October 11, 2008

Jim

[Reading question from G]

“In the body complex we have a process whereby we ingest a variety of foodstuffs for the survival and growth of our body. Our body, however, does not use the majority of the food we give it. Instead, it separates the nutrients and other helpful materials from the food, absorbs those materials and eliminates the rest.

“In the mind complex, we have a process whereby we are constantly bombarded with catalyst from within and without. Analogous to the body, our mind must take only the nutritious portions of our catalyst in order to furnish ourselves with distilled experience for the purpose of spiritual evolution.

“Can you discuss how our minds distill our experience, with special focus on how we eliminate that which is not helpful for our growth?”

(Carla channeling)

Q’uo

We are those known to you as the principle of Q’uo. Greetings in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator, in whose service we come to you this evening. It is our privilege and our pleasure to be called to your group and we are most happy to speak to you upon the subject of the good food of incoming catalyst and good digestion in developing excellent experience.

However, as always, we would like to make a point of asking each of you to use your discrimination in listening to our thoughts. If you find them fair, please, by all means, make use of them as you will. If they do not seem resonant to you, please leave them behind and move on. The right thought for you is just around the corner and it is not from us.

Be strict with yourself on this account, not only with us but also with all things that you hear and you shall make your life much simpler. For trying to follow authority is not helpful unless that authority is your own discrimination. Trust yourself and your process. We thank you for this consideration.

Comparing the acquisition of incoming experience to the acquisition of foodstuffs is very apt, my brother. There is, indeed, food that is for the physical body and there is food that is nutriment for the body that is your energetic body. And indeed, just as a person who is thoughtful and wishes to maximize his nutrition will make choices that he has come to feel are wise in what he does and does not eat and drink, just so is there a substantial amount that an entity can do as he meets the waves of experience that flood his senses and his emotions day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute.

Firstly, one may consider the moment of realization of some new catalyst. Suddenly you are asked to take a big bite of something new—a new thought, an exchange between yourself and another, or a conversation with yourself that has led you in a new direction. Whatever it is, suddenly you are chewing over a new idea, a new emotion, a new impulse, or a new thought.

The phrase “chewing over” is one we used on purpose, because there is a way to consider that which is incoming. Just as you chew your food until the saliva in your mouth has entered into the breaking down of the foodstuff, thus promoting digestion, so too, as you receive something that triggers your emotions and you find yourself tempted toward an impulsive reaction, it is a skillful thing, spiritually speaking, to refrain from immediate and impulsive response, but rather chew the trigger over in your mind.

Perhaps the trigger is an old friend, one you recognize as having been able to offer you catalyst in the past. A moment to contemplate the catalyst and you will begin to work with that catalyst without your having to do anything other than honor and respect the emotional process that has been offered to you. You may consider whether you wish to move with the response that impulsively came to you. Perhaps you do, but you may not. You may find it to be less than your deepest and truest response. So then you have the opportunity to move past whatever pain or suffering was in the trigger that moved you from your previous setting of peace and contentment.

It is not that you are looking for better behavior from yourself. The attempt to “behave” often creates more problems for the seeker than the willingness to speak honestly, or as this instrument would say, “Speak truth to power.” If heads roll and feelings are hurt because it was ethically necessary for you to tell the truth, then so be it.

However, there are many times when the initial surface response that has been triggered is not your deeper truth, but rather an artifact left over from your childhood, or from earlier in your life when you did not feel supported, cherished or valued. It takes a surprisingly small amount of time to recognize such triggers and to turn to that inner child, or that younger version of yourself that was harmed and has suffered and express to it, with caresses and kisses and rocking in your arms, that you love and honor and respect that pain, and you are there to comfort and give the Balm of Gilead to that suffering.

Secondly, it is well to realize, with a glad and light heart, that indeed much of what flows into your system will flow out, unchanged by you as you are by it. Experience, like foodstuff, comes with husks and skins and waste parts that cannot do your energy body any good. It is a mistake often made by those upon the spiritual path to try to cling to every bit of experience, thinking that it all means something. The sheer volume of experience that flows through your energy body is astounding and the attempt to hold on to it and shape it in some intellectually satisfying way can indeed constipate your energy body.

The one known as Freud mentioned that sometimes a cigar was just a cigar. Sometimes a coincidence is, indeed, just a coincidence. When you are ready for synchronicities you will begin to see them multiplying all around you. Each time you recognize a coincidence as having a spiritual lesson in its hands, you open yourself more to that level of living which this instrument would call “magical.” The more respect that you give to the details of your existence—the animals and birds that you see, the names of the streets and of the people that you meet and so forth—the more open that you become to receiving many helpful hints and pointed suggestions from your environment.

However, this line of thinking is only good up to the point where you begin to hinder yourself from simply letting things flow, by your need to identify and catalogue and think about all the synchronicities. It is very helpful to find that balance between living a life unaware of the amazing profusion of inner connections and inklings and clues that these inner connections will give you and living a life so wrapped up in self-analysis that you are never able to break out of that bubble of thinking about yourself so that you can simply be yourself.

Let the husks be husks. Let the skins be skins. Let them pass through you and away from you. If you do receive difficult catalyst, then let it flow. Move directly into the heart of it. Chew it well. Take it in small bites insofar as you can, and just keep chewing, keep swallowing, and keep affirming to yourself that much of what is moving through you will move from you and only that which can do you good is going to stay with you.

Thirdly, it has often been said that food is at its best when it is eaten with friends, when there is laughter and good conversation and good fellowship, and this is true. In the company of friends, the body relaxes, the heart can remain undefended and the digestion flows smoothly.

Likewise, within your energy body see the food that you are eating as being eaten at a party. Do you think you are in a rut? Do you think that your life is boring? Look again. Let your life be a celebration! If it seems that the only one at the party is you, then light a candle, put out a napkin, and belly up to having a wonderful party by yourself. Find reasons to laugh. Look for those thoughts that put everything in perspective. Make it a habit to step back and ask yourself what the wider view might be.

There is a skill that can be learned, in the way that any habit is learned, of being good company to yourself. Watch for those thoughts in which you put yourself down, call yourself stupid, bemoan your fate, or otherwise open the door into that view of life in which life is hard.

We do not suggest that life is not sometimes hard. This is so. It is one of the very reasons that you wanted to be in this environment, this boot camp, as this instrument calls it. Yet, at the same time, within you is the ability to choose to replace a downward spiral with an upward spiral. Both this instrument and the one known as G are fond of the Prayer of St. Francis and we would iterate it at this time. Listen to the choices and come to see how you may create, of any situation, a positive and hopeful tendency. The prayer, in its translation into your English language, goes like this:

How easy it is to grease the wheels of hatred within you! And if that habit takes hold within you, then you shape the energy body in a way that is very toxic for it. You can take catalyst that has a perfect right to be taken badly, and yet, if you refuse to take it as it is on the surface as you would have the impulse to do, and instead look for the love in that hateful moment, look for the light in that darkness, look for the hope in that despairing thought, you can cleanse your system of its toxins.

It is not particularly helpful to scold yourself or to punish yourself. It is only helpful to sympathize with yourself and offer yourself those hopes, those consolations, those little bits of light that can make the darkest night, the longest suffering, into something that is do-able, bearable, and survivable.

If you do not hang onto those emotions that are dark, they shall indeed wash through you. Although, certainly, in the midst of a blow, emotionally speaking, it does not seem to be possible that you may heal and go on, we assure you [that you can.] You are true of heart, firm of purpose, desiring to be a servant of the one infinite Creator and a force for love in your incarnation. These things about you are true regardless of what happens. Hold onto them and use them. Use the knowledge of yourself as a good person, a trustworthy person, a loyal and loving person, so that you are able to bring your own torn spirit into unity, your own dark thoughts into the light of your own love and your own belief that all is well.

There will be times when it will seem that your energy body is ill. Let it be ill. Enter into the exhaustion, the depression, or whatever condition which is afflicting your energy body at a particular moment. It is not necessary to behave or to feel in a certain way. So often, spiritual students attempt to maintain a positive point of view on the level of behavior. They simply scoop the inconvenient emotions out of the way so that they will be able to perceive themselves as wise, metaphysically correct seekers.

While we encourage you to tweak the thoughts as they come through you and to help yourself to find better versions of your own truth, we do encourage you, above all, to witness to your own truth, whatever that may be. If you are in a bad way it is not the end of the spiritual world.

And it is far better to allow yourself to heal, to move through that huge amount of catalyst that has somehow gotten stuck in your system, than to try to hurry it, even if you are feeling perfectly miserable. It is far better to allow the natural flow of your own energy body to move that through your system as it really feels to do without your asking your energy body to put a rush on it and to get rid of the feelings that you did not want.

All of your feelings have gifts in their hands, even the most crushing and cruel. There is for the doughty ¹ seeker a lesson in everything. Consequently, if you are inconvenienced by what seems to be an attack of the “megrims,” ² allow yourself the rhythm and the grace of a natural flow of returning wellness of being, knowing that you are fundamentally very sound in your health.

Fortunately, your energy body has a great deal of [intrinsic] health. And that is the last thing that we would suggest to you at this time. Sometimes when you eat the wrong foods, you might take medicine to help yourself rebalance. Just so, when you have a case of spiritual indigestion it is very helpful to call upon your guidance and to ask for the help that is all around you. Your guidance is as near to you as your own heartbeat. The angels that are around you wish only to be asked to help.

As this instrument was reminded recently, it is always well to remember to ask for that help and to open yourself expectantly to receive it. ³ Do not feel, no matter how alone you seem to be, that you are truly isolated. My beloved friends, nothing could be further from the truth. You swim in a sea of unity and interconnectedness that would astound you could you but see it. And you have many, many friends on the inner planes, friends that are drawn to you because of the beauty of your personalities and your great desire to serve. And these angelic beings wish only to lend you their love and their light and to back you up on the inner planes, so that you never feel alone. This is their one hope, that they may enter into your life and help you to realize that which you wish to realize.

The handiest and simplest way to work with your guidance is to enter into the silence each day. We often speak of entering into the silence and maintaining a silence of self as being a very important part of a spiritual battery of resources that are helpful to the seeker. And in speaking of that which enables one to use the food of catalyst well, we would be remiss if we did not mention both the passive and active kinds of meditation.

In the passive meditation it is enough simply to enter into the silence and allow the self to drift away, whether you simply follow your breathing or have another means of achieving that silence within. Indeed, whether you sit or walk or even run to meditate, it is all one. The essence of it is to enter the silence. For within the silence is that great original Thought of love which can become your consciousness if you can get your small self out of the way.

Then there is the active kind of meditation where you are musing and contemplating your day. And in those times it is helpful to work with those things that triggered you today, experiencing them in memory, allowing their opposites to come into your consciousness and allowing that opposite dynamic to take over your consciousness. Then as you finish, hold those two opposites side by side in your mind and affirm the 360-degree nature of your nature and of the Creator. The Creator is all things and you contain all things as well.

As you become more and more known to yourself, all of these ways of achieving good digestion and a happy energy body become ever more smooth and easy, even effortless, to accomplish. So many things, my friends, are a matter of habit. Create the habits of contemplation and meditation, of lightheartedness, thoughtfulness and balance, and you shall have a very good meal of life.

We thank the one known as G for this very interesting query, and we would like to ask at this time if there is a follow-up to this question, my brother? We are those of Q’uo.

G

No, not to that question, Q’uo.

Q’uo

We thank you, my brother. Is there another query at this time? We are those of Q’uo.

R

Q’uo, I have two questions about the work that I’ve started to do with G and M on reading the Law of One books together. The first question is: When people work together as a group to learn more about the spiritual side of life, do they create a metaphysical entity called a group mind? And if this is true, can they use that entity as a resource as they continue their study?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo, and are aware of your query, my brother. When entities work together spiritually they do, indeed, create a group mind, but there is more to it than that, my brother. Each entity has antecedents, shall we say, a spiritual family tree. Each has worked with other entities in lives before this one and so the family tree of relationships becomes amazingly mazed and it is, indeed, a small world.

By that we mean that by the time an entity comes into the circumstance where he is able to create the kind of study group that you have created with the one known as M and the one known as G, you have almost a sure knowledge that you have worked together before and you have entities who are of your group in the inner planes who are drawn to your coming together again. These are entities with whom both of you have worked in the past. When you add a third entity, then you get a far more intricate pattern of past lives and those on the inner planes that were part of those past lives and who wish you well and wish to be of service if they can.

Since they are all attracted to your group, it is not simply that you have formed a group mind, or shall we say a group oversoul or combined guidance or higher self, but you have also alerted and awakened a large portion of entities on the inner planes who crowd around with good vibrations and good energy to help you on your way.

May we answer you further, my brother? We are those of Q’uo.

R

Yes. I have the idea that the group mind is some new energy that gets created by a group working together, but that does not seem to be correct. I think that you’re saying that the group mind is a group of metaphysical entities that are aiding and working with the three physical entities before. Is that correct?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo. My brother, that is partially correct. We are saying that your group mind consists of your combined guidance systems plus that group of well-wishers of whom we spoke. There are actually two spokes to the wheel: there is the combination of your guidance which forms its own unique higher self for that group. That in turn is supported by the entities from the inner planes who lend their energy to that guidance.

May we answer you further, my brother? We are those of Q’uo.

R

Not on this topic, but thank you for covering it and I will share it with the others.

The other question is: Since the three of us work together and all of us feel inspired by the Law of One, and all of us also are trying to learn the art of channeling, when we work together on this particular material, does it help us in any way to be better channels and does it help us to be better channels for a particular type of consciousness?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo, and are aware of your query, my brother. In a linear sense that is not so. That is, the working together, the inspiration together, and so forth does not necessarily predispose you towards being better channels or towards being a particular kind of channel. The help that you receive, however, is in that sense of self that is difficult to quantify but is nevertheless very real. And that, in its turn, predisposes you to have faith in yourself and to release yourself from worries concerning channeling or anything else that you wish to do.

[Side one of tape ends.]

(Carla channeling)

The quality of companionship and mutual support that you are able to experience in a group when you are giving your support to others and they are generously and unstintingly giving it right back to you, has an effect upon the way that you feel about yourself. There is a validation there on a level that does not have words. And this relaxes you and allows your self-confidence to become—not overweening and proud—but this takes away the tendency towards contracting and worrying about things, including channeling.

Rather, we would say that what predisposes one towards being a better channel is gaining clarity within the self concerning the self, so that when you approach learning to channel, for instance, you are aware of why you are here, why you are working on this particular skill and art, and consequently it is much more simple and matter-of-fact.

As to what would predispose one to be a certain kind of channel, that is something that is unique to each person. It is not from the outside in that a person becomes a particular kind of channel—it is from the inside out.

If an entity wants to be a channel for healing but is trying to be a channel for the Confederation, then it simply muddies the waters, shall we say. There are many ways to channel and for each channeling student it is a matter of gaining the experience, through repetition of the work, to begin to identify your particular and unique path of service and then to offer 100% of your intention and your dedication to improving yourself along the lines of your maximum gift.

So, in terms of learning to channel, the interest for each channeling student needs to be that conversation with the self wherein there is a growing knowledge of the self, a growing clarity of the self, and the type of service that this particular entity wishes to give, so that when time comes to work on the channeling circle and be part of the effort to open the self to our humble thoughts, there is nothing competing for your attention, and you are able to relax and open the self and see what happens without worrying about the outcome or giving yourself any judgment as to how you are doing.

May we answer you further, my brother? We are those of Q’uo.

R

No, not on this particular question, although you have given us food for thought and I thank you for it.

I will ask one quick confirmation and that is: As we were speaking, I had a kind of stray thought that came into my mind, since we were talking about the Law of One, that you as an entity were probably aware of it? Is that correct? When that type of study is going on are you, as an entity, since Ra is part of your group mind, drawn to that energy in that space/time and time/space?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo, and are aware of your query, my brother. And it is certainly so. We are happy to give you confirmation of that. In the metaphysical world, when people are talking about you, it is known. So we are all eavesdroppers, shall we say, of a certain type, and when you are working with the thoughts that those of Ra have offered, we are indeed there and are part of the Confederation of Angels and Planets, as we sometimes call the Confederation. The inner and the outer planes work together, my brother, in terms of supporting and being a good guidance system for those that are moving through this school of souls that is Planet Earth.

May we answer you further, my brother?

R

No, Q’uo, thank you.

Q’uo

We thank you, my brother. Is there a final query at this time? We are those of Q’uo.

G

I’ll take the final query at this time. If it is too long or too much on the instrument’s energy, please feel free not to answer and I’ll ask it again in another session.

Ra says of karma that an entity that acts in a consciously unloving manner in action with other beings can become karmically involved. They also say that the stoppage of the inertia of action may be called forgiveness. This raises an interesting question considering that in order to polarize, the negative entity is consciously attempting to exclude the energies of the heart chakra from all of its interactions with other selves.

What then is karma to the negative entity? And if the negative entity accumulates such a thing as karma, how does the negative entity alleviate karma?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo, my brother. To answer that query we must put you into the negative mindset. To the negative mindset, karma is delicious. The building up of it is delicious. There is joy in creating more karma because this is the by-product of control over others and manipulation of others. Consequently, there is no attempt to alleviate karma in the service-to-self path, but only to hone the edge of rage and anger until it is ever more penetrating and ever more effective.

May we answer you further, my brother?

G

So then, karma operates universally on third-density entities but there are two different attitudes with respect to karma?

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo. That is precisely correct, my brother.

G

Thank you, Q’uo. That’s all for me.

Q’uo

We are those of Q’uo. We are sorry to see the energy wane and our delightful conversation come to an end. We cannot tell you how much we enjoy speaking with you. It is such a pleasure!

It is a pleasure as well, to gaze at the auras of each of you as they intermingle and create this sacred place that is this circle of seeking. Your beauty is perfectly wonderful and we thank you for the experience of being able to join in your sacred seeking.

At this time, we would leave this instrument and this group in the love and in the light of the one infinite Creator. We are known to you as those of Q’uo. Adonai. Adonai.