Spirit shares gems of wisdom with me.
He asks me if we can walk through a mountain.
Only if someone blows a tunnel through it.
We will,
What mountain?
The mountain of our mind.
How is our mind like a mountain?
Seemingly solid, but really only dense.
A fog is not rock.
Spirit tells me that we each are as rays of the sun
but not separate from the sun in any real way other
than the direction we may choose to face. The sun,
He tells me, has power to pull its rays home.
Life, too, is like that. We each live an individual
existence only in our own mind and, perhaps in the
minds of some others. But no number or individual or
group illusions alters the reality of the illusion.
Spirit tells me that happiness is not
different things to different people,
as some might believe it to be.
Happiness is a feeling of contentment
that harmonizes both intellect and
emotion.
Can it last?
Nothing lasts.
But, is it a thing?
What?
Happiness.
What else could it be?
A state of mind.
States and minds are things.
But, people seek happiness.
Where? How?
Wherever and however they seem to think
it might be found.
It can never be found.
Then, is it possible to become happy
or contented.
Yes.
How?
Develop a satisfied mind.
How?
Live by rules of your own choosing.
How to know if I am choosing
the rules I live by?
Who else could choose them?
Most social rules were created before
I was born.
So what?
I didn’t choose them.
Do you live by them?
Some of them.
Why only some?
Some are required.
Why?
They are designed to create order where
there might otherwise be chaos.
Such as?
Traffic laws.
Yes.
What does that mean?
Traffic laws are a form of general rules
designed to benefit all members of specific
societies.
What rules would benefit individuals?
Whatever would benefit a group can only be
effective if it is followed by individuals
within the group.
So, the personal and the general are as one?
Yes and no.
How so?
Group rules apply to everyone to whom
they apply.
And personal rules?
Personally chosen rules are selected from
general rules.
Worlds within worlds of rules?
Yes. Our personal rules should be chosen
above and beyond those we accept.
Who el
A spirit teacher tells me that attitude exists unseen
and yet very visible to those who have eyes to see.
How can we learn to see attitude?
Whose attitude?
Our own and that of others.
Meditation.
Meditation on what?
Not what, why.
Why what?
Yes.
What does that mean?
What does it seem to mean?
To meditate on why we do what we do?
Yes, and to dare to question our basic motives
for doing what we do.
There might be many.
Such as?
Survival.
Yes.
Survival may be our primary motive, but
but there are surely many possible others.
No.
Please explain.
Survival is maintaining what we have
at any given time, of any given possession,
real or imagined.
An imagined possession?
Yes.
How can we m imagine we possess
what we do not?
Faulty vision.
What causes faulty vision?
Attitude.
Attitude towards what?
Whatever.
Priority?
What about it?
It just seemed to come to mind.
Whose mind?
Is there more than one?
No.
Spirit tells me that the middle way is as narrow
or wide as the mind who walks it is.
Then, the middle way for some might be considered
as an extreme by some others who travel on either
side of that so-called middle way?
There is no so-called middle way. Anyone who
travels her or his own middle way is travelling
the middle way.
Regardless of how it might appear to some others?
We do not sincerely travel the middle way, our
middle way, to impress others, unless we are
travelling a road designed by others.
Then, we design our own middle way?
Yes.
How is that possible?
How is it not possible?
How can we know?
What?
What our own middle way should look like.
Look like?
I need to be able to visualize.
Yes.
What does that mean?
We can only know our own middle way
by also knowing our own extremes;
our individual potential for living
high or low.
I thought the middle way was moving
upward.
It is.
But, if the path we each travel is
between a low way and a high way ..
And it is.
Please explain.
To walk the middle way is to live as
you now live, moving through time,
while you are experiencing physical form
Your thoughts and emotions have power
to pull you high or low. Your unique
middle way harmonizes equally with
both extremes.
Then, some might have …
Not some; all do have a unique outlook
on life – within and without.
Then, no two middle ways will necessarily
be as the other?
Exactly.
Then, how can I learn to recognize my own
middle way?
Self-awareness. Know thyself.
More meditation?
Yes, but intentional meditation.
Spirit tells me that whenever the sudden
sense of awareness of an expanded
so-called reality seems to have blown
our mind, it is helpful to ask ourselves
just where has it blown our mind?
We are now beyond where we had been,
or, more truthfully, we are now beyond
being able to ever again be where we
previously had been.
It is not a matter of choosing to be
less directly engaged with other
characters and situations in the play,
or game of Life, than we once were,
and can honestly be no more.
How to recover from sudden removal
from the close-up action, even though
we may now see it all from a certain
distance as more-or-less meaningless
activity?
That would be an easy-out.
Then, how to respond?
To what?
To the awareness of not being
in the action.
Are you physically removed from it?
Not completely.
Then, what?
I seem to have been recast,
as a member of the audience, but
an audience that influences
the activity on the stage.
Yes. We are never totally disconnected
from either the play or the players.
That’s it.
What is it?
My character is still there, at least
in form. But I now know that I
acted as that character. So, am I
an actor?
Yes and no.
I want to be real.
What would real look like?
I’m not sure. I can see what is
happening, from a distance, as well as
from close-up.
Are you now more or less engaged
in the play?
I seem to be more aware of
the potential for expansion in
the value of the play.
Yes, and that expanded awareness comes
with a price you must pay.
Expanded responsibility?
Yes.
Note: Dear Reader, Spirit suggests that we each spend
a few minutes at the beginning and again at the ending
of each day, reflecting on the seemingly nonsensical
world we live in, and then to smile with awareness
of the incredible potential, locked within all that
seems to make no sense, waiting to be activated.
Jean
Spirit tells me that if we believe in ourselves
then half of the struggle is over.
As in, well begun is half done?
Yes.
But, how can I know if I believe in myself
or whether I’m only pretending?
We can never know.
But, we do know if we have begun
to do whatever?
Yes.
But, if we seem to be working alone …
Alone is the only way we can work.
It can feel very lonely.
Then, your mind has wandered from the work
you set out to do.
Then, fight the good fight?
Yes, and trust that there are others,
many more others than you could possibly
be aware of, who are also fighting
your fight, on your side.
I wish I knew what it was all about.
Enlightenment, and clearing the path
that others might follow.
What if they prefer to clear their own path?
All paths are one path.
Spirit tells me that the way of enlightenment
is different things to different people,
if only in their different minds, and even
so-called different minds are not really
different at all.
Then, how can we agree on the way to go?
Where?
To enlightenment.
There is no way.
No way to enlightenment or no way to agree?
Yes.
Please explain.
We are each and always have been
in the process of becoming.
Becoming what?
Some call it becoming enlightened.
What do you call it?
What it is.
Then, what is it?
Then, now, and forever the same
process.
What process?
Not what process of becoming?
No.
Why?
It would be an intellectual trap.
Would be, or might be?
Would be.
Yes.
Please explain the process of
enlightenment.
Before I explain enlightenment?
Yes.
Why?
I need to bring it all together.
Yes.
Spirit shares perennial wisdom with me,
and with anyone else who cares to listen
to our more-or-less private dialogue.
But, it is a dialogue with a difference.
How so? Spirit seems to know and, at time,
so I suspect, directs my thoughts, and
even my emotions.
But, He must pull them from a pool of
previously existing collection (in my mind,
or in my small share of cosmic mind), I do
recognize them as my own, more or less.
In this respect (as well as in depth of
awareness and intelligence) He has
a great advantage over me.
I can often suspect how He would likely respond
to whatever I might say, do, think, or feel, but
He often catches me by surprise with thoughts
far beyond what I might have suspected.
Why? Perhaps I have still to develop appropriate
respect for the depth of …
Why did you not refer to My depth? Am I less
than my thoughts, to you?
I’ve been there and I’ve done that.
What?
Hero worship.
Perhaps you worshipped the wrong heroes.
Are there right heroes?
For whom?
For me.
No.
Why?
You would, in time, find faults with them,
as you do with Me.
You seem to go out of your way to ensure
that I find faults with you.
Yes.
Why?
Your addiction to hero worship is
a stumbling block on the path
to truth. Truth is forever.
And Heroes come and go?
Yes.
Spirit tells me that we each are as rays of the sun, but not separate from the sun in any real way other than the direction we may choose to face. The sun, He tells me, has power to pull its rays home.
Life, too, is like that. We each live an individual existence only in our own mind and, perhaps, in the minds of some others. But, no number of individual illusions alters the reality of the illusion.
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