Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

5:15 a.m. Unsub. Can we look again at what the word meant? It came in the context of a dream, Dec. 18, 2021, and I tried to remember (for I had known in the dream) what it meant. A couple of people sent suggestions and I told one of them yesterday I’d ask you again. I get, re-read the original entry, not only that of Saturday. I did, but there’s little difference I can see between the original and the edited version.

Okay, guys, is it worth pursuing?

It is and it isn’t. You aren’t really concerned, you were merely reminded. But you could use it as practice on the quasi-free-association technique if you wished.

Well, maybe let’s try that. The series of dreams seems to center on my coming into the world hoping to achieve a certain something, and the process of doing it and the prospect of it continuing as a group effort. But “unsub,” though clear in the initial segment, was remembered without context. So, just noodle on the word unsub?

In loose connection with the meaning of the dream, yes. You are looking for the emotional tie, not a logical tie. You will remember, you as a 3D being are surrounded by seen and unseen pulls in all directions, resonances to each of the senses, to each emotional complex you may have, to each similar-sounding word, or memory-evoking association, etc., etc. So, don’t go expecting that only one path will lead you to anything interesting. And, like trying to remember a missing word (the same process, but a reciprocal), don’t clutch at it. Center on it, invite it, allow it, and if the explanation itself doesn’t come, be open to something else.

Okay. Valuable reminder in itself, that.

Unsub may refer to many things. I still gravitate toward computer code, but “unidentified subject” (a la FBI reports) comes to mind. Other things have been suggested. Unsub may mean, “accept no substitutes,” and that is feeling right, at the moment. Sort of like, you want your life to be butter, not margarine. It might be that the initial dream of the series concerned my briefing, so to speak.

In fact, let me fantasize here. I am drawn toward the idea that that peculiar series of dreams concerned my life that was to come, the life I am leading, the life in retrospect, the life’s 3D aftermath. All in the context of this work, of course.

So I could see it saying: Don’t settle for second best (though it seems to me I have been doing exactly that all my life); recognize that you aren’t sure you can do it; avoid the forces that lead to disrupting teamwork; recognize that success catalyzes departure; be prepared to see all the shortcomings of who you became and what you did and what will or may follow.

And in that case, “unsub” means “accept no substitutes”? Might it not mean, retore what had been substituted for?

That’s very interesting, and persuasive. It may indeed.

Well, what have we been nudging you toward, in your personal best interests and also as part of the message we wished to put out – the two flowing together naturally, and reinforcing each other – but just that: Return to the source.

Wow, that sends me back!

Yes, but explain.

I met Colin Wilson finally in March 1995, and we rapidly began exchanging thoughts and in fact became friends, to my delight, after 25 years of admiring his work from afar. I learned that in September he was going to be lead presenter at a weekend conference in Delaware titled “Return to the Source,” so I attended. At the time I had never heard of John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Robert Shoch, and there they were and I got what they were about. And reading John Anthony Wett’s landmark book Serpent in the Sky explained some of the salient points of Schwaller de Lubitsch’s work, which, of course, was at the center of the conference’s concerns.

And what would you say is the center of our concerns, as far as they concern you?

If it isn’t life more abundantly, I don’t know what it could be. That is the promise I immediately read in Colins books, from The Mind Parasites in 1970 straight on. But I didn’t understand it then as I do now.

Good thing! We’d certainly have been wasting our time and yours, if all these years of conversations and experiences hadn’t moved you off your initial position!

Yes, very funny, and yes I recognize that you are serious as well.

What did Kelly tell you, long before you met Colin?

That I was here to publicly remember what it is like to awaken. Or – no, you say it. You’ll probably have a different nuance that perhaps I will have slurred in memory.

She said your life was a conscious waking up that required that you begin by not remembering what of course you already knew.

Yes, I suppose so. My life has been guided pretty sure-footedly by forces not particularly obvious to me until I got to a certain point of awareness. Certainly on a 3D level of consciousness I have stumbled around in the dark, often enough.

And you have been willing to record the stumbling around, for anyone’s sake who might be able to profit from it.

All true enough. And I think you and I have made our point by now. If there’s any more wrong ways to go about waking up, or any more wrong goals or wrong procedures I haven’t embodied, I’d just as soon skip them. We made our point by now, I think.

We have and we haven’t. Pencil points can always be sharpened, you know, right up to where the lateral torque of the sharpener breaks them.

Sounds like I’ve finally learned your name: Lateral Torque. A non-3D rock band, presumably.

But you get what we’re saying.

I do. We’ve said what you (we) wanted said, reminding people to live their lives pursuing fewer external chimeras, but the lesson could always be made clearer.

Why else, do you think, are you driving yourself to review our conversations over the past few years, editing as you go?

So I suppose one more effort to pull it together in as coherent form as possible.

That, and anything else you care to do to amuse yourself. We said you weren’t here to write novels, but we said you could if you wished. Plus there are other ways to spend your time. It’s up to you.

I think it’s interesting how one thing leads to another if I let if flow according to what “the times” seem to want. Couldn’t get very far with “unsub” last year, nor the other day, but it seems clear enough now. My thanks as always.

Butter costs more than margarine, but the two products are not comparable. Returning to the source of things is always a process of purification, in a way. Certainly a process of simplification, of refining.

Yes. Again, thanks.

 

Sunday February 2, 2020

Last night you said we should start with the image of us in 3D as ships upon the sea.

We wonder if we should not be proceeding more with images and less with descriptions of relationships. An attractive idea, but impossible. Images require explanation, as explanation requires images to put it into a capsule.

A ship upon the sea is a self-contained society existing at the boundary of elements (sea and sky). It is affected to an enormous degree by weather. It is self-contained, but very far from being isolated from the elements. Its existence depends upon the elements. It is affected by any turn of the weather, it sets its course sometimes in cooperation with prevailing conditions, sometimes in opposition to them. Does this not resemble your life conditions in the 3D world? There is “you” and there is “it” – it being the impersonal world around you that affects you and seems to be unaffected by you.

Sea currents, hurricanes prevailing westerlies, winter conditions, and even subtle conditions such as salinity, barometric pressure, magnetic fluctuations – it all affects you, in reality or in potential, and it all is vastly disproportionate to your own force. The forces have their own origins, their own laws of existence, their own patterns of interaction. The salinity of the sea or the barometric pressure of today’s atmosphere do not adjust themselves to you; you adjust to them, or you live among them unconscious of them perhaps.

That’s one analogy. Hold it in mind as we remind you of another, which is equally suggestive and equally only so accurate and no more.

You as passenger on a train are being carried in a certain direction at a rate of speed you do not control. From your point of view, the world outside your windows seems to continually refresh. The old disappears, the new appears and then vanishes. Within the car you may interact with your fellow passengers. You may walk up to the dining car, if you choose to. You may snooze or read or pass the time however you can, but you cannot leave the train. You cannot change its direction, its speed, its conditions. “You” are one thing, your environment is something else, and you know intellectually, if not sensorially, that each of your fellow passengers is in the same fix.

The two analogies illumine each other because each has its own deficiency and its own applicability. Add more analogies and each would assist you to see more nuances. None would be “correct.” Each would illustrate certain aspects. Together they would come closer to portraying your reality. And of course, each analogy is really an image, easily remembered, not requiring words to be called up. So, once explained, they serve as summaries. Pointers.

So now if we refer to the vast impersonal forces, you might remember the ship upon the sea. If we refer to time in 3D, the train. If to your position as the ghost in the machine, so to speak, you might remember either. They are not meant as dogma, but as capsule visualizations. As we said a while ago, you and we, working together, must deal with the inherent limitation of attention caused by 3D conditions, and symbols allow you to hold more relationships in your attention simultaneously. The more information that can be packed into symbols, and the more symbols that can be deployed at the same time, the more sophisticated an understanding you can achieve.

However, it is important not to allow yourselves to be trapped within symbols. The two analogies cited above describe one aspect of your life: the apparent surrounding existence of the objective world as it shapes the conditions of your life. They do not really deal with your life as you live it, choosing, creating yourselves, shaping and being shaped by the crucible you exist in. They do not deal with the fact that you are in 3D but also extend beyond it; that the world around you is in 3D and similarly extends beyond it. And they very much do not deal with the question of who set the boat sailing or the train rolling, or what the course is, or what the condition or purpose of the journey, etc.

And if we can come up with symbols for each of these aspects?

Then you will have a handle on your life. Your working with the images, rather than passively accepting them, will deepen your understanding.

I can almost envision a comic book summary, consisting of little more than images.

Not impossible, but of course it would be valuable to the degree that the images were understood not only in their literal appearance but in their implied connections and invisible extensions.

Don’t try to truncate symbols into any one meaning.

Yes, exactly. Now, holding in mind the analogies of the ship and the railway car, let us move to find one to represent your active mental life among a seemingly external world.

“Diving bell” is what came to mind, immediately, though I don’t know how many people remember what a diving bell was. Scuba gear doesn’t have the same feel to it.

Perhaps caissons?

Well, maybe. Caissons were boxes constructed underwater in which men worked. The high atmospheric pressure contained within them kept the water out. The caissons were open at the bottom; the men were digging it deeper as they went.

Life inside a caisson was high-pressure by definition. You entered through hatches that allowed the pressure to be maintained. You were entirely isolated from the world outside the caisson. You could enter or you could leave; you could communicate through telephone lines or other means, but what you could not do was exist both within and without those walls. The walls preserved your life: They made it possible for you to exist in there in the first place. But they did enforce isolation.

As an analogy, it may serve to describe 3D life. You may call us in non-3D, beyond the walls of your 3D caisson, but you can’t exist here and there at the same time.

You see the point of this analogy. The ship referred to the vast impersonal forces that affect your lives. The railroad car referred to the effects of the perception of time as remorseless movement. The caisson refers to the fact that you are isolated in a high-pressure environment to work, constructing something, not merely passing the time.

 

Unsub

Saturday, December 18, 2021

6 a.m. I got up no fewer than four times to record fragments of dreams that in some way seem to form one dream. Can you help me with this, or do we have other fish to fry?

Other than the word “unsub” which remains mysterious to you, you see clearly enough what the message is, don’t you?

Well –

[paraphrasing entries made during the night]

• 1 a.m. Someone was searching for something. “Unsub” was used and I knew what it meant in context, but not when I came to record it.
• 1:35. I am uneasy because I promised to do something and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. I noted that the first dream had the same element.
• 3:25. “They” were keeping us all apart, working separately on whatever the problem was. The staff were breaking down. We somehow overheard what the difficulty was, and persuaded them to let us work together rather than in isolation.
• 4:30. Success, quickly. Then I forgot the dream, thinking about Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society” – “O Captain,, my captain.”
• 5:50. And finally, a dream, perhaps in more than one segment, about me, my friends, competition (not necessarily among ourselves), my carelessness, and many other aspects of social interaction, I see now.

Yes, I suppose I see one thread of it, well enough (except for that word “unsub” that I clung to, to write down, though losing the rest of the dream in consequence, and therefore losing the significance of the word.

Okay, we’ll teach you a trick, here. Concentrate on the word that you know was significant, free-associate on it, making occasional notes if appropriate, and see if you cannot thereby link your conscious present-moment self with that dream element by associating your present-moment self with the self of the moment that experienced the dream.

Huh! Interesting idea. Okay, I’ll try it, don’t go away. Although, thinking about it, I don’t see why you can’t be that link, existing outside of present-moment-time constraints.

Well, try it, anyway.

It sounds like computer code. Gosub, in BASIC, for instance. Like spy jargon in memos, or military acronyms. Radio jargon for hams or CBers. I’m getting a combination of Gosub and a negation of it: Unsub, not Gosub. I suppose, stay where you are, don’t go off and execute a subroutine and return. But that’s stretching it.

“Stretching it” is exactly the nature of the exercise. It is designed to help you evade the limits of logic and language (and every manifestation of sequential thinking) and instead function via images, gestalts, non-logical connections, or (more carefully said), emotionally connected. More like dream-state functioning, you see, only you piggy-backing to leave a record.

So, don’t judge the product, just continue until hopefully something goes “click!”

Yes.

Well, Unsub. Sub-lieutenant. (Where did that come from? Is there such a thing?) Accept no substitutes. A submarine of the United Nations. This could get silly.

Remember that the actual connection did not make sense to conscious processing, hence disappeared.

Okay. “Unsub” in the context of somebody searching for something, and my worrying I won’t be able to do something I’d promised to do. The original (no substitute.) But I had gotten that as a thought a moment ago.

Sometimes repetition means you’re getting warm.

Hadn’t thought of that.

When you run dry, add another element even if it wasn’t strictly connected. Robin Williams, for instance: You began thinking of him and that scene from the movie not during your dream but in writing it down. Why? It came to you; you didn’t fetch it.

True. Well, that scene involved the boys’ tribute to him as he was leaving. Their grief, their appreciation, their love really, and his acknowledgement, warm, grateful, proud. All of it in defiance of the institutions and the rules.

It had a valedictory feel, did it not?

It did. And in my dream it was tacked onto success through a group effort.

That segment, that originally looked to you like a happy ending to the four dreams, then followed by one dream more (in several acts).

Yes, a dream of trivial contentions and schemings (there was something political in one of them) and the complications of dealing with others.

So, what do you need, a road map and an Indian guide?

Maybe not. Still don’t know what the point or context of “Unsub” was, though.

Would you rather have that, or the overall message of the dream?

Both, actually.

In any case, you have a method of approach for the future.

So we do. Thanks. There was something else, but it fled. I guess I’ll transcribe and send this. I wasn’t sure I would, but I decided to go with your advice to proceed openly and censor later if need be, and it does help. But we have a few minutes. Anything you’d like to add?

Remember that dreams don’t usually mean one thing. They may be looked at as Jung looked at them, as compensations for your conscious attitude. That is, you are thinking too highly of yourself in some context; a dream says, not so much. Or you are thinking too little of yourself in some context. A dream says, you underrate yourself in this regard. This isn’t everything a dream does, and it is not what it does every time, but still it is something to consider. “How is this dream mirroring some aspect of me that I am not sufficiently aware of?” That is always a good question to ask, and sometimes it will shed surprising light on an otherwise puzzling or obscure situation.

So this leaves only one question: Why “Unsub”?

Yes, very funny. When you find out, let us know.

That’s what Bob  Monroe used to say when asked an unanswerable question: “Go find out, and come back and tell me, and we’ll both know.”

That’s how it works. Things don’t come front and center arbitrarily. There is always a reason, obvious or not. Pursuing your own puzzles is always going to be more productive than trying to attack someone else’s, and at the same time, you are likely to get more out of it than anyone else could, because it emerges from your far-flung context: everything you are, everything you have thought, felt, read, heard, imagined; everything and everybody you connect to in various ways 3D and non-3D. How could anybody’s unique combination of elements be duplicated? We keep telling you, you are each unique and hence irreplaceable. You are not identical cogs in a machine, no matter how it seems.

 

Glassblowing was an appropriate analogy for the interplay of compound beings and the vast impersonal forces that are beyond personality or easily discerned individuality.

Hold the visual image this calls forth. It may remind you that life is greater, wider, deeper, more intricate, more mysterious, than it sometimes appears in 3D. It will also remind you that your 3D and non-3D components are – obviously – in the same boat, as are you and all your fellows past, present, and future.

When one goes to thinking about the larger questions – what is the meaning of life, why am I here, where do I go from here, why am I as I am and what can I do to change or continue, that sort of question – there is often a tendency to unconsciously distort the question (and thus the answer) by considering oneself separate, or by considering one’s class of beings as separate. Surely you can see that an inquiry into the meaning of life that assumes, silently, that the center of life is oneself, or is 3D beings as a whole, or is compound beings as a whole, is necessarily going to be seriously skewed by that assumption. The proportions are wrong; it is out of drawing.

But of course the tendency is natural. To proceed to describe all heaven and earth as if one knew, is to disconnect from reality in an alternative way, particularly if the resulting scheme still talks of human existence, or compound-being existence, as if they were realer than they are, rather than half-abstractions.

Being in bodies, living in 3D as part of compound beings as you are, and each of you functioning as if you were a unit rather than an interconnected part of a larger something, certainly you must relate to the greater reality in terms you can relate to. Only, do not allow yourself to think that simplifications that form a coherent scheme express reality in anything like its complexity.

Each of you is the center of your universe, – only remember that this is a limitation of perspective for the sake of utility and reference, rather than a description that would be recognizable from any viewpoint other than someone’s living in 3D.

And perhaps you can see now why the recent reorientations, accustoming you to recognizing that 3D and non-3D are complementary parts of one whole; are, in fact, one undivided and indivisible reality. “This world and the next world” is a sterile concept needing to be overcome if you are to deepen your understanding of the way things are. The 3D world per se isn’t as real as it sometimes appears.

It has been necessary to do two complementary things: to get the materialistic vision expanded to include all the non-physical forces it wants to deny, and to get the metaphysical vision expanded to include all the religious insights it wants to deny. Not that either half of this large task has been accomplished, but many people chipping away will have an effect. Cayce the first, Seth the second, and many, many people following upon them, and many, many to follow as time goes on. But – that is what we are about here, tying together perceived antagonisms to overcome their partiality at a higher level. You cannot move forward by clinging to your accustomed prejudices.

So I take it the grain of sand’s view of the glassblowing process might not be entirely adequate to the full picture.

Yes, funny, but that’s the idea. Only, remember, that grain of sand has its own level of awareness. Like everything else, it is made of and from consciousness. It is no more dead or inert than anything else could be. It isn’t unconscious, or orphaned in the universe; it is different; it has its own appropriate level of participation in the world. It has its own non-3D component, obviously, or else how did it manage to exist in only some of the dimensions. So, don’t pity it, learn to speak its language, if you can, if you wish to. After all, that’s what larger beings have to learn to do, to speak to you.

Was that my thought, rather than yours?

You mean, was that an error of reception, you inserting something that did not belong?

Yes, I guess that’s one way to put it.

Did the idea surprise you?

Yes it did.

Well?

“Well?” meaning I suppose that the fact that it was a surprise ought to tell me it wasn’t mine.

You might say that. But it would be better to loosen your hold on the idea that ideas originate with anyone. It would be closer to say they originate from the interaction of two or more mental processes, and would be closer yet to say they don’t so much originate as reveal themselves. But let’s pursue the idea itself, rather than ideas about ideas.

Yes, larger beings have to learn to communicate with partial beings, call them. Do you automatically know how to talk to the bacteria in your body, or the habit-systems that maintain your body moment by moment? Do you even maintain a continual awareness that they are there to be communicated with? The analogy is fairly close.

So, now. Bearing in mind that analogies are necessarily approximations, which means necessarily somewhat inadequate, somewhat inaccurate, think of that grain-of-sand-into-glass analogy. In a way, that is your life. It is the transformation of particles into a larger structure; it is the fusing under hellishly hot conditions of things that were separate into things that are functionally one. It is the creation of larger structures from simple components.

[It was only in typing this up that I realized they meant that our multiple strands are fused, in 3D conditions, into a unity, a higher level of structure. Presumably that new structure becomes a strand in yet another 3D being, and thus becomes part of something even more complicated, more intricate.]

It is analogy, remember, and every analogy breaks down somewhere. But it is a good analogy. Can you see now why we aren’t as concerned with peace on earth, and social justice, and intellectual comprehension of the way things are, as you might expect? It isn’t that they aren’t real within your context; it is that your context itself is only somewhat real, only transiently real, you might say, next to the overwhelmingly important fact that the fire is melting the sand into glass.

But. Analogies break down. Do not allow yourselves to fall into the error of thinking nothing matters, that you are an insignificant grain of sand, that you are going to be annihilated by the vast impersonal forces that are, in fact, transforming and shaping you. You are still the spark of consciousness that you experience yourself to be. Your non-3D component is as much in the transforming furnace as you are. Your unique contribution to the whole is still unique, still a contribution. Only, what is really going on is also at a scale far larger than that of compound beings, let alone 3D individuals.

I feel like I am breathing very rarified air, this morning. I didn’t expect any of this. Can you really relate it to the sins and virtues, I wonder?

The difficulty will be in not allowing yourselves to be seduced by any one aspect of reality, any one particularly vivid analogy. It was desirable to remind you that Life is bigger than your 3D experience; it would be undesirable if that glimpse then persuaded you that your here-and-now had no place in things, no importance in your development, for it would soon follow that you would conclude that your very existence has no point, no importance. And such is not the case.

Our hour is up, but we can continue if you wish to round things off.

No, this is a unit as it is. Only remember that holding two or more competing or complementary or contradictory visions at the same time may lead you to be able to intuit things that cannot quite be put into sequential thinking.

 

It comes to me that this is about connecting in three ways.

• Along our strands;
• in connection with our non-3D self that is permanent (i.e. not merely conditions of resonance);
• with submerged or overlooked aspects of our 3D mind, what people call the subconscious.

Three dimensions, not just one. Each has its own characteristics. Perhaps that can be our next discussion.

The insight was valid, and should repay at least a brief look. Three modes of connection:

• Back and forth along the various strands you comprise – strands that may have little or nothing in common but you.
• Up and down (so to speak) between your strictly 3D-oriented mind and the larger self that you are or are not aware of at any given time.
• Within and within and within the parts of your 3D-consciousness realm that are outside the range of your normal awareness.

This may not be a new way of seeing your situation in the world, but it may be as well to summarize the situation, to bring it front and center. One tends to think that consciousness is more or less the same although subject to fluctuation.

Even after we are well aware of how much our consciousness fluctuates from moment to moment, we still tend to think that it is a basic unit that fluctuates. We are less likely to see ourselves as processing from a unit that itself changes (depending upon what it links to, and how strongly, at any given moment). That is, our state of mind fluctuates, but beyond that, the seat of consciousness itself fluctuates. The boundaries differ.

(And, speaking of boundaries, in the middle of that paragraph I found it was the guys speaking.)

You will find that all sorts of boundaries blur. They were never all that real in the first place, and, as we keep saying, are never absolute anyway. So let’s look briefly at the opportunities that open up to you when you become aware of them. They were always available as possibilities, but of course that is no use to you until you realize it.

• This has the allure of “past lives.” It needn’t. It could equally well be approached as an exploration of your tendencies, talents, shortcomings, etc. Such exploration provides insight, which can be a powerful lever. And when you realize that the individuals living their lives along the same strands are alive now, choosing now, hence available to you now, you see that you have far more power over parts of your life that have been run by the unconscious-you than you ever dreamed you did. They have their problems; they have things you can help them with. Also, they connect (via other of their strands) to qualities and characteristics you could never access directly, because the vibrations between you and them are so different. There is a tremendous lot of work possible here, not least the possibility of helping each other, hence more consciousness of your total possibility.
• The larger self. A lot of nonsense and of ungrounded speculation centers on the concept of Enlightenment. You would probably do well to ignore the concept entirely. It encourages you to think in terms of destination instead of process, and is likely to lead to depression or inflation, depending on your idea of how far along you are. Instead, focus your efforts on continually increasing your receptivity to, and your conscious contribution to, what may be called your larger self – the being of which any one 3D person is only a part. Everything you will interact with is alive and conscious. You aren’t speaking to statues nor prostrating yourself before gods. A tremendous amount of information (for lack of a better word) can be transferred in non-linear fashion, hence with less distortion. The potential for personal growth can scarcely be over-stated.
• Your inaccessible mind. A third realm containing uncounted treasure, with tripwires that make it dangerous, and exciting, and potentially transformative. The tripwires are of course emotional. Memories, unnoticed things, repressed things, non-logical but definite connections, it’s all there for the discovering. And the payoff for doing the sometimes unpleasant, sometimes dangerous work, is freedom. The fewer tripwires in the unconscious, the less tiptoeing around you have to do in the conscious. This is, of course, the realm of psychiatry and, formerly, of confession to another human being.

So you might think of strands as offering healing, the larger self as offering insight, and the unconscious 3D mind as offering disentanglement.

 

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

I made a note in the middle of the night to ask for an outline of the precis that might serve as an intro to this new way of seeing the world. But perhaps you have other plans?

We can give you general orienting ideas, but the specifics must be done on your end, if they are to be done at all. You are not Jane Roberts and we are not Seth, and our communication is of a different order than theirs.

Understood. It took me several days’ work to outline the existing contents of the book of Nathaniel, as I have been thinking of it, or Only Somewhat Real, as I may call it. And that is merely putting a structure of chapter headings and subheads in an existing transcript. It wasn’t shaped from my end.

Still, you can do this. The resulting structure will resemble Muddy Tracks or Imagine Yourself Well more than your books of transcripts. It is no more than what you thought of 20 years ago and were calling “The Copernican Shift,” only your understanding of it has broadened and revolutionized several times since then. So, hold to the intent but use a different technique.

There are at least two ways you could do it, each with its own virtues and disadvantages. You could try to tell it as it happened – in other words, relate the succession of mental revolutions – or you could present the picture as you currently understand it.

Another interim report.

Everything is necessarily an interim report. Nobody writes anything else. Nobody ever has the final word on anything, except by arbitrarily calling it that. The advantages of a trip summary are that it begins from the familiar and delivers the goods in a series of steps that may help the reader to stay oriented. The disadvantages are that it may be longer, more episodic, and the real substantial disadvantage is that you can’t count on the reader getting what is only implicit.

I thought you said words are sparks, not signposts.

Anybody writing anything needs every bit of clarity and precision you can bring to the job, not because your A students can’t follow you, but because you want your B students and if possible your C students to benefit as well. So, what is enough for one may say nothing at all to another, and what is overkill for one may be just barely enough for another. Mix it up.

The way Thoreau wrote, you mean.

Well, look at the difference between his impact and Emerson’s.

I remember reading Thoreau and there would be two sentences, one following the next, that at first seemed to have nothing to do with each other. I would have to pause and intuit, before I could see the thing he had said between the lines. Emerson’s strategy is more  straightforward, but sometimes his underlying thought is more obscure because he doesn’t help you tease it out the way Thoreau does. And of course Emerson’s prose is half a generation older than Thoreau’s, and so strikes us as more English, more stilted, although it did not seem so to his contemporaries. So where does this leave us?

You need to write it as plainly as you can – as both of them did, realize – as concisely and invitingly as you can.

But that isn’t any help, really. I know it’s true, but I already knew it.

Had you made the comparison to Thoreau and Emerson? It is in such comparisons of style and technique and writing strategy that you can intuit what cannot be plainly said. And certainly you will have as much need of technique as they did, for your world to reveal is as strange to your contemporaries as theirs was to theirs.

That’s fine, but it isn’t specific.

The specifics you already know. The way to sort them out in your mind is to list them and juggle them until they sort out into the order most easily comprehended by the reader.

I’m going to have to think of the reader more than ever before. Always difficult.

You don’t need to be able to envision their starting point, nor their mental processes, nor the path that leads them to you. All you need to do is keep firmly in mind that your accustomed world is strange to them, and explain. What explanation one doesn’t need, another may, and nothing wasted in providing it.

So, here are some geese to juggle:

• 3D conditions – separation in time and in place, delayed consequences, one ever-moving present-moment.
• The things these conditions allow (and require).
• The non-3D, by contrast.
• The fact that 3D and non-3D are not separate realms but are separately conceived of, but interpenetrate, being indivisible.
• So, the All-D
• Non-locality in time as well as space, and its consequences, namely, it’s-all-one-thing, even though (deliberately) not perceived that way commonly in 3D.
• As above, so below as an organizing principle.
• Community, seen one way; individual, seen another way.
• A consequently different way to see “past lives.”
• The world is constructed of consciousness.
• A Sam as creator, as opposed to the unknowable God with unknowable attributes.
• Scripture in different forms – scripture, poetry, channeling, aspiration, intense visualization.
• Miracles and impossibilities that have been reported and are inexplicable in conventional terms but look different when seen differently.
• ESP in all its forms in light of the world being constructed of consciousness rather than lumps of stuff separated by emptiness but affecting each other at a distance.
• Healing, panaceas, miracle cures, faith, etc. in light of this view.

All right, I begin to get it. Maybe two parts? One setting it out, the second setting out consequences?

Way too early to being structuring, but consider an initial chapter setting out some of the conundrums of the world as commonly seen. Maybe a fast survey of some of the proposed answers that don’t do the job. In other words, set out the problem. Then the reader knows what you want to accomplish.

But in Muddy Tracks you let the reader accompany you through certain transformative experiences and then present your interim report. What you did in Imagine Yourself Well was less of a trip report, more of a distilled here’s-what-I-know,-here’s-what-I-think-you-may-be-able-to-do. Very different strategies, very different result.

Well, I knew more by the time I came to write the latter book. I was living in a different mental space.

Precisely the point. You will be writing from a new place; remember to help readers take the step that will allow them to overcome the difference from wherever they are to where you are. This is no longer a matter of saying, “I know where you are because that’s where I started” (although that should come into play here and there), but of “Look at the world this way, and see if it doesn’t work better for you.” Big difference.

Getting “me” out of the way.

Well – that depends on how you look at it. In a way Thoreau was much more evident in his writings than was Emerson. The reader cannot forget Thoreau’s assertive presence, and it adds punch to his statements. But in a way it is true that he and his life were there merely as illustrative background. You had to intuit Emerson’s presence more; his writing was more like overhearing a man thinking, while his friend Henry’s was like watching a man living in the world. So – stay in the picture, but yes, obviously if you are in the picture it is as a flesh-and-blood illustration more than as, God forbid, role model or idol to be venerated. You are just setting out what you have learned, nothing more.

And maybe afterward it will be time to disappear and get out of the way.

There’s no way for you to know that, unless you can predict all the ways your life could go.

All right, more?

What we give you is not units of information but access to more, whenever you need it and remember to put yourself into a position to receive it.

And I know that statement is meant for everybody, not just for me.

Your temptation is always to rest on your oars after bringing in information. This will require a different kind of response, more active, more proactive. But it isn’t like you haven’t written novels; all the construction had to be done at your end, so you have the experience under your belt.

Okay, thanks.

 

All right, friends. Anything for us this morning, or shall I go back to reading? Or – ghastly thought! – even back to working?

Nobody can kick you into working if you don’t want to. It’s in what you want.

I know. Although, that always reverts to “Which you?”

For you, it does. For another, maybe not, for there might be no conflict. For yet another, paralysis because the conflict might be beyond resolution.

Yes, you’ve made that clear to us over the time..

Yet here is a nuance that perhaps we have not made clear. For some people, it is a matter of one established “I” nevertheless needing to impose its will.

Say some more about that?

You accept what comes. But do you mandate that something come?

You know I don’t.

Then you must accept a certain amount of frustration. How do you – how does anyone – both accept and direct?

Some people are naturally what is called weak-willed. Some, contrarily, are relentless bulldozers. And, as usual, everyone else falls somewhere in between. Some are relentless in one direction and quite malleable (because indifferent) in others. Some are mild-mannered but persistent in a low-key way. Some are subject to fits of suborn assertiveness alternated with long stretches of apathy or acceptance or indifference. If we spell out these different stances, it is only to bring them actively to mind, for of course you all see these differences every day.

And I get that you are going to say – as usual – that things are not quite as they appear.

Any phenomenon, no matter how familiar, will present unsuspected aspects when examined in a new light or from a different angle.

It has been noted that quite primitive personalities may meet external success in business or politics or other fields of competition because they are entirely undivided in their intent. They set a goal and move without internal friction to accomplish it, and the results may be remarkable.

Douglas MacArthur at West Point.

Yes, that is a good example. You don’t average 98 out of 100 and graduate without a demerit if you are busy trying to overcome internal conflict.

Yet his later record was littered with official reprimands of various kinds.

His later career was not as clear-cut in its requirements as was West Point. That embodied individual will functions extremely well in situations where the rules are definite and inflexible, and expectations can be met precisely and by intent. Most of life is not like that, of course, so such a person must either impose his will upon inchoate circumstances or suffer frustrations. Or both.

Somewhat like Hemingway, MacArthur was superb in dangerous situations, unruly in routine ones. In World War I he was apparently unruffled in the most violent battles, appearing quite heedless of the possibility of injury or death, just like Hemingway 26 years later when he was overtaken by his renewed conviction of invulnerability.

Both, too, were men who imposed their will upon the course of their lives. MacArthur, son and grandson of famous soldiers, willed his way to military pre-eminence. Hemingway worked and worried his way through the somewhat formless competition and chaotic requirements of the world of commercial publishing to achieve his own preeminence. In neither case was the position at the top of the heap achieved by accepting what came. They did their best to determine what came. Hemingway spent more time and energy organizing upcoming fun with his friends than some expend on a career. That energy overflowed in him.

However, we don’t wish to give the wrong impression. Hemingway was very self-divided – to the point of internal civil war – in everything in life except his purity of devotion to the act of creation. He wanted to succeed; he worked hard to get Scribner’s to promote his books. But what was non-negotiable for him was the process itself. He came to his writing desk as a priest to the altar.

We once contrasted Hemingway and Fitzgerald, in Hemingway’s voice. For Hemingway, writing was his sacred vocation; it was the thing to which he was always true. To Fitzgerald, writing was a means to an end, a talent and skill that he parlayed into fame and wealth. It isn’t that Fitzgerald betrayed his talent (as Hemingway sometimes thought he did) but that the two men thought of writing in two complementary but basically different ways.

MacArthur was something of a blend of the two, because his situation was different. He was Army to his boot tips, but he was MacArthur to those same boot tips. He did not face (if he even recognized) conflicts between the role and the profession, or between either and himself.

Have we wandered off any conceivable point, here? It feels like we have.

We can bring it to point by comparing them to you, but the difference in achievement may be too vast to allow our point to shine clearly. So find us our examples. You know what we want.

I do. Well, in the Army, how about Bradley or Eisenhower? Both highly professional, both at the pinnacle of professional success, neither was an egomaniac. And in writing, I don’t know, Dos Passos?

You are in the right ball park to illustrate the point. Bradley and Eisenhower were modest men who were team players; they didn’t have to be the star; they concentrated on doing their job as best they could. Their will, you see, was not focused solely on their own careers and preeminence. They were not weak-willed – that isn’t how one advances up a pyramid – but their will wasn’t one-pointed. In a sense, one could say MacArthur was always at an extreme of tension; Bradley was not. Eisenhower was not. They were balanced in a way MacArthur was not, or rather, their point of balance was not his. It isn’t that MacArthur was unbalanced, but that he was centered entirely upon one thing, in a way they were not.

Dos Passos, too, was centered differently than Hemingway. He considered becoming an artist as a young man. His success with his first novel surprised him. His life centered upon other things than writing as a sacred profession. He was skilled, he was serious, he was professional, but he was not a priest in the way Hemingway was. This did not make him less of a man, and perhaps no greater amount of intense concentration could have brought his prose to the level of Hemingway’s, but the difference was there.

I don’t know, I’m still unclear on the connection of all this to will.

Sometimes what appears to be a matter of will (or lack of will) is actually something else. Bulldozers don’t maneuver well. Sometimes a bicycle goes places bulldozers can’t go.

A little more explicitly, please.

Everyone chooses. Life is choice, and the result of choice, and the preparation for choice. But the criteria selected, and the goals selected, make life a very different thing for different kinds of people. Some are single-pointed and are quite successful in achieving what they can conceptualize – and may be quite blind to anything else, and may be quite disoriented, even helpless, when confronted with situations outside their accustomed areas of operation. Some are diffuse, achieving no single-pointed success but instead enjoying a well-roundedness unimaginable (because most of the facets are invisible to them) to the one-pointed person. And some are not focused at all, or are focused let’s say by default, being shaped by the currents they find themselves in. There is room for all these in life, else life wouldn’t allow them.

And so?

And so if you wish to be frustrated, there’s nothing to it: Merely measure your life by the wrong yardstick.