Life-planning
(Q) Unless you have other fish to fry, let's talk about planning, since you bring it up. People talk about life-plans and all that, and I've never known what to think about it. Something in me says the concept isn't quite right, no matter how firmly people believe in it, and no matter what convincing evidence comes, such as Robert Schwartz's book about life plans, the title of which escapes me. [Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born.] Do we plan out our lives ahead of time? If so - well, talk about it, if you will.
(A) Like so many other topics we have discussed, it all depends upon your viewpoint. Where people go wrong - or, let's say, where the seeds of disagreement are sown - is in failing to recognize that any one particular way of seeing things is only one way, never the only way. And isn't that the theme of this work? If it were not so, how could anyone say anything new, anything helpful, on any subject that has been discussed since time began? If anything could be described once for all - well, that would be the end of the discussion.
Now, notice, this s not a question of some people seeing rightly and others not; it is a matter of attaining a higher perspective so you can make new maps. And those maps are "new" only insofar as they are anchored, on one end, by the understanding of the person pondering them. That is, unlike an architectural blueprint, the thing being examined is different to each one looking at it.
And isn't that consistent with what we are saying here right along? Every person is a unique window on the world, hence is potentially the source of irreplaceable information. What is clear and plain to you may have been never clear or plain to anyone in the history of the world, for nobody has ever had your perspective to view it from.
(Q) I know you mean that for everybody, not just for me. I'm only pointing out that I'm aware of it.
(A) That is yet one more value of the individual to the species, as an irreproducible window.
All right, now to the question of life plans. Here - and on any topic you care to explore - it is well to consider the assumptions you bring to the question, as that awareness will help you separate out the essentials from the ephemera.
(Q) Come again?
(A) Observe as we do it.
If we begin from the assumption that time is as it appears to be - the present moment continually turning into the past, continually unrolling the future that will become the present - the subject will be as it appears. And if we look at it as past, present, and future all existing and you experiencing them as the moving present carries you along, still they don't appear much different - you may see more possibilities, a wider field of action, as you interact with past and future in ways the first concept would have no scope to allow - but still you will be encased in a framework that seems to support such planning. And, I repeat, that way of seeing things is not invalid from within that set of assumptions. It works, and it is more correct than the view that sees life as meaningless collisions. It's a good halfway house to further insights. (Indeed, what isn't? You aren't going to find any ultimate truths, and neither am I. The best we can do is reframe our understanding.)
(Q) Still pursuing A by understanding B, etc.
(A) That's the nature of it.
Okay, so how do life plans and life-planning look from a different perspective? Take our analogy of reality as a CD-ROM imprinted with all possibilities, and any given life as one walk down those possibilities. Look at things that way, and you can see that the "planning" is actually inherent in the original design of the game.
(Q) May I try?
(A) Go ahead; it will be easier than taking dictation.
(Q) What I'm getting is that all reality - all possible versions of everything - is created at once, and there's our CD-ROM (an analogy probably already obsolete, but there you are). Every possible path is there, which means more than "every possible decision for a given individual already exists"; it means, every possible variation of all individuals exists. Thus, Franks with very different characteristics also exist, so do versions without him.
In such case, how meaningful is it to talk of life-planning as if planning for only one person in only one version of reality? It is more meaningful to say that every possible path - including the intuitive path often called the pathless path - is there for the choosing, and so the "life-planning" so called is actually merely the deciding among alternatives.
(A) Not quite. Even here, your model is being silently influenced by other assumptions that lead you to treat a life as onepath; thus,onedecision and that's it, everything from that point is merely a run-through. Does that feel like the life you experience day by day?
(Q) No. It sort of makes it seem all automatic-pilot, doesn't it? Well then?
(A) Merely recognize that your life is an endless series of starting points.
(Q) I get it, but go on for the sake of the studio audience, as it were.
(A) Isn't it clear? You could profitably look at your life - at anybody's life, of course - as a continual moment of choice. No matter what you do, you leave yourself at a moment of choice among the next alternatives. Your birth may be regarded as the first choice, as it places you within a certain reality-stream. Obviously, by being born you obviate the streams that don't include you. As you go along, you eliminate or shall we say by-pass the streams in which you die young. Every new moment is the beginning of the choice of what comes next, as every new moment is also the culmination of all past choices. So, your life plan cannot rightfully be seen as one inevitable blueprint, but as a continuous choice among alternatives. And isn't that just how it feels?
(Q) Yes, it is. That's how I experience it. Maybe that's why the concept of a life plan always sort of grated on me.
(A) But what we've said so far is not the end of the story, for there is in fact a vectorto your life, to everyone's life.
Vectors
From DeMarco, Frank. Rita's World Vol 2: A View from the Non-Physical (Kindle Location 2182). Rainbow Ridge Books. Kindle Edition".
(Q) So, Rita, you said, "There is a vector
to your life, to everyone's life." Would you care to explain?
(A) Of course, and you will find it obvious when once stated. At least, I think you will. It is the elaboration, and the implications on a wider scale, that may perhaps give you pause.
What I have said to date is accurate, or at least is an approximation, but it only goes so far. You - anyone living a life in 3D - continually face an array of choices stemming from past choices. your past is determined (from the standpoint of your present moment); your future is absolutely free within the constraints of the possibilities presented by the situation as it exists.
(Q) What we did determines where we are. What we choose to do next determines where we go next.
(A) True, from one point of view. And after all, this is what a "common sense" point of view would portray as obvious and in fact inevitable. However, if it were this simple, logical analysis would lead you, as it has led others, to conclude that free will is an illusion, because the situation you find yourself in at any given moment essentially boxes you in. Not only can you not start from China if you start from Peru, but you can't reasonably expect to start as a salesman if you start as a mechanic or a college professor. In other words, the existing situation exists in overwhelming strength, and all but determines what you will do.
(Q) That is common sense, indeed. How often do we ever tear up our existing life and proceed down another path?
(A) Not often, perhaps, though actually more often (though slowly) than you might expect. But in one logically defensible theory of human behavior, it should never happen. Yet it does. The reason why it does - why it can- happen is that humans are more than puppets and extend farther than the bounds of 3D reality. It is a complicated relationship to explain, though simple enough in reality. Words divide what is one thing.
So, if you have the idea, try saying it.
(Q) Frank is a human in 3D, stumbling along as best he can, reconciling or trying to reconcile divergent strands within him, responsive to what seem to be external forces, and aware to a greater or lesser extent of his connection, via his comprising strands, to other times, other compound beings, continually or anyway repeatedly interacting with him.
Yet he is also an extension of himself as he exists in higher dimensions; or we might say he is a probe for a larger being, living his life with and for his larger self, part of it no matter how independent he may feel himself to be.
(A) Good enough. And talking of the 3D self and the non-3D self is only a small improvement over talking about body versus spirit, or this side and the other side, etc. Words still blur the continuity and emphasize the distinctions.
The next logical step in our analysis, bearing that continuity in mind, is to see that the 3D self is not as independent as we have been implying. It may be an autonomous state, able to exercise its will freely in domestic matters, but it is not independent, free to manage its international affairs as it wishes. That isn't the best analogy, in some ways, but it will serve.
(Q) I begin to see what you meant by saying our lives have vectors. Our non-3D components have preferences, and they bend us in certain directions, don't they?
(A) Here you will want to be careful of nuance, for language will lead you in very different ways emotionally, depending on what you choose. And once you set off on a path, you will find it difficult to remember that alternative ways of seeing things are equally valid.
So, you may put it that our non-3D component bends you in certain directions, and the unspoken implication is one of interference.
You may think of it as guidance, and the implication is of protection or anyway of assistance.
You may think of it as conscience telling you what you "should" do, and you may regard that either rebelliously or with a certain guilt for not measuring up.
All these possibilities - and all others - stem from the linguistic suggestion that there is a distinction between you in 3D and you in non-3D. There issuch a distinction, relatively; at the same time, it is an ephemeral distinction, almost a metaphysical distinction merely. This is why you were told from the beginning that the difference between what you then saw as you versus spirits ["vis a vis spirits", I think; certainly not "versus" in the sense of an adversarial relationship] was the turf you functioned on. At the same time, you didn't have the groundwork to understand a closer statement.
So, what I called a vector is established by the nature and purpose of your non-3D component - which, remember, includes you and all your strands and all the other "individuals" your stands connect you to, in a more active and equal relationship than you experience.
(Q) Let me paraphrase. I think you are saying that our conscious selves subordinate the existing reality of the other lives; we are the ring-masters of our life, and we get to drive. Yet from a non-3D perspective, a strand that existed in the 1600s is as "now" as we are, and so exerts a stronger influence there than it can here.
(A) That's right. Or, let's say, that's close enough for the moment. So now perhaps you can see that the larger being, as a whole, necessarily has a different reality than any one of its 3D pieces does, and its point of view encompasses them all.
(Q) We're edging toward a discussion of karma here, aren't we?
(A) Yes. In effect, karma may be considered to be two things at once, or one thing in two aspects, put it that way.
Karma
Karma from the 3D point of view is leftover imbalance that must be righted. Some see it as guilt to be atoned, but if it were that simple, what of those who get their good fortune first and their difficulties later? The traditional view of karma is quite insufficient, but was all but inevitable as long as people were seeing the balancing but were thinking of past lives as if they were unit to unit, rather than community to community.
Karma from a non-3D point of view might be considered more like the effects of inertia than of a need for rebalancing. After all, if no individual is really a unit, and no non-3D "individual" is only one 3D unit's non-physical component, where is the opportunity, let alone the necessity, of deliberately balancing? Instead, balance occurs naturally, as in any functioning homeostatic system.
And a third point of view is premature to discuss, but should be mentioned if only for later consideration, and that is that what we are calling the larger being, the non-3D aspects of a 3D compound being, is not, itself, any more individual than anything else we are discussing. You will find it hard to keep remembering not to let the discussion tempt you into reverting to thinking of beings as separate, but it is worthwhile to make the attempt, or else your ability to understand subtle relationships will be impaired.
And that's enough for now.
