Keeping a journal is a great resource. It’s amazing what you can find when you look back. In the course of reviewing past sessions with various guys upstairs, I found their advice from last September, in which they calmly told me that we could get rid of old unwanted habits and responses pretty quickly and easily. Great, ground-breaking stuff — and no doubt as old as the hills, too. But anything is new when you hear it for the first time. This, from Sept. 17, 2010
TGU on continuity and willpower
Sunday, May 8, 2011
“If you are going to be a writer, you must write every day,” Miss Beaumont told young Michael Ventura. I wish I’d had someone to give me that advice at a comparable age – but – would I have taken it?
9:20 AM. I’m sort of blank, at the moment, so I hope you have an idea for the morning’s entertainment. I didn’t post yesterday’s conversations with Papa, short though they were, because they seemed too personal. Well, and I don’t want to discuss in public the plot ideas he and I were discussing. But I suppose I could post a little bit from last night.
You could – or you could discuss something here. Or you could begin or continue some actual writing project. Or – you could continue reading Hemingway by Lynn, or could do nothing much. It’s a matter of consciousness, of intensity of consciousness. Of focus.
Let’s talk about that, then. What you are calling intensity of consciousness I think I would describe as willpower.
Falling in love, according to TGU
Friday, May 6, 2011
6 AM. Beginning to feel a little overwhelmed by the things I need to learn (Word 2010, for instance, and Windows 7, and all the associated things) and of the material I need to get a handle on, like all my prep sessions, etc. in notebooks. Yet with the feeling of overwhelm comes a feeling of waking up, like “this has been waiting for me to notice.”
All right, so where are we? As so often, I have the sense that you – whoever you are! – has an agenda that is being pursued, no less than Seth did, though much less obviously, and leaving me to do the work of phrasing, etc., more.
You will remember that the question of whether guidance was directive or not started this series of questions. Yes there is always an agenda, no it doesn’t necessarily get pursued in any particular order.
The initial thought, that you thought would have no part of this transcript, is actually part of it. In organization is the beginning of action, sometimes. It is true, sometimes action begins by one plunging right in, but even there it will be noted that more preparation went on behind the scenes, or rather, more or less unnoticed, though conscious, than is commonly realized.
Why it’s hard to change after we die
Thursday, May 5, 2011
8 AM. Well, guys, it occurs to me that what you are giving me applies to interpersonal relationships in the body, no less. We all deal with a certain combination of factors that we elicit, and someone else dealing with that person elicits a slightly different combination – or even a radically different combination. If I and a woman are in love, I may never experience the sharp side of her tongue that others experience all too often – until suddenly I do, and the honeymoon is over.
The analogy is close enough to be instructive, provided that you realize that she herself is not dealing with an unchanging unit. People in bodies, especially – but out of bodies, too – tend to think themselves exceptions to rules that govern everyone else. Or rather, they don’t think of the rules when thinking of themselves. It isn’t that they consciously decide “I’m different.” Rather, they never put themselves into a context in which “they” themselves disappear and reappear, according to mood and circumstance, like illusions on celluloid.
Good to see that we don’t become any more perfect on the other side. That’s a tendency I had, and many others still have – to think, once out of the body, perfection.
No, but it’s more like, once out of the body, what you are is a hell of a lot harder to change than when in the body.
Which you?
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
7:30 AM. All right, guys. A brief encounter Monday leads to the question of where the idea came from, to suddenly realize that The Sun Also Rises meant something totally different from what I or anyone I had ever read thought it meant. I asked Hemingway and he said ask you. So–?
He said your problem is with definitions. That could be said to be the problem in general, for in definitions is encapsulated your view of the world, even if various definitions contradict each other. What you know depends upon what you allow yourself to experience.
And that uses definitions as the gatekeepers.
What you’ve just said isn’t wrong, exactly, but it might be more helpfully phrased. Let’s start again, beginning with the question at hand, which hopefully will keep us grounded.
TGU’s goal
Monday, May 2, 2011
8:15 AM. Okay guys, you’re up. I can’t remember where we were, but presumably you can.
It isn’t cheating for you to review where we have been. Sometimes it makes our job easier, because communication has two pieces – talking and hearing. Anything that is most active in your mind is easiest to engage. However, in the case of a series of communications, your very habits of sitting with pen in hand, your expectation of continuation, helps hold the place. Though you may not remember the subject matter, you in effect remember to tune in.
Okay. So – should I look back at the previous communication?
Another time. Reviewing things in context adds texture and depth to your understanding. But – just to reassure you that “you aren’t making it up,” we proceed.
TGU on goals and awareness
Saturday, April 30, 2011
7:45 AM. Ready when you are.
You can take a day off now and again, remember.
Yes, I remember. Maybe Sunday morning, or Monday. We’ll see. Before we begin the day’s tutelage, a question. I have two blogs, one devoted to this kind of exploration (IOMOK) and one for political or social or historical or economic concerns. I find that the context blog – that I devote little time or attention to – is out-pulling IOMOK by 2 to 1! Okay, maybe because I post Ventura’s columns there. Maybe because a lot more people are interested in social problems than in personal exploration. But – is there more? Oh, and I realize I’ve been neglecting IOMOK for a while, but after all there is a four-year archive there – nearly 900 posts on it.
900 posts and no way to know anything about what is in it. A 900-volume magazine library with neither index nor article descriptions.