that most of the time you are not really present-tense so much as daydreaming. That is, you are in the present moment (there being no other place one could be) but you are not actively functioning, neither receiving nor constructing, but are being carried down an unending river, tossed by its currents, at its pace. It may be an interesting ride, even a fascinating ride, but it is not participation so much as spectatordom.

As we say, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is far better to be aware of what you are doing. You paid for the ride – why not take it with eyes open?

Receptivity. Once you have learned to discern the difference between being carried automatically downstream and paddling, or at least steering, you see how new opportunities arise. Let’s look at why this is so.

I’d guess it is that stillness – an absence of the continuing torrent of thoughts-that-generate-thoughts – allows quieter, more profound associations, rooted in the moment, to assert themselves.

You are in the right direction, but it should be said more carefully, because this is not as obvious as it appears to you in this moment, and may become distressingly vague to you later if not tied in.

I get that you are right, but it does seem obvious at the moment.

To some it will be, to some not. Think of it in terms of momentum. (This is analogy, remember, and must not be pushed too far.) If you travel at great speed, your ability to even notice, let alone deal with, your passing surroundings is vastly less than when you drift by slowly, or are at rest. In effect, you have less time at your disposal to look at anything. It is a trade-off, and again, not in itself a disadvantage. Sometimes you want to be traveling at speed, associating things ordinarily far removed from one another. But when you slow down, you regain the ability to see at greater depth of connection, greater detail.

And we can hear fainter voices.

And you can hear fainter voices, yes. It is the difference between a cocktail party and a quiet tete-a-tete. Neither is an absolute, but they are very different, offering very different possibilities.

You cannot come to the third state, the ability to develop what you hear, unless you first can hear it! And you cannot recognize the difference between being carried in a stream of associations and consciously choosing which connections to make, until you have recognized by experience that there is a real difference between the two.

So, first comes clearing. Even if you have been communicating consciously for decades, you will want to clear. This requires no ritual, nothing special, merely the awareness that your intent at the moment is a sort of heightened receptivity to the things of the moment; that is, to the thoughts and feelings and perceptions that are particularly acute at that moment. This gives focus.

Receptivity follows clearing. (And there need be no perception of separation between the two; they are, after all, inherently part of the same state.) Once you learn the trick of being actively receptive, you regain your freedom of choice.

Then comes the question of what you do with the input you are now allowing.

Interesting, I just got an example of this. I had to pause  and as I did I realized, people that I respected (Ed Carter, for one) told me right along that I needed to slow down, but I was proceeding at the speed that was normal to me, and I was even proud of that speed. It wasn’t so much that I disregarded the advice; I had no idea how to put it into effect, and I suppose nobody ever realized that I didn’t know how to slow down. That’s why you had me put down our talks in penmanship rather than typing, I know; it slowed me down.

And gradually you had the conscious experience to traveling more slowly, and then could deliberately adopt that speed if you wished, without sacrificing the lightning-speed imparted by intuition whenever that was appropriate. But you had to experience the difference, not merely hear about it.

Yes, and this happened just now, when I was interrupted. I realized, less speed may allow greater depth. If I could write twice as fast, or if I were dictating into a machine, the quality of whatever I got would be different. I would lose some of the advantage of going slowly.

You see us use bullets sometimes: It is a way of using a sort of shorthand to preserve relationships among far-flung items that offers the possibility of later, slower, development.

Development. Anything may be developed farther, but not everything need be, nor even deserves to be. It is a matter of choices. But that is the point here, isn’t it? Your life is choice. Your greater ability to choose is one more aspect of the life more abundantly that we wish you to be able to claim and to live.

I see it. Thanks as always.