Duality in non-3D

DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 3117). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

(A)  I was saying that duality is in the nature of all creation, and at this point I need to remind you of something we were told when we were doing this from the same "side" of the division of 3D from non-3D, and that is that it is a mistake to think that the non-3D side of life is somehow exempt from the conditions of duality that exist as ground rules.  At the time, we were thinking in terms of physical versus nonphysical and tended to think that the significant difference was whether one was in the body or not.  "The guys" informed us that the nonphysical was a part of the physical, and I don't know that we ever understood that properly, even after we were told that the chief difference between us on our side and the guys on their side was not in our natures but in the characteristics of the terrain we respectively inhabited.

You can understand that easier now, if you remember that we are conceptualizing it now not as physical versus nonphysical but as awareness of 3D versus awareness of all dimensions of which 3D is only some.  Of course we are part of the same thing.  We are in the same space, inhabiting the same world.  How could it be otherwise?  So now we move into wider ramifications by way of investigating shared duality as it manifests in the question of good and evil.  And what we're about to discuss could serve as a bridge between modern exploratory metaphysics - call it that - and traditional religious teachings.  As you have long insisted, those teachings contain valuable clues.  It is firsthand experience and reconceptualization that brings their inner truths and descriptive insights back to life again.

(Q)  The spirit of the teachings brings life, and the letter kills.

(A)  Literalism is idolatry.  I believe you read that somewhere.  I seem to remember your quoting it to me.

(Q)  I don't remember quoting it, but I do remember reading it, though I don't know where.  They could equally have said literalism is superstition.

(A)  Any words may be made into superstition, including these, if accepted and repeated without understanding.  And the greater the authority of the authors, the greater the danger of rote repetition and consequent unconscious distortion into something they were never meant to be.

I know this seems like a diversion from our topic, but it is not.  It is, perhaps, a clearing of skirts before going farther.

You will want to prove these words for yourselves, at least I hope you will.  One way to do so is to take the teachings you grew up with and reexamine them as if ("as if!") they were the record of people's experiences, a record that was distorted not for political reasons (though that could happen as well, after the fact) but because any experience and insight becomes distorted when seen as if [it were] a 3D experience, and the record becomes further distorted when read by those whose experience does not extend beyond 3D.

(Q)  In other words, by those whose lack of additional perspective prevents them from reading back into the scriptures what translation into 3D terms took out.

(A)  Precisely.  Well, as you know, Frank, I did not live in the Christian tradition I was born into, but in the modern Jungian understanding that I learned over time.  But anyone who knows anything at all about Christianity or Judaism or Islam knows that they center on the heavenly war between good and evil as it plays out "here on Earth".  They go about establishing the relevance to ordinary life in different ways and thus express, and create, quite different ways of seeing the world, as each one emphasizes different qualities, but what they have in common is this perception of the war between good and evil, a war that begins not in 3D but in non-3D; a war that moves into 3D because in a way it is about 3D, and is about humans in particular.

Other religions see the world - see the nature of reality - differently.  Shinto, for instance, or Confucianism, while observing the existence of disharmony, do not concentrate on good versus evil so much as harmony versus disharmony, or balance versus out-of-balance conditions, which has a slightly more accurate nuance here than the word "imbalance".

This does not make one view "right" and others "wrong", any more than looking up rather makes looking down wrong.  In fact, considering the fact that various valid religious traditions see the world differently helps you keep the wider view - the wider horizons of possibilities - simultaneously in mind.

So, let us proceed, as good Westerners, to consider the nature of good and evil as absolutes rather than as the matter of expression of tastes that is the most superficial end of the spectrum of behavior we are considering.

Duality and scripture

DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 3152). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition.

Religion takes the principle of absolute good and identifies it with the creator, which it identifies with God.  It takes the principle of absolute evil and identifies it with the disrupter, which it identifies with the devil.  (Understand, I am simplifying and gliding over nuances, here.  I was no theologian and, in fact, was not even much interested in religious matters when in 3D, and as you will learn over time, we aren't particularly different "over here" and what would make us so? So, for me to connect to scriptural sources would be a farther stretch than it would be for any of you in the body, where you still have greater possibility of choice.)

...  Any body of knowledge must be explained at the level of understanding of those who listen to it.  Or put another way, you could say that any congregation - even if it is a congregation of one, reading the Bible, say - must, necessarily, understand whatever it is taught in the only way its level of being allows.  Scripture cannot bring a leap of reconceptualization; it can only serve as illumination at the present level.

(Q)  A lamp unto my feet.

(A)  Yes.  And as you used to insist, it is necessarily written to give people something, no matter what level they read it from, anywhere from reading a myth as a literally true history to reading it as a coded allusion to realities to which many are blind.  It is a translation designed to appeal to many levels of being - but still it is a translation susceptible to being grossly misunderstood especially if read from a level of being that assumes that its own is the only level that exists, and, therefore, whatever the scripture seems to those at that level must be the only "right" meaning of the words.

So, if we are to look at reality in a different way, it is important that you not jettison so much past description that will open up to you in a new way when you come to it with new eyes.

(Q)  I have been telling myself for years that I should study scripture, but it doesn't seem to happen.  Apparently, it is not my path.

Maps and explorers

(A)  Or perhaps it is a matter of timing.  Now, your hour is nearly up, and it may not seem like this discussion has brought us anywhere on the subject of good and evil, but, in fact, if it has awakened anybody to the fact, or reminded them, say, that this question of good and evil is integrally connected to the exploration of reality that is the scriptures, it will have served to anchor an abstract question in a wider context.  There is no use explaining without considering the rough maps provided by earlier explorers.  They may have gotten major features wrong; they may have guessed where this or that river arises; they may have put down descriptions with greater definiteness than their experiences warranted.  Still, their journals should be explored, their maps perused.  Why?  So that you can perpetuate their errors or omissions or misunderstandings?  No - so you may profit by them.

So, to end for now, I remind you that we really are moving to answer the question and the associated questions.  Good and evil may be considered to be absolutes within our experience of duality.  We in the higher dimensions (call it) who - I remind you - continue to exist in 3D even if we have no body to anchor our consciousness there, are as much in duality as you are in 3D.  That is an important fact that will at first be an obstacle for some of you.  Still, it is the truth, and will help explain some things as we go along.  Being in duality, we experience good and evil.  however, not being subject to the constraints of limited consciousness moving from one time-slice to the next, obviously, we experience it differently.  As I said at the end of yesterday's discussion, it can be an orientation, rather than a trap.

However, there is much more to be said on the subject.  Enough for now.