Intuitive Linked Communication (ILC)

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

7:15 a.m. Anything on your minds, particularly?

You might pursue your thoughts about the Sixth Great Extinction.

If you wish, but what’s the relevance to anything we’re talking about?

Anything, discussed in an unfamiliar context, has the potential to do two things, regardless of the subject, regardless of the opinion: (1), in refocusing (by associating two things previously not seen in connection), it offers a way to go where you yourself have never boldly gone before, and (2), the mental effort of reassociating things, of seeing things differently if only for the moment, will keep you awake if only for that moment; in other words, it will have you here, now, rather than half-aware, half-awake..

While I appreciate the Star Trek reference, it doesn’t appear particularly bold to me.

Again, we refer less to the specific than to the process – as so often.

All right, I see that. I take it you refer to my saying, yesterday in our small ILC meeting, that although I hate at least certain aspects of the ongoing Sixth Great Extinction, it seems to me that “nature” – of which we are a part, of course – is using us to do what it has somehow done repeatedly before, presumably without us. But this is not a new thought to me, so how is it an unfamiliar context?

We can pretty much guarantee that the thought will be a new one to many of your friends, and so will work for them, if they allow themselves to consider it. But beyond that (potentially very helpful) effect, there is the juxtapositioning of what appears to be a 3D process, or event, or predicament, with an attention to one’s own individual consciousness as a part of the wider human consciousness, which is itself a part of All That Is, given that the entire 3D, like the non-3D, is mind-stuff.

You see? There can be a tendency to consider things in isolation from each other. You can wind up, in effect – unknowingly – no longer actively considering these things as realities, but merely playing with them as concepts, or as fantasies, or as disembodied theories. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it isn’t real work; it isn’t consciousness being employed to realize itself.

I get that you every so often throw in a hand grenade, to shock us out of our mental grooves.

Let’s say, we occasionally set off firecrackers. We’re not interested in maiming or killing, but in awakening.

Fine, but my point remains.

Oh, of course. Bear in mind, we are in the situation of dealing with people in 3D. That means, dealing with people who periodically go to sleep, in more ways than one; who have a hard time associating things over time unless the things are connected by a strong emotional tie, or are part of an ongoing continuous interest. So it is no wonder that words go dead on you. Sometimes we have to wake you out of your comfortable drowse on warm summer days, or the summer would be gone and your life and its opportunities would be gone with it.

For the record, I never doubt your benign intent.

Well – as the musical refrain goes – hardly ever.

Smiling. You wouldn’t want me to swallow everything without examination.

Indeed we wouldn’t – and here’s a new thought for you, let’s see what you do with it. We may be trustworthy to you, less so for another, antipathetic to another, and downright malicious to still another. This, without our changing and without our revealing certain aspects to one, other aspects to another. How can this be?

I don’t think that’s particularly hard to understand. We on the 3D end are half of any such communication. If your values match ours, that’s one thing; if they don’t –

Yes. Your thought caught up with your instant reaction. So –

Well, I ran off assuming (or let’s say, you tricked me 😊 into assuming) that “you” are the same “you” for each of us, and clearly that isn’t so.

How could it be so? Could any conceivable emotional and mental mix in 3D not have its analogue in non-3D? Where would it have come from in 3D?

Which means Hitler’s guys upstairs were in resonance with him, or he couldn’t have expressed them.

You have the relationship backwards, but yes. If there were not non-3D forces that were capable of expressing in 3D, where would the 3D get them? It isn’t isolation, or stress, or trauma, that produces malign examples of humanity. Those factors relate to how those qualities express or don’t express in someone’s life, but the qualities themselves obviously pre-exist their expression in 3D. At least, we assume it’s obvious.

So I sat here re-reading what we’d gotten so far, and it occurred to me, this is going to tie you (as a concept) to the vast impersonal forces, isn’t it?

Yes. You see how interesting it gets when you think, you ponder, instead of merely running with whatever first impression you get?

I think you’re insulting me, but I’m used to it. (Smiling, of course, as you know but others may not know.)

Consider the model we have been offering: The times allow certain energies in certain combinations to enter into 3D life. Those energies interact with you as a 3D individual, with everyone else as 3D individuals, with the general ambiance – what we might call the abstraction – that is society.

3D life is about choice, about self-modification through applied choice. The process is often messy, but the 3D is never the intended product; it is the workshop in which you create the product.

Life – and not just 3D life, but it is more clearly separated in 3D – is light and dark, pleasant and unpleasant, productive and obstructive, etc., etc., – and everyone’s experience of it will be different, because everyone brings different gifts to the table.

If you experience your guys as discordant, or inconsistent, or careless, or malicious, or whimsical, or irreverent, or trivial – or anything – bear in mind that this is a portrait of what you resonate with. It is an indirect portrait of who you are.

There is an unexpected upside to this. By choosing your habitual frame of reference, you choose your guys, and point yourself to what you want to be.

That may be a little opaque for people not linked in directly.

Oh, we think they’ll get it. But rephrase if you wish.

Well, I think you just said, what we concentrate on, we draw to us. What we consciously reverence, we help ourselves become.

You said it long ago to a friend, in a different context.

I’d forgotten that. Can’t remember who I was talking to, but I told him, the fact that you admire this or that quality shows that you already embody it, at least somewhat, or it wouldn’t attract you.

And this was true, and may be extended to your choice of non-3D companions.

So if I were less of a comedian, or wanted to be less of a comedian, I might get guys who were less prone to puns and word-play, not to mention insulting analogies.

We’re smiling too, but it is straight fact. The 3D life is not a trap, but a workshop. If you don’t like your life, you can change it!

H.G. Wells, The History of Mr. Polly. I haven’t read it but I somehow know the tag line.

Because Colin Wilson occasionally referred to it.

Yes, of course. Maybe he’ll contact me some day. Knowing him, though, he’s already off doing six more things at the same time. Today’s theme? What was it?

“Your part in non-3D interaction”?

Is that the snappiest thing you can come up with?

“You guys upstairs and you”?

Getting there. Again?

“Your guys upstairs; your choice.”

Well, maybe. Our thanks as always.

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

4:20 a.m. I don’t know if it is worthwhile to pursue the subject of empathy. Up to you.

We got a few responses. Why not deal with them in a few words of explanation?

Feel free.

 

Simon Hay [in a comment on my blog]:

I was ready to give my opinion on this subject yesterday, but I decided not to. While I agree that many do have difficulty putting themselves in other’s shoes, I kept hearing myself say “that is their choice”.

In the end, asking why someone is unable to empathize was no different than asking why someone believes what they believe. It is their choice to experience that way to living life, so I am in no position to question their choice to be “single-minded”, which is my judgment.

I think the idea that one can only change themselves and no one else, is a bit counter-intuitive from a human perspective, because that means that the other person must come to their own self-realization of whatever I want them to realize. From my perspective, that means I will also have to experience their choices in life. This is the difficulty that parents deal with when raising children. But at the end of the day, I cannot live their lives, nor can I expect them to be me. Perhaps this explains why some do not understand empathy. They never had to be responsible for another being or they did not care enough to feel any responsibility.

There is a slight misreading of our intent here. Again, it is not that we want you to change someone else; it is that we advise that you are better off being able to empathize and, as a secondary point, that it is the widespread inability to empathize that is shredding society into mutually hostile – because mutually uncomprehending – fragments.

 

Kennedy Golden:

Frank-  I often read, but seldom comment on your postings.  this one hit a nerve, which I always find warrants notice.

Indeed, I struggle with my desire to just claim stupidity, or meanness, or lack of empathy for viewpoints that differ from mine.  And, I often make the time to try to put myself into the mindset of the “other.”  Sometimes I come to realize that I actually do not want to understand how someone else’s mind works, as in the case of Hitler, truly psychotic  people, and those who live in places where violence against others brings what feels to me like pleasure.

So, yes, I believe there are almost always differing points of view, especially in areas of politics, and so many others.  And while it can be helpful to realize that there is no requirement to accept one view or the other, I find that my “judgment” still creeps in where I am clear about the impact that any decision or point of view will have on others- human and not.  When I personally understand the incredible impact that a decision will have on a large part of the population, I find it difficult to just sit back and accept that others think differently than I do.  And, taking that neutral stance of acknowledging differing beliefs can also lead to what amounts to me as apathy.  A nice neutral stance, requiring no further action. Sadly, understanding differing viewpoints and beliefs can be acknowledged, AND action taken to try to change decisions when one finds the impact inhumane and abhorrent.

Empathy, something many have little access to, cannot be taught- I believe.  One either has it or not, and when not a part of a decision making process, it is my belief that it can be pointed out, but will almost never change a person’s stance. So I am trying not to judge decisions as right or wrong, but to look at the ultimate impact, and to do my best to make that consideration an important part of my personal decision making process.

Being clear that there are usually more than one point of view, while an interesting exercise, does not lead to correct  discernment.  It often leads, as you have said, to the villainization of the “other”, and also can lead to lack of action.  There are times when I believe that action, often in reaction, are incredibly important.

Thanks for the opportunity to think this through.

Again, we have not made clear that our intent was not to advocate neutrality, nor inaction, but understanding. “Understanding” does not mean, “Because I see why you feel that way, I’m okay with your having your w ay about things.” It means, “I see more clearly the values that lead you to say, do, think the way you are doing. That doesn’t obviate my right, perhaps my responsibility, to oppose you. It only means seeing you more clearly; what I do with that clearer understanding is my choice.”

One other thing. We didn’t say “be clear that there are other points of view”; that is evident in any dispute. We said, or intended to say, “The other points of view are valid from the perspective of the people holding them, or they would hold not these, but other views. We said, understanding the reasons for the other point of view will lead to correct discernment. They will not lead to villainization. Ascribing reasons (often wildly inaccurate ones) does that.

 

Sharon Hurtley-Durand:

This sentence:  “Many people have no interest in understanding; they are content with choosing a stance and condemning those who don’t shared it.” prompts a question that has been troubling me for some time.  I have some friends that I consider to be intelligent people.  If there is a subject within their interest realm, they will pursue investigating it until they come to a conclusion, and then promptly shelve it, as it no longer holds interest.  But, if there is a subject that is outside of their sphere of  interest, then they resort to main stream hearsay and defend it to the last shout.  I wonder why this is.  If I confront them with my side, I get told that the “news said so” and then they don’t want to talk about it any more.

An interesting point, peripheral but related. We would say, you all do that, for the simple reason that your mental energy is limited. You can’t be investigating everything, so you tend to take for granted most things. Where people differ is in whether they identify with a point of view, a “fact” learned through the media, a “common knowledge” shared by their peer group, and feel they need to defend it, or whether they merely accept it as they accept the law of gravity or the periodic table, unexamined. It is the taking of sides that we agree is the illness overtaking your society, and, as we said, it stems from villainizing those one cannot understand.

 

Kennedy Golden’s VML reply to Sharon:

Sharon-  I believe that the art of conversation, without judgment, has mostly been lost.  When I was working with college students (for 45 years), I was often heard to say that if we could send our students out into the world with the tools needed to have a good conversation about a “difficult” subject or situation, we had done our work.  Sadly, I believe that is no longer something being taught, or learned by many.

A major source of the problem, often unrecognized, is that people are growing up primarily “interacting” with one-way media – radio, TV, every form of prepackaged entertainment often called news. They get in the habit of mistaking familiarity with understanding. Thus, they have heard the word Kosovo, say, day after day, and so they then assume that Kosovo is something they know. Or they see a given public figure day after day and think they therefore know him or her, perhaps not reflecting that their “knowledge” comes from packaged snippets put together by proponents or opponents of the person, or by people with an agenda into which they fit that person as hero or villain or space-filler.

Nothing of this process is education, and none of it has the value that people get in one-on-one interaction that is likely to rub the corners off, so to speak. So, rather than education, you see indoctrination. This is not only the fault of those who deliberately take advantage of the opportunity. It is also, even primarily, the fault of the system that leaves its children (of whatever age) vulnerable to manipulation and stunting of critical abilities.

Finally, Jim Szpajcher posted a response too long to quote in full. He pointed out that the lack of understanding of why others do what they do “is why some people make good leaders and others are disasters.”

He would certainly get no argument from us.

He pointed out that:

This is a phenomenon larger than a discussion of Jung and Nietzsche: this affects everything. Current events, in the United States and around the world demonstrate leadership which is devoid of empathy and imaginative ability discussed in today’s post.

The very pervasiveness of the phenomenon should demonstrate that it is not a localized problem. To put it into a nutshell, your civilization is doing something wrong. It isn’t just the political parties, nor the groups of ideological know-it-alls, nor the indoctrinated rather than educated classes that are in charge of matters beyond their ability to comprehend. It is not just an American nor a Western problem. It is a civilization in decline, dying by the sword it lived by. This is not grounds for despair (unless you believe in chance); it is one more bit of evidence that an old way of seeing things has come to its limit and, indeed, surpassed it. The next civilization will arise from bits of this and that, but it will have a very different central core of beliefs, as people learn (to some extent) from the failures they have lived through.

Jim also says:

It is as if Someone, Somewhere’s goal in running this 3D life system was to maximize the production of emotional energy – what Bob Monroe called Loosh.

That is one reading of the situation, not ours. We remind you, the purest form of Loosh, Bob Monroe said, was pure unconditional love. There is no need to assume that because people’s choices, combined with the energies of the times, and combined with humanity’s unfinished business, is producing chaos and suffering, that this is what the system is designed to produce. That is, there’s no reason to assume a system preference for chaos. It would be perfectly happy, so to speak, if people and their interactions were producing love. But it is people’s choice, in this their First Life, and you can’t expect everything to be sweetness and light.

 

So you see, even a few responses are helpful in removing ambiguities in our meaning. Enough for the moment. We can deal with others if they arise, or an move on to other things, as the moments suggests.

Okay. Our thanks as always. The theme simply, “Questions on empathy”?

“Clarifications” might be better.

Yes, so it might.

 

Sunday, June 26, 2022

8:50 p.m. Our little conversation this morning didn’t meet a lot of response. One agreed with us, two laid out opinions on the Roe v. Wade opinion, and one went off on a tangent. Nobody has proposed burning me or you at the stake yet, which I suppose should be encouraging. But – my reason for pulling out the journal – I am always surprised how few people seem able to actually get inside another point of view. I figured lawyers would have to be able to do it, if only to anticipate challenges. Chess players have to do it, in terms anyway of their opponent’s strategy. Poker players must be able to figure out something of what their opponents are feeling, if not thinking. But is it really so rare for us to be able to place ourselves sympathetically inside another’s viewpoint? And if so, why? Don’t we contact one another on a non-3D level?

You are thinking to have a session for tomorrow so that you may continue to work on the novel?

That’s the hope.

We don’t encourage two sessions a day as a general thing.

I know that. Does that mean you won’t do it?

We are reluctant, for two very good reasons (over and above acquiescing in your commencing a bad habit): vitality and focus. You don’t want to be sapping your vitality by over-indulging in this effort, merely because it is pleasurable. And even if you discount that, the resulting sessions would begin to lose intensity, would in effect lose focus. You can’t avoid taxing your system merely by refusing to acknowledge effects.

Just to be clear, I take it these are limits for me, not necessarily for one and all.

That’s correct. Some won’t be able to do one a day with any regularity. Some may be able to do more – or, more likely, longer – sessions. It is highly individual, dependent upon variables not of will or even of intelligent application, but of vitality and ability to refill the wells. You will remember that Carl Jung ascribed his survival of forces that had shattered Nietzsche as largely a matter of physical endurance. Jung has a stronger frame, and a more resilient constitution, and so he survived what was, in those days more than a century ago, a very difficult stretching. It is far easier in your day, and will become easier yet as the age progresses. (We mean the progress of the yugas, not any superficial social changes wrongly called “progress.”) However, any process has limits, and we are advising you of yours. Verb sap.

Well, I’ve set out the theme. Maybe we can pursue it in the morning.

That would be much better.

 

Monday, June 27, 2022

6:05 a.m. Very well, can we begin where we left off a few hours ago?

We can. You say “a few hours,” but, after all, nine hours is not a mere blink of an eye. You are generally prone to underestimate the physical requirements of a 3D system. Something that is only somewhat real, is real within those limits. Hit your finger with a hammer, and see how well mind over matter works. It won’t hurt us, outside 3D. It won’t hurt the part of you that is outside 3D. But the part of you that is within 3D is liable to feel it! The 3D isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing, either.

Yes, I get the point.

For the moment.  Very well, to your question, and to the elements of your question that may appear to be unconnected to it.

To begin, we understand, but we smile at, a question that asks why people can’t usually get inside one another’s viewpoint. The question itself is an example of the phenomenon, you understand.

Yes, I suppose it is. But perhaps that only reinforces it. I don’t think I was holding myself as a solitary exception to the rule. And in fact I have become acutely aware of how little of people’s motivations and thought-processes I understand.

Still, you do pride yourself on your ability to think through to the other side of an issue.

I begin to see. This is a little bit more layered, more complex, than I was thinking it.

And perhaps now you see why we were reluctant to address it with your energy tanks half-empty.

Hmm, that’s part of the answer right there, isn’t it? The ability to see more deeply is connected with the amount of psychic energy one can bring to the examination.

Yes, that’s part of it. Carl Jung as an analyst brought to the table immense learning, continually greater experience, great natural gifts of empathy, great mental horsepower, tremendous ego-strength used constructively – but what good would that combination of gifts have been, if he had had to express it through an underpowered or ailing body? A Nietzsche, even if identical to Jung mentally, could not have done what Jung did, because his body was not adequate to support the task.

And I suppose as Jung’s body faltered with age, his own ability to do such active relating must have declined as well, channeling his energy more into isolated scholarship and less into the general practice of medicine.

Age brings limitation, and limitation is, itself, as useful as anything else for 3D beings. But let’s talk less of Jung and more of DeMarco and friends.

You brought up Jung, not me.

Yes, as example, not as central core. However, yes, the total energy a person can bring to life – psychic force in the sense of mental force, not in the sense of ESP – will be a factor in how much empathy a person can bring to bear on a regular basis. But it is one factor, only one.

Another is one’s pattern of assumptions. Clearly – we hope it is “clearly” – someone who believes the world is chance and the collision of various forces is not going to find it easy to assume that anyone else’s impact on his or her life is part of a pattern. Much easier to believe that things are random. To believe in a close connection between inner and outer will seem to be superstition.

The relevance of this isn’t yet clear.

Well, if you are considering another person’s reactions, and you are considering your own reactions to their reactions as if they were unrelated phenomena, you will take no responsibility for your part of the equation. You will say, in effect, “My reaction is perfectly natural! Any reasonable being would react this way.” And that silently excommunicates as “unreasonable” anyone whose reaction is not the same as yours.

Oh, sure. And that means, by extension, “People who hold these views are unreasonable or stupid or malicious.”

Don’t you see it around you on all sides, particularly on the personally anonymous internet, where people can quarrel while safely immune from a punch in the nose?

I fell prey to that mindset myself, in younger days. When you’ve put time and thought and intensity into forming a view of life, and something challenges it, the natural response is not to say, “Maybe I’m wrong, I ought to think about this,” but to say, “You jerk! Go evolve, will you?”

And there is another part of your answer. First, the amount of energy required to investigate one’s own views; second, one’s investment in one’s constructed mental world – which, after all, includes one’s values, chosen repeatedly over a lifetime.

A third factor is sheer imaginative ability, or lack of it. You have to be able to “think inside of somebody else’s head,” as Hemingway has his character put it. If you can’t do that, then to some extent (usually a pretty big extent!) your other person is going to remain a mystery to you, and you are going to flail around trying to ascribe motives for behavior you don’t understand. But people don’t do things for no reason. We’ve been telling you that for years.

Yes, and I have gotten the message – except, I realize now, less so in actual person-to-person contact than absolutely.

Yes, and you know why? It isn’t as simple as that your emotions got involved. It is that person-to-person contact comes at you like life itself: immediately, without cessation, without your having time to think before the next moment is upon you. To understand takes time. To react, doesn’t. That is why it is so important how you choose, on an on-going basis. It constructs the source of your reactions for times when you don’t have time enough to understand.

And that is another variable: one’s speed of perception and analysis. The slower one reacts, the more overwhelming the stimulus. So, the better prepared on is (due to prior choosing establishing good habit systems) and the more one pays attention, and the better attuned one’s sensory and intuitive abilities are, the better one can respond.

We have come a long way in a direction I didn’t anticipate. Does all this really address the question of why it is so hard to see our adversaries/opponents/opposite numbers – think of them as you will – as they see themselves?

Bear in mind, being able to understand others is not a universal desire. Many people have no interest in understanding; they are content with choosing a stance and condemning those who don’t shared it. You may not like it, but they’re part of reality, too. If everybody in 3D were alike, there would be a whole lot less choosing going on.

Every attitude plays its part, I suppose.

And everybody has more sides to them than is consistent. A very tolerant person may be quite intolerant of intolerance. A very rigid person hay stand up for principles of tolerance for viewpoints he finds personally repugnant. Life is always more diverse than one’s thinking about it – conceptualizing it – would tend to make it.

Today’s theme, then?

How about “Resonance and intolerance?

Maybe. Alternatively?

“The elements of empathy”?

Maybe. Our thanks as always.

 

Sunday, June 26, 2022

6:15 a.m. I have the persistent urge to discuss the opportunity – that almost certainly will be squandered – presented to people by the overthrow of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. But all it will do is make people mad at me. Is it worthwhile, for the sake of the one or two people who may (in theory!) understand what I’m saying in the sense that I’m saying it? I leave it to you.

Where do you suppose the urge, and the reenforcing of the urge, and the repetition of the urge, is coming from?

Well, I just hope you have something to say that will make the friction worthwhile.

Bear in mind, in anticipating people’s reactions, you are doing quite a bit of mind-reading. How do you know who will respond to what? It is a prime value of someone saying unpopular things, that it brings forth others who think the same way, and it activates threads in the way plucking a guitar string sends vibrations out into the world.

Well, here goes. (Interesting, how hard it is to actually start, though!)

[Pause]

No, I’m not going to do it. Let’s go back to working on plotting the novel.

We can’t force you.

No, you can’t. and in this case, you couldn’t quite convince, me, either.

 

6:55. a.m. Well, since plotting doesn’t seem to be advancing very well, let’s see if in fact I can say what I am feeling about our politics.

Just put it out. You an always edit until it suits you, and for that matter you can leave it unpublished.

True. Well, the thing that strikes me re the abortion issue – as in so many issues people are passionate about – is that so few seem to recognize that it is perfectly possible for rational people with different values to passionately believe that they are right and you are doing wrong.

To put it more plainly – doesn’t anybody see, any more, that there’s more than one side to any argument? That binary thinking is tempting but terribly inadequate? That “we” are not always on the side of the angels when seen from other – equally valid – value systems?

In law school they have a course called Conflict of Laws. I don’t have any idea what they teach, or how such cases are approached, but I do wish people could remember that there are such things as Conflict of Values. Not “the good” v. “the evil,” but “this good” v. “that good.” People used to have enough common sense to know that there can’t be an argument with only one side, any more than there can be a rebellion or a civil war with only one side.

Anything you’d care to add, your turn.

You used to quote someone’s statement that “in politics there are no final victories.” That is true for most things in life, not merely politics. Thinking you are “Standing at Armageddon, battling for the Lord,” as Theodore Roosevelt once claimed to be doing, implicitly casts your adversaries into the role of evil-doers. How convenient! But one side-effect of assuming this posture is that you accumulate an ever-growing pile of memories, thoughts, awarenesses, that you dare not acknowledge, lest they show you the tarnish on your armor. These unconscious elements warp your thinking, and the effects get only worse, never better, unless and until you admit them into consciousness. Do you really want to be like the Nazis and Communists of the 1930s? That’s where moral self-righteousness combined with refusal to consider the merits of opposing conditions leads.

But – you may say – what is the alternative? To go back and forth? To dither ineffectually? To hold no position lest you fall into one-sided-ness? In short, are we advocating a stance that guarantees ineffectual, hand-wringing, neutrality?

No, I know you aren’t doing that. Say on.

You cannot understand our position until you temporarily move your viewpoint from 3D to non-3D. a thought-experiment, if you would:

From our point of view, we see all these 3D beings, living their lives together and separately; their psychological makeup is mostly invisible to them, and their attention is mostly confined to more or less the present moment. (We don’t mean, they are living, “here, now,” as we advocate. We mean they are living in isolation from their past and future. You can – and most do – live in isolation without at the same time being intensely aware of just where you are.)

Each of you is perpetually deciding who and what you are, and therefore what values you uphold, and therefore more or less what “side” you are on when various issues arise.

The difficulty – we have mentioned this many times – is that you tend to judge yourself by your motivation, and others by their actions. This is the ultimate double-standard, guaranteed to weight the scales in your favor.

So, Roe v. Wade overturns centuries of law that had declared abortion illegal like infanticide. Some see this as a victory of enlightenment, freeing women to make their own decisions about their own bodies. Others see it as a defeat for civilized values such as protection of the unborn. Both sides see implications for society, no less than (indeed, greater than) any individual cases involved. Fifty years later, Roe v. Wade is overthrown by the same institution that made it into law. Now the tables are turned, and those who had been outraged are satisfied; those who had been satisfied are outraged.

From our point of view, all these reactions are natural, even inevitable, starting from people’s values, which means starting from who and what they are, who and what they wish to be.

From our point of view, the contention of values is one thing, and nothing wrong with it; but the demonization of “them” is quite another, and there is everything wrong with it.

You cannot fix anything by condemnation, only by understanding. If you allow your understanding to be dependent upon “their” acting or reacting in a certain way, you are giving up your real power and are adopting a pretense. Worse, you are naming them as villains (hence, yourself as a hero) and are thus systematically removing any possibility of the two “sides” living with each other.

Roe v. Wade is only one example of this. You can see it on every side, it is what it tearing up your country. But you should ask yourself – you, anyone reading this – “Am I part of the problem, or part of the solution?” We tell you flatly, to the extent that you settle for condemnation, for painting yourself as the unstained guy in the white hat, you are part of the problem no matter what you do or desist from doing. To the extent that you say, “I don’t agree with them, but I can see why they think that way,” (and we don’t mean some dismissive cartoonish caricature of their views or their values), you are part of the solution, again, no matter what you do or desist from doing.

Now let’s look at it not in terms of society but in terms of you, yourself, a society of one. For this is always our primary concern. You, as an individual, are real. Society, as an abstraction, is not real in the sense that you are. Do you suppose that “America in 1916” went on to an independent life? That moment continues to exist, but an abstraction does not live in the same way that a self-propelled being does. You might as well expect a rubber tire to evolve, as to expect a society per se to live in the same way you do.

Society has it turned upside-down, you see. It is not you as individuals who are irrelevant or at least unimportant. It is you who are real, and society an abstraction that affects you as a scrim affects the actors on stage.

Your existence centers on choice. “How will I decide on this or that? What do I want to be? How do I want to be? What values are important to me?” All well and good, and it is easy to jump to thinking that your social activism is an important expression of who and what you uphold. Well, it can be, or it can be a serious obstacle to self-awareness, depending upon how you live it.

Sure, I can see that. An army in the field has to kill its enemies or get killed. That doesn’t mean they have to hate them; that’s optional.

People will think you are jesting, or are naïve, but what you said is right. The same action performed in different spirit is not the same action, when judged from a non-3D viewpoint What killing an enemy does to you will depend very largely upon the spirit in which you did it. Your enemy is just as dead, either way, but did that killing leave you unharmed? Ask Arjuna.

Yes, that’s what I meant. The invisible motivation is actually more important, almost more real, than the act.

But not everyone will be able to see it. So, we repeat, don’t let your actions or motivations be captive to what others think or do. It is your life; these are your values, your action or inaction. It’s nobody else’s fault, and it helps or harms nobody else but you.

I suppose you feel better, having gotten that out. I admit, parts of it made connections I hadn’t thought of. So what’s today’s theme, “Roe v. Wade”?

More like, “An opportunity likely to be wasted.”

True enough. I may go with that. Our thanks as always.

 

Friday, June 24, 2022

6:40 a.m. The convergence of inner and outer becomes more evident, the more attention we pay to it. So, I am trying to plot a complicated story of inner and outer relationships centering on the events (and the meaning!) of Sept 11, 2001, and I find a series on Netflix called “Manhunt: Unabomber,” which addresses many of the themes at the heart of it. [A little internet research tells me that the series aired in 2017.] Ted Kaczynski had nothing to do with Sept. 11, of course, but apparently his life was warped if not destroyed by his being an unwitting subject of MK Ultra. And the issues of government-sponsored –

No, that isn’t the point. That is the rabbit-hole down which people on the left and on the right lose themselves. Blame is easy; demonizing individuals or groups is easy. Accepting an official narrative or adopting an alternative narrative is – well, if not always easy, let’s say not always very well avoided. The issue and the problem is deeper than that, and Kaczynski seems to have realized it. What he could not find is a way to express his insights in a way that could be heard. The thing to realize about the Unabomber is that his craziness and his sanity, his crimes and his attempted service, were interconnected so closely as to make it nearly impossible for anyone to separate them unless they could bring to his story great empathy as well as clear understanding. The makers of the series have come pretty close to doing that.

There’s another thing. It is always so much easier to see the problem than the possible solution. If you come to see that the industrial revolution has resulted in our losing our individual autonomy at an accelerated rate, if the results are altering the ecosystem, even destroying the earth (however, this is a big “if” containing several unproved assertions), that does not tell you what if anything can be done about it, because the industrial revolution isn’t going to be repealed. Blowing up people – even if you could find the people most responsible for doing the damage today – isn’t going to reverse anything. If anything, it will reduce individual autonomy, reduce anyone’s ability to resist the machine. Sept 11, 2001 ought to have taught that to anyone who didn’t already know it.

An interesting counterpoint to Kaczynski would be Noam Chomsky, probably as smart, certainly as insightful. Chomsky has been deliberately marginalized, because his insights were so acute. But his personal demons didn’t drive him to send bombs in the mail. Instead, he has done what he could, knowing that any effect he was having would only be marginal. That is, after all, what it means to be marginalized. Maybe they can’t shut you up, but they can muffle your voice.

Okay, guys, this is different from our usual format, but I didn’t have any sense that it was digression from our usual theme. So – you’re on.

If one’s theme is consciousness, and the nature of life, and life more abundantly, how could nay sincere discussion of any subject become a diversion? That is, provided that one does not lose sight of the theme. You could discuss the use of traffic cameras, or parking meters, or – oh, tarring streets, say – and there would be a connection with consciousness to be found, if your mind ran that way or if you had accustomed it to run that way. “As a man thinks, so is he,” in a different context. All your lives have a central theme, a preoccupation, or let’s call it a dye, that colors whatever it encounters. Find that theme, follow it, lead it, center on it, and your life will run clear (if not necessarily smooth). If you do not find it, your life may puzzle you, but it will still have a theme, and it will still align itself around the theme, but you may not discover what it was until you leave 3D – drop the body – and remember who you are in total.

Okay, so –

Well, you aren’t interested in writing one more book about victims and villains. Even in Dark Fire, you were unable to paint the adversaries as evil. And there’s your theme.

I have always had difficulty believing in people’s evil nature, though I can see clearly enough the evil we do, unconsciously or consciously.

It is worthwhile that people be reminded that a society that does dreadful things, and is sometimes steered by awful men, is still never black and white, except that seeing makes it so. The truth is always more complex than binary thinking paints it. You haven’t been remembering – until this moment – that we deliberately set you away from this kind of thinking.

I couldn’t tell you when it was, other than that it was sometime after I started the journal, in 1966, because I remember writing it down. It was well before I came into conscious contact with you – that is, with non-3D beings experienced as sort of separate from me – so it had to be well before 1987, say. That’s a 20-year window, not that the “when” matters.

No, usually the “when” of a thing doesn’t much matter, which is why less is “lost” in your journal than you sometimes think merely because you wouldn’t know how to find it. You know; that’s what you need.

It was a very definite thought, and of course in those days I assumed ownership of anything that crossed my mind. I don’t remember even what I was trying to analyze, but initially I came up with the usual “either/or” and I got this definite prompting to make the effort to find a third alternative, or a third factor, whatever it was. The point (at least, the thing that had a lasting effect) was this sudden non-rational conviction that anything could be resolved into at least three things, not merely two. That didn’t come out very clear; perhaps you can improve on my phrasing.

What happened is largely behind words, so is difficult for you to understand or express except in its observed effects. Basically, we liberated you from binary perception whenever you were alert enough, awake enough,  conscious enough, to remember to see things as not binary but multiple. This vastly deepened your insight when you applied it. The analogy to Ted Kaczynski is that your own demons – robots, complexes, scars, biases – often enough prevented you from being conscious enough to see straight.

Well, it will sound like a joke to others, perhaps, but I always knew I had enough rage to snap sometime. Just as I avoided liquor and drugs for fear of becoming dependent (another tendency I sensed), so I would never had had a handgun, for I could never have trusted myself not to have had the one moment’s loss of control that is all that is required.

I was fortunate not to be isolated as Ted Kaczynski was. Unlike him, I had family and always at least a friend or two. Plus, I was not genius IQ, and although I couldn’t tell you why, that helped too.

You are forgetting your major safety valve, call it, or let’s say your infallible protector.

Yes, this seems to be the day for remembering things. I read a science-fiction story – way back in the days when I read science-fiction stories – and in fact I’ll bet I still have that issue of Analog, from the early 1960s. [May, 1961. The story is “Identification,” by Christopher Anvil.] It had a story whose point was that nobody could do evil deliberately if they felt exactly what their victims would feel. That didn’t change anything, but it did show me what I had already felt. I couldn’t even get in a fistfight, because I could imagine too vividly what the other guy would feel if I hit him. This didn’t save me from fistfights, but it sure changed my consciousness.

Otherwise you, living so much in your head, might have found it even harder to believe in the reality of other people.

Family and asthma and a sense of what the other person would feel, and a bias away from dualistic thinking. Strange combination.

Kaczynski didn’t have any of that, and, as you intuited, he was additionally hampered by a genius-level IQ, which made his feelings comparatively opaque to him, reducing his control. Clearly, you cannot consciously control what you cannot bring into consciousness in the first place.

We’re run through an hour, but it isn’t clear to me what today’s theme has been.

Call it “Consciousness and Choice (1).” Assuming we continue as we expect we will, the title will clarify as we go along.

Very well, and, as always, you have our thanks for your efforts to clarify our lives.

It can only be done among the willing. Since it is a process satisfying to us as well, we return the thanks, as we always do tacitly, and sometimes do explicitly, as now.

ac

Thursday, June 23, 2022

6:25 a.m. Care to expand on yesterday’s answer to our drumming question?

[“What possibilities may we be overlooking?”

[Look for things that seem too good to happen, and visualize them, instead of reenforcing that they can’t happen. This means internal changes no less than external ones. Rather than specify for you what could change, we will leave it at the reminder that much is possible.]

Or would you rather leave it as it is?

If we were to add anything, it would be that imagination tends to harden, with age, in the way that Elmer’s Glue, say, hardens. That is, it is a natural process, this hardening, and so there’s nothing wrong with it, and at the same time it is a useful process, and so there is something right with it. If glue didn’t harden, it wouldn’t perform its function; if it began as hardened, it wouldn’t perform its function. Only when it begins fluid, and hardens upon use, does it perform as envisaged. So with imagination. As a child, you are overwhelmed with the possibilities on every side. Since you can’t know what is possible and what is not, you do not prematurely assume that your dreams are not “realistic,” and hence sometimes you are able to move toward achieving them. However, that very fluidity makes it very difficult for you to stick to something (if you will pardon the play on words).

Kazantzakis (in Report to Greco, I think) said woe to the person who begins life without lunacy.

What is clearly lunacy – looking back from middle age – may appear in yet another, more favorable, light when seen from old age. Life is not so much about external achievement, as youth is tempted to think it is; and internal achievement, though mostly invisible to others and especially to oneself, is taking place as you go along. As your viewpoint changes, with experience, your judgments will alter as well.

However, that being said, remember that it is always useful to at least consider the path not taken, every so often. Sometimes you want to unglue this or that, and restructure things by applying glue to things hitherto unconnected. In short, your life isn’t over until it’s over. At any point in life, you may decide, “This is the pattern I’m happy with; no more changes needed or even desired.” But then perhaps on another day, you feel (not merely think or speculate) that “The end is not yet.” If John Adams could set about learning Hebrew in his late eighties, what would make you think it is too late to be beginning anything?

And from somewhere is coming Henry Thoreau’s statement about leisure. “It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one. But worst of all is when you are yourself the slave-driver.” Something like that.

That process may be regarded as a hardening, if you wish.

Dave Garland shared the diagram of the Japanese concept of Ikigai (“A Reason for Being”) yesterday. That is the ideal state of convergence of four conditions: What you love, What you’re good at, What the world needs, and What you can be paid for. I have a feeling that the final condition might be rephrased as “What the world values,” which isn’t quite the same thing.

No, not quite the same thing, and a valuable nuance. You who are retired, living on your investments or on your pensions or on your Social Security payments, or on whatever keeps body and soul together, may be doing many things the world values but does not pay for: nurturing your grandchildren, volunteering at various organizations, silently and invisibly spending your days praying and intending. None of these are paid for, usually. None may be said to be valued by the world, if value is measured by willingness to pay money or services or anything tangible beyond gratitude at most. Yet they are valued by those who know, and they produce satisfaction in themselves even if no one else knows or cares.

So, an encouragement for us to expand our imaginations to include things we might never have thought of, or might have dismissed as impractical or unimportant.

Yes. It is worthwhile to recall and relive the elasticity of your youth: It will not bring with it the sense of lostness it once did. You have lived one or two things since then; you know better who and what you are, who and what you want to be. Even, to a degree, who and what you have to be, by your nature and inclination.

I wish I had not wasted so many years in which I could have written my appreciation for Thoreau’s sense of the world. Repeatedly I see that he and Emerson – and Alcott – saw life more clearly than is known even yet, because people pay too much attention to their clothing – that is, to the fact that they were New England men of the 1800s – and not enough attention to the fact that they were, as we are, traveling gods in disguise. That’s what Henry called us, and he was not wrong in that.

Well, speaking of fluidity and hardening, there is no real reason for you to become what they call “practical” in your old age. You can’t know how much time you have. It’s mostly a matter of what you want to do. This of course aimed not merely at you, but at any and all.

Understood.

No reason not to settle for a shorter session today. You have other things to do; that’s fine.

Well, this seems rounded off nicely, it’s true. Theme?

“Imagining and hardening,” perhaps.

Our thanks for this and all, as always.

 

Wednesday, June 22, 2022 [What I always call Hitler-Destruction Day, as it is the day in 1941 that he attacked Russia, not the smartest thing that lunatic ever did.]

6:30 a.m. Gentlemen, Louisa asks good questions, and I am getting a general sense of your answer, but I look forward to hearing it spelled out a little. Setting for maximum focus, receptivity, clarity, presence.

[Louisa’s question: “I really felt very strong aha’s here in this particular share. Such insights.  However, as with all wisdom one reads, the practical side and examples remain challenging. While I can well see the value of a loving and softer approach to any polarity, how does one use symbols with another, especially when a person is threatened by what they imagine you represent. For example, say a man unconsciously  fears the power of women. When  you express what you want directly,  he responds by resistance. How could you use symbols in that case to defuse his reactions or create more common ground? Does one telepathically send them in silence? If so for how long? Just some how to’s again.”]

The questions mistake an explanation for a prescription. Understanding is always better than not understanding, but it is not a panacea, nor even, always, increased ability to function. This is particularly so when one misunderstands who can do what, and how the “what” is done, and what are the purposes (and therefore the nature) of the situation being considered.

At this point (prompted to do so by you, I imagine), I took out yesterday’s to re-read Dr. Jung’s passage on symbols and logic. I was drawn to a different sentence than the one Louisa refers to. Assuming it has relevance, I quote it here: “If you wish to overcome evil, you must absorb it and transform it. And this can only come from extension not from contraction, surely. That is, from love, not from rejection or hatred.” That doesn’t seem to respond to her question, but – say on.

The part about entering dialogue by seeking common ground by means of the use of symbols may lead people – as it perhaps has led Louisa – to think it is a prescription for overcoming opposition. But, taken in connection with what you just cited, perhaps you can see that it is actually aimed at the only person you can change.

Ourselves, yes. I was vaguely getting that this was where you would go with it.

This is a fundamental readjustment of attitude that would serve you all well, for there isn’t any use in always trying to do the impossible, when the same effort along different lines would produce magical transformation. But it can be difficult to grasp. Once grasped, it will be obvious, but getting to the far side of “once grasped” can be quite a leap, requiring a lot of self-overcoming.

This is going to take bullets, isn’t it? (Something our relationships often tempt us to consider!)

Very funny, but yes, bullets may help us to set out an array of facts to be considered in relation to one another.

• Symbols over logic is helpful primarily for the person wielding them.
• Who can you change? Who can you persuade? Who can you even understand (though to a limited degree)? Yourself.
• The 3D is, if is anything, a free-will universe. You choose, and choose, and choose again. But you cannot choose for another. You may constrain, but you cannot force choice.

I take that to mean, we can make someone do or not do something, but we can’t make him agree with us.

Surely all your experience tells you so.

• Changing you, however, also changes the equation. You cannot change your vis-à-vis, but you can change what your vis-à-vis has to deal with.

So, is it clearer now? Tell us what you understand us to mean.

We can’t use a change of tactics as a sort of magic wand, to manipulate others. (I’m sure there are plenty of techniques to manipulate others, but that isn’t what you are saying here.) But we can change ourselves, which changes what the other has to deal with. This may or may not resolve a given situation – it may even make it worse, I suppose – but it will help us out of a dead-end.

Yes, particularly the last. It is in thinking that you must, or even could, change another, that you run yourselves into blind alleys. If you could do that, you would cheat yourselves of valuable feedback, hence of valuable opportunities.

That’s an interesting juxtaposition. Evident, as soon as you say it, of course.

Evident only if you remember that the world – the external, the “other” in whatever manifestation – is always the same as you, the internal, the unsuspected or rejected parts of your own wholeness. Remember that inner and outer are reflections of one thing, and it is clear. Forget that, or disbelieve it, and it is not only not clear, it is nonsense.

Yes. It is a matter of how we see the world, which colors how we experience the world.

To be able to change another person at will would be to be able to evade a lot of your own internal contradictions. It would be to lose the opportunity to grow in wisdom. This is why black magicians end badly.

So, given that we cannot change others (except indirectly, by way of our own example, I suppose), how do we deal with difficult situations such as the one Louisa posited?

You give up the idea of using anything you know to change another’s reactions. You use what you know to widen your own self-knowledge, to untie old psychic knots, to calm and reprogram old robots that deprive you of the possibility of exercising free choice.

To have life more abundantly.

Certainly. This, you can do. What you cannot do is determine in advance how others will react to the changes in you. But, so what? You change for your own sake, pursuing a vision (an ideal) of who and what you wish to be. If that changed and changing person pleases or displeases others, if it makes life more difficult or less, if it creates new possibilities or closes off old ones – or both – this is a side-issue. When you are finished with First Life, you will not care about the way-stations that gave you opportunities for growth. You will care about what you did with the opportunity that a 3D life presented.

So, in suggesting that you reorient your thinking toward symbols that have no logical opposite, rather than logical counters that can be – will be – opposed by their opposites, we are not saying, “Try this, it will make your relationships easier.” It may make them harder! But it is a way forward for you. It is a way out of the blind alley that tells you that your life is dependent upon the reactions of others. At best, it reminds you that nothing is by chance, hence there is nothing to fear.

As we say, to some this will be clear; to others, nonsense.

Thinking about what you said, it is a variant of “Be a beacon,” isn’t it?

It is.

On the night of Sept. 11, 2001, the guys told Rita there were two effective responses to uncontrolled external situations (though that isn’t the phrasing they used): 1) hold your center, 2) be a beacon. That is, don’t be pulled off base, and radiate what you are, what you believe.

One can always do these; one can rarely do more than these; one rarely or never needs to do more than these. Anyone succeeding in holding their center and being a beacon can rest content that they have done good work.

As opposed to marching off to a pretended siege of Babylon. Today’s theme?

“The proper use of symbols,” perhaps.

That doesn’t seem to quite get it, but, maybe. Our thanks as always.