Monday, August 30, 2021
2:35 a.m. Focusing. Very well, guys, to continue –
We said that we want to explore the theme of “Life more abundantly,” subdividing it into explorations of consciousness, health, intent, options, and process. So let us begin by looking at consciousness.
You said, “What is your mental world, and what can it be? No one can focus on everything. What is the specialization that is you?” I liked that last: What is the specialization that is us?
That is you, mentally leaping ahead, courtesy of the intuitive link of the moment, for that is the key concept here. For the moment, we will look at each of you as a sort of specialization of the human race, as the human race itself is a specialization of a larger thing.
You can’t read history without seeing how many kinds of people there are, not only over long stretches of time, but even at any one time. You each live in a tiny sliver of experience, necessarily. How many things can someone experience? The man who speaks 20 languages may know nothing of dance or music. The woman who is an exquisite potter may know nothing of mathematics. The mathematical prodigy may be entirely ignorant of practical applications of that mathematics, let alone French drama or Persian poetry or the ins and outs of deep-sea fishing. You get the idea: Examples could be multiplied endlessly, but there is no point in doing so. Two specialists in any one field will find that, at best, their knowledges overlap; they will not coincide.
And this only glances at vocation or avocation: It does not even touch upon the many, many fields of interest in a life, nor the predicaments, nor the interactions with others and with oneself.
We get the idea.
We wonder if you do, or, more precisely, to what degree you do. Mostly you live in the world as if your own defaults were the rule, and other people’s variances were variances from the rule. In fact, they are not variance in the sense of deviation from you. Each of you is a deviation from a theoretical norm that is, in fact, only theoretical, not real. Consult any specialist and you will learn that every specialist knows that generalizations are mostly a slurring-over differences, that norms are more or less abstract fictions. At best, norms describe models of mathematical probability. At worst, they are imaginary strait-jackets.
So, begin by realizing that although you must overlap with the consciousness of others, each of you is unique. You are unique. You were not stamped out by cookie-cutter methods. There is nothing mechanical or rote or average in the shaping of any of you. By necessity, you are each unique.
Can you grasp how critical this realization is? If you once grasp that you are an unrepeatable experience, you will see your life – will see yourself – in a different light. It doesn’t matter that your society treats you as duplications; that doesn’t make it so.
You may ask, “Why is it important? Every jailbird, artist, entrepreneur, politician, teacher, craftsman, clerk, whatever – they exist in uncounted numbers, always do, and who is to say that differences among them are more than unimportant incidentals?”
Our answer is that this is so for any given category you may examine, but each person combines so many kinds of categories as to make each one unrepeatable. And that is so even if you confine your observation to this one life. When you consider that each person is composed of various strands with their own lives, surely it becomes obvious that no two combinations can do more than overlap somewhat. How would you go about producing two identical individuals even if you should happen to want to do so?
So, you say, perhaps, “The differences may not amount to anything. In essence they may be more or less repeatable.” To that, we say, Don’t you believe it. At most you are looking at variations on a theme. And, at that, you are looking at abstractions. Concentrate on any few people you know, and it will be too obvious for argument: Everybody is unique, no matter what traits they may share with others. Two members of a football team may share age, general build and health, knowledge of the game, whatever – but look at them in any different context and the differences will become apparent.
Really, it is so obvious as to require only a mention in passing. But it is as well to be sure that people consider the fact.
But if you are (or may be regarded as) a specialized aspect of the human experience, a couple of questions arise. In general, what purpose does it serve to have specialized representatives going through the 3D experience? In particular, what is it you are here to do?
That’s an interesting way to look at it. I hadn’t thought of asking what good it does to have us all going through it; I thought in terms of any one of us at a time.
Both questions are important, and asking only one and not the other must skew the resulting picture.
I see that, now. So what is your answer to the question?
You understand, the question of individual meaning can only be addressed individually. Generalization of individual experience is meaningless, or, at best, misleading. So let’s look at the larger picture: What is the meaning of life? Not that anyone has ever asked it before.
Very funny. But I see that there is a big difference between “What is the meaning of life” and “what is the meaning of my life.”
Yes there is. It is the difference between abstraction and specifics. Or perhaps it would be better to say, it is the difference between conceptualization and itemization. They are both important; they are very different, however. If you look at all human experience as one total, in the way that you experience all the “external” world as one total, you can get a sense of it.
I get, everyone who ever existed in 3D, or exists now, or ever will exist, is part of one thing. We 3D individuals may be only fragments of our larger beings, and those larger beings may be only fragments of larger beings or communities, but, taken together, we are all one thing. It is a leap, I know, but I have come to believe it.
Well, any “all one thing” cannot be subdivided, except conceptually and provisionally. Reality cannot be dissevered. We have been reminding you for quite some time, “It’s all one thing.” That makes a difference! It means you can’t get a clear understanding of any fragment’s role in the scheme of things, if you consider it as if it were separable.
Therefore, the 3D experience considered as a whole means something that no fragment of the experience can exemplify. The meaning of “all that is” necessarily differs from the meaning of any of its constituent parts. You can’t add up fragments and think you have therefore come up with the entirety. No accumulation of fragments ever amounts to the whole, because the whole always turns that accumulation into a unit at another level. Six piston rods in a crankcase do not constitute a greater piston rod; they are part of a motor.
And as above, so below.
As always. There’s your hour and a little more. Call this “Life as specialization,” perhaps.
All right. Thanks for this.