November 16, 2003

(Carla channeling)

Q’uo

We are those of the principle known to you as Q’uo, and we greet you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator, in Whose service we are happy to be and in Whose service we come to you today. We thank you so much for calling us to your circle of seeking by your desire to seek the truth. It is a great honor to us to be asked for our opinion and indeed it is our method of service at this time. So it is a great help to us to be able to speak with you since that is our method of service to others. It is a very precious thing to us and we shall do our best to share thoughts with you that will be helpful. However, in order for us to be able to speak freely, we would ask of you, as always, that each of you employ your discrimination very carefully in listening to those things which we have to suggest. For we are in every case not those of authority but those who are as you, students and seekers of the truth, of that great mystery. We do not know the mystery but we seek it as do you and we are glad to offer our notes from the road with the understanding that you will take only those things which are fair to you and leave behind without a second thought anything that does not sound just right. For truly each of you can recognize and resonate with your own personal truth.

You ask this evening concerning the present moment, the now, and how it may be discovered, recognized, entered, enjoyed, appreciated and, above all perhaps, how it may be learned from. In order to speak about this interesting subject we would begin with some thoughts regarding time itself.

The illusion of time is that which allows your experience to occur within your being. Without the illusion of time and space, without the structure that the Creator has builded for your particular body, mind and spirit to dwell in, you would not be able to process catalyst into experience. You would indeed not have catalyst, you would simply be. This is in fact your true state. You are, period. It is not that you are a human or that you are a soul or that you are any quality or condition, you are a part of all that is. You are an Is-ness. It is very difficult for us to express this concept through words. But beneath all movement, you already and eternally are.

Since that sounds like such a delightful state, one wonders perhaps why the Creator would indeed create a house, such as the universe which you enjoy, which is nothing but an illusion, or a system of illusions that are interpenetrating. The reason is that about which we were speaking recently, that first distortion of free will. The Creator chose to know Itself. And in order to know Itself, It created, with love and with light, a creation in which entities could examine whatever of the material of their essence or Is-ness that they wished to examine, against a backdrop that seemed plausible and solid so that there would be a believable, self-correcting, consensus-reality dream in which all of those within a planetary system, such as yours, could take part and help each other to learn more about that entity which all of you are or which each of you is. For, again this is difficult to say. While each of you is utterly unique, at the same time each of you is a part of one energy system which is the Creator. You are in the process of learning from your inner self with the help of your outer or other selves.

The world, then, may be seen as a dream, as a kingdom, or as a prison. But certainly your physical world, though an illusion, is quite solid, quite substantial, and quite believable. Without time, you would not be able to have the experience of consecutivity; you would not be born, live and die, rather you would exist in a being born, dying and everything-in-between-state, all in a big soup. The desire of the Creator was that hope of becoming a fuller, more richly realized beingness. There was a dedication of the principle of Godhead to an examination of self, a celebration of self, and a learning about self.

Each of you, then, is a spark of that Creator Who has chosen at this time to come into this particular environment of what this instrument calls third density, to live in incarnation amongst others of your kind, being mirrors for others, to reflect to them that truth which they offer you, seeing the mirrors of others that reflect the truth of you back to yourself, and, through all of the mazes and mirrors, beginning to come to a competency of understanding regarding the nature of the illusion that allows you, as a spirit who is seeking the truth, to penetrate more and more that which is not of the essence of self; so that more and more, you are able to take life lightly, to remove from the self the feeling of prison and to replace that with the feeling of the dream or of the kingdom.

There are many ways to lose that feeling of being a slave to time or being imprisoned within time and space. We certainly recommend meditation, as always, but there are many ways to shake the trammels of the noon-day thoughts and chores and businesses in order to lift up from that mental narrowness of thought that does not remember who you are or why you are here. It is very easy to be caught up in the never-ending series of lists, as the one known as T1 was seeing; the doing of things on a daily basis, as the one known as Jim was saying to this instrument earlier, the never ending mountain of chores to be done and duties to be fulfilled. How easy it is to become completely convinced that these are the building blocks of a complete existence! Yet, in and of themselves, there is no real substance or meaning in these things. There is simply that structure which allows experience. Without further seeking, then, the world may seem a kind of prison where the sentence is life and the eventual sentence is death. One cannot escape the life except by the door of death and when one escapes by that door, as far as those remaining can see, that entity has become nothing, dust has returned to dust and the cycle of life and death is completed.

And so for the first cycle of seeking, shall we say, there is that tendency for the new seeker to begin to feel that life is a dream. There is that realization that these seemingly solid building blocks of chores and days and seasons are not substantial. And there is a tremendous feeling of relief and freedom of the lifting up from having to take the work time, the chore time, the time of duties, too seriously. Within one of your philosophical distortions there is that phrase, “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” The time of experiencing life as a dream within a dream is that time when there is no mountain. It is a time when sudden realizations and new information may create tremendous excitement within the self and a time when the dark night of the soul can plunge one into the abyss of the deepest sorrow and grief, and yet always with the feeling that one is actually a spirit rather than a body and that one is experiencing a dream and that nothing is terribly important. It is a precious time in many ways and much good comes from the seeking that is done during this time.

Beyond that time, there comes a time of reintegration, the dream and prison coming together to form a new picture, which is that of the kingdom, a realm, a magical place. We find that this is where many of you within this circle are attempting to live at this time and we commend you for having moved along the path of seeking, through so many bends and curves and difficulties in the road, that your spiritual maturity has begun to allow you to see the riches of the illusion, the tremendous richness of the environment that has been provided for this school of life that you experience during incarnation. It is a time when the bitterness begins to dissolve. There is no longer anger at having to work for a living or feed the body or cleanse the body or take of the environment that one has chosen. The prison doors open because there is freedom to see the blessing of everything. There is no need to justify suffering and duty and all of the unpleasantness of life because it is finally seen not as that which limits and narrows the light, not as that which may be attended to but not taken seriously, but that which has been given as a tremendous gift, each gift, each moment coming fresh from the Creator. That is the time of kingdom. That is the time of jubilee. And it is truly the first place, shall we say, within the mind from which a point of view may be taken that has great depth, so that you may survive those realizations which shall come when you have become unafraid of the prison and unafraid of the dream.

Most entities among your peoples live a kind of inner life that we would describe as horizontal. The world of things spreads out like the skyline, full of detail. And it is that within which one lives. One drives the streets, one walks the sidewalks, one moves horizontally along the face of the planet. To all illusory intents and purposes, it is a flat existence. If that horizontal life were called the x-axis, then the world of spirit could be seen as the y-axis, the vertical life. Imagine standing upon the ground, seeing with the physical eyes that it extends flat in each direction, horizontally as far as the eye can see. The feet meet the ground in just so and so a place. There is contact between the soles of the feet and the ground. And that thin meeting place represents the depth of reality. But imagine suddenly realizing that precisely where the sole of the foot meets the ground there is an infinite opening, upwards and downwards; upwards into the world of ideals, guidance, godhead; downward into the ground of being. It is as though chasms open beneath you and above you and suddenly you are not standing upon a thin slab of ground but upon the razor’s edge, in intersection with eternity and infinity.

This is in fact, your situation. You are in the position of being able to live both a life in space/time, the horizontal life, and a life in time/space, the vertical life, simultaneously. We might say that the ability to remember this image, the ability to remember that which is unseen, that which opens to the Creator and to the essential self, is a measure of how well you are doing with the simple act of remembrance that is the key in many ways to progressing in spiritual, mental and physical evolution of self. How to remember that what you see is not all that you get? How to remember the intersection with wonder and magic and infinite possibility? This instrument pursues a daily and weekly spiritual or religious program which includes group worship within that distortion of spirituality called Christian. This is one way in which she attempts to be a creature of remembrance. There are many ways to be remembering who you are and why you’re here. That is one way, the simple act of setting aside time, such as you have this day, to seek together. No matter how the meditation goes, no matter how you feel that you have been as a part of a seeking circle, the intention, the dedication of time, are the things that create the feeling of remembering and honoring the portion of yourself that is living that vertical life. In moments such as this, as you allow the energy to move around the circle, we feel sure that each of you has that riveted feeling of opening to the infinite possibilities of the moment.

But there are, as the one known as T2 said, so many different ways of coming into a state of remembrance. Each of you has five senses in the physical. The example that the one known T2 gave of washing the hands and becoming aware of each characteristic and nuance of feeling in that experience operates on the principle of using the gifts that are given to you. Each sense is evocative. Each sensibility may be triggered, tuned and even transformed by choosing to be alert, to be watchful, to be attentive, to pay attention to the little things. This instrument is fond of saying, the smaller the thing, the more common and everyday, the more sacred it seems [to her]. And while we find everything equally sacred, we understand what this instrument is attempting to express. Consider that act of washing the hands, of emptying the bowels and rising from that natural function to wash the hands and to go forth to meet the day. It must be done every day, perhaps more than once but certainly in the morning. For each of you this is a life sentence of natural function that must be attended to for the sake of the body. But that is a heavy energy, that is a grudging life when one “has” to perform natural functions. However, if one enters into those natural functions and the natural ways of cleanliness and preparing for the day with every sense awake, each humble, necessary chore can become a symbol, in the physical, of processes which are moving on within the inner being, processes that move from nuance to nuance and half tone to half tint. And the ability to enter into the joy of removing the old from the system and clearing it for the day and then rising and washing the hands and blessing that event, experiencing that magical flow of water as it cleanses, experiencing all the feelings that are attendant upon the cleansing: the pleasant smell, the texture of soap, the texture of the towel; attending to each of these to see the beauty in them, softens and gentles the harsh edges of necessity into things of unutterable beauty. And as each tiny thing begins to become open to that view, the sacrededness of things emerges and lifts one up into the glory of the illusion of incarnation. Each moment is a bounty, a feast, a banquet. It is brimming with information, it is whole and perfect and one. The only way to come into that sense of consciousness is to learn the attentiveness to the sacredness of everyday things.

Within a sacred space, with altars and pews and vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows, it is easy to feel that one is in a sacred place. Yet every child of dust within the illusion of earth stands on holy ground, whether they are starving or fed, whether they are cold or clothed, whether they are sick or healthy. No matter what state or condition they may be in they stand upon holy ground and they themselves are holy. And you, child of dust, also are infinitely, ineffably, holy. You are a sacred essence of the divine.

How may one begin to experience this point of view? In some ways it becomes a matter of sheer discipline. There is a certain amount of what this instrument would call struggle involved in training the mind to come into a state of remembrance. There is much help which is available to those who wish to become present. And it is indeed a noble task to set for the self, to become present. It is not that one wishes to be without a context. We do not call you away from the world, we do not look down upon any part of the life lived by the ordinary human being. We do not suggest the need for retreat and alteration of the outer circumstances. Certainly, times of quiet, such as the one as T1 has described, are extraordinarily helpful. When there is the sabbatical there is the opportunity to take stock, to express the self as a seeking entity rather than as one who must attend to the ordinary challenges of making a living and coping with the financial side of life. And yet life for the most part is lived in the hurly-burly, in the spotlight of the passion play ², as the scenes upon the stage revolve.

We give this instrument a view of a complete lack of location. Picture, if you would, the sensation of weightlessness, of lack of input into any of the senses. Lifted from the constant contact with the senses, one is left within a kingdom which is within. Within that inner kingdom of self lies the truth and a great deal of distortion. Where did this distortion come from? An entity is born into incarnation with certain preconceived distortions already. Each of you has chosen a personality shell that is rich in gifts and in challenges. Each of you has scripted for yourself incarnational lessons which will occur thematically, repeatedly, during the incarnation, teaching you the lessons that you have chosen and offering you the opportunities of service which you have hoped for. In this inner life no mirrors exist and it is exponentially more difficult to see the self clearly than when one is receiving information from the mirrors around one. So, while we value time spent in a completely inner search, we feel that the more efficient path, in terms of the rapidness with which evolution may occur, is an environment in which the inner life and the outer life marry. Rather than fighting and dividing inner life from outer life and struggling to get more inner life, we would suggest every way which you may think of personally to stamp the outer with the inner and to relate the inner into the outer, making every connection that you can, so that all of experience becomes one and the physical and the metaphysical become a dance for two that carries both the male and the female aspect of living within one consciousness.

By male and female aspects of living, we are, in our distortion, suggesting that the outer or horizontal life is masculine, or “yang” as this instrument would say, in its activity, its reaching, its power to do, whereas that inner vertical life is as the potentiator, that which awaits the reaching, that which does not have the form but which is productive of all form, that which may be called guidance or inspiration or infinity or eternity. To allow the infinite and the eternal to become a part of the passing scene and to allow the passing scene to become stamped with infinity and eternity is to make that marriage within the life of those aspects which otherwise might fight for dominance. We assure you it is not at all easy to do this, it is much easier to compartmentalize and to do the spiritual practice and to move into the daily mode and then back into a spiritual practice and back into the daily mode. Yet we may say the fewer transitions that you must choose to make, the more often that you are able to blend the inner and the outer being, the more substantial will be your stance, and your point of view will benefit from this unification of inner and outer living.

What is the essence of you? That is the question, you see, and the answer is so simple. You are. You are not creating yourself, you are simply discovering the self that is there. You do not choose from nothing, you came into this incarnation a very real citizen of eternity. You are simply peeling away layers of distortion to see yourself clearer and clearer, to have a deeper and deeper sense of your own essence. It is a fascinating journey and we are so glad to have you as companions upon it.

This instrument is informing us that we have spoken long enough upon this most fascinating subject and we bow to her wisdom. We confess that in this particular case we could go on talking for quite a while, for this is a beautiful subject and we thank you for asking [about it]. But at this time we do relinquish this subject and ask if there may be other queries that we may respond to at this time?

V

Q’uo, you’ve spoken before about the use of the imagination to discipline rogue energies in the personality and I wonder if you would expound on that some, and specifically with regard to affirmations and why it would be so necessary to state affirmations aloud or write them down, to externalize them in some form in order to make manifestation possible?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo and we grasp your query, my sister. Perhaps you are aware of the kind of personality which thinks repeatedly about doing something but does not do it. All the thinking in the world is not productive, in terms of creating something in the consensus-reality universe, without action. In the case of making affirmations, the disciplined soul may well be able to make affirmations within the mind without writing them down and having them become “real” things; such is the power of the disciplined personality. However, for the soul who is attempting to become more disciplined, it is well to marry, again to use that simile, the inner intention with the outer fact, to make from the inner dream the outer reality. The act of writing on paper or speaking into the ether where sound may be heard is the act of putting inner vibration into the outer vibration and blending, or marrying, the two. You are aware, my sister, of the old adage, “As above, so below.” The idea of externalizing these affirmations is the idea of bringing them into reality. It is an interesting thing that it is more easy to believe in the self when one can see the words that one has written and when one can repeat them and hear the sound.

May we answer you further, my sister?

V

Yes. Actually, I would like to ask about the discipline of the personality and a thought that I had the other day regarding what my mother used to say to me which was, “Guard your tongue.” It occurred to me that, in fact, what the discipline is about is guarding the thoughts and creating the truth within you that says, “I see the beauty, I see the perfection,” rather than looking at it and seeing the cynicism and only expressing the beauty. Could you illuminate that for me?

Q’uo

My sister, we feel that you have illuminated it very well. The only thing that we could add is an encouragement to play with this awareness that you are a creator, a co-creator and that, as you think, as you actually begin to train yourself to think, you do not narrow that which you comprehend. You are as able to see the thoughts of cynicism, sarcasm, anger and so forth as you were before, perhaps more able. What you are doing as you use the discipline is shaping your heart or— we correct this instrument—shaping your mind to be able to contain the thoughts of the heart, rather than simply the thoughts of the mind. It is not incorrect, we feel, to be aware of the ridiculousness, the sorry-ness or the wretchedness of any particular situation. It is not wrong to have sarcastic thoughts or to react naturally, and fervently even, to those things which make one uncomfortable or create catalyst. The heart, however, thinks substantially differently from the mind, the thoughts of the heart coming from that vertical part of living, that time/space or metaphysical portion where the thoughts are the thoughts beyond incarnation, beyond circumstance or estate. Those thoughts are the thoughts of the infinite being that you are. They are the thoughts of the consciousness within and that consciousness is safe within your heart. It is a matter of opening your own doors into that heart, sitting there and gazing from that heart out into the world. One still may have all of the inner opportunities for making the self laugh to the self with cynical thoughts, such as this instrument does as a hobby, we should say! But allowing the shape of the heart’s thoughts to be the shape of the thought as it evolves in the awareness of the inner self gives one grace and distance and remembrance of who you are, so that your expression, even to the self, is a kinder and gentler thing. And certainly the expression to the outer world carries with it that maturity of thought that keeps that heart open and does not consider the imperfection of things as a reason to lose faith or to become embittered.

May we answer you further, my sister?

V

If you are so inclined, I would love for you to answer further but I don’t have a further query so I’ll pass it to T1.

T1

I’ve been reading a lot of the material channeled by the Seth entity and one of the constructs that is causing some confusion in myself is that of probable realities. The choice. Seth indicates that in each decision in this incarnation there are infinite other versions of the illusion in which other decisions were made. The teachings of the Confederation state that the aim of third density is the choice [of] service-to-others or service-to-self. Which [choice] one has made is due to [one’s] polarity. Taking these two together, probable realities and choice, it seems that the choice is made separately and differently by each probable self projected by the soul. Perhaps I’m just wrapping myself up in constructs here and becoming confused but is there a way which Q’uo perhaps could untangle some of my thought processes there?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo and aware of your query, my brother. Indeed, we do not know if we are able to untangle your thoughts but we are glad to share ours with you and in their own tangle, my brother, the self is a concept which understandably within humans is limited and defined by the shape of the physical body and the inevitable flowing forward of sequential time. At each decision point, at each fork in the road, the choice of which fork to take obviously creates a different probable reality than the one that would occur if the other fork in the road were taken. However, perhaps it may clear this up for you a bit to contemplate that whichever fork in the road that one takes one is still equipped with the same incarnational lessons, the same things upon the scroll of life, that will come up repeatedly, so that it is impossible to avoid one’s plan. Certainly, one may see that there are widely divergent paths and the tuning song that this group enjoyed this day asks that question, “Is there any other way I could have lived but this one? Is there anybody else I could have been?” ³ Certainly there are other choices that could have been made, but would the person that made those choices have turned out differently, or would those same choices have appeared no matter what road was taken?

In the physical life you walk down paths and turn corners and there is a new place. Turn another corner and there is another new place. Living the vertical life of which we have been speaking, the path is a spiral weaving always around and always anew; not the circle that becomes old, for every time that these themes come around again you are approaching them from a new standpoint, from a new place in your process, a new state of realization.

May we answer you further, my brother?

T1

No, thank you Q’uo. I think I need to read through and think about the explanation that you offered, thank you.

Q’uo

We thank you, my brother. Is there another query at this time?

G

Q’uo, you have often described the process of coming into that relationship with that self, that undiscovered self beyond the personality, of accessing those deep stores of self-knowledge, as a process of “courting” the subconscious mind. My question is: how does one go about, as you say, “wooing” that lover, and courting the subconscious in order to retrieve that needed information and to create that authentic contact with love and with light and with the Creator?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo and are aware of your query, my brother. Each lover must woo in its own way. Let us consider the object of love here. That object of seeking is the self within. It awaits the reaching in the archetypical manner of the Matrix and the Potentiator. The self within is as the unread book, the unknown mystery. In the archetypical tarot images, that is pictured as the woman who is veiled. One can barely see the book of wisdom that she holds at her heart. You are attempting to lift the veil from that book of self. How would you court that self within? We have at times suggested to you to think of that not as courting but as parenting, as if the self within were a child that needed comforting so that you take that self within and rock it and ask it what it needs, what its dreams are, what its hopes are, and then spend time listening to that self.

The ways of courtship are slow and sweet, they are full of passion and yet full of restraint, for the object of love is sensitive, young, inexperienced. And certainly as an essence, living within consensus reality, your hearts are indeed innocent babes in a wicked world. So there are the hints that we give you. It is not seeking as a man seeks a woman and yet it is, in that there is passion, there is true love, and there is the hope of serving.

Find the ways that your own inner self wishes to express itself. Is it walking in nature? Is it filling your mind with great music or great words? Is it the act of service? We find within this instrument’s mind an example from earlier this day as she was speaking with the one known as Jim and he was expressing to her how he feels grateful for the opportunity to cut and trim the lawn of the client so that he creates a place of beauty and as he leaves, he looks back over his shoulder with great affection and pride because he has loved that place and danced with the love that is in that place. Perhaps that undiscovered country within you is a place that you may love and that you may dance with and in.

May we answer you further, my brother?

G

No, that was beautiful, thank you Q’uo.

Q’uo

We thank you, my brother. Is there a final query at this time?

G

Q’uo, I’ll take the opportunity if no one else does. I have an e-mail that has the potential to create great change sitting in the pending file and I know you can’t offer me advice on right or wrong, because there is no wrong, no mistakes, but could you help, give me some info, offer me some advice on what I might consider before I send it and what it might do to the energy configurations between me and this distant person?

Q’uo

My brother, we are aware of your query and find ourselves full up against the stop of free will. We can give this instrument the image of one of her favorite sayings from the Psalms concerning the entity whom everyone thought was a fool until he opened his mouth and removed all doubt. ⁴ Every word spoken changes the shape of your world. Look at each word for its truth, its compassion, and its service.

We are those of Q’uo. It has been enormously pleasureful to us to speak to you. We find the beauty of your seeking most delightful and we thank each of you for that beauty that you share with us so freely. The energy exchange has been most salubrious for us. We leave you in peace. We leave you empowered with hope, with the awareness of your own magical natures. We leave you in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator and of each other. We are those of Q’uo. Adonai, my friends, Adonai.