Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The initial insight was that our lives are only “somewhat” real because this level of reality we experience is not in any way an ultimate level. Since it isn’t, we aren’t. We are, in a way, characters in an on-running drama, created for the purpose of being conduits of forces greater than us, realer than us somehow, preceding us and, I gather, destined to outlive us. They may be eternal, whatever eternal means.

Compound beings. Humans. Constructs that live in an abbreviated version of reality, knowing only what can be known while constricted to a present moment that is a moving pinpoint. Yet, eternal beings no less.

We were given a definition of the larger being (of which we 3D beings are a part) that was arbitrarily called Sam to avoid an implication of gender, as Sam could stand for Samuel or Samantha. Our part-of-Sam nature is as eternal as Sam, and we assume that Sams are eternal at least for the purpose of the exploration. Relative to any one earth life, certainly a Sam is eternal, immortal. We, sharing that essence, are equally so. not much different from religion saying we share the essence of God (whatever God may be), but the rest of the analogy is close enough to continue with.

But if we are made of the undying essence of a Sam, the combinations we form are not unchanging or necessarily eternal. Joseph, Bertram, Frank, etc., all have a limited existence in 3D. Do they necessarily have an unlimited existence beyond 3D?

Need to go slow.

I remember author C.S. Forester saying somewhere that what ruins plots is forcing them rather than letting them grow in their own time. This sounds like a similar process, maybe the same process. All right then.

Essence and personality

Our essence is Sam’s essence. Our personality is the 3D expression of certain combinations of traits, etc. But we haven’t noted the difference in relative reality. Funny phrase, “relative reality.” But that’s the way to put it, I think.

Essence is real and unchangeable. Personality is more like a mask or a costume or a role in a drama, and is real only in its own terms, as Han Solo is real only in the Star Wars movie context, while Harrison Ford is real beyond the movie, in 3D life. But Harrison Ford is real only in the 3D context. The actor who is playing Harrison Ford himself is real beyond the 3D context, in real (realer?) life.

That’s the difference between spirit and soul, come to think of it. If I have it right, spirit is unchanging, unchangeable, unconstrained. “The spirit goes where it wants to,” to put it into modern language. Thus, the actor playing Harrison Ford. The soul, born into 3D, experiencing all the emotions of life, affected by what happens to it, is Harrison Ford as played in 3D Theater.

Actor and character

Hmm, so the point being pressed is that we are both actor and character, and that is a source of great confusion and great opportunity for growth. Religions see us as both divine and human, do they not? That is how they describe Jesus – but he is reported to have said that anything he had done, his followers would do and would do more, or greater. I often wondered if his calling himself “son of man” meant that he was what we could become.

In any case, if we are both actor and character, it is as if Han Solo, in character, during the movie, became aware of being the creature of Harrison Ford, and began speaking and reacting as Harrison Ford rather than as himself, not knowing the link between them, and perhaps not sensing the confusion as actually a breakthrough. It might play hell with the movie being shot, unless the movie was about Han Solo discovering he was a creation of (part of) Harrison Ford.

But we aren’t in a movie, I have been told more than once, but are doing improv. That’s exactly how it feels. And it comes to me, maybe one reason for the improv is for the actors to see through the drama (knowing there is no plot) so as to realize fully that they are actors (i.e. only relatively real in that their roles are added on to their essence, not intrinsic to it) and that the purpose of their acting is not to fill the time but to give expression to the forces that they feel flow through them. The cardinal virtues, the deadly sins: real forces, expressing in 3D. Why? As a sort of safety valve? A puppet show? Why?

The cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. (And some add faith, hope, and charity.)

The seven deadly sins, whose initials I years ago made into an acronym so I could remember them: LEG CAPS. Lust, envy, gluttony, covetousness, anger, pride, and sloth (or ennui). Of the seven deadly sins, pride is traditionally considered first in importance.

All human life may be considered as a playing-out of those forces among varied circumstances.

But the forces pre-exist human life.

They are realer than human life, as you are realer than your human roles.

Hard to see how they could manifest outside of 3D conditions. Gluttony? Lust?

That is how they manifest in 3D conditions. But the underlying forces exist or they could not manifest.

—

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

 

All my reading of novels, of history and biography, and my frequent viewings and re-viewings of films may be seen in a different way, in light of the hint thrown out the other day by whatever force I was talking to. Behind all those stories of individuals are stories of conflicts of forces, of ebbs and flows of the power that flows through people for its own purposes.

This will strike some people as fanciful, as inappropriately concrete metaphor, so they will think either it is playing with words or it is being seduced by words into cloud-cuckoo-land. I can feel how inadequate language is. Trying to render what I just got there, the best I could do missed most of it.

Your practice has been to develop your skill. In practice that has meant, to bend your habits in certain directions in order to compensate for tendencies that would interfere.

Okay, we’re going to have to work differently, aren’t we?

We are. Express it.

Let me try to say what I just got.

A long process of development

My initial attempts at automatic writing imitated what I thought I understood from what I had read. This changed into communicating with The Boss, then Evangeline (first attempts to personify the forces I was experiencing), then The Guys Upstairs, then individuals such as David Poynter and Joseph Smallwood, then historically recognized figures like Lincoln and Jung and others, then – interspersed more as exceptions than as part of a progression – people I had known like my old friend David Schlachter and finally Rita. That long process, extending from about 1989, led me along, with gradually accumulating experience repeatedly modifying not only what I thought I knew, but the practice. The sequence aimed to change how I went about things, correcting mistaken ideas and, perhaps more fundamentally, habitual traits that tended to interfere.

My perceptions changed, my ability to work with those perceptions changed, and so did my part in these discussions. It has been a good long time since I was only a scribe writing down pearls from the other side. Dictation became conversation. Conversation clarified into part instruction, part how-to. From the beginning, the process was never what I expected on the basis of what I had read. Instead, it was peculiar to me. It was quite disconcerting to Rita in 2001, I remember. She was not used to a process where the person communicating was right there, passing along humor from “them.” But I don’t see how we could have done our work then, let alone our work subsequently, if we had tried to make what came to us fit into some preconceived box in format or content. And now, I think we’re changing gears once again.

It’s like we’re edging toward Bob Monroe’s “rotes,” where non-verbal transmission of information has to be unpacked into words, which can only be done by someone familiar with 3D restrictions of thought and experience. So, all these words have been in response to “Express it.” Earlier it was, “One level does not understand another,” and it was with that sentence that I realized that our manner of proceeding was going to have to change. I am not complaining. I think it is a good thing. But it is different, and should be seen as a new departure.

I got that we all speak at our own level of understanding. Some are incapable of seeing any level but the one they are used to. Some move in their lifetimes from one to another, leaving behind not only the habit but even the memory of the former level. Some – I’m one – move from level to level, partly inadvertently or unconsciously, partly upon demand as they learn to discern different levels. I don’t think there is any implied “better” or “worse” about it, but it is a difference in the three states. Either (1) stable and relatively unchanging, or (2) stable, then transformed, then stable again, or (3) a stability consisting of fluidity.

I think those of us who are able to move among levels are here as translators, stitching together different levels of understanding. And as I was writing that, I was reminded that the Indians called Joseph Smallwood the commuter, the man who alternated from one world to the other. That referred to him going back and forth between Indians and white worlds, but that same habit of mind that could translate different ways of seeing things might persist, I suppose.

Or might be an effect of prior training.

Hmm. Such as Joseph the Egyptian, you mean?

[Pause]

Dramas as doorways

Well, the point I’m taking such a long time getting to is that what is obvious reality to one level is fantasy to another. We see it in our 3D lives and it is also “as above, so below.” It just depends upon how far you care to extend it.

So, an example. If I say that our 3D lives are only somewhat real because we are the embodiment of forces beyond the 3D level, some people intuitively get it. In fact, it is more like I am agreeing with something they already know than like they are hearing anything new. But others have to wrestle with it, at first having to take on faith that I am not speaking nonsense, then seeing what they can make of it. And others not only can’t make anything out of it, but you might say won’t. It is self-evidently nonsense, and they aren’t going to waste their time. The different levels don’t translate.

And this brings us back to the thought that came to me as I sat down to do this: Dramas in whatever form are stories, and stories are, shall we say, peepholes, or entry-points, or doorways into other levels of meaning. But doorways function as doorways only if you walk through them, and those who are not ready to go through the doorways never even see them as such.

And I think that rounds out what we are going to get from these two cryptic expressions. This is a very interesting development. I will say, pro forma, to the energy system that is communicating to us, thank you. But my sense is that he is far beyond such human interaction.

—

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

 

Whoever you are, you are not so much accustomed to words, are you? Yet, you are coming through my mind; why does that not command the language I know?

[A long pause. At least, it seemed long. Less than a minute, I suppose.]

That was quite an experience. The response I got was a deepening of communication, in a few waves of difference, as if my mind settled, bit by bit, into a deeper, calmer place. And this wasn’t during the reaction, or because of the reaction. It was the reaction. Whoever I am in communication with is well beyond words, and needs my access to words if it is going to communicate at all.

That is much better. Can you see how your assumption that you were talking to a human mind – or an ex-human mind, as you like to say – absolutely interfered with the communication process? Absolutely interfered, and, carried farther, might have absolutely prevented.

You are nearing a fundamental transformation of your understanding of the process, if you are open to it and do not prefer to halt at the relatively stable place you have come to.

No, actually, I look forward to it.

Only somewhat real

Very well. So, from a mind that has never been human, you cannot expect a human slant on things, even though the words and concepts have to come through yours. Remember, always, that you are in the process. Any communication to humans must have a human intermediary, obviously. This affords opportunities for mistranslation of concepts, but without it, there is no medium of transmission. And of course in speaking to humans, the recipients themselves are equally sources of misunderstanding, mishearing, even deliberate refusal to understand or to hear.

Yes, that’s clear enough.

It is clear, but it is almost immediately forgotten as soon as heard. So, try to bear it in mind.

I’m not writing scripture, I get that.

Oh, but you are! What is scripture but human attempts to convey messages? Any serious and relatively successful attempt to communicate is of the same nature as scripture. However, don’t take that to be elevating you in stature; take it to be reminding you and your readers not to elevate scripture to a level it cannot sustain.

“You do the best you can,” Bob Monroe said. I think he was trying to say something of what you’re implying here, that all communication involves distortion because it is a translation from one set of conditions to another.

Almost from one reality to another. Not quite, but almost. And it requires great patience, practice, sincerity and even a form of recklessness. All of which you have been practicing for as long as John Tettemer was a monk.

I take it that is encouragement for any who are impelled to take the same road.

They don’t necessarily require encouragement, but some may find it there.

Now listen, for time is short in the remainder of this session. You have been told that your life as experienced is only somewhat real. This is because your life as you are experiencing it is deeper, with stronger cross-currents, than a mere conflict of compound-beings. You got the idea: Try to express it.

We see history as it affects us, so it becomes a matter of individuals, such as MacArthur and Wilson and Roosevelt and Hemingway and John F. Kennedy and Churchill and Robert Henri, and W.B. Yeats and so on. And to us, this is reality. It combines the external world we experience, even at second-hand, and the inner world we construct or experience as we cooperate in shaping our ideas of what is going on. But a deeper level of reality involves the same events, the same individuals, but experiences them as forces, as – I don’t know how to put it. As manifestations, I suppose.

Try not to stop there, but continue, for when you return you will not be in the same place.

In a real sense, our 3D lives may be seen at different levels of reality, and our accustomed way of seeing them is relatively superficial. All the deadly forces that run through us, as well as the living forces too, could be said to live their own lives through us. No, that doesn’t get it.

Try!

If you were a playwright, you might try to express certain ideas. You would have to clothe the ideas in characters, and express them in conflict and interaction of the characters. There would be no other way to do it.

Perhaps not “no other way,” but continue.

It would be the interplay of forces that concerned you, and the interplay of the characters you had invented would be secondary.

Well, not exactly. You acquire a stake in the characters as you animate them. You should know that, as you think of those you have brought to life and then have seen having that life, with its own bounds and possibilities.

—

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

 

TGU: This is still too vaguely expressed. Get your thoughts into gear, as they say. Or rather, apply yourself, don’t just drift.

F: Once upon a time, this work consisted of my willingness to act as scribe, trusting that I was not making it all up behind my own back (a suspicion I have never lost, though that too is too simply put). Then it became a dialog in which my part was as focused as expositor as it was as receptor. Then Rita began encouraging me to express understandings in my own words, so that my part in the enterprise came to be part radio receiver, part translator, part essayist. And now you seem to want me to use an insight conveyed to me as a point of view, and build on that.

From one point of view, what you just said is entirely mistaken. That isn’t what happened at all. But from your point of view, the progression seems natural. Well, it is part of your work to show that this is how you experienced it, and our work to show what it really was. From the beginning, you have been interested in information and we have been interested in process.

Yes, I guess I do know that, though it took me a while to catch on.

Well, where you are now is the skeleton behind the flesh of human activity.

—

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

 

[Excerpts from conversations between Rita Warren and “the guys upstairs,” in the years 2001 and 2002, edited from The Sphere and the Hologram.]

Disasters

R: I had mentioned in an earlier session, on the 11th, that I wanted to return at some point to ask about what we think of as disasters like our recent events, and other times when there’s been loss of life on the earth, either human beings or other life forms, and ask, to the extent that you’re able to alter things in the 3D world, what meaning do these kinds of events have?

TGU: Hmm. [pause] That’s a hard question to answer, phrased that way. It’s rather like asking us what meaning does a day have. Because what you see as all the same kind of things, putting the title of disaster or atrocity or war or whatever around them, to us are infinitely different, and so it’s difficult. We’ll give you an example to show you the difficulty, and then ask you to rephrase it, really. [pause]

If you have that disaster at Bhopal, where people died because of corporate indifference, and a disaster in New York where people died because of an act of war, and a disaster resulting (seemingly anyway) from nobody’s fault – the bridge over St. Luis Rey, if you remember that old example – if you only look at the fact that there is relatively widespread, seemingly indiscriminate death, then you might say those three incidents are three of a kind. And we would say they’re nothing like.

R: Can I add to that list the meteors crashing into the earth and causing major death among the dinosaurs?

TGU: [laughs]

R: That would be another disaster for the dinosaurs.

TGU: Relatively few of the dinosaurs asked questions about it afterwards. [they laugh]

All right, well, see, that’s an interesting example of what you would lump together. To you those four things have something in common, and we can understand the abstract pattern of it, but it would be as though you grouped the people of a city who were all wearing sneakers. Yes, they would have that in common, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a meaningful “in common.” If you could ask that question in a more pointed way –

R: I’ve heard you saying that you have some role in deciding things that happen here. And those things include a major loss of either human life or of other kinds of life on the planet. Why would you want to do something like that? What would be accomplished?

TGU: First, let’s point out that we don’t so much “decide” as we “plan.” We absolutely respect the free will of the individuals involved. They are planning it with us, but if they decided not to do it, we have to run around for Plan B, C, or D. We don’t decide it, we plan it. Having said that, suppose you want to build a new building on a lot that already has an old building. You destroy the old building first. Of course, it depends on what’s going on, but you understand the analogy. If you have an old wooden building on a lot that you intend to build a skyscraper on, the destruction has to come first. [pause]

You all tend to think that death or even injury is necessarily a bad thing, which perplexes us. Although we understand it intellectually, we can’t really empathize with that attitude, because – it’s so funny. It would be like regarding every sunset as a tragedy because it was the end of the day. You’re all going to die, you’re all going to get injured in one way or another, probably, on the way. And when you die, so what? Then you come back, either here or somewhere else.

So we really can’t share your views of the finality of it or even of the importance of it. A sudden death or an accidental death, so-called, or a violent or lingering death – there are a million ways to die – each of them can be molded in such a way as to help the soul that’s experiencing it. As we said, the thousands who died on the same day, on the 11th of September, were volunteers in the first place, and in the second place, you know, thousands of other people died that day who weren’t noticed. So, we know it sounds cold to you, but it’s not a big deal to us.

Now, the orchestrating of an event that can have long term, hopefully positive, effects on society – which, as we have said, only interests us in that it helps to mold people closer to their potential – that’s worth an awful lot of transient human suffering, because the alternative is not a lack of suffering, the alternative is suffering of an entirely different kind.

R: I was thinking not so much about the loss of human life as the impact that that loss has. I hear you saying that can be very positive, in that it has some altering effect on those who are still running around on this earth –

TGU: Yes. Let’s search through the old memories here. Frank’s got all kind of historical analogies. The attack on Pearl Harbor led, by way of an entire war, to a generation of men who were given college educations who never could have had college educations without the war and the GI Bill of Rights. That generation of men, mostly men, in turn had a vastly expanded life in terms of their earning potential and their intellectual horizons, and they added to the intellectual capital of a whole generation of Americans, which affected the whole world.

Now, that isn’t an excuse for Pearl Harbor, and it isn’t the underlying reason for Pearl Harbor, but it is one of the effects of Pearl Harbor. So we think it’s very misleading to look at those who were killed in the attack as if that were the full story, when in fact the story is darker – in that you have all of the 50 million people who were killed in that war – but it’s also lighter in all of the things that followed after the war cleared stuff away. It’s a matter of how wide you spread your net when you do your accounting.

R: You said “although that was not the reason for the event,” as though the reasons for the event are somewhat different than the long-term effect.

TGU: [pause] We’re saying an event has initial consequences and then the secondary consequences and tertiary and quaternary. It goes on and on. You can’t say that the event was caused for the sake of the tertiary consequences. But you can say that those consequences came because of the event. Again, it’s a question of how carefully you do your accounting when you are attempting to see.

Again, you all see things necessarily in time-slices. Because you see them in time-slices, you can’t possibly see them the way we do. What you call the tragedies of World War I and World War II, and everything in between, not to mention the Cold War afterwards, we would look at as the seismic interruption of a world culture that had kind of reached a dead end.… When a society encrusts itself with certain institutions or corruptions or even virtues, it can be impossible to pull them down, no matter how necessary it may be to do it, without some violent, or in any case catastrophic, discontinuity.

—

The Sphere and the Hologram, 15^th anniversary edition, published by SNN / TGU Books, is available as print or eBook from Amazon and other booksellers.

 

[Excerpts from conversations between Rita Warren and “the guys upstairs,” in the years 2001 and 2002, edited from The Sphere and the Hologram.]

Vengeance and choice

R: I’ve been listening in to people’s reaction to [the Sept. 11 event], on the issue of striking back against what’s perceived as the evil forces of Osama bin Laden. And it’s presented often in terms of “This is what we need to do to balance things out.” And I’m asking about this issue of balancing things out in a worldwide sense. You’ve talked about the fact that you see this without the slices of time. You’re looking at the totality, and in the totality everything is balanced out eventually. And the “eventually” means – ?

TGU: A long time. [laughs]

R: So I’m –

TGU: You’re asking, are they right in any sense?

R: I guess.

TGU: Well, if the world had been created the day before yesterday, maybe. But given the history of the planet in any given reality you choose to investigate, once you look at it carefully – even consciously at all! – it becomes obvious there’s no way to balance it out, because every society on the face of your planet is the result of some past aggression somewhere. Everyone has or could have grievances. Everyone wants to get one last blow in and that’ll make them even.

But the people who are saying that aren’t very good at mathematics. The entire point of breaking the cycle of vengeance is that the cycle cannot be completed; it can only be broken. It can’t be completed because every new retaliation creates the seeds of new retaliation in the future, because it can never balance out. It’s foolish talk. Besides, that’s not what they mean. What they mean is, they don’t want to feel that they have been weak, that they have been taken advantage of. That’s all that really amounts to.

R: We talked about our being a certain way as a way of dealing with this kind of thing. Is there more that we could do? For example you said one of the factors in understanding this process is people’s inability to see or integrate their own shadow sides. It’s hard for me to think about how we would go out on a campaign of teaching people to see their shadow sides or to integrate their shadow sides. [chuckles] Is there something in that kind of a realm that we could be doing?

TGU: Well, each will be impelled to do the work that’s proper to each. You will know; you’ll meet the opportunities that come to you. And some people will be called upon to teach, and some to organize and some to stand silently and protest, and some to fly warplanes. There are millions of roles and everyone will know the role that’s there that’s available to them. However – [pause]

Frank: That’s funny, that doesn’t happen often. I know there was something else coming, but it just went away. Wait a minute. [pause] Hmm. I’m going to re-say what they were saying and then maybe it’ll come out again. It just disappeared. I know what they were saying was everybody will have their own thing to do – and that’s obvious. Well, there was another point that wasn’t like that, but…What was the other part of your question?

R: The question had to do with, is there something more that we can do besides try to be the best of ourselves, so to speak. Is there something we can do in this world where everyone is worried about –

Frank: Oh now I know what it was. The other thing that came was that, yes there is a campaign to have people recognize their shadow selves, and that campaign is being orchestrated on their side, not on our side. [laughs] That’s what they’re saying.

R: Okay.

[Resuming as TGU]: The impact of events is a bigger teacher to you than anything that one of you could say to another, and so you are a different country today than you were last month. The difference has been created by your reaction to the events. We can create the events and we can lead you toward – but it’s up to you to choose the lessons to be learned from events, and the ways to change from the events. Because the airplanes hit the buildings, there are people who are a little more chastened and a little more self-reflective and sober today than they were before. There are others who are totally lost in rage, and there are some who are lost in fear. You see? Millions of reactions. And you needn’t worry too much about that, we will provide the opportunities. You can each spread the word, first and foremost by living it, because you’ll spread it on the internal internet, so to speak. First and foremost by living it. There are many people preaching it and if some of them would do less preaching and more living of it, they would be more effective.

But having said that, there are specific things that some of you can do, and you’ll know it. And there are specific things all of you can do and you’ll know it, but some of those may not be external things. They may seemingly be tending your garden in peace, so to speak.

R: What did you mean by a campaign on the other side to orchestrate –

TGU: Well, we’re orchestrating the opportunities, you know.

R: Specifically having to do with people becoming aware of their shadow side?

TGU: Specifically creating situations that allow the opportunity for some people to wake up in response to the situation. So when we create what you are all fond of calling a disaster, it has impact around the world in the unpredictable way that Princess Diana’s sudden death had, or the killing of the Kennedys. Those orchestrated incidents, shall we say – and we remind you that those who participated in those incidents were volunteers – those orchestrated incidents couldn’t have specific effects because the specific effects are more the result of people’s conscious choices, which are free by design. But they set up the circumstances in which people could make the choices. It sort of stressed them toward it, it biased the –

Frank: It’s a visual of pushing on a screen, you know, to push it sideways. I don’t know how to translate that.

TGU: Your choices are always free, as individuals and therefore entirely. All that we can do is set up circumstances and give you opportunities, and it’s up to you to take them. And when you take them or don’t take them, then we scramble with Plan B, you know? [chuckles] We’re always on Plan B.

R: Well as I’m hearing this, I’m wondering, what’s the advantage to free will.

TGU: Because free will is what allows you to create. Free will gives you the opportunity to choose what you will be, what kind of flower you’re going to present to us.

R: But you’re doing so much of the creation on the other side –

TGU: We’re creating the matrix for the free will. [stutters several times]

You’re saying to yourself, “That isn’t quite fair, we have free will but you’re pushing us in certain directions,” and that’s true if you look at it in any one reality. But you need to remember, if you can, that it’s happening in all realities, and you can move to the reality you want to move to. [pause] Well, theoretically.

R: But it seems like since you have preferences about how we choose and how we move, that you’re creating the situations… What is this process all about?

TGU: Let’s make a theoretical example. Supposing you as an organism came into this world intending to get a little experience with selfishness. Both the satisfying of it and the overcoming of it. We and you – but you will no longer remember, because you’re down here in it – we and you set up an endless series of obstacle courses that present you with those situations in which you will choose about selfishness. And choose and choose and choose and choose and choose. Now your choices might cancel out! Or they might radically alter you, or they might leave you the way you were. Don’t forget, you’re in on this process, it isn’t us doing it to you except that in any moment of time, it’s us doing it to you because you’re functioning in the moment of time, and so we’re the ones holding the score, so to speak, or holding the –

R: A plan that we’ve agreed to.

TGU: But you know what? “We’ve agreed to” isn’t quite right, it’s “We are agreeing to” continually, because you’re continually up there with us as we’re modifying into Plan B. But you Downstairs – some of you do and some of you don’t connect Upstairs to be part of that planning. There are actually people who remember the planning, moment by moment. And you could too. It’s a matter of requesting access and getting it. You might find that an interesting process. Takes a lot of the blame away, though. [laughs]

R: I’m just really asking myself “how’d we start on this process anyway, and in the larger sense what is this all about?” Why are we doing this?

TGU: We remind you that you don’t like being bored.

R: Oh. [they laugh]

TGU: You are seeing calculus that was invented because people mastered the times tables. And as we master calculus, then we’ll move on to other games. They’re not meaningless games, but they are games. They’re games in the sense of stretching our abilities, of enjoying it, of playing it, you know. They’re not games in the sense of one wins and one loses, but they’re entertainment. They’re engaging, let’s put it that way. Remember that the next time you get bad news on the television set, it’s better than being bored. [they laugh]

—

The Sphere and the Hologram, 15^th anniversary edition, published by SNN / TGU Books, is available as print or eBook from Amazon and other booksellers.

 

[Excerpts from conversations between Rita Warren and “the guys upstairs,” in the years 2001 and 2002, edited from The Sphere and the Hologram.]

Stagnation

R: Before we started this process, I felt nothing was happening. I assume on principle that what looked like a delay to me had some purpose. But, you know, it’s a big step for me not to feel like there is something we should do to push, rather than just to sit back and say “Well, things come about in their proper time,” you see.

TGU: When things appear to be not moving, sometimes it’s a process of settling in, sometimes it’s a process of preparation. Sometimes it’s a necessary rest, sometimes it’s stopped here because you’re working elsewhere. Sometimes it’s waiting for external circumstances to come around. And sometimes, of course, it is that you are refusing to do what you know you should be doing. But those are all very different circumstances, all of which may look the same.

When things seem like they’re dead still in the water, you can always find out whether things are stagnant or whether they’re fallow. Examine your feelings. Is there something that you know you should do that you don’t want to do and you’re not doing?

We don’t mean this in the sense of “I should be a better person, I should be more helpful”; those are just beating yourself up. But if you’re saying, “This job has to be done, I know I have to do it, but I don’t want to” – that’s not necessarily wrong either, but examine your feelings about that. If you’re shirking something that you legitimately should do, you’ll know it. And if at the same time things feel stagnant, there may be a connection!

Now, your comments brought up two things to talk about, and that was one. The second is, it’s a common mistake to confuse doing nothing externally with doing nothing. A monk in a monastery who is not even speaking to his fellows, who is sincerely and intelligently striving for whatever his own goals are – he would call it, probably, getting closer to God, but you might call it self-development – whatever the goal, someone who is sincerely striving, is not doing nothing.

It may look from the outside that they’re not doing anything productive, or that they’re even shirking their job. But we would say, if you’re shirking your job, you always know it. We would also say, there’s an awful lot of wasted energy going on because people think they must “do something.” But you never have to “do something.” If there’s something you really have to do, you know what it is, you don’t call it “something.” You see? [laughs] So beware of people who say that “We need to do something.”

R: Yes. Well there’s sometimes a sense also of feeling impatient that things aren’t happening, as you suggested, and not knowing what it is that one’s supposed to be doing.

TGU: You always have that knowledge available. Just sit quietly and meditate and ask sincerely. You may not get, “You should go do this,” but in the absence of “You should go do this” you’ll know “No, no, this is fine, what I’m doing.” You see? Waiting sometimes is what you need to do. And while you’re waiting on one level, you’re working on another. [pause] What would you like to do?

R: I would like to do what I’m doing now, but I felt there was a period of time when I was describing myself as spiritually stuck.

TGU: Ah! Well, then we suggest that for your own amusement, or for your own reassurance, go back and look and ask yourself, “What would be different had this happened before that period?” and that will, by reflection, tell you what you got out of that period. And the answer may be, “Well, I had to wait for the time to be right.” Or the answer may be, “I had my attention focused in the wrong place and that delayed it.” But the answer very well may be, “Because of this I’ve been changed to this,” you see. We’re not predicting what the answer will be, but we say it’s a good exercise.

R: Well there’s some sense where you feel that something came so close to not happening, and you feel so pleased that it happened, but it might not have happened!

TGU: There are innumerable realities in which it did not. But you chose the one in which it did. Your choice.

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The Sphere and the Hologram, 15^th anniversary edition, published by SNN / TGU Books, is available as print or eBook from Amazon and other booksellers.