Monday, December 13, 2021
4 a.m. Yesterday I made a note that you are going to treat relationships as a topic separate from -. No, that was in reference to Friday.
Let me set my switches so I know what I’m doing.
On Friday in a session I held to myself, we went looking at various concerns I have about my life. After I listed what came to mind, and the guys added one I hadn’t thought of, I said, “And mixed in with all this are the personal relationships I have or have had,” and they said no, “relationships with others and with the world is a separate topic.”
You said, “We ought to talk about relationships in a public session, even if it requires heavy editing. So –
You might quote our next sentence.
“And we repeat, openness here, followed by whatever editing is needed for your own comfort level, is now our preferred procedure, to the extent you can do it. It will help your access.”
This may be a bit difficult, but it will get easier with practice, like most things. Even on Friday, you saw that it did get easier as we proceeded.
And I saw that openness in the journal led to a lessening of internal constraints I had hardly noticed.
After all, living with a thing for most of one’s life is going to seem natural, no matter how heavy a burden or how constricting a habit. Again – yet again – we remind you all: The goal is life more abundantly, which in context means, your soul’s experience of 3D is more satisfying, deeper, more textured, more worth the living. (It has nothing to do with accumulating possessions or achievements or reputation. Such things may or may not come your way, but despite what the Calvinists may have thought, they are not themselves indicators.)
So at the moment we are discussing relationships with others and with the world. Remember, we are doing so in the unspoken context of helping you to live life more abundantly. If you will keep this orientation in mind, some things will be clearer as we go along. You understand?
You aren’t discussing them as important in their own right, but in the context of how they lead us toward or away from that goal.
Yes, only with no implication that they aren’t important, for after all, they are your life. But not important as goals in and of themselves, yes.
Now, in what sense can it be said that your relationships with others and with the world are your life? Obviously they are what happens while you are in 3D, but is that all we mean?
I am supposing that you are saying that 3D life is the interaction of our personal subjectivity with the shared subjectivity; our conscious world with the world we are not conscious of but that is still us.
Yes, not bad. Events, you see, represent collisions, or meshing, or coinciding, in time, between you as you know yourself and you as you do not know yourself. Life can be jarring, or exciting, or ecstatic, or pedestrian – or any of the ways you experience life – but it can never be disconnected from your internal reality, no matter how alienated you may feel at any given moment. It can’t be disconnected, because you and “other” are part of one thing. If you are the “heads,” the world is the “tails,” but where one side of the coin goes, the other must follow. There is no decoupling of a unit. That doesn’t mean you will necessarily experience it that way, but that is the reality.
I suppose that alienated thinkers like, say, the existentialists of postwar France must have lost that sense of connection.
They had no religious belief. Their attempt to substitute belief in Marxism, for instance, had no roots in life, only in abstract ideas. They had no way to make sense of the world, hence no way to make sense of their own inner world, because they were considering the two to be separate things. And in fact the two are not only not separable, they are not really two, as we said.
I remember reading “No Exit,” and thinking Sartre had it all wrong, saying “Hell is other people.”
You might profitably have spared him some empathy.
No doubt. But I can’t see that he was a force for good.
He was an expression of life, just as everyone is! Please try to spit out that apple you plucked from the tree of seeing things as good and evil.
True enough. But in any case I see Sartre as representing a dead end.
That’s well phrased, though you meant it in a different sense. He represents – that is, he is a representative of – people who feel the same way he felt but were not able to express it as he could. That is what an artist is, after all: a representative of the inarticulate. But yes, we agree that his conclusions represent a dead end, because they are based in mistaken assumptions, in “facts” that are not facts. Progress can be made only on the basis of reality, not of illusion. (The difficulty, of course, is that one never penetrates to bedrock reality; to some degree one always remains embedded in illusion. It is a bell-curve, not an on-off switch.)
Now, to bring this directly to each person reading this: Every person you ever interacted with was a meaningful interaction per se, although you may not have experienced it that way or may have experienced it and not realized it.
I don’t think that is clear.
Start with “There are no accidents.”
Yes?
Well, how could there be, if the world and you are together expressing the quality of the moment?
That’s worthy of Alcott, in its cryptic nature.
It isn’t actually cryptic; it ought to be plain.
Let’s say it could do with some spelling-out.
Fine. Do it.
I get that conscious-I am continuously dealing with the shared subjectivity that includes all the parts of myself of which I am not conscious. On a continuing basis, I deal with whatever comes up, and I gather than nothing comes up, or could come up, that does not connect to me. That is, all the things of any present moment that do not have significance for my conscious self do not affect me. Perhaps cannot affect me. But anything that is connected to me, potentially can and does, whether or not I am aware of the connection.
Well, perhaps the clarification will help some, but it seems to us we have said it many times. It is a simple point; the only reason it seems difficult is because it is so far removed from your society’s usual assumptions.
To return to our point: Every interaction with a person, every interaction with an event, every interaction with the cascades of thoughts and feelings that the people or events may trigger, is meaningful, hence is an opportunity. Once internalize this as your default attitude to life and everything changes, everything opens up.
I can attest to that.
Where is the scope for guilt, or for victimhood, or for a sense of powerlessness? Where is any excuse for seeing the world as victims and villains, or for fearing?
Seth said it was a safe universe.
Given that nothing can kill you no matter what happens to your 3D life, how can it be otherwise? Given that misfortune and fortune are more a matter of opinion and point of view than of fact, how not?
If you believe that all is one, and that you are an immortal being, and that there are no accidents, no perils from being in the wrong place at the wrong time – start acting like it! Start enjoying your intricate life at a deeper more satisfying level.
Amen to all that.
You will notice we were able to discuss this without going into your personal situation, but it is your willingness to do so if necessary that eases the way.
If you say so. Our theme, then?
Why not just “Relationship”?
Okay. Thanks as always.