[I have had to fill in some blanks here, connections not necessarily clear to those on the outside of the “me-and-my-guys” loop, which I have done with comments in brackets.]
Thursday, July 12, 2018
4 a.m. I wake up aching, neck stiff and actually cracking as I move it, and I wonder why, and I think, too, this is what makes people think their health is beyond their control. Then I remember spending so much time desperately gasping for my next breath, convinced that I could make the asthma attack – by then a condition, not an attack – correct itself by somehow getting hold of it, and fighting – and going on and on, to exhaustion and beyond, never thinking to go to a hospital –
Valiant in its way, I suppose, but to no degree sensible.
4:30 a.m. Perhaps the assist I got at the Discovery program is wearing off. [I was wondering if the difficulties with my body reflected a lessening of the mental or call it spiritual level I have been living on since then.] Guys?
You will always find others to compare yourself with, and the results will always be unsatisfactory – but this includes other versions of you and the life you live. You might have done this and that much better; you might have done them much worse. Comparisons are futile and indeed can be harmful.
I understand that, though perhaps I never thought to extend it to other versions of my own dealing with living.
Well, yes, but. [Basically, “But what can I do that is useful?”] But – oh, I get it. Continue to trust.
Your friends ___ and ___ show you the futility of living without faith. Valiant, but not sensible.
Why not use the help that is available? [Non-3D help, in this case.]
I see. Even help to be employed against a part of our own psyche, so to speak.
It is easy, in 3D-constricted circumstances, to be tempted to give up to what seem to be external circumstances. But that is a choice, not a forced choice.
“Forced choice” as in chess, where your opponent has maneuvered you into an impossible or anyway undesirable situation?
Life is not chess, and it is not a matter of rigid rules and fixed places and a built-in zero-sum situation featuring an active opponent. Instead, it is a free-form dance in which many people (seen and unseen) participate, skilled and clumsy, deft and clueless, not so much in antagonism as in competition for shared space at the same time. Rules are provisional and are different for everyone, in that one is bound only by the rules one cannot disbelieve in.
[I particularly like this: “Rules are provisional and are different for everyone, in that one is bound only by the rules one cannot disbelieve in.” That explains a lot about life, it seems to me]
One attempting to apply chessboard rules to a free-form dance is going to be subject to frustrations and anger.
I can see that.
When things get worst, the greatest potential for redefinition is manifesting. What you do with it, of course, is up to you.
I think of defeated Germany in 1945. That situation would qualify as a worst-case situation for them, I would imagine.
And they were only a few years from resurrection as a vibrant democratic state rather than as a moribund state in the clutches of a determined group of pirates.
But how would their way forward be said to be up to them? East Germans had a quite different experience of postwar life than West Germans, as it depended upon which countries had conquered and occupied them.
We never said nor implied that one consciously chooses one’s circumstances (other than in the ways that common sense and experience tell you that one does).
But – it seems to me you just did say exactly that.
Everyone chooses his or her reaction to circumstances shaping (constantly) the life they lead. There is a difference.
Okay, I see that, and sure, big difference.
That’s all you need, a choice of attitude. Or, as we said, live in faith. If it was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, it will be no less good for you. Not that one person’s trials and burdens are comparable to another’s, but still it is illustrative. Life in its detail is far too complex for anyone in 3D or out of it to comprehend, but life in its motivations and ground rules is relatively simple. Get those right and you have, not a road map, but a sure orientation as you proceed upon what is necessarily an unmarked trail.
This is helpful and I will put it out, minus the two specific names.
That [deletion] will be helpful in its own way, in that it may cause some to wonder, “Are they talking about me?” – and the answer to that is, yes, to some extent probably we are, for discouragement is a pandemic temptation in 3D circumstances.
I certainly have found it so, although not recently. Our thanks for this.