It’s a chicken and egg kind of question: How do you connect to guidance if you don’t have guidance to connect you to guidance? How can you know that you are not connecting to evil or mischievous spirits intending to lead you astray?
As usual, the guys upstairs had a couple words about this, that I hope you will find useful. Continue reading Learning to live consciously in guidance
[December 22, 2005] 8:15 a.m. Back to Joseph, with a couple of complications. A friend emailed that no one could get eight miles an hour from a horse over several hours, day after day, without breaking down the horse’s health. Just the kind of factual error the prospect of which used to paralyze me. And then, it occurred to me all the stuff that was going on (though I don’t know how fast the news of it traveled) that he ought to have been aware of. Oregon statehood question, “54-40 or Fight,” the Mexican War – and no mention so far.
Plus – a very odd feeling – I try to imagine ahead of time what he’s going to say about his life after he came east and I can’t find it! Surely that ought to be reassuring? Well – onward, farther into the real wilderness. I’m not doing anything much different than Lewis and Clark, though in different kind of territory. I sure wish I knew what I was doing, though! (And I wish I knew internal agendas. Here I’ve spent the week mostly channeling Joseph and transcribing and sending – haven’t even looked at the guidance section of the book I’m supposedly writing – and yet I feel it is okay. I suppose this new access is part of that book, or part of the process, anyway.
Joseph, you’re on. I hope you’ve made up a convincing story, and an explanation or two.
Astoria
[Wednesday, December 21, 2005] 8:40 a.m. All right, Joseph, I’m ready if you are.
You’re ready but you’re nervous. We’re functioning on the theory that you’re getting some things wrong, remember, and can correct yourself later. But you’re also getting some things right.
All right. Always a struggle for me, and not just for me.
No. Well. You’ve always assumed that I went west and stayed there, or, more recently, that I went west and bounced back east. But in fact that’s just your natural tendency – anyone’s — to see another’s life as more simple than it is. That’s eliminating the cross-purposes, and the back-and-forth that makes life really. Think of your own life. To tell it is to falsify it because all anyone can do is lay out a few lines, and the other lines are as if they didn’t exist. But things that aren’t talked about, scarcely are thought about, may be as important as coloring, as flavoring, as what is talked about. Can’t be helped. I liked cats as much as you do – but that doesn’t mean we ought to spend a lot of time talking about cats. You understand. Of course, if we did happen to start talking about cats probably it would illuminate as much as anything else would.
[Still Tuesday, December 20, 2005]
1:20 p.m. Having transcribed and sent. A friend says if I have a middle initial it will make things easier. “Thaddeus” immediately pops up before I can fairly ask the question. I see there was a Joseph T. – in the 7th battery, Indiana Light Artillery – one of three initials that appear for that battery. But you have said none of the units are right.
Yes I have said you are on the wrong track. You came closest when you speculated about the 50th U.S. But first let’s talk some more about my time in the west, the high point of my life before the crusade.
You were pretty opinionated, weren’t you; pretty downright and forceful. [This because I gave an uncharacteristically blunt and even harsh characterization of what the Civil War was about, to one of my very good friends who is an ex-reb.]
Went with being a New Englander. We weren’t much for sugar-coating. Continue reading 5 – West to Astoria
[December 20, 2005] An odd thing is that Marching Through Georgia is insisting on mutating into a refrain of “..marching through – Boston.” What the hell? No reason I can think of, and certainly nothing I consciously intended. While we were marching through – Boston??
8 a.m. All right Joseph – Mr. Smallwood? – you’ve begun something of interest to a lot of people. I sure hope you’re there to continue! Continue reading 4 – North on the river
In January 2006, while I was in the middle of receiving lots of information from the other side, several things happened that once again shook my confidence — for in this whole process, I have never been certain that I was right or even that I knew what I was doing. Much closer to say the opposite. (If you cannot stand ambiguity or uncertainty and if you cannot stand the feeling of being lost, exploring probably is not for you.)
Not only was I unable to obtain verification of Joseph Smallwood’s story as I went along, but when a friend asked me to obtain information from the other side, and I did, it turned out that what I had brought back was smoke. It didn’t match the case at all. Yet the information that I was bringing back — and promptly posting to a Monroe Institute group — was proving helpful to people. How could I sometimes be receiving information that was helpful and at other times receive information that was wrong? It never made sense to me. A little discussion with the guys upstairs shed light on the question. Continue reading The limits to guidance
[On Sunday, December 18, 2005, I wrote this: “Instead of addressing the guys in general, perhaps I’ll try it this way: David, please put me into direct touch with Joseph Smallwood.” That’s all it took. (David, by the way, was a journalist whose life spanned about 30 years in the 19th and another 30 years in the 20th century. His is one of the oldest influences in my life, and one of the first that I investigated.) I don’t know why so many years had to go by before thought of contacting Smallwood (or anybody) in this simple, straightforward way.
[The only additions I have made to this record — which will extend a long way — is that I have added titles such as “how I came to follow Lewis and Clark.” As we go along, you will see me interacting with Joseph, and later with others. Bear in mind, this is something that you can do as well. Okay, on to Joseph’s story.] Continue reading 3 – Going West