Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

[Question submitted by Jane Peranteau: “We are affected by the forces as they come through. Do we affect the forces in any way, other than by how we express or channel them? In other words, you could say they hone us. Do we hone them? Or is it just about honing us?”]

The short answer is yes, it is a mutual interaction. But the closer you look at this, the more complex and nuanced it is. As usual.

If we stick to the human level as commonly experienced – that is, if we consider only the effect of 3D decisions upon the forces that blow through them – then you could say, no, there is no effect. Hurricanes are not much affected by whether you do or don’t leave a lawn chair out on the deck. The lawn chair will be affected! But the hurricane, no. The disparity of forces is immense.

However, 3D experience indirectly affects you in 3D – that is, the real effect is in your changes, which are decisions express or implied. In turn, changes in you result in change in your overall being, hence in your Sam. Again, the disparity of forces is great, but there is an effect, especially considered cumulatively. And – we aren’t going to go into it – changes in Sams in effect result in changes in the winds sweeping through 3D life. But that is all we’re going to say about that.

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

Let us begin our long discussion of the forces that influence your lives, and that your lives use in order to make shapes.

Interesting way to think of it.

An analogy: Think of the air you breathe. Chemically, you change its composition; physically, within limits, you direct the outward flow of breathed air. You are not the air, and yet the air is a part of you, but not as a component so much as part of a process. Air flows through you. It is changed in predictable fashion as it does so, but this is not a one-time change, nor an accident, nor an incident: It is a process, and it must continue if you are to live. Eliminate humans and the air continues to exist and be influenced by other beings. But eliminate air and humans die. So you may wish to think of these “vast impersonal forces” we have been mentioning as the equivalent of air to breathe. And in fact the same word is sometimes used for breath and spirit, and that’s what they are talking about.

I thought I understood before, but this is clearer. The soul is us, the created physical beings attached to strands etc. The spirit is the force that flows through us, animating us, interacting with us, but not us.

That’s correct. Spirit both is part of you (because you couldn’t exist without it) and is not a part of you (because it has its own independent existence that would not fail in your absence.)

Compound beings are soul and spirit, localized collections of strands and characteristics, serving as conduits for forces forever beyond them. So now that you are clear on that distinction – you interact with spirit; you embody soul – let us look at the forces flowing through you.

The forces of good and evil, I take it.

Well, not quite. Good and evil may be looked at more as effects than as causes. Remember, God looked at his creation and found it good. He didn’t find it good and evil, he found it good. Evil didn’t enter into the picture until a compound being chose to experience the result of perceiving things as good and evil. Dropping into duality, in other words.

But wasn’t “creation” – the 3D world in its widest ramifications – already by nature dualistic?

Only if experienced – seen – that way.

You’re going to have to explain that.

Oh yes, and it won’t be a brief explanation. By the time we have explained it as best we can, many things will appear in different light.

Remember if you can – the 3D world is not exactly a creation, more like a separation from the larger reality. It is a creation in so far as anything is a creation that is gathered together from a larger, more comprehensive whole, but only in that sense. “The world was created out of nothing” can only mean – nothing like it existed before it was created. That doesn’t mean first there was a vacuum, then there was rubble filling the vacuum.

I get the sense of the 3D world as being a truncated part of reality, and it was the treating the truncated part as if it were a whole that is meant by creation. Is that right, or even partly right?

That is a serviceable interim way to look at it. Remember, there is one reality, not two. The 3D world is part of the All-D, as we are calling it. So if 3D had been created out of nothing, in the way people commonly understand the idea, what of the rest of All-D? Yes, you might imagine that it was created and unnoticed, or was created and somewhat noticed and considered as the spiritual complement of the physical world, but there is no need for so complicated a reaction. Considered as a world in itself, the 3D world came into existence when compound beings were – truncated, I suppose we should say – to experience only so much of reality and no more. But it is not this simple.

I notice it never is.

Over-simplifying is one of the great roots of fanaticism and determined ignorance.

The forces that flow through you manifest as good and evil not so much because it is their nature as because that is your nature. It isn’t spirit that is perceiving things as good and evil; it is your perception, just as was said in the Book of Genesis. But misinterpretation of intent leads to mistranslation and misunderstanding, and a devil of a lot of bad theology is based on logical conclusions from bad translations and incorrect assumptions.

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

Bear in mind continually, there can be no such thing as a universally applicable statement. What is appropriate to a Western audience may not meet the condition of someone in a Chinese or African society. What meets the needs of 2017 may fall flat in 2050 as in 1950. So, don’t try to assume that everything being said is universally applicable. It isn’t and it can’t be. The underlying reality is the same, but the illustrative examples aren’t and cannot be equally appropriate. We are speaking to you, in your 2017 now. Settle for that, and do not try to make one size fit all.

All right. So, where we have been, tailored to our audience.

Where Western society has been is a divided trail. For 500 years and more, religion and science have been fragmented because divorced from each other and unable to understand each other’s point of view. We would say the chief example of this is that your society has lost sight of the vast impersonal forces we mentioned as vast impersonal forces. A part of your thought regards them as supernatural or as only epiphenomena (because “matter” is considered to be primary, as if matter even existed independently).

Clearly a society cannot continue such a splintering process forever. At some point the social glue cannot hold. Then comes the use of force and, ultimately, self-destruction. But remember, we are not primarily concerned with societies but with compound-beings. It is true, your society shapes you. but it is not the only thing that shapes you, and its influence can be modified. In any case, stick to what you know, which is your own experience in the world, most of that experience being internal.

That’s all the back-tracking we need to do here. Those interested in history will find the history well laid out – and the way it is laid out will tell you worlds about the mental constrictions of those who did the laying out. But, it’s hardly necessary. You all know what you are living.

Now, to come back to what is for many of you a sore point – which should be your cue that it is an important point. Religious thought is your most extensive investigation into the existence, function, and manifestation of these vast impersonal forces. We have said it before and no doubt we will be obliged to say it again, because there will be great resistance, but if you do not know these forces, you do not know your lives. If you do not know how they shape your lives, you do not know what your lives are to accomplish, or why you are in 3D in the first place.

Do we need to say we are not advocating that you go join a church? However, we are requesting that those of you who are members of The Church of Nothing-But consider resigning your membership.

These forces are real. Every society you know of, and many more that you have never heard of and never will hear of, knew it, know it, will know it. You cannot understand reality if you begin by resolutely determining that reality will not consist of A, B, or C because you were taught a cruder version of them, or because you don’t like the looks of some who talk about A, B, or C as if they knew what they were talking about and – more – as if no contradictory version could contain truth. If you allow yourselves to block off aspects of reality because of external manifestations, that isn’t exploring, it is a different form of conformity, conforming to an imagined band of holders of the truth instead of going ahead and seeing for yourself.

Understand, to say all that is not to say, give up your present beliefs. What kind of exploring would that be, either? Yet, it may seem like that, because we do say, don’t let your present beliefs prevent you from giving fair consideration to things you may have rejected. (Actually, it is more a matter of giving fair consideration to things that remind you of things you have rejected.)

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

I get that we’re centering on that same image of humans as conduits of vast impersonal forces. It’s a huge subject, and it flows off in all directions. I’ll start and rely on you to steer me or at least head me off if I go off in non-productive directions.

The visual is sort of a horizontal torus comprising untold millions of individuals, a swirl of organized energy, call us. We know we aren’t “individuals” in the way people commonly think, but for simplicity, call us that. So, a vast orderly flow of compound-being energies, always changing, but, as I say, orderly, sort of shaped loosely. I can’t think of a good extension of the visual analogy. Not marbles or solid objects of any kind; not merely lights or drops of liquid, a little too undefined. Maybe the kind of visual image you see in close-ups of the sun’s swirling energies.

Anyway, that is the horizontal image. Then welling up vertically are the vast impersonal energies I have been sensing, the forces that flow through our lives, vitalizing them, causing complication and interest and discord and beauty and every thing humans can feel. We personalize these energies – we personify them – we think either that they are part of our being (rather than part of our environment, you might say) or that they are the forces of the gods.

Horizontally, a vast beautiful ever-changing torus-shaped image representing humanity. Vertically, an eternal upwelling of energies from far beyond human limits, mingling with, transforming, interfering with, vitalizing, all human activity as it is directed by uncounted numbers of decisions moment by moment by uncounted numbers of humans and ex-humans. (Humans, remember, in this case means compound beings whose consciousness normally is restricted to 3D conditions. It does not mean “only planet Earth”).

I say humans and ex-humans, and I am surprised at first, then I recall that of course we and they remain integrally connected, so of course we continue to be affected, and to affect, together. Not in lockstep, and I don’t even know if always in harmony, but at any rate, together.

More or less okay so far?

So far, so good. Now, why are we centering this picture at this time in your exposition?

Hmm. All I can get is, it’s time. We have reached the point where we can’t re-evaluate without changing focus.

Not exactly reevaluate. More like, you can’t go deeper without bringing what had been unnoticed background into focus.

Okay. So where are we going?

Wrong question. A better question would be, where have we been? It’s much more convincingly answered, you see.

 

Okay. Specifically in this case, my understanding is that the impersonal forces we are talking about are not the strands but something entirely different. Can we at least clear that up?

You say “clear that up.” No, we can’t clear up anything, in any absolute sense, because the words carry ambiguity, and people bring to the interpretation of words their own mindset, which is never a blank neutral platform, but always includes all sorts of bias and distortion unsuspected by the person consciously. You’ve seen it all your lives, all of you – and you’ve exemplified it, not usually realizing it, all your lives. It is the source of much exasperation among you.

But, we know what you mean, and we will try to provide a clearer statement. By the way, this is one reason why “the better the question, the better the answer”; questions tend to reveal past ambiguities of expression, and thus reduce the extent of material productive of controversy as to fact, as opposed to controversy as to implication.

Strands and forces. Compound beings, as we have said, comprise “past lives” as strands, and comprise, as well, traits, characteristics.

Now, we haven’t needed to go into this until now, but let’s look at traits. You could look at a trait as a tendency. But this is going to have to be said carefully. There are physical traits, like red hair. That is not a tendency, although tendencies may be associate with it. In fact, it may better be considered as a physical indicator of a tendency, such as, perhaps, a hot temper, or impulsiveness. Red hair does not cause either; it does not guarantee the presence of either; but it may be a signpost saying, “they’re likely to be where it is.” You see? A physical trait like an open countenance or red hair or height or shortness or thinness or stoutness – any of the characteristics of appearance that are often used as signposts of mental or temperamental characteristics may in fact be signposts. They are not the thing itself.

Beyond physical traits, there are traits of temperamental characteristic. So, maybe the person is impulsive, does have a hot temper. Regardless of signposts, these traits do exist. But what are they? They are not the forces we are talking about. They are the relative susceptibility or insusceptibility to these forces.

Your composition leaves you more susceptible to some forces and less so to others. You are a poor conductor of some energies and a good conductor of others, by your nature. This has nothing to do with what you do with these energies as they flow through you, it merely addresses the fact that your initial composition inclines you toward some things and away from others. This is no different than what you have been told for all these years, except that it is now being said explicitly, with emphasis on other aspects of the situation. First you had to be led to see yourselves as the communities you are: Until you saw that, none of this could be understood.

And bear in mind, none of this is new in the sense of never having been seen or said before in history. What is new is the context. So, people throughout millennia have talked about choleric or sanguine dispositions. What is that but a recognition and codification of the observed fact that people’s dispositions are not identical, and that they can be made to fall into categories?

Choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic.

Or, astrological or alchemical or any number of systems of categorizations. It all boils down to this: People are mixtures of traits that express elementary forces; they express them in different degrees, rather than uniformly; they may be categorized for belter understanding. But what is central for our purposes, for the moment, is that humans are conduits of vast forces that flow through them in varying strengths according to the nature of the individual, and it is the individual’s task (opportunity; fate; problem) to choose moment by moment to express or resist or divert the various forces as they arise in everyday life.

You are not the forces that express through you (and everybody else). Your particular makeup is unique, necessarily, because your comprising characteristics are a unique mixture. Your decisions during your lifetime help determine the flow of these forces. (The fact that all versions considered together make all choices is not relevant here, because each version’s world may be considered as if it were the only “the” world, as in practice you usually do.)

As to what those forces are, what it all means – stay tuned.

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

I’d like to get something straight before we go on any farther. I get a firm idea of what I’m being told, but other people reading the same words get another idea that is clearly different, and, to my mind, confused. Is it my job to rephrase your words to make them clearer in such cases, or is it every man for himself, interpreting them, or what? I mean, it’s one thing when I bring through something that is susceptible to more than one interpretation in my view, but I think it is quite another when it seems clear to me and is read differently by others. On the one hand we don’t need a pope. On the other hand we don’t want to be putting things to a vote. My question amounts to this: When I, as scribe, feel that others are misinterpreting what came to me essence to essence, what can we reliably do to clean up the confusion? If we say, “Ask you,” well, that just comes back in the same hole we went out. And of course, here I am, asking you.

And here – as, ironically, you well know – you see the dilemma faced by any people attempting to bring information through. Any body of information must be conveyed through human instruments. The transmission, the reception, the process of assimilation, the process of mutual understanding – all the steps in the process are subject to the difficulties of communication among people who are having to rely partly on sensory data, partly on communication mind-to-mind that does not depend on data, and partly on each mind’s prepared reception.

Oh, I understand the problem, all right! But what is the indicated solution?

If we understand you correctly (this is sarcasm, you understand), you are asking how you can overcome the difficulties that caused the Protestant revolution, the controversies over heresy before that, wars between different religions, hostility between religions and secular orientations, wars within the scientific and mental worlds between, again, orthodoxy and heresy –

I get the point. But in practical terms?

You know the answer. You quote it every so often.

“You do the best you can.”

What else is there? As misunderstandings arise, you clarify your prior statements. But process and result are two different things, in all forms of cooperative thought. You can do your best to clarify. You can’t depend upon others seeing it your way.

Seems to me we are providing people with a lot of opportunities to mislead themselves – and to be misled by others.

We are. That is true whenever one brings any information through. But the alternative is silence, and the corrective is always at hand: It is for each person to wrestle with the material and make of it what s/he can, remembering that vehemence is no proof of truth (and is often an indication of suppressed doubt) and that sincerity of purpose combined with humility will lead you right, over time.

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.

 

You are not rational beings interrupted by occasional (or even frequent, or even continual) emotional forces. You are compound beings living your entire life as conduits for forces that flow through you, you doing what you can to channel and direct them. That is not the picture [English philosopher] John Locke would paint of humans. Nor behaviorist B.F. Skinner. But equally it is not the point of view of Freud and Jung and those who accompanied and followed them. They recognized the role of passion in the human, but they assumed that the human occupied a detached place that was affected by the emotions and what they knew as the problems of the person. They did not necessarily see that in any person’s life the central fact is that the 3D individual is a conduit of forces from beyond. They tended to see the 3D individual as a separate unit affected by these forces. We have repeated this now, several times. We wonder: Have any of you actually heard it?

Your physically separate and seemingly independent life accustoms you to thinking your mental life equally separate, and your civilization accustoms you to seeing your emotional life as an offshoot of your mental life, which is ridiculous but persuasive because habitual.

You know, I think that for the first time I understand why the metaphysical types and the religious types can not be made to take each other seriously!

Not to mention the scientific types, the “hard-headed realist” types and especially the worshipper of an idea of the mind as an ideal. Go ahead.

It is not just a temperamental difference, nor a matter of prejudice, nor of strongly held opinion, though that is how I have usually seen it (on either side). They aren’t using the same definitions!

They do not consider the same forces, no. They define the world differently.

And that is a matter not of opinions, but of orientation. Religious thought begins by seeing humans as living in a torrent of forces, call them, that often manifest as emotion or even as persistent non-rational motivators. Religious thought proceeds from a recognition that we as individuals are not the basic unit we think ourselves to be, but are conduits of vast inhuman forces that they perhaps personify as God or Devil, or perhaps see merely as illusion. [I was thinking of Buddhism, here.] For those who do not see life in this way, religious thought seems nonsensical, superstitious. And you can see that psychotherapy is halfway toward religious thought, only it persists (as far as I know) in thinking the individual the unit it seems to be, rather than the construct and community it also is.

All right, now you, and at least some of your readers, will have made the adjustment. You will find life looks differently, only – look close to hand, don’t succumb to the temptation to look only (or primarily) at others, or at society at large. Look to your own lives: What else do you know so well? What else can you know “essence to essence,” so to speak?

This is very interesting. With that one fundamental insight, we can proceed beyond futile arguments about the track record of organized religions, and about points of dogma, and about most of the things that prevent discussion on sympathetic grounds. Once realize that the great divide is between those who think us independent units mostly motivated by reason and those who see us as conduits of vast impersonal forces, and lots of things clear up, including where (relative to that divide) we ourselves belong.

Bearing in mind, of course, that this is one way to divide the world. It is useful at any given moment, but remember that the cake may be sliced in many different directions, to yield different, equally valid, divisions. But this particular division should prove particularly useful just at the moment. This is a logical place to pause, and an opportunity for people to examine the nature of their lives to see if they agree with what has been said.

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This is an edited excerpt from “Only Somewhat Real,” not yet published.