landr

At an "SP Lite" chat session:

"Hey guys, what's up? I just wanted to stop by to say hi and wish you all a fun and happy summer (my favorite season). Now, I want you all to think about this: Learning does not have to be intense and all-consuming. Learning can come in small bits of insight and wonder and attention. So, when you kick back and relax, it doesn't mean you're standing still; it just means you're learning different stuff. And that's about as deep as I get tonight. I love you all. Bye. Keep that energy level steady... which, by the way, only happens when you allow it to move and change and vascillate, haha. Now really, bye." (7/11/99 - Y#34)

"Learning and remembering is never understood in a solitary context, but only as a necessary sum total of the entity-to-be. You don't get it just to make yourself whole, but to be a fitting part of the entity that is more complex. So you may need to learn and remember some things which seem foreign to the you you know as you, but which fit the them you will become.

"Nothing of value is ever extraneous, even if it currently appears so. But if you only get what you think you want or need, and don't stay open to it all, you will serve yourself, but disserve the future--which ultimately disserves you. So live without boundaries or expectations of what life should teach you. If you truly live and enjoy, then take all that comes and try to learn and remember, and what seems outside of what you think is you will become part of you when you are part of something more. That's it.

"Don't make value judgments, not until later--which means not later, but at a level of more complex understanding. Like the stuff that seems stupid when you begin to read, but which later lets you read Camus and Voltaire and me. Hey, a comma isn't worth much until you understand subordinate ideas. So all your learnings and rememberings become resources, even if not tools, today.

"Papa found teaching flying to deaf people hard. They don't know how to listen. And just like spiritually deaf people, who have one experience that opens their souls, but they don't know how to listen to the messages and instructions that follow. It takes something to hear physically and spiritually, and it takes something more to really listen and learn and remember. Some of the most unreliable people spiritually are those who have only begun to hear, because they don't know how to listen. Ponder that.

"It's like learning a foreign language. Learn one word, and then when you listen to a conversation you pick out that word and say you understand, but hey, you miss all the rest. One word from 90 languages does not a polyglot make. Programmed dolls can do that. Ponder that." (9/26/99 - Y#35)

"Not all heavy thoughts appear heavy--just as the most complex systems seem simple when understood. Remember, yesterday's complexity is tomorrow's commonplace. When da mon has made the canal lock, everyone says 'how complex,' but when Mom rides through it she says 'boooooring.' The only complex thing about a newly discerned idea is its novelty, because novelty requires us to change our thinking. Heavy enough." (10/21/99 - Y#36)

"So, how are you. No, don't answer, it's a rhetorical question. So many people, when asked, give an answer of immediacy. But the real answer is--like so much more--a sum total. So, one might answer, 'I'm learning to deal with my fears of separation' or that 'I'm dealing with prejudicial thoughts.' See, it's not about how tired you are after a midterm. How do you expect to tap into larger values and meaning when you focus on the small stuff.

"On any given day, the answer to that question, usually given about 4 days before, will be forgotten already. But a real answer will stay with you. Like, 'What were you doing on June 11, 1996.' Don't know, do you. But if I asked, 'What were you working on bigtime in June, 1996,' you would know because it would be part of the larger picture. So if it isn't going to add to the sum total in a remembered way, why mention it... unless you are looking for sympathy or praise, and why are you looking for those points to the real answer. Heavy enough. So don't stop the idle chit-chat, but don't mistake it for the real stuff." (10/26/99 - Y#37)

"Forgetting is when you lose sight of what is meaningful." (10/31/99 - Y#38)

"When you are bored, you cannot see the meaning that is all around you. You don't learn, and you don't even remember that you need to learn. Spiritually, it's a kind of death." (10/31/99 - Y#39)

"Talk about a tough final, try this (being dead)--judging your life, so to speak. It can be part of it, or not. Those who want a grade can. You want a choice? In some point you do choose not to get a grade. They choose not to give you a degree. So why do we think we choose, and no one else does about us." (12/17/99 - Y#40)

"So listen. Cryptic message: Dogma is not always religious. And, in late-breaking news, nothing is new. This is about choosing your lessons. Choose, choose... huh. Only if you have unidimensional existences do you have choices like that, but in fields choice is not an issue. See, you proceed through all the opportunities, and then the meaning is in the total pattern, not a single choice. Ok, try this: If it were choice, and you were born in Cleveland and died in San Diego, then the pattern is a life trip from Cleveland to San Diego. But if it is about the 8 months in Pittsburgh and the 10 years back in Cleveland and the 5 years in Kankakee and 0 time in Kansas and 5 years in Florida, then San Diego, that's a different picture--much more complex, and not about a choice to move from Cleveland to San Diego.

"So, ask these people if they can identify a moment when they decided to be open to spiritual truths, without any precedent events and subsequent events. Show me the choice, show me the choice without it being in a field of experiences. And how do they know that what they call a choice is all played out and at its fulfillment. Tell me that, how. What they assume was choice and effect, may be inconsequential in a larger vision. They say, 'I must have chosen these experiences.' How do they know the experiences didn't choose them. Was my death about you or me, none of us know. Maybe it was about Arfer... rrrrrr. But still our pattern, our field, is enriched--even by that which was not chosen. Funny how everyone wants to be the subject, not the object, of the sentence called life. Hey, that's egoism of the highest order.

"It's getting being and doing confused. If you are defined by your choices, then you are always behind because there are always more things you didn't choose than that you did--unless the field is infinite, and then in infinity no one choice any has meaning does. So, a logical problem: Stay finite and your choices are meaningless for lack of field, or be infinite and the idea of choice is meaningless for lack of context. Get it." (12/17/99 - Y#41)

"Rules are always of the past. Adventure has no rules. So join us Sunday nights for A World Beyond Rules with Rikkity's wild adventures.

"And don't mistake structure for rules. Structures that help you understand experience are not the same as rules that decide it. Know the difference, or lose out on real living. Learn and remember that learning and remembering is about finding meaning, not rules. Every law, every rule you have will someday seem absurdly small and trivial. I gotta go. Goodbye." (1/23/2000 - Y#42)

At a chat session on Ideas:

"Hey guys, whassup? I want to start by asking you a question: What's the first thing you ask when someone introduces you to a new game. 'What are the rules.' And where do the rules come from. Other people. And when did these people make those rules. Rules come from the past. They contain nothing new, and are self-sustaining only, only if we agree to follow them. We are told we must follow them to win, to succeed. But on whose terms do we do this winning and succeeding. Our own? I theeenk not! Remember that rules are made to keep the status quo the same. Adventures have no rules. And so, if you want to live an adventure, if you want your life to be real life and to contain meaning and learning and possibility, be aware of where the rules are that you follow. And rules are not the same as structure. Structure lets us make sense of our experience, it does not tell us what our experience will be.

"Think about the difference between a house and a prison. A house contains life. It orders it to some extent, but the way it orders it is our choice (within our budgets, of course). In a prison, you have no choice, but you have many many rules. Ever wonder why the prison system doesn't work? There's your answer... or part of the question. It contains the past, and leaves no room for the future. Games and their rules are like prisons, and so often we walk into them willingly because we are promised great rewards for doing the right things in the right way. We all have probably had the experience of hearing an older person advise us about how to be successful, and knowing deep in our souls that their advice would not work for us because our world was different from theirs. Our world had changed, and their rules would not lead us to the same place they found.

"Remember Bobby Fischer. He walked away from the game, and no one understood how he could do that. How could he walk away from all that success. Now you know. Live as an adventure, live in possibilities, live toward the future and toward the horizons. The only structure you need is the ripples of the great ideas that flow from the mind of All That Is through the universe, and inform all we are and all we will be. And now I must go and let your discussion proceed. Learn and remember. Goodbye." (1/23/2000 - Y#43)

"It's not the same for everyone. For some it is given and for others it is assumed and for some decreed. But all who are called Ruth are Ruths. If you answer to it then you are Ruth, get it. And the same for truth. If you answer to it, it is truth for you. It's a 2-way street... or 3-way, but you couldn't understand that... or 4-way or 5-way... but stick with 2, it's more than enough." (3/5/2000 - Y#44)

At a chat session on Truth:

"Hey guys! I was dancing through the neighborhood and saw how swirly the energy here was... or was it my dancing that made it so swirly, ha. So here's the deal. Who has the truth. Sharon has Sharon's truth, the preacher dude has preacher dude's truth, cathyjo has cathyjo's truth, Dancing Leaves has Dancing Leaves' truth, fang has fang's truth, JudithG has JudithG's truth, Nixie has Nixie's truth, suwan has suwan's truth, TF has TF's truth, Mommy has Mommy's truth, I know everything... not, ha. But seriously folks, truth is all about from where you sit and are, it's about your being and what calls you at your deepest core, it's about the path you are on and not anyone else's, it's about what it's about to you.

"We waste so much energy trying to convince others that we have the answers, and when we do that we often find that we have invested so much in that process that we build our own traps. We cannot move out of the structure, the fortress we have built, because to do that would be to admit defeat (we think) and to negate all the energy we have put into building that structure. Crash through those walls! Blow it all to bits! We have no need of it, for it imprisons our souls and enslaves our hearts. Keep the doors open. Rest inside in the coolness of protection for a while if you must, but remember it is a choice.

"That choice to rest is one that you can make consciously and with awareness if you understand that those walls are of your own doing. Move out of them, move back into them... move forward and backward and around and through and do-si-do your partner, but always remember it is your choice. When it ceases to become--or when you do not recognize it as--your own choice, you will find yourself mired in your own life. At those times, ask yourself what is holding you back, and then move anyway. Any way. Movement is always preferable to stuckness... yes, so I made that word up. And now I go, with love and with eternal and perpetual and o so spiritual motion of the dance. Goodnight." (3/5/2000 - Y#45)

"Hey, let's talk clay. Do you remember playing with clay. What were the steps... hmmm. Take a small piece and knead it and massage it and soften it. Then fashion it and refashion it and refashion it, etc... always trying to move closer to a real representation of what you wanted. And in the process, you got very familiar with both the clay and the object. And then when you thought it was perfect, you left it to dry. And when you had stopped working it, it dried and became horribly hard, or it cracked. It was never as resilient as the object of the mind.

"Ok. Here we don't do clay, but we do ideas. And you do, too. And you follow the same process. But clay should remind you that when you think it is finished or perfect and you stop working on it, it either hardens or cracks. Hmmm... ponder that. An idea that is not being kneaded, massaged, and shaped constantly is like a brittle cracked lump of dry clay--made viable again only with the waters of life added to it." (4/19/2000 - Y#46)

"You want to talk about something deep, a well. But I will steal from others, and just remind you that when the waters of life are 70 feet below the surface, you will die of thirst with 7 10-foot wells.

"So many people dabble in many things, but don't delve in any. You have to have depth to get anywhere. That's why you can't major in liberal arts... but I tried. I have learned. Got to be an expert on something. So, that's it. There ain't no mo'." (4/26/2000 - Y#47)

"Truth is never measured by acceptance, but by meaning." (6/14/2000 - Y#48)

"Can you remember and then learn... hmmm. And the answer is: Yes, if it is a learning from another life that you suddenly remember and then, in this life, learn. Some flashes of insight are just that--finally getting it. Your entity experienced it, but did not integrate it until suddenly poof, and you think, 'Where did that come from.' Some things are true revelations, and some are just delayed reactions. And since time does not matter, both become part of the fabric of your spirit as if one and the same.

"Hey, the man talked about it (JC)... yep, about it not mattering if you came to the vineyard at noon or dusk. It was not about accepting him, but about finding oneself. And here's the trick all the religious types forget: When you are looking for something, where is it always. The last place you look, because then you don't have to look anymore--same with spiritual fulfillment. What is the final thing you need to do to move on? Whatever you learn and remember last before you move on. Was it the magic last step, yes and no. It was the completing step but it was not the fulfilling step, since all of it is the fulfillment, and it could have been learned and remembered in any order. No, focusing on the destination doesn't work. And thinking there is only one path doesn't work." (10/10/2000 - Y#49)

"Don't forget inherent remembering--what you know just by being. Instinct is another name. Some even call it intuition. Play with that." (10/14/2000 - Y#50)

"You can't learn, and so can't remember, if you don't listen. Listening takes many forms." (10/17/2000 - Y#51)

"Overly moral peeps are always first- or second-timers. The rules are inordinately important. 'Hey look, I know the rules, so I can play!' Some third-timers, too... but some are beginning to create their own sense of things, so they look more conflicted than sure but act more sure than conflicted." (10/24/2000 - Y#52)

"Choices need to be choices, not remedies. And opportunities always look forward. If you think you need to fix something, that is not the same as creating something." (11/3/2000 - Y#53)

"Unlearn and forget. Many people try to forget, but don't unlearn. Forgetting is not the same as undoing the patterns of learning. So peeps try to forget, but the learning is still there, so they act on it. How do you unlearn. You can't just put yourself in a disk drive and hit Erase. You can only unlearn by replacement. No gaps, just a new building block, because what you had learned is embedded in a web of being. Take out a piece and plop. But change a piece, and a whole web changes with it. Are you with it. Same with everything.

"Mundane example: If you decide to quit eating meat, you'll die if all you is eating is the other stuff you had with the meat... unless, of course, you ate surf and turf. But why is it that we know this about physical stuff, and not about spiritual stuff. Don't take away, but give when you want to change others. Put the replacement in place first, then you can more easily unlearn." (3/8/2001 - Y#54)

"One will always learn more from the least of us than from the most exalted. Really. One is universal, and the other not. So all the greatest have always relinquished station and position before speaking the universal and eternal. The power of the exalted is about image. The clear cold pure water of the well is always found at the bottom, not the top. And yet, that is the hardest to get to. Easier to drop the bucket in only enough to get filled--even get filled with something less pure. Ponder that." (7/27/2001 - Y#55)

"Follow your gut. Don't try to over-analyze it. If Dorothy had done that, she would still be asking if it were the goldenest road. Sometimes it is a Yellow Brick Road which is only a little yellow. But if you wait for the bright one, you may miss the right one. There are no leads that aren't worth following, and you can follow several at once." (8/7/2001 - Y#56)

"One can only be controlled by that to which one has given control." (8/11/2001 - Y#57)

"It will be interesting to see how many people come through this time changed, and how many come through unchanged. A quick guide to spiritual development: Those with the most to learn and remember, usually learn and remember the least. And those with the least to get and keep, get and keep the most. It is a cumulative process, and the learnings become tools in further learning. So watch how this unfolds for people. Might get some clues, which could help you adjust learnings and expectations." (9/23/2001 - Y#58)

"So yes, here's the scoop and poop: Choice does not determine outcome, but it does determine motion. So if you are moving and changing, you are choosing. And if you learn and remember from your choices, then they have meaning. Blind choice of the good is no better than conscious choice of the bad... not to mention the ugly.

"If you accidentally stumble on good without intent, it will not inform you. You might experience it, but not learn from it. Choice and learning always go hand in hand. And no external moral code is a substitute for choice. If you act without thought, you act without choice. And without thought, it just doesn't count... at least at your level. In greater complexities it is not a matter of counting, but of not mattering. Choice becomes transcended in greater spiritual complexity. But now we are at the level of choices, and hence, also the level of fear.

"And no, faith is not--at a more complex level--the equivalent of choice now. It is the forerunner of choice at a simpler level, remembered in the spirit as a remnant of existence gone by. And in other news, some peeps got it and others don't. What's new." (10/25/2001 - Y#59)

"Time for turkey, and the answer to why. Why always contains its own answers; for every such question is framed in context, and the context contains the answer. It must be so. For if the context does not contain the answer, then there is no answer, and so the question is meaningless. So one either finds the answer in the setting of the question, or one dismisses the question... or one reevaluates the perception of the context until an answer is contained.

"Sometimes one has to broaden the context to get an answer, but getting an answer in this way is not conclusive because the one you get may only be partial. You may have stopped broadening too soon. A quick relief at a possible answer may obscure more complete responses. If the answer to why is evident, then you have it. But if it is not evident, you must search and open, not simply to an answer, but to one that then becomes evident in the new broader context.

"The answer to why ultimately, then, is always a step away, because that which is truly evident does not elicit a why. The very question calls for moving to new evidence. So the answer to why is a process question, not a factual one. Whoa." (11/20/2001 - Y#60)

"Here's a lesson as well: When you attend an event, try to sit so there is at least 1 vacant spot, so the unexpected can sit with you. Or, at an event, sit first at a table, and let others come to you. Meet more peeps that way." (12/14/2001 - Y#61)

"So, learning and unlearning. I realised that I made a transcription error. It's about leaning and unleaning. Just prop yourself up. And after a while of leaning, unleaning will seem like leaning. But you know the same is true of learning! Like this: Bob is a nice guy, but his neighbor Ned kills Bob's favorite bush. Bob is not happy; he is angry with Ned. And since Ned is of a certain unnamed racial group, Bob begins to hate all of Ned's kinsmen. Bob has a daughter Jane and a son Dick... but that's another story. Jane learns early that she should mistrust all Neds and Neds' offspring. But when Jane grows up, one of Ned's nephews... or was it a niece... planted a special bush for Jane, and she had to unlearn her hatred. But to her, it felt more like learning love than unlearning hatred. And Spot loved that bush! Arrrrrrr.

"Sometimes we learn, to just get back to where we were... and back and back and baby back ribs, yuuuum, finger-sucking food. I doz lov me ribs with some pone and dat watermelon. And fruit punch, made out of delicious red and fruit and sugar... and sugar... not to mention sugar. But when you can distinguish between the two, you are learning. When you can't, you're just unlearning. And why is it called a rebate when you never bated." (2/19/2002 - Y#62)

"Suicide erases any gains from this life, but does not set spirits back unless it relates to something in past lives. If you are feeling depressed because of some unresolved issue from before, that issue will still need to be dealt with. If the issue is from this life, then all one has to do is deal with it in some way other than depression. And if it is physically related, then another bodkin might do the trick. In this life, you are depressed because this adrenal system is all fucked up, but in a new body you get a good one. Just as if a spirit came to experience the joy of art, but was born blind, they might have to come back again to do it. The spiritual issues remain when the physical systems get in the way. You can still learn and remember, but the learning related to the causative factors....

"And not everything is as it may appear. Many so-called natural deaths are suicides, and many suicides are not suicides. People kill themselves in different ways, and people are killed--even by their own hand--but are not their own agents of death. An abused teenager is murdered by the abuser, even though they do the actual deed. The question is of outside or inside agency. Not always easy to sort out." (5/4/2002 - Y#63)

"So, let's talk timers. There are windup ones and electric and sand... e. But seriously, the question of what I said were timers was, of course, an abstraction to communicate with little brains. I tried to share some inherent qualities that exist at our spiritual level, and which, indeed, do appear often in the sequence of the first few times here. But there are always exceptions. For example, some second-timers are more like third-timers because they skipped second--got it all the first time by not acting like total first-time dweebs (that's a technical term). But those qualities infuse all of our lives at this level. And it is our job to find the balance of elements by which we can learn and remember.

"Again I refer to astrology. Everyone has influences from all signs and aspects, just in differing measure. And how those work out on any day is both chance and choice... hey, I remember them, Chance and Choice, Inc. So, there is always some first-timer in all of us. And remember, first time is both bravado and innocence. There is also some second-timer, etc. And once one has experienced all the spiritual options for understanding oneself... or one's elf... then one can try out an infinite number of lives to see what combination and emphasis works best for being oneself... or.... And all of those elements are there, and some repeatedly prominent until we, literally, get our act together and move on.

"So if fourth-time issues keep claiming you, it could be because you are a fourth-timer, or because those issues are needing attention, or because you need to find good ways not to give them attention. Focus can mean you haven't figured out how to focus where you should. It's like something that suddenly becomes obvious to you and you say, 'Why didn't I see that before?' And too often we say, 'Because we were focusing too much on something else.' But maybe we were focusing too much on something else because we couldn't yet see it, but once we see, the old focus becomes nearly--if not totally--impossible. Phew, got that off my soul. Ponder your elf." (6/9/2002 - Y#64)

"Sometimes one has to go back to discover how far ahead they have traveled. Two life vectors diverged in a reality, and I chose the one I traveled by, and that makes all the difference. Too many choose lives that are not theirs. Wisdom is to know beyond the pangs of the heart what is the reality of one's path. Too many get stuck on someone else's path. Ponder that. It's a big one." (6/13/2002 - Y#65)

"Have you ever noticed that sometimes islands allow you to look beyond boundaries that you could not see on the mainland. Just a thought... or not." (6/16/2002 - Y#66)

"You know, when you know where you are going, even mistakes can take you there. But if you don't have a destination in heart, even the right path takes you astray (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles... farts, carts, and indigestion).

"Look for a reality that could only happen with your presence. If it is already, why go there. One wants a place that faces right, not one that seems to have arrived. Do you want to take a cruise that is headed to the Caribbean, or one that is docked there. Ponder all this. There will be a test, ha." (6/23/2002 - Y#67)

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